Andrew Blum
Andrew Blum

Donald Trump recently said that bad PR and bad PR people were the reason his poll numbers were down.

Well, that may be true but a bigger reason is that every time he doubles down on a policy of his or a comment he has made, he turns these into stories that last days, weeks and sometimes even months.

In the PR business you do whatever you can to lessen the length of the news cycle of a negative story. Instead, Trump does the opposite – sort of like the George Costanza character on Seinfeld. Trump keeps pushing his unpopular policies and repeats and escalates incendiary comments on a wide range of topics.

One also has to ask from a PR point of view, why does he do some of these things in the first place?

Take for example the recent posting on his Truth Social account – essentially his press release service -- that pictured the Obamas as apes.

Whether Trump personally posted it or whether an aide did the posting, he or his staff must have known it would appear racist and lead to a lot of news coverage. After an uproar, the post was taken down but Trump refused to apologize. People are still talking about it days after the Feb. 5 posting.

Making matters worse, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at first told the press corps it was much ado about nothing.

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Leavitt said. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

While the post was deleted hours later, the PR stench remains.

Trump has also continued to lambast the media and reporters – most recently he went after Caitlin Collins of CNN. He criticized her for "not smiling" after she asked a question about the Epstein files.

"You are the worst reporter," Trump told Collins during a Feb. 3 Q&A in the Oval Office. "CNN has no ratings because of people like you."

Trump added: "You know she's a young woman — I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile. I’ve known you for 10 years. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a smile on your face. You know why you're not smiling? Because you know you're not telling the truth."

Overall, he keeps hammering away. Pick a policy or comments: the economy, prices and affordability; ICE and immigration raids and the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis; tariffs; prosecuting his enemies; changing voting rules and relitigating the “rigged” 2020 election; attacking climate change and the environment; invading Venezuela and threatening Greenland and Canada; pissing of European allies; renaming the Kennedy Center; and thrusting his opinion into just about every aspect of America and the world.

The list is too long to include everything here. Like no other American president, Trump is all over the news and dominates the news cycle.

When NBC Nightly News recently interviewed Trump, anchor Tom Llamas noted that one of Trump's "biggest endorsers," podcaster Joe Rogan, compared ICE to the Gestapo. Trump said in response that Rogan's "a great guy," and after pushback from Llamas added: "We do a phenomenal job, but I don't think we're good at public relations."

Trump also said recently that his poll numbers are in the tank is because he has some “bad public relations people."

I just don’t get all of this. Trump is an over-the-top marketer of his own name and image. Like him or not, he is shrewd. Does he make all of these PR missteps just to piss off people? Or does he just not care about bad PR?

Maybe he will eventually blame the PR people -- Leavitt in particular. I know the job of press secretary is a tough one, but Trump has had a series of bad, combative press secretaries starting with Sean Spicer and also including Sarah Huckabee Sanders back in his first term.

As to berating reporters, Leavitt has also clashed with CNN’s Collins in the past, saying during a press conference in December that Collins was reporting on “fake news.”

Fake news, witch hunts and alternative facts are three of the PR phrases Trump and his aides have used to attack the press, truth and facts. That’s part of their PR approach.

When you have unpopular policies and comments and your ICE agents are killing American citizens and arresting a 5-year-old, you have to know this is not good PR.

Doubling down on these and turning stories into days and weeks-long news events is not the way to be popular and it’s no way to win elections. Politics is to a large extent about image and PR.

If this PR approach keeps up, it could cost the Republicans the 2026 mid-term elections. Then what?

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Andrew Blum of AJB Communications is a PR consultant and media trainer who has directed proactive and crisis PR for a wide range of clients and issues, and has done PR for more than 40 authors, professional and financial services firms, NGOs, startups and PR agencies. email: [email protected] or X: @ajbcomms

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