SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
President Trump has had a lot to say his first two weeks back in office, just as he floods the zone with executive orders, and presidential memoranda. Trump is also filling the airwaves with presidential commentary on a wide range of topics. As NPR senior White House correspondent, Tamara Keith reports, the Trump show is back.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: After a traumatic event, like the midair collision between a commercial airliner and an army helicopter, the American people expect to see the president in the role of comforter-in-chief.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I'd like to request a moment of silence for the victims and their families, please.
KEITH: But after the silence and a few sentences about a nation in anguish, President Trump veered sharply from the script presidents typically follow in a situation like this.
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TRUMP: We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions and ideas, and I think we'll probably state those opinions now.
KEITH: And state them he did - blaming the helicopter, air traffic control, diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the FAA and Democrats. Later in the day, he summoned the press again.
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TRUMP: Thank you very much for seeing me twice today. It's going to be quite an important signing, so we thought we'd let you watch.
KEITH: It was just another day in the Trump presidency.
CHRIS WHIPPLE: Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
KEITH: Chris Whipple is the author of "The Gatekeepers," a book about White House chiefs of staff. He says the fire hose of Trump content is all the more jarring because it follows four years of Biden.
WHIPPLE: They hit him. They had him hermetically sealed away for four years. We're now seeing the exact opposite of that with Trump, and it can be just as ineffective in its own way.
KEITH: Matthew Seeger is a professor at Wayne State University and has spent his career studying the best ways to communicate in a crisis or disaster situation.
MATTHEW SEEGER: One of the fundamental characteristics of a crisis like this is uncertainty. What happened? Why? Who was involved? Are there going to be more events like this? What should we do? Those are the kinds of questions that people want answered.
KEITH: Wildly speculating about possible causes doesn't help, Seeger says. It just risks injecting politics, division and even more uncertainty. He says Trump has long been effective at harnessing the media's spotlight. Remember the COVID briefings? Even in situations where it would be better if politicians hung back.
SEEGER: Disasters are always media events. So it is not surprising that he is taking advantage of these events as opportunities to demonstrate that he is in control.
KEITH: During his first week in office, Trump visited North Carolina and Los Angeles to survey the damage from natural disasters that happened before he took office.
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TRUMP: It is devastation. It's incredible. It's really an incineration. Even some of the chimneys came down, OK? When you have the chimneys come down, you know that's pretty hot stuff and a lot of them were down. That was a bad sign, too.
KEITH: Trump even mused that he might get rid of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or at least upend how it operates. He took questions from reporters six separate times in that single day. On the flight back east, Trump came to the press cabin on Air Force One.
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TRUMP: You're getting a little bit more access to your president than you did the last time slightly, like, by about 5,000%.
KEITH: Trump's TV programming approach to the presidency has changed the game, says Michael LaRosa, who was press secretary for first lady Jill Biden.
MICHAEL LAROSA: The days of scripted, rehearsed and practiced politicians are over.
KEITH: And LaRosa says as long as Trump dominates the attention economy, at least on some level, he's winning.
LAROSA: The more you have him talking to reporters, the less room there will be in your stories and your reports from other voices who may have contradictory feelings or may challenge the premise of the president.
KEITH: Political scientist Martha Joynt Kumar, who tracks presidential interactions with journalists, says in his first 11 days, Trump did more Q&As with the press than in the entire first month of his first term. Trump is back and has even more to say.
Tamara Keith, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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