Abstract
Donald Trump is a master of distraction, seemingly diverting the public’s attention away from whatever accusation may be hurled at him, in part, through skillful use of social media. Once again, this chapter looks at the same question as in the previous chapter, if an individual’s status as a pop culture icon prior to revelations of politically related bad behavior affects the appearance of scandal. In this case, certainly more attention and more forgiveness come with Trump’s celebrity status. Trump himself notes this both on the now famous Access Hollywood tape and in his campaign statement about shooting people in the middle of 5th Avenue and not losing any support. Clearly, late-night comedy’s obsession with Trump qualifies for his continued contribution to pop culture.
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Notes
- 1.
Starting in January 2005, The Apprentice or Celebrity Apprentice was on television for at least 15 seasons.
- 2.
Interestingly, Bush is a cousin of the political Bush family.
- 3.
Daniels is best known for her acting roles in adult movies (i.e., she’s a porn star), but has had minor roles in mainstream entertainment outlets and has been known as an exotic dancer, a director, and a producer.
- 4.
Mitch Rabalais of The Bayou Brief reported on January 11, 2018 that Daniels’ candidacy was actually the result of “a ‘Draft Stormy’ movement launched by a few overzealous political science students looking for an adult entertainer to run against Vitter . Their strategy was that Daniels’ mere presence in the race would draw more attention to the Senator’s extramarital activities .”
- 5.
In August 2018, Avenatti was making the rounds of talk shows and even attended the Iowa State Fair, a typical starting point for presidential campaigns, to test the waters for a possible bid.
- 6.
Hannity continued to defend Trump on his regular FOX News program and as of this writing there had been no evidence of legal wrong doing by Hannity.
- 7.
Recall that Broidy was involved in and pled guilty to bribery charges in the Alan Hevesi pay to play scandal discussed in Chapter 5.
- 8.
Agent is used here, not necessarily in the intelligence application of the term, but more generally as someone acting on behalf of another party, whether an individual or government. This particular usage then is more like a usage would be familiar with from contract law or economics as opposed to a usage that would be closer to a colloquial definition of a spy.
- 9.
The FBI had already been investigating possible connections or collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russian agents since early in 2016.
- 10.
In early July 2018, former Trump attorney, Michael Cohen , apparently on the verge of cooperating with Mueller, told ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos that the investigation was not a witch hunt .
- 11.
Manigault Newman was hired by Trump to serve on his 2016 presidential campaign and later as part of his White House staff responsible for outreach to minority communities.
- 12.
And in mid-August 2018 was releasing the tapes in drip by drip manner during her television appearances.
- 13.
She has asserted that Trump knew of the existence of the hacked DNC emails before their existence was made public by Wikileaks .
- 14.
Perhaps more than any entertainer, Colbert makes regular references, during his monolog, to the tape and leaves no doubt how much he’s like for the stories to be true.
- 15.
Similar searches for Kimmel (75,500), Fallon (42,400), O’Brien (15,000), Seth Meyers of Late Night (32,800), and Samantha Bee of Full Frontal (19,800) reveal a true penetration of our pop culture by Russiagate . Samantha Bee’s number is truly impressive given that her show is broadcast only once a week.
- 16.
Bridgegate involved the closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge , allegedly as part of a traffic study, in order to extract political revenge on the mayor of Fort Lee , New Jersey . The closings cause tremendous traffic jams throughout Fort Lee.
- 17.
Only in the sense that without newer technology it would have been harder to catch them or that they would have had a harder time engaging in the activities that got them in trouble in the first place.
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Twombly, J. (2019). Drinking from the Firehose: Trump, Social Media, and Late-Night Comedy. In: Political Scandal and American Pop Culture. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01340-0_8
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