这是一篇时事分析文章,我觉得文章很有趣!分享给大家。
原文:
Trump is making himself inescapable
By Brian Stelter, CNN
Last year, President Joe Biden passed up a chance to be interviewed on the highly rated Super Bowl pregame show. This year, not only is President Donald Trump being interviewed, he is coming here for the big game in person.
By becoming the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl, Trump is turning the NFL’s biggest spectacle of the year into another episode of “The Trump Show.”
The show has been on seemingly 24/7 since the inauguration last month. It takes many forms: news conferences, contentious announcements, AI-generated memes and all-caps Truth Social posts. All of it makes Trump the proverbial main character.
“I’ve been so busy that it’s hard to believe,” he said at the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, prompting knowing laughter from the audience.
Every new president generates a lot of news, but something feels different this time. To the delight of his fans and dismay of his detractors, Trump has made so many pronouncements and held so many press Q&A’s that he has been all but impossible to avoid.
Think about it: A year ago you could go days without seeing or thinking about Biden. You’re lucky if you can go hours without thinking about Trump. And that’s just how he likes it.
White House aides have indicated the president’s ubiquity is partly a strategy to impress Republican voters and disorient Democratic opponents.
During White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s first briefing on January 28, she proudly brought along a headline about his omnipresence. “Politico summed it up best: ‘Trump is everywhere again.’ And that’s because President Trump has a great story to tell,” she said.
Trump’s long history of courting media attention suggests that it’s also partly about satiating his own ego.
In the new book about attention, “The Sirens’ Call,” MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes argued that Trump’s psychological needs are “so bottomless” that “he’ll take attention in whatever form he can get. He’ll take condemnation, rebuke, disgust, as long as you’re thinking about him.”
Conversely, Trump boosters often argue that liberals play right into his hands by obsessing over all things Trump.
A strongman technique?
History professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” told CNN that Trump has a “personality cult” that views him as both a man of the people and a demigod, and his visibility is a key component.
“The strongman must appear not just omnipotent but also omnipresent, he is everywhere,” she said.
Trump seems to welcome every opportunity to show off his stamina and strike a contrast with Biden, even months after defeating him.
“He knows his base and how simple they are,” CNN contributor Cari Champion said during a recent “NewsNight” discussion of the “optics presidency” and how effective it’s been.
Trump “knows how to entertain them and it’s working,” she said.
In a Truth Social post on Friday, Trump previewed his Super Bowl pregame interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier, which was recorded Saturday at Mar-a-Lago. “There hasn’t been one in four years (Gee, I wonder why?),” Trump wrote. (Biden participated in the pre-game tradition in 2021 and 2022.)
Even Biden would probably admit that Trump has superior attention-getting skills. Since retaking office, Trump has created so much purposeful chaos — including at federal agencies that are being gutted by the day — that journalists can barely keep up. News producers who wake up in the morning to prep an evening show know that many of the political stories will change by airtime.
This, of course, is what 2017 felt like. CNN even penned a similar story back then: “The inescapable Donald Trump.”
Google Trends search data shows that interest in Trump news peaked in 2017, then dissipated for the other three years of his first term, and then only spiked again when he tried to stay in office following his 2020 election loss. Interest is back at those 2020 levels now, but not quite as high as 2017, according to Google Trends.
Democratic strategist James Carville, who grew up in Louisiana and spends much of his time in New Orleans, said Trump being “white hot” would ultimately redound to the Democrats’ benefit.
Channeling Muhammad Ali’s famous “rope-a-dope” tactic, Carville said of Trump, “just go ahead and punch yourself out the first five rounds.”
Flooding the zone with cultural fights
Many of Trump’s events, and even some of his executive orders, are as much about performing the role of president as about changing government policy.
In an influential essay on his Marginal Revolution blog, Tyler Cowen wrote that Trump’s incessant posts and photo ops are “investments in changing the culture.”
Trump’s strategy, he wrote, seems to be the following: “Every time the policy or policy debate pushes culture in what you think is the right direction, just do it. Do it in the view that the cultural factors will, over some time horizon, surpass everything else in import. Simply pass or announce or promise such policies. Do not worry about any other constraints. You don’t even have to do them! They don’t even all have to be legal! (Illegal might provoke more discussion.) They don’t all have to persist!”
Flooding the zone with the fights is “how you have an impact in an internet-intensive, attention-at-a-premium world,” Cowen wrote.
For Trump’s fans, it feels like nonstop “winning.”
Clay Travis, the conservative radio host and founder of OutKick, which bills itself as the “antidote to the mainstream sports media,” told CNN that Trump’s attendance at the Super Bowl was reflective of a “major vibe shift” in Trump’s favor.
“I’d even go so far as to say a majority of NFL players, owners and execs support him” now, he said.
Young men have also swung toward Trump in significant numbers.
“It’s night and day between what we saw with sports in 2017, when many athletes openly attacked Trump,” Travis said. “I expect Trump to be cheered in the stadium and for USA chants to break out.”
The Super Bowl, in so many ways, symbolizes American culture, from the combat on the field to the consumerism of the $8 million 30-second commercials. No wonder it’s where Trump wants to be on Sunday night: It’s the biggest show in the world.
--------------推荐夸克的翻译,并经夸克分段润色和我手工对译文取舍。请大家批评指教。
译文如下:
特朗普让自身成为无法忽视的存在
2024年,乔·比登总统曾放弃在收视率极高的超级碗赛前节目接受采访的机会。而今年,唐纳德·特朗普总统不仅接受了采访,还将亲自到场观看这场盛大的比赛。
通过成为首位在任期内出席超级碗的总统,特朗普正在将美国国家橄榄球联盟(NFL)一年中最大的盛事转变为《特朗普秀》的另一集。
自上个月就职典礼以来,这场秀似乎全天候、无休无止地进行着。它以多种形式呈现:新闻发布会、充满争议的声明、人工智能生成的模因以及全部大写的“真实社交”帖子。所有这些都让特朗普成为了众所周知的主角。
“我太忙了,简直难以置信,”他在周四的全国祈祷早餐会上说,引起听众会意的笑声。
每位新任总统都会引发大量新闻报道,但这次的感觉似乎有所不同。让特朗普的支持者们欣喜若狂,也让反对者们忧心忡忡的是,特朗普发表了众多声明,并举行了多次记者问答会,几乎让人无法忽视他的存在。
想想看:一年前,你可以连续几天都不见到拜登,也不去想他。而现在,如果你能连续几个小时不想特朗普,那就算你走运了。这正是他所希望的。白宫助手指出,特朗普的无处不在部分是一种战略,旨在打动共和党选民,并迷惑民主党对手。
在1月28日白宫新闻秘书卡罗琳·莱维特的首场新闻发布会上,她自豪地带来了一则关于特朗普无处不在的头条新闻。“Politico(美国政治新闻网)总结得最好:‘特朗普再次无处不在。’这是因为特朗普总统有一个精彩的故事要讲述,”她说道。
特朗普长期吸引媒体关注的经历表明,这也在一定程度上是为了满足他自己的虚荣心。
在克里斯·海耶斯(Chris Hayes)关于注意力问题的新书《塞壬的呼唤》(The Sirens’ Call)中,这位MSNBC主持人认为,特朗普的心理需求是“无底洞”,因此“他会不择手段地获取关注。无论是谴责、责备还是厌恶,只要你在想他,他就满足了。”
相反,特朗普的支持者则常常认为,自由派人士对特朗普的一切都过于痴迷,这正好中了特朗普的下怀。
强硬人物的策略?
历史教授、《强人:从墨索里尼到当代》一书的作者露丝·本-吉哈特在接受CNN采访时表示,特朗普拥有一种“个人崇拜”,这种崇拜将他视为既是一个人民的一员,又是一个半神半人的存在,而他的高曝光率则是其中的关键因素。
历史学教授露丝·本-吉哈特,同时也是《强人:从墨索里尼到现代》一书的作者,在接受CNN采访时指出,特朗普拥有一个“个人崇拜”的形象,他既是民众的代表,又被看作是半神一般的存在。而他的高曝光率正是其关键所在。
她表示:“强人必须展现出无所不能、无所不在的形象,他似乎无处不在。”
即使在击败拜登数月后,特朗普似乎仍乐于抓住每一个机会来展示自己的耐力,并与拜登形成鲜明对比。
CNN的撰稿人卡里·钱皮恩在最近一期讨论“形象总统”的《新闻之夜》节目中说:“他知道自己的支持者,也知道他们有多单纯。”
她还说,特朗普“知道如何取悦他们,而且这很有效”。
特朗普在周五的“真实社交”帖子中预告了他与福克斯新闻主播布雷特·拜耳的超级碗赛前采访,该采访于周六在马阿拉戈进行录制。特朗普写道:“四年来都没有人采访过我(天哪,我想知道为什么?)。”(拜登在2021年和2022年参加了赛前采访的传统。)
即便是拜登可能也会承认,特朗普在吸引注意力方面有着非凡的技能。自从重新掌权以来,特朗普蓄意制造了无数的混乱——包括那些日益被掏空的联邦机构——以至于新闻记者们几乎都跟不上他的节奏。那些在早晨醒来准备晚间新闻的制片人知道,许多政治故事在播出时都会发生变化。
当然,这正是2017年的感觉。CNN甚至在当时也撰写了一篇类似的报道:“无法忽视的唐纳德·特朗普”。
Google Trends的数据显示,对特朗普新闻的兴趣在2017年达到顶峰,随后在他首个任期的另外三年中逐渐消散,直到他在2020年选举失利后试图继续留任时才再次激增。Google Trends显示,如今的关注度又回到了2020年的水平,但尚未达到2017年的高度。
民主党战略家詹姆斯·卡维尔(James Carville)在路易斯安那州长大,目前大部分时间都在新奥尔良度过。他说,特朗普的“白热化”最终将有利于民主党人。
卡维尔借用了穆罕默德·阿里著名的“绳圈战术”,他提到特朗普时说,“尽管在前五个回合中全力以赴吧”。
通过挑起文化斗争来淹没舆论
特朗普的许多活动,甚至一些行政命令,与其说是改变政府政策,不如说是扮演总统角色。
泰勒·考恩在他有影响力的《边际革命》博客文章中写道,特朗普不断的发帖和拍照机会是“改变文化的投资”。
特朗普的策略,正如他所言,似乎可以概括为以下几点:“每当政策或政策辩论推动文化朝着你认为正确的方向发展时,就立即行动。秉持这样的观点,即文化因素将在某个时间段内超越其他一切重要性。简单地通过、宣布或承诺这些政策,无需担心任何其他限制。你甚至不必真的去执行!它们甚至不必都是合法的!(不合法可能会引发更多讨论。)它们也不必全都持久!”
通过不断挑起争论来淹没舆论场,这是“在网络密集、注意力稀缺的世界中产生影响的方式”,考恩写道。
对于特朗普的支持者来说,这感觉就像是一场永不停歇的“胜利”。
Clay Travis,这位保守派电台主持人以及自称为“主流体育媒体解药”的OutKick网站的创始人,在接受CNN采访时表示,特朗普出席超级碗比赛反映了一种对他有利的“重大氛围转变”。
“我甚至想说,现在大多数NFL球员、老板和高管都支持他,”他说道。
年轻人也显著地转向支持特朗普。
特拉维斯说:“2017年我们在体育界看到的情况与现在相比,可谓天壤之别。当时许多运动员公开抨击特朗普,而现在,我预计在体育场里,特朗普将受到欢呼,美国队的呐喊也将响彻云霄。”
在许多方面,超级碗都象征着美国文化,从球场上的激烈对抗到价值800万美元的30秒广告所展现的消费主义。难怪特朗普想在周日晚上出现在那里:这是世界上最大的舞台。