The Trump Bubble Is Impregnable for
Now—but Boy, Is It Going to Burst
The president is on a collision course
with an accountability moment. Either he or our democracy will prevail.
The
new year is no longer so new, and we’re 10 months away from the midterm
elections. Let’s take stock of where things stand in this country by
acknowledging five central points that combine to tell us that we are at an
unprecedented and chilling place in our history: We have a corrupt and
incompetent president whom we are, for the time being, powerless to rein in;
and on top of that, we have every reason to fear that, when the time comes to
rein him in (this November), he will do everything he can to nullify the
electoral process and reverse the voters’ will.
Last
year was a democratic nightmare. This year is going to be worse. But he can’t
do this forever. My five points below describe his temporary strength. But they
also suggest that his hold on absolute power is fragile, and the reckoning day
is coming.
Point
one: On a personal level, Donald Trump is becoming more and more unhinged. He
rambles, he stumbles, he fumbles. We don’t know whether he actually pooped
himself in that one much-discussed episode in the Oval Office. But the fact
that it has been discussed as something that might have
happened is bad enough. And even if he retains full control of those
evacuations, it’s the ones coming out of his brain and mouth that remain more
concerning. Politico reported recently
that the prime minister of Slovakia—a Trump ally—met with Trump at the White
House on January 28 and later told other world leaders that he was concerned
about Trump’s “psychological state.”
That repost of the Obamas
as apes has been widely interpreted as one more Trumpian effort to troll the
libs. Sure, I guess it was that. But what if it was something else? It may also
have been the act of a man who is losing some marbles. It was beyond anything
even he has ever done along those lines. He’s losing it. The
mainstream media is afraid to touch the topic. The right-wing media screams
that everything’s fine, it’s Trump Derangement Syndrome. That’s an apt phrase,
all right, but it means the opposite of what the Foxies think it means. The
bottom line for now is that the rest of us, the majority that finds him
repulsive, just has to sit here and watch.
Point
two: Politically, the bubble in which he lives is becoming further and further
removed from reality. His penchant for self-aggrandization, always prodigious,
has lately reached the point of insane self-parody.
Case
in point: Last Thursday, it was reported that there were 108,000 layoffs in January—the
worst number since the Great Recession. But the stock market also hit 50,000 on
Friday. Of course, any president would brag about the latter and play down the
former, but Trump went much further, congratulating himself repeatedly on
achieving this milestone in one year.
First
of all, “he” didn’t achieve it. And second, the Dow Jones Industrial Average
was around 44,000 the day
he took office, meaning it’s gone up around 6,000 points in the last year and
change. That’s really no different from the change in the last year of Biden’s
presidency, when it went from just under 38,000 up to 44,000. That’s normal
stock market growth.
People
aren’t buying his economic palaver; they see it as self-serving and out of
touch. But that isn’t even the worst part of the Trump bubble. He has come to
believe that the American people actually want what Immigration and Customs
Enforcement is doing where it’s been unleashed. They do not. He has created for
himself a world in which he never hears a negative word about himself. This is
not a plea for him and his people to wake up—they won’t, and I’m well past
hoping they will. It is rather an observation that this too is one more
Trumpian assault on democracy. He thinks himself answerable only to those who
adore him and think he can do no wrong—in other words, to people who require of
him no answers at all. The rest of the country—that is, the majority of the
country—doesn’t exist.
Point
three: The corruption becomes more blatant and open by the week. That Wall
Street Journal story about the UAE
sheikh who bought a huge stake in Trump’s cryptocurrency venture and then got
AI chip contracts was just insane. But we now live in an era when the president
can do a Teapot Dome or worse on a weekly basis and there’s no one who can hold
him to account.
Well,
check that: Someone can. As Andrew McCarthy noted in the National
Review, House Oversight Chairman James Comer thundered ad nauseam
about Joe Biden’s alleged corruption, even opening an impeachment inquiry,
alleging that Trump’s predecessor had racked up $27 million in ill-gotten
gains. Today? McCarthy: “Of course, Trump can’t be faulted for obstructing
congressional investigations. There haven’t been any. Comer is busy
tangling with the Clintons, the better to take the Epstein heat off a president
whose poll numbers have declined as this year’s midterm elections beckon. Now
that self-dealing has achieved heights so astronomical that $27 million would
barely be a rounding error, Republicans have lost interest.”
Point
four: Speaking of Jeffrey Epstein, we know that that story is far from over,
either in general or with respect to Trump. I won’t relate the rumors about
Trump that surfaced recently as they’re not corroborated. But you’ve probably
read them. I have no idea what the chances are that one fine morning this year,
we are greeted by an explosive headline about Trump in this context that will
blow our collective mind and change everything.
Trump
will deny any wrongdoing. The Republicans will rally behind him or be quiet.
The right-wing media will defend him and say Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill
Clinton. And while some Democrats will smell blood, too many others will say
no, we can only talk about health care.
Finally,
point five: He is of course preparing to steal the midterms. Pundits and
talking heads on cable news should dispense with even wondering whether he
will. Of course he will try. And if he can’t pull it off, he and the GOP will
challenge every result they possibly can in ways that you and I can’t even
imagine.
So
here we are. Mentally deteriorating, unpopular, incompetent, corrupt, out of
touch; and yet, in—for now—unshakably firm control of power, completely beyond
any democratic accountability. And when that accountability moment comes in
November, he will blatantly do whatever he can to erase and reverse it. So this
year is going to be far worse than last, at least for a while.
But
he can’t shut out reality forever. No one can. And the longer he manages to do
so, the more thunderous and unequivocal will be the comeuppance. The Trump
bubble will burst, and it’ll be like the Red Sea in The Ten
Commandments, crashing down on Pharoah’s head. Until then—patience. And
rage.
Michael Tomasky is the
editor of The New Republic and the author of five books,
including his latest and critically acclaimed The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a
Return to Shared Prosperity. With extensive
experience as an editor, columnist, progressive commentator, and special
correspondent for renowned publications such as The Guardian, The
Washington Post, The New York Times, the Daily Beast, and many others,
Tomasky has been a trusted voice in political journalism for more than three
decades.
