With President Donald Trump it’s a never-ending cycle of “provocation, reaction, normalization, and forgetting,” but Fulcrum publisher David Nevins said the public and the media can end the cycle.
Between outrageous statements to “suspend elections,” and claiming his “own morality” is the sole limit to his power, Trump likes to make random outbursts. But are these remarks just random outbursts, “or are they part of a deliberate strategy to control and distort the public conversation,” asked Nevins.
“The pattern is now clear. Trump says something extreme, his critics react with shock, and his supporters normalize it. After a day or two of dominating the news, the story shifts again. The shocking remark or action is quickly replaced by the next provocation,” said Nevins. “This isn’t random. It’s a strategy to control the news cycle and dull the impact of the outrageous.”
Trump’s cruel, hyperbolic and delegitimizing statements serve the consistent purpose of keeping the public in a state of “reactive attention.”
“When the political environment is shaped by his words, [Trump] controls the frame. When opponents feel compelled to respond, he controls the message. When institutions scramble to interpret or contain his statements, he controls the terrain,” said Nevins. “In this environment, complexity works against his opponents. Nuance is treated as a weakness. Any expression of concern is dismissed as Trump Derangement Syndrome. And so the country gets trapped in a cycle where the president’s most extreme statements aren’t outliers but instruments. They shape what the public debates, what the media amplifies, and what his supporters come to see as normal.”
But the real hazard of this stupid loop is a political culture where shock replaces substance, and the president’s words become the gravitational center of national life. Not seeing the strategy, said Nevins, makes you end up playing into it.
“And if we don’t push back, we risk accepting a political reality where truth, trust, reason, civility, and the dignity of all people … are seen not as shared commitments but as weaknesses to be used against us,” said Nevins.
Of course, the media can’t just ignore Trump’s hateful statements. But instead of focusing on the shock, they can highlight the “pattern, the repetition, the escalation, and the political purpose behind” them.
“They can provide context rather than sensationalize, analyze rather than react, and refuse to let the most inflammatory remark of the day eclipse the underlying policy consequences,” said Nevins. “This means shifting from constant ‘breaking news’ to structural reporting. Less ‘can you believe what he just said?’ and more ‘here is how these fit into a long‑running strategy to control the narrative and destabilize democratic norms.’ When the press stops feeding the fire, the blaze diminishes and so does the strategy built on it.”
With Trump’s opponents, it’s a slightly different story, but still familiar. Every time a Trump opponent responds to his extreme statements, they reinforce Trump’s centrality, said Nevins, and their outrage becomes a trap.
“The alternative is not silence — it is reframing,” Nevins said. “Opponents can shift the discussion back to concrete issues, lived experience, and the practical consequences of governance. They can highlight the gap between spectacle and substance, between rhetoric and results. The best way to counter the politics of provocation is with steadiness.”
