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Donald Trump now sits at the head of the most powerful media operation of any president in U.S. history. And it's already up and running—a 21st century propaganda operation, maybe not in form, but certainly in function.
On Thursday, the president-elect boasted on Twitter: Ford Motor Company would be keeping its Lincoln plant in Kentucky, and not moving it to Mexico. The implication: A change of heart conceivably meant saving U.S. jobs (or: Trump, not even in the White House yet, had himself already saved jobs).
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What actually happened? After a day of the story being reported out, the truth emerged. Bottom line: Trump didn't save anyone's job at Ford. The company was going to use the same facility to produce a different car. Also, yes: Ford's still building a major production plant in Mexico.
Explaining Trump's Ford lie with that level of nuance is something the average news consumer would've been hard-pressed to find amid the chaos following his Tweet. Numerous publications rushed to laud the news as proof that Trump was already improving the country. Others debunked it.
Confused? That's pretty much the point.
The Ford situation provides the first look at what news about the Trump administration will be like once the president-elect is sworn in come January. On one side, there's the traditional media, already plenty maligned after an exhausting election. On the other, there's the collection of media entities that have formed around Trump. Let's call it the Trump News Network (TNN for short).
TNN provides a way for Trump to leapfrog the traditional press entirely. Particularly for supporters of Trump, TNN will serve as their primary news source, unchecked by the much-loathed mainstream media. For the rest, it'll be a well-oiled propaganda machine capable of muddying the waters of even straightforward news.
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In some ways, it's right out of the playbook of Barack Obama. Obama's administration excelled at getting out its message in non-traditional ways while also being noted as one the most secretive administrations ever. For example: The Obama White House routinely leapfrogged the political media, giving interviews to YouTube stars (who aren't, like Trump's media surrogates, traditional presidential interviewers).
The main—and extremely important—difference, though, is that while Trump will be able to broadcast his own versions of the news, it often won't come directly from him or his administration.
As for the media's ability to deal with it, there's not much reason for optimism. The election cycle highlighted how Trump's outrage-by-the-hour pace combined with the social media-driven news cycle has rendered even the best journalism as faint bits of signal in an ocean of noise.
This media did relatively well around the Ford situation, with many major outlets pushing back against Trump's claims. At this point, a search on Facebook turns up more debunking stories than anything else. The problem is that these pieces took time to flesh out. In the meantime, the news of a Trump victory was already spreading—via legitimate outlets, no less.
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Reuters would later thoroughly debunk claims that Trump saved the factory or any jobs.
Not that it'd matter much to the person whose tweet is embedded above. If the media eventually gets the story right, it'll only matter to those who either already dislike Trump, or have a serious affinity for the truth. An affinity, by the way, which now takes effort, and upkeep.
It's a continuation of the Catch-22 the media faced during the election. As Trump became a more serious contender for the Republican nomination, his statements became more newsworthy. As president, the media will have no choice but to report on Trump's statements, and do their best to fact-check them in real time.
Trump's not going to make that easy. He's already shown a willingness to ditch his protective pool of journalists.
TNN, meanwhile, has served its purpose, which is to provide Trump with a way to sidestep serious press scrutiny while peddling its own version of the truth. For his supporters, he's a hero who is already fulfilling his promises. The rest of the media? Less than an afterthought than an outright enemy combatant.
The most troubling aspect, here, is that Trump's media operation has now become robust enough to the point where his supporters can exist entirely within their own surprisingly roomy silo—one that barely includes Fox News. With the Ford debacle, Trump has already created two realities: One for his supporters, and one for everyone else.
If this continues, the U.S. will be split like never before, in a way that, right now, feels inevitably irreparable, and to that end, pointedly dangerous.
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