Link to audio and a transcript here: With Conflict And Drama, Trump Hooks You Like A Reality TV Show : NPR
Tom Foreman was a journalist and now produces TV shows. With that context, he provides a plainspoken, non-judgmental breakdown of Trump’s approach and how it plays out. He discusses how it is frustrating to him as a citizen, and to journalists, but to the larger population it is very effective at getting them engaged and talking.
[QUOTE=Tom Foreman interviewed on NPR]
On the media’s role in making the campaign feel like reality TV
The media loves a good story, right? I think he knows the degree to which we like a simple story told well, and is doing his best to give us one.
I think Obama, smart though he was, an unbelievably talented speaker, was operating at that 30,000-foot level. He wanted to talk about policy. Obama would talk about the relationship between the federal government and state-funded education. And the federal government’s role in helping people at a state level go out and get a college education. And that’s unbelievably important, but it’s dry.
Trump tweets about withdrawing federal funding, and suddenly you’re impassioned and you have a point of view — and he’s hooked you. What he’s actually talking about is nuts, and certainly less important than the actual policy discussion. But he’s made it understandable, he’s made it personal, he’s added a conflict-driven narrative. And look, those are the techniques we use every day, because they work.
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It sums up what we are seeing: he takes some superficial action or tweets he will defund UC Berkeley, say, gets people engaged and talking and then takes no action and/or modifies his approach over time based on what he confronts.
It is effective in how it feeds his base and tips a hat towards looking like he is acting on his promises. It is incredibly ineffective, like reality tv show relationships in general, in actually recovering from the high-drama engagement and having a healthy productive relationship. Just like a relationship with a Real Housewife or a Kardashian may be engaging in its way, but ultimately toxic and weird as hell, this is what is playing out with standing non-partisan sectors of government and foreign leaders.
We so, totally, live in an episode of Black Mirror now.