Here courtesy of Mike Allen and Axios a digest of what went down in Harrisburg where President Trump scheduled a rally to compete with things in DC. It was a feast of binary angst. Binary angst is when your mind cannot get past us and them and Steve Bannon is still calling the shots. This is the meat of everything you need to know about why Trump and Bannon need each other.
Alt-right split screen
Allen relays from AP's Patrick Semansky that the binary was literal, split screen conceived by the almost co-equal alt-right twins in the White House, Bannon and Stephen Miller.
These are the folk your reality is being created by. They are very real. The only thing is that binary is lethal as is their version of reality.
The nationalist
Jonathan Swan reports we are seeing "Trump in full-blown nationalist populist mode, connecting viscerally with 'forgotten' Rust Belt Americans." The other half of the screen is all the poor stiffs in DC who showed up at the president-less White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Sources say Trump did not call them bubble people but he didn't need to. Fact is, it is the rust belt folk who were being used. Feeling good is easy when there's nothing left to lose. Isn't that the way the song goes?
Eleven minutes of bile
Trump devoted 11 minutes to skewering the media.
He applied the fake news label to MSNBC which has him for Russia and CNN which has him at every opportunity. He gave the media the failing grade they have almost universally given him. It is binary all the way. The crowd booed Washington. The "better people" of central Pennsylvania applauded themselves.
Inside-outside
Trump is playing the binary inside-outside game Axios says.
He is also lying to the rust belt. He is not telling then what his health care plan will do to them. He is not telling them what his cutting of essential health research will do if airborne disease strikes. He is not telling them that on an ethical basis Trump's harm index is very high.
Watergate nostalgia
AP's Cliff Owen reports Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein presented awards at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner.
Their essential message is that truthful reporting will win and that the way to success is to follow the lies. They also reminded their listeners that Nixon's doom came at the hands of people who had once been loyal to him. They got applause for saying the media is not fake news. They did not observe that the media has not exactly been successful in refuting the president.
'Daily Show's' Hasan Minhaj
Minaj was the featured entertainer at the DC gig. Axios flagged his best jokes. They do not sound that funny to me. Casting Putin as the president was inventive perhaps. But a string of Russia jokes seems stale the day after.
