(AFP) – Donald Trump’s opponents have spent the days since his inauguration playing political whack-a-mole over a torrent of orders specifically calibrated to overwhelm and bewilder, say analysts, as the new president gets to work on his radical policy agenda. A chaotic first week saw him sign scores of divisive executive orders, as well as pardons or commutations for nearly everyone convicted of crimes — including serious violence — in the 2021 US Capitol insurrection.
And then there were the new president’s freewheeling media appearances, the feuds with perceived enemies, dust-ups with the clergy, stripping of security details for critics, the launch of a meme crypto coin, and one headline-grabbing social media post after another. “He doesn’t just flood the zone, he drowns it,” said Evan Nierman, the founder and CEO of global crisis PR agency Red Banyan. “It’s a classic PR strategy: overwhelm, distract and control the narrative before anyone else can. Flooding the zone is his way of making sure no single controversy sticks because there’s always a new one incoming.”
Longstanding Trump cheerleader Steve Bannon explained the shock-and-awe strategy in 2018, when he argued that the real opposition to the Republican billionaire was not the Democrats but the media. “And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit,” he said. “Flooding the zone” is a phrase with roots in sports lingo, originally used to describe the tactic in US football of saturating the opposition’s defense until a weak spot opens.
But Bannon was also echoing a widespread authoritarian move, premised on the notion that politicians can avoid scrutiny over any individual outrage by bombarding and overwhelming the public’s attention span. The blizzard of headlines is disorienting, and it is supposed to be, say analysts. The point isn’t to persuade anyone of anything; it’s simply to ensure that critics don’t mobilize around a coherent narrative and that no one has control over the flow of information.
“By throwing out an overwhelming number of policy changes and provocations, Trump has presented his opponents with a giant game of whack-a-mole stacked very much in his favor,” political scientist Michael Montgomery, of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, told AFP. In his first week, Trump dived headlong into America’s culture wars, ending all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
There was a stay of execution for Chinese-owned app TikTok, a back-to-the-office demand for federal workers, a hiring freeze, renamings of the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali, and a likely unconstitutional order to end birthright citizenship. This week, Trump — whose approval rating is at its highest ever — sowed chaos across government agencies with a pause on most federal grants, launching a frontal assault on Congress’s constitutional role as controller of the budget.
He was forced into something of a climbdown amid a ferocious backlash. But nearly forgotten in the furor were other extraordinary measures, including his firing — widely considered to be illegal — of 18 inspectors general, who are independent watchdogs of the federal government. The firing of multiple officials who had previously worked on the federal criminal investigations into Trump was likewise overlooked.
Katherine Cartwright, a co-founder of media buying agency Criterion Global, sees Trump as a vector of “Disaster Attention Deficit Disorder” — leaving those deluged by demands on their attention paralyzed, like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights. Another attention tactic in which Trumpworld excels, she says, is the “Friday drop” — ensuring the most unwelcome headlines arrive late in the week and burn out quickly as people lose interest through the weekend. Trump’s new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — a TV host with no relevant management experience and serious questions over his character — was confirmed on a Friday and “washed from the news by Monday morning,” Cartwright said.
Nierman, the crisis PR expert, sees the president’s unpredictability as both strategy and reflex. “Trump thrives in the churn, where the public’s attention shifts too fast for any one scandal to stick,” he said. “While everyone else scrambles to process yesterday’s outrage, he’s already on to the next, ensuring his version of events dominates both the day’s headlines and social media conversation.”
But the long-term risk of flooding the zone, says Nierman, is the kind of Trump fatigue that caused voters to vote him out of office after his first term. “Even loyal supporters can grow tired of constant turmoil,” he told AFP. “And swing voters may ultimately crave stability over spectacle.”
– Frankie TAGGART
© 2024 AFP
