A Multi-Pronged Attack
Trump 2.0 is hitting us in myriad ways. Can we hold on?
The Trump administration knows that they cannot govern in the traditional sense, particularly right now as the GOP only holds a 2-seat majority in the House of Representatives1. As a result, Trump is resorting to rule by fiat, trying to fundamentally change the American government through a series of Executive Orders and other illiberal means. He is doing so from multiple vectors, any one of which would cause a great deal of concern in normal times. Taken together, they create an ominous picture of what Trump envisions his rule to look like, both at home and abroad.
Revenge and Retribution
One thing that I will constantly point out with this administration: Every accusation is a confession. Throughout the campaign Trump bemoaned “lawfare”; the alleged weaponization of the Department of Justice. Apparently being indicted for the criming that you do is political in Trump’s mind. Now that he is back in power, he is naturally erasing the boundary between the office of the President and the Department of Justice. His appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi wasted no time in explicitly politicizing the department, and his pick for FBI Director Kash Patel literally has an enemies list as an appendix in a book he authored.
Bondi has also already created a “Weaponization Working Group” and tasked it with investigating the folks who initially investigated Trump’s crimes, including special counsel Jack Smith and NY District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Smith’s cases were already dropped, while Bragg’s case is currently under appeal, so why would Bondi go after these people, other than as retribution?2
We can also discuss the ridiculous scorched-earth policy on rooting out all things DEI (ominous music plays). First let’s address the elephant in the room… When this administration talks about DEI, they are talking about civil rights. They may not be explicitly saying that right now, but this attack on DEI is the first step towards attacking the rights of POC and women. Also, any time you see someone use DEI as an adjective, you can safely assume that they are racist.
Now with that out of the way, the administration’s scatter-shot approach to removing any traces of the evil DEI have resulted in some pretty significant overcorrections.
Corruption and Wealth Transfer
Corruption of public officials has existed since, well, public officials have existed. Rarely though have we seen it in the scale and brazen openness that we are seeing with Trump 2.0. On the corruption side, we saw things start even before the inauguration, with ABC/Disney folding a winning hand and Trump enriching himself by billions (on paper, at least) by launching a meme coin the weekend prior to the inaugural. We have seen a new form of bribery with multiple settlements being paid to either the Trump Library3 (in the case of the Disney and Meta settlements) or directly to Trump, in the case of the TwitterX settlement. Note that each of these cases was likely a slam dunk win for the companies that instead caved to Dear Leader.
Another glaring issue came to light last week, when to no one’s surprise the Department of Justice instructed the Southern District of New York to withdraw its indictment of embattled NYC Mayor Eric Adams. Recall that shortly before the inauguration Adams, a Democrat, made the pilgrimage to Mar A Lago to kiss the ring and bend the knee. One can only imagine the conversation that took place, but the results are glaringly obvious. At least the DoJ’s blatant cronyism did allow us to see someone finally standing up to this administration.
All of this grift has to have a payback, right? Well, of course. That is coming with the planned extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts. This extension will not only extend the existing cuts but will also transfer wealth from the masses to the uber-wealthy, to the tune of approximately $4.5 trillion. With a T. While Musk’s DoGE Pups claim that they can finance $2 trillion of this bill (they can’t), the rest has to come from somewhere. And no, tariffs ain’t gonna do it. So, as is always the case, the cuts will hit the poor the hardest, and once again the folks that voted for all of this will get hit first. In their long-awaited budget plan, the GOP has indicated that they want to cut Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion. That’s only the first step, as they have their eyes on Social Security and Medicare as well.
Global Destabilization
Not satisfied with only causing chaos within our borders, the administration has already shown their cards as to what their vision of an America First foreign policy will look like under Trump 2.0. As with the corruption, the destruction of our alliances started even before the inauguration. Trump baffled pretty much everyone by floating such bizarre ideas as attacking our allies by annexing Canada as the 51st United State, taking Greenland, and retaking the Panama Canal. None of these things were ever mentioned during his campaign. Not once. And yet the MAGA cult immediately fell in line and supported this lunacy.
This past weekend saw the first major international appearance by Trump 2.0, and it went about as poorly as you can imagine. First, we had Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, late of Fox and Friends Weekend Fame, essentially giving away the entire negotiation posture of the United States during his first ever foreign press conference in Brussels.
Hegseth said definitively on Wednesday that the U.S. would not accept NATO membership for Ukraine or provide peacekeeping troops, and warned the country would not return to its pre-2014 borders. He also said NATO peacekeeping troops in Ukraine would not be covered by Article 5, a bedrock principle of the alliance that declares any attack on one nation is an attack on all.
But not to fret, he made up for it by letting the assembled international press corps know that Daddy Trump was nobody’s sucker. Needless to say, Hegseth then had to walk back most of his points the very next day, letting Europe know that, obviously, all decisions were Trump’s.
Enter JD Vance4, speaking to the Munich Security Conference. Rather than discussing the critical situation in Europe, what with the largest war in eight decades currently raging in Ukraine, Vance took his bully pulpit to chastise our allies for being mean to Nazis. Rather than discuss how the United States would work with their NATO allies in our fraught world, ol’ JD lectured them on the dangers of an “enemy within”, echoing the ridiculous posture that his boss takes when discussing American security. He then met with the leader of the German AfD party, the far-right group that is gaining in popularity, especially in the economically downtrodden East Germany. Who, by the way, are pretty much neo-Nazis.
At the conclusion of the weekend, I have to imagine that our closest allies in the world were left at best shaken and at worst no longer confident that the USA would be their steadfast partner in global peace. Relationships and a world order that have taken 80 years to develop and foster were effectively ended in only a month. The feeling of our allies may best be encapsulated in the following quote from a New York Times article on Ukraine:
“This chain of Trump’s statements is a chain of humiliation for people like me, people who believed that there was law and justice in the world,” said Anna Murlykina, a 50-year-old journalist who fled to Kyiv from Mariupol in 2022.
“When you live in a world that is crumbling under your feet,” she said, “the only thing that helps you survive is to believe in guidelines, in civilized democratic countries that uphold values. When countries like the United States cease to be pillars, there is nothing to hope for.”
Home of the Free, Land of the Brave, indeed.
Unconstitutional Power Grab
As if this piece has not already been pretty damned depressing, we haven’t even mentioned all the ways T2.0 is challenging the Constitution here at home. I will save all of the various attacks being carried out by Shadow President Musk, as those deserve their own piece. There is quite enough to point to without Musk and the DogePups, unfortunately.
Trump’s unilateral actions such as firing multiple Inspectors General, freezing already approved Federal funding for multiple agencies, and shutting down entire agencies and departments he doesn’t like are only a sampling of the illiberal acts he has undertaken in his nascent term5.
While many of these acts have been preliminarily paused by the courts, it is important to realize that a) these are the very first steps in the court process and b) T2.0 personnel are already laying the groundwork for Trump to defy court orders. In fact, it appears that despite multiple orders to resume all Federal funding, money is still not getting to all agencies. In any normal time, the administration would grudgingly go along with court orders until they got their day in court. Not so with this admin, and that is huge.
Speaking of Congress, they are very complicit in all of this. There was once a time in our nation where the Congress took their role seriously and jealously guarded their Constitutionally mandated powers. Unfortunately, they have been giving that power away for years, and we are seeing the culmination of that as the GOP in both the House and Senate stand by and watch Trump ravage their standing in the government.
Republicucks
Note: I pretty much despise the term “cuck”. It’s generally used by angry incel bois who think that they are edgelords, and I view it as an admission of self-loathing in those who use it unironically.
It’s obvious that the intent is to flood the zone, and T2.0 are certainly doing that. A common refrain I see (and have joined in on) is “where the hell are the Democrats?” It’s a fair point, but it’s also tough to pinpoint one area to push back on or highlight. The Dems need to have a traffic cop, someone to assign people to speak out on each prong of the attack. But that would require some organization, and I just have not seen enough of that from most Dems.
The seriousness of our current situation cannot be overstated. If this administration starts to get some “wins”, if they are able to win some court battles6 or get some other “positive” results, then we will get more boundary pushing, more authoritarianism. Yay. And guess who gets to define success? Well, if we let them, then it will be Trump and his cronies.
Trump campaigned on fixing the government. He is not doing that. In fact, he is doing the opposite, with the intention of destroying the government as we know it in order to rebuild it as he desires. It’s working.
Take care and stay strong.
Due to Trump appointing several GOP House members to Cabinet and other positions, the current composition of the House is 217 R to 215 D and will remain so until special elections can be held to fill the vacancies. Even assuming GOP wins in all of these, the GOP will still only enjoy a 5-seat majority in the House.
You don’t have to think too hard about it. It’s retribution.
From Meta and ABC alone this fantasy library has already netted over $40 million. What’s the moneyline that this institute of learning is ever actually built? I will gladly take that bet.
Is an asshole.
We can’t forget that the Republicans control both Houses of Congress. It is well within their means to make this all legal. They could shutter both USAID and the Department of Education through legal channels and there would be little the Democrats could do. But that would require both courage of conviction and the ability to govern, both of which are severely lacking in Clan MAGA.
Or avoid them entirely, which may be even worse.