"Trump has an incredible ability to break down the real and reconstruct it"

Portrait of Alexis Pichard, author of "Trump and the media, the illusion of war?

», In the 20 Minutes studio, October 27, 2020, in Paris.

-

• Every Friday,

  20 Minutes

   invites a personality to comment on a social phenomenon in his meeting “20 Minutes with…”.

• Alexis Pichard, researcher in American civilization, author of a book entitled 

  Trump and the media, the illusion of a war?

  , looks back on the heated relations between Trump and the American media, less than a week before the American presidential election.

• Donald Trump, who relied on the media to build his image as a businessman, now condemns them to gemonies to build his presidential story, underlines the specialist.

• Alexis Pichard also points to "dangerous fake news" from the President of the United States.

"Trump is, since his election, obsessed by the novel of his presidency, the one that will be forever recorded in the history books, that he wishes in his image, all in grandeur", notes Alexis Pichard, in his book

, which has just been published by VA éditions *.

To ensure the dissemination of this story, the US president launched a "war on the media", an expression he himself invented, underlines the researcher in American civilization at the University of Nanterre.

However, Donald Trump, a great communicator, has no interest in her ending.

A few days before the American presidential election, Alexis Pichard returns for

to the long history between Donald Trump and the media, which he has widely used to build his image as a businessman, then as president.

From his beginnings in the public sphere, Donald Trump is essential in the media to write his story ...

He is someone who has a taste for storytelling, who is very narcissistic, who has created an image for himself through the media.

He got into real estate in the 1970s and built himself a story of "self-made man", of a self-taught man who succeeds in everything because he is smarter than others, because 'it is stronger, etc.

And he always denied the fact that he was greatly helped by his father.

He then circulated this story via the media and in particular, in the 1970s, thanks to the

, which took an interest in him around the middle of the decade, by devoting a few very laudatory portraits to him.

For Trump, that was holy bread, because it was completely free publicity, and he was someone who cares about never paying for the publicity.

Portrait of Alexis Pichard, author of “Trump and the media, the illusion of a war?”, In the 20 Minutes studio, October 27, 2020, in Paris.

- Olivier Juszczak / 20 Minutes

Conversely, when articles displease him, he does not hesitate to let them know, or even to take them to court.

Why ?

There are elements that make up his virility, his masculinity, that he doesn't like to be touched.

He does not care if we touch his family, that we attack him personally, but as soon as we attack his manhood, it's disaster.

His wealth, but also his bankruptcy were a big moment in his career of shaping counter-narratives.

In the early 1990s, he went bankrupt and his marriage to Ivana Trump collapsed.

He will again use the media, and in particular the most popular fiction of the time - the sitcoms - to rebuild himself, to restore his image as a ladies' man and a businessman to whom nothing is come.

Did Fox News help build the Trump myth?

Of the Trump myth, perhaps not, but it participated in his credibility, his presidentialization, in particular during the column that he held every Monday morning in "Fox & Friends" [between 2011 and 2015], the morning success of Fox News.

He was interviewed by a trio of very pro-Trump hosts.

They allowed him to build his program, especially around Hispanic immigration, since it was via Fox News that he realized that this was something that galvanized his potential electorate.

Did the show "The Apprentice", which he presented from 2004 to 2014, make him known to the general public?

It allowed him to reach a total audience: NBC is a channel distributed throughout the United States.

It's a reality show.

At the time, reality TV was not very developed, people might have thought that what was reported there was pure reality.

Now, we have more perspective on that.

The average American identified himself on this show.

When he announces his candidacy and holds his meetings, the media are clearly under attack.

What does Donald Trump have in mind with these words?

The idea that he will not be elected!

All the commentators say so.

When he is in the Oval Office with Barack Obama just after his election, he is fearless, he does not know how to react, he looks lost.

He was someone who was organizing chaos for chaos, who was a sort of wrecking ball, come there to spice up the countryside.

He has considered running for president quite a few times and each time has stepped down before the election begins.

Always to make a financial profit.

This is also why the mainstream media said to themselves "It's Donald Trump who is running for president, we've already seen that a hundred times, we're not going to give it any credit.

"

It also conditioned his style.

He saw that Americans liked it.

He attacked institutions, the untouchables.

The polls have never fallen, on the contrary, they have jumped as he has been more vehement.

During the campaign, you point out that there is a form of fascination between the media and Donald Trump.

The more outrageous his words, the more they are relayed.

It makes the audience.

He kept in mind how reality TV works and this sense of entertainment, anger and buzz.

How to create a buzz?

By defying the prohibitions, the "politically correct" which he hates.

Does the media quickly understand the game Trump is dragging them into?

They understand it, they take advantage of it, that's why there is a form of cynicism.

They really have an interested posture.

CNN boss Jeff Zucker, who was head of NBC when

launched, says audiences have never looked better than they are today.

It is an incentive to continue to comment on all of Trump's deeds, actions and statements.

CNN bit their fingers a bit later, since they understood that they had given Donald Trump too much space for expression for obvious financial benefits.

Portrait of Alexis Pichard, author of "Trump and the media, the illusion of war?

», In the 20 Minutes studio, October 27, 2020, in Paris.

- Olivier Juszczak / 20 Minutes

In your book, you distinguish between progressive media and those classified to the right and the far right.

Donald Trump has distinct strategies towards these media ...

For what I call the conservatosphere, it's pretty classic, since it considers these media to be state media, whose only mission is to peddle its dominant narrative, the narrative it also unfolds on Twitter.

Even if these are statements that are often fallacious, even false, it takes, because we have media like Fox News which relay this information.

We are in a closed circuit, because they will relay this information and Trump will retweet or refer to these media to support his comments.

We are in a closed circuit of self-references which, in a way, legitimize each other.

At the same time, as soon as Fox News or some other conservative outlet deals with Democrats in a neutral way, there it is the truckload of insults [from Donald Trump].

As for the progressive media, Trump seeks to pose them as enemies - moreover, he has called them "enemies of the people" - and to ensure that they can serve him politically.

In the downturns, he'll put a coin back in the jukebox to re-energize the support of his constituents, saying, “See, if I don't succeed, it's because of them.

He is waging a war on them, but a war he has no interest in ending, because it allows him to exist politically and to gain the support of his followers.

What does he blame the progressive media for?

To be anti-patriots, because they never support the president's action, and to seek to harm him by disseminating what he calls "fake news", in order to scuttle his presidency permanently.

He sees in these media the expression of a desire for anarchy, it is they who will destroy American democracy, because they attack the presidential institution.

We saw it throughout his last part of the campaign, on order and the law.

He accuses them of being close to Black Lives Matter, with the “antifa”.

For him, it is a big progressive nebula.

How has the progressive press reacted to Donald Trump's attacks?

It revived a form of activism that we had not seen for a long time.

It notably revived investigative journalism.

The problem is that business being almost daily under the Trump administration, these long articles which follow one another on the revelations of his presidential action fade as and when.

The progressive media have thrived enormously on the image of the rebellion.

They put forward this aspect “We are the opposition, so subscribe.

This is not completely altruistic activism.

During his years as president, was there any particularly striking false news relayed by Trump that had an impact?

What he says about the antifa [Donald Trump said he wanted to classify them as “terrorist organizations” after the demonstrations that followed the death of George Floyd].

It is a catch-all that serves to frighten, to anger its electorate, while the antifa are less numerous than the right-wing paramilitary militias.

The “fake news” that struck me the most recently is the fact that he is in denial of his proximity to them.

And when he says, during the debate, “I don't know anything about QAnon” - which is not a paramilitary militia but a far-right conspiracy movement that says Democrats are at the head of a satanist pedophile ring - while he spends his time accrediting these theses by retweets from members of this movement, that is dangerous, it is totally false.

About the "proud boys" [an extreme right-wing group], in the first debate he said that they did not know them and, at the same time, he has a message which is very complex, since he had said “Stand back and stand by”, “step back but be ready to act anyway”.

For me, these are dangerous “fake news”, which are associated with a form of call to violence, in the context of a presidential election.

On the latter too, huge “fake news” on postal voting, which he had said would be at the origin of massive fraud.

This pushes its electorate to be on the alert and this could trigger, if not a civil war, at least shootings - we have seen that there have been a few recently - and an insurrectionary climate which will be very difficult. to manage

by Joe Biden if he gets elected in November.

The book "Trump and the Media, the Illusion of War?"

by Alexis Pichard, in the 20 Minutes studio, on October 27, 2020, in Paris.

- Olivier Juszczak / 20 Minutes

Why did Donald Trump choose to invest Twitter, when, if we are interested in the number of users, Facebook is a much more important heavyweight in the United States?

Twitter is not the medium of its base, but it is the one that is used the most by journalists.

This helps ensure that his most stormy, most disrespectful tweets are widely relayed because journalists will grab them as soon as they are published.

There, it is really the intelligence of Trump to have known very quickly that Twitter would allow him to have access to all the media.

It is also his media, his word and it will allow him to assert his untruths - or in any case his presidential and personal story - without contradiction, without intermediaries.

It's a presidential trend that doesn't go back to Trump, it goes back at least to the creation of the media, but Trump has taken it to incredible paroxysmal levels.

How does Donald Trump "reconstruct the real", as you write in your book?

He has a capacity to decompose reality and reconstruct it in its own way which is incredible, unheard of for a president of a democracy.

For me, these are practices that we see more in totalitarian regimes, in dictatorships, this construction of a propagandist story, flawless, to the glory of the president.

This is also why it may threaten the foundations of American democracy.

How does he do it?

By Twitter, by its spokespersons, by the conservatosphere and its very active voters on the Internet.

Donald Trump also stages these “alternative facts”.

Does it come from television?

His discharge from the hospital is carried out like an action film, even though we have seen on traditional channels that Trump had difficulty climbing the stairs, that he was panting.

All of that footage has been redacted from the video, where he is simply seen standing proudly in front of Marine One, the presidential helicopter, and giving a military salute while heroically removing his mask.

We have a Hollywoodization, a "reality TV" of presidential life which is very strong.

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* 

, by Alexis Pichard, VA éditions, October 6, 2020, 335 pages, 29 euros.

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