A Reminder: Trump's Chaos is Not 'Greatness'

Plus: What you can do.

A year ago, I stepped off the daily hamster wheel of crazy. And yet, here we are again, waiting for tomorrow's distraction from today’s distraction from yesterday’s horrifically stupid, dangerous idea.

So, more than ever, we need to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.

Happy Thursday.

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A blunder. Not a gaffe.

As T.S. Eliot might have written in one of his more cynical moods, pundit narratives come and go, don’t they? For the last 17 days, the usual suspects have flirted with the notion of Trumpian Greatness.

Axios’s Mike Allen goggled at Trump’s “winning streak,” while John F. Harris, founding editor of Politico, gushed that Trump was “the greatest American figure of his era.”

“It is now simply an objective description about the dimensions of his record. He began a decade ago by dominating the Republican Party. He soon advanced to dominating every discussion of American politics broadly. Now, his astonishing comeback after his defeat by Joseph Biden in 2020 and the notoriety of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot makes clear [he] is someone with an ability to perceive opportunities that most politicians do not and forge powerful, sustained connections with large swaths of people in ways that no contemporary can match. In other words: He is a force of history.”

Out of such piffle conventional wisdom is often built. So, it is up to us — standing over here in the corner — to raise our hands and point out that the Orange Emperor is naked. And he’s still a clown.

David Leonhardt notes that despite the performative rush of executive orders and confirmation wins “the last few days have instead conjured the chaos of his first term, when his grand pronouncements often failed to change government policy.”

In other words, Donald Trump is still Donald Trump. The inanity over Gaza was a blunder on a global scale. But it was not a gaffe. His proposal to take over Gaza — with American troops and tax dollars — was not a slip of the tongue, or a simple brain fart (although it felt like it). This was an idea that has rattled around the dusty corners of his brain for months, if not years.

But the moment reminds us: there is no filter in his head (if there ever was one). So, things like this are just going to come out — one vomited bad idea after another. Of course, some will be harmless (like his suggestion we inject bleach into ourselves); but it will get worse, and the danger is real, because nobody in his wretched hive of an administration is pushing back on him any longer.

So, we get chaos and backtracking on top of the batshittery. For hours yesterday, the White House tried to “walk back” his Gaza-takeover scheme, only to have Trump bleat out this morning:

He immediately followed that up with an all-caps screed about a bogus conspiracy theory.

And then, this morning — at the National Prayer Breakfast FFS — Trump went on a weird riff “about the deadly air crash, comparing the collision with the infrequency of golf balls hitting each other.” [Don’t ask. Spare some brain cells.]

Greatness? Let us make bold to call Bullshit.

**

Dan Pfeiffer, who is doing a good job of keeping his head, while all about him are losing theirs, urges us not to fall for Trump's Strongman Gambit. The reality: “Trump's first two weeks reveal a chaotic and incompetent administration trying to mask weakness.”

This is not to say that he is not dangerous, or that he cannot do irreparable damage. But perhaps we ought to stifle the urge to buy the Trumpian narrative. Writes Pfeiffer:

If you break with conventional wisdom and look at the details of Trumps’ first two weeks the picture that emerges is a lame-duck president unable to execute on fairly simple tasks and too weak to get Congress to pass his agenda. Instead, he is relying on a series of legally dubious executive orders that resemble press releases more than policy documents. In his first two weeks, he has made countless errors, backed down from fights he picked, and been rebuked by the courts.

Don’t buy his strongman schtick.

BONUS: “GOP support for Musk influence with Trump falls dramatically: Poll.” Only 26 percent of Republicans now think that Musk should have “a lot” of influence in the Administration.

Overall, 13 percent of surveyed Americans want Musk to have “a lot” of influence on the Trump administration, while 25 percent say they want “a little” influence and 46 percent say they want “none at all.”

Phonies, fakes, and hypocrites.

On Bluesky last night, I posted: “I think I’m going to have a story tomorrow about the biggest phonies/ hypocrites in politics today…”

I regret to tell you that this was an exaggeration, because there are really too many to choose from — a plague of grifters, frauds, mountebanks, and phonies all across the political spectrum. Who’s the biggest? Who can say? Although if you buy me a couple of bourbons, I do have some thoughts. But I was referring to the disingenuous frauds from “No Labels” and “Uncommitted.”

Over the last 17 days we have seen one Republican senator after another surrender what remained of their principles, voting to confirm manifestly unqualified cabinet nominees. Over and over, we saw the profiles in cowardice and truckling; Joni Ernst caving to pressure and voting to confirm accused rapist Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense; the invertebrate Thom Tillis voting for Putin’s girl, Tulsi; and perhaps the most pathetic surrender of all: Senator Bill Cassidy — who is a doctor — voting to back RFK Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.

It was one of the ugliest moments in a very ugly time. But the folks at “No Labels” were there to applaud it.

You might recall this bizarre — but well-funded — group, which toyed with the idea of a third-party presidential run last year. Eventually, that all fell apart, but the grifty group is still around. This showed up in my inbox yesterday:

Charlie,

This week, our friend Senator Bill Cassidy faced a difficult choice as the deciding vote on whether to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to lead the nation’s health agencies. As the decision loomed, he was so inundated with messages from both sides that his Senate website crashed.

Senator Cassidy was conflicted for good reason. A doctor before entering public service and a longtime advocate for vaccines, he does not like Kennedy’s vaccine skepticism. But he also believes Kennedy has many good ideas, such as on food safety.

Ultimately, he did what any good problem solver does: he worked to make a deal. Senator Cassidy met repeatedly with Kennedy and the White House and demanded multiple concessions in exchange for his vote—most notably that they will protect the public health benefit of vaccinations.¹

Regardless of how you feel about Kennedy’s nomination, we should all be able to respect the thoughtfulness and leadership Senator Cassidy showed…

Kennedy still faces a vote in the full Senate, but if confirmed, America can rest easier knowing Senator Cassidy is helping to shape this new era of American health leadership.

Dan Webb

No Labels Board

The naïveté here burns. You will recall that Cassidy was one of the GOP senators who voted to convict Trump back in 2021 for his role on January 6. But now “No Labels” would have us believe that the Trump regime will readily cede Cassidy a major role in setting policy.

This is either bad faith rationalization or raging stupidit. But it really tells you who these charlatans are.

**

Then there are the leaders of the “Uncommitted” movement that refused to back Kamala Harris over Trump: “'Uncommitted' leaders stand by 2024 strategy after Trump floats Gaza takeover.”

Layla Elabed, a co-chair of the “uncommitted” movement is standing by her position — even as Trump calls for ethnically cleansing Gaza. Because “both sides.”

**

Julie Roginsky, In the Banter, writes about the cost of those “protest votes” and raises a provocative question about those activists: Where, she writes, are the campus protests?”

Notably, college campuses have not erupted in protest over Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who never missed an opportunity to slam President Biden for arming Israel, remained strangely silent in the wake of Trump’s press conference (though she did find time on Sunday night to tweet about the Grammys). Dearborn and Dearborn Heights, Michigan, two heavily Muslim-American towns that she represents, voted for Trump over Kamala Harris in November.

Times Square was eerily silent too. No spontaneous marches erupted with protesters screaming, “There is only one solution — Intifada revolution,” as they did during the Biden years.

Were they all shocked into silence? They should not be. Trump’s behavior is so predictable that it is a miracle he waited fifteen days after his inauguration to announce his plans for Gaza. And yet, in a fit of pique, Tlaib, many of her constituents, college protesters and others decided to send Democrats a message last November over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by refusing to endorse the one candidate who unequivocally supported a two-state solution. Now, the very people they claimed to defend with their protest votes and their chanting are going to pay the price.

What can you do?

I get asked that question all the time. Last night, in my conversation with Steve Schmidt, I had some thoughts.

Here’s a rough, edited transcript:

A lot of people who are watching us right now want to know, what can I do? What can we do? And I think that there ought to be an answer to that. And one of the things is that while the big money is being spent on these ads, everyone who's watching us has the technology in their hands to do something to be part of the debate and the narrative.

Put a human face on this…. These stories can be viral.

Courage can be contagious. I mean: if we have one person that stands up and says, I am defying you… how many others might they inspire?

So, what I'm saying is: Tell your own story. Find someone else's story. You have that phone in your hand.

You have that picture. You can talk to the people in your circle of influence. But also, literally every person that we're talking to right now can perhaps create some story of the pain that's being caused. And a million people will see that by the weekend. So don't wait for the governors to do it.

Don't wait for somebody else to come down on top. Don't wait for the consultants to make that ad….

Everybody out there has the ability to do that. You have some sort of a network. And again, you may think, well, I only have like 100 followers on Substack or I'm on Instagram or whatever. Well, you just never know when that one story, that one story of that one child who was denied medical care…

In our enshittified world, the worst people in the world have been empowered and platformed. But that also means that the best people are also empowered and platformed….

What's the story of George Floyd? It was about people standing around. And what could they do? They could record it. And it really changed the nature of our debate. And I'm guessing that every person that recorded the death of George Floyd — not one of them thought that when they got up that morning, I am going to do one of the most influential things in America today.

You can watch/listen to the whole thing here.

Ice Dogs

The boys visited the frozen lake yesterday. They are wondering where the water went.

1. According to No Labels, here is a partial list of the concessions Cassidy got for caving on Kennedy:

• Kennedy and Cassidy will have an unprecedentedly close, collaborative working relationship if he is confirmed, including meeting multiple times a month.

• Cassidy will provide input into hiring decisions at Health and Human Services (HHS) to ensure all sides of the conversations around vaccines and healthcare are present.

• Kennedy will work within current vaccine approval and safety monitoring systems and not establish parallel systems.

• If confirmed, Kennedy will maintain the recommendations of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices without changes.

• CDC will not remove statements on its website pointing out that vaccines do not cause autism.

• Kennedy and the administration committed to respecting the role of Congress and not attempting to subvert existing laws passed by Congress.

• Cassidy may choose a representative on any board or commission formed to review vaccine safety.

• HHS will provide a 30-day notice to Cassidy’s committee if the agency seeks to make changes to any federal vaccine safety monitoring programs and the committee will have the option to call a hearing to further review.

Bullshit.