Trump's daily chaos circus is already back in full force
Yesterday's flood of scandal was a reminder of the past —
and a preview of our future.
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Mediate publishing a police report detailing
the horrific rape allegation against Pete Hegseth. RFK Jr. apologizing after CNN unearthed
comments he made on the radio calling Trump supporters Nazis. Matt Gaetz
withdrawing from consideration as attorney general shortly after CNN contacted him for comment about a
second allegation of sexual misconduct with a minor.
That was just Thursday morning.
Before the day was out, Trump had landed on a new AG nominee — Pam Bondi,
a former impeachment lawyer for Trump best known for nixing an investigation of
his business when she was Florida AG, conveniently right after Trump cut her a $25,000 check. That sort of blatant
corruption would be a big deal in normal times, but normal times these ain’t.
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Yesterday was a jarring reminder of what most days felt
like covering the first Trump administration, which I did as a correspondent in
DC for ThinkProgress and then Vox. There was never a dull moment, but there was
also never one without at least a vague feeling of dread. I still vividly
recall the overwhelming sense of relief that washed over me when a disgraced
Trump got in that helicopter and finally left the White House for what I
thought would be the last time. It was a surreal four years to cut my teeth
writing about national politics. Having watching it up close, I knew we were
lucky survive it. Voters learned from their mistake, and we would never go down
that path again.
Even as Trump laid the groundwork for another presidential
run and rolled his way to the Republican nomination, I truly believed America
would reject him once and for all at the ballot box this year. I felt that
right up until the returns from Georgia started coming in and that familiar
hollow feeling returned. The circus was coming back to town, and Americans had
put the clowns in charge of everything.
There’s no doubt that compared to Biden, the Trump show is
good for scoops and clicks, and the excitement is palpable in some of the copy
we’re reading these days about the hot intrigue leaking out of Mar-a-Lago. But
it’s important to not lose sight of how much the nonstop absurdity is setting
the country back. There’s no universe in which sleazebags like Gaetz and
Hegseth should be nominated for top law enforcement and military jobs in the
first place, or in which a crank like RFK Jr. should have anything to do with
healthcare. We don’t have to live like this. Or at least we didn’t have to.
It’s hard to say that Americans didn’t vote for abusive
creeps to run things when Trump is the president-elect. But as we reacclimatize
to the zone being flooded with shit on a daily basis, we have to keep in mind
that the future is not determined. Trump benefitted from powerful global
dynamics this year and was actually on a long electoral losing streak before
November 5.
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Voters may have been willing to risk it all for slightly
lower egg prices, but regardless of what they thought they were doing, they’re
getting a chaos machine — and that sort of thing gets exhausting pretty
quickly.
If you’re worried about Trump dealing a deathblow to
democracy, in a strange way I think the last couple weeks have actually been
somewhat reassuring. The Gaetz debacle showed that Trump not only can’t get
everything he wants, but remains disorganized and prone to damaging own-goals.
It takes a profound lack of discipline and judgment to burn
any political capital on the likes of Gaetz. Trump’s incompetence often got in
the way of his authoritarian designs the first time around. The early returns
of his transition back to office and the insanity surrounding it indicate he
hasn’t changed.
