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Donald Trump has constantly attempted to sow distrust into the media since he entered politics. This has had a destabilising effect on American Democracy as a whole, given that much of the population no longer trusts the news supplied to them by ‘mainstream media’.
In 2019, Steve Bannon (Trump’s Chief Strategist for the beginning 7 months of his first presidency) revealed his administration’s media strategy. He described the media as “the opposition party” and believes that they can only follow one breaking story at a time because “they’re dumb and lazy.” Trump’s method is to therefore “flood the zone” by pelting 3 different stories at the media each day, hoping that “they’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done.” This approach was also seen in the first week of Trump’s second term as he ‘flooded the zone’ with dozens of executive orders, covering all parts of the political system. The media and the Democrats simply couldn’t keep up and therefore the bulk of the executive orders weren’t scrutinised and challenged in the media.
Trump seeing the media as the “opposition” is concerning given that its main function is to inform the people of what is going on in the world. The hostility he shows towards what he calls the ‘mainstream media’ leads to its distrust among his supporters which is dangerous to democracy. If Trump supporters don’t trust the ‘mainstream media’, the democratic institutions such as the Supreme Court, Congress, and the Senate that make up the supposed ‘deep state’ and only trust the words of Trump, then a situation such as the January 6th insurrection is more likely to occur. Perhaps the largest difference between the public’s beliefs and the media’s information was started by Trump, continually insisting that he did not lose the 2020 election.
Trump has embraced alternative media sources such as social media and podcasts, especially during his 2024 election campaign. He appeared on 12 different podcasts during his campaign, such as the Joe Rogan podcast which has since been listened to 55 million times. He turned down interviews with major news outlets, such as ’60 Minutes’, instead opting for what he saw as friendly venues with direct access to his audience.
In another encouragement of his followers to turn away from established media outlets, Trump has broken convention in allowing anyone to apply for a White House press badge. This would allow them access to news conferences in which Trump usually faces his most challenging questioning. Allowing content creators to attend press conferences will help Trump as he attempts to spread his news, fake or not, to all newspapers, news channels, and social media platforms.
Image: Trump, July 2024, by Rawpixel // CC0 1.0
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