Did that really happen? Four outrageous stories from Trump’s first year back that you may have forgotten about
In 2019, former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon told PBS’ Frontline program how President Donald Trump was engaged in a deliberate strategy to overwhelm the press and his critics by rolling out massive and controversial policy changes while distracting them with trolling to keep them from ever focusing on any one thing that could matter.
He described the tactic as “flooding the zone.”
“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,” he said.
Nearly a year into Trump’s second term, their “flood the zone strategy” has been in full effect.
His administration has unveiled sweeping changes to how America’s government operates in ways that have had and will have dramatic effects on how everyday people live for years to come. But those changes have come in such rapid-fire succession that nearly 365 days after Trump was sworn in on a freezing January day last year, it’s hard to even begin to remember what he’s done.
Here are some of the wildest stories from the White House in 2025:
Five days after his swearing-in, Trump committed a Friday-night massacre of the independent inspectors general who root out waste, fraud and abuse within federal agencies and departments.
The late-night purge removed the inspectors general at nearly every Cabinet-level agency without warning and in violation of a longstanding law requiring the president to notify Congress of his intent to fire any such official 30 days before actually doing so.
Only the watchdogs at the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security were permitted to remain in their jobs.
Trump, who fired a number of inspectors general during his first term in an effort to kneecap their ability to investigate wrongdoing by his appointees, defended the illegal move as “very common” while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to the first weekend golf outing of his second term.
“I don’t know them … but some people thought that some were unfair or some were not doing their job. It’s a very standard thing to do,” he said.
The purge took out Senate-confirmed watchdogs at the departments of Defense, State, Transportation, Labor, Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Energy, Commerce, Treasury and Agriculture, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency, Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration. The move allowed Trump fill the positions with loyalists.
Less than a month in the White House, Trump hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an official visit.
Netanyahu’s trip was his first appearance there in quite some time, as Trump’s predecessor, former president Joe Biden, had declined to invite the Israeli leader due to election-year sensitivities around Israel’s brutal campaign of bombing civilian targets in Gaza to retaliate for the October 7, 2023, terror attacks by Hamas.
