I indicated not long ago that I had been considering a framework that would provide a context for the Trump Administration’s actions since January 20; upon reflection, I’ve decided there are two different overall strategies being implemented. No attempt is made here to place all of the Administration’s blizzard of activities in one of the categories; those listed below are for illustration only. Some of the Administration’s initiatives fit in more than one category. If you agree with the gist, I leave it to you to place other Trump actions in one or more of the categories, and to add any additional categories you think I’ve overlooked. Listing them from least to most malign:
Implementing Policy Initiatives. Mass deportations of illegal immigrants, imposition of tariffs, enabling increased domestic drilling for carbon fuels, further tax cuts, and ending diversity initiatives in place via Presidential Executive Order are all policy initiatives that the President Donald Trump campaigned on. He won the election. Like them or not, none of his efforts in these areas appear to be beyond the lawful scope of the Executive Branch.
Hucksterism. If willingly gullible ordinary MAGA citizens want to contribute to various Trump Organization financial vehicles because they believe such will – wait for it – Make America Great Again, or buy Trump cryptocurrency meme coins, Trump Cologne, etc., etc., etc., they should have at it. [Authorities: W.C. Fields and (apocryphally, at least) P.T. Barnum.]
Exhibiting Vindictive Toxicity. Examples: Mr. Trump’s order removing security details for former Trump Administration Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Trump Administration National Security Advisor John Bolton – both under threat by Iran due to their part in the assassination of Qasem Soleimani at Mr. Trump’s order – due to their criticism of Mr. Trump; Mr. Trump’s order that Mt. Denali be renamed, “Mt. McKinley,” a blatant slap at Alaskan indigent tribes opposed by a majority of Alaskans and both Alaska’s Republican Senators; and the unsubstantiated claim that Democrats and their “DEI” policies somehow caused the recent Washington, D.C. airline crash. All petulant spasms.
I’d suggest that these first three categories collectively are intended to achieve a strategy that is pure Trump: please your audience, make a quick buck off a sucker, and petty payback.
Undercutting Strategic Alliances. Examples: Deploying tariffs against our North American neighbors despite their adherence to a trade deal Mr. Trump negotiated in his first term; declaring that the Gulf of Mexico should be renamed, “the Gulf of America”; proposing to annex Canada; threatening to take Greenland (under the jurisdiction of Denmark, a NATO ally) by force; and suggesting that Gazans should be transported to Egypt or Jordan (irritating these U.S. allies in an extremely unstable region). None of these actions served any purpose save to make our allies less amenable to any requests for assistance we might make in the future.
Dismantling the American Government. Here’s a couple: nominating grotesquely unqualified persons to run extremely complex and sensitive organs of the American government, such as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, soon-to-be Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard; and the DOGE machinations. These maneuvers create fear and disruption. Although making government more effective is certainly within a President’s purview – Theodore Roosevelt made clear in his autobiography that he authorized quite a number of independent, unpaid individuals to improve federal government efficiency during his presidency — the measures Mr. Musk and his little Bobos are effecting toward our governmental structures are not those of a rational business person attempting to improve an organization’s processes. I am confident that if/whenever Mr. Musk seeks to trim the workforces in his two operations that he actually understands – cars and spacecraft – he doesn’t indiscriminately give almost all of his full-time employees carte blanche to go with severance pay, or turn hiring and firing decisions over to neophytes, without regard to the impact on his operations.
Degrading the Rule of Law. Here are a few: Politically browbeating U.S. Senators to abdicate their Constitutional responsibility by approving abjectly unqualified Cabinet nominees; dismissing members of the Department of Justice and the FBI for conducting investigations and prosecutions that yielded sufficient evidence that grand juries returned indictments against Mr. Trump; executive orders to end birthright citizenship notwithstanding pretty darn clear language granting same in the Fourteenth Amendment; impoundment of funds and closing of federal agencies authorized by Congress; and, of course, the pardoning of those who either pled guilty or juries of ordinary citizens found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of assaulting the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Such attacks not only undermine faith in our system of government, but also undermine global confidence in our financial system, which draws much of its strength from world nations’ belief in the competence, integrity, and impartiality of our courts.
A lot has been made in recent days of the impending Constitutional crisis that will ensue if the Trump Administration defies rulings rendered against it in federal courts. While the potential crisis is perhaps a new notion for many of our citizens, those with legal training are always acutely aware that our courts’ power is based upon the premise that those government officials with actual enforcement power will abide by their rulings. Obviously, if it becomes clear that the Administration is willfully disregarding court orders, such will trump (if you will) all other manners by which MAGAs are undermining the American rule of law. I will venture that the culmination of such a confrontation will occur if/when a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, with three Trump appointees and a total of six conservative Justices, rules against a Trump initiative – and the Administration thereafter ignores the ruling. Since the Court controls its docket, I suspect that there will be a temptation on the part of some Justices to only take the disputes which they believe will be easiest to rationalize in favor of the Administration, but it is going to be difficult to duck some impending Constitutional issues, such as birthright citizenship, in which the Administration’s opponents seemingly have the stronger legal argument. I suspect that when these challenges come, the key votes will be Chief Justice John Roberts – who will certainly be at least as interested in preserving the Court’s putative standing within the Constitutional framework as the outcome of the case before the Court — and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. (There was a point at which I thought Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch was more judge than partisan, but that fleeting notion has passed.)
The types of activities that fit within these last three categories collectively amount to the decimation of the American state. President Trump and Co-President Musk have over the years each made clear their respective affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin. These efforts couldn’t suit Putin’s purposes any better than if the Russian President had specified them himself.
McCoy's Noise 