Without Twitter, without chyron-to-chyron coverage from Fox News and without a pulsing presidential campaign to boost his messages, Trump depends on his shock-jock skills to elbow his way into the public sphere and onto the front page. But it did help explain something true about Trump. So the postmortem smear didn’t illuminate Powell. In one of the “statements” he issues in hopes it will be reposted on Twitter - from which he is permanently banned - and become Topic A in the media, Trump blistered Powell as a “classic RINO” who dragged us into the Iraq war and slagged the press for treating him in death “so beautifully.” Trump’s sulfurous elegy worked as designed, as the media chorus united to scold him for violating the no-speaking-ill-about-the-newly-dead conventions of modern manners and meta-analyses, like this one, assembled themselves to explain the former president’s strategy.
In Trump’s formulation, Powell wasn’t a hero, he was a fool. In a classic bit of counterprogramming, Trump took the position that no other prominent commentator wanted to go near. Of course Donald Trump rained on the Roman triumph parade the political establishment and the combined houses of major media convened this week to honor the memory and accomplishments of warrior, diplomat and leading citizen Colin Powell on the occasion of his death on Monday. Jack Shafer is Politico ’s senior media writer.
