Marshall - TPM - fascinating. "The Archaeology of Trumpism"

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-archeology-of-trumpism

Over what are now the years since Donald Trump entered, took over and now totally permeates American political culture, I now and again think back to something that happened years ago, long before his presidential campaign. Starting in 2011 Trump started posting these video blog or ‘vlog’ videos to Youtube. They were called “From the Desk of Donald Trump”. They ran on the Trump Organization video channel. What settles in my memory is that at some point I started watching them and was chatting with a TPM colleague about them. They had a certain Dr. Evil-ish feel to them – or maybe one of the video messages from Blofeld, the Bond series villain on whom Dr. Evil is based. Trump has always been a comic book-like figure, whether you like him or not. That’s part of the brand, bold and over-the-top. Like a character from a Batman comic, there he is in his iconic headquarters, Trump Tower, sending out his videos messages: some new promise, threat, or angle.

To get a feel for these videos it’s important to set aside so much of what we’ve seen over the last three years. Video blogging goes back to the early aughts. But Donald Trump wasn’t some self-starting teen or millennial. He was a man in his early 60s with what was in fact an existing, massive media megaphone. What added to the oddity is how lo-tech they were. I don’t know just how they were filmed. But they could easily have been put together with an iPhone or a very simple video camera on a tripod in front of Trump’s desk. There’s no intro or outro or special effects. Not really anything. Just Trump talks for a minute or so with signature Trump cuts and jabs and then he’s done. In and out. This crass simplicity would be a through-line and a strength throughout the 2016 election.



Only years later did I realize that this series, which ran mainly in 2011 and 2012 but had a handful of episodes in 2013 and 2014, were a sort of dry run for the Trump we now know from Twitter, the presidential debates and his rallies. Trump has been a public figure at some level for almost forty years. He been a national media presence for three decades. And then of course there was The Apprentice. But politics was only a small part of the mix, especially the highly caustic right wing politics which he ran on in 2016. It’s present of course. There were the recurrent threats to run for President. But there was fairly little that was explicitly ideological in Trump and, to the extent there was, the ideology could change from one year to the next. So in these videos you can see him working with the language and tonalities.

I think he eventually realized that video had too many superfluities. Twitter just cut to the chase. It was easier, more open to impulse and the kinds of sudden gut instincts and insights that are the core of his eventual political success.

snip - lots more.


Long read, but some fascinating analysis of where we find ourselves (or rather, were hacked into)

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. kicking for the night shift

[dalton99a]

2. Great article.