We’re now days away from the U.S. Presidential election. I’m optimistic that that the polls have it right, that the vast majority of voters understand four more years of Trump would be akin to putting the country in a wood chipper. When the 2016 election put Trump in the White House, our folks in Asia …more
While Trump has mastered the use of Twitter, he continues to struggle with fundamental communications. He managed to coax Hope Hicks back to the White House. Of course. Ms. Hicks along with much of the West Wing caught Covid-19, sidelining them for the foreseeable future. This backdrop prompted me to dust off this from a …more
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I intended to slide into the holiday on a happy note. But I can’t leave alone the White House statement on Saudi Arabia and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. It turns out that Trump didn’t care whether Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was behind the murder or not. He …more
Communications debacle after debacle have riddled the Trump administration, the latest involving the firing of FBI Director James Comey. TIME Magazine called the Comey firing “a gross miscalculation, like reaching for the gasoline can in order to extinguish a grease fire.” Naturally, Trump’s knee-jerk reaction was to throw press secretary Sean Spicer under the bus. …more
It’s only a matter of time. Once President Trump tires of telling us how many jobs he’s kept in America and discovers the difficulty in building a wall that stretches 1,000 miles, he’s going to take shots at China. Past behavior suggests that these shots will come in a different forms. He will claim that …more
The Columbia Journalism Review published an open letter to President Trump earlier this week before the official inauguration which of course takes place later today.We already know what Trump thinks of journalists. Let’s put it this way. His campaign rhetoric never included the slogan, “Make journalism great again.” And we now know what journalists think …more
Breaking the Top 10 storytelling posts for 2016 into two parts, I published the first part last week. Here’s the second part, again reflecting the varied facets that make up today’s communications in the business world. In spite of the massive changes in our industry, media relations and PR storytelling still matter, an apt way …more
For global companies founded in the U.S., Donald Trump’s election has the potential to dishearten and even divide their employees working overseas. This sentiment doesn’t necessarily show up on Facebook or Twitter or other public forums. Instead, it’s water cooler chatter and emails, wondering if their company’s character will take on the hue of Donald …more
