All publicity is good publicity

Our president, in a telephone call to Eddie Calvo, the governor of Guam:

“Eddie, I have to tell you, you’ve become extremely famous. All over the world they’re talkin’ about Guam, and they’re talkin’ about you, and I think you’re gonna — tourism, I can say this — in tourism, you’re gonna go up in, like, tenfold, with the expenditure of no money, so I congratulate you.”

Both the president and the governor seem to be operating under the mistaken show-biz assumption that all publicity is good publicity. I think that we’ve just passed some outer limit of what’s plausible in our political reality.

[The passage I’ve quoted begins at 0:57. My transcription.]