Donald Trump and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein are slated to meet on Thursday, not at all coincidentally splitting the focus with hearings on court-nominee Brett Kavanaugh. What will happen in that meeting? Rosenstein could be fired. He could resign. He could stay. He and Trump could share really good chocolate cake … though that last one seems unlikely. What’s much more probable is that the story which began a week ago with a deliberately loud bang, will end on Thursday with a whimper of statements from Sarah Sanders. And a big win for Trump.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is “is open to keeping” Rosenstein in his current position. Or at least, that’s what the sources from inside the White House reported. That’s the real story of this week: Everyone reported just what they were told. And it’s one of three ways the Rosenstein story was made to work for Trump.
Though Trump has complained for months about the use of anonymous sources by the media, that use has never been one-sided or even mostly against Trump. Whether the subject has been actions inside the DNC or claims that the FBI had found nothing on Trump connecting him to Russia, there have always been sources speaking up from inside the system to provide cover for Trump’s actions. There have always been outlets eager to trumpet those stories. But this is a new phase.
Trump’s team was extraordinarily effective in building a narrative in social media during the election using techniques designed, tested, and weaponized by Russian operatives who worked for years in advance of the 2016 election to plant stories, accelerate their spread and maximize impact. What has happened over the last week shows that Trump’s team is now equally effective in weaponizing the same outlets that they deride as “fake news.” They effectively planted a cause for Rosenstein’s firing, generated a mock-crisis of “verbal resignation,” fended off attempts to correct reporters serving up exaggerations at best, lies at worst, and they kept the media in a state of chaos in which signal could not penetrate the noise.
As a test of their ability to upend the media and generate a firestorm on demand, it could hardly have gone better. And like all such trials, this effort also generated data that could be collected and sorted to make the next such effort even better.
Team Trump managed to:
- Take the Kavanaugh nomination out of the headlines, giving Republicans a chance to address their strategy at a critical moment.
- Demonstrate an ability to generate and steer press coverage that included planting a story, simulating a crisis, and steering the response.
- Weaken both Rosenstein’s position at DOJ and desensitize the public to the idea that he could, in fact, be sent packing at any moment.
If the last week were a test of an emergency response system, there were clear winners and losers. The national media* immediately latched onto a story shaped by Trump’s team to create a cause for Rosenstein’s dismissal. The media then jumped again to report events that had not happened in response to sources within the White House. Efforts to correct that report were sidelined at many outlets, especially those which had initially reported the “Rosenstein has resigned” lead. Long after it became clear that the deputy attorney general had not resigned, the story was kept in a state of confused boil.
As the story started to trail away, some of the same reporters who were involved in planting the initial story were back again to report that Rosenstein was “overly emotional” during his White House meeting, and that he was willing to step down … if only Donald Trump would agree not to say bad things about him. Because the end of a decades long career would be tolerable, but not the devastating Twitter attack of Trump.
In other words, a program of attack that began with making Rosenstein seem flighty, nervous, and disloyal was capped off with reports designed to make Rosenstein seem weepy, weak, and fearful.
Will Trump dismiss Rosenstein or not? No matter how it goes, the primary goals of the week have been achieved. Somewhere in the White House, the media team is laughing. And not at Trump.
*When i say “national media” I’m including myself in this group. More than once in this past week, I’ve let the effort to stay on top of “breaking news” cause me to respond to opening salvos even when they were more than a little suspect in their origins and content.