Donald Trump has developed a highly successful strategy for deflecting attention whenever he gets into hot water: create a distraction. The on-again, off-again tariffs serve that goal well. Calling them TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) overlooks their functionality in distracting from his failure to end the war in Ukraine, or to “obliterate” Iran’s nuclear program, or even his success in rallying Canadians, Panamanians, Australians, or Greenlanders to unanimously reject his threats and the careers of his followers.
While it might be an overstatement that Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, has to create a reality show every day, there are few days without created drama. Only Cabinet meetings with all required to heap praise on Mr. Trump are quiet days.
The current Epstein affair is a perfect case, and it also shows how the media is compliant with this strategy. Trump has been unable to calm the anger of his base, and he even told them he doesn’t want them. His meaningless gesture to ask that the redacted grand jury documents be released didn’t work either. Worse, more revelations continue to come out, such as the illustrated birthday letter to Epstein. And earlier stories resurface, such as the party with young women with only Trump and Epstein as guests or Maria Farmer’s strange interaction with the two.
A perfect time to distract: “I demand that the Washington football team restore their earlier team name and the same with the Cleveland baseball team.” How important! How timely! How distracting — but only if the media play it as something real.
And they, and The Tribune, did.
On Monday (7/21), we were treated to a half-page story from The Athletic, with the blaring headline: “Trump calls for Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians to revert to previous names.” With such an important story, who cares about Epstein? Let’s worry about whether this is right, whether he can command these changes, what it will do to football, etc.
And on Tuesday (7/22) we got a similar New York Times story.
Next time, let’s all not be distracted by Trump/Wiles and ask that the next time they pull out their latest reality show distractor, the headline will read, “Trump tries to distract attention from his newest failure by …”
Ken Jameson, Salt Lake City
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