Nearly every antic that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have pulled off since inauguration day has been meant to keep Americans as off-balance as possible, for as long as possible, according to a new piece by The New Yorker's Errol Louis.
Louis argued that the chaos America will experience over Trump's first 100 days is all part of a well-thought-out strategy "intended to minimize accountability by leaving the president’s critics demoralized, distracted, and disoriented, unable to figure out which battles should be fought."
Louis cited some of the major distractions used to "flood the zone with s--t," as Steve Bannon likes to say, including Trump undermining NATO, wanting to annex Canada and Greenland, attacking transgender Americans, pardoning violent Jan. 6 offenders, agreeing to what has been compared to a "quid pro quo" with New York Mayor Eric Adams — that caused a "mini-revolt" at the Justice Department — renaming the Gulf of Mexico, mass firings, granting DOGE access to pretty much everything — the list goes on and on.
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But there is a way to cut through the clutter to get at the heart of the matter Trump and Musk don't want Americans to see, Louis posited.
"That starts with identifying — and downplaying — sucker bait like Trump’s mid–Super Bowl announcement that he had 'instructed my Secretary of the U.S. Treasury to stop producing new pennies.'"
Louis continued, "Whenever Trump or his aides start blowing smoke, the question to ask is: What are they trying to hide? In my opinion, the most important story to focus on — the one that they want us all to ignore — is the shocking, open corruption and self-dealing by Musk and the Trump family."
Louis also had advice for the media tasked with covering the day-to-day upheaval:
"All news reports about the Trump-Musk dismantling of our government should include phrases like 'the businessman, whose companies currently hold billions of dollars in government contracts from the very agencies he is probing' or 'Musk, who stands to make money by weakening the agencies that regulate his private business.'"
Louis concluded, "The response to Trump and Musk from every newsroom in the country should be to flood the zone with truth."