On distraction and focus

The stuff Trump does is not a distraction; the key is to not focus on all of it

On Joe Biden’s first day in office in 2021, he went into the Oval Office and signed a flurry of executive orders, including:

• rejoining the US in the Paris Climate Accords and the World Health Organization

• extending eviction and student loan moratoriums as a Covid-era measure

• revoking the permit on the Keystone XL pipeline

• ending Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission

• strengthening legal protections for DREAMers while ending Trump’s Muslim Ban

• banning workplace discrimination against LGBT employees

It was a lot! And in an era when moving legislation through Congress has become especially difficult, this sort of quick early executive action on a great deal of policy priorities and campaign promises has become a feature of the modern presidency. The First Hundred Days has become The First Day. So when people are claiming that Trump’s onslaught of executive orders during his first week in office are overwhelming, it’s important to be clear: this isn’t about the number of orders. That’s pretty common. It’s about the substance of them.

Perhaps inevitably, some of Trump’s executive orders this week (and Biden’s before him, and Trump’s before him, and Obama’s before him, etc.) are just reversals of the previous president’s executive orders. I don’t mean to diminish these, as they can have massive impacts on many people’s lives. But that has become a part of the modern presidency. And in an era when the two parties often trade White House control back and forth from election to election, citizens and foreign governments know that a lot of these policies, commitments, and even treaties with the United States are pretty ephemeral.

One of the things I’ve heard from Trump observers and critics over the past week — and heard a lot during his first term — was warnings to not be distracted. For example, Elon Musk’s Hitler salute is a distraction from the more important fact that the President is openly in the pocket of multi-billionaires, or Trump’s plan to rename the Gulf of Mexico is a distraction from his other more disturbing foreign policy goals, or Trump getting billions of dollars through a memecoin scheme is a distraction from his cruel immigration plans.

I disagree with this. The fact that a close supporter of the President’s with a White House office who owns a social media company is publicly praising Neo-Nazis and Nazi-Nazis is an issue! As is his influence over Trump. The fact that Trump has imperialist goals is important! The fact that Trump is using his public office to openly solicit billions of dollars in an unregulated and unrecorded way is important (and a violation of the Constitution)!

But I would agree with others, including David Bernstein, that you really can’t focus on all of it. I’m no therapist, but I think the smart approach is to focus on just a handful of key issues that you think aren’t getting enough attention or are getting the wrong sort of attention. If you just want to focus on birthright citizenship, there will be more than enough news for you to focus on, (and there are already plenty of really bad takes that need correcting). If you’re concerned about Trump’s open alliance with the wealthiest people on the planet, you’ve got plenty to work on. Personally, I haven’t figured out what my focus will be, but I’m going to work very hard to have a focus.

There are 1,459 days remaining in this administration. This is a marathon, not a sprint.