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Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
Historical sensibility tells us it is the barbarians who storm the gates. In today’s America, it is the other way round. Inside the citadel, the hordes are incinerating America’s traditions of law, civility and restraint. The civic-minded cry in the wilderness. Measured by the old era’s conventions, US President Donald Trump’s bonfire is only a quarter of the way through. Like so much else — the US Institute of Peace, the Kennedy Center, the Versailles-style White House ballroom, other people’s Nobel Prizes — Trump is rebranding the US as his own. As America prepares to commemorate its 250th anniversary, the republic is flirting with its own funeral.
Exaggeration? Since Trump descended that escalator in 2015, loyalists have diagnosed critics as suffering from “Trump derangement syndrome”. In line with the president’s core trait, they project their own condition on to others. With Trump, accusation is confession. He calls his opponents corrupt, unpatriotic, dishonest and much cruder things besides. Trump’s apologists — a more numerous crowd than true believers — work round the clock to sane-wash his policies into something coherent. Alas, Trump’s caprice makes it impossible for his explainers to keep pace.
One day Trump is a restrainer paring back America’s role in the world. The next, he is a true nationalist asserting his country’s domain over all he surveys. Tomorrow, he could revert to libertarianism. Today he is a pragmatic statist taking bites out of the shiniest bits of the private sector. Some make heroic attempts to depict Trump as a 21st-century reincarnation of Ronald Reagan. They get an A for effort. Like the fable of the naked emperor, he is imagined in all sorts of finery. More’s the pity that he is not playing along.
Fate will decide what becomes of Trump. He could get to the point where he loses his grip over the 2028 succession. He could just as equally bury America’s constitutional order and claim a third term into his mid-eighties. Those who discount the latter should recall that Trump serially exceeds the worst forecasts of what he will do. The move-along-nothing-to-see-here crowd have never had it so bad. The only thing that stopped Trump from staging an auto-coup in 2020 was a display of rectitude from his formerly quiescent vice-president, Mike Pence. JD Vance, the current vice-president, was picked to prevent such insubordination from recurring.
The other improbable hero of 2020 was Bill Barr, the attorney-general who was an ultra-loyalist up to the point that Trump asked him to seize voting machines and investigate voter fraud. Barr resigned. Pam Bondi, Barr’s successor, can be relied on to carry out any such instruction. Sceptics of Bondi’s limits should consult the Jeffrey Epstein files. Congress passed a law last month mandating Bondi to release them, which she has largely ignored. The law apparently is dispensable when it clashes with the wishes of America’s greatest leader. Whatever fate decrees for Trump, his Greek chorus are lashed to his mast. There is no easy path back from unquestioning obedience to the whims of one man.
How should rational planners — American and foreign alike — respond to whatever Trump throws at them? They have little chance of success unless they see him for what he is. No ideological code can fully capture his actions. Calling him a fascist may offer emotional release but his autocratic impulses stem more from vanity and insecurity than a coherent belief system. Trumpism is whatever he chooses it to be even as he contradicts himself. The key thus lies in Trump’s psychology, which has never been a mystery. His character is hidden in plain sight.
For those belatedly ready to see today’s abyss for what it is, here once again is Trump’s worldview. Life is a battle in which one person wins and the other loses. Everyone else, including his henchmen and America’s allies, is the other person. A zero-sum world permits no room for sentiment or friends. Opponents earn respect. Loyalty is for fools. Rivals might win or lose, depending on their hand. China has been the biggest winner of Trump’s second term so far — and has earned his respect. Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro is an obvious loser. Greenland, and quite possibly Nato, could be next.
The lesson for America’s friends is clear. Flattering Trump will earn his contempt. The world should study the fate of Canada’s Mark Carney. Alone among allies so far, the Canadian prime minister is responding to the reality of America’s deranged turn. Standing up to Trump offers no guarantee of success. Submission, on the other hand, is certain to fail.
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