Blog 10!

Donald Trump running for President was already a heated argument when he declared. I think the thing that really set people into hating Donald was his proposed plan to “build a wall between The USA and Mexico” to keep illegal aliens from coming into our country. This topic seemed to light the media on fire and everyone was talking about it all at once.

           

            For my “Conservative” website I chose to analyze the story about the wall that Fox News did. They decided to put out a story that was more informative than interesting to me to be honest. They said specified details such as having 50 foot automated gates for vehicles and pedestrians. The fact that the wall would reach 30 feet high, cover 1,000 miles and cost close to $15 billion dollars to make this monolith of a wall our President is calling for. It is almost like Fox purposefully did not take a stance on this topic. They know if they said anything about this idea it would undermine the President and that is not what Fox wants. Fox wants to paint the best possible picture of Donald Trump they can because he is their candidate. My favorite part of this story was that they were not afraid to quote Donald on his very carefully chosen words “Big, beautiful wall”.

 

            On the other hand, I chose the BBC for my “Liberal” news site, their coverage of the wall is much different than Fox. They went into detail about who would be paying for the wall, the effect is would have to the nature. The increase of taxes and tariffs that would need to happen for Mexico to pay and how incredibly massive this project would be to complete. This story gives the reader a very strong feeling of opposition to Trump. Other than blaming humans for single handedly killing animals and ecosystems everywhere, they talk about “not standing with” Trumps pledge for his beautiful wall.

 

            The “Biased” story I chose was done on Eagle Rising and it was titles “Donald Trump is right- We need to build a wall”. If that isn’t biased I’m not entirely sure if we have the same definition of the word. The article does a good job of dialing it back in the end though. It calls Donald a “Showman” admits to many of his faults and even says that he’s gaining popularity despite him being a jerk. This article is different because frankly states that supporting Trump is continuously becoming more popular and it even tells you to vote who you want, and that God is our only hope in the end. It seems like this article was extremely religious and very patriotic while simultaneously explaining to readers than it understands that Donald Trump may not be the best choice for office; but he’s what we have.

 

            The media is the reason for all of these new stories being generated. Not just social media either, all types of media which is a very broad spectrum of communication. We live in a hyper analyzed and over reported world where things that would genuinely matter to people are swept under the rug while we see things that are inherently meaningless. Depending on where you look to for your news you can get a completely different story about the same situation. I would pitch stories about how I can make a difference without spending billions of dollars and reform the system as opposed to the people in the system.

Agenda Setting

Issues:
When I used the way back machine to go back and look at Donald Trump's website looking for issues he wanted to focus on, it was easy to find. There was a massive page dedicated to just what I saw looking for. It was so large actually I needed to take two screen shots of it to fit on this blog. 

Many of you may be surprised to see that Immigration Reform is on the bottom of the list. Among other obvious ones like Healthcare Reform, International Trade, Taxes and taking care of our Veteran's. When I was asked to compare Trump's stance on issues to someone in his party running against him I chose Rand Paul. He is just about as opposite to Donald Trump as you can get other than Jeb Bush, but Bush has too much shadow political motives for my liking due to his last name.

The list of issues that Rand decided to focus was Debt, NSA, taxes and getting all the power out of the hands of The Federal Reserve. I honestly really like Rand's policies and stances more than Donald's. Rand is focusing on the issues that the population of the USA wants to see change as opposed to Trump who is more in line with the changes that Washington wants to see change. Rand is the son of Ron Paul who is notorious for his very opinionated personality and although he is some what radical, his son Rand is much more level headed.

When I did a google News search for Immigration reform and health care reform I saw all "right wing" articles for healthcare and I saw all "left wing" articles for immigration. People seem to be angry that we do not have a replacement for Obama Care yet. They aren't mad that Obama Care was reformed, they're mainly mad that the man who is the reason for it disappearing doesn't have a successful alternative yet.

I personally think the media is setting the agenda. The media seems to be rather "outraged" by Trump getting elected and this is why I think they want to control what people see. When people turn on their TV's and log onto the computer, they are vulnerable to persuasion which us why I believe they are trying to get a little power back.

Pop Culture Trump (Frozen Parody)

When I saw this week we had to use a piece of Satire involving our candidate I did not want to use the typical SNL skits that they've been running recently. It did not take me long to find this amazing parody video on YouTube done by a channel called Derick Watts & The Sunday Blues. Although this channel only has 190,000 subscribers on YouTube, this video has 20 million views... 20 MILLION!

 My artifact was a parody of the song from the Disney movie Frozen, instead of "To build a Snowman" they made a song called "Do You Wanna Build A Wall"? Not only did they change the words of the song but they effectively took clips from every one of Donald's press conferences and speeches and sliced it into an amazing song about our President building the wall between the USA and Mexico. This artifact shows the audience how ridiculous the idea of building this wall would be in reality and how much it would actually cost us. Mexico is a key factor in the song, you get a cameo from the last President of Mexico saying "We will not pay for that f*%!ing wall" and they are included in multiple of the lines in the song.

The creators of this video did a great job of really emphasizing some of the stupid faces Donald has made throughout the past year or two of him running. They do a great job of using his insane amount of "hand movement" in his speaking and integrate it very flawlessly into the song. I think this does the exact opposite of what Donald has been trying to paint his image as since the beginning of his run. He says he wants to "reunite" the people yet he does things to directly split us apart day by day.

(I made this GIF which is a part of the video where Donald says "Crime Rave" instead of Crime wave) if you watch the original video you will get to see a hilarious compilation of our President dancing and doing other stupid things.

Advertising Strategy

The First ad I decided to use was not necessarily released by the Trump campaign but it is without a doubt some of the best clips I have seen of Hillary Clinton; She is going against what she said in her platform and throughout her run for President and it is involving outsourcing jobs. This is a perfect example of both an issue ad and an attack ad at the same time. The country is in a very difficult time right now where good jobs are hard to come by if any at all. In the video, it is 2005 and Hillary is talking about she couldn't ever imagine "effectively restricting" outsourcing and calls it "inevitable".  She not only received money from India but she also got a $5,000,000 from one of the businessmen in the room that day. Although this video is over 10 years old I personally do not believe people change so I would not be surprised if we did not see a change in the employment rate had she been elected.

This next ad is another perfect example of an attack ad directed towards Hillary's past in politics but it is also an uplifitng candidate-positive message about Donald Trump. The ad blames Hillary's 30 years in politics directly for taxes being raised, terrorism increasing and jobs vanishing from our citizens. Although some of this may be true; Hillary Clinton would only have helped the situation moving foward towards what the ad says. She is not solely responsible for any of those things happening like the video implies. The second half of the ad talks about "Real change" from Trump and how a vote for Hillary is a vote for more of the same we've had in the past. On the other hand a vote for Trump is a vote to "Make America Great Again" and to turn Washington upside-down.

The Pro trump, image ad that the Trump organization released was the most effective in my opinion, only because attack ads seem to be losing their effectiveness to me. I think the Trump campaign went for a different approach with this ad because they had Donald himself narrating the whole time. They show photos of Trump supporters when he is speaking highly of himself; and show politicians such as Obama, Hillary and others in the summit in Paris saying that "They don't have your best interest in mind". He highlights trade being an issue like NAFTA and TPP while showing the people who were in office at the time of these agreeements being signed and who are to blame for our economic issues we face today. Donald does a good job of showing the faces of many American citizens and emphasizes our power as the American people so we can make the changes we need to see.