Why Trump Blinked
He likes the dress-up. Not the reality.
Welcome back to the land of confusion. As if we ever left.
Donald Trump continues to flout the law and seems confused about the Declaration of Independence. Meanwhile masked federal agents continue to make arrests and our war against Iran is on hold — for “two weeks”.
Happy Friday.
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In order to make sense of what’s happening, we need to dive into the tangled mess of Donald Trump’s cognitive dissonance. This is what we need to understand about that fetid stew:
Trump loves the dress-up part of being generalissimo. But he is not a warrior president.
He revels in the trappings and parade of power; but if he wages war, he wants it to be here in America, not abroad.
He would love Day One of the the War. Not so much the Days After. He wants the show, but not the mess.
Donald Trump very much wants to be the strongman who drops the big bunker bomb on Iran’s nuclear program. But he also very much wants to win a Nobel Prize, because he really does fancy himself as peacemaker. (Don’t ask.)
Trumps enjoys the attention he’s getting now; and craves being in control. But the fallout from war is uncontrollable. There are 40,000 American troops in harm’s way; Iran could blockade the Strait of Hormuz.
And, finally, the guy who blusters All-caps threats — “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” — really does always chicken out.
And then there is the paradox of MAGA:
It remains cultishly loyal to Trump, but deeply divided.
Trump knows that his base will stick with him; but he is paying very close attention not just to the Fox News talkers, but also to the random shit-posters and angry podcasters, who make up the id of the “movement”.1
The bitter inter-MAGA fracas is a revealing glimpse of the distinctive MAGA qualities of viciousness and spite.
Which brings us to Trump’s pause. On Thursday, Trump announced a two-week deadline to make a decision. “Based on the fact that there is a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place in the near future,” Trump said. “I will make my decision of whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”2
Yeah, that was a tell.
In TrumpWorld, “two weeks” is a punchline — an eye-rolling cliche that Trump rolls out with absurd regularity whenever he wants to dodge an issue or fudge a decision. It’s “where promises go to die.”
Notes the NYT: ‘Two Weeks’ Is Trump’s Favorite Unit of Time”
Asked eight weeks ago if he could trust Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Trump replied, “I’ll let you know in about two weeks.”
Tax plans, health care policies, evidence of conspiracy theories he claimed were true, the fight against ISIS, the opening of some coal mines, infrastructure plans — all were at one point or another riddles he promised to solve for the public in about two weeks.
In other words, “two weeks” is often Trump’s way of saying: Never.
**
All of this leads Daniel Drezner to go out on a limb and predict that “Trump is not gonna bomb Iran. This is a bluff.”
Drezner reminds us that we’ve here before. In 2017, Trump was breathing fire and fury over North Korea’s nukes. But, he recalls, “once the DPRK offer to negotiate came through, Trump pivoted sharply.”
This appears to be what Trump wants this time around as well. Seen through this lens, everything Trump has done over the past week has been an exercise in signaling he’s willing to launch a war in the hopes that the Iranian mullahs come to the bargaining table. If they ask for talks, even as an empty gesture, my hunch is Trump will take it.
Drezner notes that there is a pattern with Trump on such matters.
Finally, as noted here, here, here, here, and here, Trump is more predictable on foreign affairs than he or his team understand. If Trump thinks he is picking on a weakling, or an actor who cannot retaliate against the United States, he’ll go through with the attacks.
But otherwise, Trump always chickens out.
**
It’s still early, but Democrats already seem feckless and in some disarray. Via Politico’s Playbook:
At least one prominent Hill Dem is not impressed with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s leadership on Iran. In a clip just posted on YouTube, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) tells Playbook’s Dasha Burns he’s disappointed by Schumer’s answer on whether he’ll help push for a vote on Kaine’s AUMF resolution.
“He could have said, ‘No, I’m not, because I want Trump to attack Iran.’ Or he could have just said, ‘Yes, I am’ — which is where I think the Democratic Party should be,” said Khanna. “Instead, he gave this gobbledygook answer, which no one other than Washington Beltway consultants understand. Part of my problem is he didn’t take a clear stand. That’s exactly what people hate about the Democratic Party.”
Trump’s Declaration
The least surprising story of the day: “Trump appears to confuse America’s Revolutionary War with the Civil War”.
“You look right up there,” Trump said, pointing to the wall, “I don’t know, you see the Declaration of Independence, and I say, I wonder if you, you know, the Civil War always seemed to me maybe that could have been solved without losing 600,000 plus people.”
We could, of course, point out the flawed chronology here (the Civil War was 1861-65; the Declaration was issued in 1776), but let’s point out some other things instead.
The original “No Kings” manifest, the Declaration laid out America’s grievances against George III:
“He has refused his Assent to laws; He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither; He has obstructed the Administration of Justice; He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices; He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people; He has affected to render the Military independent and superior to the Civil power;
Moreover:
“For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world; For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent; for depriving us in many cases of the benefit of Trial by Jury; For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses.”
Any of that sound familiar? Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Who are those masked men?
Walter Olson writes: “ICE, our new secret police agency, claims its agents must wear masks and conceal their identities because of a rising risk of violence on the job or home terror attacks.” But, as Philip Bump notes, the agency “refuses to substantiate those claims -- and there's much reason to doubt them.”
Olson makes this excellent point:
Noem, Bondi & Co. are asking us to get used to a brutal and unaccountable secret police force because of scary hypotheticals about home terror attacks. Meanwhile, judges, state lawmakers and others courageously do their jobs in public each day despite very real home terror attacks.
He also cites this savvy take about “how the Trump Administration's refusal to respect process rights for persons once detained tends to raise the stakes and tension during the act of detention itself”.
"There’s [a] way in which ICE’s lawlessness has incentivized Good Samaritans to resist their enforcement efforts. Think of how ICE arrests used to go. Agents show up to take a person into custody. They may be in uniform or in plainclothes, but their faces are visible and they show their badges when asked. The person they’re arresting knows he’ll have the opportunity to speak to a lawyer, to tell his family where he’s being held, and to plead his case before a judge.
"Now snap back to the present day and put yourself in Lander’s shoes. Masked agents show up to whisk a migrant away. Maybe he’ll get to tell his family where he is, maybe he won’t. Maybe he’ll have the opportunity to speak to a lawyer or plead his case to a judge, maybe he won’t. And you think to yourself: *Will there be a legal process? Or am I the very last person who has a chance to intervene on this person’s behalf?*"
Exit take: If we were really cynical, we might almost think that Trump is trying to provoke confrontations.
Tik Tok Lawlessness
On Thursday, the president issued an order notable for its brazen illegality.
President Trump today issued a new executive order that extended two prior executive orders that declined to enforce the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, i.e., the TikTok ban. That statute made it unlawful, as of January 19, 2025, for U.S. firms to provide services to distribute, maintain, or update TikTok unless its operation in the United States is severed from Chinese control. The administration’s serial refusal to enforce the TikTok ban, and its related efforts to immunize providers from the effects of the law, are blatantly unlawful.
..
Trump’s moves extend far beyond non-enforcement and amount to a claim that the president has authority, at the flick of a pen, to destroy all consequences of a law enacted by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court.
Even Xitter Community notes called out Trump’s lawlessness: “The President has no legal authority to extend the deadline another 90 days. SCOTUS, in Tiktok vs. Garland: "The Act permits the President to grant a one-time extension of no more than 90 days with respect to the prohibitions’ 270-day effective date".
Exit take: Where’s Congress?
Friday dogs
Weekend road trip for Eli and Auggie.
Matt Labash posts on Substack:
In other insanity news, The Daily Beast reports that Trump’s psychopath office wife, Laura Loomer, is now promising to rat out any MAGA apostates who criticize Trump’s Iran position (even if his “position” seems to change hour-by-hour), saying she will collect any social media posts, and deliver them to Trump herself. Which he will then presumably have read to him, since reading’s not really his bag. He’s more of a visual learner. (He prefers TV.) And she brags about this! Whatever happened to “snitches get stitches”? I know we’re a more enlightened society now, despite the fact that Laura Loomer is a presidential advisor. But there’s something to be said for the Old Ways.
Trump is looking for an “off-ramp” after advisers became concerned at Iran’s ability to hit United States bases across the Middle East and kill American troops in retaliation for any military intervention, such as the targeting of nuclear facilities with bunker-busting bombs, The Times understands. On Wednesday, Tehran wreaked considerable damage against targets in Israel, including by using hypersonic missiles to evade Israel’s Arrow interceptor system.
President Taco TwoWeeks. I like how that sounds.
Great call on “two weeks” it means I don’t know what to do, so I will delay until the next big event. Not proactive for sure!