The term was adopted by Trump as a way of subverting its then-emerging use to label the phenomenon of propaganda being produced supporting the Trump campaign following what a RAND Corp report has described, in its recent application by the Russian government, the “firehose of falsehoods” model (at the time this was seen as analogous to the Russian use of that propaganda style; it's since become clear that at least some of it was, in fact, Russian state propaganda, making it following a current style of propaganda observed in Russian state propaganda less surprising.)

Trump's adoption of the term to preempt that use was very successful, as is evident in the common perception that it is something he invented.