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.
