I remember when Trump first announced he would star in The Apprentice, a ridiculous and ridiculously popular vanity project that promoted the questionable narrative that he was a brilliantly successful businessman. I thought, “Huh? An obscenely rich and successful real estate developer and entrepreneur wants to ‘star’ a silly piece of fluff? Why? Would Warren Buffet do this? Bill Gates? Carlos Slim?”
It took me a while to understand that Trump had not, in fact, been a brilliantly successful entrepreneur, and that the “why” was that his greatest aspiration had always been to be on TV, where the largest number of people could see him, talk about him, and admire him.
What Trump actually did have an exceptional talent for was deceiving people, sometimes referred to as “marketing”.
At the time, Trump was already pretty famous as a promoter, scam artist, and business fraud, but the TV show really propelled him into the national spotlight.
Promoter, as “heel”
Scam Artist – gotta love that Coat-of-Arms. Classy!
A Few Trump Businesses – where are they now?
The TV show, however, was a whole new level of celebrity, and the “Executive Presence” he appeared to demonstrate on camera apparently qualified him for elective office in the opinion of millions of voters.
What Trump has always understood better than anyone else is that, doubters notwithstanding, lipstick really does kind of make a pig more attractive. Enough, anyway, to make it weirdly desirable in the very short run.
Everybody knows that, yes, it’s still a pig, but there’s something, um, I don’t know, different about it. Different and better. The thin veneer of “luxury” and “quality” he applies to his rickety projects has always been more than enough to put them over on unsuspecting investors, customers, and publicity agents.
The one thing that Trump has learned better than anything in his career is that to make people believe in what you’re selling, you have to believe it yourself. And you have to make them want it. Bad. It doesn’t make any difference at all if the thing you’re selling actually is what you say it is or does what you say it does. If the buyer wants it bad enough, he will attest that it works. And you can always sue him for libel or whatever if he complains about it. Or fire him, if he works for you. He’s done it literally thousands of times.
The approach that brought him so much “success” in business is the approach favored by Tweety in the day-to-day execution of his duties as POTUS. Or maybe we should say “in the current episode of the hit reality show ‘The POTUS'”.
Go with what you know. If people are worried about getting sick, you simply sell them a cure. It is, of course, first necessary to silence any credible voices, also known as medical professionals, who may want to point out that what you’re selling is not, in fact, a cure, and that unfortunately there is no cure.
As everyone knows, President Tweety gets all the information he needs, including information on science and medicine, from FoxNews. Sean Hannity, his friend, adviser, and daily phone buddy, has determined that an anti-malarial drug called Hydroxychoroquine will cure Covid-19. He has implored New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to stop denying the wonder-drug to sick people there.
That’s good enough for Tweety. Inside the White House “Situation Room”, where the Coronavirus Task Force meets, a battle over Hydroycholoquine has broken out. As Axios reports, Trump believes it’s a game changer and so his closest allies on the task force, specifically Peter Navarro, are championing the miracle drug.
“Who is Peter Navarro?”, I hear you asking, “and why is he on the task force?” Both good questions. He’s an economist, Assistant to the President, Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, and the national Defense Production Act policy coordinator. And why is he on the task force? To protect the economy, of course.
Another medical expert at the table, Jared Kushner (you remember Jared, right? The guy who brought us peace in the Middle East), agrees with Navarro about the value of the malaria med, but had to tell him to take it down a notch as he was screaming at Anthony Fauci, accusing him of being against Trump’s policies. Navarro had a bunch of papers which he said were “evidence” that Hydroxychloroquine cures Covid-19, but Fauci was pointing out they were not evidence, but rather anecdotes from France and China with no Control Group testing (there’s that damn scientific method again, always screwing things up for the good guys!)
Fauci didn’t bother to mention that there is also anecdotal evidence that taking the drug could kill you. That’s what GOML is here for. Anyway, the day’s meeting ended with the agreement that the administration’s public posture would be that the decision to use the drug is between doctors and patients.
Of course Tweety doesn’t care what a bunch of egg-heads, even his own egg-heads, agree that he should say. He’s going with what he knows – marketing!
“What do you have to lose? Take it,” the president said in a White House briefing on Saturday, pushing Fauci out of the way when the question was asked. “I really think they should take it. But it’s their choice. And it’s their doctor’s choice or the doctors in the hospital. But hydroxychloroquine. Try it, if you’d like.”
Yup, it’s your choice. Reality or Reality Show. Problem is, the people who prefer the Reality Show are making the rest of us sick.
Get Off My Lawn 