Joe Honick Joe Honick
In the days immediately following the election, the national media devoted huge segments of their news, editorial and guest columns to analyze seemingly everything but the, frankly, brilliant Trump team strategy that won him the White House. I raised this idea to one of political coverage’s best in the business, and he sounded surprised when I pointed out how his newspaper and just about all of its competitors had been so well played. Another top news staffer was angry I even suggested the idea.

What was this secret that was so openly put to work by the Trumpkins?

From the outset of the nomination announcement, Donald Trump’s team had their man attacking anyone and everyone as well as making the wildest declarations regarding some of the most sensitive areas of race and ethnicity. The wilder and more controversial Trump’s declarations were, the more effective the coverage, getting virtually non-stop editorial pages and headlines in the process.

It was a brilliant and dangerous strategy: brilliant because it worked, dangerous because it repeated a similar process effectively employed when another candidate pleaded with his country in 1933 to give him four years to make his nation great again. The key formula then as well was to repeat the big lie until it became truth, with slogans repeated everywhere, phrases that sounded a lot like “cleaning swamps” and ridding America of “elites.”

Then came reality, when our President-Elect chatted with the actual President in the White House. While holding high-level discussions with the person he declared to be the “worst President in history,” it’s doubtful he once said something like, “Barack, let bygones be bygones; it was just politics, and I might even try to save some of your healthcare stuff.” We’ve since learned that his “team” of media manipulators threatened those who deserted their party candidate with what were termed “hellish responses.” It’s even been reported without much challenge that Trump's group has warned President Obama not to do anything really “presidential” as his term concludes.

Powerful publications like Time, The Economist and the Financial Times suggested a new “era” has arrived, something that was much more mildly declared with the ascendancy of Bill Clinton or the Bushes, or even the more popular and generally respected Ronald Reagan. The tenor is one of either fear or wonder rather than acclaim.

Comes now the vague PR announcement that the new President might only be a dollar-a-year man saving the nation some dough. That must not happen and for several powerful reasons:

It suggests he will continue to get his daily or monthly millions that roll in from his 500 or so companies and foreign partners which has yet to name and the captive media have done little to demand. In short, he either has a full time paid job working for the United States, or his new job is just one more of what he has been doing all along.

He is now an employee — not the owner of his new corporation — and he must respond to the details of his inaugural oath the same way he demanded his recent election opponent to do so. As an employee, he must separate himself completely from all his businesses and swear to do the same with respect to any decisions affecting his companies.

He must take up residence in the White House as a sitting President in order to preserve the dignity of the office and make it clear that he respects the office. The manipulated media should reclaim their responsibility not merely to print what comes out of the Trump propaganda operation but to demand clarification of this constant flow.


It’s difficult to recall another time when a political machine has so captured and seemingly controlled what the people will know about actions that not only will impact their daily lives and futures but how their nation will now be seen throughout the world. 
Without question, that political machine may now well threaten the free right to question the very powers who operate it.

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Joseph J. Honick is president of GMA International in Bainbridge Island, Wash.