In This Trump Presidency, the Domination Will Be Televised

There was a Caesar-at-the-Colosseum air to President Donald J. Trump’s appearance at this year’s Super Bowl, the first by a sitting president.

The leader of the state took his place in the grand arena — which figuratively included more than 127 million TV viewers — to preside over his people’s biggest event of gladiatorial combat. Fox cameras captured him saluting during the anthem, amid shots of service members and a military flyover, part of the increasingly martial pageant of the pregame ceremony.

He even had Super Bowl ads, of a sort: Spots for Fox News during the game repeatedly featured a photo of Mr. Trump raising a fist after the assassination attempt against him last summer.

Seeking the media spotlight is nothing new for Mr. Trump. But in his second term, there is already a pronounced trend in how he and his allies are using imagery with an almost imperial aesthetic to project an air of ubiquity, authority and invincibility.

On TV news and social media, his immigration-enforcement raids are being packaged like mini reality-TV shows — complete with perp walks and even guest stars — to flood viewers with images of relentless action. His signing ceremonies are playlets of theatrical conquest. Even in his inaugural portrait, where he smiled in 2017, he now scowls.

The Trump 2.0 penchant for dominance theater was evident from the inauguration, at the arena show where Mr. Trump basked in the cheers of a MAGA crowd as he signed executive orders at a makeshift presidential desk. The manner of the signing said just as much about Mr. Trump’s vision of leadership as the text of the orders did: the sole decider lifting his pen and ruling by decree.