I fear President Donald Trump is winning the media war of images and narrative even as many of us in the mainstream media think he is only looking more and more dangerous to democracy and desperate to win re-election.
The most noticeable, cynical and, in a purely political sense, successful effort by Team Trump involves the way it has framed images of social protest. Nighttime street scenes of clashes between police and those protesting the deaths of Black men and women killed by law enforcement officers dominate popular culture and our media consciousness these days.
Turn on a cable news channel, and I guarantee you will see a scenario involving flash grenades, tear gas, armored vehicles and heavily armed officers in riot gear clashing with protesters in the streets of an American city. Minneapolis; Portland, Oregon; Kenosha, Wisconsin. Will your city be next? How about your suburb?
As Trump has embraced law and order in recent weeks as the central theme of his reelection effort, he has increasingly fanned the flames of ideological conflict driving those urban conflicts. He did it recently via social media with a barrage of tweets attacking the mayor of Portland after a shooting in that city left one member of a right-wing group dead.
Members of that group called Patriot Prayer were among a caravan of about 600 vehicles filled with Trump’s supporters that drove into Portland where it was met by counterprotesters, according to The Associated Press. The president shared video of the caravan arriving in Portland with the caption “GREAT PATRIOTS!”.