Trump’s ‘Muzzle Velocity’

The Trump administration’s rapid-fire set of proposals that distract us all and allow the administration to execute on an audacious and dangerous set of policies

Demonstrators protest against cuts to American foreign aid spending, including USAID and the PEPFAR program to combat HIV/AIDS, at the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill, Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025, in Washington. (Photo by: Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press)

They call it “muzzle velocity.”

Inside the Trump administration, it refers to the rapid-fire sequencing of bullets on a target and the term was coined in this political context by former advisor Steve Bannon to refer to a strategy which “floods the zone” with one outrageous initiative after another to keep the opposition disoriented.

“Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity,” Bannon said in an interview with PBS FRONTLINE back in 2019.

In the first 50 days of Trump’s second term, we’ve seen it time after time, and yet, America still falls for it, especially our tribe of journalists. Trump says something outrageous and the entire media turns on its heels to focus on it, relegating the coverage of other, more important topics, to the background.

This tactic has been deployed with overwhelming effect. The president suggests Canada should become the 51s state. Then he says that it was President Zelensky not Putin who started the war in Ukraine, then that the U.S. “owns” Gaza, among dozens of other statements that are as outrageous as they are false. Then Trump’s advisor, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, jumps on a stage wielding a chainsaw saying that all of USAID, which offers crucial aid to the poorest in the world, should be “put through a wood chipper.”

We go from one outrage to the next. Bannon himself declared victory last month in an interview with Semafor’s Ben Smith, saying, “Of course. It’s worked … The media is in a complete, total meltdown.”

In this newsletter, we are going to do our best not to allow ourselves to be distracted by the smoke and the dizzying blasts and instead focus as best we can on what real impact Trump’s policies are having at the local level, both in the United States and abroad. Our editor Alana Campbell curated a storymap that lays down the ground truth of Trump’s cuts across multiple branches of government including: national parks; tracking and preventing infectious diseases; refugee settlement and environmental conservation. We want to be sure we are highlighting the immediate and future consequences of these cuts, not just for the employees and communities directly affected, but for all of us. We also want to be sure to evaluate the beneficial effect these cuts may have on reducing the overspending in a sprawling Washington bureaucracy that carries $36 trillion in national debt, which economists from the left and the right agree is definitely not sustainable. And we want to be sure we are careful to do the long math on what the cuts will mean in terms of longer term costs to our health, our environment and our national promise to care for military veterans, the poor and the elderly.

As Campbell writes, referring to the cuts in climate change mitigation in California: “Beyond environmental impacts, the funding freeze threatens local economies by disrupting work for contractors, construction firms, and consultants who depend on federally backed projects. If these funds are permanently rescinded, the effects could ripple beyond conservation efforts, dealing a blow to California’s economy and undermining years of planning and investment in climate resilience.”

As Trump continues to target us all with “muzzle velocity,” it is our responsibility as journalists and citizens to see through his disorientation tactics, and for you as readers, to support the news organizations that are focusing on the actual issues and delivering the information that communities need. Please take a look at our latest “On The Ground” storymap which features local reporting by journalists across the country and around the world.