Trump’s Presidency is Circling the Drain

Nothing goes right for the Mad King

Donald Trump’s predilection for chaos has wrecked any hope of functional democracy. It is also proving to be disastrous for his presidency. He has lost public support on nearly every issue—and for good reason.

Photo by Leo Visions

Domestically, the economy is sputtering. The rich are thriving, while middle- and lower-income Americans “navigating a labor market that is losing momentum” are spending less, the New York Times reports. “Slower wage growth, combined with persistent inflation, is straining many families’ finances.” When Americans increasingly rely on credit and start “falling behind on car loans and credit card payments” so drastically, you know Trump’s economy is on shaky ground.

Inflation, made worse by Trump’s inane tariffs and brutal immigration raids, continues to weigh on consumers. A Labor Department document recently revealed “‘the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens’ is threatening ‘the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers,’” the Washington Post reported. The document also rebukes a favorite talking point of the anti-immigrant extreme right: that Americans will take these jobs. The Labor Department “noted that Americans are not willing to step into farm work and lack the skills to fill agricultural jobs that undocumented immigrants are abandoning.” Not enough U.S. workers are available to offset migrant labor losses.

Meanwhile, the ongoing shutdown is only worsening the unemployment picture. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The number of unemployment claims filed by federal workers has grown sharply, reaching their highest level since a 34-day government shutdown that ended in January 2019. ….

The jump in claims likely reflects two forces. The shutdown has prompted many temporarily furloughed workers to file for unemployment. And some of the workers who took the Trump administration’s deferred-resignation plan—and recently lost their paychecks—might be filing for unemployment.

The claims figures provide a glimpse into the roiling of the federal workforce at a time when most official economic reports have been postponed by the shutdown.

As for the shutdown, the ostensible reason Republicans refuse to come to the bargaining table (their refusal to preserve healthcare coverage for millions of Americans from) seems to be crumbling. “Republican leaders on Capitol Hill are quietly ramping up talks within their senior ranks and with White House officials over how to structure and advance a potential extension of key Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies before the end of the year,” Politico reported. As Democrats have made clear, the ACA subsidies “are at the heart of Democrats’ shutdown demands” so capitulation on this point would represent a stunning admission that MAGA hostility to affordable healthcare coverage is a loser, and a shutdown necessitated by refusal to keep tens of millions of Americans insured has been politically…dumb.

Trump’s domestic “policy” (such as it is) obviously is not his only glaring weakness. Trump’s strutting and bullying on the world stage makes him look more inept. Vladimir Putin has predictably ignored his pleas to end the war against Ukraine; Trump continues to flip-flop on what, if anything, he is prepared to do to help Ukraine. As many foresaw, Trump’s “peace plan” for Gaza, which resolved none of the underlying issues (e.g., Gaza governance, Hamas disarmament), hangs by a thread as intermittent attacks flare up. Trump has neither the patience nor intellect for serious negotiation on thorny issues.

Likewise, Trump’s blatantly illegal and reckless attacks on supposed drug smuggling boats and murders of those on board have drawn the ire of everyone from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to President Gustavo Petro of Colombia (who understandably accuses Trump of murdering a fisherman).

As Paul put it on Meet the Press in denouncing the attacks that “go against all of our tradition”:

You have to accuse them of something. You have to present evidence. So, all of these people have been blown up without us knowing their name, without any evidence of a crime. And for decades, if not centuries, when you stop people at sea in international waters or in your own waters, you announce that you’re going to board the ship and you’re looking for contraband, smuggling, or drugs. … So, if our policy now is to blow up every ship we suspect or accuse of drug running, that would be a bizarre world, in which 25% of the people might be innocent.

(Paul also suggested that since the boats are 2,000 miles away, they’re “probably peddling drugs to one of the islands of Trinidad or Tobago off of Venezuela.”) If only Paul had other Republican colleagues remotely concerned about their oaths of office, Congress’s constitutional role, and/or the danger of being dragged into a war without Congress’s consent.

The only relationships in this hemisphere Trump deems worth cultivating are with mini-me autocrats such as former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro (whose conviction provoked Trump to slap a tax, or “tariff” that is, on Americans for Brazilian coffee and other exports), and Argentina’s strongman Javier Milei (who gets a $40M taxpayer bailout, a transparent effort to interfere with that country’s election). Trump has fully embraced the role of Ugly American nemesis of Latin American democracy movements circa 1970.

In sum, voters who made a Faustian bargain in voting for Trump—figuring that a better economy and deporting just the “worst of the worst” migrants was worth the insanity, constitutional calamities, betrayal of allies, etc. inherent in a Trump regime—have gotten a feeble economy and Trump’s insanity, cruelty, ineptitude, despotism, vulgarity, and recklessness that daily disgrace the United States.