Trump’s Slop and Ouch First Week
Trump’s failson practically wet himself with a Tweet bragging about what CIA Director John Ratcliffe accomplished on his first day at the office.
Given John Brennan’s 2023 testimony that stood by the opinion expressed in the letter, Jr’s claim he “lied” may well be legally actionable (and Brennan said then, as he did the other day, that the only reason he retained his clearance was for intelligence officials to be able to consult with him). Plus, many if not most of the people from whom Ratcliffe “strip[ped] security clearances” didn’t have them; the most impotent kind of signaling possible. But it worked for Trump’s failson!
Jr also makes a big deal of the fact that John Ratcliffe, without explaining the meaning of a “low confidence” assessment, released a report that his predecessor, William Burns, ordered up.
Jr was, like mediocre men are wont to do, grading Ratcliffe on a curve. And that was his idea of a big win.
Trump has overtly pitched a claim he’s engaged in Shock and Awe (and, given the widespread adoption of the term, seems to be pushing a similar campaign to the press). While the attention on Trump’s attack on rule of law and marginalized people is absolutely merited, in addition to wowing a captive press, Trump’s declaration of Shock and Awe has shifted the focus away from ways that Trump has affirmatively hurt Americans, including, undoubtedly, a great number of his own supporters, what I’m dubbing his Slop and Ouch campaign.
Trump halt on NIH funding literally shut down cancer treatment already in process (ironically, since Trump claimed he was attacking Joe Biden’s “cancer” when signing many of his Executive Orders). Cancer doesn’t doesn’t discriminate against MAGAts. Shutting down cancer trials may literally be taking away a Trump’s supporter’s latest hope of a cure.
Trump’s attacks on Biden’s efforts to lower drug prices may lead to higher costs for generic prices and could even lead to higher prices for diabetes drugs (setting aside any impact threatened tariffs on Denmark would have on Ozempic prices).
Trump reversed access to wind power, which has become cheaper than fossil fuels. This will force American consumers to pay more for dirtier fuel. Foreign competitors are already licking their lips about the competitive advantage it gives them.
Trump’s attack on programs focused on environmental justice will harm poor rural communities.
And after spending four years declaring one after another infrastructure week only to have Joe Biden deliver it right away, Trump is threatening the funding for bridge and road projects already underway. He’s taking away what he promised — but failed to deliver — during his first term.
His rescission of job offers throughout government (though Veterans groups were able to get a reversal on VA care) has left thousands stuck with their lives in limbo, with movers arriving but no job to move to on the other end.
Trump’s attack on public health even as Avian Flu threatens to snowball will exacerbate the already increasing price of eggs — which Trump himself made a key campaign plank.
And because he is choosing to pursue his deportation policy in the stupidest way possible, it is creating problems. HCI detained three people in a Newark raid with out a warrant, reportedly including a Puerto Rican and a veteran. And Mexico refused a landing request for a deportation flight on a military plane (it accepted four others that were on chartered flights, which cost less to run and may have greater capacity; also, Colombia has since blocked a military transport flight); military flights to Guatemala avoided Mexican airspace, suggesting Mexico refused overflight requests as well. Trump is also claiming repatriation flights are instead deportation flights in false claims that he’s delivering on his promise of mass deportation. And the single stay stats many are boasting about aren’t higher than some days during 2022. Despite his claims of Shock and Awe, Trump has had to lie to support his claims he succeeded in doing the one thing he has prioritized most.
And all that’s before the inflationary effect of deporting those who pick America’s food and build her homes.
None of this takes away from the grave damage Trump did in his first week, particularly to those like Trans people and migrants he is trying to treat as unpersons.
I don’t mean to minimize the ways this is going to get far worse. It will get far worse. It will devastate the lives of a lot of vulnerable people.
There’s nothing good about the fact that, in addition to all the people Trump has deliberately targeted for cruelty, Trump has also inflicted real damage on his own supporters. But it’s a sign of one direction where this could head, particularly as a dumbing down of government hires in favor of sycophants starts degrading efficacy.
An ideology that places grievance above all else — an ideology that is willing to hurt America if that’s what it takes to reverse the successes of the Biden Administration — is an ideology guaranteed to impose pain far beyond those targeted for spectacle and cruelty.
Underneath Trump’s Shock and Awe that is doing grave damage to the Constitution and Trump’s marginalized targets, there’s a Slop and Ouch that targets everyone this side of his billionaire friends. And that needs to remain visible, too.
The lab issue is interesting to me insofar as it seems similar to the weapons of mass destruction narrative, but not in the way Matt Taibbi has been portraying it. Based on the scholarship I’ve come across, most independent researchers (e.g., virologists, immunologists, etc.) now seem to believe that the lab leak hypothesis is even less likely, given the time they’ve had to study it. Additionally, when I listened to the annual intelligence briefing with the Senate, there appeared to be a wide range of opinions about the virus’s origin. However, the FBI—notably staffed with China hawks—was the most confident in a lab leak, while other agencies were less certain. Now that the CIA is under the leadership of Ratcliffe, who I suspect is more hawkish, I’m suspicious that intelligence might be manipulated or selectively edited.
As for the cancer issue, the explanation is probably Occam’s razor: Biden supports it, so Trump opposes it. However, I do worry that there may be some shady business deals at play. My wife works in oncology research, and in recent years, there’s been a growing tendency to monopolize researchers’ time with commercial activities, especially as blockbuster drugs, which have been incubated in the public research space for years, are now coming to market. Just a thought.
This is how Fox News spun the C19 release story:
“The CIA’s decision to release a Biden-era assessment favoring the once widely-dismissed COVID-19 lab-leak origin story marks a step toward transparency with the American people, newly-confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe told Fox News on Sunday.”
https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-cia-boss-ratcliffe-says-biden-era-report-backing-lab-leak-theory-released-restore-trust
Of course they didn’t mention that the conclusion was that a lab leak was low-probability.
Faux “News” is not going to tell their readers anything that goes against the Rwing narrative. The “Biden-ear assessment” language is meant to insinuate that “the truth” was being kept from Conservatives. This is how evil Faux is.
Nothing is as Matt Taibbi describes it.
The completeness with which Trump has not just muzzled, but shut down govt public health R&D suggests more reasons than Occam’s Razor would explain.
Among them, the public health community were among his most savage critics, over his abusive handling of the pandemic. He is vigorously anti-intellectual. He – and his patrons, of course – want to elide from the culture the idea that the govt can do things well, and for the benefit of the average person, including keeping them safe from avoidable diseases.
Born in 1946, Trump would have been among the first children to benefit from the new polio vaccines. But he is bizarrely opposed to anything that will protect the average person or lift them to a safer, more secure rung on the ladder. He may be “a fucking moron,” in Rex Tillerson’s immortal phrase, he may be intensely selfish and narcissistic. He’s also the monster that Fred made.
Wikipedia has a page for nearly everything:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_SARS-CoV-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_lab_leak_theory
“In July 2022, two papers published in Science described novel epidemiological and genetic evidence that suggested the pandemic likely began at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market and did not come from a laboratory.”
One that’s not behind a paywall:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abp8715
As a cancer biologist it should be noted that cellular transduction, invasion and metastasis have no partisan prejudice but if the etiology of the tumor is due to viral infection or toxin-induced mutation then public health authorities probably shouldn’t be fired from their jobs, nor should oncology researchers be distracted by corporate funding and stock options.
Greg Palast says that media will report on GOP voter suppression tactics before an election, but post election, media will not report what effect that voter suppression had on election outcomes.
https://www.gregpalast.com/
https://www.gregpalast.com/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won/
https://hartmannreport.com/p/trump-lost-vote-suppression-won-c6f
[edited for length and because it’s wildly off topic]
I saw those reports, and they are worth a read. Palast and Hartmann are covering the topic that corporate media cuts dead after elections.
Palast is the Upton Sinclair of our times, and “our times” is the Second Gilded Age, the First one being Sinclair’s journalistic target.
Given what has happened to the term “election integrity,” I wonder what grievances the Trmpists can spin out of this.
Zoe Tillman is also reporting that DOJ has nixed summer internships for law students. “The US Justice Department has withdrawn offers for its volunteer legal internship program, with law students being informed that they would no longer have summer positions, according to multiple people familiar with the change.” Additionally, “[o]fficials earlier in the week had withdrawn offers for the elite Honors Program for entry-level lawyers and for a paid summer internship program for law students, which is also competitive ….”
Although it’s likely that law students of all stripes are affected by the internship decision (Honors Program hires have likely been relatively long in the works), one has to wonder if more conservative students didn’t apply for these internships this cycle given that an incoming Trump Administration has been a fait accompli since early November. Marcy’s penultimate paragraph above rings true here, too: Trump’s policies, which seemed aimed first and foremost at reversing all things Biden-Administration, has the necessary consequence of hurting Trump supporters.
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/trumps-doj-halts-unpaid-summer-internships-for-law-students
[Moderator’s note: link has been replaced due to an excess of tracking content triggering auto-moderation; content at both original link and link above are behind a paywall. /~Rayne]
emptywheel wrote:
“ Jr also makes a big deal of the fact that John Ratcliffe, without explaining the meaning of a “low confidence” assessment, released a report that his predecessor, William Burns, ordered up.”
The purpose of that release was clearly to cause another round of badly-reported news articles, which it did.
As a reminder, there is no actual scientific evidence supporting the lab-leak hypothesis, and there is actually quite a lot of scientific evidence supporting a zoonotic spillover in the Wuhan animal market. Leading virologists have considered a lab-leak origin highly implausible for years now, but these right-wing conspiracy theories persist and are harmful to science.
My wife works in health care, and she just participated in a conference call with corporate lawyers who were advising directors about how do deal with ICE, etc, when they start nosing around and/or targeting care facilities. She informed me that all areas of such facilities, other than actual exam or patient care areas, are considered public and all you can do is let admins know that a raid or whatever is going down so that legal can show up, and attempt to prevent them from entering care zones. She also said that anyone who might be a target (for any reason including what they look like) needs to carry their legitimizing documentation with them at all times, everywhere they go. More 1930s Germany similarities piling on each and every day.
My takeaway: make sure my phone is charged and I’m ready to video record anything that goes down when I’m in a waiting room, or when I’m out and about in general. I have actually been practicing pulling it out and getting into a record mode, and operating the zoom and volume features, more automatically.
I’m White, and we live in a fairly Caucasian-heavy population zone, so I’m not expecting much to happen here. And when I say “Caucasian,” I’m not just referring to our predominantly white citizenry, but also our immigrant community, many of whom actually come from the Caucuses. That’s not so in other areas of our New England state where Africans from conflict zones and, increasingly, Hispanic folks have been showing up for many years. But a good cell phone video is worth many thousands of words.
It’s true that we haven’t seen wholesale “roundup”-style crackdowns from Homan’s directives yet (it’s a little too soon for that), but the appetite for that from the nativist portion of Trump’s base will soon lead to clamoring for spectacle, and they will have to be sated. That political imperative (from Trump’s perspective) will not be hindered by institutional resistance from ICE employees, who’ve exhibited their own nativism over the years (even those members who are Hispanic). Like within the military, there’s a large contingent of Trumpists already ensconced.
One more thought regarding the “Shock and Awe” moniker:
Can we make a concerted effort to point out that that tag line originated at the onset of the Bush/Cheney *criminal* invasion and decimation of Iraq, and that it was concocted for purely propaganda-driven purposes, to get the American public to root for that epic desecration of our collective integrity?
Only this time, the object of the 21st Century version of the Blitzkrieg is American institutions and the US citizenry itself.
During the original “Shock and Awe” we were subjected over and over again to images of Baghdad being blown to ashes and dust by bombs and every cruise missile in our arsenal. Sorta like what Russia is perpetrated on Ukraine now. We were trained to see that massive destruction as something to be proud of as Americans but when the suicide bombers appeared as a last resort of resistance against the invasion we were told that was terrorism. Lies and media manipulation fed both narratives. Oh and also too “People better watch what they say”.
Why is the military tactic of “shock and awe” being employed against our own country? Will Trump employ blitzkrieg next? Is this their way of signaling the start of civil war?
In Trump’s world view, there are only sycophants and enemies.
Excuse me, excuse me, Earl. I’m sure you meant to say ‘patriots’ and enemies.
@Rita:
It’s has that feel:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/emergency-measures-to-provide-water-resources-in-california-and-improve-disaster-response-in-certain-areas/
It’s also why they’re using usaf c17s (at around 250k per flight) to transport a few dozen deportees when a dhs charter costs a tiny fraction of that. It’s performative red meat for maga base
[Welcome to emptywheel. Please choose and use a unique username with a minimum of 8 letters. We have adopted this minimum standard to support community security. Because your username is too short it will be temporarily changed to match the date/time of your first known comment until you have a new compliant username. Thanks. /~Rayne]
A small child’s simplistic solutions to problems they don’t (or won’t, or in TFG’s case, can’t) understand. IF he wants to turn the clock back, he can set up an area – like the US Gulf Coast – where all of that is done, and they get “tax breaks” for allowing it. Of course, he isn’t going to explain that living in the 50s means no computers, smartphones, microwave ovens….
Seth Abramson has actually been doing a series where he goes over Trump’s EO’s and breaks down how they are going to hurt MAGAs here:
https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/trumps-day-1-executive-orders-are
https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/on-day-2-of-his-presidency-donald
https://sethabramson.substack.com/p/its-day-3-of-a-disastrous-presidency
The average maga isn’t bright enough to realize any of that tho.
[Moderator’s note: see note in your comment at 3:14 pm /~Rayne]
Yes, Joh Brennan should avail Jr the opportunity to prove his comments in a fair court of law. 7 or 8 figures worth too worth of opportunity too if possible.
This is what happens when you live in the upper mid-west Lakes region, or have a lot of lakes in your state, and stay home and not vote:
Trump propses ‘clean out’ of Gaza citizens
https://archive.is/XeD5N
…and this is only his first week.
This is what happens when you vote for the other guy because the good candidates aren’t proposing instant peace.
That is exactly the issue I had with the Harris campaign. Otherwise, she ran a good campaign. The voters of that region warned her.
…and here we are.
They voted from ignorance – they don’t seem to understand treaties, or that the US doesn’t make decisions for Israel.
BUT HERE WE ARE. Donnie just released more 2000lb bombs to the IDF.
The phrase “don’t cut off your nose to spite your face” comes to mind.
Anybody who paid attention knew that Trump would be worse for Gaza than Harris.
I do not want the Trump ultimate plan for Gaza to be forgotten.
“Jared Kushner has praised the “very valuable” potential of Gaza’s “waterfront property” and suggested Israel should remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip. ”
Kushner…”made the comments in an interview at Harvard University on 15 February [2024]. The interview was posted on the YouTube channel of the Middle East Initiative, a program of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government…”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-property-israel-negev
“Responding to a question about whether the Palestinians should have their own state, Kushner described the proposal as “a super bad idea” that “would essentially be rewarding an act of terror”. “
From near the end of a Guardian piece today comes their latest about Trump urging Gazans to leave so the place can be rebuilt, with emphasis added:
Free Palestine supporters all over Blue Sky insisting that Trump’s going to “save” Palestine in a way “Genocide Joe” never would…
I knew this was coming, but they’re still in massive denial.
Very interesting and penetrating post, thank you Marcy.
It appears the Trump government decided to have a very active first week in order to dominate the headlines. News folks mostly don’t know enough nor work enough to parse the flood of nonsense. It is working, e.g. the NYTimes has “Trump Leaves Democrats Dazed and on the Defensive” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/us/politics/trump-democrats-republicans.html
We reading emptywheel get the straight scoop that it is mostly sloppy or erroneous or both. Thanks! But we are not the audience for this.
The audience is news folk, who are overwhelmed by it, and wingnut pundits, who can spin it as Trump Triumphs, Don Delivers.
The substance appalls; the organization and political craftsmanship are worrisome.
It seems as if, but I’m not so sure about it. When I read that an order that aims at enforcing immigration law is titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion”*) I rather assume that this is preparing for a bit-by-bit change of the meaning of the legal vocabulary. Invasion shouldn’t be confused with immigration of private indiduals, even if they come in great numbers. That’s how courts, including the SC, have decided — so far. But when ‘invasion’ and ‘immigration’ will be used as interchangeable terms again and again, I become doubtful how the SC will decide once the order on birthright citizenship reaches its bench.
*) Source: “President Trump and The Civil Service: Day 1” by Nick Bednar, Thursday, January 23, 2025, 1:32 PM.
Sorry, I forgot to include that the article is on the Lawfare pages. Here’s the link:
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/president-trump-and-the-civil-service–day-1
Thanks Konny.
For the political purposes of the Trump folks, it doesn’t much matter that many if not most of the initiatives will come to nothing. They have, from a MAGA perspective, grand goals that they can be trumpeted and from a media-confounding perspective, the effect of flooding the zone. It is within that they are politically well organized and craftmanlike.
That is worrisome, and even worse if they win on a few of the moonshots.
Convincing the SC that immigrants are a foreign army and thus not subject to the laws of the US seems like a moonshot to me. They have a lot of moonshots.
If the moonshots don’t work out in court, the trumpists will campaign against the courts. Mr. Trump showed over the last few years that he is a very able campaigner against the courts, possibly training others to keep that up after he can no longer do it effectively. Also worrisome that they can win by losing.
I understand that releasing the intelligence on Covid’s origin satisfies those who want to pin the blame on “gain of function” research (and, hence, indirectly Fauci). It also stokes animosity towards China, which might serve short term interests but not long term ones.
Trump supporters are calling for Dr. Birx “to ‘be charged’ with the crimes she committed” and have an open execution, “to be hanged by her beautiful scarf,” because of her C19 statements.
https://www.mediaite.com/news/top-trump-supporters-call-for-his-own-administration-official-to-be-executed-in-shocking-posts/
Dr. Fauci is untouchable – he has a pardon; Dr. Birx does not.
We are a sick country.
I have proposed before that a website be created which lists this administration’s promises, actions, and consequences. To simplify it further, I have suggested just listing the Actions and Consequences. After reading Marcy’s post, I would suggest complicating it a bit by adding a third column addressing Likely Consequences. Many of the substantial consequences may not be seen for years. So, to make it more current, I would suggest listing what Marcy has listed above in most cases — the Likely consequences. I would put an asterisk after Likely on the page that signifies “only when sufficient research warrants a reasonable prediction.” For many actions, such as tax cuts for the wealthy, there is ample evidence to suggest what those will likely lead to.
Someone should register jan6inrealtime.org and make a site similar to https://apolloinrealtime.org except this new site should play all the footage from the Jan 6 insurrection over and over in a realtime loop.
A site like that would be a useful resource for reminding Americans, with their goldfish memories, of what occurred on that day and why the more-than-1500 people Trump pardoned in connection with that day should have been left to the justice system to try, convict and sentence.
“Decades ago, George Orwell suggested that the best one-word description of a Fascist was “bully,”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning
The Felon in Chief was in Asheville Friday. I was mystified by his schedule: supposedly on the ground at 11, two stops planned-a fair distance apart and then he was due to leave shortly after 1. I’m still uncertain if it was just a flyover since traffic was snarled on the ground.
There’s still debris from Helene stories high-everywhere. Buildings, homes, businesses, livelihoods, and Lives lost and the President of the blessed country comes here and tells the media, “Thinking of cutting FEMA.” (Which has been pretty responsive as far as I’ve experienced and heard anecdotally throughout the region).
I haven’t seen any stories about his visit to L.A. on Friday, but it apparently was short, since he seems to have spent the night as his Las Vegas hotel. (He saw Pacific Palisades, but not Altadena.)
I happened to have the misfortune of hearing the convoy of Ospreys conveying him back from Palisades burn area to the back 40 at LAX where AF1 was parked on Friday night. They flew low and were very noisy – I live in Westchester, just north of LAX. It was about 6:15 pm local time. Although Gavin met him on the tarmac when he arrived, he did not accompany him to the Palisades burn area, but I did hear he had a rather testy back-and-forth with Mayor Bass before leaving for Vegas…
Southern California burn areas resident here, Trump also popped in here to say he covets cutting FEMA. Very stable genius that guy.
“We shouldn’t be in a position where you have tumbleweed that’s dry as a bone. Even tumbleweed can be nice & green & rich & it’s not gonna burn. You don’t even have to remove it. It’s not gonna burn. But it’s just dry. So I hope you can all get together & say I’m so happy with the water.”
Trump at Pacific Palisades, CA
Every resident of Wyoming is shaking their heads at that comment.
Even those that voted for him.
He doesn’t seem to know how rivers work. (Or anything else, much.) You’d need the Mississippi in flood to put out the wildfires of the last 10 or so years. No city system can handle it. And we don’t have enough water-droppers, and never will, with his lack of concern for actual people.
(I wonder what the results would be if you locked him in a room with a GED paper exam, proctored.)
“I’m signing an executive order to open up the pumps and valves in the north. We want to get that water pouring down here as quickly as possible … you’re talking about unlimited water coming up from the Pacific Northwest, even coming from parts of Canada.”
Trump, Pacific Palisades, CA
@ Ms Jenny MD:
I think this is that order:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/emergency-measures-to-provide-water-resources-in-california-and-improve-disaster-response-in-certain-areas/
Nothing like an EO that will do zero for firefighters. Or for the endangered fish species, which are what the laws and regulations are supposed to protect. (I noticed he spent as little time as possible in L.A, and learned zero about the actual problem, which is climate change caused by fossil fuels, and people building in areas that are not at all safe from fires.)
Direct assistance from FEMA: https://www.axios.com/2024/10/08/fema-direct-payments-state-recipients. The bulk goes to Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. California—over Jan 2015 to April 2024—got about 12 – 15% as much as each of those states did.
“—–If you walk like a fascist, talk like a fascist, think the rules do not apply to you; if you seek to destroy the democratic institutions of your nation, solely to serve your own personal ends; if you foment racism, violence, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny and racial intolerance; if you constantly lie to the people of your country; if you seek to destroy the credibility of news organizations to inoculate yourself against them reporting to the nation about your crimes; if you knowingly collude with foreign powers to undermine your country’s electoral process; if you sell public policy, domestic and foreign, to the highest bidder…you just might be a fascist.”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning
One of the immigration deport planes not mentioned above, is one that flew into Brazil yesterday, carrying 88 Brazilians. Brazil’s Lula government expressed outrage after dozens of immigrants deported from the United States arrived by plane in handcuffs and leg shackles, calling it a “flagrant disregard” for their rights.
I’m going back to Rio in ten days to work on getting my spouse their visa to come live in the U.S. I have no doubt that somehow Trump will muck-up relations between Brazil and the U.S. in the near future. Already Brazil is requiring a tourist visa from Americans beginning in April 2025. Currently nothing is required of me to enter Brazil, but my U.S. passport (…and a promise to leave).
I’m seriously considering obtaining a Brazilian passport as well on this trip. Having a U.S. passport will no doubt become an international embarrassment in the next four years.
Brazil at least used to have fairly strict visa requirements for Americans. In a 2003 trip for a wedding, I had the hardest time getting in (most of the rest of the party were Irish or Scot).
The WH just placed tariffs on Colombian coffee for refusing our military transport planes. Now we can enjoy high-priced coffee AND eggs (…except if you go to Costco; 5 dozen eggs $18.59)
BTW, the White House spelled Colombia as “Columbia” – like the sports wear company.
Morons
Are
Governing
Again
.
News media are now reporting that Colombia backed down and allowed the deportation flights, and Trump changed his mind about imposing 25% tarriffs on them.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/26/politics/donald-trump-colombia-power-analysis/index.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20p36e62gyo
Do Americans understand how much damage Trump is doing to the reputation of the U.S. with all his bullying of other nations? He’s pissing away soft power that took literally decades to accumulate. 10 or 20 years from now, the U.S. will be much poorer and less powerful because of Trump’s reckless and idiotic way of engaging with other countries. Even long-time allies like Canada and Denmark are going to hate the U.S. for a long time if Trump keeps behaving like an asshole towards them.
I feel like the media is once again analyzing Trump’s actions as if he has some bigger scheme or plan for the country. This is so maddening, especially when Trump is so transparent in his motivations.
A prime example is his withdrawal (and desire to withdraw) from all the nation’s alliances. Trump is not an “isolationist” as the media endlessly obsesses about. Trump simply does not want the responsibility of maintaining alliances. The PERSONAL responsibility. He doesn’t want to have to make any decisions, especially where they can be attached to him and not easily misattributed to someone else (he is extremely indecisive, which is why he most often goes with whatever the last person he saw said). There is no personal benefit to him that comes from these alliances so they are of no use in his mind.
Another example is his desire to get rid of FEMA. FEMA offers him little personal gain and a lot of potential headaches. He hates going to disaster areas (unless he’s campaigning).
I’m predicting that Trump will not go to any gatherings of our allies. He might appear digitally, where he can filibuster and lie and bully and not have to do it to other world leaders faces (he is too cowardly to that). I’m not sure if his old man wish to remain in familiar territory will limit all his international travel; he still may make supplicatory trips to the countries of authoritarian leaders.
He’s tired. He avoided jail and no just wants to golf, enjoy having billionaires kowtow to him, and perform for his followers. He will seek to get rid of any of the responsibilities of office that pertain to governing and focus on further enriching himself.
He will still pay lip service to his followers by reciting all their grievance greatest hits, but the machinery of the government will not have his tiny, demented hands on the levers.
I would really like to see Senators question every single nominee up for confirmation by discussing what Trump is doing to certain members of his prior administration, asking the current nominee if they are aware of what Trump did to Pompeo, Bolton, et al., and once the nominee acknowledges awareness of Trump’s treatment of those members of his prior administration, ask the nominee if they are prepared to be treated similarly by Trump if they displease him.