The Trump team is starting to do exactly what it needs to do in parallel with its aggressive transformation of the federal government – mount a public relations campaign to bring American public opinion along for the amazing ride the administration is taking us on.
I noted in other pages not so long ago that the publicexposure by Elon Musk’s DOGE team of absolutely ludicrous US taxpayer expenditures on such things asDEI musicals in Ireland, transgender comic books in Peru, and transgender operas in Colombia, even though they are paltry amounts compared to bloat and corruption in places like the Defense Department andNIH, is a brilliant public relations strategy by the Trump administration. Their lunacy is easy for the American people to grasp and simply make the public’s blood boil. Their exposure helps assure the public’s backing of the president.
Now, it seems, Team Trump is starting to do what many of us in the conservative commentariat have been urging them to do – ramp up their strategic messagingto keep their remarkable achievements front and center in the public mind.
It is evident that the administration is having many of its top officials, such as Attorney General Pam Bondi, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Senior Advisor Peter Navarro getting out and making the administration’s case every night on the airwaves. “Border Czar” Tom Homan is practically a fixture on Fox News it seems, and we see Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent venturing into enemy territory by going on NBC’s Meet the Press to make the case.
Is there a danger of one of these spokespeople going off message occasionally? Sure, but these are highly successful, media-savvy people. Trump, a maven of mass media if there ever were one, seemed to go out of his way to choose top-ranking officials who had extensive media experience. In fact, he seems to have depleted the ranks of the stable of Fox News personalities, giving Pete Hegseth the lead at Defense, Sean Duffy the job of Transportation Secretary, Tammy Bruce the job of State Department spokeswoman, andfrequent Fox contributor Mike Huckabee the role of US Ambassador to Israel. Jesse Watters recently quipped that he was hurt he hadn’t been offered a cabinet post.
And why wouldn’t Trump have chosen this strategy? He is surely the most media-savvy President in history, with arguably only Ronald Reagan vying for that distinction. Trump co-produced and starred in a top-rated television show, The Apprentice, which ran on NBC for 15 years. He masterfully crafted an image in the public mind of a no-nonsense, calculating businessexecutive who reveled in testing executive candidates and telling those who didn’t make the cut, in front of a television audience, “You’re fired!”
During his campaign, Trump quickly recognized and embraced in a major way, before any other national candidate had, the use of podcast interviews to get his message out. It seemed like there was not a podcast Trump would not do, his presence became so ubiquitous in that media format. The incredibly inept, and surely worst presidential candidate ever proffered by a major US political party, Kamala Harris, had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do such interviews. The ones that she did agree to do were generally done by fawning sycophants, like “Who’s Your Daddy” host Alex Cooper, which even the LA Times noted had been characterized by viewers as “propagating talking points of the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee.” When Harris attempted to do interviews with mainstream (albeit, left-wing) journalists, things didn’t go well. A rambling, utterly incoherent response to a question posed by Bill Whitaker of “60 Minutes” about Israel was literally edited out and re-shot because it was so bad. Then there was her cringeworthy co-interview with her very strange running mate, Tim Walz, by CNN’s Dana Bash.
Now we see really epic videos with high production values being published, apparently by Republican/Trump operatives, and making their way around social media, which are exactly what is needed to further advance the Trump agenda. There was this one, which should delight conservatives and send a chill down Hillary Clinton’s spine. It neatly summarizesHillary Clinton’s campaign paying outside political operatives to manufacture bogus “intelligence” about alleged Trump-Russian “collusion”, and then launder that bogus intelligence into the FBI, wherein utterly corrupt officials, like James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and Bruce and Nellie Ohr, tried to bring down the first Trump campaign and thenpresidency through a fraudulently predicated investigation. These people should all be in prison, along with Hillary herself.
And then there was this superb video highlighting the Trump administration’s operations to deport the worst of the worst illegal aliens that the Biden administration not only welcomed into the country, but encouraged to flock here.
The fact is that the Trump administration is operating on so many fronts to make America great again, that it almost resembles President Lincoln’s “Anaconda Strategy”, which sought to encircle and slowly crush the forces of the Confederacy. The American people are stunned by the number of initiatives the president is pursuing.
One of the president’s biggest challenges right now is keeping the American citizenry informed of everything he is doing, and the positive effects his initiatives are having. They need to be continually apprised through a multipronged approach, using clear, well-produced videos, like those just described, well-spoken senior administration officials doing frequent appearances on major news outlets and podcasts, and regular appearances by the president himself in one of his most effective venues – large rallies.
All the great, transformative presidents of the past recognized the importance of connecting with the American people and convincing them of the importance of their initiatives. President Trump shouldassign as much importance to his public relationsstrategy as he does tothe policies he is executing, and it seems that is exactly what he is doing.
William F. Marshall has been an intelligence analyst and investigator in the government, private, and non-profit sectors for 38 years. He is a senior investigator for Judicial Watch, Inc., and has been a contributor to Townhall, American Thinker, Epoch Times, The Federalist, American Greatness, and other publications. His work has been featured on CBS News 48 Hours Mysteries and NBC News Dateline. (The views expressed are the author’s alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.)