In today’s attention economy currency, Donald Trump is the richest man in the world.
His media-devoured indictment in New York was extrajudicial evidence A. Returning to the no-business-like-show-business metropolis that propelled him to tabloid fame so many years ago has also returned the former president until the stage where it thrives the most. In doing so, he demonstrated, albeit in an atypically slow-moving manner, his peculiar way of encountering the world – as a luminary and a victim in one person.
Love him? hate him? Does not matter to you? Doesn’t matter. Just like during his presidency, he commands attention. Quiet. Thousands of New York City police officers, the US Secret Service and swarms of journalists stationed in Lower Manhattan can all attest to this.
It was a procedural court appearance, the lowest level of drama in a criminal case, but it was an all-encompassing spectacle. And to call it that, to value it that way, doesn’t belittle it—not in today’s world, where spectacle and all its by-products drive the attention economy and cultural dialogue.
Something about Tuesday and the five days leading up to it was somehow familiar and deeply abnormal.
For the most part, Americans had emerged from the all-Trump ethos that ruled our days between 2016 and, say, mid-2021. So the Trump flavor that has prevailed since the indictment was unveiled on Thursday was hardly new. Also familiar was the uneasy clash of ostentation and seriousness, of government mannered machinations with the anything-goes rhetoric of 21st-century reality-TV-influenced populism.
Just as you saw during the Trump presidency the monuments Americans erect to assure themselves that their efforts to administer a democratic republic are very serious endeavors. Formerly the Washington buildings of the Executive and Legislative branches; on Tuesday it unfolded in a heavy masonry courthouse built into the imposing architecture enshrining the rule of law.
Yet all that familiarity obscured what was truly new under the American sun: the moment-by-moment recording of an ex-president going to court, coming to court, being charged with crimes in court, and leaving court in a motorcade who drove to the airport to board his private plane with his name very publicly painted on the side.
“Beyond is the perfect way to put it,” Dana Bash said on CNN.
LOOK AT TRUMP
We must see everything as it has become our species. Inside the courthouse, we saw the cinema verité style of news cameras behind barricades desperately seeking – and getting – a peek. Outside, everything was being followed from above by four news helicopters, a tableau of slow-motion echoes of a previous trip echoing through the decades: that of the white Bronco driven by OJ Simpson in 1994 – someone who is also accused of a high-profile crime.
Three decades separate these two chopper-chronicized scenes. These years saw the rise of reality television, the explosion of the internet and social media, and the general dominance of tools and mindsets handy to obfuscate reality, making American life – sometimes intentionally – seem more and more like a movie to permit. Trump was of course a prominent motor of this upheaval, both as a performative private individual and later as CEO.
This American preoccupation with big, loud storylines was on full display Tuesday as hosts, pundits and sources talked and talked and talked. You could hear it burned into the language on every corner.
– There was one main character you can’t look away from: A Newsmax host waiting for Trump’s court appearance called him the “star of the show”.
— There was a metaphorical musical score: “His legal cases will be a soundtrack to his presidential campaign,” said CNN’s Jeff Zeleny.
— There was trading power. “Donald Trump has built a hell of a brand,” one of his attorneys, Joe Tacopina, said after the indictment.
– Disinformation was built up to sell products: Although no mugshot was taken of the former president during his time in court on Tuesday, people fundraising on his behalf quickly crafted a fake one and blew it up, um to rally the troops and lighten their wallets.
— And there was a relentless stream of content, led by Trump himself, posting on his Truth Social account until he approached the courthouse and continued as he exited. “America shouldn’t be like this,” he said at one point, another of those statements he calibrates perfectly to turn his personal troubles into national ones.
WHAT MESSAGE?
Trump has been a storyteller for so much of his life, controlling the image, the message, and often his preferred version of the truth. With the presidency, he made this approach national policy. But on Tuesday, when rules and laws wrested that sense of control from him, he was no longer the narrator but the narrated. Despite all the attention and criticism over the years, it’s a position he’s deeply unfamiliar with.
And by the looks of the photos and short video, he didn’t like it. As these somber images of him in court flashed across national screens, presenters and pundits used words like “diminished” and “boastful.” Not things that Donald Trump generally follows.
“At this moment, this is not a conqueror. This is a grandpa having a very bad day,” commentator Van Jones said on CNN after noticing the former president’s dejected expression as he exited Trump Tower in front of the indictment.
Yet these same moderators and pundits have said these very things before, during his campaign and presidency and after the presidency. They tried to tell for Trump. Somehow he always emerges as the master storyteller of his own story – no matter how much fabulism it contains.
By nightfall he was at home in Mar-a-Lago, Fla., supported by American flags, speaking to hundreds of supporters at a rally-style gathering and doing prime-time grievances. In doing so, he sought to recapture that narrative the way he’s always done it best: in front of a crowd handpicked to delight without hesitation and boo on the first try. “I have a Trump-hating judge with a Trump-hating wife and family,” he said.
His intent was obvious — to show that Donald J. Trump remains a potent force in the arena of America’s attention economy, where fighting is always raging. Attracting attention was his world, and politics is an area of attention. Whether the legal field, which he has so far successfully avoided, will be anywhere near the same for him may be a very different reality.
___
Ted Anthony, director of new storytelling and newsroom innovation at The Associated Press, has been writing about American culture since 1990. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/anthonyted
Comments are closed.