There is a particular brand of self-congratulatory flatulence that only emanates from the zip codes surrounding the Potomac, and today’s olfactory assault comes courtesy of the White House press corps. Andrew Feinberg, a man whose primary contribution to the historical record is being a professional witness to the slow-motion car crash of American discourse, has offered us a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look at the Trump II administration. It is a piece of writing that manages to be simultaneously breathless and suffocating, a diary entry from the belly of a beast that doesn’t even realize it’s being observed because it’s too busy admiring its own reflection in a gold-plated mirror.

The premise is as tired as the people writing it: that there is a ‘side’ to this administration that we don’t see on television. This implies, of course, that there is some hidden depth, some clandestine machinery of statecraft operating beneath the surface of the televised tantrums. There isn't. The great secret of the White House press briefing room—a space with the architectural charm of a windowless basement and the intellectual weight of a cereal box—is that the 'unseen' side is exactly like the 'seen' side, only with more expensive coffee and significantly more anxiety about seating charts.

Feinberg details the 'overhaul' of the briefing room under the second Trump iteration as if he were describing the renovation of the Sistine Chapel, rather than a strategic rearranging of deck chairs on a ship that has already hit the iceberg of public indifference. The administration’s ‘flipped script’ is not a masterpiece of political maneuvering; it is a basic branding exercise. They have realized that the media is not a Fourth Estate to be respected, but a collection of performing seals to be managed with varying sizes of fish. On one side, you have an administration that views the truth as a customizable accessory, and on the other, a press corps that views its own existence as the thin line between civilization and the abyss. Both are hallucinating.

The 'Trump II' media strategy, as described, is a pivot from the chaotic skirmishes of the past toward a more curated form of malice. It’s an evolution in the way power handles its court stenographers. In the first term, it was about the spectacle of the fight; now, it’s about the efficiency of the snub. The administration has learned that you don’t need to ban reporters if you can simply make their presence irrelevant by talking over them or, better yet, ignoring them until they start fighting each other for the scraps of a non-denial denial. This is the 'side you don't see'—the banal, transactional reality of people who hate each other but are contractually obligated to maintain a symbiotic relationship of mutual parasitic survival.

The Right-wing perspective on this is predictably moronic: they see this overhaul as a glorious dismantling of the 'fake news' apparatus, ignoring the fact that they are simply replacing one set of mouthpieces with another, slightly more loyal set of parrots. The Left-wing perspective is equally performative: they view every change in briefing room protocol as a funeral for democracy, conveniently forgetting that 'democracy' in this context is just a televised argument between two people who both went to the same three Ivy League schools and shop at the same Whole Foods.

Feinberg’s account is a symptom of the media’s desperate need to be the protagonist of the story. They aren't. They are the background noise to a country that has largely tuned out. The American public, currently struggling to reconcile their bank accounts with the price of a gallon of milk, does not care about the 'overhaul' of a briefing room. They do not care about the nuances of how a press secretary handles a follow-up question. The irony of the 'unseen side' is that it is just as performative as the televised version. The reporters preen for the cameras, and when the cameras go off, they preen for each other, swapping anecdotes about their 'bravery' in the face of a lukewarm press release.

Ultimately, this 'flipped script' is just a different font on the same ransom note. The administration continues to treat governance as a reality TV spin-off, and the press continues to act like they are the Emmy-winning critics. The tragedy isn't that we are seeing a new, more dangerous side of the administration; the tragedy is that we are seeing the exact same side, and the people paid to tell us about it are too caught up in the drama of their own seating assignments to notice that the theater is empty. The 'unseen side' is just a void where substance used to be, filled with the echoes of people who are far less interesting than they believe themselves to be.