Another *Week*, another masterclass in managing the message — or, perhaps, in managing to bury it under an avalanche of… something.
The latest “interview” we’re tasked with dissecting isn’t a sit-down with a smiling anchor or a carefully staged town hall. No, the administration’s primary communication strategy during Week 77 appears to have been an exercise in sheer, unadulterated volume. This past week saw the usual slow drip of information evolve into a firehose, aimed squarely at the collective attention span of the press and public alike.
What began as a typical mid-week stream of updates, according to observers like those at Lawyers, Guns & Money, escalated dramatically. By Friday night, the flow of announcements, reports, and disclosures became a veritable torrent, continuing past midnight Eastern time and seemingly beyond. It’s a bold approach, certainly, to governance by deluge.
What landed
What landed, unequivocally, was the *strategy* itself. This wasn’t merely the standard, cynical Friday afternoon news dump designed to slip unpalatable information into the weekend void. This was an *escalated* version, a sustained barrage that the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog aptly noted felt like “not the usual late-afternoon dump of information someone wants no attention to, but up until I go to bed (after midnight Eastern time) and beyond.” The sheer stamina required to generate and release so much “news” across various platforms is, in its own way, remarkable.
The impact of this strategy also landed with bruising clarity. It effectively overwhelmed the capacity of even dedicated political watchers to “keep up.” In an age of dwindling newsroom resources, an administration that weaponizes the clock and the sheer volume of output can achieve a curious form of opacity. By presenting everything, it arguably reveals nothing clearly. The message, if there was one coherent message, became lost in the static.
What doesn’t add up
What truly doesn’t add up is the ostensible goal of this information blitz. If the intent was to bury specific pieces of news that “someone wants no attention to,” the tactic seems to have overshot the mark dramatically. Instead of quietly interring a few inconvenient truths, the administration appears to have bulldozed the entire information landscape. This raises the question: why bury a needle in a haystack when you can just bury the entire field under a new, much larger haystack?
Furthermore, the absence of a discernible, guiding narrative within this torrent is conspicuous. While the volume suggests an administration actively communicating, the lack of clarity suggests an administration actively *avoiding* communicating. It’s a contradiction inherent in the method: speaking so loudly that no one can hear. This isn’t transparency; it’s performance art in obfuscation, where the “interview” becomes less about what was said and more about the deliberate struggle to discern anything at all.
Come Monday morning, the primary change will be the collective sigh of exhaustion from those attempting to piece together the fragments of Week 77. The challenge for accountability will not be in scrutinizing specific statements, but in merely identifying them amidst the digital detritus. The true interview, it seems, is still waiting to be given.
Source: OnTheRecord