Weekend Quotables
'Flooding the Zone'
Flooding the Zone
Back in 2019, Steve Bannon, then Trump’s Musk, outlined in a TV interview his strategy for managing information. “The opposition party is the media,” he said, “And because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time… All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang.” — Newsweek, Bannon’s Flood the Zone strategy
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After we “lost China”
China was to be one of the “Four Policemen” of world order after 1945. It was the first signatory of the United Nations Charter. But when the USA “lost China” in 1949, it betrayed Banquo [whose ghost is a character in Shakespeare’s Macbeth—mk]. It denied China membership in the United Nations and gave the seat to the government-in-exile that had fled to Taiwan and so controlled 0.4 percent of China’s land area. It excluded China and the USSR from the final peace treaty with Japan, the former colonizer of Taiwan, and rebuilt its security architecture in the Western Pacific in the islands of the Japanese Empire that had menaced China and other East Asian states for fifty years. It fought a horrific war in Korea, killing millions to contain the horrible red shadow of China’s Ghost. It excluded the real China from the world diplomatic system until the late 1970s. — Jeff Rich from Burning Archive
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Super Bowl Shuffle
Stephen Carter says, “Social media is awash with fury” over the NFL’s decision to replace the words “End Racism” with “Choose Love” in the end zone. Every touchdown since the 2020 murder of George Floyd would show those words etched into the turf, a visual reminder of the racial injustice that persists in this country. Timing-wise, this looks bad for the NFL: The minute the anti-DEI president decides to show up at Caesars Superdome, you drop that message? Yikes. — Bloomberg
More Weekend Quotables
HEADLINE…
'Flood the Zone': Trump is signing executive orders at a rapid pace to keep the public disorganized. President Trump's media strategy of overwhelming the news cycle. How a constant barrage of headlines keeps outrage and controversy untethered. — WUSA9
Ezra Klein
They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them. — NYT Op-Ed
Actor, Richard Gere
“I come from America, which is in a very dark place, where a bully and a thug is the president, but it doesn't just happen in the United States - it’s happening everywhere.” — Speech at an awards ceremony in Spain
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut)
“I have news for you — we aren’t taking over Gaza. But the media and the chattering class will focus on it for a few days, and Trump will have succeeded in distracting everyone from the real story — the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people.” — WaPo
Kristi Noem
BASH: I remember a time when Republicans were very careful about the government having access to personal data
NOEM: Well, we can't trust the government anymore
BASH: You are the government
NOEM: Yes, that’s what I’m saying — CNN
Donald Trump
“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN. I have decided to immediately terminate multiple individuals from the Board of Trustees, including the Chairman, who do not share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture…We will soon announce a new Board with an amazing Chairman, DONALD J. TRUMP!” — AP
OINK says he won’t deport Prince Harry: ‘He’s got enough problems with his wife.’ — The Hill
Hitting Left
You can listen to our most recent edition of Hitting Left with Mike Klonsky & Friends right here. Friday, Susan Klonsky and I interviewed author/poet/historian Hilton Obenzinger. We covered the Judaism v. Zionism debate, Trump's plan for a Gaza Riviera, and other madman MAGA tactics.
