President Reagan Manipulated Television. President Trump Is Controlled by It.

[Commentary] Of all the explanations for President Donald Trump’s sudden foreign-policy about-face — from America First noninterventionist who coldly proposed to cooperate with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to humanitarian interventionist of sorts — the one that makes the most sense is that supplied by President Trump himself. “That attack on children yesterday had a big impact on me — big impact,” he said the day after Assad allegedly launched a horrific chemical attack on civilians in northern Syria. “That was a horrible, horrible thing. And I’ve been watching it and seeing it, and it doesn’t get any worse than that.” President Trump saw something on television that upset him, so he cast aside his position and formulated a new one, which neither President Trump nor his advisers could articulate, driven by his newfound, apparently sincere, but diffuse outrage at the brutality of the dictator he had once touted as a potential partner against ISIS. The televised images of suffering overrode everything he had said about the issue for years.

The largest source of unpredictability in the Trump administration is the president’s addiction to television news. For good or bad, mostly bad, the herky-jerky logic of TV news coverage dictates the president’s strategy, or lack thereof. Previous presidents, most notably Ronald Reagan, became famous for their ability to manipulate television. Television manipulates Trump.