Get ready, America. Donald Trump’s about to eat everyone’s lunch again. And by everyone, I mean the media, the Democrats, and hate to break it to you but you, too.
This Wednesday commences a 24-hour period that will produce an indigestible tsunami of headlines. It’s a Newsageddon.
For the first time we can look forward to Senate confirmation hearings for virtually all of President-elect Trump’s major appointments occurring on the same day, including Attorney General, Secretary of State, CIA Director, Education Secretary, Homeland Security Chief and Transportation Secretary.
So good luck to Democrats opposing any of the nominees. Multiple, nearly simultaneous hearings do not exactly lend themselves to extensive and persistent questioning. It’s hard to believe this isn’t by design. It is. GOP leaders, sensing the extreme vetting many of Trump’s nominees are facing, took a page from the President-elect’s playbook and aim to distract everyone with tons of information at once: the same day, Trump will hold his long-awaited first press conference.
This is a guy who used to go to the opening of an envelope just to get his mug in the paper, who will have waited an astounding 63 days since the election before facing the mainstream media he now so despises.
Both sides have girded their loins for battle, like the time he headlined WWE’s “Wrestlemania” in 2007 or fired Omarosa twice on two different seasons of “The Apprentice.” (Last week, he named her Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison — I mean, seriously.)
Trump may have learned a lot of his political tactics from his time with the WWE: blow away scandals, accusations and distractions by following up with lots of things that are bigger and louder.
All of this will happen the day after President Obama’s Farewell Address, so add whatever he says to the geyser of information that day.
Needless to say, under normal circumstances, the kind of fireworks expected to erupt at any of these historical events scheduled for Wednesday would result in screaming front-page headlines around the world. But the sheer volume of news that will wash across millions of screens large and small, could easily obscure an important moment that otherwise would change history.
It’s like one of those crippling cyber assaults, like when Russian hackers shut down Estonia in 2007. Something like it is probably knocked “The Drudge Report” offline last week.
They’re called DoS attacks and they paralyze big computer networks by flooding the zone. DoS stands for “denial of service” and refers to an attack that overwhelms a system with data. Computer servers meltdown as they struggle to respond to more requests than they can handle and important data is lost.
Wednesday will be a real world, brick and mortar DoS assault on the news-cycle itself. It’s a code the GOP has learned from watching the Russians. They’ve also noticed how it worked for Trump who gets away with saying and soon doing crazy things. But with moves like these? He’s crazy like a fox — and the way he plays is spreading like a virus.
