Anonymous wrote:
If you are puzzled by the bizarre “press conference” put on by the White House press secretary this evening (angrily claiming that Trump’s inauguration had the largest audience in history, accusing them of faking photos and lying about attendance), let me help explain it. This spectacle served three purposes:1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference. This is the PR equivalent of “negging,” the odious pick-up practice of a particular kind of horrible person (e.g., Donald Trump).
2. Increasing the separation between Trump’s base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong—that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong—they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here—likely to pay off—is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as “fake news” (because otherwise they’d be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.)
3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say “clearly the White House is lying,” a third will say “if Trump says it, it must be true,” and the remaining third will say “gosh, I guess this is unknowable.” The idea isn’t to convince these people of untrue things, it’s to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine.
This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump’s White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as this, just imagine what else they’ll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. It’s gonna get real bad.
http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/2017/01/trumps-fact-free-world-and-it-matters.html
Though that’s not the original source. It was quoted by Michael-in-Norfolk, stating “An activist friend shared some thoughts on Facebook that seem to describe the coming disinformation campaign:”
~*~
And here we see how Trump will achieve that aim.
From: With False Claims, Trump Attacks Media on Turnout and Intelligence Rift NYT 1/21/17 By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and MATTHEW ROSENBERG
Commentary about the size of his inauguration crowd made Mr. Trump increasingly angry on Friday, according to several people familiar with his thinking.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump told his advisers that he wanted to push back hard on “dishonest media” coverage — mostly referring to a Twitter post from a New York Times reporter showing side-by-side frames of Mr. Trump’s crowd and Mr. Obama’s in 2009. But most of Mr. Trump’s advisers urged him to focus on the responsibilities of his office during his first full day as president.
and later in the article
But most of his [Trump’s] remarks [at his appearance at the C.I.A.’s headquarters in Langley, Va on 1/21/17] were devoted to attacking the news media. And Mr. Spicer picked up the theme later in the day in the White House briefing room. But his appearance, according to the people familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking, went too far, in the president’s opinion.
This is how the teflon works. Trump goes off in private, activates his flying monkeys by riling them up and making them defensive on his behalf, releases them to promulgate his will, and then subsequently disavows their actions. By this process, his anger and narcissistic injury is expressed, but he remains untouched by the fallout. He can appear cool, unaffected, and magnanimous when dealing with both his flying monkeys (they were just suffering from “too much love” for him) and his detractors, gas lighting them in the process (I really didn’t mean/say/intend that).
Hearseeno 