Business
These are the top 7 issues facing the struggling restaurant industry in 2025
Operating a restaurant in Southern California continues to be a difficult endeavor, with many establishments still struggling from pandemic losses.
Food and labor costs increased in 2024, remaining by far the largest expenses of running a restaurant, according to the Independent Restaurant Coalition. And the minimum wage is set to increase again in California starting in the new year — to $16.50 an hour.
Locally, several Los Angeles restaurateurs report that they have yet to recover from entertainment industry strikes last year, which severely affected the service industry. Paired with low patronage and pandemic-era loans and rent payments that came due, several acclaimed restaurants are struggling or have shuttered across the country, particularly in L.A.
Most recently, the well-regarded All Day Baby in Silver Lake closed on Dec. 15. Owner Lien Ta told The Times that the restaurant simply didn’t make enough money on a day-to-day basis to sustain operations.
All Day Baby in March 2020. The Silver Lake restaurant is now shuttered.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
It’s unclear what 2025 has in store for restaurants, but the needs of restaurants and bars are complex and numerous. Here are the top seven challenges restaurants are likely to face in the coming year.
Labor costs
Labor has long been a top expense for restaurants. In California, a larger percentage of the bottom line is spent on labor compared to other states. This doesn’t just mean the dollars for paying staff but includes other costs, such as payroll tax and workers compensation insurance.
It used to be that a good goal for a restaurant was for labor costs to be about 30% of gross sales. But many restaurants are spending much more. At some establishments, labor can account for 50% to 60% of the bottom line.
Ross Pangilinan, chef-owner of Terrace by Mix Mix restaurant at South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa, said he spends the most on staff, which can account for up to 34% of his bottom line. The higher the labor, the more payroll tax and workers comp, he noted.
“Labor is going to be the No. 1 challenge” for 2025, said Pangilinan, who operates small, independent restaurants, including Populaire, also in South Coast Plaza.
Larger restaurants regularly poach his staff, he said.
“The restaurants can pay higher wages. They are paying their cooks over $20 an hour and smaller restaurants are trying to compete with that,” Pangilinan said. “We’re a tiny restaurant at Terrace — 70 seats or so. We’re not backed by a big corporation or big investors.”
To stay competitive he’s raised wages for his back-of-house staff, who also benefit from tip sharing, he said. “They deserve as much as the servers do. They are working more hours and they are working as hard and, sometimes harder, than the front of house.”
Food prices
Food prices are up 28% since 2019, according to the Consumer Price Index.
Higher production costs, labor and fuel costs are a few reasons that food is so much more expensive now than before the pandemic. Severe weather and disease have affected several essential crops and livestock. Also, global events such as the war in Ukraine have led to supply chain disruptions.
While the rate of growth has slowed, food costs are expected to still increase in the coming year.
Egg prices already are going up due to the accelerating spread of H5N1, a highly transmissible and fatal strain of avian influenza. The virus is to blame for below-normal levels of egg production that can’t keep up with consumer demand, which leads to higher prices.
Luis Perez, executive chef at Chapter One in Santa Ana, said he’s already paying about $114 for a case of 180 organic eggs. A few months ago, he was paying less than $100.
He’s bracing himself for what the cost will be in the coming weeks. “On any given week, we go through four to five cases of eggs,” Perez said.
In response, he’s had to pivot more often than in the past. For instance, instead of serving airline chicken, he’s dishing up less expensive chicken leg meat since a few months ago. Instead of filet mignon, he’s serving hanger steaks.
He stopped buying mixed greens months ago from local farmers markets because it was just too costly. Perez said he currently charges about $15 for a salad but would need to charge upward of $23 to justify the cost of farmers market greens.
Health insurance
Federal law requires employers with 50 or more full-time or equivalent employees to provide health insurance benefits with minimum essential coverage.
At the same time, the average cost of health insurance has increased for nearly every American. It’s no different for restaurant operators offering plans to employees. The average cost of single coverage health insurance was $8,951 in 2024, up 6% from the previous year, according to the National Restaurant Assn. For smaller outfits, the price was an average of $9,131.
Kerstin Kansteiner, owner of Alder & Sage in Long Beach, has a small staff and isn’t obligated to offer health insurance. Still, she decided to offer coverage to her six full-time employees. Three of them took her up on it. She also provides free dental insurance and a 401(k) plan.
“I promised myself, I can’t have health insurance myself and not offer it to my team,” she said. “We felt like we wanted to do the right thing.”
But that commitment comes at a price. Not long ago, Kansteiner said she got word from her health insurance provider that rates were increasing 17% to 19% in the coming year. She could switch to a lower-tier health insurance plan, but she said she doesn’t think it’s right.
“I ask my team to do the impossible every day,” she said.
She said she doesn’t quite know where she’ll find the money to pay her portion of the increase but doesn’t think she can pass it on to diners. Some already complain about prices on the menu, she said.
“I think we have to have a conversation with the public about what food really costs,” Kansteiner said.
Maricela Moreno, manager at El Tarasco in Marina del Rey, disinfects cash at the restaurant in May 2020. Dining with a credit card purchase became ubiquitous after the pandemic.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Credit card fees
As use of cash in everyday transactions fades, credit cards have become the de facto way to pay for meals, and that means card transaction fees have become a growing monthly expense for restaurant operators.
The fees are particularly a burden on smaller independent restaurants, which already operate on the slimmest of profit margins.
Delilah Snell, who operates Alta Baja Market, a restaurant and market in Santa Ana, said card swipe fees take at least 3% of her bottom line.
“Three percent means everything over the course of a year,” said Snell, who sells an assortment of products and prepared foods sourced from Mexico, California and the U.S. Southwest. “If a business makes $500,000 a year and it’s a 3% fee just for credit cards? That’s a lot.”
Visa and MasterCard dominate the credit card market, controlling around 80% of transactions in the U.S.
“With little competition in the industry, these companies set the terms, leaving independent businesses with few options to reduce their processing costs,” according to a statement from the Independent Restaurant Coalition. “The lack of competition stifles innovation and prevents smaller restaurants from negotiating better rates or leveraging alternative payment systems.”
Child care
Affordable child care continues to be a major challenge for restaurant workers. Nearly 3.5 million parents work in the restaurant industry and more than 1 million of those are single mothers, 40% of whom live in poverty, according to a 2016 report by the National Women’s Law Center and the Restaurant Opportunities Center.
The rising cost of child care and the lack of flexible options put both parents and businesses under pressure, said the Independent Restaurant Coalition. Dan Jacobs, a “Top Chef” star and chef-owner of Dan Dan restaurant in Milwaukee, said that as his team expands, more of his staff are starting families.
“The rising cost of child care across the country presents a tough dilemma: Parents are forced to choose between remaining in the workforce or staying home with their children,” he said in a statement. “It’s disheartening that in a country as advanced as ours, basic parental leave and childcare support remain out of reach for so many. It’s time for a change.”
Delivery app fees
Meal delivery apps became ubiquitous during the pandemic, and the demand for food delivery continues to expand. The delivery app market — dominated by DoorDash, UberEats and Grubhub — seems to be a blessing and a curse for restaurant operators.
The apps helped restaurants survive during the COVID-19 pandemic, when everyone was hunkered down at home. But that convenience comes at a cost to restaurants.
The commission rates can be as high as 30% per order, according to the Independent Restaurant Coalition.
“For small and mid-sized restaurants, the costs and constraints imposed by third-party apps are unsustainable,” the IRC said. “High commission fees, coupled with marketing expenses, drastically reduce profitability.”
Caroline Styne is director of the Lucques Group of restaurants and Hollywood Bowl Food & Wine.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Caroline Styne, a restaurateur who is co-owner and wine director of the Lucques Group of restaurants, said her restaurant relies on third-party delivery apps because she’d rather get a sale than not get one.
“It’s a little like you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” Styne said of delivery apps. “They have us in a stranglehold. And because of that they are able to continue and even increase their price as time goes on.”
Styne said she encourages diners who want food delivery to do so directly on the restaurant’s website, instead of going through a third party; that makes the fees slightly lower for restaurant operators.
Service charges and tipping
Service charges and junk fees came to the forefront this year after California prohibited “junk fees,” hidden online ticket sale fees and fees tacked onto hotels, restaurants, bars and delivery apps.
At the last minute in June, the state Senate passed an emergency bill to exempt restaurants from the service-fee ban.
Regardless of the 11th-hour reversal, the practice of service fees has been called into question and sparked lawsuits against restaurant operators over its use.
At the same time, the practice of adding service charges to restaurant checks has grown in Southern California and across the nation in recent years, giving rise to a debate about how the fees should be treated by customers and workers.
Several restaurant operators and industry advocates favor a service-charge model. Advocates say such a model can provide more equitable compensation to all staff so that pay is not reliant on factors such as customer satisfaction or implicit biases that may affect tipping behavior.
Mary Sue Milliken, chef and co-founder of Mundo Hospitality Group, whose restaurants include Socalo, Border Grill and Alice B, said she hopes the entire restaurant industry will one day turn to a service-charge model and get away from tipping, which she said can lead to “bad behavior” and an inequitable system where front-of-house workers get paid exponentially better than back-of-house employees.
“There has to be some movement toward a better system” on the subject of tipping and service feeds, said Mary Sue Milliken, left, with Susan Feniger in the dining room of their restaurant Alice B. in Palm Springs.
(Anne Fishbein)
But, she said, doing away with tipping would have to be done universally. Milliken compared it to how Beverly Hills in 1987 became the first city in California to ban smoking in restaurants — and most public places — while nearby cities continued to allow it.
“Beverly Hills had no smoking and all their restaurants were dead,” she said. “It has to be all in the state of California or the county of L.A. All have to do it to make it fair. There has to be some movement toward a better system.”
The Na’vi won the battle of the box office this weekend, as “Avatar: Fire and Ash” hauled in a hefty $88 million in the U.S. and Canada during its opening weekend.
The third installment of the Disney-owned 20th Century Studios’ “Avatar” franchise brought in an estimated total of $345 million globally, with about $257 million of that coming from international audiences. The movie reportedly has a budget of at least $350 million.
Box office analysts had expected a big international response to the most recent film, particularly since its predecessor “Avatar: The Way of Water” had strong showings in markets like Germany, France and China.
In China, the film opened to an estimated $57.6 million, marking the second highest 2025 opening for a U.S. film in the country since Disney’s “Zootopia 2” a few weeks ago. (That film went on to gross more than $271.7 million in China on its way to a global box office total of $1.1 billion.)
The strong response in China is another sign that certain movies can still do well in the country, which was once seen as a key force multiplier for big blockbusters and animated family films but has in recent years cooled to American movies due to geopolitics and the rise of its domestic film industry.
Angel Studio’s animated biblical tale “David” came in second at the box office this weekend, with an estimated domestic gross of $22 million. Lionsgate thriller “The Housemaid,” Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Movies’ “The Spongebob Movie: Search for Squarepants” and “Zootopia 2” rounded out the top five.
The weekend’s haul likely comes as a relief to theater owners, who have weathered a roller coaster year.
After a difficult first three months, the spring brought hits like “A Minecraft Movie” and “Sinners” before the summer ended mostly flat. A sleepy fall brought panic to the exhibition business until closer to the Thanksgiving holiday, when “Wicked: For Good” and “Zootopia 2” drew in audiences.
Dear Liz: When I retired, I had a small 401(k) with about $12,000 in it. Instead of rolling that money into an IRA, I took a distribution and paid taxes on it. I had no immediate need for the remaining funds, so eventually I opened a new IRA account and deposited the money.
I now realize I should have put it in a Roth IRA so I wouldn’t face double taxation on the money. This is the stupidest thing I’ve done in recent memory. Is there any legal mechanism I can use to get that money out and into a Roth without paying taxes the second time?
Answer: You made a mistake, but probably not the one you think.
You can’t contribute to an IRA — or a Roth IRA, for that matter — if you don’t have earned income. So if you’ve fully retired, you should contact your IRA administrator and let them know you need to withdraw your “excess contribution” as well as any earnings the contribution has made.
If you contributed this year, you have until your tax filing deadline — typically April 15, 2026 — to remove the funds without penalty. If you contributed in a previous year, you’ll typically face a 6% excise tax for each year the money remained in your account.
Now, a warning about financial mistakes: They tend to become more common as we age. That can be incredibly unsettling, especially to do-it-yourselfers used to handling finances competently on their own. Retirement is a good time to start implementing some guardrails to protect ourselves and our money.
Hiring a tax pro would be a good first step. Anything to do with a retirement fund should be run past this pro first to make sure you’re following the tax rules.
Dear Liz: In response to a reader who asked about creating a will, you suggested options for low-cost online resources. That is great! But, I would encourage you to remind readers to designate beneficiaries on accounts and assets where that option is available.
While they should still have a will, many readers may not know that they can add beneficiaries to brokerage, checking, and savings accounts (in addition to IRA and retirement accounts) so that their assets will pass directly to the designated beneficiaries and not have to go through probate with the extra hassle, time and expense.
For those without a trust, designating beneficiaries may be the easiest way to pass on many of their assets. In California (and some other states), even houses may pass without probate with a transfer-on-death deed. Many readers may not know about the option to add beneficiaries, and you would do your readers a service by educating them about it.
Answer: Anyone adding beneficiaries to accounts needs to be aware of some major potential drawbacks.
A big one involves settling the estate. If all available funds are transferred directly to beneficiaries, the person settling the estate may not have enough cash to do their job.
Beneficiary designations can also result in unintentionally unequal distributions if there’s more than one heir, and complications if the beneficiaries die first or aren’t changed appropriately as life circumstances change.
That’s not to say that beneficiary designations are the wrong choice, but they’re certainly not a one-size-fits-all option.
Dear Liz: Your recent column about advanced directives said that people could get a free version at PrepareForYourCare.org. I found there is a charge. Is this for all online directives?
Answer: Prepare is a free site supported by donations, grants and licensing agreements. If you were asked to pay, you either clicked the donate button or weren’t on the correct site.
Liz Weston, Certified Financial Planner, is a personal finance columnist. Questions may be sent to her at 3940 Laurel Canyon, No. 238, Studio City, CA 91604, or by using the “Contact” form at asklizweston.com.
To understand how Mr. Trump has achieved this omnipresence, The New York Times reviewed the first 329 days of his second term, finding at least one instance each day when he attracted the public’s attention to himself and his actions.
The review encompassed more than 250 media appearances, more than 320 official appearances, and more than 5,000 Truth Social posts or reposts. The analysis shows that while Mr. Trump has lagged his predecessors in his number of official appearances, he has pursued a raft of innovative methods to force himself into the public consciousness on a daily, and sometimes even hourly, basis.
The battery of activity started from the moment he was inaugurated, when he traveled from the Capitol Building to the Capital One Arena to publicly sign a flurry of executive orders.
Since then, he has stayed in the public eye in part by doing things no president has ever done. High-stakes Oval Office meetings, like his negotiations with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, are held on-camera and broadcast live on global news networks. His Q.-and-A. sessions with reporters frequently last an hour or more.
He regularly airs his opinions – on social media, in discursive asides at rallies – about idiosyncratic subjects that range widely across the zeitgeist, from Sydney Sweeney’s sexy denim ads to the redesigned logo of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain to the mysterious fate of the aviator Amelia Earhart, who vanished over the Pacific Ocean in 1937.
And his engagement with the news media has soared well beyond the start of his first administration.
Through Dec. 14, Mr. Trump took reporters’ questions on 449 occasions, compared with 223 during the same period of his first term. On average, Mr. Trump has interacted with journalists roughly twice a day, doubling his rate from 2017, according to Martha Joynt Kumar, a Towson University political scientist who tracks presidential press interactions. Mr. Trump limits which news outlets can ask questions at small events, but in sheer volume, he is the most media-accessible modern president, and far outpaces his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“Reporters will be in my office asking me for the president’s reaction to a breaking news story,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in an interview. “And I’ll just say to them, ‘I don’t know, why don’t you ask him yourself in 30 minutes?’”
President Trump’s media appearances have soared this year, more than doubling both the Biden administration’s and those of his own first term.
Finding the Cameras
Many of his public moments go viral online, like his diatribe about restoring the name of the Washington Redskins, or the A.I.-generated video meme he posted of himself dribbling a soccer ball with Cristiano Ronaldo in the Oval Office. They take on a life of their own, rippling across social media and dissected and amplified by influencers and mass media platforms alike.
The result is a president whose not-so-inner monologue is injected into our daily lives in myriad ways, when we are watching TV on the weekends or idly scrolling the web – a Greek chorus for our national narrative.
“He’s the most ubiquitous president ever,” said Douglas Brinkley, the presidential historian.
The media strategy aligns with his political strategy.
Dating back to his years as an outspoken real estate developer and reality TV star, Mr. Trump has relished being unavoidable for comment. But at age 79, he has been outdoing his younger self. And there is a logic to his logorrhea.
Mr. Trump’s allies often speak of the political benefits of flooding the zone: pursuing so many policies, ideas, and dramatic restructurings of the normal ways of governance as to overwhelm the system. “All pedal, no brake,” as Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s one-time adviser, has called it.
“We joke internally that he is our ultimate director of communications,” Ms. Leavitt said. “He has incredible media instincts, and he is the final decision maker on all policy, and he has been in a ‘flood the zone,’ ‘do as much as possible’ mindset since he walked into the Oval Office on Jan. 20.”
All presidents benefit from the awesome news-making powers of the office, with its agenda-setting influence over a dedicated global press corps. But Mr. Trump has outstripped his predecessors in whipsawing the public’s attention onto matters small and large – and limiting the level of scrutiny that any one shocking remark or policy proposal receives.
“People can really only focus on a handful of things a day,” said Bill Burton, a deputy White House press secretary under former President Barack Obama. “This attention flood is working for Trump because he is able to do an extraordinary amount of executive actions and very little of it can get attention.”
Or as Mr. Brinkley put it: “He plays to win the day, every day, around the clock.”
His commentary takes on a life of its own.
One of Mr. Trump’s political assets is his instinct for virality.
With a natural feel for the web, Mr. Trump has a knack for amplifying wacky memes and pop culture curios that can drive days of online discourse. Sometimes, coverage of his offhand remarks or late-night social media posts can crowd out the more significant, norm-shattering changes he is making to American governance.
Late one Friday night in May, the president posted an obviously A.I.-generated image of himself as the pope. It struck a nerve.
Mr. Trump had already courted controversy days earlier, after the death of Pope Francis on April 21.
“I’d like to be pope,” the president told reporters who asked about who should become the next pontiff. “That would be my number one choice.”
The comment disturbed some Catholics, who said the notion was crude and insensitive. That reaction seemed only to prompt Mr. Trump to double down, posting the A.I.-generated image to his Truth Social account days later. By the weekend it had become a cultural phenomenon, mocked on “Saturday Night Live” and called out by experts as an example of misleading A.I. content.
After Mr. Trump posts the A.I. image …
May 2
Trump posts A.I. image of himself as Pope
There is nothing clever or funny about this image, Mr. President. We just buried our beloved Pope Francis and the cardinals are about to enter a solemn conclave to elect a new successor of St. Peter. Do not mock us.
May 3
NYS Catholic Conference says “do not mock us”
May 3
“Saturday Night Live” covers fake image
May 3 Vatican asked about image, declines to comment
May 4
Cardinal Joseph Tobin of New Jersey criticizes image as “not good”
May 4
JD Vance defends Trump on X, calling it a joke … some Catholics were outraged, prompting a news cycle focused on the controversy …
5
Says “the Catholics loved it”
… before Mr. Trump suggested he had nothing to do with it.
Mr. Trump, who is not Catholic, had plenty of defenders, too. They said his commentary and the A.I. image were simply jokes, part of the president’s unique comedic style.
“As a general rule, I’m fine with people telling jokes and not fine with people starting stupid wars that kill thousands of my countrymen,” Vice President JD Vance, who is Catholic, wrote on X.
In his quest for attention, the president is often aided by a cottage industry of right-wing influencers and activists who are primed to syndicate, reinforce and defend whatever content he pushes out each day. For this conservative media ecosystem, Mr. Trump’s messaging and commentary are the raw fuel that drives clicks, shares and views.
On June 7, the president’s visit to a raucous U.F.C. fight – complete with a “Trump dance” entrance into the arena – generated an immediate spike in online interest, including about 50,000 posts on X. Five days later, when he promoted a “Trump gold card” visa, his announcement led to roughly 30,000 posts on X.
A barrage that distracts from bad news.
One pattern in Mr. Trump’s behavior: When his administration is faced with bad news, he launches a fusillade of distraction.
This can take the form of outlandish, out-of-left-field claims about political opponents. Or he might weigh in on a pop culture subject far afield from Washington politics – from the ratings of late-night hosts like Seth Meyers to the physical appearance of a megastar like Taylor Swift.
The events of July 2025 offer a case in point.
As the Jeffrey Epstein files returned to the news – along with speculation that Mr. Trump might appear in them – the president embarked on a breathtaking series of tangents. Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that former President Bill Clinton had bankrolled an effort by senior intelligence officials to frame him for a crime, mused about stripping the actress Rosie O’Donnell of her U.S. citizenship, and accused the singer Beyoncé of accepting millions of dollars to endorse his erstwhile rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
July 8
F.B.I. publishes memo about Epstein files On July 8, the F.B.I. said it would not declassify more Epstein files.
10
Claimed intelligence officials tried to frame him
10
Pushed to defund NPR and PBS
10 Directed ICE to arrest protesters
12
Threatened Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship
15
Claimed Adam Schiff engaged in mortgage fraud Over the following days, Mr. Trump seemed to lash out in every direction.
On July 18, the Justice Department filed a request to unseal grand jury testimony about Mr. Epstein, again raising questions about Mr. Trump’s involvement. The president promptly lobbed insults at late-night talk show hosts, dismissed the Epstein affair as “fake news” and shared fresh claims about a supposed Obama administration plot to undermine him after the 2016 election.
July 18
Request filed to unseal grand jury testimony
On July 18, the Department of Justice filed a request — later denied — to unseal grand jury testimony.
20
Criticized Washington Commanders name
21
Called the “Russia hoax” the “crime of the century”
22
Called Epstein controversy “fake news”
22
Criticized Kimmel and Fallon
24 Criticized Federal Reserve chairman
Over the following days, Mr. Trump bounced from topic to topic.
On July 25, The Wall Street Journal published a major scoop: The paper had unearthed a risqué birthday letter that Mr. Trump had apparently written to Mr. Epstein in 2003. Mr. Trump responded with his attack on Beyoncé and revived his threat to revoke the broadcast licenses of TV networks. Then he announced the imminent construction of an enormous gilded ballroom at the White House, at a cost of $200 million. (He has since revised the cost upward to $400 million.)
Asked if there was a deliberate strategy to distract from negative news, Ms. Leavitt noted that every administration seeks to minimize unhelpful headlines.
“Yes, there have been times in which we’ve tried to do that, but also often it just happens naturally, because the president is willing to weigh in on so many subjects,” she said. “Sometimes it’s really not deliberate. It’s just him speaking his mind on whatever news cycle or news story is brought to him in that moment.”
He has added tricks to his arsenal.
Mr. Trump’s devotion to Truth Social mirrors the hair-trigger Twitter habit of his first term; on one recent December evening, he posted 158 times between 9 p.m. and midnight. And he has continued to appear on Fox News with certain preferred hosts.
But this year, he has added to his media arsenal by appearing in many more public spaces that fall outside of a president’s typical itinerary.
Mr. Trump has stopped by a Washington Commanders N.F.L. game, popped up in the New York Yankees locker room, attended the Ryder Cup golf tournament and the men’s tennis final at the U.S. Open, sat ringside at numerous U.F.C. fights, and traveled to the Daytona 500. He is the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl. When FIFA staged the Club World Cup final in New Jersey, Mr. Trump not only attended, but joined the winning team onstage for the trophy ceremony.
The net effect is a sense of inescapability, that no corner of American life remains Trump-free – which itself amounts to a potent expression of presidential authority and command. “His power, in part,” said Mr. Burton, the former Obama aide, “comes from the attention that people give him, or that he forces on them.”
Can it ever be too much?
In the fall of 2009, President Barack Obama appeared on David Letterman’s talk show, gave interviews to CNBC and Men’s Health magazine, and made the rounds of all five major network Sunday shows. Washington was abuzz about whether he was overexposed.
That debate sounds quaint today. But the question of whether a president can be too visible remains open.
“The public is being desensitized” to Mr. Trump’s omnipresence, argued Mr. Brinkley, the historian. “It starts becoming blather. The enemy for Trump isn’t Democrats; it’s the public being bored with the show.”
Ms. Leavitt said that if there was a risk to his ubiquity, “President Trump would not be president right now.” She added: “He is a businessman who speaks his mind and tells it like it is, and sometimes people don’t like that. But obviously the vast majority of our country does, or else he wouldn’t be in this office.”
During Mr. Trump’s first term, the public eventually tired of his frenzied pace. And in some ways, Mr. Trump appears to be slowing down physically as he approaches his 80th birthday in June (which he will celebrate in part by staging a nationally broadcast U.F.C. fight on the White House lawn). He has appeared to doze at some Oval Office meetings, and he is holding fewer formal public events than he did at this point in 2017.
Still, Mr. Trump and his team have embraced the everywhere-all-at-once nature of modern media. Average Americans, busy with work and family, do not tune in for daytime news conferences or Cabinet meetings. And 6:30 p.m. newscasts and local newspapers are no longer the primary vessels by which Americans learn about their commander-in-chief.
Instead, politics now suffuses our lives as a kind of ambient noise – via TikTok videos, social media posts, YouTube talk shows and family Facebook messages – never fully separate from our leisure pursuits. “Right now the game is attention, in terms of what’s culturally breaking through,” Mr. Burton said. “The fact that so much message exists is the point.”
Mr. Trump has both propelled this merging of culture and politics, and continues to strategically exploit it. In December, he became the first president to personally host the Kennedy Center Honors, comparing himself onstage to Johnny Carson and musing that he would do a better job than Jimmy Kimmel.
“This is the greatest evening in the history of the Kennedy Center,” Mr. Trump told the crowd. “Not even a contest. There has never been anything like it.”
His performance will air in prime time on CBS on Dec. 23.
Photo and video sources: Graham Dickie/The New York Times; Doug Mills/The New York Times; Roll Call Factba.se; PBS; Mauro Pimentel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Kenny Holston/The New York Times; The New York Times; Annabelle Gordon/Reuters; Eric Lee/The New York Times; Fox; Cheriss May for The New York Times; Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press; Margo Martin, via Storyful; Mark Abramson for The New York Times; Global News; Al Drago/Getty Images; Fox News; Dave Sanders for The New York Times; Pete Marovich for The New York Times; Ted Shaffrey/Associated Press … Show all
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