Trump,
in his final days, goes full King Lear
Opinion by
Columnist
Dec. 28, 2020 at 6:44 p.m. CST
As President Trump
behaves ever more erratically in the waning weeks of his term, Republicans and
Democrats alike wonder: What’s he thinking?
To all those who
would divine in the president’s floundering a grand strategy, or even a small
one, let me offer some caution: If you go rummaging around in Trump’s brain
right now, you’re going to emerge empty-handed.
He labeled it a “disgrace” — the
covid-relief package his treasury secretary negotiated, in part because it was
paired with spending items that Trump himself had proposed. After threatening
the nation with a government shutdown, he signed the bill anyway.
He vetoed a
crucial $741 billion defense bill that
provides funding for military programs and gives the troops a pay raise —
because of a personal beef he’s having with Twitter and Facebook and because he
wants to keep the names of Confederate generals on military bases. On Monday,
the House overrode the veto by
an overwhelming 322 to 87.
He pardoned
lawbreaking cronies and, according to President-elect Joe
Biden, the “political leadership” of Trump’s team has blocked the
incoming administration from learning about foreign threats, a vulnerability
“our adversaries may try to exploit.”
Trump continues his
quixotic and lonely bid to overturn the results of the election he lost. He’s
now lashing out at Republican leaders who have finally opted to follow the
constitutional order rather than continuing to indulge his clownish attempt at
a coup.
Even the Murdoch-owned
New York Post, which endorsed Trump and ran with Hunter Biden allegations that
other outlets could not substantiate, questioned the madness.
An editorial in Monday’s edition urged
Trump to stop “cheering for an undemocratic coup” and avoid being the “King
Lear of Mar-a-Lago, ranting about the corruption of the world.”
The widely-read
morning tip sheet, Politico Playbook, marveled over the
“bizarre, embarrassing episode for the president” in which he unsuccessfully
threatened the covid-relief bill with “no discernible strategy” to make good on
his bellicose statements. “He folded, and got nothing besides a few days of
attention and chaos,” it concluded.
Ah, but that is
exactly what he wanted. Attention is his lifeblood, and chaos its delivery
vehicle. There is no strategy or policy.
Arguably, there never
was. But in these final days, we see a defeated president abandoning all things
— national security, democratic elections and any pretense of handling the
duties of the presidency — as he does anything and everything to keep the spotlight
on himself.
In tribute to this
late-stage Trumpian lunacy, I’m writing these words wearing my back-ordered
T-shirt that just arrived from Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia,
with the slogan “Make
America Rake Again.” (My wife has the other version: “Lawn & Order.”) After
the Trump campaign chose this location (near a porn shop and crematorium) for
an election-challenge news conference, millions have posed the same question:
Why?
New York magazine’s
Olivia Nuzzi last week gave us the definitive 5,000-word account. And Nuzzi
concludes, more or less, that there was no good explanation. “As one
Philadelphia Republican official told me: ‘Duuuuuude! … It’s the
height of idiocy!’”
she writes. “It was probably
always that simple.”
On Monday, the House
returned early from its Christmas break to deal with the latest instabilities
and idiocies induced by the stable genius.
First, Democrats
exploited Trump’s last-minute demand for $2,000 checks for Americans by forcing
Republicans to vote on exactly that.
“Democrats agree that
families deserve more,” Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal
(D-Mass.) argued, so their new bill would “increase the payments in the relief
package to $2,000, the exact amount the president said he wants.”
The ranking
Republican, Rep. Kevin Brady (Tex.), was forced in the position of
disagreeing publicly with Trump, saying the bill “does nothing to help get
people back to work” and amounts to spending "another trillion dollars so
hastily.” Still, he admitted, “we expect a number of Republicans to support
this bill.”
Forty-four of them
did.
Then, the House took
up its override of Trump’s pointless veto of the defense bill, which threatened
an annual defense authorization for the first time in 59 years.
Rep. Mac Thornberry
(Tex.), the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said, “I continue to support
this bill as more than 80 percent of the House did just 20 days ago.” He made
it clear, as Biden did earlier in the day, that Trump’s madness is jeopardizing
national security.
“The president has
exercised his constitutional prerogative,” Thornberry said. “Now,
Madam Speaker, it’s up to us. The troops, the country, indeed the world is
watching. … Put the best interest of the country first. There is no other
consideration that should matter.”
On Monday, 109 House Republicans defied
Trump and joined the successful veto override — a first for his presidency.
Such a public rejection of Trump’s position by Republicans would have been
unthinkable over the past four years. But as his spotlight-grabbing madness
worsens, some Republicans are making their belated reacquaintance with sanity.