Trump’s worst nightmare may be coming true. The charm of Wonderland has worn off.
He ran as a populist paladin who was so smart he could outwit the arrogant elites and return power to the aggrieved people whose prejudices and misinformation he shared. It turns out the rigged game is just another name for reality, and the smart guys knew things he can’t figure out.
In short, being an arrogant, unqualified, bully who inherited money doesn’t get you in the game except as the patsy. Trump believed it would be easy to fix health care, but it turned out to be hard. It would be childishly simple to fix immigration, but terrorizing toddlers turns out to turn the stomachs of a nation of immigrants. Working with Congress to patiently craft compromises is far beyond his ability.
Corrupt lackeys like Scott Pruitt didn’t seem like they were draining the swamp but feathering their own nests. And now a federal judge thinks the emoluments clause may not allow him to profit from his office so flagrantly.
Allowing criminal enterprises to pollute the air and water is also less popular than he thought it would be. California is fighting against getting its smog back and Detroit has retooled to make clean cars and trucks and doesn’t want to backslide since their global customers aren’t in the market for filthy products.
Trump thought he could bluster our NATO allies into picking up more of the tab for defending the West, or failing that ditch our responsibilities and go it alone, even though our leadership made us rich by assuring market and political stability. Turns out a fragmenting or less democratic Europe is not to our advantage, and risks driving Europe into the arms of Russia or China for trading partners.
Trump promised he could get Kim Jong Un to disarm, and declared victory on the strength of a promise, but Kim still has his nukes. He said China is eating our lunch on trade, but his voters depend on cheap imports to maintain their lifestyle. He was going to be pals with Putin, but the dictator smirks while Trump undermines the world order that kept Putin in his place and is investigated for benefiting from Putin cyber attacks on our elections.
As if has become clear that Trump is in over his head, he has begun to get more pushback, and has had to back down. After his groveling before his master in Helsinki, Trump doubled down by scheduling another meeting in Washington for the fall with Putin. His own foreign policy team was blindsided and his party aghast.
Leaders of the House and Senate rushed to the White House to insist a Rose Garden photo op with Putin a week or two before the Midterms would be poison, and Trump ignominiously capitulated. The Putin meeting has been postponed.
One of Trump’s articles of faith is that a trade deficit means we are being cheated, even though it really means his voters like buying products they want for a price they can afford. So, to teach our global trading partners, or in Trumpspeak our foes, who’s boss, he slapped tariffs on Canada, Mexican, the EU, China et al. Surely that would drive them to the negotiating table where the Dealmaker-In-Chief would win, win, win.
But he lost. Raising tariffs on aluminum and steel translated into a tax on everything manufactured that uses those commodities. So prices are rising and American workers find themselves uncompetitive. Undeterred, he threatened to impose more tariffs on more goods, like all imported autos and anything made in China. But while he fiddles, China is plotting to expand its reach and fill the vacuum of global leadership left by America’s abdication
Targeted countries fired back, raising tariffs on American motorcycles, bourbon and farm products. Soon, from Nebraska and Iowa to South Carolina farmers and auto workers who fueled Trump’s election were feeling the squeeze and screaming bloody murder. Trump’s reaction was not to say he’d learned that capitalist global trade is complicated or that sovereign nations are less amenable to bullying than New York zoning commissions.
Rather, he came up with a lunatic fix, proposing to spend $12 billion in taxpayer money on welfare for farmers beggared by the trade war he started. Republicans who still subscribe to their bedrock distaste for government meddling in markets or picking winners and losers were furious. Trump said they only needed to be patient. His toughness would soon repeal the laws of economic reality.
But apparently even he didn’t believe it. He was soon meeting with the head of the EU and agreeing to discuss an end to the tariff tit for tat, all the while claiming his crawl back from the ledge was a victory. Few were deceived. Trump’s base seems to have begun to notice that the Emperor has no clothes.
He isn’t a populist, but another self-serving swamp dweller. He really doesn’t know how the rigged game works since he keeps being outwitted. The fictions he believe to be true don’t actually describe the world we live in. He is all talk and misguided actions. And his bluster and egomania cut no ice with the hard-eyed technocrats, unsentimental markets, ruthless adversaries, stone-cold judges, and reality-based media he finds himself up against.
His recent address to a VFW convention in Kansas City was so poorly attended his handlers had to downsize the venue, and Trump was reduced to the Orwellian expedient of begging a roomful of vets, who know first hand how poorly he’s handled the disarray at the Veterans Affairs department, not to abandon ship.
“Stick with us,” he said. “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. What you’re seeing and what your’e reading is not what’s happening.” We’re truly through the looking glass if that’s the best the President of the United States can offer.
But if Alice could realize the Hatter was Mad, we can see fictions of the President nicknamed Agent Orange for what they are. Farmers know the drop in the price of soybeans is real. Manufacturing workers know the rising cost of tariffs on materials is real.
We all know the rising cost of healthcare and prescription drugs is real, the Russian attack on our democratic elections is real, the EU being forced into the arms of our competitors is real. Realest of all is the Mueller investigation, the legal troubles facing the president, the damage to his brand, and the falling poll numbers in swing states.