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By Anna Rahmanan
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The newest practitioner of the ancient art of handling Donald Trump is Jayme Franklin, a conservative media entrepreneur, former Trump campaign staffer and founder of The Conservateur, a lifestyle publication for young women who like their politics traditional and their traditionalism beautifully packaged, and which may now enjoy a rather timely bump in traffic.
Franklin was standing behind the president during an Oval Office event on childhood-vaccine policy when Trump appeared, in a viral clip, to drift momentarily asleep. At the critical instant, her hand moved toward her midriff and Trump’s head jerked up.
Social media exploded, applying the solemn evidentiary standards of a Jacobean witch trial, decided that Franklin had pressed a concealed button and electrically recalled the commander-in-chief to consciousness.
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She is now being called “the Zapper.”
There is, of course, no evidence that Franklin possessed a button or a transmitter or any type. She simply may have moved her hand and Trump may merely have been concentrating with his eyes shut. The mechanics are fantasy, but the metaphor is exact because many understand that handling Trump is the central occupation of American government. The republic has become an elaborate system of invisible cattle prods, each designed to steer one immense, instinctive personality away from the ornamental china.
At the head of this elaborate system sits perhaps the most professional Trump handler of them all—his chief of staff Susie Wiles, the first woman to hold that job in U.S. history. Wiles insists that she does not manage Trump—she managed his campaign, not the candidate—which is rather like Noah saying he managed the ark but had nothing to do with the animals. Her method is not confrontation but climate control. Restrict the drama, control access, let the weather system believe it has chosen its own direction.
Trump’s first administration consumed four chiefs of staff, one of them in an acting capacity. Wiles has lasted because she understands the first law of Trumpian physics—a guardrail must never allow itself to be photographed looking like a guardrail.
Then there is the first lady, Melania, who handles Trump with the most economical instrument in the repertoire—marital skepticism.
Trump has recounted returning home after a “wonderful conversation” with Vladimir Putin, only for the first lady to reply, “Oh, really? Another city was just hit.” It is diplomacy by raised eyebrow. The entire apparatus of the National Security Council compressed into one Slovenian expression of disbelief. Intelligence agencies have satellites and Melania has timing.
Foreign leaders have developed their own handling schools.
Emmanuel Macron practices competitive intimacy—prolonged handshakes, thigh pats, shoulder clasps—the diplomacy of two men trying to establish dominance while pretending to help each other out. During a 2025 Oval Office meeting, Macron praised Trump warmly, then gently corrected him on European aid to Ukraine. The French technique is to wrap the fact-check in cashmere, a plan that Americans might want to adopt in the coming years.
Keir Starmer, on the other hand, prefers the royal method. During a February 2025 White House visit intended partly to preserve American support for Ukraine, the British prime minister arrived bearing praise and a personal letter from King Charles III inviting Trump to Britain for an unprecedented second state visit. Starmer had correctly identified monarchy as one of the few forms of inherited privilege Trump regards as insufficiently ostentatious. This was not appeasement so much as weaponized pageantry. Britain may have lost an empire, but it retains a formidable diplomatic stockpile of palaces, banquet silver and golden carriages. Starmer understood that one does not simply present Trump with an argument—one presents the argument on palace stationery and lets a footman carry it in.
The bond market is a less courtly handler. It does not flatter or cajole. Instead, it raises yields. After Trump’s sweeping tariff announcement in April 2025 helped trigger a stock rout and a violent Treasury sell-off, he paused many of the country-specific levies for 90 days. Trump said people were becoming “yippy.”
Wall Street had discovered what generations of advisers had not. The surest way to make Trump retreat is to arrange for the markets to describe his advance as a disaster.
Television may be Trump’s most influential handler of all.
He is an avid viewer of cable news, particularly Fox News, and administration officials regularly appear on its early-morning programs knowing that the president himself may be watching—hence the description of Trump as the “audience of one.” Other presidents were influenced by briefing books…Trump can be reached through a television screen. An argument introduced on Fox & Friends may be repeated by Trump hours later and, before long, acquire the force of government policy. In this White House, the remote control is not just an appliance but part of the chain of command.
And yet none of these people truly controls him.
Wiles channels, Melania punctures, Macron embraces, Starmer gilds, television provokes and the bond market applies economic voltage. The Zapper, real or imaginary, merely perfects the metaphor: Trump is not handled like an ordinary president; he is surrounded by a court of lion tamers who must continually persuade the lion that the hoop was his idea.
Somewhere in the West Wing, a hand hovers discreetly over a button that may do nothing or may do everything. What’s perhaps oddest of all is that this is a fair description of the American system of checks and balances as well.
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