Donald Trump is a genius. Indubitably. He did not get to where he is today by stumbling. Conmen have to be clever, and he is a very clever man. However, his hand has been shown, the only exercise of power he has relies on you giving in to your more vulnerable instincts.
The media has shown time and time again of being grossly incapable of handling this man, as he is such a deviation from the norm. CNN in particular has provided more power than any other source of media by giving him live coverage, and spreading his propaganda and distractions.
Recall in 2012, when Mitt Romney said he had “binders full of women.” While the statement was misogynistic because of its subliminal messaging, it was nonetheless much less misogynistic than Romney’s policies. The media really only needs to report one or two volatile statements like this to establish where a candidate for office is, Trump has flooded the media with them and they keep taking the bait. The media has always enjoyed sensationalism, and Trump is a sensationalist.
We alone cannot flip a switch and change the way the media approaches Donald Trump, however, together we can.
Discourage Ratings
Turn off every news channel the second Trump, Conway, or Spicer, is given room to broadcast. Mainstream media depends on your viewership to make money, if they start to see a trend of Trump’s face resulting in lower ratings, they’ll stop putting him on the air.
Turn on every news channel when they start to fact check Trump on policy. This is their job, you want to encourage them to do this.
How do you do this? Well, if you’re on Twitter, be sure to appoint someone in your friend group who has a sufficient amount of free time to send alerts to you whenever a news channel begins fact checking. Certainly, Trump’s deplorables will catch on to this trend, and the benefit of this is they will nonetheless be contributing to the viewership of fact-orientated sources. As ratings go up for fact-orientated sources, Trump’s “low ratings” smear tactics associating fact with entertainment will become less and less affable, and will yield a more and more informed public. There is nothing Trump’s deplorables can do to organize a counterstrike to this plan.
Most importantly, do not contribute to Trump’s menial controversies. They give him power. Trump is a provocateur, he seeks a reaction, as do many of his minions, most of which use strawman arguments and gaslighting to distract from any criticism of their leader. Don’t tweet about what he tweets about, reply to his account with links to Trump leaks, and information campaigns to enlighten people about how this conman is robbing them.
If you see something like Trump’s conflicts with Arnold Schwarzenegger trending on Twitter, IGNORE IT. Don’t tweet about his subject, instead, just use whatever hashtag or trending phrase that’s being used to spread critical information about his policy.
Don’t let your irritation distract from your outrage. Ignore what he says, scrutinize what he does.
