"Trump is acting like a king because he's too weak to govern like a president"

I just listened to a 14 minute Sunday episode of the EKS. It's a good cautiously optimistic take on the first two weeks of Trump v2.0. Gift article: Don't Believe Him.

Ezra points out that while we're getting this onslaught of executive orders, it's rather incoherent, chaotic, and could backfire. He's issuing all these EOs because he knows major legislation wouldn't pass a House where Republicans have a razor thin majority. And anyway at least some of these EOs will get blocked by judges.

In this flailing administration there are so many leaks and also staff getting blindsided by things that go public that they weren't aware of. He discusses an email crafted by Elon Musk urging a ton of federal employees to retire early, but that seems to be getting some pushback.

The other notable part of this brief episode is at the start: Steve Bannon talking about how to "flood the zone" - just overwhelm the media with so much that they can't handle. Ezra expresses skepticism though, because for it to succeed you have to keep hammering away, which can be hard to sustain.

It reminds me of Bannon's "flood the zone with shit" interview. You all remember that, right? I can't find the original but it's appeared in Vox several times, such as this one.