MAGA's not-so-secret weapon: "Major media are a key tool for Trump’s destruction of the government"

One month into his second term, President Donald Trump’s shock and awe campaign against America’s multiracial democracy — and the very idea of responsible governance — continues mostly unabated. Trump’s many dozens of executive orders, diktats and other mandates (many of which are clearly unconstitutional) were just an opening fusillade. Trump’s shock and awe strategy will last much longer as his autocratic rule takes hold.

The courts have intervened, but President Trump is signaling he will (and in some instances already has) ignore any rulings he disagrees with. This will inevitably cause a constitutional crisis, which is likely the next step in a much larger plan to expand Trump’s increasingly unlimited power and authority.

Ultimately, the not-so-secret power of Trump’s political success and rise to power is that he is an expert propagandist and entertainer who knows how to manipulate and maximize his relationship to, and control over, the news media and attention economy. Trump is an expert at being “Donald Trump." The mainstream media and political class have few effective defenses against such a leader in an era of global populist discontent.

In an attempt to help the American people better navigate and make sense of Trump’s surreal and unprecedented first month back in power, the country’s rapidly worsening democracy crisis and the role of the media, I recently spoke with David Altheide. He is the Regents' Professor Emeritus on the faculty of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University and author of the book "Gonzo Governance: The Media Logic of Donald Trump."

This is the first part of a two-part conversation.

Trump’s first month back in power has been a spectacle, a shock and awe campaign against American democracy and society. So many horrible things are happening at once that it is very difficult, by design, to make sense of it all. Beginning with Trump’s surreal inauguration, how are you trying to make sense of these last few weeks?  

The inauguration was a spectacle on steroids, with amped-up drama emphasizing power, strength, salvation and greatness. It was a vulgar display of power. America First. First, the setting at the Capitol Rotunda, where Trump-inspired insurrectionists battled police just four years ago, became a stage for the usual pomp. People were sitting close to the rostrum so that Trump’s insults at President Joe Biden were not even a head turn away. Trump made his financial statement very clear: Seated in front of his Cabinet picks and glaringly present were several of the richest men in the world. Second, the speech, as others have noted, was more of a campaign speech that spewed a lot of cliches of American and Western Civilization mythology, including a new Golden Age and Manifest Destiny. Trump also decreed that there are only two genders and pledged to restore America’s potential in the world and history.

Perhaps the most vulgar thing that Trump did was to assert that divine intervention, in essence, God, prevented an assassination so that he could make America great again. Trump also proclaimed a national emergency at the southern border and promised massive deportations of millions of migrants and “illegal aliens,” attacked the civil rights movement(s) and racial and ethnic equity and promised to upend legal and judicial organizations that had been unfair to him. Trump did not stop there. He promised to take back the Panama Canal and rename Mt. McKinley and the Gulf of Mexico [renamed to the Gulf of America].

The spectacle gained momentum in the other venues, such as the DC Capitol Arena, where he would reenter each time to more applause. There, Trump would single out some of his supporters, including his family, all choreographed as they rose from mini thrones seated behind him. His wife and family, like the Israeli hostage families who were also there, were all props.

The ultimate spectacle was when he transformed a rostrum into his Oval Office and dramatically began to sign and display multiple executive orders, pausing for the applause and approval of the crowd.

Donald Trump is more than just a man or politician. He is best understood as a symbol and type of meme. How has Trump been fulfilling that role?

Trump is playing the role of savior, saving America from further decline, challenging government bureaucracy, tradition, norms, entrenched values and policies about authoritarianism, equality and progress. Trump is so repetitious that he has become a meme who is interpreted by audiences for what they want him to be and stand for.

For example: The major media can’t be trusted; they provide fake news, only Trump gets it right. The U.S. is being invaded. Trump took people behind the scenes and confided that now he could say things he couldn’t really say in his inaugural speech.

He stressed that American policy for years has been all wrong: Trump will restore America’s promise, but many things had to be changed, including major institutions, legal and judicial processes and appointments; real civil rights that don’t include diversity, equity and inclusion practices that have been followed for 70 years, international agreements and treaties, even national boundaries would have to be changed. Trump promised to stop “birthright” citizenship, which is guaranteed in the Constitution. Educators and schools are on notice to no longer teach bad things about America. Injustices would be corrected; he pardoned the “J6 hostages”, a group who Trump and his followers believe are true patriots that were given unfair sentences for their role in the coup attempt and attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6.  

Donald Trump is an expert at being “Donald Trump,” the persona and character, and manipulating the media and the public in the age of spectacle. To this point, the establishment voices across American society, politics, and civil society have no answer for Trump’s power and appeal as a strongman leader.

Trump is effective because he promotes fear and frames everything in terms of victims and saviors. Trump commands digital media and repeats what he likes from Fox News. He controls the narrative with props and staging. Trump’s America is frightening and scary. He asserts that Americans are victims of corrupt politicians and non-white migrants invading and exploiting them. Trump also lies and distorts reality and the facts with claims such as President Biden and the Democrats are the real enemies of the American people, the real fascists and authoritarians and enemies of democracy, and not him and the Republicans and the MAGA people.

Trump talks in short slogans, often repeating emphasis. This fits the format, rhythm and grammar of social media —instantaneous, personal and visual. He doesn’t qualify terms; he just says them. For example, the innocent are being persecuted by a weaponized legal system. Trump is the parent: strong, male and protective.

How do you explain Trump’s effectiveness as a character and personality? Donald Trump is very funny while at the same time possessing great menace. He is very compelling as a character and media personality. That is verboten to many liberals and progressives because they too often confuse their normative priors and disgust at Trump with a substantive analysis of his symbolic power and why so many tens of millions of people support and even love him.  

Trump’s style is entertaining. He continues to play the part from the TV show “The Apprentice.” He is the boss, tough, masculine and direct.

Sociologist Orrin Klapp’s book, “Heroes, Villains, and Fools: The Changing American Character,” helps explain Trump’s effectiveness with the media. Trump repeats many myths about good and evil, victims and criminals. Trump plays the hero – a hero is a winner, performer, independent, strong, and an authentic defender and a savior. Migrants are cast as criminals and villains. They are weak but cunning, untrustworthy, sneaky, and renegades. Biden and other politicians can also be criminals, as well as fools, who are incompetent, small-minded, and pompous. Trump, the hero, will vanquish all villains and fools, change the Constitution, prosecute any citizen or official who opposes him, and make a lot of money on the side.

President Trump's Cabinet nominees and other appointees are being confirmed by the MAGA Republican-controlled Congress. The media and centrist voices were aghast and basically promised that the Republicans would not support them because these candidates, almost to the one, are manifestly unqualified — except for the qualification of being loyalists and destroying democracy, the rule of law and the institutions they lead. One of the main reasons these people were selected is because they are Fox News personalities. They are familiar faces to the Trump public and larger right-wing. Trump’s Cabinet members are experts in playing their roles on TV. This aspect of Trump's move has been largely neglected by the news media.

Major media are a key tool for Trump’s destruction of the federal government and his refusal to follow court mandates. The takeover is easy when journalism and massive news organizations stay the course and pretend everything is normal. Trump’s attention-based politics of fear stresses a Man of Action; he gets things done; many dozens of felt-tipped signature mini-whiteboards of Executive Orders and proclamations are signed and held up for cameras — it is Document Choreography. The Trump fascist takeover of major public governmental programs, agencies and institutions is a crisis.  

News routines are not amenable to such chaos and disruption: There is only one significant story to be told! That is the fascist takeover of the American government, the raiding of the Treasury, the sacking of experienced FBI leadership, the shutting down of life-saving medical and scientific research, and the firing and dismissal of tens of thousands of civil servants who keep the country functioning, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This has been aided by the usual suspects of massive digital disinformation and Fox News diatribes. The Trump regime continues to set the agenda and narratives. The Trump administration counts on ritualized news programs sticking with their format of a few 2–4-minute reports (including the weather report of course!). These formats have evolved to maximize entertainment as news: short, brief, dramatic, conflictual and visual. The network news closes with a thank you to visitors and with NBC’s Lester Holt admonishing us to take care of “yourselves and each other.”  We are caught up in entertainment formats that have helped propel gonzo governance, the larger media spectacle that helped to propel Trump and the MAGA movement to power. 

Journalists and news outlets must change this behavior. The high ground must be retaken every day with headlines about such topics as violating court orders, unelected officials gaining access to personal and financial information, national health care being compromised, children’s cancer treatments being interrupted, food shipments to starving children stopped, school children’s free lunches stopped, life-saving medical research interrupted, the Consumer Protection Agency being shut down, etc. Every day, these and many other casualties of the Trump administration’s illegal and unconstitutional attacks on our democracy and society should be emphasized.