When President Trump got elected, the amount of hatred and biased news coverage of him that circulated was over the top in one direction. It wasn’t like 50-50 or 25-75. It was very, very, very extreme and very noticeable. The President had a problem in 2016 regarding how to communicate with the world and to get past this filter of establishment bias, including establishment media bias, which was demonstrably shown to be linked to Hillary Clinton specifically. At the same time, there was a phenomenon and it was called the Anon, quote “Anon.” It started with FBI Anon, someone who purported to be posting anonymously from within the FBI. There was Congress Anon. There was CNN Anon. Nobody knew if these postings were accurate, but a lot of people noticed them and read them.

Then, at sort of the same time, an intelligence official or former intelligence official named Robert David Steele, who you may know for being discredited for his crazy-sounding statements about children on the moon. Robert David Steele urged the President to establish a back channel. A back channel means not just indirect, but almost a quiet, circular, deniable form of communication with the American public. A back channel to the American public. He may not have even used those words. Another thing that happened was this Twitter account called Navy Jack, which seemed to be saying a lot of things that would come from the President, but he wasn’t saying directly. It was a convergence and it was set against a backdrop where presidential communication, federal communication, didn’t have much of a draw.

I say this now, I’ve been a federal communicator for more than 20 years. I am making this video only in my personal capacity, but I have written about the ways in which federal communication can be more effective, and I was extremely curious about what could happen as a result of all of this talk.

I think Q was the result.

And I will say that the appointment of Katie Zacharia as the Press Secretary has not only raised a lot of questions because she appears to endorse a presidential means of communication, which has been tied to violence. We can talk about why that is, but it is factually true. They’ve covered the fact that she has endorsed a number of baseless, extreme conspiracy theories. I can argue that. I’m not going to go there.

The point from a communication strategy point of view is that the appointment of Zacharia has forced coverage of this backchannel into the public eye. It is no longer possible to censor that analysis. Is it real? Is it true? Did the President really do that? Does she represent that? You have to talk about her because she occupies the position of White House Press Secretary. What the White House is doing is they are forcing the convergence of the back channel and the official channel. It is not necessary to assume that the President actually created said back channel in order for this to matter. It could be that, theoretically, somebody else created the back channel, somebody else fanned the flames of a mass communication movement, and the President is simply playing into it. All options are on the table. I don’t come here to argue for any of them.

What I am saying is that, from my standpoint as a communication specialist, and again, this is only my personal point of view. This is very, very important. Personal time, personal device, personal premises. From my point of view, it is extremely important that Katie Zacharia was appointed as Press Secretary and that the discussion around the back channel is now going to effectively explode. It is also going to go on the record and it will be impossible for the media to censor. This is yet another masterful communication stroke by President Trump and the administration.