The insane Trump news cycle of 2018 in one chart

Here's how busy the Trump news cycle has been in just the first half of 2018, as seen in Google News Lab's data on the googling trends of the public. It shows when and how much people searched about 30 of the biggest news events.

Data: Google News Lab; Chart: Lazaro Gamio/Axios

Between the lines: This doesn't even account for all of the policy changes, media attacks and tweets coming from President Trump and his administration. It's clear we've been jumping from one four-alarm news fire to the next, with China, Russia and Robert Mueller receiving steady interest all year. If anyone thought the pace would slow after Trump's first year, they were wrong.

The topics that received the greatest spikes of interest from Google users were:

  1. The government shutdown, which came in January.
  2. The National Anthem saga, as Trump berated professional athletes who protested racial injustice by refusing to stand during the anthem.
  3. Russia-related news.

Go deeper: The insane Trump news cycle of 2017.