Donald Trump’s “Shock and Awe” Campaign

Like it or not, Donald Trump is about to be president again. And given his first tumultuous term in office, we can expect a good deal of chaos and confusion to follow. Much of that daily drama from January 2017–2021 was a result of Trump’s short attention span, which led to dizzyingly fast news cycles as journalists tried parsing the president’s bombastic declarations and (many false) claims to get at what was actually happening in government. We will likely be once again hostage to Trump’s tweets (or rather, “truths” from his own Truth Social) and subject to his shifting moods and grudges.

While none of us knows exactly what Trump 2.0 will look like, the expectations are for an onslaught of headline-grabbing executive orders and announcements. On Fox News, Bret Baier said Friday that he’s “been told that it’s going to be shock and awe,” as “they’re going to throw a lot in the first day, and maybe a couple of days, that will have to be digested.”

Presumably, “shock and awe” will include executive orders on deportation, as incoming “border czar” Tom Homan has used similar language in speaking about immigration-related day-one plans. But as Axios shows, Trump has made 59 different day-one promises, from settling the Russia-Ukraine war to increasing drilling to ending birthright citizenship (a right guaranteed by the 14th Amendment). We can expect attempts to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and feed into other culture-war obsessions, like transgender athletes. And then there is Trump’s promise to pardon many of the January 6 defendants, which is particularly troubling to democracy-watchers, as it may create a narrative that lawbreaking done in Trump’s name is permissible.

“If Trump pardons January 6 rioters,” law professor Joyce Vance wrote on the Brennan Center’s blog, “he would be using the pardon power to erase an attack on Constitution and country.” Such a move could only empower right-wing extremist groups whose members were involved, like the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters militia. “Research shows that this use of the pardon power can damage the rule of law in the United States,” academic Michael H. Becker wrote for The Conversation. “It undermines one of the tools against violence that law enforcement can bring to bear—deterrence.”

Even if some of Trump’s day-one ideas are merely concepts of a plan, this all paints a picture of a second-term agenda being put into motion at breakneck speed. Over the holidays last month, we got a reminder of the Trumpian news cycle when he mused—once again—about buying Greenland, making Canada the 51st state, and retaking control of the Panama Canal. (Meanwhile, Rolling Stone reported in November that Trump’s team has discussed invading Mexico.)

This is where the importance of not swinging at every pitch comes into play. As argued before, we can’t tune out Trump completely; after all, he is the president-elect and will be in power soon. But we in the media need to be thoughtful and sophisticated when taking stock of the provocations and claims coming out of a second Trump administration. In the cases of Greenland, Canada, and Panama, Trump’s bellicose rhetoric may actually be more of a negotiating tool, rather than an indication of any deeply considered plan. Stephen Moore, an economic adviser during Trump’s first term, told the CBC that the incoming president “uses the threat of tariffs to get countries to do things that he thinks are in America’s national security and economic interests.”

Trump is about to do a lot of things. He has a GOP-controlled Congress to push through his sweeping agenda on everything from taxes to regulations to the border, as well as a new chief of staff intent on running a more orderly White House (with Trump being Trump, though, we’ll see how that works out). Some norm-crushing moves, like pardoning the January 6 rioters, could do lasting damage to democratic institutions. But Trump will also surely do things simply to agitate his political opponents or bait the news media into responding in ways that appear hysterical. Because if everything is a crisis, then nothing is. The challenge will be separating the news—the radical, extreme actions being rolled out—from all the inevitable noise.