All show but no substance
All this past week the press has been hyping the great Trump-Putin summit. Pundit after pundit has been asked what to expect from the summit, and the answer is always the same: “nothing”…. “nothing”……”nothing.” Of course Putin isn’t going to make any concessions, and of course Trump cannot give away territory that isn’t his to give.
The great day arrived. Hundreds of reporters gathered for the pre-announced press conference after 3 hours of negotiations. Then, both Trump and Putin gave very brief meaningless statements. (“productive talks”, “progress towards a solution”, blah-blah-blah) Then they walked away without taking any questions from the gaggle of open-mouthed reporters expecting to ask questions, who now had nothing to comment on. All these political experts tried to read something profound into Trump’s ridiculous truism, “There’s no deal until there’s a deal.”
Next, for hours after the protagonists had left, the pundits sat around trying to say something erudite and meaningful about what had just occurred. Their answers, couched in extensive vocabulary, all came out “nothing”…”nothing”….”nothing”. CNN had assembled its team of heavyweights, all of whom had nothing insightful to say. It was embarrassing.
You’ve got to hand it to Trump. He arranged this huge red-carpet spectacle to distract the world from the Epstein scandal, and wow! Did he ever succeed! While the media were hyping and over-analyzing the great non-event, no one mentioned Epstein. Both Trump and Putin knew that nothing could come from the summit, but each one wanted to profit from the image and the extravaganza.
The thing is, we saw it all coming. Everyone knew that the summit would be a nothing-burger, but they took Trump’s bait anyhow. Trump really played them, big-time.
Of course, the media game is all about viewers. Did all the hype bring in millions of viewers, or did the public see through Trump’s ruse? I suspect it’s more the latter, just as people stayed away from Trump’s big parade a few months ago. Or more probably, viewers initially tuned in but were bored by all the non-answers and tuned out.
They want to hear about Epstein scandal.