Trump's Twitter Distraction

By George Lakoff, George Lakoff's Website

10 March 17

he net has been drawing closer around Trump’s Russian connections. His unwavering support for America’s major enemy has raised a question: Is Treason the Reason?

The Tax Return issue has become a treason issue. The tax returns could show if Trump is deeply in debt to Russians or if he is involved in illegal financial activity. He might clear suspicions by releasing the returns.

The longer he refuses to do so, the greater the suspicion gets. Jeff Sessions’ recusal made Trump furious because it meant that Sessions could no longer protect him from an independent Justice Department investigation, if there were to be one. If Sessions is forced to resign, the net gets that much tighter. Of course, in addition to releasing the tax returns, Trump should support a full and independent investigation to clear up all questions about his Russia contacts.

In the midst of this, Trump created a distraction: accusing Obama of wiretapping the Trump Tower, with no evidence. Faced with the biggest scandal in American history – presidential treason – Trump, with a tweet, accuses Obama of a scandal bigger than Watergate.

Trump’s tweets are strategic. I analyzed the tweets on NPR’s On the Media, and a diagram has been shared widely on social media and also appeared in the Washington Post.

Trump’s tweet is a doozy. It is an example of all four of Trump’s strategies.

Pre-emptive Framing: He frames first. He creates a new presidential scandal – Obama’s wiretapping — an accusation without evidence, and with all evidence against it.

Deflection: He puts the onus on his squeaky-clean predecessor.

Diversion: The press bit and the diversion worked. It generated headlines questioning whether Obama, rather than Trump, had committed wrongdoing.
The diversion worked, at least temporarily.

Trial Balloon: Will the public accept it, or listen to a discussion of it long enough to distract the press and the public from the treason issue?

The media is still focused on the false accusation, not on the investigation of Trump’s Russian connections and the treason issue.  (Of course, the growing nature of the scandal is making it harder and harder for Trump to pivot away from his Russia problem)

Pretty effective tweet.  But it gets more effective.

It put the press and those from the Obama administration in the position of denying the accusation — of repeating the accusation by questioning it and negating it — like saying Obama is not a crook. The more the press discusses it, the more Obama is associated with the idea of wiretapping Trump, thus strengthening Trump’s claim in the minds of the public by denying the claim, or asking for evidence of the claim. Meanwhile, Trump’s minions are associating Obama with Watergate by repeating “What did he know and when did he know it?” This question is what brought Nixon down. They can keep this up for a long time.

And worse: This is not just a diversion from the treason issue. It’s also a diversion from what Trump’s cabinet, with the help of Paul Ryan, is doing under the cover of the diversion: denying healthcare to millions, taking away public protections we have all depended on by defunding the EPA, allowing drugs to go on the market without being tested for safety and efficacy, taking away protections from investors, and on and on.

The wiretap tweet was not crazy or manic – it was strategic. And when the press treats tweets as “breaking news” it just plays out the Trump strategy.

Trump Has Sold Out His Voters for Corporate America

By Graham Vyse, New Republic

10 March 17

The president's early policies benefit corporations and the rich at the expense of everyday Americans.

efore he even took office, Donald Trump was bragging about his presidency’s benefit to American consumers. “Thanks Donald!” he tweeted in December, after consumer confidence hit a 15-year high. On Monday, the president marked National Consumer Protection Week by touting “the importance of empowering consumers by helping them to more capably identify and report cyber scams, monitor their online privacy and security, and make well-informed decisions.”

“Our work to protect consumers from identity theft, abuse of personal information, and fraud, and to improve the integrity and security of our marketplaces, enhances the prosperity of our great country,” he said in a presidential proclamation.

But early in his presidency, Trump has already rolled out a plethora of policies that will hurt American consumers.

Late last week, his administration shelved two proposed Obama-era rules on airlines: one requiring baggage fees to be posted alongside airfare, the other requesting information about how airlines market flights on comparison websites like Kayak and Expedia (the concern being that visitors to those sites don’t see all available fares). Airlines for America, a trade association and lobbying group for the major airlines, applauded the decision.

As Gabrielle Bluestone wrote for VICE News on Monday, “the Trump administration recently eliminated or proposed eliminating a host of consumer protections, from a requirement that users opt in before cable and telecommunications companies are allowed to sell their web browsing data to advertisers, to a rule that would have required financial advisors to make decisions in the best interests of their clients.”

The New York Times reported on Sunday that more than 90 regulations have been “delayed, suspended or reversed in the month and a half since President Trump took office”:

Giants in telecommunications, like Verizon and AT&T, will not have to take “reasonable measures” to ensure that their customers’ Social Security numbers, web browsing history and other personal information are not stolen or accidentally released.

Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase will not be punished, at least for now, for not collecting extra money from customers to cover potential losses from certain kinds of high-risk trades that helped unleash the 2008 financial crisis.

The Times called it “one of the most significant shifts in regulatory policy in recent decades,” and “the leading edge” chief strategist Steve Bannon’s “deconstruction of the administrative state.” Moreover, the paper found that in many cases, “the changes came after appeals by corporate lobbyists and trade association executives, who see a potentially historic opportunity to lower compliance costs and drive up profits.”

Trump and Republicans are also looking to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent government watchdog created under President Barack Obama. “Republicans have introduced legislation that would change the CFPB’s leadership structure, replacing the one-person directorship with a five-person commission, which could effectively slow or stymie the agency’s aggressive consumer protection actions in an effort to get a consensus,” Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary wrote last month. Meanwhile, conservatives are building a legal case to remove the agency’s director, Richard Cordray, before his term ends next summer.

Then there’s Trump’s trade policy. In January, Brookings Institution fellow, Dany Bahar criticized the president’s plan to slap a 35 percent tariff on imports. “Not only will it not protect the American worker, it will strongly hurt the American consumer,” he wrote. “This is simply because if imports turn out to be more expensive than before, it is the American consumers, and no one else, who will have to pay for that extra 35 percent that will be added to goods’ price tags.”

The Republicans’ proposed “border adjustability tax” would also hurt consumers. “This levy will cost American consumers at least a trillion dollars over the next ten years,” Steve Forbes, the chairman of Forbes Media and a two-time Republican candidate for president, wrote in January. “Knowing how Washington politicians calculate these things, you can bet the amount will end up being considerably more. Prices for everyday items, such as socks, shoes and household appliances, will go up. So will tech devices like the iPad, not to mention automobiles and trucks. Gasoline? Millions of Americans will pay an additional 30 cents or more per gallon at the pump. Lower-income and struggling middle-class Americans will get hit the hardest.”

Trump has also vowed to dismantle the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, and he and the GOP are in the process—albeit a floundering one—of doing the same to Obamacare. The plan unveiled by House Republicans on Monday amounts to a tax cut for the rich while making it tougher for Obamacare’s most vulnerable customers—the poor, sick, and elderly—to find affordable care.

“For too long, a small group in our nation’s Capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost,” Trump lamented in his inaugural address. Not even two months later, it’s clear that the American people will bear an even greater cost under Trump.