“Are you talking about the NFL? Then Trump is winning”, The Boston Globe
By James Pindell, Ground Game, Globe Staff, September 25, 2017
It’s a tried and true strategy for President Trump — and candidate Trump before that: When the news gets bad it’s time to find a distraction.
It happened again Friday. Headed into the weekend, Trump was facing several stories that had him on the ropes. A last-ditch effort to repeal and replace Obamacare in Congress is headed for defeat. Trump’s attempts to talk tough with North Korea over its nuclear capacity had only led to taunts. Both his treasury and health and human services secretaries were caught in a scandal over their use of private jets they billed to taxpayers.
What better way to divert attention from all of that than to launch an attack on professional athletes who take a knee during the national anthem?
The blowback was swift and maybe stronger than even Trump could have imagined. But it played right into his larger strategy. The demise of the Obamacare repeal isn’t on the front page anymore.
At first it was unclear on Friday night whether his riff against the NFL players was an intentional distraction or if it was classic Trump, shooting from the hip. But by Saturday morning he must have decided he had tapped into something, because that’s when he began executing a strategy. He took to Twitter to fan the flames on the issue and even attack NBA superstar Steph Curry for declining an invitation to the White House.
It worked. His comments were soon leading cable news and continued to do so all weekend. Even LeBron James took the bait and hit back at Trump.
Another Trump-manufactured national controversy was born. He may not have meant for it to go as nuclear as it did, but the fact that it dominated news coverage this weekend just furthered the president’s initial goal of boxing out all that news he didn’t want discussed.
He does this all the time. During the Republican primary season when rival Marco Rubio was set to get the endorsement of the South Carolina governor ahead of that state’s primary, Trump launched a headline-grabbing fight against the pope. When an Obamacare repeal bill faced its first defeat this spring, Trump wrote a tweet saying that President Obama had wiretapped him in the campaign — changing the entire course of the news cycle as a result. The list goes on and on.
Every president wants control of what is dominating the news. That’s especially true when they’re wrestling with headlines that just won’t go their way. Past presidents have gone as far as to announce new policies or make overseas trips to try and change the subject. Some even accused President Clinton of launching limited airstrikes in Sudan and Afghanistan as a way of distracting from news of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, the revelations of which were revealed a mere three days before the strikes.
But Trump created a diversion this time by launching a full-scale cultural debate, one that didn’t just change the subject, but overtook our common conversation for several days running (so far).
Whether to stand or kneel during the national anthem is a topic worthy of a national debate. But instead of walking the country through that dialogue, Trump fanned the flames and escalated tensions. And he did so by equating himself with the American flag.
If you’re talking about the NFL right now — and let’s be honest, you probably are — then Trump’s strategy worked just as he intended.