Donald Trump’s opponents have spent the days since his inauguration playing political whack-a-mole over a torrent of orders specifically calibrated to overwhelm and bewilder, say analysts, as the new president gets to work on his radical policy agenda.A chaotic first week saw him sign scores of divisive executive orders, as well as pardons or commutations for nearly everyone convicted of crimes — including serious violence — in the 2021 US Capitol insurrection.And then there were the new president’s freewheeling media appearances, the feuds with perceived enemies, dust-ups with the clergy, stripping of security details for critics, the launch of a meme crypto coin, and one headline-grabbing social media post after another.”He doesn’t just flood the zone, he drowns it,” said Evan Nierman, the founder and CEO of global crisis PR agency Red Banyan.”It’s a classic PR strategy: overwhelm, distract and control the narrative before anyone else can. Flooding the zone is his way of making sure no single controversy sticks because there’s always a new one incoming.”Longstanding Trump cheerleader Steve Bannon explained the shock-and-awe strategy in 2018, when he argued that the real opposition to the Republican billionaire was not the Democrats but the media. “And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit,” he said.”Flooding the zone” is a phrase with roots in sports lingo, originally used to describe the tactic in US football of saturating the opposition’s defense until a weak spot opens.- Assault on Congress -But Bannon was also echoing a widespread authoritarian move, premised on the notion that politicians can avoid scrutiny over any individual outrage by bombarding and overwhelming the public’s attention span.The blizzard of headlines is disorienting, and it is supposed to be, say analysts. The point isn’t to persuade anyone of anything, it’s simply to ensure that critics don’t mobilize around a coherent narrative and that no one has control over the flow of information.”By throwing out an overwhelming number of policy changes and provocations, Trump has presented his opponents with giant game of whack-a-mole stacked very much in his favor,” political scientist Michael Montgomery, of the University of Michigan-Dearborn, told AFP.In his first week Trump dived headlong into America’s culture wars, ending all federal diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.There was a stay of execution for Chinese-owned app TikTok, a back-to-the-office demand for federal workers, a hiring freeze, renamings of the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali and a likely unconstitutional order to end birthright citizenship.This week Trump — whose approval rating is at its highest ever — sowed chaos across government agencies with a pause on most federal grants, launching a frontal assault on Congress’s constitutional role as controller of the budget.He was forced into something of a climbdown amid a ferocious backlash. But nearly forgotten in the furor were other extraordinary measures, including his firing — widely considered to be illegal — of 18 inspectors general, who are independent watchdogs of the federal government.The firing of multiple officials who had previously worked on the federal criminal investigations into Trump was likewise overlooked. – ‘Yesterday’s outrage’ -Katherine Cartwright, a co-founder of media buying agency Criterion Global, sees Trump as a vector of “Disaster Attention Deficit Disorder” — leaving those deluged by demands on their attention paralyzed, like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights Another attention tactic in which Trumpworld excels, she says, is the “Friday drop” — ensuring the most unwelcome headlines arrive late in the week and burn out quickly as people lose interest though the weekend. Trump’s new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — a TV host with no relevant management experience and serious questions over his character — was confirmed on a Friday and “washed from the news by Monday morning,” Cartwright said.Nierman, the crisis PR expert, sees the president’s unpredictability as both strategy and reflex. “Trump thrives in the churn, where the public’s attention shifts too fast for any one scandal to stick,” he said.”While everyone else scrambles to process yesterday’s outrage, he’s already on to the next, ensuring his version of events dominates both the day’s headlines and social media conversation.”But the long-term risk of flooding the zone, says Nierman, is the kind of Trump fatigue that caused voters to vote him out of office after his first term. “Even loyal supporters can grow tired of constant turmoil,” he told AFP. “And swing voters may ultimately crave stability over spectacle.”

Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to head the FBI, faces a potentially fiery Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday amid staunch Democratic opposition to his nomination to head the top US law enforcement agency.Patel, 44, has drawn fire for his promotion of conspiracy theories, his defense of pro-Trump rioters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and his vow to root out members of the so-called “Deep State” who oppose the Republican president.Republicans have a 12-10 majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the panel is likely to approve the nomination of the former Trump advisor and Pentagon official, sending it to the full Senate where his prospects are less certain.Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate but three Republican senators voted against Trump’s inexperienced nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, forcing Vice President JD Vance to cast the tie-breaking vote.If confirmed, Patel, who holds a law degree from Pace University and worked as a federal prosecutor, would replace Christopher Wray as director of the 38,000-strong Federal Bureau of Investigation.Wray was named by Trump to head the FBI but their relations became strained. Wray had three more years remaining in his 10-year term but resigned after Trump won November’s presidential election.A son of Indian immigrants, the New York-born Patel served in several high-level posts during Trump’s first administration including as senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council and as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary.Patel has a reputation of being a fierce defender of the president and supports the Republican hardliner notion of a “Deep State” of allegedly biased government bureaucrats working to stifle Trump from behind the scenes, even having written a book on the subject.His nomination has been denounced by Democrats and opposed by some Republicans, including more than 20 Republican former law enforcement officials who reportedly sent a letter to Republican senators urging them not to confirm Patel.According to The Hill, which obtained a copy of the letter, the Republicans said Patel lacks the “record and temperament for FBI leadership” and is “motivated by revenge.”- ‘Grave concerns’ -Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said following a recent meeting with Patel that he has “grave concerns about his fitness for the role of FBI director.””He is a staunch political loyalist who has repeatedly peddled false conspiracy theories and threatened to retaliate against those who have slighted him personally and politically,” Durbin said. “He’s even published an enemies list of 60 people who he calls ‘government gangsters.'”The senator said Patel’s “political grievances make him a favorite of the MAGA world but they have not prepared him to work night and day to keep America safe from violent crime, drug trafficking, terrorism, and other threats.”Trump has defended his choice, saying in a Truth Social post that Patel “is the most qualified Nominee to lead the FBI in the Agency’s History and is committed to helping ensure that Law, Order, and Justice will be brought back to our Country again, and soon.”Patel also got a vote of confidence from Trump’s pick to be attorney general, Pam Bondi, who said during her Senate confirmation hearing that “Kash is the right person at this time for this job.””Mr Patel would fall under me and the Department of Justice and I will ensure that all laws are followed and so will he,” Bondi added.According to US media reports, Trump sought to name Patel deputy director of the CIA or the FBI in the waning months of his first term in the White House but dropped the plan after then-CIA director Gina Haspel and then-attorney general Bill Barr threatened to resign in protest.

“Manifest Destiny” is back, with Donald Trump as its champion.In the 19th century, the phrase was used to invoke the divine justification for the United States to expand its territory westward all the way to the Pacific — in bloody campaigns that saw the conquering of Mexican and Native American lands.Trump’s second term as president, not even two weeks old, is already mixing religious fervor, nationalism and territorial expansion.The Republican has vowed to acquire Greenland — and declined to rule out the use of military force to do so. And he’s targeted the Panama Canal, insisting on taking back the key waterway from Panamanian control.Canada, meanwhile, would be better off as America’s 51st state, according to Trump.Though key to Trump’s aggressive foreign policy, threats of territorial expansion more akin to the 19th century have rattled Washington’s modern diplomatic relationships.Manifest Destiny was “a belief on the part of some Americans, in a particular moment in American history, that God intended this country to expand from one coast to the other,” historian Alan Kraut, of American University, told AFP.”That was sort of the American conception of itself: this was a country that had been somehow blessed by God with great resources… (and) vast amounts of land, and now it was being filled with people from various other parts of the world who were coming here in ever greater numbers.”- Tarnished president honored -If Manifest Destiny entwined religion and nationalism, Trump himself hasn’t shied away from those themes either.After two assassination attempts on the campaign trail, he said at his inauguration on January 20 that he was “saved by God to make America great again.”His own Manifest Destiny also includes 21st century twists.”We will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars, launching American astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars,” Trump said during his inauguration speech.US westward expansion in the 1800s was a particularly violent era in American history, with a war against Mexico and the dispossession of Native Americans.One of the grimmer chapters was the so-called “Trail of Tears,” where thousands of Native Americans were forced out of the US southeast.A portrait of president Andrew Jackson (1829-37), whose Indian Removal Act spurred what modern historians have in retrospect called the ethnic cleansing or genocide of the tribes, now hangs in the Oval Office at Trump’s request.Manifest Destiny was also key in the acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines and Hawaii under William McKinley, in office from 1897-1901.The tallest peak in North America used to bear his name before president Barack Obama renamed the Alaskan mountain to Denali, the name used by Alaska Natives.One of Trump’s first acts of office was to rename it Mount McKinley.- Outdated? -Reviving 19th-century style imperialist expansion won’t come without a fight, however.Canada, Greenland and Panama have all pushed back on Trump’s rhetoric, which is itself a callback to a young American nation teeming with immigrants and a booming population — a far cry from the president’s isolationist vision today.”Manifest Destiny of the old fashioned kind, of the 19th century kind, is gone, right?” said the historian Kraut.”There are other countries in the world that are powerful, there’s an interdependence among countries, whether Mr Trump realizes it or not.”

Latin American leaders have canceled a summit to discuss Donald Trump’s migrant crackdown, as the region weighs the risks of openly confronting the firebrand US president.Honduras had called an urgent meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to discuss migration after the blazing row between Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro over the weekend.But Honduras was forced to cancel the meeting after no prominent regional leaders apart from Petro confirmed their attendance.The dispute saw Trump rapidly move to enact tariffs and other sanctions on Colombia after Petro blocked the arrival of US military aircraft carrying deported migrants.Within hours, the White House said Bogota had folded to its demands.Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum denied Wednesday that she and other leaders were afraid of invoking Trump’s ire.”Our link with Latin America exists, and will continue to exist,” she insisted.Yet the fate suffered by Petro appears to have given other leaders cause for reflection.Sandra Borda, professor of political science at the University of the Andes in Bogota, blamed what she described as Petro’s ham-fisted diplomacy for the lack of regional unity.- Defying diktats -“The way President Petro launched the conversation with Washington destroyed any possibility of consensus,” she said.”Everyone is scared because Washington has bared its teeth and we know what happens when we do not follow the diktats.”In a sign of the shift, Honduran President Xiomara Castro, who had threatened to close US military bases if Trump carried out mass deportations, struck a less defiant tone this week.Castro said she was considering chartering flights to bring home Honduran migrants in an “orderly” fashion and called for “dialogue.”In Brazil, meanwhile, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was silent on the treatment meted out to a group of migrants who arrived home by plane to his country in handcuffs.Brazil’s government summoned the top US envoy to Latin America’s biggest economy to explain the “flagrant disregard” for the migrants’ rights but crucially did not lay down any condition for accepting more deportation flights.Michael Shifter, senior fellow at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue think tank, said Latin American leaders were walking a tightrope in the Trump 2.0 era.”On the one hand leaders feel they have to accommodate Trump to some extent. But complete capitulation… without at least taking a stand and drawing some lines is also not good (domestic) politics.”- ‘Give and take’ -Petro’s swashbuckling approach to Trump — in a rambling late-night post on X the former left-wing guerrilla vowed not to bow to “slave drivers” — contrasted sharply with the measured tone taken by Sheinbaum.Mexico’s first female leader has refused to be rattled by months of threats of steep tariffs from Trump, pointing to her predecessor’s close relationship with Trump during his first mandate as proof the neighbors can collaborate.Her pragmatic approach has seen her defend Mexicans as the backbone of the US economy while acting to curb illegal migration and drug trafficking.Sheinbaum had managed to straddle the line between “dignity and realism,” political analyst Jorge Zepeda Patterson wrote in Milenio newspaper.In a sign of how their tactics have played with voters, Sheinbaum’s ratings have soared while Petro was roasted in Colombia, a longtime US ally in the war on drugs, for his rumble with Trump.Colombia’s right-wing former president Ivan Duque accused his 64-year-old predecessor of “an act of tremendous irresponsibility.”Shifter however rejected Trump’s claim of an unconditional Colombian surrender, noting that “there was some give and take,” including a stay, at least for now, on US military deportations to the country.Welcoming home migrants repatriated by the Colombian air force on Tuesday, Petro said they were “in their homeland, where they are loved.”burs-cb/des