President Donald Trump's transition team and outside allies have been signaling for weeks that they were planning to "flood the zone" in the first 100 days of the new administration. Former senior adviser and activist Steve Bannon had pushed this idea during Trump's first term, telling author and journalist Michael Lewis that "the Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with s**t.” He called it "shock and awe," which was described by historian Douglas Brinkley as "bizarre, rapid-fire presidential policy making."
"[E]very day there’s a new, radical initiative, and it doesn’t give journalists or the public a chance to get a grip on what just happened."
