Jeff Turner
A & E EDITOR
When Donald Trump announced his candidacy in June of last year, he energized those on the far right. At the time, Republicans and Democrats were largely laughing at him. His ridiculous showmanship and frequent fallacies made him hard to take seriously. There is a video called “Analyzing Trump: 15 Logical Fallacies in 3 minutes” that is essential viewing to those hoping to understand Trump a little more.
His style in the debates was simple. He would use simple words: three syllables max; he would follow that up with boisterous showmanship and complete it with total confidence in what he was saying. He also yelled the loudest and asserted his dominance. At that point it didn’t matter that most of what he was saying was wrong (according to Politifact.com, only 15 percent of the statements from Trump that they’ve aggregated qualify as ‘True’ or ‘Mostly True’). None of the Republicans took him seriously at first. As the debates went on however, things quickly descended into madness.
Despite the best efforts of everyone else involved, the presidential debates weren’t a huge improvement, and he spent most of the time interrupting his opponent. This was the debating approach that he had perfected over the course of his campaign.
Franklin D. Roosevelt revolutionized the way radio was used in elections. Kennedy revolutionized the way television was used in elections. Donald Trump turned the election into entertainment.
On election night, Deadline reports that CNN will be partnering with AMC Theaters to broadcast the election across the country. Fifty theaters in 25 major markets will participate. This is the first time any theater chain will broadcast the election.
This same article also notes that there was a risk of gun violence at this event and that people had to be trained for security.
The cynicism towards the media in our country has grown exponentially in the decades since 24-hour-news began. The facts have often become more prone to political spin, and the information both more limited and less nuanced. The media seems to try to sensationalize issues. This dates back to the OJ Simpson trial, which played like its own show.
The tragedy is, Trump knew how inept the media was, and he knew this is the only way he could truly achieve his dreams. The media wanted to sensationalize stories and turn it into entertainment, Trump finally finished the job. Now with the election being broadcast in theaters, something they would have never considered doing before Trump entered the race, Trump has been proven right. The media is shallow, and if Trump treated it like a reality show, he’d get within a trigger hair of being President of the United States.
This is one thing that Donald Trump was right about, and the fact that CNN is partnering with AMC to have the end of this nonsense broadcast in a theater like it’s an “Avengers” movie, after admitting they were wrong for giving Trump the constant exposure he needed to get elected in the first place, confirms that anybody with enough money could game this system and run it into the ground.
Even if Donald Trump loses the election, he has won the entertainment platforms.
