I believe there is already a group planning the impeachment roll out. I’ll call them the Impeach The MFer Already (ITMFA) group. I’ll call the woman in charge of the media strategy the Media Strategist for Impeach the MFer Already or (MS for ITMFA). She probably already has her staff lining up the experts on emoluments, obstruction of justice, money laundering and other crimes from the Mueller Report.
Her goal is to show the crimes and/or treasonous activity of Trump AND HIS INNER CIRCLE and push new parts of it out to the public every single day, using multiple methods on multiple platforms to multiple audiences.
The Democrats need to tell a story to the American people that will convince them to act in a certain way. Impeachment will require figuring out the best ways to deliver the news, images and video from the hearings to the multiple audiences that have to be reached. How? My first tip:
1) Recreate conclusions from the Mueller Report in a way the American people can absorb.
That involves first getting experts to explain the crimes, second providing video of the criminals talking about doing those crimes and third, getting more experts to refute the excuses from Bill Barr, Rudy Giuliani, Mick Mulvaney or Donald Trump that the crimes aren’t really crimes. They need to be shown they are are wrong, wrong, wrong. 10,000 times wrong.
The Captain, Spocko and the late great Joel Silberman discussing ways to show the American people how to take down a penny-ante operator like Trump.
[If my friend, the late great Joel Silberman, were alive I’m sure he would be an adviser to this group. He would explain to them the importance of telling a story with emotional beats, backed up by hard facts, political and legal analysis all topped off with damning video clips. ]
The Trump White House is fighting hard to keep any Mueller witnesses off camera. If I wasn’t a polite Vulcan I would scream, “STOP LETTING THEM WIN BY GIVING DON JR. A CLOSED HEARING!”
But a modern media strategist doesn’t have to only use hearings and they don’t have to just work with what the MSM clips at hearings and uses. Rachel Maddow can bring on all the experts, but not everyone sees them. My next tip.
2) Create your own clips and get the story out directly to the world via Social Media.
I’m sure the MS of ITMFA already knows this, but I want to remind Democratic activists to not count on the MSM to show why Trump is a criminal and should be removed from office. We need to use our own platforms, social media and connections to help the process.
I’ll admit I’m no expert on Social Media but I know a lot about how it has been used and how it can be manipulated by bots to amplify messages. If you read the Mueller report, you would know who the the Russian government controlled Internet Research Agency was and what they did to influence people’s opinions. Here’s a clip on them from the report.
The ITMFA should hire the American equivalent of the Internet Research Agency to get the impeachment story out. The IRA used actual people pushing a specific message and used bots to amplify them. ITMFA shouldn’t hide the use of bots either. Just explain the new battleground, “We are using the same methods and bots as the IRA. It worked for Putin and got us Trump, so we are learning from our enemies.” That story alone will educate people on bots and social media manipulation.
Other social media ideas for ITMFA:
- Hire YouTube stars to create explainer videos on obstruction of justice, money laundering or the history of foreign influence on politics
- Hire comedians & smart writers to help politicians with clever, retweet-able tweets and vicious sub-tweets. (Hire my friends Jeff Tiedrich
@itsJeffTiedrich and Frank Conniff @FrankConniff.) - Bring Instagram Influencers to the hearings and pair them with someone who can explain the impeachment story to their audience
- Bumperstickers!
The MS of ITMFA can suggest that committee members at hearings ask the kind of questions that will create video clips of the people talking about what they heard, what crimes they committed, or the obstruction orders they got from the President but didn’t carry out. The media will use them but that leads me to my third tip.
3) DON’T TRUST THE MEDIA!
The Media will water down the story that Trump is a criminal and should be removed from office.
It appears to me that certain news producers, journalists and hosts want to believe rational Republicans exist. They keep providing Trump with “to be fair” comments about his lawlessness and keep bringing on Giuliani types to explain away crimes and treasonous activities. The GOP today are extremists. But some mainstream media and Democrats STILL think the Republicans will reach a point where “The Fever Will Break.” once Trump is out of office, and things will go back to normal.
NEWSFLASH for Joe BIDEN: Today’s GOP IS the fever, and it’s coursing through Trump’s plaque-clogged veins.
I understand people who don’t follow politics want the Republican party to stop being insane. But the insanity has worked for the GOP extremists. They have gotten what they wanted, conservative supreme court judges, multiple federal judges, huge tax cuts, cut backs on regulations, no action on the climate emergency and nativist attacks on immigrants. Why would they change? What’s in it for them? Respect from people on the left? HA!
The ITMFA group can arrange the right video clips for the MSM, but they can’t fix the media’s attitude of giving the benefit of the doubt to the GOP’s bad faith actions in support of Trumps’s lies and criminality. Many are still stuck playing along believing a President wouldn’t be a traitor to his country and Republicans wouldn’t support him if only they knew the truth.
We need to help Democrats successfully Impeach Trump for his crimes and treasonous activity. Pick an area you are interested in, learn the story, then learn how the Trump people are trying to quash that story. Then explain to the people who mostly listen to NPR, watch the NewsHour or see a few headlines, what is happening, why Trump’s excuses are invalid and why it matters. Even if they think they can predict the future and say, “But the current GOP senate won’t act!” They don’t know the future. Only time travelers like me do, and even then things can change.
I’m just a brain in a box and not even from this planet, but I’m half-human and I want a better future for my friends in this time in this timeline. I’ve learned that we are not alone in this fight. There are people who ARE working to ensure impeachment and the removal of Trump. Give them a signal boost when you can. Your nudge might be the one to move us out of the darkest timeline.
