If you click on my profile pic, you’ll notice that I’m a bald white guy. And that’s relevant for this story:
It was early in my PR career. I had just landed my first really big, legit superstar client — a black quarterback who played for the Atlanta Falcons. (Yes, the one who got in trouble for dogfighting. But this was a couple of years before that.) It was the NFL preseason and I was flying into Atlanta to babysit a photoshoot between him and Maxim magazine.
This was 20-ish years ago, when magazines had big, beautiful budgets for photoshoots. Maxim rented a studio in downtown Atlanta, and the gameplan was that I’d meet everyone there maybe an hour before the shoot.
So, as a courtesy, I asked the athlete’s entourage to email me their food and beverage requests. That way, on my way over, I could swing by the grocery store (and/or liquor store) and grab whatever they wanted.
It’s a simple PR calculus: The happier the client, the smoother the shoot.
This was before iPhones. (I think I had a Blackberry that was thicker than a brick.) But since I was gonna pick up everything in Atlanta, I didn’t bother reading my Blackberry until my plane landed. And when I did…
Oh. My. LORD!!
His entourage requested every frickin’ stereotypical item you can think of! Like, you name the “culinary stereotype” for black people, and it was listed in the email.
So I bought it for ‘em. Every last item! (What else could I do?)
But on my way to the studio, I had an unsettling thought: What if I’m being set up?!
Here I am, a bald-headed white dude in downtown Atlanta — a city steeped in ugly racial history — and I was in my late 20s. Honestly, I kinda/sorta looked like a skinhead.
If the guys in the entourage denied emailing me that list, man, I’d come across as the biggest jerk ever: “Hey, Scott… why the heck did you bring us all THIS?! Guess you figure this is what ‘we people’ eat?! You’re a RACIST!”
Fortunately, that didn’t happen. The athlete’s crew actually seemed pretty pleased with their food and drinks. (They ended up drinking too much malt liquor and lost their car keys, but that’s another story.) The lesson is, sometimes you’ve gotta take a calculated risk.
Even if it exposes your jugular.
Politics is the art of calculated risk-taking. There are no guarantees; only probabilities. You make your move, roll the dice… and hope for the best.
But sometimes the best hands still go bust.
“It’s possible to commit no mistakes and still lose,” said Captain Jean-Luc Picard, my bald-headed contemporary. “That is not weakness. That is life.”
And so it is.
PRedictions: The go-to narrative for the Trump-Putin Alaska summit is still influx. Whether or not it’s perceived as a success, a failure, or something in between hasn’t been determined.
Which means, there’s still a PR war that must be waged.
As far as I can tell, there are only three ways the bloodshed between Russia and Ukraine can come to a close:
- Ukraine defeats Russia;
- Russia defeats Ukraine;
- A “strategic stalemate” is reached, where neither country defeats the other.
Trump was exactly right when he told Zelensky that he lacks the cards to win. The Ukrainian people have fought bravely and nobly, but this will ultimately be a war of demographics. The Ukrainian population — whatever’s left of it, because so many have fled — is smaller and older than Russia.
So, it’s not enough just for Ukraine to win each battle. It’s gotta win each battle by an 8-1 to 10-1 ratio, or it’ll be devoured in a long, agonizing war of attrition.
An off-ramp is still in everyone’s best interests.
PRojections: If you’re a superfan of world history, the Russia-Ukraine war has been a microcosm of pretty much every single Russian war over the last 500 years:
The first year is a disaster. The Russians are disorganized and unprepared. Their military, which rewards corruption and cronyism (and eyes competency with suspicion), embarrassingly underperforms.
But then they figure it out — mostly by throwing bodies at the problem until something finally cracks. Usually it’s their enemy — but sometimes it’s the Russian government.
As long as Mother Russia has the manpower to continue, she surely will. After all, Russia already paid the “admission price” in year one of the Ukraine war, when she suffered between 70,000 and 80,000 military casualties.
From Putin’s point of view, they’ve already done the hard part. So why stop now?
PRaise: The trouble with defining yourself via comparison is that you’ve placed your brand identity in someone else’s hands: If Brand A is simply the opposite of whatever Brand B is, then Brand B can turn Brand A into their puppet by switching positions.
Which brings us to President Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, D.C. — one the most crime-ridden capital cities anywhere on Earth. (It’s also where I went to law school in the 1990s… and was only mugged twice!)
A sane, rational Democratic Party (and/or their cohorts in the myopic mainstream media) would’ve said something like, “We don’t think a federal takeover is necessary, but OF COURSE we believe Washingtonians deserve peace and safety. Getting rid of murderers, rapists, traffickers, and street gangs is a GOOD THING.”
But they can’t do that, because it’s too close to a Trumpian position. Instead, they’ve been “puppeteered” into the stupidest, silliest, most brain-dead position possible: THERE IS NO CRIME PROBLEM IN D.C.!
NBC News: Trump’s unprecedented takeover of D.C. police comes as crime is down, figures show
The New York Times: Trump Takes Control of D.C. Police, Citing ‘Bloodthirsty Criminals.’ But Crime Is Down.
Axios: Trump’s D.C. crime claims don’t match the data
BBC: Is crime in Washington really out of control as Trump claims?
MSNBC News: ‘We are not experiencing spikes in crime’ DC’s Mayor refutes President Trump’s claims
USA Today: Trump says Washington is unsafe, but the data tells a more nuanced story
AP News: FACT FOCUS: Trump exaggerates, misstates facts on Washington crime
The Washington Post: Trump says crime in D.C. is out of control. Here’s what the data shows.
CBC: Trump deploys National Guard in D.C. — even as data shows crime at 30-year low
PBS: The legality of Trump’s D.C. takeover as statistics show decline in crime
NPR: D.C. mayor defends capital’s crime rates after Trump threatens to take over police
CNN: Trump’s Washington, DC, crackdown is a political stunt. But it could take a much darker turn
The Guardian: Trump spreads false narratives about DC crime — just as he did with LA
Most of those articles, I’ll betcha, weren’t written by journalists who actually live in D.C.
Because those who live there know the truth:
ABC anchor breaks from the Left-wing script and CONFIRMS how dangerous DC is:
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) August 11, 2025
"Here in Downtown DC where we work, right here around our bureau, just in the past 6 months, there were 2 people shot, 1 person died... I actually was jumped walking just 2 blocks down from here...… pic.twitter.com/CpvH0FjMFG
The federal takeover of D.C. is vintage Trump: It was long overdue — it’ll make life better for D.C.’s most vulnerable citizens — and it put the Democratic Party on the wrong side of yet another 80% to 20% issue.
As PR maneuvers go, that ain’t too shabby.
PRedators: Speaking of history, it’s being rewritten as we speak. Not ancient history either — I’m talking about the events of just the last decade.
Most Republicans remember the reaction to the first Trump term: Never before had there been so much angry, vicious, hysterical, meanspirited blowback! The Democrats (and their allies in the media and the Deep State) did EVERYTHING to destroy Trump.
They spied on his campaign. They set him up with a phony Russia dossier. They threw novel criminal charges at him. They leaked confidential info about him. They charged him with felonies. They invaded his home in Mar-a-Lago with armed guards — and even green-lit the use of deadly force. They literally tried to throw Trump in jail for the rest of his life!
And a few assassins tried to END his life.
But that’s not what the Democrats want the history books to say. Instead, there’s a new narrative emerging — one where the liberals were nice and respectful in the past, but golly gee, that dang Donald Trump took advantage of their kindness and naivety:
Fight! Fight! Fight!
It’s not just Donald Trump’s mantra anymore. As the Republican president pushes states to redraw their congressional districts to the GOP’s advantage, Democrats have shown they are willing to go beyond words of outrage and use whatever power they do have to win.
[…]
There is no guarantee Democrats can prevent the Republican-powered redistricting, just as Democrats on Capitol Hill have not been able to stop Trump’s moves. But it’s a notable turn for a party that, by its own leaders’ admissions, has honored conventional rules and bypassed bare-knuckled tactics. [emphasis added]
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHA!!
After Election Day 2024, outlets like the Washington Post openly admitted that their Trump “maximum resistance” campaign didn’t work. Back then, they extensively focused on how the heck to pivot from “resistance.” It was the talk of the town!
In late 2024, The Hill ran a piece, “Democrats recalibrate their resistance to Trump”:
Democrats are not planning an all-hands resistance to President-elect Trump.
At least not in 2016 style, when lawmakers, activists, volunteers and millions of angry voters mounted a party-wide effort to curb his newfound influence in Washington.
And on Jan. 25, 2025, five days after Trump’s second inauguration, none other than the New York Times(!) ran the obituary for the “resistance” movement, “Goodbye ‘Resistance.’ The Era of Hyperpolitics Is Over.”
Well, forget all that “maximum resistance” stuff. It never happened!
In the new edition of American History 101, Trump and the Republicans were the ones running a “maximum resistance” campaign against the Democrats — and finally, after suffering indignation after indignation, those morally upstanding Democrats have finally had enough. That’s why they’re fighting fire with fire:
“Maximize Democratic Party advantage,” [Beto] O’Rourke said at a recent rally. “You may say to yourself, ‘Well, those aren’t the rules.’ There are no refs in this game. F―- the rules. ... Whatever it takes.”
Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin acknowledged the shift.
“This is not the Democratic Party of your grandfather, which would bring a pencil to a knife fight,” he said.
See?! The Democrats must rewrite history to justify their current tactics in the redistricting wars. That’s the game they’re playing.
Fortunately, they’re just not very good at it.
