Donald Trump ad libbed his threat to North Korea

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas 0 Comment

The equivalent of Eric Trump versus the equivalent of Kim Jong Il

Yesterday, while less effective people were working, Donald Trump was both working and vacationing at the same time. The president took a break from doing the people’s business at his Bedminster, NJ golf resort to issue this statement on North Korea:

North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. He has been very threatening, beyond a normal state, and as I said they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before.

The first time I saw a transcript of these remarks, the phrase “best not” made me think it was a joke. You can tell when the guy threatening you is not accustomed to violence when he says something weird. It’s a sign he threatens people in his head more often than he threatens them out loud. But the marquee phrase in this statement is “the likes of which the world has never seen.” That’s the one that caught the attention of the press and, fortunately, rules out the possibility of a nuclear strike, since the world saw that on this date in 1945.

Still, it’s an understatement to say presidents have not historically spoken this way. North Korea routinely speaks this way about us, but that’s what makes them the world’s funniest non-nuclear nation. The joke stops working if they irradiate Guam. What we to do is keep the dynamic between the DPRK and the US like a kid taunting a pro wrestler, and not wade into the stands to beat him to death for saying we suck.

My understanding of the consensus on KJ-1 is that he is a rational actor. He makes weird moves, but they’re to satisfy the weird demands of running a nationwide cult of personality, not merely to make chaos. He does not actually want to fight a nuclear war. He would probably fight back in a nuclear war, though, and if he felt one was inevitable he might try to beat us to the punch. You want to interact with someone like that carefully, so it’s weird Trump decided to say something so inflammatory.

Today, however, we learn that he didn’t decide to say anything in particular. Although he had discussed the elements of a statement with White House staff, what he said yesterday was improvised. That’s cool. There’s no need to write out the entire speech you will say to avert nuclear war. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to the dental supply store and buy several hundred lead aprons.

Say, what’s in the real news?

By Dan Brooks in Fake News 2 Comments

Lara Trump explains that a kid who works in the lodge could never ski faster than Eric.

Remember when we coined the phrase “fake news” to describe the proliferation of hoax stories on social media? That genie got out of the bottle fast. The term meant “made-up reports” for about two weeks before Trumpsters coopted it entirely. Now “fake news” is their term for any item critical of the president, including factual reporting of events by legacy news organizations. They prefer “real news,” i.e. statements from people who are not journalists, disseminated by flacks who hold the very idea of objectivity in contempt. It took about six months to get from “watch out for hoaxes” to the assertion that only propaganda is real. Step one was to classify actual events that reflect poorly on the president as “fake news.” Step two is this:

Let’s talk about the things that make this news real:

  1. It is devoted to reporting good things about one subject.
  2. The reporter is the subject’s daughter-in-law.
  3. It contains no interviews with or quotes from anyone else.
  4. It is not broadcast on a news network.

Compare this shot of reality to last week’s reports that multiple people got fired from the White House staff, Obamacare repeal died in the senate, and the president has been asking people if he can legally pardon himself. All that stuff is fake. This video does not mention it explicitly, but we know it’s fake because it distracts us from appreciating the president. Lara Trump implies it with her very first sentence, “I bet you haven’t heard about all the accomplishments the president had this week, because there’s so much fake news out there.”

This statement sets up a weird dichotomy. It’s not as though knowing the Mooch got fired prevents you from knowing that the Dow has reached an all-time high, but Reporter Trump implies that you either know President Trump is doing a great job or you’ve fallen victim to fake news. That news is fake not because investigation shows it didn’t really happen, but merely because Trump fans refuse to listen to it. This is an extremely bracing way to think about the distinction between “real” and “fake.”

Another difference between fake news and the real news, though, is that the real news is not new. This video reports that President Trump continues to donate his salary, unemployment continues to be low, and the Dow continues to be high. One problem with the plan to replace the fake news of sourced reporting and reputable outlets with real news from the wife of the president’s kid is that it doesn’t really satisfy people’s appetite for fresh information about what just happened, i.e. the “news” of the world. It’s weird that Trump & Trump’s Real News would not try to replicate the reporting that most people agree is the lifeblood of what they call fake news.

But maybe they don’t think of it that way. Maybe Trumpworld looks at the Washington Post and the New York Times and determines that their signature feature is not comprehensive reporting on breaking events, but rather stuff that makes Trump look bad. Compare this to their own product, stuff that makes Trump look good. It seems fatuous, but maybe once you commit to approaching all knowledge as instrumental—not as a way to understand the world but as a way to wield power—you kind of forget how truth smells. If you only care about the score, the ref seems like another player. Why not compete with him?

Lara Trump’s real news is a dispatch from a world where the Washington Post is propaganda, too. The more one tries to parse the logic of Trumpworld, the more one suspects that it is not about lying so much as denying the distinction between truth and lies. The question of whether a statistic is accurate or a story really happened is orthogonal to the terms “real” and “fake” as Trumpworld uses them. Pointing out that what they call “fake news” actually happened is like saying the symphony is oblong. That President Trump is making America great again is their only claim of fact, and they take it as an article of faith. All other realness flows from there.

Okay, now choose which of these is funny

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 4 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been loving today’s wall-to-wall coverage of a Twitter exchange between Donald Trump, a real estate magnate and reality TV celebrity who recently became President of the United States, and Chelsea Clinton. You may remember her as the daughter of that world-famous symbol of feminine power, Kim Kardashian. Anyway, here’s the leader of the free world this morning:

The amazing thing here is that Trump has access to professional speechwriters, yet he continues to address millions in the same voice your uncle uses on your Facebook wall. The other amazing thing is that he is referring to the recent G20 summit, where Ivanka filled in for him at a general meeting as he met with the president of Indonesia.

No biggie—it’s just the president’s daughter representing the United States to foreign nations, like when Barack Obama sent Malia to the Sochi Olympics. Too bad the Fake News, continues to apply a double standard to him and Hillary Clinton even now, in the second year of their campaign. That’s why he mentioned Chelsea in his tweet, since she is the logical parallel to the sitting president’s daughter.

Anyway, the whole thing is garbage. You have to read the sentence three times to even understand what he’s trying to say. He wants to imagine Clinton in a parallel situation to his own, but he also can’t resist saying that she would “give our country away,” whatever that means. These two concepts are incompatible, but Trump is too bad at sentences to realize that, so he crams them in together and leaves the reader to unpack. It’s bad. To get a sense of how bad it is, look how good Chelsea’s rejoinder seems by comparison, even though it, too, is terribly bad:

Look what you can accomplish when you have multiple people writing the tweet instead of just one! Chelsea also crams in too many ideas, including that A) her father was president, and he never had her sit in for him,  B) he slipped up with that giving-the-country-away thing, C) she respects the office more than he does, as her salutation will indicate, and D) she hopes he does a better job in the future. It’s banter from the least funny and spontaneous person ever to inherit fame. But at least the writing doesn’t sound like she’s yelling over a dragster engine. It’s committee-quality copy from a brand that knows it will be applauded for any gesture of defiance.

Anyway, which one of these people totally inspires you? Is it the sub-literate plutocrat who insists the news is fake? Or do you prefer the anodyne nepotism case whose mother’s obstinance put the plutocrat in charge? I’m siding with Chelsea, because she seems less likely to put people in camps. But does she seem 100% certain not to do that? Not really, and therein lies the problem.

Montana struck by earthquake; two-headed calf born; I get Best Writer as end draws nigh

By Dan Brooks in Self-Promotion 1 Comment

Pretty cute but will not stop saying “he is coming”

That tremor Montanans felt last night was Norman Maclean rolling over in his grave. The well-intentioned maniacs who voted in this year’s Best of Misssoula poll have selected me as best writer over perennial winner James Lee Burke, strengthening the case that Indy readers are making fun of me. Burke has published more novels than I have visited states. He has received numerous professional awards, justly, and I suspect his being unjustly denied this one will escape his notice. I, on the other hand, am embarrassed. Thank you to everyone who voted in the poll, and thank you to the awesome power of selection bias.

I also got best journalist, which is the same bullshit that happened last year. You know who the best journalist in Missoula is? Derek Brouwer. It’s either him or Erika Fredrickson. Both of those people go out there and gather real information they fashion into news, while I stay home and pretend to be wrong about it. It’s an unjust system. But we must obey the Best of Missoula electoral college, which awarded me the win this year even though I lost the popular vote. You can read all about it in this week’s column, in which I make common cause with the president in our search for evidence to back our claims of fact. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to celebrate. Mark McGwire, Milli Vanilli, and the guy who accepted the Best Picture Oscar for Crash are all waiting for me at Dave & Buster’s.

CNN reserves right to expose maker of Trump wrestling meme later

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 2 Comments

Donald Trump attacks CNN founder Carl News Network at Wrestlemania.

The hashtag #CNNBlackmail is some high-level internet, some third-degree online hoodoo. In order to understand it, you have to know, first, that an anonymous Reddit user named HanAssholeSolo made a video by superimposing the CNN logo on old Wrestlemania footage of Donald Trump tackling Vince McMahon. That’s called satire. Repurposing pop culture with comically amateur video editing is internet degree one. The second degree happened when the president retweeted the video to his 33.3 million Twitter followers, prompting the commentariat to disgorge a clutch of takes. It also prompted CNN to go looking for the real person behind the Reddit presence named, I reiterate, HanAssholeSolo.

They found him. They elected to preserve his anonymity, though, after he issued a written apology and promised not to make any more trouble. Judging by this passage in their own report, CNN reserved the right to out him if he messes with them again:

CNN is not publishing “HanA**holeSolo’s” name because he is a private citizen who has issued an extensive statement of apology, showed his remorse by saying he has taken down all his offending posts, and because he said he is not going to repeat this ugly behavior on social media again. In addition, he said his statement could serve as an example to others not to do the same. CNN reserves the right to publish his identity should any of that change.

Emphasis added, naturally. The third degree of internet set in when Trump supporters interpreted that last sentence as a threat and coined the hashtag #CNNBlackmail. Let no one call me a Trump supporter, but I kind of have to agree with them. What CNN did strongly resembles blackmail. Consideration after the jump.

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