Rachel Maddow said Trump was never weaker and that was repeatedly said as part of a MSNPW advertisement. What Maddow said was hyperbolic or paradoxical because Trump was in control of all the branches of the American government, still had a goon squad of ICE agents, was engaged in numerous illegal and unconstitutional actions, and was conducting an unauthorized war. It would be more accurate to say that Trump had run out of steam, that he had used up his initial incentive or rationale and was floundering around thinking of what to do with his government.
His original impetus was racism, clearly announced when he came down the golden escalator and announced his run for president. He said illegal immigrants, Mexicans, had calves like cantaloupes from carrying narcotics across the southern border. He succeeded in getting illegals crossing the border next to nothing, but I don’t know whether that improved the economy or the nation because the United States needs more workers to reap crops and do construction. ICE has violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment but was stopped by local civilian activists in Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. Trump also got through his Big Beautiful Bill, a windfall for rich people but hardly moved towards balancing the budget which Conservative Republicans used to think was the litmus test of political responsibility. And even Conservatives are leery of Trump’s Voting Rights Act, which would undermine a free and fair election and which will go nowhere in Congress, and Trump controlled in January by vigorous Democratic leadership in the Congress.
But what about Trump initiatives? Remember that FDR produced the Wages and Hours Act to provide a minimum wage and good working conditions in 1938, six years into the New Seal, before turning from insults against the economic royalists to the same people who became charged with building tanks and liberty ships. Trump seems to be looking around to keep him busy, less than two years into the term where he became unleashed.
His main issues became self aggrandizement. When he didn’t get a Nobel Prize for Peace, he decided the opposite road; He went to war with Venezuela, and that was easy, and tried to do the same with Iran, which proved more difficult, and so has lost interest in the project and thinks that neglecting that war will make it go away, just as Canada and Greenland stopped being issues when he stopped talking about them. Trump is also bored with the Ukraine-Russia War and wants to side with whichever nation wins. He is willing to sell out his ardent support for Israel so as to claim he got an IsraeliGaza peace deal even though Hamas would continue to control its munitions. He doesn’t get it.
He becomes preoccupied with glorification projects like the East Wing, the heliport, the reflecting pool and the Arch of Trump because he sees himself as a master builder when he has botched these jobs and, anyway, I thought money had to be allocated by Congress and not a lot from “voluntary” donations lest public policy be driven by and for private interests. Trump is doing the oldies and goodies of corruption because that is what he understands: personal wealth rather than public service his endeavor while all previous Presidents were constrained by their legacies, and Trump’s imagination is too limited to be concerned about real accomplishments rather than the appearances of those, just like winning fake golf trophies. What a shameful, limited figure.Don’t ever think he has more on the ball than that.