Trump comes for American lore with pop agenda
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Photo illustration: Maura Losch/Axios. Photo: Image Photo Agency/Getty Images.
In his second term, President Trump is making a habit of taking action on topics plucked from America's popular imagination that had previously been non-existent in Washington's policy playbook.
Why it matters: Trump's voracious appetite for generating attention and marketing his policies has bred ideas that inject the power of the presidency into deep recesses of American life and culture.
Driving the news: This past week, Trump announced that Coca-Cola had agreed to use real cane sugar in Coke. For decades, high-fructose corn syrup has sweetened the drink. (The company hasn't confirmed his claim.)
- The topic has been steadily gaining attention in the U.S., with interest in Mexican Coke — which uses cane sugar — rising for years, according to Google Trends.
The big picture: We all know "kitchen-table issues," the topics shaped by decades of campaign trail debates. But these are "group-chat issues" — stuff you'd text your friends about that doesn't usually get picked apart by policy wonks.
- Alcatraz: Trump stunned the country by announcing this spring that the notorious prison island — closed for more than 60 years — would be reopened. The move is inspired "more by symbolism than necessity," Axios' Marc Caputo reported.
- The penny: The administration took action on the ultimate pocketbook issue by announcing plans to discontinue the 1-cent coin. While the move makes economic cents — pennies now cost more to make than they're worth — the bigger impact could the cultural ripple of an extinct piece of American iconography.
- Gulf of America: Trump caught Americans off guard when he edited U.S. maps on his first week in office. The seemingly superficial move led to profound fallout over press freedom and geopolitics.
- JFK files: He indulged a decades-long national fascination about the JFK assassination by releasing 63,000 pages of records — a topic that had largely been left to amateur sleuths and conspiracy theorists. While the records added color to the understanding of the event, there were no bombshells.
Reality check: Trump finds himself on the other side of a group-chat issue with his posture on the Jeffrey Epstein case.
- He is fighting against the populist current demanding more information and transparency around Epstein's sex trafficking operation, while disavowing his supporters who continue to press him.
Zoom in: On some lesser-noticed, Seinfeldian issues, Trump addressed everyman gripes with the stroke of a pen.
- He signed executive orders to maintain "acceptable water pressure in showerheads" and curb the use of paper straws.
