"BABY CRIES, MAMA BUYS"

I found this picture today:

It was taken in Boston in 2016. Here's a close-up shot of a slogan that appears on the truck's body:

I remember seeing this slogan on an ice cream truck in Boston forty years earlier, though I'm sure it wasn't the same vehicle.

Because American political life has been dominated for the past decade by an infantile whiner named Donald Trump, I think about this slogan a lot. The implication is that resistance is futile: when Baby cries, Mama doesn't have a choice -- she has to buy or Baby simply won't shut up. That's certainly how Trump operates.

And this seems to be happening in California now:

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has invited President-elect Donald Trump to visit the Golden State to see the devastation of the Los Angeles fires firsthand.

Trump has been critical of Newsom’s handling of the wildfires, and of California’s overall wildfire prevention efforts, calling on the governor to resign and blaming the natural disaster on him. Newsom ... sent a letter to Trump inviting him to visit the state as he returns to the White House....

“In this spirit of this great country, we must not politicize human tragedy or spread disinformation from the sidelines. Hundreds of thousands of Americans — displaced from their homes and fearful for the future — deserve to see all of us working in their best interests to ensure a fast recovery and rebuild,” he added.

Maybe Trump won't take Newsom up on the invitation. I think he will, and he'll be reasonably polite while he's in California -- and then immediately resume sniping at Newsom as soon as he leaves, now pretending to be an expert with firsthand knowledge. Newsom will have given him what he wants: attention and credibility. Maybe he'll concede some point to Trump, on water usage or forestry, in an attempt at cooperation. Trump will pocket that win and continue attacking Newsom.

Danes and Greenlanders are doing it too:

Denmark sent private messages in recent days to President-elect Trump's team expressing willingness to discuss boosting security in Greenland or increasing the U.S. military presence on the island, two sources with knowledge of the issue tell Axios....

The Danish government wants to convince Trump, including through the messages passed to his advisers this week, that his security concerns can be addressed without claiming Greenland for the U.S.

In a way, you can't blame Trump fans for seeing this as a good approach to governing, a real-life "art of the deal." Trump picks an enemy and goes on the attack. He makes a lot of noise. The enemy tries to mollify him by giving him part of what he wants. Everyone in MAGA: Trump wins! Baby cries, mama buys.

But on the other hand, what does the MAGA base get out of all this? We were told that Trump won the election because voters were upset about the price of eggs. Right-wing voters were upset about immigration. Ads attacking trans people reportedly had a major impact.

How does strong-arming Gavin Newsom until he agrees that maybe California should clear more underbrush address any of those issues? How does a thuggish attitude toward Greenland and Denmark strengthen the U.S.-Mexico border or lower grocery bills?

The truth is that Trump's base might be concerned about certain policy goals, but they'll be very happy if Trump just beats up someone they hate. Fox News, talk radio, and Republican politicians trained the GOP base to despise California long before Trump entered politics -- and the same is true for the godless socialists of Denmark and other Western European countries.

The conventional wisdom is that these fights are attempts to distract us from the real Trump agenda: cutting taxes and regulations on the rich and big companies, pursuing a full-blown Heritage Foundation culture war. Maybe there's some truth in that, but I think the fights might be efforts to distract us from Trump's inevitable policy failures. He's admitted that it's "hard" to lower grocery prices. His Department of Government Efficiency concedes that it won't find $2 trillion in budget cuts. His border czar is lowering expectations on the scope of the immigrant crackdown.

Trump is picking gratuitous fights to reassure voters that he still has the right stuff -- and I think he's also doing it to reassure himself. He has a desperate need to believe he's the greatest president ever, even though he knows deep down that he can't solve the problems he faces. But hey, he can beat up Greenland!