THE WHITE HOUSE IS PROPPING UP A DEPRESSED TRUMP WITH TWO FOLDERS OF PROPAGANDA A DAY

So read an August 8, 2017 headline on the PoliticusUSA website.

The story opened:

“Donald Trump receives two folders of screen grabs, transcripts, and pictures of himself looking strong each day as the White House using the communications office to compile propaganda that makes Trump feel better.”

It then quoted Vice News as stating:

“Twice a day since the beginning of the Trump administration, a special folder is prepared for the president. The first document is prepared around 9:30 a.m. and the follow-up, around 4:30 p.m.

“Former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former Press Secretary Sean Spicer both wanted the privilege of delivering the 20-to-25-page packet to President Trump personally, White House sources say.

Donald Trump

“These sensitive papers, described to VICE News by three current and former White House officials, don’t contain top-secret intelligence or updates on legislative initiatives.

“Instead, the folders are filled with screenshots of positive cable news chyrons (those lower-third headlines and crawls), admiring tweets, transcripts of fawning TV interviews, praise-filled news stories, and sometimes just pictures of Trump on TV looking powerful.”

Anonymous sources told Vice that Priebus and Spicer created this “happy news” smorgasbord to boost their own standings:

“Priebus and Spicer weren’t in a good position, and they wanted to show they could provide positive coverage. It was self-preservation.” 

But it didn’t save  Priebus and Spicer. On July 28, 2017, Priebus resigned—after suffering repeated humiliations by Trump—such as being ordered to kill a fly that was buzzing about.

And, on July 21, 2017, Spicer angrily resigned after Trump chose Anthony Scaramucci as White House Communications Director. Trump kept Spicer in the dark about events that he needed to know. 

At 6 a.m. every weekday, three staffers arrived at the Republican National Committee’s “war room.” Their mission: Scour newspapers and the Internet and monitor MSNBC, Fox News and CNN. About every 30 minutes, they sent the White House Communications Office an email with tweets, screenshots, interview transcripts and news stories.

“Maybe it’s good for the country that the President is in a good mood in the morning,” one former RNC official said.

Creating folders of “happy news” to prop up Trump’s fragile ego was a practice unique to the Trump administration.

“If we had prepared such a digest for Obama, he would have roared with laughter,” said David Axelrod, the senior adviser to Barack Obama during his first two years in the White House. “His was a reality-based presidency.”

Barack Obama

Trump devours praise like a sugar addict consumes candy. He frequently tweeted his thanks to cable television hosts like Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and the hosts of “Fox & Friends” who lavishly praised his administration.  

But Trump is hardly unique among world leaders to listen only to “happy news.”

During World War II, as his armies were forced to retreat on all fronts, Adolf Hitler increasingly demanded that his ministers refrain from “defeatist talk.”

Hoping for victory and stating that it was inevitable became the key to saving one’s job—if not life—in the steadily-declining Third Reich. Countless Germans who refused to embrace Hitler’s fantasies were executed for “defeatism.”

Adolf Hitler

This was best illustrated by the case of Albert Speer. Hitler had often proclaimed him “my genius architect” before appointing him Minister of Armaments in 1942. As Speer revved up the production of military hardware, Hitler continued to hail his “genius.”

But as Allied bombing raids increasingly devastated Germany’s industrial plants, armaments production began to fall. This forced Speer to tell his Fuhrer the unpalatable truth: Germany was losing its capacity to wage war.

Hitler didn’t want to hear it, turning instead to those who fed him a diet of “happy news.”  When Speer’s deputy, Karl Otto Saur, told Hitler, “By Christmas, we’ll have air superiority!” Hitler was ecstatic.

At a meeting with his generals, the Fuhrer announced: “We have the good fortune to have a genius in our armaments ministry.  I mean Saur.”

The promised air superiority never materialized.

As even Hitler came to realize that the end was near, he blamed Germany for losing the war he had started.

“If the war is lost,” Hitler told Speer, “the nation will also perish….This nation will have proved to be the weaker one and the future will belong solely to the stronger eastern nation.”

He ordered a massive “scorched-earth” campaign throughout Germany.

All German agriculture, industry, ships, communications, roads, food stuffs, mines, bridges, stores and utility plants were to be destroyed.

It would have deprived the entire German population of even the barest necessities after the war.

Fortunately for Germany, Speer dared to sabotage the “Nero Order,” thus ensuring a future for those who survived the war.

Hitler’s demands for only “happy news” did not save him—or his regime.

As the COVID-19 casualties increasingly rose among Americans, Trump demanded ever more “happy news” from Federal health officials charged with combating the disease.

It didn’t save him from the anger of 80 million voters fed up with his lies and criminality.

And it will not save those Americans who substitute wishful thinking for reality.