Mr. Trump lavishly praised Mr. Manafort for refusing to “break” and cooperate with federal investigators. On Tuesday in West Virginia, collusion hide-and-seek appeared to be little more than a way for the president to shrug off a series of damaging developments; Mr. Trump quickly moved on to other subjects. “There is an entertainment aspect to this, and this tease of ‘Who’s going to win? Who’s going to be the bad guy?’ and Trump has a demonstrable instinct for this,” said Mary E. Stuckey, a professor of communications at Penn State University who has written extensively on presidential communication. “It keeps people watching, and it puts the attention where he wants it, which is, ‘Where is the shiny object?’”

Source: New York Times August 26, 2018 17:37 UTC