Today's Science Lesson: New Tone's Three Laws of Misdirection

For those of you wondering how the media continues to fail us in exactly the same way (Vanity Fair) --

The Media Once Again Heralds Trump’s New Somber “Tone”

...“Trump changes his tone, gets real on the coronavirus threat,” read one Associated Press headline; “Trump shifts tone as pandemic worsens,” USA Today asserted; and CNN anchor Dana Bash took to the airwaves to “applaud” his “remarkable” pivot to a “tone of calm and understanding” that people “yearn for in times of crisis and uncertainty.”

...
Politico Playbook coauthor Jake Sherman, who that morning highlighted the government’s shifting coronavirus claims, described it as “an absolutely new message and new tone from Trump.” He wasn’t alone: Washington Post White House bureau chief Philip Rucker and national correspondent William Wan observed that Trump “adopted a newly somber and sedate tone—and contradicted many of his own previous assessments of the virus” in a Tuesday piece; New York Times reporter Eric Lipton tweeted that Trump is “sounding different today. Scale of death appears to have changed his tone, at least”; and ABC News White House correspondent Karen Travers offered a similar sentiment: “The tone at this White House coronavirus task force briefing feels different than all prior COVID-19 briefings: grave, sober, grim, realistic.”...

 -- over and over and over again (Daily Beast) --

Trump Literally Laughed at How He Can Game the Press With His ‘New Tone’

...
“It’s so easy, can you believe it?” the president said during a dinner at the White House in early 2017, according to a source who was in the room at the time. “All I had to do was be a little nice… and do something beautiful [and now they’re] saying all these terrific things about Trump.”

During that conversation, Trump was referring to several high-profile TV personalities who usually were highly critical of him, but who were suddenly being “fair” to him for a news cycle, the source recalled. The dinner took place not long after the president addressed a joint session of Congress in February 2017 for the first time since his inauguration. During his speech, Trump honored the widow of a Navy SEAL who was killed in Yemen, in a nationally televised moment that was heralded as emotionally moving.

“He became president of the United States in that moment, period,” liberal commentator Van Jones said on CNN at the time. “That thing you just saw him do, if he finds a way to do that over and over again, he’s going to be there [in office] for eight years.”...

-- I thought it might be helpful to review three of the immutable laws of physics under which the media operates.

New Tone's First Law states that while Donald Trump is clearly a lying sociopathic threat to the nation, the media will collectively agree to ignore it as best it can and hope for the best.

New Tone's Second Law states that, when overwhelmed by events he cannot immediately lie his way out of, Donald Trump will grudgingly become slightly less vulgar and will sniffle and stumble slowly through remarks prepared by other people. The media will then hailed this development as Trump finally "becoming the president".

New Tone's Third Law states that every time events force Donald Trump to become momentarily less of a lying assbag, he will almost immediately explode with an over-the-top-loathsome opposite reaction.  To which the media will react with surprise, as if no one could possibly have seen that coming.

Science, bitches!