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.
Ukraine On My Mind
I’ve been pondering this thought: would it have made any difference to NATO lend-lease agreements with Ukraine if Obama had not scuttled the planned missile defense system to be deployed in Poland? Certainly sea-based and fixed locations couldn’t be sent over to Ukraine, but what about mobile launchers – and the missiles themselves?
Mwen Rekòmande Panik Imedyat
Having sensed that my public is calling: “In fair Springfield, where we lay our scene …”
Why So Much Israel Hate and Outright Anti-Semitism?
Who is behind the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and pro-Hamas riots that have been taking place on American university campuses? An analysis from Park MacDougald.
A Profile of a Killer, Part 2: Audrey Hale
Anybody remember Audrey Hale? That’s okay if you don’t, few do. The story of Audrey Hale is not only one of a killer, but one whose background is inconvenient for people who have the ability to make people disappear from public view.
It’s been 1 ½ years since Hale, a transgender-identifying woman, entered the Covenant School in Nashville on March 27, 2023 and proceeded to slaughter six people, including three children, and only now are we finding out about any possible motive. Hale had attended Covenant, a private Christian school, some years earlier.
I am not a big believer in “hate crimes” as a legal term, but the basic facts of the incident, transgender-identifying woman hunting down and killing Christian children, had on the surface all the hallmarks of hate.
However, within a day after the slaughter, Audrey Hale started to disappear from public consciousness. This disappearance was a deliberate act in two parts.
The first part dealt with suppressing Hale’s writings, Hale left a manifesto of sorts in her car, clearly with the intention of its being discovered. She communicated with a friend via Instagram before the killings that “One day this will make more sense. I’ve left more than enough evidence behind.” However, federal and local law enforcement seized the material and refused to release its contents, initially citing that there was still an on-going investigation, the fear it would incite other violence, and later the reason given was due to a copyright claim by the parents (the government transferred the copyright to the materials to Hale’s family). No motive for her crimes was provided by law enforcement.
The contrast with a similar case is remarkable. In 2022 Payton Gendron, a white man, drove several hours to a supermarket in Buffalo and killed ten people, all black. Gendron left writings declaring his intent. By the evening of the shooting, local law enforcement had not only reviewed said material but announced to the public that it was “…racially motivated hate crime”. Needless to say, the story filled the media for weeks and Democrats made political bank on it.
Hale’s writings were finally released to the public September 2, 2024, not by the government, but rather by the Tennessee Star which had obtained her writings and other investigation documents from an unknown source. The editor-in-chief of the Star is still under the threat by I’Ashea Myles, the judge assigned to the case, of investigation by a special prosecutor.
Only the New York Post, a few local Tennessee outlets, and some conservative sites bothered to report on the release of Hale’s writings or their content. As Hillary Clinton might have said, it had become old news. Public attention is a fickle thing.
The second part dealt with what David Plouffe, part of the Obama brain trust, once called “stray voltage.” This is a deliberate method which creates controversy to spark attention, which in turn provokes conversation, and that conversation then embeds ideas into the public consciousness.
Three days after the shootings, a mob of several hundred demonstrators entered the Tennessee Capitol. Many of the demonstrators occupied the visitor galleries inside the House chamber, and working in concert with three Democratic legislators who had taken over the chamber’s well, yelled gun-control slogans and ground official business to a halt. That action, along with a larger gun-control demonstration outside and protesters wandering the Capitol, was all over the media.
Controversy, conversation, ideas. What was once a story about a transgender-identifying woman killing Christian children had, within 72 hours, become embedded in the public’s mind as a gun-control issue. Including the protesters outside, an estimated 1,000 people showed up at the Capitol on short notice. Nicely organized, from the protest itself to the narrative switcheroo.
Then there was more controversy. The Tennessee House voted to expel two of the three Democrats who had decided to take over the chamber’s floor. The two who were expelled were black, the one who escaped expulsion was white. All heck broke loose as the racial angle was exploited and inflamed by the Democrats with a visit from Kamala Harris and an invitation for the expelled legislators to come to the White House.
With that, the disappearance of Audrey Hale was complete, buried with a combination of information suppression and stray voltage.
So now after more than a year we can finally start to fill in aspects of Hale’s profile. The part of Hale’s writings that were published last week by the Tennessee Star does not paint a pretty picture. She had been planning the Covenant massacre for some time, was struggling with mental health issues and her gender identity, and was twice evaluated for commitment. You could see how a mentally-unstable, transgender-identifying woman killing children could create image problems.
So what are the larger implications of this story?
This is Information Warfare 101, where the Left understands that while they couldn’t erase the Covenant massacre from history, they could change the way in which it was told. Feed the news cycle with alternative narratives, delay or outright suppress inconvenient information, and wait until enough time passes. Switch topics, suppress, delay.
The story they were going to tell was going to be about racism, gun control… anything but the portrait of a crazed, transgender-identifying killer.