The Flood of War
Three months in, and Trump is turning the White House press operation into a rapid-response, 24-7 smash mouth PR shop bent on juicing political division to discourage dissent.
President Trump has called Steven Cheung—his new White House Communications Director and architect of Trump’s new “battle-rhythm messaging”—his “sumo wrestler.” Trump is fiery, and so is his new communications media. “It sticks,” Cheung has told reporters, “because attention is the most scarce resource in today’s media world.”
NEW YORK—I remember being a very young White House correspondent for Hearst News when I was assigned, in the early 1990s, to cover President George H.W. Bush’s trip to Japan for an economic summit. Midway through it, Bush, stricken with the stomach flu, famously fell ill during a state dinner, and vomited on Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa’s lap.
NPR’s news stories—and mine—were shared internationally. [YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and the rest weren’t yet invented, and White House press managers were rarely a big part of the action at state dinners back then.] Regardless, Bush’s blunder, as it was later called, became instant fodder for headline writers and late-night comedians on Saturday Night Live.
But something else happened that night. Bill Clinton—the elder Bush’s adversary in that year’s presidential race—refrained entirely from using the incident to mock Bush among voters for what happened. In an interview years later, Clinton explained “it was out of respect for the man and the office of the president at that moment. It could have happened to anyone.”
Fast forward to today, three months into Donald Trump’s second term, and that traditional Oval Office practice of telegraphing empathy in times of crisis seems to have—for Trump—gone the way of the phone booth. The shock-and-awe of Trump’s new communications strategy encourages aggressive trolling of political opponents, 24-7, about nearly everything, everywhere, all at once.
Supercharging Persuasion
“Trump has become the nation’s first media influencer president,” says Drew Harwell, who covers the White House’s digital strategy for The Washington Post. White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told Atlantic writer Elaine Godfrey in a recent interview that American political language “has been due for a supercharge.” Cheung acknowledges that Trump’s in-your-face campaign will continue.
It’s not hyperbole. Since Trump took office again in January, the White House has been building Trump’s strongman image by pumping out new collections of personal insults about his political enemies, creating provocative issues videos, and flame-throwing social media attacks in tones used by no U.S. presidential administration before Trump’s. [Trump says Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer remains “the weirdest man in Washington,” former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains a “crazy, horrible human being.” And Taylor Swift? “I hate her,” he has posted, more than once.]
So what’s new this time around?
During his first term, Trump was a more isolated voice on Twitter and a no-show on TikTok, and his communications team was smaller and roiled in division over how aggressive his messaging should be. But this term, in the Trump 2.0 era, the new communications team is operating as if his 2024 campaign never ended, and is helping Trump’s messaging to become even more aggressive.
Building a war room
Trump’s team inherited the traditional White House press operation and now is totally engaged in a “modernized re-vamp” to turn the West Wing into a war room, staffed by a 20-member “Rapid Response team,” a digital video group and a social media team that includes AI image-makers. All of these sub-groups now function as Trump’s avatars, and unlike last time, communications team members share both similar attitudes and ideologies. [Trump’s video team calls itself “the Clippers”—people who watch live video, full-time, to pull segments out of what’s shown on TV and post them online quickly to start building up viral attention. Trump’s social media team, simultaneously, writes the tweets and Instagram posts. That team also works with image designers, who make or curate, retouch and resize digital images, as needed, to align with political messaging.]
It’s not much different than what large, media-savvy organizations do to assemble their social media teams and 24-7 brand messaging. Trump’s new team is bringing this kind of operation to the White House—and its goal is to deploy it at a size and speed not yet achieved by a President of the United States.
“These teams are totally disciplined, organized and synchronized on message,” Harwell said in a recent podcast interview. “And they’re unapologetic.” White House team leaders compare it to smash mouth football—a style of play in American football that emphasizes a powerful and very combative approach to offense. One of the more viral examples? The Valentine’s Day card put out over the White House’s official social media accounts. It was seen by millions, and was made to mimic the playful tone of most memes. It read: “Roses are red, violets are blue. Come here illegally, and we’ll deport you.” The card featured a scowling photo of President Trump next to a headshot of Border Czar Tom Homan.
In a recent podcast segment about the new strategy with tech influencer Taylor Lorenz, Post writer Harwell said Cheung’s new communications team “is not quibbling or debating policy. They’re not recognizing nuance. It’s just ‘we’re going to hit you in the face with the message and the political talking points that we want to get across, over and over again, and if you agree with us? That’s great. If you don’t, maybe you’ll see the messaging so much that you’ll start to agree.’”
In other words? What was once unthinkable—trolling, cruelty, ASMR deportation videos, 24-7 response messaging—has become part of the strategy.
Trump 2.0
Here are some of Trump’s new communication goals for his second term, which are helping to shape a new type of White House messaging apparatus to support his aggressive re-set of how America is run—for better or worse:
Full spectrum dominance. Cheung uses this military term to describe the Trump team’s push to win media dominance. Trump is made “the star” in most of what’s shared, and, says Harwell, “not just on TV, not just on radio, not just owning the headlines on print and websites, but all over social media, too. … It’s everything anyone can talk about to be mostly about Trump.”
More issues videos. The new team is using different kinds of niche video formats to build emotional influence and credibility. The ASMR video that went viral recently, mocking deportations of illegal immigrants, was widely criticized when posted on the White House’s official social media accounts and re-posted by Elon Musk earlier this year. Using ASMR technology—designed to trigger feelings of pleasure and calm—the video featured a giant transport jet and highlighted the sounds of the jet engines and visuals of the handcuffs and sounds of the chains used to capture the men who were being marched onto a plane for deportation. Cheung has told reporters that the video, when posted, received 200 million views and 886,000 engagements across X and Instagram. Lorenz says “dehumanizing cruelty is the point”of Trump’s use of this technology and says the Trump team plans to make more ASMR videos to share with supporters.
Continued use of AI-generated images. Last fall, Trump posted on Truth Social an image of what appeared to be Vice President Kamala Harris addressing a Soviet-style rally, complete with a Communist hammer-and-sickle flag. The image went viral. Trump’s team says it will be experimenting with more “issues-oriented images” to visually describe its stance on people and issues going forward.
Continued efforts to insert Trump into popular culture discussions and narratives. Conservative commentators are leveraging the Blake Lively vs. Baldoni dust-up to dismantle support for #MeToo and persuade more people to support Trump.
Promote Trump as a “king.” Trump’s communications team is working to align Trump, when able, with king metaphors and images. In February, the team created an AI-generated magazine cover resembling TIME magazine’s man-of-the-year covers, and posted it on Instagram and other social media platforms to show Trump wearing a crown above the caption, Long live the king!
“From the White House perspective, the new messaging is that Trump is the strongman. He is running the show. He’s somebody you want to trust. He’s somebody using his power to change the world,” the Post’s Harwell says.
Many voters are still treating Trump’s win last November as a profound change in American politics, with the president and his allies claiming that his victory—the third narrowest since World War II—represents a “sweeping mandate” and “vibe shift.” Now, as public criticism expands against Trump’s DOGE cuts, his trade tariffs and his harsh deportation tactics, Trump’s communications team is redoubling efforts to characterize and underscore its description of his win as a “clear mandate.”
The team’s methods can be seen as being brutal, says Lorenz, who covered Trump’s digital strategy for the Post before his second term began. But she also says White House leaders believe they are effective. “It works,” Lorenz says, “so now they want more of that.”
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Yes, much of this communications strategy can sound like what propaganda sets out to do. Spin on steroids and beyond. Thanks for your comment.
Cheung et al have been studying Joseph Goebbels’ methods very carefully, it seems. And we know how well the Nazi propaganda machine worked.