MEDIA WATCH
Is Trump Really Unraveling? Or Is This Simply Part of the Playbook?
Unravel: undo (twisted, knitted, or woven threads)
Who knows what is really happening in Washington. Or China. Or in Miami. Or Saudi Arabia. Or your neighbor’s bedroom.
I mean, unless you are THERE, most of what you know has been mediated to you via middlemen and interpreters. So I find this ongoing description of President Trump as “unraveling” as somewhat amusing.
The Atlantic’s most recent assault again reiterates what they wrote two years ago, more or less. The President Is Unraveling is the title, with the subtitle, The country is witnessing the steady, uninterrupted intellectual and psychological decomposition of Donald Trump.
Now frankly, I haven’t a clue whether this is rhetoric or based in observation. Two years ago, in the spring of 2018 CNN told us about Trump’s great unraveling, and in the Fall the Washington Post re-affirmed it.
At what point is it overkill? Here’s The Guardian, 2018.
And, just so there’s no reader left out of the loop, Newsweek, too made sure to inform us. This time, confirming the facts with a Yale psychiatrist’s report.
In 2019 the Washington Post affirmed yet again, more unraveling.
And even the Anchorage Daily News ran with it.
I remember when Hillary Clinton’s PR team went out of their way to plant the word “muscular” into the media slipstream so that the public would perceive her as “strong.” Here’s what Reason magazine wrote about it: Journalists Described Hillary Clinton’s Speech as ‘Muscular’ — Because Her Team Blackmailed Them
So, whose been planting the word “Unraveling” in everyone’s headlines to describe Mr. Trump? It just strikes me as weird.
What goes around comes around though. That’s the dirty game Trump played to best his opponents in the 2015–16 debates, giving them demeaning nicknames. Now it’s “Sleepy Joe” he’s up against. The president’s adversaries have found an image they’re painting in return, the “unraveling” president is now purportedly bonkers.
With the November election approaching, I suspect it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Alas. C’est la vie.
