Going Public: Mobilization as a Governance Tool in the Trump Presidency (Part 9 of 19)

By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News

Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — August 18, 2026

Let’s break the fourth wall for a second.

By this point, this series had started to sound a little too much like a political science lecture. The information was sound. The tone was getting a little too classroom. That is not what this series is for. So from here forward, the goal is the same, but the voice is going to be more live. Less lecture hall. More field notes from a country watching an operating system under load.

This week’s subject is simple: Donald Trump does not just govern through the state. He also governs through the crowd.

The crowd is part of the machinery

A presidency can work through formal channels, meaning agencies, departments, memos, and law. It can also work through public pressure. When a president goes straight to supporters, speaks over institutions, and turns public attention into leverage, that is not just politics on the side. It is part of governance.

Political science has had a name for this for years: “going public.” The basic idea is that presidents try to move other institutions by moving the audience first (Canes-Wrone, 2001; Eshbaugh-Soha, 2004; Peake, 2008).

Trump did not invent that tool. He did push it harder, louder, and more constantly than most of his predecessors.

This is not outreach. It is pressure.

In a conventional White House, public messaging supports policy. In Trump’s model, public messaging often does more than support policy. It pressures Congress, intimidates rivals, disciplines allies, and frames the terms of debate before institutions have fully reacted.

That matters because public appeals can change the environment in which legislators, agencies, and even reporters operate. The president does not need to win every argument on the merits if he can define what the argument is about before anyone else does.

Attention is a weapon

Modern political systems run on limited attention. There are only so many headlines, hearings, clips, and arguments that the public can absorb in a day. A president who can seize that attention repeatedly gains an operational advantage.

Trump’s style has always been built around that fact. He creates bursts of attention, sustains conflict, and forces both allies and opponents to respond on his terrain. In that model, outrage is not always a failure state. Sometimes it is the fuel.

This is where some observers get it wrong. They think the goal is persuasion in the traditional sense. Sometimes it is. Often it is saturation. If every institution has to react to the president’s frame, then the president is still setting the pace.

Formal power and crowd power reinforce each other

The White House has formal instruments ready at hand. It can issue executive orders, presidential memoranda, proclamations, and public statements through official channels (The White House, 2026).

But formal documents alone do not explain the method. The larger pattern is this: formal action is paired with public messaging so the legal move and the political move arrive together. One tells the bureaucracy what to do. The other tells the public how to understand it.

That pairing reduces the time available for critics, agencies, or Congress to define events first.

Congress hears the crowd too

A member of Congress does not just read a bill. He also reads polling, watches clips, monitors donor pressure, and tracks activist noise. When a president goes public, he is not speaking only to voters. He is speaking through voters toward other officeholders.

Presidents gain leverage when they influence what other institutions are forced to spend time talking about (Peake, 2008; Canes-Wrone, 2001). Public attention becomes a channel of influence.

The strength of this method is speed

This style of governance has clear advantages.

It is fast.
It is visible.
It keeps supporters engaged.
It can make institutions look slow or reactive.

A White House that looks active can dominate a Congress that looks procedural. Trump has consistently used motion and visibility to shape perception before outcomes are fully clear.

The weakness of this method is distortion

There is a cost. When a presidency governs through permanent mobilization, the line between administration and campaign begins to blur. Public life becomes more reactive. Institutions are pushed to answer bursts of conflict instead of slower standards of evidence and process.

That can weaken shared factual baselines. It can also reward escalation, because escalation attracts attention and attention moves the system.

Over time, this changes expectations. Citizens begin to expect continuous public performance from executive leadership, not just governance.

What this means

Trump’s presidency cannot be understood only through formal powers written into law. It operates as a hybrid system. Part of it runs through institutions. Part of it runs through attention, narrative, and public mobilization.

The crowd is not outside the system. In this model, the crowd is part of the system.

That does not make the crowd sovereign. It does mean that executive power is being exercised in a way that treats public reaction as a usable input.

That is not incidental. It is structural.

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If this work helps you understand what’s happening, help me keep it going: https://www.patreon.com/cw/WPSNews

For more from Cliff Potts, see https://cliffpotts.org

If you are interested in resisting authoritarian rule and understanding the systems behind it, see https://endfascism.xyz

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References

Canes-Wrone, B. (2001). The president’s legislative influence from public appeals. American Journal of Political Science, 45(2), 313–329.

Eshbaugh-Soha, M. (2004). Presidential influence over the systemic agenda. Congress & the Presidency, 31(2), 223–246.

Peake, J. S. (2008). The agenda-setting impact of major presidential TV addresses. Political Communication, 25(1), 23–44.

The White House. (2026). Presidential actions. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/