since the beginning of what seemed like “the rehabilitation of trump” i had my doubts. i distrusted his economics, but most of all i distrusted his character, the extravagant narcissism, the lack of honesty, and the inability to tolerate having to share any limelight with anyone else at all. he’s never been able to keep good, strong people in his orbit because he cannot tolerate others being praised.
for a brief moment during the tail end of last year and early this, i thought maybe this time was different, that trump had evolved and changed. well, that was a nice theory. it’s now in tatters.
the greatest fear was that the dem plan of only covering elon and saying “president musk” at every opportunity would be more than donnie could bear. it was a good bet and an effective tactic. they did the same to vance: load of coverage as the mover and shaker, for trump nothing.
it worked. vance has all but disappeared from the high profile scene and trump has destroyed his presidency. sorry. many won’t like my saying this. but he has.
trump had a once in a generation opportunity and all he had to do was sit still and win. let DOGE demolish the deepstate, drag it into the light, and expose it. let them wreck the chains of command the partisan permanent state had established, the dirty money, the captured agencies and purloined justice. control the border, tear out DEI root and stem, and shrink the regulatory state. get the schools back.
this was the clear obvious path to making america great again and the alliance of trump populists and sili valley and fin bro builders was incredibly potent, a literal dream team set up for a walkover win.
it was not to be.
the true genius of DOGE was not even saving money. that was pretext. the real value lay in exposing the compromised deepstate and the corruption and theft that has become 30-50% of US federal governance from USAID to NIH to corporal klinger’s army. the real value of “tell me 3 things you did this week” was not to fire losers, it was to find the buried diamonds, the effective useful people buried three layers down in bureaucracy and elevate them to make a difference. it was to find new allies and friends.
the huge win was not in the budget or the congress but in the society. every day there was another headline, over and over, each worse than the last. no one even knows what the treasury spent all this money on. no one has audited this. look at this program, now look at that one. it was marvelous theater and a page out of the climate crisis crybully playbook of saturating the field with messaging until minds change. two years of daily drip feed of federal malfeasance would have created a massive societal shift. it was already happening. even many of my deep blue friends from deep blue places were saying things like “wait, is this real?” and “they were actually doing this?” hearts and minds were softening and being won. tides were turning. unprecedented alliances were coming together, trust was being built in pursuit of common cause.
this was a revolution that could spread.
populists and tech titans were in the same boat and it was really picking up speed. it was a credible coalition capable of winning trust and confidence, a grand bargain to go make a mutually desired agenda happen.
then came tariffs.
the trade war waged with powers grasped in cavalier and questionable fashion blew this to newfound confluence to flinders. it lost all the initiative and gave the game away. it not only fractured the alliance, but it brought “bad trump” back into the foreground as he stormed the spotlight needing every news cycle to be about him and his antics. the economic harm will be very real as for the second time in 2 presidencies, he breaks global supply chains and is now rapidly losing control of the negotiations and having them go sideways.
but worse is all the allies alienated.
no one wants to deal with him because no one trusts him. and that’s because trump will always need to be the center of attention, places no value in his word, and always stabs his friends and business partners in the back. this has been his whole career. “the art of the deal” is basically “make a massive mess, who cares about rules or law, and rugpull all your friends to grab their stuff for personal gain.”
it goes from this:
to this:
in one temper tantrum.
and the trump presidency will wind up a failure as a result because he broke faith on trade, on staying sane, and on the budget.
trade alone was the beginning of the end. the whole builder and finance class was lost right there, all the really effective folks in the DOGE orbit and the people DOGE could have convinced were pushed out.
even if you believe it was some cunning negotiation (it wasn’t) or that mercantilism works (it doesn’t), the price would STILL not be worth it. it was the end of the trump presidency as an effective time of change. it became a circus in a swamp. all the media became “look how crazy!” all the people who thought “hey, maybe this is going to be not such a bad thing” flipped right back to “yup, bad thing.”
the midterms were gone right there and so was much of the center. worse, the daily news drip of “government bad” was back to “orange man crazy.”
all the progress was lost and reversed.
i watched it happen to so many of my friends.
it happened to me.
so many of us that were leaning in suddenly sat back.
then it got worse.
the “big beautiful bill” is a porkulous calamity where a weaksauce gormless opposition party played business as usual to run up debt by overspending and trump, in direct contrast to the claims he ran on, cheer led it. he’s siding with the RINO frails in congress over the american people on SALT giveaways and entitlements and 5000 little private clownshows. it’s an awful, business as usual bill resembling nothing so much as sugar loaded suet marketed as protein bars.
a stand was promised and this was the time to take one. instead, we “have to pork the bill to pass the bill” and keep these lameo fake fiscal conservatives in congress. trump proved to be just another “run on balanced budget rule on giant deficits” republican.
this is not a good look.
they gave the game away.
even harry “the muppet” sisson can see what’s coming next…
and now we’re at needless internal war because trump simply could not let others get credit and wanted to appeal to a house majority he was already going to lose in any event by pushing a bill that’s sure to lose even more of them and finish shattering his alliance.
elon has the right of this. he came in to participate in a joint agenda. and trump broke faith because that’s what trump always does.
his whole career is screwing his business partners.
many (including me) thought perhaps he had finally grown up.
nope.
he was goaded into needing to play “the big man” and running DOGE out of the headlines. he lost the zeitgeist, the moral high ground, and destroyed his grand alliance all in a couple of months setting what was shaping up to be one of the most promising presidencies in living memory on fire.
and make no mistake, this is bill is NOT what trump ran on.
el donaldo was set up to be a massive win with decadal scale legs. now it will be a cautionary tale. trump is the scorpion killing the frog. because that’s what scorpions do.
the orange man has turned red and his ego and delusions are showing.
elon won him the election using social media and broadening appeal. an awful lot of trump voters were DOGE voters. maybe he could have pulled it out without musk and rogan and vance and who knows how many others. but i doubt it. they gave him the machine and the smarts he needed.
his sophistication was theirs.
then he threw them under the bus.
“dismantle leviathan” was the key plank of his promised platform. not crazy, semi-considered tariffs, not simping for RINO congresscritters as they run up trillions in annual deficits and call it stewardship. take the permanent state apart, restore american culture, and get control of our borders.
we could have had day after day of better economy, better mood, morning in america cultural revival and deepstate defenestration. now we have trade malaise and collapsing new orders.
we could have had the gutting of federal agencies and reduction of purview. the people were all there to make it happen. now they are fleeing. they worked for elon, not don. and who, after this rugpull, would want to?
hard re-won trust is all gone.
we could have had this in the news over and over all day every day until everyone in america really, truly understood at a deep level that government is corrupt and leviathan has become the enemy of the republic.
instead trump did exactly what the swamp donkeys wanted and made it all about him. not the issues. him.
it’s the textbook definition of an own goal. trump did this to himself and instead of playing nemesis chose to provoke it with hubris of his own.
it’s really a massive shame.
you cannot fix the US by protecting a thin congressional majority of abject losers and frauds who will keep selling we the people down the fiscal river year in year out.
that is not worth saving. this was the time to go to war on them, call them out, and make the midterms about them and not trump. this was the time to win the zeitgeist with drip-feed DOGE saturation, to move the middle, to move the culture. that was the only important fight, the only one with meaning.
politics is downstream of culture.
change the culture, change the congress.
change the congress, fix this mess.
instead don doubles down on the same congress-jackals that dug the hole and protects them as though they somehow represent the way out of it. this is obviously and devastatingly stupid and for those who want to keep saying “we have to win the election to rule!” consider that if you have to keep selling out the path to useful rulership, then your rule is neither useful nor helpful.
“politics is the art of the possible” makes sense inasmuch as what is possible is also good, but if all that is possible is awful, then politics is the path to dissolution.
at a certain point, you need to turn over the gameboard.
the ury style BATNA (best alternative to negotiated settlement) comes into play. sometimes, you walk away and play a longer game.
“we need to keep the same malefactors in office who never keep their promises or else we will not be in power” is not a basis for government nor a path to anywhere you want to go.
maybe the GOP needs a huge loss to wake them the hell up.
i suspect they’re gonna get it.
musk and others are already talking about a third political party.
sure, this splits the GOP vote, but i bet it pulls from the left too. i’d support it in mid terms.
if they won even 20% of the house and prevented either of the other 2 parties from getting over 50%, they could wield A LOT of power.
everyone gets horrified about “perot making us lose” but keep in mind, last time that happened, the reflexivity 2 years later was the gingrich congress, the only ones to balance the budget in living memory.
it forced a real plan, an actual contract with america.
where the hell is that these days? we need it.
“doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result” is the not the definition of political pragmatism, it’s the definition of brain dead.
time for new ideas. what we’re doing now is clearly never going to work.
there is a vast centrist desire for morning in america and our two political parties are the chief impediments to its realization.
they will never change.
they need to go.
time for something new or 10 years from now, we’ll be over the event horizon on federal debt and default or hyperinflation will be the only ways out.
time to grasp thistles and make hard choices.
choosing not to decide is just another way of admitting that you have already lost.
Appreciateyour insight as always but wow, not my take at all and I hardly think this will destroy Trump or the MAGA movement. That said, if it's not all a set up it's embarrassing as hell for both of them to have such public tantrums. Time will tell I guess.
Elon Musk is a known drug addict. Trump, like all of us, has feet of clay. If Kalamity Kamala had been elected, the country would already be bankrupt. I am not 100% for Trump. He can be arrogant and annoying, but he's the best bet we have.