Look! A squirrel!
On the morning of November 4, 2024—forty-eight hours before the most consequential election in a generation—Donald Trump tweeted, in all caps, about a squirrel.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
“SO SAD WHAT THEY DID TO PEANUT!! A BEAUTIFUL AMERICAN SQUIRREL MURDERED BY GOVERNMENT GESTAPO. ANIMALS LAST, ILLEGALS FIRST!!”
The post lit up MAGA forums, hit Fox News by noon, and by sundown, Trump’s running mate JD Vance was onstage in Pennsylvania demanding justice for the Instagram-famous rodent.
“The same government that lets criminals run wild doesn’t want you to have pets.”
It had all the substance of a tabloid hoax—and still, it dominated every major network. Coincidentally, that was the same day early voting reports showed record turnout among young progressives and independents—two groups the Trump campaign had failed to move. By the next morning, no one was talking turnout. They were talking about Peanut.
When reality gets inconvenient, Trump doesn’t retreat. He performs.
He’s spent nearly a decade perfecting the art of narrative warfare. In media theory, it’s called strategic distraction. Trump’s version is simpler: flood the system, hijack the signal, say the most outrageous thing in the room. Doesn’t have to be true. Just has to trend.
“Trump doesn’t care about the downside effects of negative attention. He views all attention as valuable.” That line from MSNBC’s Chris Hayes isn’t commentary—it’s playbook. In the attention economy, visibility is power. Shame, scandal, even absurdity—it all converts.
Psychologists call it narcissistic personality disorder. In behavioral terms, it’s a self-referential orientation: the self must be seen, defended, applauded.
“Trump can’t be wrong, can’t be blamed, can’t be ignored,” said one clinical psychologist who’s tracked his behavior for over a decade. “When accountability is a threat, distraction becomes a survival reflex.”
It works because it’s compulsive. His short attention span and lack of impulse control aren’t flaws here—they’re assets. He lurches from one controversy to the next, erasing each in real time. Tweets, tantrums, now TikToks.
In early 2025, as journalists finally dug into the quiet restructuring of the federal government—Trump and Musk’s stealth consolidation of data, finance, and intelligence—Trump fired off a single, unstable line about Gaza. Wild, unverified, designed to provoke. It did.
Within 48 hours, the entire media apparatus pivoted. Gaza took over. The story of America’s dismantled agencies vanished.
On March 17, 2025, after weeks of reporting on sweeping “efficiency reforms” that funneled federal oversight into the White House, the first damning memos were about to drop. They outlined a purge of independent review boards, and a centralization of data access under executive control.
Then, at 8:02 a.m., Trump posted:
“GAZA HAS BECOME A DISTRACTION FOR WEAK LEADERS. I SAY STOP FUNDING UNTIL WE SECURE OUR BORDER! SAD!”
That was all it took. Cable networks dumped their segments. Editorial teams froze coverage mid-cycle. Suddenly every anchor was parsing a geopolitical grenade instead of naming what had just happened at home.
“The fastest way to disappear a headline is to scream over it.”
That’s how one D.C. editor described it later—after the dust had already settled.
The memos never resurfaced. But the policies advanced.
He didn’t invent distraction. He scaled it. Clinton’s missile strikes during Lewinsky? A diversion. Bush’s carrier landing? Theater. Nixon’s speeches? Deflection. But Trump industrialized it.
“Other presidents redirected. Trump detonates a bomb in the newsroom and walks away.”
That, from a campaign veteran who’s worked both parties.
Sometimes it’s so ridiculous it plays like satire—like the time he proposed renaming the Gulf of Mexico “The Gulf of America.” Or annexing Canada. Reporters laughed. But the punchlines displaced the real headlines: extremist Cabinet picks that breezed through confirmation while media attention was somewhere else.
When PEPFAR cuts threatened HIV/AIDS programs across sub-Saharan Africa, Trump didn’t deny it. He changed the subject—to white South African asylum seekers. Claimed they were fleeing “anti-white genocide.”
It wasn’t just cruelty. It was camouflage. And it worked.
On April 2, 2025, the tarmac at Dulles International filled with reporters. A chartered jet had just landed. Inside: a dozen Afrikaner families, flanked by White House aides and welcomed like dignitaries. Cameras clicked. Mics crowded. The story wrote itself.
Behind the spectacle, PEPFAR cuts had quietly gone into effect. Clinics across Africa began closing. Orders for life-saving antiretrovirals froze.
“A chartered flight carrying white refugees? The optics were impossible to ignore,” said a former USAID official watching live on CNN.
By the time the broadcast ended, the debate had shifted. Refugee policy. Race. White identity politics. Meanwhile, no one on-air mentioned the funding that had just been pulled.
“By the time the cameras left the tarmac, millions had already lost their meds,” recalled one NGO coordinator who arrived too late to stop the cuts.
Every time the spotlight veers toward abuse, corruption, or collapse, Trump sparks a new spectacle. A squirrel. A TikTok tantrum. A fantasy war with Canada.
He floods the signal until nothing sticks.
“It’s a magician’s act,” said one political psychologist. “You’re watching the hand that moves—not the hand that acts.”
In Trump’s America, distraction isn’t a tactic.
It’s the whole show.
The collusion of the media in this whole sh*tshow is truly depressing. They know they’re being manipulated, but don’t seem to be able to do anything about it. Trump’s appointees and media representatives have learned that the more obnoxious and aggressive they are the more they can get away with. All the famed checks and balances of the US political system are failing utterly.
Thanks for revealing what is right in our face. Like the nose on our face we really don’t see it. Thanks