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Yes, yes, a billion times yes.
To me, the fundamental problem - the primary reason that it seems so difficult to deal with Trump - is that so many politicians and analysts and commentators are still spproaching issues as if the old rules are still in place, and they quite simply aren't.
Every time that another analysis or editorial appears that discusses the "failures" of the Trump administration, since their policies will undermine the original goals of the agency/programs in question, it's ultimately just meaningless noise, since it starts with the patently false presumption that the original goals still count. They don't.
The Trump administration isn't failing to achieve traditional goals - it's succeeding in achieving an entirely new and different set of goals. And there isn't going to be any meaningful commentary until it focuses on those new goals.
Just because Trump has different motivations doesn't mean that's the correct framing for questions. Questions and accusations are more for the audience than trying to get Trump to reconsider why he's doing something, and at least currently that bias toward "how things were supposed to work" still exists in the general public.
I'm fully aware of that (and the notion tgat Trump would ever reconsider anything is foolish on its face). And it's for the audience that the politicians and analysts and commentators need to change the context of their analyses.
And that's a lot of the problem. The people need to be smacked upside the head with the two-by-four of truth.
Why on earth would you want to normalize Trump's motivations? The whole point of talking about things based on those previous frameworks is to make the current events look shocking. If you reframe it according to Trump's new center, then you get quotes like "this was expected" or "this was better than expected" for things that should still shock the audience. That's exactly the framing Republicans want this to have so they don't have to answer questions about Trump breaking from our (and their) previous norms.
Holding the Overton window steady despite Trump obviously not wanting past precedent to mean anything may not be perfectly candid with the audience, but we sure as shit don't want to just take it as given that America is an ally with Russia or antidemocratic moves are to be expected and then feel good when he only does 75% of what we thought he was going to do.
Ah. So reporting "Trump is a lying sack of shit who claims to be dismantling agencies in order to cut spending but is actually methodically eliminating every part of the government that serves to limit the abuses the 1% can heap on the rest of the country" is somehow "normalizing" his actions and reporting "Trump's spending cuts are failing to accomplish as much actual reduction in spending as he promised" somehow is not.
Got it.