Stories like the second Trump assassination attempt allow us to view the various media strategies of the Left unfolding in real-time. I alternate between horror and fascination, watching how the media tries to grapple with impossible stories and tries to gaslight us yet again. L’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace.
We need to understand the framework in which the media operates. As a longtime mentor once said to me, the media reports stories, they don’t report events. Events are data, stories sell papers/ads/impressions. It seems at times most stories in the media fall into one of the two masterplots, stranger comes to town or hero goes on a journey.
Of course there is the (false) assumption that the story being told is an accurate portrayal of events. Forget bias and sleaziness, that assumption just fails as a matter of epistemology.
The story paradigm has two other aspects that are important. The first is that stories have a limited life span. Not only do stories get stale over time and fall out of the public’s consciousness, but stories can be replaced in that consciousness by newer stories. The second is that media stories for the Left are never about the story as much as they are about the story ending and its lessons for society as a whole: gun control, misogyny, Orange Man Bad. The media writes every story not just about the present, but based on the story’s past, for its future.
The media typically knows the story they want to write and they will then find the facts to back it up. A reporter or editor knows the right name in their Rolodex that will provide them with the pull quote they are looking for to justify their actions.
The second assassination attempt comes at an awkward time for the Left, so, clearly, they want it squelched. Going back to what I wrote about Audrey Hale, a smart media outlet which doesn’t mind acting as the PR firm for the Left can roll even with the worst of stories, if it understands that you don’t have to “defeat” a story on its merits if you understand how to manipulate its arc.
So we can expect the media to use two strategies.
The first is suppression. Unlike with the Audrey Hale story, with the second Trump assassination attempt there is no manifesto to suppress. And unlike Thomas Matthew Crooks the second shooter is alive. However, the media uses an important trick in how it gathers information. If it wants to speed up a story’s arc and keep the story alive with new revelations, it will deploy assets into the field and keep digging up new information — new, exciting stuff to write every day. It will then juice the story with the appropriate pull quote from an “expert” from the media Rolodex.
If the media wants to slow down a story it will rely on news releases, such as they are, from investigators or authorities. It’s that relationship with authority which determines where the story is going to go, and who is going to define the story — the media or the investigating authority?
A good example of this is a headline from last night’s Washington Post:
“Investigating” “Potential” “Attempt” “FBI”? This is the type of damage control verbiage a press agent would use for a client who got caught on the 2024 equivalent of Epstein Island (not that we would ever know). How much actual digging is the WPost going to do on this story — or are they just getting their pull quotes so that they can consider it case closed? Something to watch for, going forward.
Another example of this phenomenon was the “Cats of Springfield” story, which the media claimed had been debunked on the basis of a phone call to an official in Springfield. The right quote from the right authority and case closed. No media outlet actually went to Springfield and conducted an investigation. If anybody does get around to conducting an investigation, the results will come, much like the eventual revelation of Hale’s writings, too late.
It’s good DeSantis is going to launch his own investigation regarding the assassination attempt, because otherwise we would probably start getting results by next Christmas.
The second strategy is diversion to another story line, through the use of stray voltage or simply by putting up other dust to cloud the immediate picture and slow down the clean narrative of someone trying to kill the Republican nominee (again). In less than 12 hours after the aborted assassination attempt we had the following:
-There is the “Trump had it coming due to his rhetoric” narrative, which is the equivalent of the “short skirt” argument in a rape case. No word yet if the media will investigate itself for its own rhetoric calling Trump Hitler or a Caesar who would destroy the American Republic.
-There is the attempt to draw an equivalence between the assassination attempts and Vance’s rhetoric regarding Springfield narrative. You know where this is going, the “tomato” “tomahto” argument — so let’s just call the thing off.
-Then there is the pure stray voltage angle of this is an election campaign stories that are always just around the corner. I’m sure there will be a story coming soon, breathlessly reporting Kamala buying a bag of Doritos.
The over/under of this story disappearing without a trace, unless DeSantis or someone else can grab control, is this Thursday.
11 thoughts on “You Don’t Hate the Media Enough (2)”
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The second Trump assassination attempt is being downplayed [like the first] because there are those who want them to keep trying till they succeed. That, and there is the risk that the stories may be to Trump’s benefit politically.
We [those of us here] already know the faults and neglect of SOP by the Secret Service in Butler, PA in the first attempt. There was a question of whether it was incompetence or malice.
Just found this. You can track the location of someone through the location of their cellphone. Someone got Routh’s cellphone locations before they seized the log, probably to wipe it. [And maybe before he is Epsteined.] He was hiding for about 12 hours there before the shooting.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2024/09/trump-assassination-attempt-suspects-phone-was-near-golf-course-for-almost-12-hours/
When the president is golfing there, SOP is to chase everybody else out/off of the course. Yet somehow the SS managed not to do a perimeter sweep for intruders? Another thing about the golf course. As sometimes happens, the local county jail is adjacent to the golf course [I think the jail was there before Trump bought/built the course]. Loitering, camping, various forms of hanging out are a no-no and it is supposedly enforced by the Sheriff’s Department. Routh was not found.
That may or may not have an effect on some peoples’ answer to the “either/or” question above. At this rate, I would not rule out further attempts.
Subotai Bahadur
Great post.
I had read about the cell phone tracing after I posted. My understanding is that only the previous and next several holes are cleared and it was that advance party that found him. That report might be incorrect, but you would think after Butler it would have been SOP to clear the course and establish perimeter security
What’s interesting about this is the same as with the first attempt, the guy involved, and I’m sure the media won’t probe further. There are a lot of loose threads
This is a guy with a an interesting history, who was in Romania and Ukraine, involved in recruitment for foreign volunteers. Somebody claims, with Ukraine MOD documents to match, that he was in the Ukrainian Army; I haven’t seen that verified
Like Crooks, somehow this guy ended up in a firing position where he could have killed Trump; not as ideal as Butler but still… He had to have some ISR ability given that it’s still not clear to me how easy it would have been to ascertain that Trump would have been golfing, that day, and at his Florida course and not NJ. Keep in mind it’s still September, his NJ course is still open and FL is hot as heck.
Maybe he surmised it (WAG) and just decided to hang out in a tree line with a rifle during a late Florida summer day It’s not clear how difficult it would have been to access the position from the road or how clear his field of fire was. I would imagine he was probably in place by dawn which meant he was out there, concealed for hours. Of course he blew it by having his barrel exposed rather than prepping his position for concealment. Then again the tree line wasn’t too deep and how many other golfers passed him by?
He could be a loner who just got to end of his capabilities, but there are a lot of interesting aspects to this guy. Once again this is somebody who had reason to believe he could infiltrate and take out Trump. Why?
I like to call the second method the “chaff” method (referencing missile defenses of planes). Especially since it’s pretty effective to throw up so much stuff people get too exhausted to ever bother seeking out the truth.
Great post.
Yes, Mike is awesome.
Anyway, someone on X claimed that the shooter knew Trump was going to be golfing at this time and place because DHS is leaking to the FBI, who it was claimed, are running the assassins.
Gosh. Now I don’t know if that’s true, but it sure seems awfully truthy. Two attempts on Trump’s life in two months, and the usual suspects of the regime are just fine with it.
That tells me all I need to know- this is another inside job, using the same sort of setup that I’m now pretty sure was used to kill JFK and others.
I wonder how long this wannabe shooter will survive.
And for what it’s worth I’m sure that there will be more of them.
“but you would think after Butler it would have been SOP to clear the course and establish perimeter security”
Thinking is apparently not something required to be a Secret Service agent. There was, of course no way to predict that there would be a requirement for more Secret Service protection details, this election has only been in the calendar for a little more than 246 years.
I The strange thing about the media today is that back when I was starting out one of my first mentors told me the key to life is to act like a journalist, that is ask a lot of questions. Could be like a person going on a tour through a museum, meet somebody at a party who runs a garbage business, or somebody who has a different viewpoint,, People are an amazing wealth of information about things that they deem important to their lives and even if they are mentally ill, you learn a lot about mental illness. The media, even beat reporters, don’t seem to ask alot of questions.
Every story has multiple dimensions and sometimes you need to look at several of them to get a full picture. Maybe it’s my professional background, I find it is good to look at things from an operational perspective, I want to know how did Routh and Crooks actually know to get into that position. I don’t think even a well-motivated person would have thought it possible to get into such an advantageous position, specially Routh after the first attempt, in a Special Service-defended area. If there was nothing special about what Routh and Crooks were trying to do then there would be a long history of guys like these trying to penetrate a secured area, whether the Secret Service was competent or not.
The other aspect from an operational perspective is the chance for discovery. It’s not clear where Routh was when he was discovered. Perhaps he was outside of the course’s perimeter fence which meant he didn’t need to be pre-positioned for hours in the tree line. Then again that would have made him visible from the street. Crooks had been discovered by people several minutes before he fired, Routh would need to have accounted for that chance since he either would have been pre-positioned for hours passed by other golfers or been visible from a busy street.
I don’t claim any special insight into these particular situations beyond some basic operational common-sense. Things always go wrong, think of Murphy’s Law, yet while people focus on 0 for 2 when it comes to attempts I see 2 for 2 in terms of guys getting into the right position.
On the surface what we are left with is:
1) 2 failed attempts. We have achieved a normalization of sorts of these events. I don’t know if that was planned that way but that’s what we got.
2) Trump is not the only possible target. People think of the reaction if Trump was killed, imagine what would happen if someone on the other team was killed in a Michigan Militia scenario. Remember that the media is focused on stories.
3) The most obvious way to do this is from a FPV drone. Such device are relatively cheap and a motivated person or person(s) could rig a rough contact-fused munition. They could have been launched from behind a tree-line a few hundred yards in Butler or across the street in parking lot in West Palm Beach; in either case they would approach at low-level, relatively silent (distances and weight would mean battery power) , and a second team could ensure attack from multiple angles. Remember Oklahoma City was a 2-person job with off-the-shelf components.
We are in a very bad place. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks we are looking at this wrong. Scroll to the end and read Simon’s update.
Nate,
I like your metaphor of “chaff:, captures the concept
It’s easy to lump all of “the media” has one entity but it isn’t so
I think the New York Post and Wall Street Journal are pretty honest
So there was no police patrol along summit avenue that day for 12 hours that day in coral gables if you park for one hour get suspicious you cant part along the road there is a gated post office across the street
Yes the bogus whitmer kidnapping plot the fake pipe bombs at the capital the kick boxing filipino bomb delivery guy the bureau is focused on chaff most they generate