How Donald Trump Deplatformed the Mainstream Media

Volume and execution, baby! The secret ingredient is saturation.

Just four years ago, ex-President Trump limped away from the White House with an anemic 34% approval rating. He was deplatformed from every major social media site; the future of MAGA was in tatters.

Back then, Trump’s political future seemed destined for the presidential scrap heap of losers and also-rans. Aside from South Park’s Kenny, Trump has probably had his eulogy recited more times than anyone else in modern history.

And today? Seems like someone threw a Reverse Uno card onto the table. (Although there’ll probably be an upcoming executive order that changes the name of “Uno” to “One”: Go ‘Murica!) Instead, it’s the Democrats fretting about their lack of a media-friendly ecosystem. It’s the Democrats whose brand is toxic. It’s the Democrats who are spineless, unable to message, sounding like they’ve got a mouth full of crackers.

Meanwhile, Trump’s popularity continues to hit record numbers.

So what the hell happened?

Come huddle ‘round the campfire, boys and girls: Uncle Scotty has a story to share. But as a storytelling device, I’ll begin with the present and work our way back:

The media’s bandwidth is limited; there are only so many reporters at so many outlets working on so many stories. For the most part, reporters are underpaid and unmotivated, their industry’s vulnerabilities (and job loss) top-of-mind. In the old days, reporters were assigned stories via a rigid hierarchy, so PR pros tended to pitch the news directors. Nowadays, we pitch the reporters directly, since the hierarchy is broken. Reporters tend to do whatever they want to do, and either the subsequent “clicks” justify their editorial choices, or they’re fired from the outlet.

Journalists today are judged by the traffic they generate. This new paradigm leads to less risk-taking and more groupthink since they're mostly following the whims and interests of their outlet’s audience: You gotta give ‘em what they want or they won’t click on your story.

This inhibits creativity and leads to a lot of repetition, which is obviously bad, but the worst part is that it’s impossible to be nimble and responsive within this system. Think of it like a hive mind: until a consensus is reached, the hive ain’t moving. Nobody has the courage to freelance.

Which gives opponents a window of opportunity.

As we discussed yesterday:

[T]here’s a famous expression: “Quantity is a quality of its own.” (Unfortunately, the quote was apparently from Stalin, but don’t focus on that right now.) The biggest reason for Trump’s month-one successes is because of volume and execution: They’re overwhelming the opposition, and just as importantly, they have the skill, discipline, and talent to handle the higher workload.
Steve Bannon called it “flooding the zone.” As he described it:
“The opposition party is the media. And the media can only — because they're dumb and they're lazy — they can only focus on one thing at a time. And all we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things, they'll bite on one, and we'll get all of our stuff done.”

It’s not a novel PR tactic. Companies do it all the time: On the same day you’re hit with, say, a high-profile sexual harassment lawsuit, you might opt to announce the hiring of your first female CEO or a new scholarship for women in your industry. Often, you can drown out negative news with large quantities of content, throwing stories at the media the way Russia threw bodies at the Germans in World War II. (Hmm. That’s my second Stalinesque analogy in the past two days. Мне лучше прекратить.)

Eventually, you exhaust the other side.

Even after all these years, the mainstream media is still like a hyperactive golden retriever chasing a tennis ball. Trump just needs to wave it around in the air and they’re salivating. He can fake-throw it a dozen times in a row, and they’ll fall for it every damn time! And then, when he does throw the ball, they gallop after it at warp speed.

But when Trump throws four or five balls at once, they still only go after one of ‘em. All the others are left in the field.

That brings us to the political tactics of today and why they’re successful. But what about four years ago? How did we reach the point where the mainstream media is yammering into the void — and it’s the conservative movement that rules the world of alternative media?

Two words: credibility and proportionality.

The MSM's credibility vanished in the wake of COVID. It was such a grotesque overreach and life-altering overreaction, that it pushed a generation of young people to the right. This was because not only did the media push the COVID hysteria with gusto, but they viciously attacked all dissenting opinions, excising them from their platforms.

This meant, if you wanted to hear a different point of view, you had to look elsewhere.

And so, their audience did.

Alternative media is outperforming traditional media for the same reason that Rush Limbaugh, talk radio, and Fox News were so successful: When you systematically block conservative voices and right-of-center opinions everywhere else, you create an opening for a competitor to exploit.

And not just exploit: to monetize, too. Rupert Murdoch made an absolute mint, simply by catering to an overlooked, underappreciated audience.

But it wasn’t only COVID. It was also Elon Musk.

Four years ago, the mainstream media browbeat the social media giants into deplatforming Donald Trump. His Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube accounts were confiscated. The Tech Oligarchs joined the anti-Trump hive mind, and the MAGA movement was persona non grata. The mere act of disputing the “official” government narrative about COVID (or what happened on Jan. 6) could get you kicked off a platform forever!

Elon Musk instantly changed everything. Say what you want about the guy (and I certainly have), he’s an extraordinarily independent thinker — the human antithesis of groupthink. When he purchased X and gave a voice to conservatives, it pressured the other platforms to do so as well.

Which was also in their financial interests and a big reason why they caved so quickly: one of the dirty little secrets of the social media “influencer” world is that the conservative voices and their right-of-center audiences are larger than the left’s.

Trump’s 2024 interview with Joe Rogan racked up an astonishing 50 million views on YouTube. But under the old rules, that episode would’ve been deleted from the platform for disputing the COVID narrative. And without Musk’s influence — along with the unspoken threat of importing YouTube’s conservative audience to X — it almost certainly would’ve been.

So, if you think the Joe Rogan interview made a difference in the race, you owe Elon Musk a debt of gratitude.

Whereas the COVID coverup and draconian censorship greatly battered their credibility, what ultimately deep-sixed the mainstream media was their lack of proportionality.

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you,” warned Nietzsche.

The Democrats failed to heed Nietzsche’s warning. They were so convinced that Trump was a monster, they became monsters themselves trying to fight him.

“He’s literally Hitler!” “He’s a threat to democracy!” “He’s a fascist!” “He’s the most evil man to ever exist!”

Meanwhile, the American people saw a guy flipping burgers at McDonald’s, dancing to the Village People, and driving around in a garbage truck. Sure, Trump might be loud and abrasive and self-aggrandizing, but when the American people watched him, they didn’t see Hitler.

They saw Trump.

Then, the media tried to destroy Trump by overhyping Biden-Harris, telling their audience that Bidenomics was the envy of the world, President Biden was “as sharp as a tack," and his presidency was “one of the most consequential in American history.” They staked their credibility on Biden-Harris’s success.

But when the American people looked, they saw a half-dead Biden, a brain-dead Harris, and skyrocketing grocery prices. The media’s narrative wasn’t matching reality.

So they tuned the mainstream media out — perhaps permanently — and sought their news and information elsewhere, opening their ears to conservative messaging.

Four years ago, Trump was deplatformed. But four years later, it’s the mainstream media that’s missing their audience!

That’s a helluva Reverse ~~Uno~~ One card.

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