Celebrities lie and the media repeat these falsehoods ad infinitum without examination.

Donald Trump is a celebrity.

Madonna sells out every show!

No.

Springsteen can play forever in New Jersey!

Maybe in terms of time, but the truth is Groupon filled a bunch of those seats.

Never mind the pronouncements about sales figures… It’s all boasting, all image, all the time. And you wonder why Donald Trump can get away with the same thing?

Politicians gave way to celebrities long ago, when elected officials sold their souls to lobbyists and corporations, there was no there there. Celebrities know their identity is everything. And a few pitfalls can be explained away by drugs and hardship… Celebrities know success is about an arc, going from somewhere to everywhere, beating the odds in the process. Politicians wait their turn in order to be nominated by the machine. Last I checked, it was the singers on Sony who were known by everybody, not Doug Morris.

Everybody knows Donald Trump. And he’s employing the number one axiom of celebrity…MAKE NOISE, STAY IN THE PICTURE, ALL PUBLICITY IS GOOD PUBLICITY, PUBLICITY IS EVERYTHING!

Leave the public eye and you’re forgotten these days. Which is why celebrities are all over social media, why their publicists plant stories repeated all over the web. It’s to keep them top of mind in the audience’s brain.

Hillary is losing the news war. She’s playing not to lose. If you don’t go for it, you usually don’t succeed. Utilizing old saws like the ground game as if it wasn’t 2016 and the entire nation is driven by what’s online. The oldsters are already registered, want to reach the youngsters, play online. Just ask Buzzfeed and the linkbait legends, that which goes viral, that which generates clicks, wins today. Substance is secondary to train-wreck quality. Everything’s run by algorithm. Respect the game.

But everyone inside the Beltway believes it’s the same as it ever was. Like the record companies and Napster. They believe the public will do the right thing, that they can shame people into behaving. But it didn’t quell file-trading and Hillary’s poll numbers are sinking because… To write again and again what a nitwit Trump is in the press is missing the point. People believe in celebrities blindly, they get caught up in the mania, just try tweeting something negative about Taylor Swift or Beyonce, you’ll be subjected to enough hatred to delete your account.

That’s the game Donald Trump is playing.

It doesn’t matter that he lies because everybody does. And the news cycle is short. And the key is to promote a new idea every day. Kinda like Drake releasing mixtapes. The old fart baby boomer acts take years to polish their turd albums whereas the young acts are constantly releasing new material, putting up covers on YouTube, they realize we live in an attention economy and attention is everything.

And if you don’t like it…

You’ve got to give people good jobs so their only alternative is not reality TV. They may not ever be able to be rich, but they can be famous for a week or two on the tube.

You’ve got to admit you’re flawed, but still stay on message.

The celebrities own this paradigm. When caught acting badly they cry, apologize, go to rehab and emerge refreshed. Whereas politicians believe they’ve got to stay the course, they can’t show weakness, they must be wary of gotcha moments. But in a world where your complete life is online your only choice is to own the gotchas.

So if you want to be famous, and seemingly everybody in America wants to, that’s the national game, you play on all platforms all the time and try to gain traction. And once you get a leg up, you don’t rest on your laurels, you keep taking chances, the well is never dry.

Of course Trump lies. Of course he’s uninformed on how to run the country. But if you want to beat him, you must play his game, not yours. After all, he beat all challengers in the primaries. Because the Donald is tapped into the American zeitgeist, where it’s every man for himself and we laud those at the top of the totem pole, irrelevant of how they got there.

Taylor Swift had a rich dad.

So what. Only the haters care. Her fans couldn’t care less.

So you can sit on the sidelines pointing to Trump’s faux pas or you can learn from his efforts. You don’t have to lie, but you don’t have to be afraid of making mistakes. Trump criticizes Gold Star parents and doubles down, Hillary labels Trump followers “deplorables” and then goes silent, allowing the enemy to spin her statement. Today you’ve got to own who you are, you’ve got to show strength, while, ironically, letting weakness emerge. As for hiding anything, like pneumonia, everything ultimately outs. You create your own narrative. Trump got out in front of the tax issue, said he was never gonna release his returns, said he was being audited even though his son recently denied this. It’s about being aggressive.

Sure, it would be great if we could appeal to voters by promising our best efforts to lift them up.

But if that was a TV show it’d get canceled.

No, you’ve got to have drama. You’ve got to have story. You have to constantly release new episodes.

Nobody believes anything anymore. The press has been complicit in spreading falsehoods and too many outlets have agendas. You create your own image. And it must appear authentic to enough people for you to reach your goal. When Hillary Clinton’s credibility is questioned by her own followers, you know she’s in trouble.