When the #AccessHollywood video was released , it was immediately countered by the first dump of Hillary Clinton emails of the 2016 campaign and brought a welcome distraction from possibly devastating news, allowing Donald Trump to survive another day.
From this event, and many others, Trump has learned that he can create a distraction from a disturbing event by simply by creating another.
Here are some examples:
When Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Mueller Investigation, Trump created the distraction that he had been wiretapped by President Obama.
When his former fixer, Michael Cohen, was testifying before Congress, Trump arranged to be out of the country, supposedly negotiating a deal with North Korea.
When the well-announced #ICEroundup of illegal immigrants produced no results, Trump made his most recent racist Tweets against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and #thesquad.
Are these, and other such events, mere coincidences, or are they calculated efforts by a master huckster? The evidence supports the latter, and so it continues, time after time.
What is his motivation?
Well, it can be said to be a twofold approach. The first is to distract from a more serious incident by creating a false controversy. The second, and more disturbing, is that it appeals to the only audience that matters to him: his base.
What does it matter? We will not change the minds of the morally bankrupt base. They will believe the lies, the distractions and the mischaracterizations that he presents practically every day.
We need to ignore the distractions. We need to filter out the lies. We need to #TakeaStand!