SPECIAL TO THE ALTERNATE REALITY NEWS SERVICE
| 1 | Are you scheduled to hold a press conference? | |
| NO | 2 | May as well go for a soda. |
| YES | 3 | Do you call on a cackling jackal of the lamestream legacy press to ask a question? |
| YES | 4 | Is the question "hostile?" Which is to say, does it at all make reference to the "fact-based world?" |
| YES | 5 | Insult the reporter's intelligence and the news outlet's integrity without in any way addressing the question. Even acknowledging the slightest part of the question is too risky to attempt – never address any part of it no matter how innocent it may seem. |
| NO | 6 | Insult the outlet's integrity, then go to an unrelated talking point. Really. The further away from the original question, the better. |
| 7 | Does the journalist try to ask a follow-up question? | |
| YES | 8 | The cheeky bastard! Pointedly ignore the journalist while calling upon another journalist to ask a question, especially one whose politics you know are diametrically opposed to the one who dared to ask a follow-up question. Journalists never seem to learn, but you need to put lessons in front of them on the off-chance that this time will be an exception. |
| NO | 9 | Do you feel like continuing to deal with insipid questions from the spoiled brats of the press corps? |
| YES | GO TO 3 | |
| NO | GO TO 2 | |
| 10 | Is the question about how great a human being President Ronald McDruhitmumpf is, or what a great job President McDruhitmumpf is doing as President, or something equally laudatory, like how brilliant he is or how well he fills out a superhero costume in AI-generated videos? | |
| YES | 11 | Praise the journalist for the question – they are obviously a terrific judge of character. Add your own compliment on the subject. Unless you are President McDruhitmumpf, in which case, add at least three of your own compliments on any subject. |
| NO | 12 | Is the question about how great a specific policy of the president is? |
| YES | 13 | Praise the journalist for the question and repeat the latest lie the President has said on the subject. Unless you are the president, in which case you have two other options: make up a different lie on the subject, or word salad the subject until you get to something you would rather talk about, then take the conversation in a completely new direction that has little or nothing to do with the question. |
| NO | 14 | Lie about how great the President and his policies are. Effusively and with conviction. |
Notes
Remember when press conferences contained actual, you know, information? About government policies, I mean? A lot of spin, sure, and the occasion obfuscation, certainly, and its share of deflecting blame, without a doubt, but at least some discussion of substantive issues?
Right. Those of you who grew up with online social media would have never experienced that. You'll just have to trust me that there was a time when press conferences contained information that actually mattered to people, not just lies that served the administration.
Right. Those of you who grew up with online social media will never trust anything I say because I represent lamestream legacy media, and everybody knows that lamestream legacy media always lies to the public to distract them from the harm being inflicted on them by our alien lizard overlords. Or something like that.
At this point, we appear to have reached an impasse, but I will continue as if you were respectfully reading what I am writing. Have to look like I'm earning my salary somehow.
The press conferences of the Ronald McDruhitmumpf presidency are part clown show, part ritual humiliation, all embarrassing. The McDruhitmumpf Administration's Press Relations Algorithm is an attempt to sneak a peak into the interior of the clown car to see just how deeply the seats have been covered in pie fillings and sanctimony.
Very deeply, as it turns out.
As always, The McDruhitmumpf Administration's Press Relations Algorithm is descriptive, not prescriptive, which is a ten dollar word way of saying that it describes the world as it is, not how we would like it to be. But what do I know? As an old media fart, readers assume that I don't have a clue what day it is!
