WE'RE ALL LOOKING FOR THE GUYS WHO FAILED TO STOP THIS

Against my better judgment, I decided to read this discussion -- Patrick Healy of The New York Times interviewing op-ed columnists Maureen Dowd and Carlos Lozada. At one point, Healy asks about the mood in Washington as large parts of the federal government are being dismantled.

Healy: ... I want to ask: You’ve both worked in Washington for decades; you know the way the bureaucracy resisted and even thwarted Trump at times in his first term, and the way Congress and the courts have slowed down or even stopped presidents before. So I have to ask: Has the fight gone out of Washington? Has the deep state and the Democrats and the courts lost their moxie or their creativity to resist? Because I keep hearing people telling me what a gloomy, depressed place D.C. is now, as if DOGE and Trump have just laid siege in 100 days and the fight has just been leached out of the town. What happened?

Dowd speaks first, and says something that infuriates me:

Dowd: Well, I’m a Washington native and I can sort of understand why everyone is reeling, because nothing like this has ever happened in Washington. Washington was a very stable place, no matter whether it was Republican or Democrat. And then to have this wolf pack of DOGE kids coming in and either muscling their way into agencies or sneaking into agencies and getting hold of sensitive taxpayers’ information was something we couldn’t have conceived of happening. A president letting that happen with no rules about disclosure or what would be private. The Civil Service is gutted now, and all the programs around the world that gave America its reputation for generosity and idealism, and it was done very quickly, and it’s very hard for people to understand how to fight that.

I've added bold at the end for emphasis because I was shouting at my laptop when I read those words. What does Dowd mean, "it’s very hard for people to understand how to fight that"? It's not hard at all. You pass laws preventing the president from doing it. You send a bipartisan congressional delegation to the White House telling the president he's over the line and there will be pushback, up to and including impeachment. You hold hearings. You subpoena records. You fight by fighting.

What I'm describing, of course, is not something that could actually happen in the real world. But it should be obvious to everyone watching this unfold that it could happen if Republicans placed devotion to our country and the rule of law over loyalty to their party. And as a result, every observer should recognize that the Republican Party is rotten to the core, because every Republican in Congress has made a conscious decision to stand by and allow our system to be dismantled, because there's partisan advantage in doing that.

I'm saying something obvious, but apparently it's not obvious to anyone in the conversation. Healy speculates that "the deep state and the Democrats and the courts lost their moxie" (emphasis added again), as if Republicans in Congress have no agency, and Lozada goes on to talk about "Congress" as an undifferentiated mass:

Lozada: ... There was this sense that Washington would endure. Administrations come and go, but civil servants, public servants keep doing their work. And part of that is DOGE. Part of that is also the abdication of Congress’s own powers of oversight. It’s not just that Trump is doing these things that are affecting the livelihoods and the life work and missions of civil servants, of D.O.J. lawyers and of N.I.H. scientists, but it’s also the sense that it seems like nothing can stop it. It seems like no one is doing anything about it. The normal checks and balances aren’t operating.

Emphasis added again. But who has the ability to wield "Congress’s own powers of oversight"? Big hint: Republicans control both houses of Congress. If "the normal checks and balances aren’t operating," it's not a natural phenomenon. It's because the people empowered to check and balance the Executive Branch aren't doing so. Those people are Republicans. Republicans could intervene, but they won't, because they're happy to destroy the American system if their side is winning as it's being destroyed.

Many of you will know the meaning of this image as soon as you see it:

For those who don't, it's from a 2019 sketch on the Netflix comedy series I Think You Should Leave. A hot-dog-shaped car has crashed through the front window of a clothing store, and a man dressed in a hot dog suit talks to everyone in the store as if the identity of the person who drove the car through the window is unclear. The line that's become a meme is "We're all trying to find the guy who did this."



Healy, Dowd, and Lozada are all trying to find the guys who didn't stop Trump, as is most of the Beltway political universe. But it's Republicans in Congress who are wearing the hot dog suit.

EVEN WHEN REPUBLICANS WERE VOTING FOR MAINSTREAM CANDIDATES, TRUMPISM IS WHAT THEY WANTED

Jonathan Chait tries to imagine a normal Trump presidency:

In an alternate reality, Trump’s 2024 victory paved the way for a traditionally successful presidency with broad popularity and concrete policy achievements. After the election, his polling numbers shot up, and numbed Democrats retreated into self-doubt; some of them concluded that their best path forward lay in working with the new president. Congress formed a bipartisan DOGE caucus of members eager to eliminate inefficiencies in government. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, at the time perhaps the Democratic Party’s best-positioned 2028 presidential contender, sent a letter to Trump offering cooperation.

Chait recognizes that Trump had no interest in that sort of presidency:

In the real world, despite the obvious opportunity, Trump never tested the possibilities for constructive engagement....

The available evidence suggests that Trump could never imagine supporting a piece of legislation proposed by a political opponent merely because it advanced some worthwhile policy goal. (That is why passing an infrastructure bill and bolstering domestic manufacturing of silicon chips ranked among Trump’s highest stated priorities, until President Joe Biden passed these ideas into law, at which point they became disasters to be repealed.) ...

Instead of working within the system, he set out to crush the opposition. He ... has used the threat of investigation, prosecution, and punitive defunding to extort media owners, law firms, and universities into compliance. He has attempted to establish, in his immigration-enforcement powers, the ability to disappear people who may or may not have committed crimes, and may or may not even reside in the country illegally, brushing aside court orders to stop.

And Chait knows that Trump has surrounded himself with like-minded people:

Trump’s allies do not recognize any legitimate place for democratic opposition. They have come to see all of progressivism as a false consciousness implanted in an unwitting populace by a handful of puppet masters in academia, philanthropy, media, and Hollywood. Their operating theory is that, by cutting off funds, they can uproot liberal ideology itself.

Chait says that "Trump and his inner circle have consciously patterned themselves after Viktor Orbán’s regime in Hungary." But Republicans were illiberal -- or at least opposed to treating the Democratic Party as legitimate -- long before they discovered Orbán.

Grover Norquist, the best-known anti-tax activist, said that "bipartisanship is another name for date rape" in 2003. That was during the George W. Bush presidency, which began with the pursuit of a bipartisan education bill but then moved on to highly partisan tax cuts and a post-9/11 national security strategy that relied on torture and legally dubious overseas prisons. Bush fired U.S. attorneys who wouldn't pursue cases invoving nonexistent Democratic electoral fraud (and, of course, he'd won the White House by means of a disputed vote count in the home state of his governor brother, a victory endorsed by the Bushes' party-mates on the Supreme Court).

Rank-and-file Republicans cheered that electoral victory and agreed with the allegations of voter fraud because even then they didn't believe that Democratic votes were legitimate. They believed that Democrats won elections because undocumented immigrants voted for the party or because Democratic voters are brainwashed by, as Chait puts it, "a handful of puppet masters in academia, philanthropy, media, and Hollywood." They've wanted to defund public broadcating since the early 1980s; Andrew Breitbart began quoting the aphorism "Politics is downstream from culture" as a means of explaining that alleged brainwashing during Barack Obama's first term.

In the pre-Trump years, even when Republican voters settled on Mitt Romney and John McCain as party standard-bearers, they craved more, perking up in 2008 only when the charismatic demagogue Sarah Palin joined the ticket and embracing would-be authoritarians Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum in 2012 before Mitt Romney's money sank their campaigns. Trump is the kind of president they've always wanted, the fantasy avenger from the QAnon posts so many of them binge-consumed during the height of the COVID pandemic.

That's why no Republican has had what Chait calls a "traditionally successful presidency" in decades. Playing well with others simply isn't "traditional" in the GOP. What's traditional is a craving for jackbooted thuggery.

WE HAVE TO SAVE OURSELVES FROM TRUMP, BECAUSE AMBITIOUS CAREERISTS WON'T

The Atlantic has a new cover story about the president.

Here's what's most striking about this story: Its authors are remarkably eager to to tell us how they were jerked around by Trump, and how they responded by writing exactly the story he asked them to write. Admitting that doesn't fill them with shame. Hey, they're ambitious careerists, A-list journalists who had to produce a big story for a "Trump's first hundred days" deadline. Wouldn't you have allowed Trump to manipulate you to get that story?

Parker and Scherer begin by telling us that they pitched an interview to the White House.

Trump agreed to see us. We were tentatively promised a meeting and a photo shoot—likely in the Oval Office, though possibly the Lincoln Bedroom.

Already he's messing with their heads -- I won't just give you an interview, I'll give you a photo shoot! Maybe even in the Lincoln Bedroom! At that point, Trump is a cat toying with a caught mouse. Any idiot can guess what happened next:

But then, as is so often the case with this White House, everything went sideways.

The week our interview was supposed to occur, Trump posted a vituperative message on Truth Social, attacking us by name. “Ashley Parker is not capable of doing a fair and unbiased interview. She is a Radical Left Lunatic, and has been as terrible as is possible for as long as I have known her,” he wrote. “To this date, she doesn’t even know that I won the Presidency THREE times.” (That last sentence is true—Ashley Parker does not know that Trump won the presidency three times.) “Likewise, Michael Scherer has never written a fair story about me, only negative, and virtually always LIES.”

Apparently, as word of our meeting spread through Trump’s inner circle, someone had reminded him of some of the things we (specifically Ashley) had said and written that he didn’t like. We still don’t know who it was—but we immediately understood the consequences: no photo shoot, no tour of the newly redecorated Oval Office or the Lincoln Bedroom, and definitely no interview.

They could have retained some self-respect and written the story without his cooperation. But they had a phone number for him and called him. He agreed to talk for a while and went into a boasting monologue, which Parker and Scherer recount at length. But he'd denied them the big get, and he knew it. They'd talked to him, but they still wanted an interview on his home turf. And he toyed with them again:

As ever, Trump was on the hunt for a deal. If he liked the story we wrote, he said, he might even speak with us again.

“Tell the people at The Atlantic, if they’d write good stories and truthful stories, the magazine would be hot,” he said. Perhaps the magazine can risk forgoing hotness, he suggested, because it is owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, which buffers it, he implied, from commercial imperatives. But that doesn’t guarantee anything, he warned. “You know at some point, they give up,” he said, referring to media owners generally and—we suspected—[Jeff] Bezos specifically. “At some point they say, No más, no más.” He laughed quietly.

They have interviews with Trump insiders. They have this conversation. But they still want the big get. Near the end of the piece, he calls (or butt-dials) one of them after one in the morning and doesn't leave a message, and instead of finding a way to leverage his apparent craving for another interview, they plead for more, and he tells them what his conditions are:

We made another appeal for an in-person interview. Later that day, an aide told us Trump was denying our request. But the rejection came with a message from the president—a message, Trump specified, only for Michael, not Ashley, with whom he was still annoyed. If the article we were working on really told the remarkable story of how he had come back from the political dead, “maybe The Atlantic will survive after all.”

At this point, we already know that that's exactly the story they've written.

Perhaps no one in American history has had a political resurrection as remarkable as Donald Trump’s.

... he has always been convinced of his own genius, his pure gut instincts. But never more so than today. The past four years have turned him into a Nietzschean cliché. Banishment, multiple indictments, a 34-count felony conviction, repeated brushes with assassins—all have combined to convince him that he is impervious to challenges that would destroy others. Those years also strengthened in him the salesman’s instinct that he can bend reality to his will—turn facts into “fake news,” make the inconceivable not just conceivable but actual, transform the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America, make people believe what he’s selling in defiance of what they see with their own eyes. This is the core lesson that Trump and his acolytes internalized from the 2020 election and January 6.

Trump teased and bullied and cajoled his way to getting what he wanted -- a detailed account of his awesome, unimaginable comeback (I'll spare you the details, though I'll note that I found his comeback all too imaginable even a few days after January 6).

He eventually gave Parker and Scherer an Oval Office interview, and it's ... a big nothing. It's the same spin we get from Trump in every other medium.

He often avoided direct answers in order to recite lists of accomplishments....

We asked about the concern that his administration was pushing the country toward authoritarianism, where politicians use the power of their office to punish their enemies for speaking their minds, as Trump was attempting to do to Chris Krebs, Harvard, law firms, universities, and news outlets. He did not answer the question directly, but instead talked about how he’d been wronged....

Near the end of the interview, we asked Trump why, given that he’s now definitively won a second term, he can’t just let go of the claim that he won the 2020 election.

The president told us it would “be easier” for him to just accept our assertion. But he couldn’t. “I’m a very honest person, and I believe it with all my heart,” he said. “And I believe it with fact—you know, more important than heart. I believe it with fact.”

That's what you did all that groveling for? This rehash?

The press and high-level politicians in both parties won't save us from Trump because they fear that going after him head-on puts their careers at risk. That's why the second-term Trump resistance came from the bottom up. The rest of us have less to lose.

YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE PEOPLE DISCUSS AROUND THEIR KITCHEN TABLES? LIFE-THREATENING ILLNESSES.

President Trump's polling is awful right now, with his job approval coming in at a wretched 39% in new surveys from AP and The Washington Post. Trump's numbers are especially bad on specific issues, as the Post notes:

If establishment Democrats are worried about attacking Trump in his areas of strength, maybe they should stop worrying -- he no longer seems to have areas of strength. But if they want to be cautious, you'd imagine that they'd want to go for the areas where he's weakest.

But that doesn't seem to be the case.

The most timid Democrats are locked into a rigid formula: Talk about nothing except the economy and Medicare/Medicaid/Social Security. Never veer from this path. And so we have this:

Democrats, after weeks of struggling to find a message that resonates with ordinary Americans while President Donald Trump dominates the news, are beginning to settle on one: the allegation that Trump and his allies are crippling Social Security.

Former president Joe Biden used his first public comments since leaving office to criticize Trump’s handling of the popular program. Early Democratic ads are targeting Republican senators on Social Security. Democrats have visited Social Security offices around the country, sometimes getting turned away and going public. Senate Democrats have set up a “war room” to deliver the message.

It's good that they're doing this. But why not look at the list of items above on which Trump is getting absolutely crushed in polling and start talking about those as well?

Look at the last item in the bar graph above. "Reducing federal funding for medical research" is opposed by 77% of The Washington Post's poll respondents. It would be safe even for Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries to talk about that, too.

Medicare and Social Security are a constant presence in older people's lives, so of course we're afraid to lose them. But cancer and stroke and ALS and Alzheimer's and other medical conditions are frequent worries. We'd like to think there are smart people working on cures and treatments for these conditions -- and then we see DOGE, for no reason we can comprehend, cutting grants to medical researchers. We see a U.S.-based Russian scientist with expertise in advanced cancer detection being arrested, detained, and threatened with deportation over a minor customs violation. We see the administration punishing universities for alleged campus wrongthink by cutting off research grants, while handing over control of those grants to a crackpot with no scientific expertise.

People don't just talk about money around their kitchen tables. Older people in particular talk about their health. It's reasonable for us to think that treatments we might need, or family members might need, will never come or will be delayed because of this Trump/Robert Kennedy/Project 2025 vendetta against science.

The young firebrands many of us hope will shake up the party probably won't talk about any of this -- at their age, health isn't a top concern. So the old guard ought to speak up. Come on, Chuck and Hakeem -- 77% disapproval makes this safe enough even for you to talk about.

THE GOP IS A NICHE PARTY

The new New York Times/Siena College poll is very bad for Donald Trump. I'll let Nate Cohn explain:

You would be hard pressed to find a single “good” number for Mr. Trump in the survey.

His job approval rating is just 42 percent, and voters disapproved of his handling of every issue tested in the survey, including longstanding strengths like immigration and the economy.

Only 43 percent view him favorably, down from 48 percent in the final Times/Siena poll before the election and the lowest since his attempted assassination last July.

On question after question, voters say he’s going too far. Sixty-six percent of them say “chaotic” describes Mr. Trump’s second term well; 59 percent say “scary” fits at least somewhat well.

Cohn reminds us of the conventional wisdom of a few months ago, which most elite commentators believed (and many centrist Democrats still seem to believe):

Bring yourself back to the beginning of the year, when Mr. Trump was basking in victory, when there was talk of a rightward cultural “vibe shift” or even an incipient realignment....

While he won only narrowly, the election was still a decisive victory for populist conservative politics over an exhausted liberalism. There were countless opportunities for him to push major initiatives with significant public support, on issues like immigration, crime, energy, “woke” or the economy. Back in January, it seemed possible for Mr. Trump to solidify a coalition behind these issues.

Not anymore.

Remember the widespread belief that young people in particular were now Trumpers for life? That moment appears to be over. I'm looking at the crosstabs, and on issue after issue the 18-29 age group rejects Trump more vigorously than older people.

Question: "Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president?"

* Respondents overall: 42% approve, 54% disapprove.
* 18-29-year-olds: 26% approve, 69% disapprove.


Question: "Please tell me if this describes Donald Trump very well, somewhat well, not too well or not at all well: Understands the problems facing people like you."

* Respondents overall: 44% well, 54% not well.
* 18-29-year-olds: 28% well, 72% not well.


Question: "For each of the following, tell me whether you support or oppose the policy. Deporting immigrants living in the United States illegally back to their home countries."

* Respondents overall: 54% support, 42% oppose.
* 18-29-year-olds: 37% support, 61% oppose.


Question: "The tariffs imposed by President Trump."

* Respondents overall: 39% support, 55% oppose.
* 18-29-year-olds: 20% support, 71% oppose.


Question: "Government spending cuts by DOGE."

* Respondents overall: 42% support, 44% oppose.
* 18-29-year-olds: 17% support, 65% oppose.

It's all like this. As a result, 18-29-year-olds say they'd support a Democrat in the 2026 midterms by a margin of 59% to 30%. (Overall, it's 47% to 44% in Democrats' favor.)

We're regularly told that the Democratic Party has become a niche party -- that the party's core is educated, well-off whites -- but this poll suggests that the Republican Party is a niche party now. College-educated whites, college-educated non-whites, and non-college-educated non-whites all reject what Trump is doing. Only non-college-educated whites offer support.

Question: "Tell me whether you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump has handled each of the following issues as president: The economy."

* White, college: 33% approve, 65% disapprove.
* Non-white, college: 26% approve, 72% disapprove.
* Non-white, no college: 34% approve, 62% disapprove.
* White, no college: 58% approve, 40% disapprove.


Question: "Immigration."

* White, college: 39% approve, 59% disapprove.
* Non-white, college: 39% approve, 60% disapprove.
* Non-white, no college: 32% approve, 65% disapprove.
* White, no college: 60% approve, 38% disapprove.


Question: "Managing the federal government."

* White, college: 35% approve, 64% disapprove.
* Non-white, college: 40% approve, 53% disapprove.
* Non-white, no college: 34% approve, 57% disapprove.
* White, no college: 55% approve, 41% disapprove.


Question: "Trade with other countries."

* White, college: 34% approve, 64% disapprove.
* Non-white, college: 27% approve, 66% disapprove.
* Non-white, no college: 39% approve, 59% disapprove.
* White, no college: 54% approve, 40% disapprove.

The pattern keeps repeating. Trump's alleged new coalition of blue-collar Americans of all races is now a coalition of blue-collar white people only.

The press won't tell you this because the press believes that blue-collar whites are normative, blue-collar non-whites are of interest only when they support Republicans, and college-educated people aren't Americans at all. But that's absurd. We're all Americans. And everyone seems to be abandoning Trump except one demographic group.

YOU'D HAVE ANGRY ENERGY TOO IF YOU'D MADE HATING LIBERALISM YOUR ENTIRE PERSONALITY FOR DECADES

I don't like admitting this, but I understand how David Brooks feels:

I’ve detested at least three-quarters of what the Trump administration has done so far, but it possesses one quality I can’t help admiring: energy. I don’t know which cliché to throw at you, but it is flooding the zone, firing on all cylinders, moving rapidly on all fronts at once. It is operating at a tremendous tempo, taking the initiative in one sphere after another.

A vitality gap has opened up. The Trump administration is like a supercar with 1,000 horsepower, and its opponents have been coasting around on mopeds. You’d have to go back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration in 1933 to find a presidency that has operated with such verve during its first 100 days.

I've detested 100% of what the Trump administration has done, and I certainly wouldn't say that the administration has verve, but I'll concede that, regrettably, the Trumpers have a hell of a lot of energy.

I don't agree with Brooks that it's primarily Trump's energy. Brooks writes:

Some of this is inherent in President Trump’s nature. He is not a learned man, but he is a spirited man, an assertive man. The ancient Greeks would say he possesses a torrential thumos, a burning core of anger, a lust for recognition. All his life, he has moved forward with new projects and attempted new conquests, despite repeated failures and bankruptcies that would have humbled a nonnarcissist.

Hey, you know what they say: Tiny hands, big thumos. (Actually, no -- nobody says that.) Brooks is right about Trump's "burning core of anger," but Trump spent most of his middle age getting a moderate amount of screen time on a TV show of which he was reportedly the star, even though it largely focused on non-famous contestants. Apart from that, he mostly slapped his name on buildings and other commodities (water, steaks, a fake university) built by others, until he discovered Fox News and almost accidentally became a pundit, and then a politician. He's a lazy guy. He's not a ball of energy.

Brooks is on more solid ground here:

The administration is also driven by its own form of righteous rage. Its members tend to have a clear consuming hatred for the nation’s establishment and a powerful conviction that for the nation to survive, it must be brought down.

The real reason the Trump administration seems energetic is that it's fueled by the pent-up energy of the conservative movement, which has spent decades stewing in eliminationist resentment of everything perceived as liberal. Trump is the angry figurehead, and Elon Musk supplies his own drug-fueled jitteriness (as well as army of boys for hire), but the desperate need to attack everything all at once is what you get after millions of Americans have spent years mass-consuming (and mass-producing) right-wing propaganda. Now that they've undergone this form of brain poisoning, they're consumed with the desire to reverse every form of human progress we've seen in America since 1900. Conveniently, the Heritage Foundation prepared for the Trump presidency by compiling a book longer than Ulysses on how to do just that, and an array of right-wing billionaires have kept the authors of the program well remunerated until they were ready to execute their plan.

Because this is David Brooks, he can't help blaming the old guard for their own demise at the hands of rage-fueled Trumpers. He's right that they partly brought this on themselves, but not in the way he thinks:

Trump’s offensive style takes advantage of the unique weaknesses of America’s existing leadership class....

The people who succeeded in the current meritocracy tend not to be spirited in the way Trump is spirited. The system weeds such people out and rewards those who can compliantly jump through the hoops their elders have put in front of them.

Members of the educated elite (guilty!) tend to operate by analysis, not instinct, which renders them slow-footed in comparison with the Trumps of the world. They tend to believe that if they say something or write something (ahem), they have done something. The system breeds a fear of failure that the more audacious Trump largely lacks. Such elites sometimes assume that if they can persuade themselves that they are morally superior, then that in itself constitutes victory; it’s all they need to do.

That isn't the reason the establishment failed. The establishment failed because it refused to do what people want it to do, which is make a serious dent in economic inequality and precarity. People are working hard and not getting ahead, while the rich get richer and richer. The establishment didn't want to do anything about this except tinker at the margins, and so millions of voters who weren't Trump superfans decided to vote for him because he promised to do something bold, even if they had no idea how destructive it would be.

When Brooks tries to imagine how to fight back, he frequently sounds like one of the weak-willed establishmentarians he describes:

On clarity of purpose: Trump’s opponents have still not produced the kind of one-sentence mission statement that he produces — that the elites have betrayed us, so we must destroy them.... My mission statement would be: America is great, and we will fight for what has made America great.

... Democrats will do the most good if they can stop sounding like Democrats for the time being, with all the tired rhetoric about the oligarchy and trickle-down economics.

Why does the anti-Trump movement need a goddamn "mission statement"? It's not some hipster Brooklyn startup named Sage + Acacia. Just fight the bastards.

And I see that "oligarchy" is the new "Latinx" -- the single word whose evil spell magically makes all Democrats unelectable, for reasons no one can explain. Yesterday Politico published a profile of Michigan senator and wannabe centrist savior Elissa Slotkin, in which we were told this:

Her strategy also focuses on language and tone. She said Democrats should stop using the term “oligarchy,” a phrase she said doesn’t resonate beyond coastal institutions, and just say that the party opposes “kings.”

In fact, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are drawing massive crowds in non-coastal America with a tour called "Fighting Oligarchy." Do Brooks and Slotkin object to the word "oligarchy"? Or do they object to fighting the oligarchy? Because people want that, and I sense that Brooks and Slotkin (and most mainstream Democrats) don't.

Right-wing propaganda tells Americans that elitism is cultural rather than economic, and many fall for that, but it's clear now to many people that Trump's war on propriety isn't solving any of their problems. Simply pointing out the harm done by the Trump administration is good, but harnessing class anger might be the only way to persuade Americans that there's an alternative to Trumpism that's equally vigorous.

TRUMP'S APPROVAL SEEMED TO HAVE A HIGH FLOOR, BUT NOT ANYMORE

I wrote a post yesterday arguing that President Trump's popularity has settled in at a number just below 50-50 approval ... and then three new polls arrived suggesting that he's crashed through that floor and has nowhere to go but down. In a new Economist/YouGov poll, Trump's approval/disapproval numbers are 44%/53%. A Fox News poll puts Trump at 44%/55%. A Pew survey has Trump at 40%/59%.

Surprisingly, Fox polls tend not to have much of a skew one way or the other, so I'd like to focus on that one. Trump was at 49%/51% in a Fox poll conducted in March, which means there's been a big drop in approval (5 points) and a 4-point rise in disapproval. Why?

In this poll, Trump is still getting good numbers on border security and okay numbers on immigration overall, while he's getting clobbered on the economy. But it's starting to seem as if that's not enough to please some former Trump supporters.

Trump regularly said on the campaign trail that he'd fix all of America's problems "quickly." I think many Americans responded to that because, while the Biden administration actually did a lot, it wasn't very good at telling people that it was doing a lot, so many voters didn't believe it was doing much of anything. Millions of Americans weren't happy with the economy in 2024 and came to the conclusion that President Biden didn't care. Republican voters thought Biden didn't care about immigration because they heard about border crossers incessantly on Fox News; some independents probably shared that concern, as did moderates who lived in or near the communities that were dropoff points for immigrants transported by Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott.

Voters who were concerned about immigration are seeing swift action from the Trump administration -- it's horrible to you and me, but it's happening, and it's happening quickly. Elon Musk's DOGE is moving fast and breaking the government -- again, in a horrible fashion, but it's quick.

Voters who believed Trump's promises undoubtedly imagined that he could lower egg prices as fast as DOGE destroys government agencies and ICE rounds up green card holders. They might have believed that Trump's tariffs would swiftly lead to awesome deals with other countries. Instead, the only thing that's happening quickly is turbulence in the stock and bond markets.

Also, Trump promised to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine swiftly. He's failed on both counts, and now his foreign policy approval is 40%/54%.

In my post yesterday, I said that there appear to be quite a few "trust the plan" voters -- people who think things are bad now, but they'll be better in a year or so, because Trump has such a big, shrewd brain. The Fox poll suggests that the number of people who believe this may be shrinking. Notice that a majority of poll respondents not only believe Trump's policies will hurt America in the short run (54%), but also believe they'll hurt America in the long run (51%).

A majority are discouraged about the next four years:

If they're not buying what I've called "the long con," he could be screwed, because it's not as if he'll actually do anything to improve economic conditions for ordinary Americans. His one Big Economic Idea is bad for everyone. So his only hope is to keep Americans believing that the golden age is coming and everyone should just be patient. If onetime supporters are losing faith in that, he's in trouble. And if he is, it's because they assume that a guy who seems like a Man of Action in other realms ought to be capable of some sort of aggressive action on their economic behalf. They'll never believe us when we tell them he's incapable of that, but they may be slowly learning now.

SADLY, BOTH TRUMP AND MUSK HAVE MADE A SOFT LANDING

The New Republic's story about Tesla's quarterly earnings report carries this headline:

Tesla Earnings Plunge Because Everyone Hates Elon Musk

TNR tells us:

Elon Musk’s far-right turn as the head of the Department of Efficiency has apparently tanked Tesla’s earnings.

In a humiliating first-quarter report published Tuesday, Tesla reported that profits had crashed by a whopping 71 percent, falling to a mere $409 million, compared with $1.39 billion from the same quarter last year.

The company vastly underperformed compared to Wall Street’s expectations for per-share profit, reporting an adjusted earnings-per-share of 27 cents, well below the expectations of 41 cents.

Sales slipped dramatically as well, dropping 13 percent from the same period last year.

But does that mean everyone hates Elon Musk? Apparently not, because as I write this, Tesla stock is up more than 7% in pre-market trading. This is why:

Elon Musk says he will step back next month from his work with the Department of Government Efficiency to focus more time on Tesla, after the electric carmaker's profits plunged 71%.

"Starting next month, I will be allocating far more of my time to Tesla," Musk announced during Tesla's earnings call Tuesday. "My time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly."

"I think I'll continue to spend a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so and as long as it would be useful," added Musk, as he declared his work with DOGE "mostly done."

Many people don't hate Elon Musk categorically. They hate the fact that he's putting in so many hours working at DOGE, where he's alienating potential customers, rather than doing what they still believe he's good at, which is running his companies -- this despite the utter failure of the Cybertruck and the many missed deadlines on full self-driving, a lower-cost electric vehicle, and robotaxis, not to mention continually plunging revenues at X. Despite all the evidence that he's lost the plot, many people will go right back to regarding him as a genius and a visionary if he dials back his involvement in DOGE. And, of course, many people have never stopped believing in him.

This makes him very similar to Donald Trump, whose poll numbers have dropped since his second inaugural, declining notably after his tariff "Liberation Day," but have now apparently stopped their slide. According to Nate Silver's polling average, Trump's job approval slipped to 45.5% on April 10 -- but now it's a nearly identical 45.4%. At RealClearPolling, Trump's job approval number dropped to 46.7% on April 12 -- exactly where it is now. Markets are selling off U.S. bonds, trade deals aren't happening, Trump is defying the courts on deportations, Trump subordinates are obtaining or seeking access to personal data at an alarming rate, measles is rampant -- but 45% or more of the country either loves everything that's going on or has a few qualms but still trusts the plan. Much of America still can't quite believe that Trump is dangerous and untrustworthy, just as they can't quite accept that Musk is a charlatan, a Nazi, and a brain-poisoned whackjob.

This also seems analogous to the endless "Are we in a constitutional crisis yet?" coverage in the mainstream media. Those whose answer is "Not yet" apparently need to believe that we could return to normality at any moment, with laws prevailing and guardrails holding. They still want to believe this is normal politics, and I can't imagine what it will take to make them realize that we've been in a constitutional crisis since Inauguration Day.

Maybe a recession? Will that do it? I can imagine that Americans might turn against Trump for that most normie of reasons, but will never quite realize that he destroyed much of what was best about America, and did it illegally and unconstitutionally. They'll simply write him off because he didn't lower the price of eggs. And if we can still have elections and vote his party out of office, the GOP will be able to regroup after that and take a second run at destroying everything good about America, with a less ignorant, less idiotic dictator this time. We'll never have the necessary reckoning. We'll just go right back to treating the GOP as a normal politcal party.

LET THE BLAME-SHIFTING BEGIN!

Economically, we're screwed:

Apollo Global Management, Inc‘s chief economist warned on Saturday that the odds of a U.S. recession in 2025 are 90%.

... Torsten Slok predicts the U.S. will fall into what he labelled a "Voluntary Trade Reset Recession.” He attributed the high risk to the economic impact of President Donald Trump's trade and tariff strategies.

... Trump's current plan calls for double-digit tariff rates. Slok calculated that this could subtract nearly 4 percentage points from 2025 GDP. This does not include additional negative effects from uncertainty on consumers and corporate decisions.

Other prominent economists and financial institutions see an elevated risk of recession, but none as high as Slok's 90% call. A recent Wall Street Journal survey indicated that economists have raised their estimated likelihood of a recession in the next 12 months to 45%, a significant increase from 22% in January.

But don't worry, because President Trump has a ready response: It's all the Fed chairman's fault.

President Trump is signaling that he will blame the Federal Reserve for any economic weakness that results from his trade war if the central bank doesn’t cut interest rates soon....

In a social-media post on Monday, Trump repeated last week’s demand that the Fed reduce interest rates now. “There is virtually no inflation,” he said, blasting Fed Chair Jerome Powell as “Mr. Too Late” and “a major loser.”

... Some analysts said the president’s attacks on the Fed simply represent an attempt to scapegoat the central bank for impending economic weakness. “It’s tempting to want somebody else to ride to the rescue, or at least have someone else to blame,” said former Sen. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican.

Yup. Meanwhile, Republicans are looking to shift the blame for impending Medicaid cuts:

And as we're learning that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared classified information with his wife and brother in a second Signal chat, and also learning that the information included specifics about an ongoing bombing mission, it's beginning to appear as if Hegseth might lose his job soon. But I think this offers the Trump regime and the GOP a new opportunity to shift blame.

Yes, NPR has reported that the White House is looking at potential replacements for Hegseth. But I'll remind you that back in December, after the press had unearthed the first skeletons in Hegseth's closet, it briefly appeared as if Trump might withdraw Hegseth's nomination in favor of another candidate, possibly Ron DeSantis. That never happened. Trump dug in. Hegseth was confirmed.

John Stoehr believes it's categorically impossible for Dictator Trump to suffer a political scandal.

As I said after the first Signalgate story, there are no political scandals under autocratic rulers, because there are no standards to which an autocratic ruler feels he must subordinate himself. The only thing that matters to Trump is whether Hegseth is loyal....

I disagree -- Trump does care about public opinion -- but Stoehr is right about this:

Naturally, the press corps will keep bird-dogging Signalgate. If this were a normal president who respected the constitutional role of the media, as Joe Biden did, Hegseth might be gone by now. But this is Trump we’re talking about. He has united his party against reporters so that virtually anything they say can and will be used against them.

Anything that goes wrong on Hegseth's watch will now be the fault of the people who write critical stories about him, and the fault of the sources for those stories. Thus we have this headline at The Federalist:

New Anti-Hegseth Op Illustrates The Media’s Campaign To Protect The Pentagon Status Quo

Remember, in the eyes of the MAGA base, Trumpers in good standing can do no wrong, while anyone who criticizes a Trumper in good standing is not only wrong but evil. Everything that's not MAGA is part of a vast conspiracy to weaken and ultimately destroy America.

That Federalist piece tells us this:

... the D.C. establishment’s continued campaign to oust Hegseth comes from its fervent opposition to the much-needed change he’s bringing to the Pentagon.

For years, the Defense Department has operated within the best interests of the agency’s higher-ups and D.C.’s notorious defense-industrial complex. While high-ranking officials used their coveted positions of influence to advance neo-Marxist ideologies throughout the Pentagon and defense contractors got rich off of America’s military involvement in nonsensical overseas conflicts, rank-and-file service members’ needs were ignored, the country’s military infrastructure crumbled, and the priority of winning wars went out the window.

Unlike his predecessors, Hegseth is someone who comes from outside this incestuous system that’s responsible for the decay witnessed throughout America’s armed forces. Much like Trump, he’s a disruptor — and by every measure, he’s doing exactly what the president appointed him to do.

... the loudest voices within the D.C. establishment aren’t concerned that Hegseth doesn’t have what it takes to lead the Pentagon. Rather, they’re afraid of the changes he is and will continue to implement that directly disrupt the status quo they’ve spent years protecting.

So I assure you that if there's a major Pentagon failure while Hegseth is in charge -- an actual disaster for America, not just a reckless exposure of classified data that luckily appears to have had no negative consequences -- the Trumpers won't blame it on him. They'll blame it on "deep state" saboteurs who want to preserve the pre-Trump, pre-Hegseth status quo because they hate America. And the majority of Republican voters will accept this assertion uncritically.

YOUR RIGHT-WING NEIGHBORS HATED POPE FRANCIS AND ARE GLAD HE'S DEAD (updated)

Pope Francis died this morning at the age of 88. If what I'm reading in right-wing comments section is any indication, your right-wing neighbors an relatives are already celebrating the pope's death.

Here are some of the top comments to Gateway Pundit's obituary, which says that Francis was "long criticized by conservatives for steering the Church into left-wing political activism rather than defending tradition and morality":

He died not in peace, but in fear, because he served Satan.
Good riddance. The world is a slightly better place without him.

****

Truer words have not been spoken.He served the Devil completely.

****

The communist Pope has left the stage!

****

To rot in Hell.

****

He was very generous... with other people's stuff.

****

Bergoglio took steps to stack the College of Cardinals with Globalists. We'll just get another Francis.

****

Yes, Francis packed the Conference of Cardinals with Commie filthbags like himself.

****

He packed The Conference in the same way the Democrats packed the court under Biden.

They are each DEMONIC

****

He was globalist, and communist, he believed in the same world as King Charles, one of the ruling class, one of exploitation of poor and infirm, and everyone else in servitude to the elite...

****

Sad part is,there are plenty more just like him ready to take over and continue what he started.

****

Just like every US institution and university has been destroyed by Marxism…I fear the Catholic Church has been subverted by the “Holy” Communist Father Mario Bergoglio. We can only pray the Holy Spirit can once again pierce the clouds of sulphur that blanket the earth....

****

The True Pope, Benedict, never left his seat. He was forced out by a deep state globalist usurper. Now the usurper is dead.

The comments in response to this Breitbart obituary are similar:

What a shame.
They'll be hard-pressed to find a replacement as leftist as he was.

****

You have to remember, the leftist Cardinals who appointed him are still there. I can almost see the headlines, Trans Pope Appointed.

****

I was thinking the same thing. Next Pope will be a trans or an illegal gang member trans. LOL

****

Pope Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. She checks off lots of boxes.

****

Put a chick in it...and make her lame and gay!

****

Hmmm... Does China tells them who to be the next Poop

****

He said and did evil things that influenced hundreds of millions of people. I'm happy he is dead and not ashamed about it at all.

****

I grew up in the 60s and 70s hearing "The only good Commie is a dead Commie." I look at Frankie's demise no differently than I did Mao's, Brezhnev's, Ho Chi Minh's or Pol Pot's. The only difference between them and Frankie is that he didn't leave as many corpses in his wake. But he was just as godless.

****

Pro-Homosexual turd burglar

****

Pope Francis has died. Well I'm not Catholic, nor was I a fan of him. I felt that he was a Globalist and spent more time preaching the gospel of George Soros than that Of Jesus Christ. I hope they find a Pope more interested in Christ than Soros.

****

His successor should call for a crusade to extirpate Islamism from Europe.

The response to the Fox News obituary is only a bit milder:

He was also an extreme hypocrite. When asked about Gays, who are specifically admonished in The Bible, he replied who am I to judge. A wonderful response until he went on to viciously judge Capitalism, and by extension, Capitalists, which are never mentioned in The Bible. He criticized borders while Vatican City is surrounded by a wall and has the most restrictive immigration laws on the planet.

****

Hitler loved his mom, girlfriend and dog. That did not make him a good person.

Francis helped the poor but he led the Lord's sheep astray (with his socialist woke ideology) and on a road to hell. That made him a terrible Pope.

****

I quit going to Mass because of his progressive stance on immigration and pushing the CLIMATE hoax. He told Trump in 2017 that we needed to open our borders.... After meeting with the Kenyan

****

He was part of the international liberal/socialist cabal, and living very comfortably behind a facade of religion.

****

Good grief, how many stories does Fox need about this freakin' Pope dying? No one here even likes him and the guy was only pope for 12 years. That's hardly a blip in time when you consider the Earth is almost 4,000 years old.

(That last one is from a commenter named GretasStrapon.MakesAndyTateCry855.)

Maybe now they will get a real Catholic that isn’t woke and prone to globalism and abortions.

They want a wingnut successor. From the Gateway Pundit comments:

Cardinal Maria Vigano should be the next Pope. But the communist pope who just mercifully left this life, excommunicated him. Too Catholic for his tastes. But the globalists would never allow it. He has written extensively about their evil and the rot within the Church, covered up by the "deep" Curch. This pope was a globalist tool.

When I regularly lurked at Free Republic, I'd see Carlo Maria Viganò's name a lot. He was excommunicated last year. But fear not: The right-wingers will rally around other candidates:

One, Hungarian churchman Peter Erdo, is close to his country's hardline president Victor Orban and has expressed opposition to divorced or remarried Catholics being allowed to receive Holy Communion.

Another, the Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah branded gender ideology 'Luciferian' and has also spoken out against Islamic fundamentalism.

On paper, Sarah would seem to have a slight edge. But he's black, so I think they'll be rooting for Erdo. If a liberal or moderate wins, they'll probably blame George Soros or the World Economic Forum.

******

UPDATE: As I was saying...

Today there were major shifts in global leaderships.

Evil is being defeated by the hand of God.

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) April 21, 2025

TRUMP'S BAD ECONOMIC POLL NUMBERS ARE ACTUALLY A REASON FOR DEMOCRATS TO TALK ABOUT OTHER SUBJECTS (updated)

I'm just a schmuck amateur blogger and Matthew Yglesias is one of the Big Brains, but I think he's taking away exactly the wrong lesson from the data he's citing:

Everyone should think about which topics they want to raise the salience of and why. pic.twitter.com/O9wutKoSVR

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 18, 2025

Self-criticism corner: By suggesting it is bad to increase the salience of immigration, I have generated meta-discourse that has only further increased the salience.

No more posts about this from me ever!

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 18, 2025

Yglesias's argument is as follows: Trump's poll numbers on the economy and trade are really bad, much worse than his overall approval rating, so people who want to make him less popular should keep talking about the economy and trade, and stop talking about immigration, because the numbers show that voters like Trump's abductions and deportations.

But the numbers that lead Yglesias to this conclusion can be read in exactly the opposite way: that we're winning the argument on the economy and trade, yet it's not enough to drive Trump's overall poll numbers lower, so we need to go after Trump's strength on immigration and try to lower that number as well.

I'm not sure we can drag Trump's economic numbers any further down, at least in the near future. Yesterday I noted that many of the Trump-voting independents in a recent New York Times focus group have economic anxiety right now but "trust the plan" -- they assume that President Trump is really, really smart and knows exactly what he's doing, and that all of this will work out in the long run. We can try to tell them that it won't work out, but they'll just assume that we're defending the establishment elitists and Trump knows better because he's the world's greatest dealmaker. And then what can we say? We have a pretty good idea what Trumponomics will do in the long run, but until more time passes, we can't prove we're right.

We can see voters splitting on the short-term and long-term impacts of Trump's economic and trade policies in polls. Here are some numbers from a recent CBS poll (apologies for the muddy images; click to enlarge):

In the short term, 75% of poll respondents think Trump's tariffs will increase prices; only 5% think they'll decrease prices. But in the long term, 30% think they'll decrease prices, while 48% think they'll increase prices. In terms of overall economic impact, 65% of respondents think the tariffs will make the economy worse in the long run, but only 42% think they'll make the economy worse in the long run. Only 8% of respondents expect the economy to be better in the short term, but 34% expect it to be better in the long term.

Even the long-term numbers are kind of lousy for Trump, but they're better than his short-term numbers. We simply can't win over the people who expect the plan to work in the long run, because they think Trump is smarter than we are. Also see this result from a March Wall Street Journal poll:

In this poll, 48% of respondents think Trump's policies will "create economic difficulties with very little benefit," and 35% believe they'll "create some economic difficulties in the short run but economic benefits in the long run" (while 13% think they'll just create benefits). The 13% probably can't be won over under any circumstances, and it's unlikely that we can win over the 35% until the economic leopards are actually eating their faces.

Meanwhile, the data analyst who produced the chart Yglesias reproduces above -- G. Elliott Morris, who succeeded Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight -- disagrees with Yglesias and believes it's worth going after Trump on immigration.

... the individual components of Trump's immigration agenda are much less popular than the general ideas of securing the border or deporting undocumented immigrants.

In polls of Trump's immigration policy, voters generally oppose deporting residents who have been in America for more than ~5 years, deporting people where it would separate children from parents, and deporting people who have not been convicted of crimes other than illegal entry.

In a piece titled "Trump's Immigration Agenda Is Not Popular," Morris gives us some specifics:

There are some ambiguities in the polling. In the Wall Street Journal poll I cite above, 55% of respondents approve of "deporting illegal immigrants who are suspected foreign gang members to El Salvador without a court hearing to determine whether they belong to a gang"; 43% disapprove. On the other hand, 58% believe that "Donald Trump must comply with federal court rulings that limit his actions or which he disagrees with," while only 37% believe that Trump should refuse to abide by federal court decisions. So if courts block Trump's renditions and express skepticism about whether he's correctly identified gang members, it seems as if there's room for public opinion to change. Contesting Trump's immigration moves involves contesting his characterizations of the abducted. He's obviously lying about many of them, if not all or nearly all of them. Americans want him to deport immigrants who are bad people, but their support for him could change if they don't believe that's what he's doing, and if they see him not merely taking aggressive action but taking aggressive action in defiance of the courts.

I'll add this: mainstream Democrats like Yglesias want the party to be hyper-cautious and limit its rhetoric to as few issues as possible. They seem to believe that voters can't think about more than one issue at a time. Meanwhile, Trumpworld talks about tariffs and Greenland and DEI and the "Gulf of America" and universities and pro-Palestine foreign nationals at universities and alleged immigrant gang members from Latin America and many other subjects, and voters seem able to process it all. Democrats are hemming themselves in -- something they seem to love doing -- if they continually say they mustn't or can't or shouldn't. They should exercise a certain amount of caution, but much less than Matthew Yglesias recommends.

*****

UPDATE: Look who's not afraid to defend due process for immigrants.

TRUMP'S TARIFF RHETORIC ISN'T JUST A CON, IT'S A LONG CON

I've had to adjust my thinking about how much damage Donald Trump has to do to America before his less-committed supporters decide he's a bad president. I don't think they're sticking with him simply because they voted for him and can't bear the thought that their vote was wrong -- how many swing-voting Americans really have that much of an emotional investment in their vote? I think it's more likely that their belief that he'd quickly make the country better has been replaced by a belief that he'll make the country better someday, even though things look bad now, and everyone just needs to be patient.

In other words, he's replaced the con of his campaign (I'll make everything better on Day One) with a long con (Just stay invested -- the payoff is coming, I swear, and it'll be a big one).

I'm saying this after reading the latest New York Times focus group involving thirteen independent voters who chose Trump in 2024. When they're prompted, "Fill in the blank for me: I feel 'blank' about the way the country is going these days," seven express discomfort ("Bad," "Pessimistic," "Hopeless," "Frustrated," "Worried," "Confused," "Lied to"). Two others are neutral ("Curious," "Faithful"). Three are "Hopeful." One is "Cautiously optimistic." Yet not one of them regrets voting for Trump.

They were interview on April 8, just before the mega-tariffs were scheduled to take effect, then partly rolled back. They weren't loving the tariffs. Diana, who was "Hopeful," said,

I work in finance. I think in the short term, it’s a shot in the foot.

But then she added:

But I think in the long term, it may be a great thing for the country. So I’m hopeful that this will improve our economy and manufacturing.

Angela, who was "Faithful," said:

I feel like there’s a plan that’s been implemented. I’m just trusting the process.

Only four of the thirteen believed things in the country would be better in the next six months. Three thought they'd be worse. Five thought they'd be "basically the same." But, some of them said, that's okay! I guess they took all of Trump's promises of an instant economic Golden Age seriously but not literally, and now they'd accepted the con man's assurance that the apparent short-term failure of The Plan isn't a sign that's it's failing, it's a sign that it's succeeding, and they just need to stick with Trump.

Steven ("Curious"):

There’s a lot of policy movement right now. It’s a lot — break things now, fix it later. And sometimes that’s the best kind of leader. Sometimes it’s not. I don’t think six months is long enough to reconcile what needs to happen. So I think it’s probably going to be 12 months and beyond before we see any meaningful change that might come from what’s going on today.

Walter ("Cautiously optimistic") repeated his assessment:

I’m trying to be cautiously optimistic. But it is going to take a while for all these policies to shake out and take effect. So maybe a six-month horizon isn’t quite long enough.

Neil ("Hopeful") said:

The whole point of having tariffs is to even out the playing field. I want the Ford plants in Mexico shut down and all those jobs brought over here. How long is it going to take Ford to build an entire building to bring those plants up? It’s not going to be overnight or even a couple of months. It’s going to take a while, probably a couple of years.

He was asked, "Would that still feel short term for you?" His reply:

We’ve been taken advantage of by the entire planet since after World War II. So it takes as long as it takes. It’s for the good of the country. If whatever happens happens, that’s what it is.

When I was young, Republicans' imagined American Golden Era was the 1950s. For many people that wasn't true, but for millions it actually was, though for many reasons Republicans would never acknowledge (strong unions, very progessive taxation, significant government investment in education, housing, and infrastructure). But now Trump says that the period when America had its broadest and most prosperous middle class was hell on earth. And these folks believe it. They believe we've been miserable for eighty years, and that was after the Great Depression and World War II. So of course Trump can't fix everything overnight if it's been awful for at least a century!

Thus the con becomes a long con.

A couple of years from now, in all likelihood, things will still be bad, and these people may well perceive them as bad -- but if Trump keeps pumping out the rhetoric of his long economic con, while continuing to tighten the screws on anyone who opposes him, he (or at least the regime he's building) could have the staying power of Viktor Orban's regime in Hungary. As The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum notes, Orban remains in power despite a terrible economy:

Once widely perceived to be the wealthiest country in Central Europe (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp,” as it was known during the Cold War), and later the Central European country that foreign investors liked most, Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. Industrial production is falling year-over-year. Productivity is close to the lowest in the region. Unemployment is creeping upward. Despite the ruling party’s loud talk about traditional values, the population is shrinking. Perhaps that’s because young people don’t want to have children in a place where two-thirds of the citizens describe the national education system as “bad,” and where hospital departments are closing because so many doctors have moved abroad. Maybe talented people don’t want to stay in a country perceived as the most corrupt in the EU for three years in a row.

Trump needs to keep the long con going until his opponents can't topple him. To prevent this, we need to fight him on every possible front until we peel off as many soft supporters as possible. But that's going to be difficult, because the con will keep many of them waiting for the big payoff for a long time.

SMART-ASS NAYIB BUKELE IS PLAYING EXCLUSIVELY TO TRUMP'S BASE

I don't know what happens next in the case of immigrants abducted from U.S. soil and sent to a torture prison overseen by President Trump's smug, sociopathic errand boy, Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele. Bukele at first refused to allow Senator Chris Van Hollen to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a legal resident of Maryland until his abduction by Trump's thugs, but yesterday Bukele relented. The Bulwark's Andrew Egger thinks Van Hollen threw Bukele off stride:

Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s trip yesterday to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia plainly wrongfooted Bukele, who first denied Van Hollen an opportunity to meet with the wrongfully deported man, then reversed himself and tried to sully their meeting with some hamfisted propaganda, directing an aide to place “glasses with cherries and salted rims” on the table “in an attempt to stage the photo.”

Yes, that's real. The New York Times reports:

Mr. Bukele, in a social media post, even crowed that “Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture,’” was “now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!” But according to a person familiar with the situation, a Bukele aide placed the two glasses with cherries and salted rims on the table in front of Mr. Van Hollen and Mr. Abrego Garcia in the middle of their meeting in an attempt to stage the photo.

Here's Bukele's tweet with the staged photos:

Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the “death camps” & “torture”, now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador!🍹 pic.twitter.com/r6VWc6Fjtn

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) April 18, 2025

Those aren't very convincing margaritas.

Why would Bukele relent and allow Van Hollen to see Abrego Garcia? When Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did a photo op in front of shirtless, tattooed prisoners last month at CECOT, the prison where Abrego Garcia is being held, The Bulwark's Jonathan Last wrote:

The use of prisoners for propaganda purposes is as old as war itself. But there are a few recent examples you may recall. ISIS made extensive use of videos and pictures of imprisonment and execution. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese alternated their approach. Sometimes they used American POWs as props to suggest that all was well in their camps and that prisoners were being treated properly. (They were not.) Other times, they used images of American prisoners as tools to spread fear. They would parade captured American soldiers before mobs and display them at press conferences.

The goal is always the same, though: To use prisoners’ bodies as weapons of political war and to do so against their will.

This is what evil, illiberal regimes do.

Bukele is sending conflicting messages, like the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. But he's always controlling the message.

However, it's my sense that the current messaging is aimed at Americans who get 100% of their news from right-wing sources. That's a healthy portion of the country, but it's not all of us. To those people, Abrego Garcia is not only an unquestionably bad person and not only a gang member, he's one of the key members of the gang he's accused of joining.

Before his abduction, Abrego Garcia worked full time as a sheet metal apprentice. How many "top" gang members are you aware of who need to work a forty-hour day job?

The Times reports that on Wednesday afternoon White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt

was joined in the briefing room by Patty Morin, the mother of Rachel Morin, a Maryland resident who was brutally murdered in 2023 by an immigrant from El Salvador. The administration has pointed to Ms. Morin’s death as an example to justify its stance on immigration, though statistics show immigrants are less likely than U.S.-born citizens to commit crimes.

The White House used your tax dollars to post a tweet with two photos, one showing Trump meeting Patty Morin and the other showing Van Hollen and Abrego Garcia.

We are not the same. pic.twitter.com/yTUoSXmCBa

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 18, 2025

You may object that while Rachel Morin was murdered by a Salvadoran, it was a Salvadoran other than Abrego Garcia. But in the MAGA/Fox News Extended Universe, all Salvadoran men are alike, all are murderers and MS-13 members and terrorists.

But when the Trumpers put this propaganda out, I think they forget that the immigrant horror stories that make up a disproportionate percentage of Fox News programming simply aren't front of mind for most Americans the way they are for Fox viewers.

And as for that word "terrorist": The Trumpers love to use it because it adds an extra layer of fear. They also use it because the fiction on which they're basing their detention drive includes the notion that Latin American governments are deliberately sending border crossers to America as an act of war. I hope you're sitting down for this: They're lying about that. The Washington Post reports:

The National Intelligence Council, drawing on the acumen of the United States’ 18 intelligence agencies, determined in a secret assessment early this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the United States by the prison gang Tren de Aragua, a judgment that contradicts President Donald Trump’s public statements, according to people familiar with the matter.

The determination is the U.S. government’s most comprehensive assessment to date undercutting Trump’s rationale for deporting suspected gang members without due process under the Alien Enemies Act, [a] 1798 law....

The intelligence product found that although there are some low-level contacts between the Maduro government and Tren de Aragua, or TdA, the gang does not operate at the direction of Venezuela’s leader.

And, of course, Kilmar Abrego Garcia isn't from Venezuela, or accused of being a member of Tren de Aragua -- he's from El Salvador and is accused of being a member of MS-13. But they know all those Latin Americans and Latin American gangs look alike to Fox viewers, the same way they know that their base can't distinguish Abrego Garcia and Rachel Morin's murderer.

So Fox viewers look at Abrego Garcia at that table with Senator Van Hollen and see a scary terrorist gang memnber. They have no idea that what the rest of us know about him includes the fact that the administration itself said he was abducted and deported due to an "administrative error." Members of the Trump regime would love to wipe out everyone's memory of that inconvenient truth the way they've banished knowldge of it in the minds of their own fans. So they pretend it's fake news:

Abrego Garcia isn't a perfect person. His wife did get an order of protection against him in 2021, though she now says the two have worked through their problems. But the larger point is that he should stay in the country or be expelled based on evidence and a formal process for assessing that evidence.

I think we need more Chris Van Hollens. Van Hollen and other Democrats should continue demanding to see the prison itself -- if Bukele is so proud of it, why won't he show it off? Polls show that Americans have sympathy even for immigrants living illegally in America as long as they're working and playing by the rules otherwise. Democrats in Congress should demand due process for the gay makeup artist and the abductee with the autism tattoo honoring his brother, and others.

And to the Democrats who fear this is a bad issue, I'd say that Democrats can do this and demand border security. Just make the processes fair and aboveboard. And it's not a "distraction" from the economy, as Gavin Newsom and others believe -- in their reactions to Trump's throw-everything-at-the-wall approach, Americans have demonstrated that they can respond to more than one issue at the same time.

AMERICANS ARE CAPABLE OF THINKING ABOUT ISSUES OTHER THAN MONEY, APPARENTLY

Navigator Research is a public opinion research firm that's aligned with the Democratic Party, so perhaps we should take its latest survey with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, the survey makes clear that voters are not comfortable with President Trump's assaults on the rule of law. If that's true, it contradicts what Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, James Carville, and other old-fashioned Democrats fervently believe: that only the economy matters to voters.

The survey tells us:

Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of Americans say that Donald Trump believes he is above the law, including majorities of independents (65 percent) and non-MAGA Republicans (51 percent)....

Driving their concerns: that Trump let Elon Musk and DOGE access the personal health and financial data of tens of millions of Americans, that Trump has violated multiple court rulings, and that Trump is attempting to close federal departments and agencies. Two-thirds find each of these concerning, including majorities of both Democrats and independents.

* Trump let Elon Musk and DOGE access the personal health and financial data of tens of millions of Americans: 66 percent concerning, 53 percent “very” concerning,

* Trump has violated multiple court rulings: 65 percent concerning, 51 percent “very” concerning, and;

* Trump is attempting to close federal departments and agencies like the Department of Education, even though those departments and agencies can only be shut down by acts of Congress: 64 percent concerning, 51 percent “very” concerning....

Nearly 60 percent say each of these poses a threat to democracy, with almost half saying these actions pose a severe threat to democracy.

Respondents also believe Trump's threat to pursue a third term poses a threat to democracy -- 48% say it's a "severe" threat and 60% overall think it's a threat.

I don't want to overstate the importance of this. The respondents are expressing these opinions because they've been asked questions. That doesn't mean that they think about these subjects a lot. I'm sure economic issues are much more important to them.

But the results suggest that regular reminders of Trump's abuses would find a receptive audience in the public. I don't agree with the Carvillean conventional wisdom that Democrats need to focus their attention on one or two issues because the public can't process more than that and other issues are Trumpian "distractions." It appears that everything Trump is doing is dead serious, and if Trump and Republicans are able to focus the public's attention on multiple issues, why can't Democrats?

So it's good to have Senator Chris Van Hollen in El Salvador reminding voters about Trump's flouting of court orders in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, with other Democrats likely to follow. It's good to talk about the possibility that Trump will try to stay in power past January 2029. The public has opinions on these subjects even if many elected Democrats are hesitant to talk about them. If every Democrat highlighted these very unpopular aspects of Trumpism, it could further damage his overall popularity. And morally, speaking out against authoritarianism is obviously the right thing to do.

I'm sure there was never a time when the American public said that the #1 issue in America was the security of overseas diplomatic outposts or the email practices of government officials. But Republicans relentlessly attacked Hillary Clinton on Benghazi and her private email server, and succeeded in damaging her approval ratings. Democratic should treat Trump the same way. Attack him with whatever is at hand. It's good for the Democrats, and fighting the administration's lawlessness is good for America.