NPR’s Leila Fadel speaks with Todd Belt of George Washington University about whether there’s a strategy behind President Trump’s fixation on a UFC fight and building projects across Washington, D.C.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
For more on what President Trump is focusing his attention on, we’re joined by Todd Belt. He’s the director of the Political Management Program at the George Washington University, where he studies mass media, public opinion and the presidency. Good morning, and welcome to the program.
TODD BELT: Great to be with you, Leila. Thanks for having me on.
FADEL: So we just heard about how much time Trump is devoting to these building projects, how he goes on tangents talking about them at completely unrelated events. Do you see a strategy behind this?
BELT: Oh, absolutely. We have data and some academic scholarship that shows that when there is bad news about Donald Trump on Fox News, which is where he gets his news, then we see an increase in the amount of social media posting that he does and also a variation in the amount of topics that he is pushing out there. So the correlation shows that there’s definitely something there, but of course, that’s not enough to prove that he’s doing it intentionally. We have to look at the pattern and practice in his own statements, and those very clearly show that this is intentional.
FADEL: So if it’s about distraction, is it working – flooding the news cycle with comments and social media posts?
BELT: It does seem to work. Some studies have shown that when Donald Trump starts pushing other ideas and other policies that he talks about in his social media posts into the greater media ecosphere, then you see less commentary on the actual initial type of bad news that he was responding to.
FADEL: Do Americans care, though, about a ballroom, the building of an arch, a UFC fight that seems to be for profit when the economy’s doing badly, when the U.S. started a war it can’t seem to get out of?
BELT: Absolutely not. And although we see, you know, that Donald Trump has, as we say, a high floor with a lot of people that will just never break with him in terms of his public approval ratings, there are some that are starting to – some of the America Firsters, who say that all this distraction is getting away from the attention on the economy. And in our GW Politics Poll, we found that’s what actually vaulted him into office in 2024, and he’s really neglecting that. And looking at all these international affairs and the ballroom, as you mentioned, and other things really seems like a big distraction from the thing that a lot of people elected him to do, which is fix the economy.
FADEL: The president also makes a lot of abrupt pivots, as he did on Thursday when he posted that the U.S. will attack Iran, quote, “very hard tonight.” Just a few hours later, he announced on Truth Social that a peace deal with Iran is imminent, something he’s said repeatedly and hasn’t come to fruition. So it can feel like whiplash. How should we understand these swings?
BELT: Absolutely, it feels like whiplash, and he’s been doing that for eight weeks now. And this is just his strategy of throwing everything at it. And this goes back to his days in – as a real estate magnate. He said in “The Art Of The Deal” that if you’re a little different or outrageous and the things you do are controversial, the press is going to write about you. And he followed that pattern of all press is good press, the – sort of the old Hollywood statement about, you know, trying to generate any sort of press to create a larger-than-life persona.
And he did this in 2016. I mean, he’s credited for about $2.4 billion worth of free media because of his tweets back then. He knows that this is going to work for him. And he’s said even to William Barr that a good tweet has just the right amount of crazy. So throwing a lot of outrageous statements out there and keeping people off balance is a tactic that has worked for him in the past, and so it’s obvious that he’s going to continue with it.
FADEL: Todd Belt directs the Political Management Program at the George Washington University. Thank you for your time.
BELT: Great to be on. Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF DAN HASTIE & TERIN ECTOR’S “TIMELESS TALES”)
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