Trump is thowing dead cats on the table to divert attention from the President Musk meme. Expect more deadcatting and beware of wag the dog. by Hal M Brown

 

I discovered that the metaphor about throwing a dead cat on the table to divert media and public attention was an actual political strategy when I read this on BlueSky:

I tried to use AI to make an illustration for today's blog that wouldn't be too upsetting. I am a cat lover and have had a dozen wonderful cats in my family in my life. My first was Bibby who was part of our family past the time I went to college (shown with my sister, Jenifer), and my next cat, Demetrious who, like Bibby lived to be 23.

What Trump has done has been effective. Instead of all the furor over Elon Musk being president and Trump being his puppet, we have Trump threatening to annex Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, send federal troops into Mexico, and execute as many prisoners as possible, making the news.

The following is from Wikipedia:

The dead cat strategy, also known as deadcatting, is the political strategy of deliberately making a shocking announcement to divert media attention away from problems or failures in other areas.^[1][2] The present name for the strategy has been associated with British former prime minister Boris Johnson's political strategist Lynton Crosby.

While he was mayor of London, Boris Johnson wrote a column for the 3 March 2013 edition of The Telegraph in which he described the "dead cat" as a piece of Australian political strategy about what to do in a situation in which the argument is being lost and "the facts are overwhelmingly against you".^[3][4]

There is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don't mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout, "Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!" In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.^[1]

Johnson employed the Australian Lynton Crosby as his campaign manager during the 2008 and 2012 London mayoral elections, leading to press speculation that he was the "Australian friend" in the story.^[5][4]

Only at the very end of the Wikipedia article is Donald Trump mentioned. It should be updated.

Rodwell notes the term later finding a place in media coverage of the "outrageous pronouncements" made by Donald Trump during the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries and his later presidential transition in the United States,

Just because Trump has used deadcating to take attention away from Elon Musk this doesn't mean that Musk can't do the same thing to regain the limelight. 

Today Musk is in the news for suggesting cognitive tests for goverment officials. The thing with this is that while there is a legitmate concern about people with dementia serving such a mandate would be impossible to initiate. Still, his suggesting it makes headlines and discussed on TV news.

It was even covered in Pravda.

Deadcatting is similar to how polticians use wag-the-dog:

Wag the dog is a political term for the act of creating a diversion from a damaging issue usually through military force. It stems from the generic use of the term to mean a small and seemingly unimportant entity (the tail) controls a bigger, more important one (the dog). It is usually used by a politician when they are in a scandal, in hopes that people forget about the scandal and focus on the more important issue. The phrase originates in the saying "a dog is smarter than its tail, but if the tail were smarter, then it would wag the dog."^[1] The concept has strong intersections with many other aspects of Diversionary foreign policy, particularly the rally 'round the flag effect, as wag the dog actions tend to both distract and seek to bolster support through these actions. (Wikipedia)

You may be familiar with this term because it was the name of a film:

Wag the Dog is a 1997 American black comedy political satire film starring  Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro.^[1] Produced and directed by Barry Levinson, the film centers on a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer who fabricate a war in Albania to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal.  (Wikipedia)

Wag the dog is arguably far worse than deadcatting when it comes to Donald Trump. If he wants to divert attention from a failed policy, broken promises, or any of his political troubles, he could actually invade a county. 

This is also from Wikipedia:

During the Monica Lewinsky scandal, President Clinton ordered missile strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan shortly after the story broke, drawing comparisons with the film and popularizing usage of the phrase.^[5] During impeachment proceedings, Clinton also bombed Iraq, drawing stronger "wag the dog" allusions.^[6] With the scandal still on the public's mind in March 1999, his administration launched a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. These action drew more attention to the phrase, growing its popularity.^[7]

It has been used multiple times for former President Donald Trump. First, in April 2017 when he conducted airstrikes against Syria during an investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections,^[3] and again in January 2020, after a U.S. airstrike assassination of Iran's General Qasem Soleimani occurred during first impeachment trials of former President Trump.^[8] 

That's it for today.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah.

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