Well well well, we see how it is going to go in the coming Trump administration. Today was the blueprint.
After insisting that he never settles lawsuits, the President-Elect settled the Trump University lawsuit for $25 mIllion.
This disturbed the news cycle domination of his meeting with Mitt Romney, the biggest news coming out of the cabinet selection process as it would reveal that Don has the capability of sharing power with someone who criticized the President-Elect during the campaign and who represents the distant sane (sans "Binders Full of Women") shore of the Republican establishment. The big news is that the President-Elect is seeking to be normalized, to have his election campaign sins (too numerous to count, but basically dividing up America with the sharpest Ginsu knife in history) forgiven and to be seen as a sober, thoughtful leader. The Romney meeting, possibly news of an almost-moderate with something resembling a soul joining the mouseketeers or maybe just some tactical theater, is the message sent out to dominate the headlines, to dissipate the critique of Bannon and the cabinet posts, to seep into the consciousness of 300 million people who saw or heard Non-Fake-News™ eleven days after the election was over.
Trump University started to push Romney off the front page (is that print news term THE FRONT PAGE still assignable to digitally-delivered info?).
Enter Hamilton. The cast of the popular Broadway show gave the Vice-President-Elect a piece of its mind. So now the "Romney Olive Branch" was snapped off like a twig and a lawsuit and a thespian-scolding are pushing-back against Don's still-being-assembled machine.
So Don simply follows the blueprint. He tweets an absurd little rant and the pushback slams against it all. A wall. He built a wall on twitter on day eleven to stop any advances. Because instantly, his tweet, the tone of it, the meaning of it, the impulse behind it, the implications of it, this was all that anyone could rush to their keyboards to write about, to post about, to pontificate about. The talking heads talked (I was out all day, actually, did they? Of course they did). And social media had funny memes of Abraham Lincoln saying things like "Worse things have happened in a theater" bwahahaha, I mean the amped-up inspiration and passion to talk about the President-Elect shaming thespians was everywhere, it dominated human consciousness across America.
The talk about the fraud underneath a $25 Million settlement disappeared before it fully formed. Little talk about the righteous calling out a bigot in a public (if quite expensively ticketed) place.
Nope… it was all about having the hottest take on the tweet. The tweet that made him look like a fascist to his opponents, a strong man to his suppoerters and a guy who sticks up for his Vice President to anyone still on the frickin' fence.
He has a blueprint. Rock-'em, Sock-'em, Shock-'em. We will lose count of how many times he follows this blueprint. We will never become jaded because he will find new ways to do this Rock-Sock-Shock schtick that defy taste, gravitas and decency. He will control the news cycle by making us all dance.
So on day eleven, I will not dance. The President-Elect defrauded customers through a scam called Trump University. He is terrified of perjuring himself, a threat to everything he has gained, so he is winding up all these lawsuits. That's the story. What can we learn from today's story is that he engages in fraud and that he does not want to go on the record of how he commits fraud. That is the story of day eleven. We may need to remember this lesson in the coming months and years.