The magician-in-chief: How Trump makes us miss the real story
Donald Trump is the magician-in-chief.
Trump understands better, I reckon, than any US president since Ronald Reagan how to bend and manipulate the squirrel-like attention spans of much of the new and 'legacy' media to his will and advantage.
Reagan and his adept advisers relied almost exclusively on choreographing flattering set pieces for television to drive his retrograde plans and stick-handle around a prickly scandal or two.
Trump, having established his ubiquitous star via 'reality TV' and countless appearances on ephemeral 'chat' shows, knows full well the ways and means to inculcate himself into the American consciousness courtesy of the 'boob tube'.
Still, Trump has skillfully used social media – now mostly Truth Social – to hone his trademark trick: Misdirection. Like any seasoned illusionist, he appreciates how to draw the public's eye and ear away from what demands scrutiny.
His aim is twofold: To advance his revolutionary agenda and to obscure the damage that agenda inflicts.
When, in early 2020, a new, lethal virus emerged and spread rapidly as the death toll mounted, Trump dismissed the COVID-19 threat, peddled unproven cures such as hydroxychloroquine, and even suggested injecting disinfectant as a possible remedy.
Trump's bizarre provocations were deliberate and meant, in large measure, to delay and deflect thorough review of his administration's slow, chaotic response.
Trump grasps that in the digital age, outrage is oxygen. By provoking conflict and controversy at a relentless pace, he controls the focus and tempo of public discourse.
Armed with a cellphone – likely embossed with the presidential seal – and a glint of inspiration, Trump can instantly shape or reshape the dominant 'news' narrative.
He does this by flashing shiny, fleeting baubles that further his parochial interests, while more consequential matters drift by like a passing cloud, unnoticed – leaving the hard, complex stuff to fade into neglect.
Trump is the human equivalent of a 24/7 cable news outlet pumping out intriguing content that the real cable news channels are happily addicted to – admitted or not.
So, in the disconcerting face of the sudden, caustic split with Elon Musk and a festering revolt in the Senate over his signature 'big, beautiful' budget, Trump pulled out of his top hat a fantastical 'channel-changer' that provoked awe and disbelief.
According to NBC News, the president of the United States 'reposted a baseless claim on Truth Social that former President Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced with clones or robots'.
Given that the president of the United States shared the 'conspiracy theory' with his 10 million followers, and, by extension, the rest of us, an NBC correspondent was required to contact the White House to determine the following:
First, whether America's head of state 'believed' that Biden was executed in 2020.
Second, why did America's head of state amplify a post claiming an executed Biden had been replaced by a clone?
Let me help NBC News and the dozens of reporters who were compelled to ask the White House the same absurd questions in the pursuit of 'clarity'.
Despite his, ah, bluster and eccentricities, I can confidently suggest that Trump does not 'believe' that Biden was executed in 2020.
Trump trumpeted this nonsense to get NBC News and other scribes fixated on the latest shiny bauble instead of exploring how his 'big, beautiful' bill will strip millions of Americans of their health insurance and dilate the US deficit.
To dismiss Trump's expert ability to train the world's gaze where he wants it as a 'distraction' is, I think, too easy and simplistic since, by now, we ought to have become wise to the ruse.
What Trump wields is far more practised and pernicious. He doesn't just distract – he rewrites the story in real time, making the serious seem trivial, and the trivial seem epochal. Oh, and he figured out long ago that most political observers are far more captivated by personality than policy.
Trump also recognises that the presidency isn't only about power. It's about stagecraft. He is not preoccupied by nuance or accountability. He revels in spectacle. And the spectacle always wins out.
As such, Trump continues to beguile and enthral with his studied performances grounded, as they are, in the gravitational pull and intoxicating prestige of occupying the Oval Office.
The Beltway press is conditioned to look where the president points – again and again.
On reliable cue, Trump announced, by presidential decree, that the White House counsel and attorney general would probe allegations that Biden's aides may have 'covered up' his 'cognitive decline' and used an autopen to sign off on major policies without his knowledge or consent.
For his agitated part, Biden issued a statement on Thursday calling Trump's calculated gambit a 'distraction', while insisting that he made the 'decisions during my presidency'.
The 'investigation' comes on the convenient heels of a book, co-authored by CNN host Jake Tapper, detailing Biden's alleged waning mental acuity while in office.
The book's detractors have accused Tapper of revising the record as a sop to right-wing personalities since, they insist, he and CNN previously poo-pooed reports of Biden's faltering mind and body.
Meanwhile, the manufactured brouhaha and deepening, vitriolic rupture of the Trump-Musk bromance, have reduced the resurrection of Trump's racially tinged travel ban to an afterthought.
Once the subject of fierce legal and moral opposition, it has returned with barely a whisper of resistance – another example of how Trump's theatrics serve to smother the dangerous intent beneath the enticing din.
What to do?
A responsible newsroom must avoid as best it can serving as marionettes to Trump's cynical schemes.
That translates into ignoring the impulse to treat every incendiary outburst, insult, or incitement as urgent or newsworthy. Editors and producers should ask: Whose interests are being served by this coverage?
If the answer is Trump's, pause or take a refreshing pass.
Journalists should redirect the lens towards substance, not stunts. That involves patience and the discipline to pose another important question: What is being hidden behind the colourful camouflage?
The antidote to manipulation is not detachment – it's sharp, vigilant coverage of the profound, human consequences of the president's actions, not his antics.
In its exhausting dance with Donald Trump, the fourth estate can and must stop mistaking the fireworks for the fire.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
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