Trump's attentional vortex
Money in politics feels devalued when you're compelling enough to command people's time and interest. Which Democrat will learn this lesson fastest?
The most enduring portrait of Donald Trump’s second inaugural day to me was not the ceremony or speech itself, the tech oligarchs in tow or Zuck ogling at Bezos’ girlfriend’s chesticle. Not Elon’s peculiar childlike physicality or even Melania’s wide-brimmed concealing tophat that simultaneously presented an air of mystery and prevented her husband from landing a kiss. The scene that best captured Trump’s resurrection and his singular political superpower came sundown Monday and displayed him sitting inside the Oval Office at the Resolute Desk, conversing at length without a script with the Enemy of the People — the political press. Trump casually fielded questions for 45 minutes as he scribbled his imprimatur on a raft of executive orders — 38, per Akin Gump’s tracker — some of which are legally dubious and (possibly) politically perilous, like ending birthright citizenship, (which only half the country strongly opposes.) But Trump kept talking and taking questions, like the star quarterback holding court at the bar: comfortable, collected and notably without venom. The members of the media present, even the hostile ones, had to revel in this depth of discourse and access. Yes, attention ingratiates; it will until the end of time. And no, Joe Biden never did anything similar and Kamala Harris never tried, likely because neither of them were capable without making a mistake or mucking up the pre-cooked message, adhering to the foolish instruction to “avoid making news.” Trump has long known that his presence IS the message and smart Democrats are learning that in order to compete in this era of media ubiquity, they’ll need to showcase a natural ability to communicate authentically beyond the 7-minute Face The Nation segment. “Democrats are still thinking about money as the fundamental substance of politics. And the Trump Republican Party thinks about attention as a fundamental substance of politics,” mused Ezra Klein on his podcast.
Where art thou Democrats? In the Wilderness, figuratively. But they’ve been absent at