The first thing an amateur magician learns is to attract the audience’s attention with one hand while the other is making the trick work in secret. It is a common practice in business and in politics. When a person asks a particular question that you don’t want to answer, then respond with an answer close to the original question but different. When asked if this car with 80,000 miles is in good condition, the dealer might say these cars are often good at 250,000 miles. Truthful answer but didn’t say what condition this car is in.

            Elon Musk and his cost cutters are “cutting waste, fraud, and abuse” as in one agency and department after another except NASA. When Trump’s NASA nominee was asked about the plans for Mars, he said it would be a priority. Guess whose company is getting exorbitant funding for the Mars project. Guess who is pushing NASA to close the current space station earlier than planned so a part of his company will be transporting all the parts to build it. His company, Space-X, is a part of Tesla and where a large part of Tesla’s revenue comes from!

            Notice how the administration tries to get Americans to look at one policy while trying to hide something else they were doing in secret. They tried to hide the firing of all inspector generals, but the media didn’t catch the importance because tariffs made the headlines at the same time, sucking up all the investigating air by the media. Some of the inspectors were charged with researching the misinformation “lies” put into the American internet by Russia, China, and North Korea and reporting it to the authorities are now being fired. Others were keeping their agency legal.

            In the first term Trump had no clue how to manage the media but he has learned. Now he makes a big attention grabbing statement about something while the dirty work is kept secret or downplayed to the public.