Signals overlap and at times contradict, with real direction embedded across channels rather than declared outright. Join us on Telegram , Twitter , and VK . Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su Trump has lost his mind. At least according to America’s most loved MAGA pundit influencers and politicians who have been attacking Trump all season, casting him as irredeemably insane in light of his apparent grotesque mutation or cooption as an unhinged warmonger subordinated to neoconservatives at home and to Likudnik Israel abroad. Gone are the days of peacemaking and unexpected diplomatic moves like the North Korea opening, rapprochement with Russia as a major and highlighted theme; moments that left progressive doves envious and exposed their own inability to deliver on the hopes they once placed in Obama. What happened to reindustrializing the country, affordable housing and healthcare, taking on the CIA and the globalists, and in short, ‘Making America Great Again’?
We would mention Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, Marjorie Taylor Green, as household names, with perhaps a few others, that were known not only for their endorsement of Trump, but in many ways some of the key figures who helped define what MAGA was. And now this season an apparently unhinged, insane, compromised, or senile Trump took to “Truth Social” the other day to get it all clearly into the open what he personally thinks about these characters, and it wasn’t pretty. We say “season” because, by and large, most of this is a scripted series, like one would find on Netflix or Amazon, only far better written. In that sense, we are in season two of the show “47”, the confusing though still popular spin-off or sequel to “45”, and also “46”, that season where things took a strange turn as America was run by a senile war-mongering fraudster, his son on the run from the law, and an autopen, while Trump operated in the background the type of shadow presidency that Obama tried to operate between 2017 and 2020.
Now one could wax on about the decay of American culture, what an effective American populism would look like in the age of four second TikTok clips, ADHD as a pandemic, Monster energy drinks, legalized marijuana, organized distraction as a religion, and declining IQ . But few really have risen to the task of explaining how an effective American leader would then operationalize these to turn a corner and play it to their advantage when their end game was to work against the very same misleadership that had engendered this decay. We know that much of this will fall on deaf ears, but land on the right ones. Those who really want to know, those who really seek, will find, if they are able.
But working against any understanding are a few heuristic prejudices that have been maliciously placed in the collective consciousness, and we first have to empty these from our glass before we can receive any bit of truth. The first is that pernicious cultural psyop known as Hanlon’s razor, and then naturally that total bastardization and misreading of Ockham’s razor, the mutated form which then made possible Hanlon’s. Rather than a vulgarized “simplicity” or “stupidity,” we need to understand the great stakes involved. Indeed, the fate of the world hinges on all of this. What we are seeing is not incompetence, but art.
To wit, as we have long laid out, what you are seeing in Trump is not the antics of a buffoon, but a highly competent strategist and expert communicator, utilizing multilayered and multivoiced communication in a way no one else has in living memory, with a predictably unpredictable course of managed chaos.
We have previously laid out that Trump outsources his foreign policy to either those he declares as foes (Venezuela, Iran), or at other times, to those the deep-state and their legacy media insist ought to be our foes (Russia and “Russia collusion”). These tactics fit into his broader bouquet of stratagems, both in policy and in messaging, towards the total grand strategy. Some of these fit the same model of “judo” which Russian President Putin is known for, and Trump has no doubt learned and borrowed some of these methods from the master.
For instance; how does one transform a society run by oligarchs (think “Yeltsin era”), into a society where the oligarchs are subordinate to the state? But Trump has adapted these to American conditions and the American culture, in a time and place which one might call “The Stupid Ages”.
For years we have written on the domestic strategy, and of course the global grand strategy which includes reducing America’s imprint around the world, while improving its power in the Western hemisphere, a decade before the administration would itself officially declare this.
But what of these communication tactics that are getting him there? Have people already forgotten about the huge Elon Musk “Epstein files” blow up, where suddenly Trump and Musk were bitter opponents until the very end, bent on each other’s mutual destruction, to “draw attention” to Trump not releasing the Epstein investigation documents (with prosecutions) after having made it one of his election platform promises?
Then, legacy media and liberal/left opposition took the bait and even led the entire ‘release the Epstein files’ campaign – a program still in the works, but one which will no doubt lead to the downfall of the very political actors trolled into calling for their release. But then suddenly, Musk and Trump were seen at a ballgame together, and magically their relationship was fine. This is just one example of a broader pattern.
Limited by time and space considerations, we will deliver a rough outline to better help contextualize Trump’s communication strategy, and also the methods themselves, which in so doing also deliver tremendous insight into how power operates inside the United States. [Forgive repetition/overlap.]
1. The U.S. President is not a sovereign power with eyes and ears everywhere. He operates inside a vast, competing power complex so labyrinthine it renders the U.S. effectively non-agreement-capable. This non-agreeability was a luxury, even an asset, when the country was the world’s sole global superpower. It emerged during the post–Cold War neocon and neoliberal ascent, driven by globalist fantasies and the Washington Consensus mandate. But the U.S. now needs to become agreement-capable. Therefore, Trump’s chaos is actually controlled, and his moves and signals are intelligible by competent intelligence agencies in the world.
2. The U.S. President is like a Chief Negotiator and a CEO. There are multiple stakeholders: finance, defense sector, media blocs, party factions, foreign lobbies, intelligence networks, plurality shareholders. These are powerful and nagging enough that they can push Trump into rolling out a policy or “product”, even though he knows these will fail or will derail the grand strategy. They will push for this to be done, and if he doesn’t, it becomes a node of opposition ; meanwhile more layers in society may believe this policy etc. may be a good one, and no one will know how foolish it actually is until its tried. Why not just judo it
3. As Chief Negotiator or a CEO, he has to include their demands and products, even roll them out. Trump cannot openly break with all of them at once without triggering coordinated resistance, nor is it necessary to break with all of them, when dividing, capture, coercion, and redirection are also often preferable , even necessary.
4. Trump must balance, stall, redirect, and fragment pressures on these “products and policies” rather than confront directly and uses split signaling : real direction vs. cover direction. He works covertly to inform the counterparties through signaling (other leaders of the world in government, finance, business).
5. Trump even manages to therefore sabotage or work quietly against the very same “policies and products” he was forced to roll out. Even kinetic activities. Even wars. Example, Iran: Why did he green light protests to happen in January, where insurgents objectively burnt their resources out when the war was not started until March? Then he told Iranians not to protest in March. Why did he refuse to arm the Kurds? Why did he shoo away NATO and the British? And then accuse them of not helping? These were three huge factors required for any “potential” success against Iran (and here we mean, by their own projections – Iran would have likely still survived it).
6. Not all statements are equal; some are bait, some are positioning, some are actual intent. There are also deliberate contradictions as method , not failure, confusion, frustration, or incompetence.
7. Bait works to draw attention to the subject itself, especially when Trump appears to take a bizarre or ‘unexpected’, unpopular position . Sometimes it is simply to draw attention to an otherwise mundane subject, using his wild antics to draw hostile media attention which amplifies it beyond the confines of the embargo on his speech. Other times hostile legacy media which is set on ‘autopilot’ to attack everything he says, will invariably wind up approximating his own true position and telegraphing to the public and the world at large, thinking they are contradicting him.
8. Outsourcing signal through critics . Manufactured opposition with aligned or semi-aligned figures like those named in Trump’s “Truth post” above. Public friction does not equal real break. This keeps probably trusted “opposed” figures in orbit and focus while creating apparent/visible disagreement
9. This expands reach across audiences that wouldn’t accept direct messaging. Recent/direct access between these figures and Donald Trump implies at minimum baseline alignment or awareness. E.g. Owens and Carlson.
10. “Independent criticism” from “disillusioned MAGA” thus functions as distribution channel, not opposition. Critics isolate and amplify specific lines. Repetition embeds message deeper than friendly coverage would.
11. Message inversion dynamic . Hostile media acts as involuntary relay system. Outrage cycle = amplification mechanism. Negative framing still spreads core message. Allies are not always primary carriers. Critics often carry the “real” message further and louder.
12. Layered communication structure - Direct statements (mixed intent)
- - Semi-aligned commentators (controlled divergence)
- - Hostile media (amplification)
- - Public narrative (chaos, fragmentation)
- 13. “MAGA in crisis” narrative . Media frames disagreements as collapse, and focuses on covert friendly pundits/politicians. Provides cover for coordinated divergence. Makes alignment look like fragmentation. Maintains bench of reliable critics / semi-detached voices . Can distance, criticize, or “break” on cue without exiting orbit.
- Creates flexibility and deniability . Political insulation . Signals tailored to appease or neutralize hostile domestic factions (neocon, ideological blocs, etc.) Prevents internal/external revolt (Mark Levine, Lindsay Graham, Likudniks) while pursuing different underlying direction.
- 14. Negotiation tactic . Public maximalism vs private positioning. Opening position is not the real objective. Threats, exaggeration, and posture used as leverage. Parallel tracks: Public hostility vs. private contact
- Diplomatic backchannels (Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, etc.) alongside antagonistic rhetoric. Diplomacy with Russia (via Dmitriev) is merely an open example of this, which leads to the conclusion a.) it happens, but misleadingly b.) only openly when it does
- - Controlled ambiguity : Keeps multiple interpretations alive. Prevents opponents from locking onto a single clear strategy
- - Domestic (internal) vs. International (external) signaling split . Some messages aimed at domestic factions, not foreign actors. Some “foreign policy” rhetoric is actually domestic management.
- 15. Temporal layering : Short-term media cycles vs longer strategic movement. Immediate noise vs. slow directional shifts
16. Foreign policy extension of same method . Nominal oppositional framing while maintaining selective cooperation or contact
- Works with networks inside target countries, not just official governments
- - Can align with factions currently in power or (Israel) not currently in power
- 17. Plausible deniability built into system - Can disavow statements as rhetoric
- - Can point to critics as independent
- - Can shift positions without admitting change
- Concluding End state: This outlines Trump’s controlled chaos messaging attuned to the age of digital media, along with his own impression of Putin-style judo against the Globalist factions within the U.S. and abroad; as well as against the Likudniks who for their part are operating their own chaos game, neither multipolar nor globalist. There is no single clear line of policy to those not read in, while a relatively coherent line exists for those who are. Signals overlap and at times contradict, with real direction embedded across channels rather than declared outright. What appears as chaos is in fact structured communication and deliberate maneuvering aimed at integrating the U.S. into the multipolar world in as strong as a position as possible.
Unthinking and over-confident liberal critics no doubt view this as impossible, and will discard it as a “conspiracy theory” and Six Dimensional Chess. All the while failing to realize the short time lapse between conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact, and that multi-dimensional chess is an actual phenomenon otherwise known to the thinking part of the world as “ grand strategy ”. Follow Joaquin on Telegram @NewResistance or on X/Twitter @XoaquinFlores