周一晚上在内布拉斯加州的大岛市，唐纳德·特朗普总统在欢呼的人群面前吹嘘道，为美国人为他与伊朗的战争所付出的代价进行辩护：“让他们摧毁洛杉矶吧。让他们摧毁圣地亚哥吧。”他补充说，这“只是一个非常小的代价”。一位美国总统将美国主要城市可能遭到毁灭、数百万公民可能丧生描述为战争中“一个非常小的代价”，这是危险且冷酷的。
On Monday night in Grand Island, Nebraska, defending the price Americans are paying for his war with Iran, President Donald Trump bragged to a cheering crowd: “Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”It was, he added, “a very small price to pay.”An American president describing the potential destruction of major American cities and the deaths of millions of citizens as “a very small price” to pay in a war is dangerous and callous.
不出所料，政治领袖和媒体评论员纷纷愤怒谴责。加利福尼亚州州长加文·纽森称他“精神错乱且危险”。圣地亚哥市长托德·格洛里亚提醒特朗普，他的城市“并非附带损害”。甚至海军退伍军人、圣地亚哥县监事、正在竞选代表加利福尼亚州第48国会选区的众议院议席的吉姆·德斯蒙德也“强烈”反对特朗普的观点，他认为：“美国必须对抗伊朗并捍卫我们的利益，但我们的总司令首要的责任是保护美国人民和我们的家园。”
Unsurprisingly, political leaders and media commentators piled on in outrage. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, called him “deranged and dangerous.”Todd Gloria, the mayor of San Diego, reminded Trump that his city “is not collateral damage.”Even Jim Desmond, a Navy veteran and San Diego County supervisor, who is running for the House seat representing California’s 48th Congressional District, “vehemently” disagreed with Trump, arguing that “America must stand up to Iran and defend our interests, but the first responsibility of our Commander in Chief is to protect the American people and our homeland.”
有线电视花了一整天时间来分析特朗普的真实意图，而这正是他想要的：转移人们对他的支持率下滑、通货膨胀加剧、就业率下降、无法保护美国在中东和英国的军事设施，以及他的朋友——总统弗拉基米尔·普京拒绝解释俄罗斯疑似爆发瘟疫病毒事件——这些问题的关注。
Cable television spent a day parsing what Trump really meant, giving him precisely what he wanted: a distraction from his declining poll numbers, rising inflation, falling employment, his inability to protect U.S. military installations in the Middle East and the United Kingdom, and the refusal of his friend, President Vladimir Putin, to explain the suspected spread of a plague virus in Russia.
与特朗普相识30年，将他的种种荒诞行径斥为疯癫发作或渐发的痴呆，既错误又危险。他向来都是如此，而且这是他的主动选择。有人将这种转移注意力的手段称为“闪亮新事物”的催眠效应。20世纪40年代的传播学者则称之为“Wurlitzer效应”，灵感源自嘉年华旋转木马上震耳欲聋的管风琴所具有的吸引注意力的力量。
Having known Trump for 30 years, it is wrong and dangerous to write off his grotesque capers as delirious tantrums or creeping dementia. He has always been this way by choice. Some call this diversionary maneuver the hypnotic effect of a “shiny new object.”Mass communication scholars of the 1940s called this the Wurlitzer Effect, drawing on the power of the booming organs accompanying carnival carousels to command attention.
在我们那本《纽约时报》畅销书《特朗普的十诫》中，我们将其称为“声音之墙”，这个名字源于臭名昭著的菲尔·斯佩克特那套著名的注意力控制制作手法——通过叠加大量乐器，使音乐填满所有频率，从而掩盖一切其他声音。
In our New York Times bestselling book, Trump’s Ten Commandments, we call this the “Wall of Sound,” after the scandalous Phil Spector’s famous attention-controlling production technique of layering so many instruments that the music fills every frequency and drowns out everything else.
大多数政治分析家自以为看到的是冲动性的混乱，实际上往往是一场经过精心策划、精准调控的挑衅风暴。当传统领导人面临负面新闻时，他们会试图用好消息转移话题。而特朗普则恰恰相反。他会用自己制造出的更响亮、更耸人听闻的新闻来掩盖坏消息。他是唯一一个会主动朝自己左脚开枪的领导人，只要这能阻止你去关注他的右脚。
What most political analysts presume to be impulsive chaos is often a deliberate, calibrated churn of provocations. When a conventional leader faces a damaging story, they try to change the subject with good news. Trump does the opposite. He buries bad news under louder, more outrageous news of his own making. He is the only leader who will shoot himself in the left foot if it keeps you from looking at his right.
特朗普的“注意力转移机器”我们早已多次目睹他上演这一套手法。今年1月，特朗普升级了对格陵兰岛的威胁，声称美国国家安全面临一种毫无根据、甚至近乎幻觉的危险。他让预备役部队进入警戒状态，威胁要对丹麦发动无端军事入侵并实施贸易制裁。他还再次嘲讽要将加拿大变成美国第51个州。欧盟、英国和加拿大随即采取行动，试图遏制他的虚张声势。
The Trump distraction machine We have watched him run this play many times before. In January, Trump escalated his threats against Greenland, invoking an unsupported, even hallucinatory danger to U.S. national security. He put reserve units on alert, threatened an unprovoked military invasion and trade sanctions against Denmark. He renewed his taunts about making Canada the 51st state. The European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada mobilized to curb his bluster.
今年1月初，特朗普下令发动军事突袭，试图抓捕并撤离委内瑞拉独裁者尼古拉斯·马杜罗，而这一行动背后的正当性理由却通过一连串的解释被刻意粉饰。尽管根本不存在外国攻击的风险，他仍以国家安全为由进行辩护。
The military raid Trump ordered to capture and extract Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro in early January was deceptively justified with a flurry of explanations. He invoked national security despite the absence of risk of foreign attacks.
他声称要打击毒品走私，尽管委内瑞拉并未向美国走私毒品，而且他还释放了一名来自洪都拉斯的主要毒品贩子。他曾承诺通过政权更迭来恢复民主，但最终却保留了原政权。他还承诺增加美国的燃料供应并降低零售汽油价格，但这一说法忽视了提炼委内瑞拉黏稠、含酸量高的原油所面临的困难。
He cited drug interdiction despite the lack of drug trafficking from Venezuela into the U.S. and his release of major drug trafficker from Honduras. He promised regime change to restore democracy, then left the same regime in place. And he pledged to increase U.S. fuel supplies and lower retail gasoline prices, a claim that glossed over the challenges of refining Venezuela’s thick, sour crude.
2025年6月22日，特朗普隆重启动了“午夜铁锤行动”，出动B-2隐形轰炸机和潜艇发射的“战斧”导弹，袭击了伊朗的三个核设施：福尔多、纳坦兹和伊斯法罕。他宣称此次行动摧毁了伊朗的核浓缩能力，并消除了该政权构成的核威胁。然而，伊朗持续具备制造核武器的能力，戳破了这一豪言壮语。
On Jun. 22, 2025, Trump launched Operation Midnight Hammer with great fanfare, deploying B-2 stealth bombers and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles against three Iranian nuclear facilities: Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan. He declared that the operation had destroyed Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and eliminated the nuclear threat posed by the regime. Iran’s continued nuclear weapons capability punctured the bravado.
2025年2月28日，特朗普发起了“史诗怒火行动”，承诺在几天内推翻伊朗政权，并消灭其代理人组织——哈马斯、真主党和胡塞武装。八个月后，所有这些战线的战斗仍在继续，局势毫无缓和迹象。即便是支持此次行动的美国军事专家也对其时机提出了质疑：伊朗并未立即采取任何挑衅行为，而执行任务所需的美军海军力量却部署在加勒比海和南海，远离中东地区。这一时机显然只是特朗普为转移国内失败问题而做出的又一次绝望尝试。
On Feb. 28, Trump launched Operation Epic Fury, promising to topple the Iranian regime and eliminate its proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis—within days. Eight months later, the fighting continues on all these fronts, with no resolution in sight. Even military experts who supported the operation questioned its timing: there had been no immediate Iranian provocation, and U.S. naval assets needed for the mission were positioned in the Caribbean and the South China Sea, far from the Middle East. The timing made sense as another desperate attempt by Trump to distract from his failures at home.
特朗普在2月份深夜于“真相社交”平台上分享的那段针对奥巴马夫妇的种族主义AI视频，是一场精心策划的注意力转移手段，其发布时间恰好与其不断下滑的支持率相吻合。他因这种荒谬且充满偏见的幽默而受到批评——正是这类言论曾终结或损害过早期政治家的职业生涯，例如农业部长厄尔·巴茨、参议院多数党领袖特伦特·洛特以及众议员史蒂夫·金。
The racist AI video of the Obamas that Trump shared in a late-night Truth Social post in February was a calculated diversion, timed to coincide with his sagging approval ratings. He faced criticism for his bizarre bigoted humor, the sort that had ended or damaged the careers of earlier politicians, such as Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and Congressman Steve King.
但特朗普很高兴能将周末新闻节目的焦点从他的国内政策挫折上转移开去。当那场争议平息后，他再次转变策略，这次将目标对准了备受尊崇的国家地标。他试图将肯尼迪表演艺术中心改名，最终甚至关闭了这栋建筑，并威胁说，如果无法将自己的名字加上去，就将其拆除。
But Trump was delighted to have baited the weekend news shows away from his domestic policy setbacks. When that controversy faded, he pivoted again, this time to targeting revered national landmarks. He sought to rename the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, ultimately closing the building and threatening to raze it if he could not put his name on it.
随后，他又散布了林肯纪念堂倒影池遭人破坏的虚假言论。当他试图将美国250周年庆典塑造成自己宏伟的致敬仪式时，却被泰勒·斯威夫特在麦迪逊广场花园举行的婚礼的热烈报道抢了风头，于是他又对这场婚礼发起攻击。接着，他又对大学、律师事务所以及前政府官员（包括前联邦调查局局长詹姆斯·科米和前美联储主席杰罗姆·鲍威尔）发动了新一轮毫无缘由的法律攻击。
He followed that with by false claims of vandalism of the Lincoln Monument’s Reflecting Pool. When his effort to recast America’s 250th anniversary as his own grandiose tribute was outshined by glowing coverage of Taylor Swift’s wedding in Madison Square Garden, he attacked the wedding. He then launched another round of unprovoked legal attacks against universities, law firms, and former public officials, including former FBI director James Comey and former Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell.
然后，特朗普又回到了他惯常攻击的目标：加拿大。与此同时，债券市场已发出警报，美国商界领袖和农民则谴责他的关税政策和对外战争推高了燃料和化肥成本，并削弱了美国商品进入外国市场的渠道。
And then, Trump returned to a favorite punching bag: Canada. Meanwhile, bond markets were signaling alarm, and U.S. business leaders and American farmers were condemning his tariffs policies and foreign wars for driving up fuel and fertilizer costs and undermining access to foreign markets for American goods.
掩盖坏消息的极限：这些干预措施——无论是鲁莽的、自我毁灭性的贸易壁垒，大规模军事入侵，还是充满攻击性和分裂性的演讲——无一不占据着大量注意力。尽管这些手段最终适得其反，但起初确实如预期般转移了媒体关注。这些挑衅行为及其引发的轩然大波掩盖了其他严重问题，而连锁反应则放大了特朗普的存在感，使他仿佛无处不在、无时不在。这正是他的目的所在。
The limits of burying the bad news Each of these interventions, whether reckless, self-destructive trade barriers, massive military invasions, or offensive divisive speeches, soaks up attention. All of these interventions initially diverted media coverage as intended, even if they ultimately backfired. The provocations and the uproar they generate drown out other serious problems while the ricochet effects magnify Trump’s presence, making him seem everywhere, all the time. That is the point.
事实上，特朗普拥有一种独特且近乎超人的能力：他能够将负面新闻深埋不露，直到支持者和批评者都逐渐不再谈论那些足以让几乎任何其他政治家身败名裂的问题与失败。在人为制造的大量头条新闻的掩埋之下，他的支持率已跌至两届任期的最低水平：根据路透社/Ipsos最近的一项民意调查，仅为32%。
Indeed, Trump has a unique, almost superhuman ability to bury bad news until supporters and detractors alike are no longer talking about issues and failures that would sink virtually any other politician. Buried under this avalanche of manufactured headlines are his approval ratings, which are the lowest of either of his either term: 32% in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll.
此外，持续的高通胀、急剧恶化的经济数据、骤降的消费者信心以及疲弱的就业增长，共同加剧了可负担性危机。即便是有关与伊朗战争的报道，也被围绕特朗普在洛杉矶和圣地亚哥言论引发的争议所掩盖。这场冲突的持续时间远超他的预期和计划，其战略目标似乎已陷入停滞，且没有明显的出路。
And there is an affordability crisis compounded by persistent inflation, cratering economic data, plummeting consumer confidence, and weak jobs growth. Even coverage of the war with Iran has been eclipsed by the uproar over Trump’s Los Angeles and San Diego remarks. The conflict has lasted far longer than he expected or intended, with its objectives seemingly stalled and no easy way out.
就在本周，五角大楼确认，位于英国费尔福德空军基地的全部12架B-1B轰炸机均已返航。自3月份以来，该英国基地一直是美国轰炸机对伊朗发动袭击的据点。这些轰炸机在英方当局以涉嫌策划针对该基地的阴谋为由逮捕数人后撤离，而英国首相则将该事件与伊朗联系起来。
Just this week, the Pentagon confirmed that all 12 B-1B bombers at RAF Fairford in the United Kingdom had been flown home. The British base had hosted American bombers striking Iran since March. The bombers left after British authorities arrested several people over a suspected plot against the base, which Britain's prime minister linked to Iran.
周二，康涅狄格州参议员克里斯·墨菲透露，五角大楼拒绝允许他进入位于卡塔尔的乌代德空军基地。作为该地区最大的美军基地，自2月份战争爆发以来，该基地已多次遭到伊朗袭击。此外，五角大楼还以国防部长皮特·赫格塞思3月份发布的一项旅行指令为由，拒绝在他访问卡塔尔期间就战争问题向他提供简报。墨菲称，这是一种“正在进行的、史无前例的、违宪的行为，旨在向国会和公众隐瞒这场战争的成本”。
And on Tuesday, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut revealed that the Pentagon had denied him access to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The largest U.S. base in the region, it has been struck repeatedly by Iran since the war began in February. The Pentagon also refused to brief him on the war while he was in Qatar, citing a March travel directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Murphy called it an “active, unprecedented, unconstitutional effort underway to hide the costs of this war” from Congress and the public.
然而，“声音之墙”存在一个结构性弱点：它只有在公众未能将喧嚣与它试图掩盖的内容联系起来时才能奏效。对抗这种噪音机器的方法唯有纪律：无论对方抛出多么荒谬的干扰手段，都必须保持对事实的关注，并坚持要求问责。
But the “Wall of Sound” has a structural weakness. It works only while the audience fails to connect the noise to what it is hiding. The answer to a noise machine is discipline: staying focused on facts and demanding accountability, no matter what outrageous diversions are tossed out.
持续关注特朗普试图掩盖的内容，正是对抗他那永不停歇的噪音机器的良方。如今，将特朗普的行事手法追溯至他的导师、其父亲那位阴险的律师罗伊·科恩，已成为一种时尚。但特朗普同样也借鉴了一种更久远的美国传统，这种传统由19世纪的表演家P.T.巴纳姆清晰阐述：“公众似乎乐于被取悦，即使他们意识到自己正在被欺骗。”
Sustained attention to what Trump wants buried is the antidote to his perpetual noise machine. It has become fashionable to trace Trump’s playbook to Roy Cohn, his mentor and his father’s diabolical attorney. But Trump also draws on an older American tradition, articulated by the 19th century showman P.T. Barnum: "The public appears disposed to be amused even when they are conscious of being deceived."
此外他还说：“没有宣传，可怕的事情就会发生：什么都不会发生！”对特朗普而言不幸的是，加拿大人、伊朗人以及他的美国同胞们已经开始识破他的伎俩，并将注意力集中在他日渐失灵的国内政策和濒临崩溃的全球外交上。就连巴纳姆也明白，公众既能欣赏一场三马戏团同时上演的热闹表演，又不会盲目追随马戏团团长那喧嚣的叫喊。
And, “without promotion something terrible happens: nothing!”Sadly for Trump, the Canadians, the Iranians, and his fellow Americans are figuring out his maneuvers and keeping their attention on his faltering domestic policies and imploding global diplomacy. Even Barnum understood that the public can balance a three ring circus and not follow the carnival barking of the ringmaster.