Despite being perhaps the most divisive man to ever win the White House, Donald Trump has been remarkably successful in uniting mainstream opinion behind one thing: his is a presidency of complete and utter chaos.

His first two years have packed in more controversies and sparked more outrage than Obama faced over two full terms. I can only imagine the frustration felt by news editors in Trump’s America knowing their frontpage lead could be two or three stories out of date by the time they go to press thanks to a few taps on the Tweeter-in-Chief’s phone.

But I can’t help feeling there’s some method to the madness of Trump’s press operation. Let me tell you a story about an Australian politico and his dead cat.

Lynton Crosby is a political consultant from Australia, credited with masterminding the UK Conservatives Party’s 2015 majority-winning election campaign. Known as the ‘Wizard of Oz’ because of his impressive winning record, one of Crosby’s signature moves is known as the ‘dead cat’ strategy.

The play is essentially to respond to an unfavourable story with something eye-catching and outrageous, distracting public attention from the thing that’s doing you harm and moving the news cycle onto something else.

Boris Johnson, whose London mayoral campaigns were managed by Crosby, described the strategy as follows:

“There is one thing that is absolutely certain about throwing a dead cat on the dining room table – and I don’t mean that people will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted. That is true, but irrelevant. The key point, says my Australian friend, is that everyone will shout, ‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!’ In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat… and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”

It’s genius and bonkers in equal measure! And I would argue that Donald Trump is probably better at deploying the dead cat than Lynton Crosby has ever been.

Think back to the 2016 US presidential campaign itself. Trump didn’t need to spend millions of dollars on TV attack ads or social media marketing – his crazy public statements guaranteed him free media air time nearly every day.

As former CBS reporter Bob Schieffer told an audience of journalists in 2017: “Donald Trump threw cats dead and alive on the table. Every time the narration went this way and suddenly the attention was back to what he was talking about and was on him.”

Remember Trump’s ‘Lock her [Hillary Clinton] up’; Mexican rapists; Bill Clinton, the ‘sexual predator’?

AND, he’s been doing it ever since.

How did Trump respond to Jeff Sessions recusing himself from the Russia investigation, which sparked a blitz of media questions about the jeopardy the President was in without the protection of his Attorney General? He took to Twitter to accuse Obama of bugging Trump Tower during the election. The news cycle moved onto the new bizarre claim.

What did he do in the aftermath of November’s mid-terms, when Democrats took back the House of Representatives in what was widely described as a ‘blue wave’? He revoked the press credentials of CNN reporter Jim Acosta – on the basis of a dubious claim that the journalist had manhandled a White House intern – and sparked widespread outrage about the administration’s attitude towards press freedom.

These are just two examples that demonstrate Trump’s savviness in drawing attention away from bad stories with something new and outrageous. He prevents serious criticism because the media has to move onto the next scandal.

To you and I, it may seem that he’s replacing a bad story with something worse. But does your typical Trump voter care if Obama’s name is dragged through the mud? Does he or she care if CNN, the ‘fake news media’, is prevented from accessing the White House?

Trump’s White House is chaotic, unqualified, belligerent and dangerous. But there’s a method to some of the madness.