Welcome to Our Miserable Reality
Trump's end game spelled out in three of today's top news stories.
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Item #1
Uncertainty is certain.
Inconsistency is constant.
Economic and geopolitical chaos is now our everyday treat thanks to President Trump’s trade war, which intensified overnight with China slapping huge tariffs on the U.S. in response to Trump doing so to them.
With a 30-day pause on levies for the rest of the world, we are now in a New Reality where:
Trump will toggle tariffs up and down based on nothing more than instinct and whim.
Trump will secure hollow bilateral trade deals with countries and portray them as more significant than they are, declaring victory after pyric victory through his Gaslighting Media Ecosystem.
Former allies and deeper enemies will respond in kind, matching his feral behavior with panicked practicality.
Stocks will rise. Stocks will fall.
The U.S. dollar will weaken. Our massive debt (created by both feckless parties, thank you) will cost more to finance and threaten our global power.
The end game will take months or years to play out.
Our long-term options:
Either Trump defies history and economics to create a new world order that somehow leaves the U.S. both isolated and atop.
Or the natural order holds and the global economy suffers; consumers pay more; the rich get richer; our enemies grow stronger; Republicans get waxed in another swing election; voters turn angrier and even less trustful of the political system; Democrats get waxed in a yet another swing election; and we’re never quite the same as a nation.
Which option do you think is more likely? After all those years watching Bill Clinton operate, am I somehow missing third way?
Item #2
Maybe the U.S. government can't defy federal judges to deport U.S. residents to foreign prisons without due process.
At least this once the Supreme Court held the line, upholding a lower-court order requiring the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of a Maryland man who was mistakenly (or so we’re told) deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador last month.
This assault on the justice system was too onerous to ignore. But there are many more cases coming the high court's way, many more chances to put country over ideology. Or not.
The immediate questions: Will Trump heed this ruling? Will Abrego García come home? Or is the word “facilitate” a loophole large enough for Trump to drive his extraconstitutional defiance through?
Item #3
Marc Leibovich is right: Trump is serious about serving an unconstitutional third term and we should be seriously alarmed.
"Or, at the very least, to recognize that a familiar pattern seems to be reasserting itself, one that can become quite messy. It begins with Trump musing over some seemingly outlandish idea—say, his desire for the United States to annex Greenland. At first, the prospect is treated as an absurd amusement. Republicans on Capitol Hill are asked what they think. They either laugh it off or avoid the question," Leibovich writes for The Atlantic. "Soon enough, the prospect does not seem so ridiculous."
But one dynamic everybody seems to be missing is how Trump's imperial musings could help Democrats win the White House in 2028.
If he keeps this up into 2027-28, he freezes the field. No Republican will dare challenge the MAGA king.
If he doesn't somehow usurp the Constitution, Trump runs the risk of freezing the field long enough to restrict the amount of time — and even the number of candidates — the GOP normally would have to mount an effective campaign.
Or is this just wishful thinking?
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It was item #4.
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Re item #1, of course there's a third way. (Just as there has been a third way between a balanced budget and an economic collapse.) The outrageously antisocial international actions like tariffs and denigrating alliance partners get trimmed back enough to let us muddle through without disappearing completely. We are worse off but there is no collapse.
I come for the savvy insights . . . and stay for the stylish, conversational writing ("Democrats get waxed," "his feral behavior").