In political PR, the real story is the story behind the story.
Take, for instance, President Trump’s primetime address. It aired Wednesday night; here’s a link if you missed it. Millions of Americans watched it live.
But the real story was what happened behind the scenes.
The TV networks don’t like forfeiting ad revenue — especially during the season finale of (gasp) Survivor, for goodness sake — and they expect a presidential address to feature breaking news. If you’re gonna preempt their precious marquee programming, you better deliver something salacious!
Like war, pestilence, famine, and death. (You know, the good stuff.)
The TV networks were expecting a galloping quartet of fast-breaking news.
But that wasn’t Trump’s goal. He simply wanted to reset his PR response to the so-called “affordability crisis” that had stymied GOP candidates. (And if you read yesterday’s PR column, you already know his speech was an extraordinarily successful earworm — and tactically, from the narrative framing to Trump’s loud, high-energy delivery, it was all absolutely deliberate.)
Other than sending free money to military members, virtually no news was broken. Had the major networks known this, they would’ve denied Trump the airtime, and that’s an ironclad, slam-dunk guarantee.
Because they’ve done it before.
From the Associated Press:
Network leaders notably rejected Obama in 2014 when he wanted to talk about immigration policy while Congress was at an impasse over the matter.
[…]
In 2022, Biden spoke at length on his concerns about American democracy — but several networks did not carry his remarks from Philadelphia. By itself, the topic could be framed as a national concern above partisanship. Biden’s effort, though, was complicated by the fact that he was talking about Trump and Trump’s supporters who ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, at a time when they were being investigated and prosecuted.
As it were, the networks only gave Trump 15 minutes of airtime. (Although, as Paul Krugman noted, they didn’t have the cajónes to cut away when he went over.)
This led to an epic game of cat-and-mouse, where the White House kept its cards close to its vest, and everyone in the media guessed what the heck the president might say.
And that’s when the White House unloaded its big gun: Conservative pundit-turned-political shock jock Tucker Carlson.
Always on the lookout for warmongering Jews “Neocon Zionists,” Carlson is convinced that America is perpetually on the brink of World War III, because… well, something-something-Israel. (Tucker’s logic is hard to follow, mostly because it’s not very logical.)
That’s because he’s a committed pacifist and unapologetic, America First isolationist, imploring the country he loves so much to avoid foreign entanglements at all costs — except, for some reason, when it comes to Qatar. (Qatar “is awesome,” and Tucker Carlson has a house there, you know.)
Tucker told us that bombing Iran’s nuclear sites would lead to “thousands of American deaths” and would become “America’s war”:
So naturally, when Tucker learned of President Trump’s primetime address this week, he quickly put two-and-two together and knew what it must mean: WAR!
Oy veh, those dastardly ((Neocons)) are at it again!
Judge Andrew Napolitano: Is Trump going to start a war in Venezuela?
[…]
Tucker Carlson: Here’s what I know so far, which is that members of Congress were briefed yesterday [Tuesday] that a war is coming, and it’ll be announced in the address to the nation tonight at 9:00 by the president. […] A member of Congress told me that this morning.
Axios reporter Marc Caputo tried to correct the record:
But it was too late.
With rumors of war reverberating, the TV networks were trapped: War is the ultimate ratings-grabber; none of ‘em wanted to be asleep at the switch when the president announced that the dogs of war were released.
That’s major news!
And Donald Trump is so gosh-darn unpredictable, maybe he really was about to invade Venezuela. The media didn’t know what to do. After comparing him to Hitler for a decade, it certainly seemed plausible.
Besides, if a member of Congress point-blank told Tucker Carlson that the White House briefed congressional leaders, that’s eyewitness testimony. Tucker got the scoop directly from a firsthand source. That’s about as official as it gets!
I mean, Tucker wouldn’t just make up something like that… would he?
War is serious stuff. If you’re willing to lie about war, you’re willing to lie about pretty much anything.
For presidents, politicians, podcasters, and pundits, lying about war is the greatest violation of the public trust imaginable.
(Which is why I’m sure Tucker Carlson will name the congressperson who LIED to his face, outing this politician publicly. Yessir, any moment now. A truth-teller like Tucker Carlson won’t tolerate liars! That congressperson deserves to be outed and shamed! Ooh, this’ll be good. Let ‘em have it, Tucker!)
[checks watch] Hmm, that’s weird: Tucker still hasn’t said anything.
Why is that?
(Like Tucker, I’m “just asking questions.”)
Regardless, the White House deftly leveraged Carlson’s childlike gullibility and/or willful stupidity to claim primetime real estate on all the major networks. Congrats to pundits like Michael Knowles and Jack Posobiec for connecting the dots:
And a special thanks to our good friend, Tucker Carlson, for helping to make it all possible.
Merry Christmas, buddy!
https://pjmedia.com/scott-pinsker/2025/12/19/how-trump-used-tucker-carlsons-stupidity-gullibility-and-paranoia-to-score-a-free-primetime-speech-n4947287
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