The Cry Wolf Effect

It seems to me that we're back to a situation where Donald Trump understands media dynamics a lot better than the media professionals who think they run the planet. His response to the latest indictment has been to call it, among other things, just another hoax in a series of hoaxes. According to the BBC,

Mr Trump, who is running for the White House again in 2024, called the indictment a "hoax" by the "corrupt political establishment", also describing it as a "joke" and a "travesty of justice".

On one hand, you can hurt yourself by claiming something that clearly isn't a hoax a hoax. The idea that a bunch of Islamist terrorists didn't bring down the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 is a hoax, and if you claim it isn't, you damage your credibility on anything else you claim. On the other hand, the problem for never Trumpers of any persuasion has become that there's now a series of factoids put forth as truth that have kept turning out to be hoaxes, from the pee dossier to the 2019 Zelensky phone call to the claim that Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation to the whole question of just what happened with COVID. It's the simple cry wolf effect.

Nor does it help that Jack Smith, the special prosecutor who brought the latest indictment, looks like the nebbishy assistant sociology professor you remember from your sophomore year for trying to get the undergraduates to demand the university give him tenure -- but he was so nebbishy, not even the undergraduates would buy it.

So we have a repeating phenomenon, whereby with each new indictment, Trump surges in popularity.

A poll indicates that former President Donald Trump has widened his lead in the GOP primary following the Department of Justice’s indictment of him for allegedly mishandling classified documents at his Florida home.

Surveying 1,798 potential voters between June 9-10 with a margin of error ±3.3 points, the CBS News poll showed the former president had 61 percent support in the Republican primary, leading his opponent, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by a full 38 points – 61 percent to 23 percent. Republican Sen. Tim Scott (SC) stands in third place with just 4 percent of support, just one point ahead of former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.

This seems to be causing even figures like Alan Dershowitz to question the received wisdom on Trump's supposed predicament. Last week, he was with the establishment:

Since reading the 49-page indictment, which was unsealed on Friday, Dershowitz says, “at least one part of it is somewhat stronger than I had initially believed it would be.” Specifically, the indictment cites a tape recording in which the president allegedly brags to an unnamed person about classified “secret information” in a document about Iran.

By Sunday night, he was starting to hedge:

Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz offered his legal insight into the indictment of former President Donald Trump, saying Special Counsel Jack Smith had only one job when he was assigned to the case: "Get Trump."

Beyond the legalisms, though, we're in a situation where the plebs is behaving unpredictably. The Bud Light-Dylan Mulvaney boycott caught everyone by surprise, and even in the early weeks, nobody thought it would last. Then it moved to Target, and again, its specificity, strength, and persistence have defied conventional wisdom. As of now, it appears that it may spread to other brands like Cracker Barrel. The plebs simply doesn't respond well to being told to believe things that go against common sense.

I would go so far as to say that questions like whether the pee dossier or the Hunter laptop Russian disinformation story were hoaxes have had far less impact on the public mood than the whole COVID-lockdown-masking-social-distance-mandatory-vaccine-booster-after-booster brainwash that's soured the public mood, likely for years to come. If Dylan Mulvaney and Alissa Heinerscheid allowed the plebs to pick the targets, freeze them, and personalize them as the problem, Trump has been able to move into a posiiton where he can be picked, frozen and personalized as the antidote.

And for now, it's William Barr, Jack Smith, and President Brandon himself who are playing the bigger media roles of Dylan Mulvaney and Alissa Heinerscheid as the frozen and personalized targets.. Bud Light and Target haven't figured out how to extricate themselves from their predicament. It doesn't look like the puppets who think they're running the political show have figured things out yet on a bigger scale, either.