On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s administration rescinded the Office of Management and Budget memo that instituted his disastrous funding freeze, an apparent surrender amid a national outcry. Soon after, Trump pushed a bizarre lie about $50 million supposedly being spent on condoms for Hamas in Gaza. These kinds of things are often described as a “flood the zone” strategy, in which Trump throws so many lies and abuses of power at us that we can’t keep up. But what if this approach is more likely to backfire? We talked to The New Republic’s Timothy Noah, author of a good analysis of Trump’s chaos strategy, who explains why the hidden story here is that Trump is best seen as “a weak president.” Listen to this episode here. A transcript is here.
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“A Weak President”: Trump’s Chaos Strategy Implodes in Epic OMB Fiasco
As Trump backtracks on his funding freeze, the author of a new piece on his “chaos strategy” explains why this is already failing—and how it reveals him as both authoritarian and weak.
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