Donald Trump's unpredictability is not simply erratic behavior but a deliberate communication strategy tied to his personalized style of exercising power, according to columnist Rafael Méndez, writing in the Santo Domingo-based newspaper Diario Libre.
Méndez argued that Trump does not need everyone to believe what he says. He only needs to make sure no one can afford to ignore it. That, the columnist wrote, is where much of the effectiveness of Trump's constant, high-volume communication style lies.
The piece is the second in a three-part series Méndez is writing on permanent presidential communication. He described Trump as the most extreme example of personalized, nonstop presidential messaging, noting that since his first term Trump has turned his own words and social media posts into a direct extension of the White House, often sidelining official spokespeople and advisers.
Blurring the line between president and politician
According to Méndez, official statements, threats, personal opinions, attacks on rivals and formal state decisions all flow together into the same communication stream under Trump. His greatest strength, the columnist wrote, is his ability to communicate without intermediaries, dominate public conversation and force adversaries, allies, governments and media outlets to react to whatever subject he puts on the table.
But that same capacity, Méndez argued, is also Trump's most destabilizing trait, because the boundary between the president's institutional voice and his personal reactions as a political leader frequently disappears.
The 'Madman Theory' comparison
Méndez linked this pattern to the so-called Madman Theory, historically associated with Richard Nixon. During the Vietnam War, Nixon sought to project the image of a president capable of taking disproportionate decisions, calculating that adversaries' fear of an irrational reaction would lend credibility to threats that might otherwise seem unlikely under conventional diplomatic logic.
The comparison to Trump is not arbitrary, Méndez wrote, since contemporary foreign policy studies have found significant parallels between the two presidents in their use of unpredictability as a negotiating tool. He cautioned, however, against treating the two cases as identical: with Nixon there is evidence the image was deliberately constructed, while with Trump it remains an open question how much stems from calculation and how much from his own political personality.
What matters for the analysis, Méndez wrote, is not settling whether Trump consciously applies a doctrine devised more than half a century ago, but observing how his hypercommunication produces a similar effect. Allies and adversaries alike must take even seemingly excessive statements seriously, he argued, because they cannot fully rule out that those statements will turn into actual presidential decisions.
Méndez pointed to tariff threats, disputes with governments considered allies, territorial announcements, abrupt shifts toward particular leaders, and decisions that contradict Trump's own earlier positions as examples that create a kind of permanent state of alert. Under that dynamic, he wrote, governments, markets, diplomats and media must constantly ask how much of a given statement is a real threat, how much is a negotiating tactic, and whether it will ultimately become actual state policy.
When the president becomes the story
Méndez drew a distinction between controlling the agenda and building an institutional narrative. Trump excels at the former, he wrote, but his communication revolves fundamentally around his own personality, decisions, confrontations, threats and reversals, to the point that the lead story is often not what the U.S. government has done, but what Trump said, wrote, threatened or suggested he might do.
This hypercommunication gives Trump a considerable political advantage, Méndez argued, because it makes it difficult for rivals or media outlets to sustain an independent agenda for long and keeps his base continuously mobilized. At the same time, it introduces uncertainty even among those who must interpret his words to make economic, diplomatic or strategic decisions.
Méndez wrote that it would be an oversimplification to call this behavior purely erratic, just as it would be an exaggeration to attribute every unexpected turn to a carefully designed strategy. He said the uniqueness of the Trump model lies precisely in how calculation, personality, spectacle, negotiation and improvisation can coexist within the same communicative sequence, making it extremely difficult to know where one ends and the other begins.
Rather than building a state narrative, Méndez concluded, Trump ends up building a narrative around himself, becoming simultaneously president, spokesman, protagonist and chief daily producer of political events.
Author's conclusions
Méndez summarized his argument in three points. First, Trump's unpredictability can be understood both as a deliberate strategy and as an expression of his particular way of exercising power, in which hypercommunication, personalization and uncertainty combine to keep allies, adversaries, markets and media in a permanent state of reaction.
Second, he said this does not mean every shift, threat or contradiction reflects flawless calculation, since intuition, improvisation and circumstance also play a role, and a deliberate decision can still turn out to be mistaken or fail.
Third, Méndez wrote that the Madman Theory does not require concluding that Trump acts irrationally, but rather that he may use unpredictability as a tool of pressure and disruption. As he put it, Trump does not need everyone to believe what he says. He needs no one to be able to ignore it.
Méndez said the series will conclude with a third case study on former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who he said used his daily morning press conferences over six years as a systematic instrument to contest and retain control of the public narrative.
