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We are entering the last two years of the Trump era with the man who would be king not only a lame duck, but a desiccated and ever more reviled loser.
In retrospect, it was nearly inevitable that a president who tried to seize dictatorial power over the US government by frontally attacking the US government would not succeed.
Some have described the second Trump regime as the apotheosis of the decades-long growth of presidential power that established a so-called “imperial presidency,” in which presidents expanded their power by expanding the reach of the federal government. But the opposite is true.
Trump set out to assault and gut much of the government to great success, mistakenly believing it would enhance his own power. But Trump’s “success” in immolating the government he is charged with overseeing also ensured his own failure as a would-be dictator.
A head of state at war with the state
Ronald Reagan, the most effective right-wing president of the post-war era, famously presented himself as an opponent of “big government” — but it was an act.
Reagan and his acolytes recognized that lasting political power and ideological influence would come from systematically populating the government with their fellow reactionaries, and using the mechanisms of government to their own ends. By remaking government agencies to serve their purposes, Reagan and subsequent Republican presidents achieved their most significant and resilient successes, to the frustration of Democrats.
But Donald Trump — whose prior “business” career was focused on gutting and pillaging and scamming people — entered government in 2016 with no knowledge of, or curiosity about, how to use the mechanisms of government in his favor.
Trump went on to spend his first term raging over how the government he presided over limited his ability to destroy it, and he left office in 2021 after a vain effort to literally take it down. In the wake of his failed coup, Trump became convinced that an ordered, rule-following government was the greatest possible threat to his power.
So immediately on retaking office, Trump set out to hobble governmental institutions, and replace them with … chaos. In his second regime, Trump has been singularly devoted to destroying the US government, no matter how much it damages his office, and therefore impairs his own power.
By immediately unleashing SpaceX CEO Musk and his “DOGE” — comprised of young nerds whose level of ignorance of the government agencies they assaulted was exceeded only by their vast egos — the self-styled caudillo in the White House made clear he believed that achieving absolute power depended on gutting the executive branch of the government.
While DOGE utterly failed when judged by its supposed purpose of lowering government spending and making agencies more efficient, Musk and his nerdy crew of neo-fascists succeeded in setting a pattern for the entire Trump regime. The lines of authority and rules that govern the operation of the federal government have been gutted through mass firings and driving out professionals who helped to keep the complex machinery of the government running for decades.
At this point, one in five government employees is gone. But contrary to received wisdom, Trump’s power has not been enhanced as a result. Instead, Trump presides over a government he has ruined, and that is rapidly draining his own power.
A shadow war with America’s allies
Over the past two years, Trump has sidelined the State Department and indeed nearly all the established foreign policy channels of the government he ostensibly heads. Instead, his key “foreign policy” initiatives have been placed in the hands of a group of extra-governmental cronies, including his friend Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, who, by design, operate in the shadows.
The reason Trump replaced diplomats with his cronies is that he also wants to discard America’s democratic allies and put the United States into an axis with a rogues gallery of brutal dictatorships and kleptocracies, such as North Korea and, of course, Russia, most immediately by assisting Putin in vanquishing Ukraine.
The problem, however, is that Trump’s goal of causing the US to leave the community of democratic nations is hugely unpopular in the US, even in Trump’s own party, and is favored only by his venally motived acolytes. Put otherwise, Trump has had to carry out an improvisational, crony-driven “foreign policy” because that policy is reviled by the American people who reject Trump’s goals ever more definitively the more he pursues them.
The recent failed scheme to kneecap Ukraine’s military and civil defense by hobbling Ukraine’s access to the “Starshield” system, and thereby aid Putin in maximizing the mass murder of children and other civilians, exemplifies the phenomenon.
It has been over two weeks since Ukraine’s access to the putatively US military controlled, but SpaceX owned, Starshield was substantially shut off, and it remains unclear how and why it happened, as is the nature of Musk’s and Trump’s involvement in the matter. But the Pentagon’s inspector general has stated he will not even investigate how the potentially illegal actions came about.
The fact that Trump wants the facts to remain as murky as possible, however, demonstrates the fundamental problem with his “strategy.”
The scheme could not be sustained for long, because it was rejected so definitively by Republicans and Democrats alike, and was so reviled that Trump had to distance himself from it. Inevitably, Trump’s broader scheme to make the US a Russian ally will fail as well. It is, and will remain, unacceptable to the American people to ally with Russia in its war on Ukraine, and the rest of Europe.
Accordingly, while Trumpers have through their crony “diplomacy” successfully placed a lot of blood on their hands, Trump will almost certainly leave (or be forced out of) office without having achieved his goal of establishing a permanently evil US foreign policy.
The DOJ at war with the justice system
Two years into his presidency, Trump’s “success” in gutting the government is nowhere more evident than in the Department of Justice, where scores of experienced and exceptionally skilled lawyers and FBI agents have been fired or hounded out of their jobs.
The problem for Trumpers is that the personnel who have replaced the highly skilled fired professionals are not only largely mediocre, but frequently incompetent. Once again, Trump’s assault on a government institution is backfiring on him.
In case after case, the credibility of the Justice Department, and therefore of the Trump regime, has been irreparably damaged before judges, making the DOJ a singularly ineffective defender of Trump’s own misconduct and persecutor of his enemies.
The results of Trump’s kneecapping of the DOJ were on full display in DC courtrooms last week during proceedings in a case constructed, reportedly at the behest of FBI Director Kash Patel, against two former FBI analysts that conspiracy theorists have long asserted deliberately “misled” Congress about Hunter Biden’s laptop.
During an extensive evidentiary hearing, Trump’s legal eagles, who a magistrate judge ruled had improperly filed an amendment to their criminal complaint, embarrassed themselves as it became crystal clear the case is probably baseless. The testimony made clear that there is not a colorable basis for asserting that Congress was deceived by the agents, and that even an agent assigned with trumping up the case was concerned that it could be seen as political.
Trumpers’ repeated gaslighting of, and lies to, a federal judge over the illegal scheme to vandalize a treasured public DC golf course also reached a crescendo on Friday, after the DOJ denied that Trumpers were about to commence a renovation of the property even as Trump was publicly announcing it — and this after a wholesale deforestation of the site that took place in defiance of representations to the court.
When Stanley Woodward, a former Trump house counsel who is now a senior DOJ attorney, declared that he had “endeavored to answer the court’s questions as honestly and effectively as I can,” snickers and guffaws erupted in the courtroom. By the time the latest round in the debacle was over, the DOJ was left with an order mandating a full-blown investigation into potentially serious breaches of ethics standards by Trump’s DOJ attorneys and Interior Department personnel.
In the same courthouse last week, another federal judge quizzed a DOJ lawyer on his agency’s contention that Trump needs to build his desired “triumphal arch” immediately because it will double as a highly armed fortress. When the judge asked the DOJ attorney about whether it is remotely practicable to lace a DC tourist attraction with high explosives, the lawyer confessed that he had no actual facts to support the (absurd) claims he was advancing, only statements from guys like famed truth-teller Pete Hegseth.
These embarrassing proceedings are far from the only abuses of the justice system under the Trump regime, and particularly under AG Todd Blanche, who now shamelessly serves up bogus lawsuits seeking to disrupt elections and criminal charges against Trump’s perceived enemies, wholly without regard to merit.
The problem, of course, is that every bogus lawsuit and criminal charge only further erodes the DOJ’s credibility before judges and juries, which is essential to its effectiveness, especially with a lawbreaking president at the helm. Once again, Trump has dismantled a key part of the federal government to his own detriment.
At war with the Department of “War”
Perhaps the most extreme and self-destructive war Trump is waging against his own government is occurring in the Pentagon, as one of his most incompetent hacks — Department of Defense (or War) Secretary Hegseth — is busy ever more aggressively dismantling the leadership of the armed forces.
The military is one of the few parts of the government that Trump, a would-be strongman, did not want to dismantle. And the wars of choice he’s pursued have placed great demands on every branch of the military. But Trump’s choice to head the Pentagon is nonetheless engaged in an ever more destructive war on the military, right in the middle of his war on Iran.
Hegseth reportedly bears a grudge against military officers, possibly because he was drummed out of the National Guard because of an extremist tattoo on one of his biceps. Whatever the reason for his hard feelings, he has embarked on a systematic assault on the upper reaches of the military, including by intervening in the promotions process and otherwise scheming to force out highly decorated officers.
The list of discarded general officers seems to grow by the day and includes a number of the most respected and decorated leaders of nearly every service, including some with knowledge and expertise of cutting-edge defense challenges like drone warfare. Some experts believe the huge losses that the US suffered early in the war on Iran, which included the decimation of bases in the region, were exacerbated by Hegseth’s nihilistic assaults on the leadership of the Army and other services.
Most recently, Hegseth fired — for the second time — the general holding the post of senior military planner at the Pentagon, in the midst of reported planning for new potential strikes on Iran.
The latest planner to be fired, Lt. General Brett Sylvia, reportedly stands accused of revealing classified information to the press. Hegseth, of course, himself recklessly shared highly sensitive battle plans with a member of the press but was not sanctioned for it, yet he has reportedly gone so far as to refer Sylvia for potential prosecution
Trump, of course, bears full responsibility for this debacle, and has so far stood fully behind his failed “War” Secretary. Yet Trump also seems remarkably disengaged from Hegseth’s serial firings and other acts of extraordinary mismanagement. For example, he indicated his belief that Sylvia is a woman (and therefore a member of the gender he prefers to fire).
Accordingly, Trump — who envisions himself as a wartime dictator of historic proportions — is certain to leave office with a greatly weakened military, and one that is extraordinarily unprepared for the new challenges it is likely to face in potential future conflicts.
The United States is about to enter a foreboding final period in the already catastrophically failed Trump presidency. It is difficult to anticipate what further outrages the frustrated, and increasingly feeble-minded, failed dictator will attempt to unleash on the country he purportedly leads.
But one somewhat reassuring thing is already clear — Trump’s ongoing assault on the US government will continue to sap his already eroding power.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
Dear US-ians. Somehow the US electorate committed an enormous act of self-harm by re-electing Trump - someone with a record of proven failure in his first term. Despite his greed, malice and cripplingly overblown ego his harm has been limited by the saving (dis) grace of his incompetence and indifference to competence in his appointments to senior positions. I know most who read this are blameless for this state of affairs but all USians need to understand that they cannot expect to be so lucky next time. Politics is about power and a lot of intelligent people are strongly attracted to power. (Message from a well wisher from abroad).
We need Knock-out numbers at the polls tomorrow. And we need it to land heavy in favor of democracy, right between the eyes. ❤️🤍💙. Thanks, Public Notice!