Hurricane Trump grabs the spotlight

With fewer than 100 days back in the White House, Donald Trump has already outdone himself. In his second term, he has proven himself capable of accelerating further, surprising more and making more decisions in order to dominate the public’s attention and control the conversation.

He has achieved this by taking to the extreme a strategy that he already put into practice in his first government, albeit at a smaller scale, called “flooding the zone.” It consists of overflowing each day’s agenda with multiple statements, actions, and issues in order to direct public opinion and disorient the media and the opposition.

In an era in which social media has accelerated news cycles and shortened the attention span of the citizenry, Trump has realized that he has to move with much greater speed in order to flood the zone. He also seeks to mark a stark contrast with political elites, whom he brands as lazy. While he and his government are synonymous with efficiency and action, his rivals are inefficient and passive.

The consequences are notorious: measures that are announced and then rolled back (tariffs, layoffs, etc.); institutional clashes with other branches of government; a disoriented and overshadowed opposition that does not know what to respond to; and a citizenry overwhelmed by the pace of it all and feeling anxious. And not only in the United States, but also in other countries.

In his first 70 days, Trump has “flooded the zone” more than any other president in U.S. history and more than the presidents of the rest of the world in the same period of time. To top it off, he has an army of influencers who help him multiply his message on social networks.

Here are five ways in which he carries out this overflow:

To learn more about the subject

Articles:

- Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí: Inundar la zona

- Ezra Klein: Don’t Believe Him

- María Márquez Guerrero: La estrategia comunicativa de Trump: la energía del caos

- Adam Tooze: Chartbook 361 Flooding the zone: The first 54 days of the second Trump administration and the end of the world as (we thought) we knew it

- Jennifer Mercieca: La constante actividad noticiosa de Donald Trump puede ser agotadora, lo que dificulta que la gente analice sus acciones presidenciales

Podcasts:

- Governor Gavin Newsom and Ezra Klein’s conversation reflecting on Trump’s acceleration and the slowness of democratic processes

- NPR: “Why is Trump flooding the zone?”

Videos:

- Anne Applebaum on the “flooding the zone” strategy and authoritarian regimes