Milieu Control: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 2
How Trump uses disinformation and manipulation to control media reality
This special 10-part article will be posted weekdays through November 1.
60 Minutes TV correspondent Leslie Stahl recalled a 2016 conversation with then-Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump. She had asked Trump why he kept attacking the press. "He said, 'You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.'” His candid reply tells us Trump seeks to influence what people say, see, hear – and ultimately, think – about him.
When Robert Jay Lifton detailed his eight psychological themes of thought reform in communist China, he started with milieu control:
The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication. Through this milieu control the totalist environment seeks to establish domain over not only the individual’s communication with the outside (all that he or she sees and hears, reads and writes, experiences, and expresses), but also – in its penetration of one’s inner life – over what we may speak of as one’s communication with oneself (Lifton, p. 68 emphasis added).
Disinformation
While it’s common for politicians to try to shape perceptions so people will vote for them, Trump seems to go further by attempting to forge an alternate reality for MAGA followers. Trump’s reach extends to both public media (TV, radio, web etc) and social media, and to distributing both information and disinformation (knowingly false information intended to mislead).
Since political leaders like Trump can’t directly control the entire milieu, or environment, for their potential audience, Trump focuses intensely on the media. Longtime Trump ally and strategist Steve Bannon famously told author Michael Lewis, “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t” (Lewis).
During a decade leading the MAGA Movement, Trump has indeed “flooded the zone,” often with outright disinformation:
A newspaper analysis said Trump told over 30,000 mistruths during a four-year presidency – including over 500 falsehoods during the last day of the 2020 election cycle.
National Enquirer publisher David Pecker testified that he created a false story and photos indicating that the father of Ted Cruz – then a Trump competitor for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination – knew Lee Harvey Oswald before Oswald assassinated JFK. Trump then spoke with the media about the story, which had been created as a favor to Trump.
Trump and members of his legal team spread disinformation that the 2020 election had been stolen, a claim Trump maintains to this day.
Trump asserted during the 2024 campaign that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were eating the dogs and cats of citizens.
Trump has commonly called out the news media as fake news at his rallies, such as in this video of a 2018 Pennsylvania rally where the crowd responds by chanting, “CNN sucks!”
The most basic feature of the thought reform environment, the psychological current upon which all else depends, is the control of human communication
Working the refs
Besides branding mainstream media as “fake news” to discourage supporters from consuming it, Trump also pits conservative networks – and conservative media personalities – off one another to manipulate the most positive possible coverage for himself:
Taking Trump’s football comparison and turning it into a sports analogy, Trump aggressively “works the referees (refs)” – complaining about their decisions to try and impact them.
Trump wrangles a complex and mutually beneficial relationship with cable TV’s Fox News:
He courts the favor of FOX News opinion hosts with phone calls and exclusive access, praising them in public: Hannity, Ingram, former host Tucker Carlson.
New programs during daytime hours (when Fox News has fewer viewers) present more hard news, which frustrates Trump, as he relates in this post on Truth Social:
The day after his 2024 Presidential debate with Kamala Harris, Trump called the Fox & Friends show and suggested that that daytime personalities Brett Baier and Martha MacCallum would not be suitable moderators for a potential debate on Fox News, but that Hannity, Ingram, and Jesse Waters would be, saying ”Jesse was fantastic last night, what he said. He really got it. Jesse said Trump won that debate.”
Trump complaining to the CIA that the press mis-reported his inauguration crowd size, mentioned at the opening of this series, was Trump “working the refs.” His administration “worked the refs” regarding The Mueller Report (The Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election). Trump’s appointed Attorney General William Barr pre-released a public March 2019 letter mischaracterizing the report’s findings. By the time Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report released, Trump had already claimed exoneration for 3+ weeks and public interest in Trump’s conduct had waned.
How does milieu control affect the individual? Lifton writes:
Many things happen psychologically to one exposed to milieu control; the most basic is the disruption of balance between self and outside world. Pressured toward a merger of internal and external milieus, individuals encounter a profound threat to personal autonomy. They are deprived of the combination of external information and inner reflection required to test the realities of their environment and to maintain a measure of identity separate from it. Instead, they are called upon to make an absolute polarization of the real (the prevailing ideology) and the unreal (everything else). To the extent that they do this, they undergo a personal closure that frees them from humanity's incessant struggle with the elusive subtleties of truth (Lifton, p. 70).
By discrediting the mainstream news media, “working the refs” and flooding the media with distracting and/or incorrect information, Trump discourages access to information that could help people to make different decisions about him. Trump supporters who consume his semi-orchestrated version of reality may adopt Trump’s media preferences, his view of reality, and forego their own internal judgments about what is “real” vs “fake.” This process may be intensified by Lifton’s additional themes.
Navigation within this article:
Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA - Intro
Milieu Control in Trump's MAGA, Part 2
Mystical Manipulation in Trump's MAGA, Part 3
The Demand for Purity in Trump's MAGA, Part 4
The Cult of Confession in Trump’s MAGA, Part 5
Sacred Science in Trump’s MAGA, Part 6
Loading the Language in Trump’s MAGA, Part 7
Doctrine over Person in Trump’s MAGA, Part 8
The Dispensing of Existence in Trump’s MAGA, Part 9
Conclusion: Thought Reform in Trump’s MAGA, Part 10
References
Lewis, Michael (2018). Has Anyone Seen the President? [Audiobook], Simon & Schuster Audio.
Lifton, Robert Jay (2019). Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry, The New Press.