Axios

There is a very specific — and dangerous — formula for manipulating the media and hijacking the Twitter/cable/conventional media industrial complex. Trump sets this formulaic trap increasingly often. And news organizations keep falling for it.

Step 1: Throw an early morning Twitter bomb, usually but not always timed to "Fox & Friends" fodder or reinforcement. The Tweet-bomb frequently hits "fake news" or some social topic with racial undertones.

• Within minutes, thousands of Trump's Twitter followers retweet it, and the sparks fly in response. Trump knows this and has bragged to staff about the storm he's stirring as he hits "publish."
• The data: As president, Trump has tweeted about fake news 124 times, mostly before 9 a.m., and his tweets about fake news average more retweets and likes.

Step 2: The outrage machine kicks in. The first hour of "Morning Joe" is consumed by reaction to either that morning's or yesterday's tweet bomb. But the real action unfolds on Twitter, with scores of journalists and activists howling in protest.

"He exerts a deeper level of control simply through his ability to bait hostile media at will with his every seemingly nutty utterance," conservative columnist Bret Stephens smartly noted Thursday in the New York Times.

Step 3: The cable beast awakens. MSNBC/CNN/Fox are basically 24/7 politics now, and the reporters who uncorked on Twitter sit alongside the hosts to dissect/condemn the Twitter bomb. They tweet the highlights. The rage builds. The cycle speeds.

• One result: "A political opposition that is exhausting itself — and much of the public — with its perpetual state of moral apoplexy," Stephens writes.

Step 4: The fringes foment. Breitbart belts out a stream of stories, usually supporting Trump or mocking cable hysteria on the left. It pumps its greatest hits through Facebook, where both sides game the algorithm to play to their team's emotional response. Twitter wars usually ensue.

• The data: Many of the most engaging politics and news pages on Facebook in October were hyper-partisan political pages, according to social analytics company NewsWhip, and the most popular reaction to them is the "angry face" emoji.

Step 5: Opinions fly. By nighttime, MSNBC goes hard left, Fox hard right, peaking with their highest-rated champions (Maddow on the left and Hannity on the right) tucking like-minded people in with soothing stories of why they were so right today.

• The data: Hannity averages more than 3.1 million viewers a night over the last two months, and Maddow averaged 2.6 million.

We go to bed, sleep poorly, wake up and do it again. "How do we pay attention without paying him a kind of homage? Can we respond to his outrages without drowning in our own?" Stephens concludes in his must-read column.

Sound smart: We are all amplifying and participating in this endless sideshow. There is no easy solution, other than clinging to reality and clinically exposing Trump's make-believe. Check the facts, pay attention, but ignore the pure crap.

"The truth about Trump is not that he's crazy. He's a narcissist and a neurotic with a feral talent for attracting the attention he craves," Stephens writes. "In Russia, Putin can compel attention thanks to his complete control over most media and many other aspects of ordinary life. In the United States, citizens can deprive Trump of his political oxygen simply by turning off and tuning out."

Go Deeper: Exhausted by the Trump presidency? Brace yourself. White House officials expect Trump to be even more outrageous and cocksure in coming months.

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Sears Holdings, parent company of Sears and Kmart, posted a better-than-expected loss of $558 million in the third quarter. Investors initially cheered the news, sending the company's stock soaring as much as 30% higher in pre-market trading, though those gains were wiped out by early Thursday afternoon.

Why it matters: Even as it lost less money than analysts expected, Sears financial situation is dire. "Whichever way you cut them, the fundamental economics of the business do not add up," GlobalData Retail Managing Director Neil Saunders tells CNBC. "Nothing in this latest set of results changes our view."

Cumulus Media, one of the largest U.S. radio broadcasters, filed for bankruptcy protection, according to Reuters. The company says it has entered an agreement with lenders to restructure its business to reduce more than $1 million in debt.

Why it matters: The announcement comes amid a wave of media consolidation in all sectors, driven mostly by tech companies that have been able to drive users and revenue with their ability to move at the speed of 21st century consumer demands. In April, Cumulus rival, iHeartMedia — the holding company of IHeartRadio, which is the biggest operator of radio stations in U.S. — said it expected bankruptcy within a year.

In an effort to encourage more Mexicans to shop online, Amazon is promoting a new payment system whereby shoppers can deposit funds into their Amazon accounts via kiosks at local convenience stores, Bloomberg reports.

Why it matters: Developing countries' e-retail sectors are hemmed in by their customers lack of access to credit cards. In places like India and China, e-commerce firms have worked around this by enabling delivery workers to accept cash, a solution that isn't viable in countries like Mexico where assaults and robberies are common.

British Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday pitched London's stock exchange as the best location for the massive IPO of state oil giant Saudi Aramco next year, a move that comes two weeks after President Trump publicly urged the kingdom to select the U.S. for the offering slated for 2018.

Why it matters: The international venue selected for the listing will bring huge fees to the exchange that wins the IPO of 5% of the company, which Saudi officials hope will raise tens of billions of dollars to help fund the kingdom's economic diversification and modernization efforts.

Making her case: "I think London is extremely well placed, not only from its importance as an international financial centre, also technically well placed in relation to Aramco," she told reporters just ahead of her visit with top Saudi officials in Riyadh, according to the Mirror.

• The outcome of the very public courtships — not to mention behind-the-scenes appeals — also carry geopolitical ramifications, forcing the Saudi rulers to make a choice between the U.S. and the U.K. (or perhaps another venue like Hong Kong) at a time of tensions between Trump and May.

Separately: Yesterday May rebuked Trump for retweeting anti-Muslim hate videos from British far-right leader Jayda Fransen.