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2024 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

8. Drinking from the Firehose: Trump, Social Media, and Late Night Comedy

verfasst von : Jim Twombly

Erschienen in: Political Scandal and American Pop Culture

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

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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 Chapter 7, 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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Vorheriges Kapitel Clinton Scandals—Twenty-First-Century Version, but Not Bill

Nächstes Kapitel Still Thirsty? More Firehose, but Not January 6th

Noah replaced Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show in 2015.

Here, in this earlier time frame, the reference is to the investigation conducted by Robert Mueller into the interference by Russia in the 2016 election and whether that included so-called collusion by the Trump campaign.

I have personally experienced this phenomenon with regard to a weekly segment I used to do on a local TV station’s (WENY-TV, Elmira, NY) newscast.

Trump was banned from Twitter for a while after posts he made that appeared to encourage hate and violence following the insurrection on January 6, 2021.

Starting in January 2005, The Apprentice or Celebrity Apprentice was on television for at least 15 seasons.

Interestingly, Bush is a cousin of the political Bush family.

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.

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.”

Hannity continued to defend Trump on his regular FOX News program and as of this writing there had been no evidence of legal wrongdoing by Hannity.

In the infamous “Steele Dossier,” a piece of opposition research commissioned by first Republican primary opponents of Trump in 2016 and then funded by the Clinton campaign, alleges that Russian Intelligence has a video of Trump watching prostitutes urinating in a Moscow hotel room on a bed once used by Barack Obama.

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.

The FBI had already been investigating possible connections or collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russian agents since early in 2016.

In early July 2018, former Trump Attorney, Michael Cohen, apparently on the verge of cooperating with Mueller, told ABC News’s George Stephanopolous that the investigation was not a witch hunt.

According to reporting by USA Today, Trump made this statement while boarding Air Force One for a return trip to Washington from Mar-A-Lago (Collins et al. 2019).

Perhaps more than any entertainer, Colbert makes regular references, during his monologue, to the tape and leaves no doubt how much he’s like for the stories to be true.

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.

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.

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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Diamond, Jeremy. 2016. “Trump: I Could ‘Shoot Somebody and I Wouldn't Lose Voters’.” CNN, January 24. Retrieved on July 2018 from: https://www.cnn.com/2016/01/23/politics/donald-trump-shoot-somebody-support/index.html.

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Titel: Drinking from the Firehose: Trump, Social Media, and Late Night Comedy
verfasst von: Jim Twombly
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Buch: Political Scandal and American Pop Culture
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-63167-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-031-63168-9

Copyright-Jahr: 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-63168-9_8