Trump Fever

Note: Audio this week read by my daughter Lauren

This past Sunday, midway through a fever, I found myself included on a private email chat with some influential MAGA people plus a few friends. The question posed was Trump’s motives behind the tariffs imposed on Canada, Mexico, and China. Some thought Trump was simply being crazy, some thought he was being crazy like a fox––that the tariffs were designed to influence the upcoming Canadian election or to rewrite the existing trade agreements.

The commenters had given far more thought to the tariffs than I had. As well, they assumed they were writing to a like-minded audience so they had no need to embellish their analyses with rhetoric. That alone was refreshing.

At the time I was battling the worst flu I can remember. My body and mind were both fatigued. I found my mind wandering above the details of real life, sometimes in fever fantasy dreams that made no sense. Other times, my mind seemed to be floating at a far distance from any details.

In such a state, there is a temptation to come up with a grand unifying theory about something. And I had something I wanted to say about Trump’s first few weeks, which was this:

“The way I see it is [Trump’s] policies are irrelevant. This is all about trying to establish domination.”

By using the word “irrelevant,” I was using feverish shorthand to signify that for Trump the prime motivation for everything he’s doing is to see how much power he can grab. It then follows that the more outrageous the policy or nomination, the greater the opportunity to extract obedience, exert his will, and set domination precedence.

While I believed my comment was coldly clinical, I see now that my comment could have been interpreted as a broad condemnation of the Trump administration. In any event, after my comment hit the email chain, a number of the more influential politicos on the chain requested to be released.

Build-a-mandate-workshop

From Build-A-Bear. President Trump also favors blue suits and a red tie, although I don’t think his spirit animal is a Teddy Bear.

The calendar says the election was three months ago but it feels far more distant because of the ceaseless barrage of presidential news. The noise and the smoke can make it hard to remember that Trump’s election was not a mandate for sweeping change.

His margin of victory was slender. The popular vote was 49.8% to 48.3%. His margin in Congress was also slender–––53 to 47 in the Senate, not close to the 60 needed to override a filibuster, and 220 to 215 in the House, a margin similar to the popular vote.

An election can give you a mandate to enact sweeping changes. The most recent example was Obama in 2008 when he won the popular vote 53% to 46%, had a majority in the Senate of 59 to 41, and in the House 257 to 178.

Trump’s slender margin was not reflected in the tone of his inaugural address. He spoke as if he had scored a remarkable, FDR-type, landslide victory.

“My recent election is a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal…”

And a little later in the speech referring to the failed assassination attempt in Pennsylvania,

“I was saved by god to make America great again.”

The normal way to build a mandate after a close election is to cooperate with the closely defeated party. No one expected Trump to do this.

Instead, Trump has been governing as if he had been given the heavenly mandate of his dreams.

Act “as if”

In the movie Boiler Room, Ben Affleck addresses a room of raw broker recruits (all young men) to his firm of J.T. Marlin. Marlin creates phantom companies and then has its brokers sell the worthless shares to unsophisticated investors. The movie was made before meme coins were a thing.

Affleck dresses like a “million bucks.” The recruits dress “like shit.” Affleck’s performance is demonic. A display of testosterone-fueled domination.

“There’s an important phrase we use here. I think it’s time you all learned it. Act as if. Do you understand what that means? Act as if you are the fucking president of this firm. Act as if you have a nine-inch cock.”

That’s the phenomenon Trump is banking on. If enough people believe and accept that he has unlimited powers, then wishful perception can become reality.

Acting as if involves both words and actions. The actions test whether the words are true, in large part by seeing what resistance is met.

Over these first few weeks, Trump has moved rapidly and mostly lawlessly to act as if he had a degree of unparalleled presidential power.

One of the most important power moves has been the start of a purge of the Federal bureaucracy, eliminating people identified as being anti-Trump or anti-Trump policies. The message from Trump is essentially this––if you’ve ever crossed me in the past or if you cross me any time in the future, I will fire you.

Workers in the Justice Department and the FBI, the two most important law enforcement agencies, have been early and prominent victims of the initial purging.

Anther significant power move is granting Elon Musk access to the Treasury Department payment systems. That access could involve the power to alter payments. That would be a fundamental breach of the Constitution, which reserves appropriations and spending to Congress.

Then there’s the near complete dismantling of the USAID (US Agency For International Development). The dismantling serves no ideological purpose. The purpose is to show that the will to act fast and break things, regardless of moral and legal commitments, is real. ¹

These and many other actions are being challenged in the courts as unlawful. Some temporary restraining orders have been granted. There is a great quantity and quality of legal talent at work to defend the rule of law. ²

Weakness

It’s a weak president not a strong one who needs to break the law to get what they want. It’s a weak president not a strong one who needs to appeal to our baser instincts. Shouters shout because they feel if they speak in a normal voice no one will listen.

Gary Cooper in High Noon. The strong silent type personified.

Noah Berlatsky

wrote an excellent post about weakness not being at odds with fascism. A tough word, fascism. A word that for me is tightly bound up with Nazi Germany, Hitler, and the Holocaust.

In Noah’s essay, he quotes a definition of fascism by Robert Paxton, pre-eminent historian of Vichy France.³ Using that quote, Noah notes that key elements of a fascist political movement include an obsession with victimhood and the creation of an avenging cult. These concepts fit perfectly with Trump’s memorable line in his inauguration speech of

“a mandate to completely and totally reverse a horrible betrayal…”

In 2024 Trump ran against a historically weak Democratic ticket. This is not a knock on Kamala Harris but rather the truth of the situation created by Joe Biden’s failure to keep his promise to be a one-term president. Then dropping out so late, and only after his diminished capabilities were revealed in that sad and terrible debate in late June. The series of events––the debate, senior Democrats pretending that Biden was still qualified, and the spectacle of Biden being forced to relinquish his nomination –––was a spectacular political disaster for the Democratic party.

The Democrats would have been demolished up and down their ticket if they had run against a Republican candidate of average appeal and strength. That didn’t happen.

I’m not suggesting that Trump is a weak individual but rather a politically weak president. He must know (or sense) his power is vulnerable. Therefore he will continue to be reckless in seeking domination over the entire government.

A few years ago, Trump was desperate to stay out of jail. A week ago I had a bad case of influenza. Now Trump is free and I’m mostly better. Things major and minor can change very quickly back and forth.

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This seems like a fitting moment to recall the words of Winston Churchill below.

“The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honour.” ⁴

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Questions for the comments:

For those who want to comment about politics, it’s open season on me provided you attack my ideas, not me personally, and keep your language respectful. And do the same in responding to other commenters.

Otherwise, for the Super Bowl, I’m leaning Eagles plus 1.5 points in my betting with my brother. My season’s on the line. Am I still under the influence of a fever for betting against the Chiefs machine and Taylor Swift?

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1

“USAID funds projects in some 120 countries aimed at fighting epidemics, educating children, providing clean water and supporting other areas of development.” From a Time Magazine article on February 6th.

2. I know some of these lawyers. They are polite, meticulous, brilliant legal killers.

3. Robert Paxton on fascism as quoted by

Noah Berlatsky

“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” [italics are Noah’s]

4. From Churchill’s eulogy for Neville Chamberlain.