When I was interviewing journalists in 2017 about strategies for covering antagonists, white supremacists, and other media manipulators, the issue of what to do about trolling loomed large. Many of the subjects these journalists were profiling employed batsignaled trolling memes and embraced various forms of shitposting, and whether or not they had direct connections to trolling spaces like 4chan or 8chan, frequently gave responses with an ambivalent wink. Because it wasn’t clear–and was designed not to be clear–if the subject was being serious or not in these cases (and if serious, how serious, and to what end), their efforts to troll reporters, and by extension audiences, provided an enormous amount of rhetorical cover. The antagonist or white supremacist or media manipulator could say something dangerous, false, or racist while laughing and then watch as the journalist oversold or undersold their claims. Either way, the troll won.

Most of the journalists I interviewed were aware of this dynamic and most had some strategies for resisting their transformation into troll food. At least, most had strategies for dealing with “small fish” trolls. The higher up the food chain the trolling went, the more difficult it was to respond in ways that didn’t do the trolls’ communications work for them. One reporter sighed that he hadn’t come close to figuring out what to do about Donald Trump, who might not have been a subcultural troll (though he did adopt a number of trolling memes and 4chan references, as the report I was working on chronicled) but certainly had mastered trolling rhetoric: say the thing that will make the most people the most mad, and in response, get the most news coverage possible. Rinse, wash, repeat; the attention economy loves it.

Nearly ten years later, the same basic challenge holds true, though this time around Trump isn’t the only big fish troll to contend with. The entire White House communications apparatus has gleefully adopted trolling rhetoric and what can only be described as an extremely online posture. Critics call out the trend, of course; but even high profile Trump allies acknowledge the strategy. House Speaker Mike Johnson admitted that Trump was trolling the Democrats with his government shutdown AI slop (“because that’s what President Trump does,” he smiled in an interview with ABC), and regarding Trump’s winky suggestions that he might just run for a third term, Johnson said he enjoyed the trolling.

My prediction for 2026, which I offer more as wishcasting than as full-on prognostication, is that this will be the year that journalists–and anyone with a media platform–fully contend with the question of how to cover trolling, updated for Trump 2.0.

The first step is identifying how trolling has evolved as a communications strategy. The second is considering how the objectives of White House trolling threaten to undermine the basic tenets of journalism, captured in the SPJ code of ethics: accuracy, transparency, and independence. I will start with step one.

In 2016 and into 2017, trolling subculture was a memefactory for Trump and those within his orbit. Explicit subcultural references ultimately gave way to what I called “smokescreen trolling,” efforts by Trump and his allies to play up their fights over culture and play down their threats to the 2020 election. During Trump 2.0, the political trolling embraced by Trump and his White House has again evolved. I describe it as “combat sensationalism,” the goal of which is to harness the attention economy specifically to fight liberals, used interchangeably with “the left” and the Democratic Party. That “liberal” is such a shapeshifting amalgamated slushpile–the history of which I break down in my recent book The Shadow Gospel–is a feature rather than a bug for the administration. There is no consistent criteria for being a liberal. All it takes to qualify is opposition to Trump.

Trump 2.0 trolling is designed to trigger such opposition. In the process, it mints liberals. That, in the end, is the administration’s currency. The more liberals there are, the wider the surface area of their alleged threat. The wider the surface area of their alleged threat, the more proverbial and literal troops the administration can justify sending in to restore order.

The administration’s comms around ICE raids tips this trolling hand. In bombastic-to-the-point-of-self-parody promo videos and other social media content hyping various immigration arrests and raids, the visual subjects aren’t solely the immigrants (or people who look like they could be immigrants). Just as many white protestors are included in these media, and the “liberal cities” and their “liberal policies” (including, apparently, due process) are presented as if they were sentient characters in a graphic novel. Here, provoking outrage isn’t just about making the widest swath of people angry. It’s about cohering them into a singular enemy.

The political trolling that journalists grappled with during Trump 1.0 had an altogether different goal. Then, the risk of trolling was that journalists would unwittingly be pressed in the service of bad comms. Now, the risk of trolling is that journalists–and indeed anyone with a public platform–will unwittingly be pressed in the service of minting liberals or at least reinforcing the fake battle lines the administration has drawn.

There are two basic ways that this can happen. Journalists and other commentators feed into the administration’s trolling by returning left/right-coded rhetorical fire that actively affirms or implicitly accepts the premise that pushback, including their own, is being volleyed from the left-hand side of the battle line. That so many of the administration’s policies warrant strong pushback does not undermine the fact that the administration benefits from–i.e. mints liberals through–such fights.

Journalists and other commentators also feed into the administration’s trolling by not fighting back at all and instead reporting on–for example–DHS shitposting and ICE’s troillish operations names as straight news. This does the administration’s job on two fronts. It normalizes the culture wars as the White House says they exist and nods affirmatively at all the liberals the administration has minted. (I am currently writing a book on this dynamic and cannot count the number of times journalists have casually reinforced Trump opponents as default liberals, or who quote Trump as he rattles off the most incoherent string of people, places, and things that allegedly fall under the liberal umbrella and never question why things like “diversity” or “Chicago” are inherently liberal/leftist or what holds the nonsense litany together. They certainly aren’t interrogating what the administration gets by pretending all these unrelated things, including the journalists themselves, are actually one thing).

In 2017, the question of whether to give oxygen to falsehood, racism, and other kinds of harmful messages was complicated. As discussed in this section of my report, choosing to amplify such content had major potential drawbacks. So did choosing not to amplify it. The current moment is marked by similar ambivalence. What has changed is the stakes and the scope of the problem. Trolling was tricky enough to deal with when it existed around the edges of policy. Now it is policy.

There are many reasons to resist what is happening to and in the name of this country. Sidestepping the broad moral and human rights imperatives, the government’s efforts to rope reporters (and so many others) into their trolling threatens the institution of journalism as a whole. Deferring to terminology that seems neutral and common sense but in fact is making big and ultimately strange claims about the world risks undercutting the journalistic goal of accuracy. Serving the administration’s interests either by giving them the kind of fight that they want or by uncritically deferring to their chosen framing risks undercutting the journalistic goal of independence. Not explaining, or worse, not reflecting on the editorial choices that shape coverage (use of one term over another, use of one framework over another), risks undercutting the journalistic goals of accountability and transparency.

There has never been an easy way to cover communications designed to weaponize the norms of journalism, politics, and the attention economy. But identifying the game being played and calling it out, so that audiences can understand why things are being said and not just that they are said, is critical to covering state-sanctioned trolling ethically and effectively. What combat sensationalism demands is a continually reconstituted left to fight. That outcome is only possible when people across the political spectrum and institutions that are not partisan take the battle and its lines as a given. The reality is that those lines, and the culture war they purport to represent, are neither a given nor an inevitability. 2026 is the time to start saying so.