This Remake Isn't Any Better

There's a thing about the first 100 days of a presidential administration that's supposed to signify the successes - and failures - pointing towards how that presidency is going to turn out.

I'd like to refer to Maha - who's also quoting a few other observers - over at her blog to describe just how badly trump's second go at driving America over the cliffs is going: 

Okay, so where was I? Much of the news over the past few days has been about Trump’s falling poll numbers. He’s not just historically unpopular; with the exception of “border security” his “policies” are underwater as well. The majority do not like his handling of the economy, or of immigrants, or anything else. Yet  he’s not getting the message. Jennifer Rubin writes that Trump is doubling down rather than backing off.

Whether it is court decisions, nominees, or taxing everyday American consumers, Trump seems so wedded to boneheaded ideas that he might continue insisting on upping the ante rather than cutting his losses. In doing so, he will likely wipe out a table of Republicans who have stood by him but will soon have to stand for reelection.

It’s becoming increasingly easy to understand how he bankrupted all those casinos.

Josh Marshall writes that Trump has already lost.

I see the signs all around. He’s doubling down on things people don’t like. He’s fomenting a growing political backlash. The more signs we see of the limits of Trump’s power, the more people show signs of bucking that power. All power is unitary. We see signs of it everywhere. You simply cannot impose an autocracy if a clear majority of the country opposes what you are trying to do at the outset, when you are trying to do it.

They are now reacting to initial resistance by doubling down on things that are not popular. They appear to be upset that they’ve managed to have fewer deportations during Trump’s first hundred days in office than Biden had in his last hundred. Now they’re going to crack down on local officials and are threatening more indictments of judges and other officials who get in their way.

Good luck getting 12 jurors to convict any of these people. 

Nobody is saying that the administration is going to collapse soon. It’s going to be a couple of months before the effects of the tariffs hit the retail stores, and consumers...

Not surprisingly the U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter. Not surprisingly, Trump blamed Joe Biden.

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” Trump posted to his Truth Social platform after the economic news dropped, and markets braced to open lower.

“I didn’t take over until January 20th. Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers.

“Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS, only that he left us with bad numbers, but when the boom begins, it will be like no other. BE PATIENT!!!”

But most economists are telling us there is no way the economy will get better as long as Trump refuses to completely change course. It’s probably not too late to salvage a decent economy out of the mess, but Trump is unlikely to let that happen.

So there we are...

I've noticed some of these things already. When confronted with the facts his actions aren't working, are unpopular, or both, trump will refuse to admit his mistakes and double down on them until someone with the power to tell him no steps up and stops him... at which point he'll blame everyone else - including the ones who stopped him - for the screwups.

Always remember this about trump: trump views the world as made up of Winners and Suckers/Losers, and he must never admit to being a Loser.

As trump's tariff wars keep starting and delaying - except for the ones on China, which are now taking effect - he refuses to admit how his chaotic actions are unsettling the global economy to where he's triggered the start of a world-wide recession, and he's threatening to keep up with that chaos until he gets the trade deals with other nations - which they won't cooperate bending towards - he wants.

As trump's anti-immigration policies are scaring away legitimate tourists and college students, he doesn't want to admit the warrantless overkill arresting law-abiding migrants and students is breaking any laws, and he's insisting everyone he's shipping - illegally - to El Salvador are hardened gang members by flouting manufactured "proof" nobody else can take serious.

trump can never admit he's wrong... which is why the things he's doing wrong will get worse.

It'd be pretty to think that the end result of this would be a broken, mostly dead Far Right Republican power base that can never rise again to any political control of the United States. But that should have happened the FIRST TIME AROUND, when trump's failures and the GOP's inability to rein him in should have ruined their reputation with a majority of voters and doomed them for a generation or three. Instead, this miasma of disinformation and short-term memory failure - and the Democrats' refusal to throw trump and his lackeys into a courtroom for guilty verdicts and prison cells - allowed trump to come roaring back into office where his greed, rage, fearmongering, and idiocy would doom us again.

Only this time, he's been granted more power than before, and there's NOBODY in a position to delay his obsessive agenda to burn it all down - so he can rule the ashes - or else cushion the damage getting done.

A lot of people are going to lose their livelihoods - their lives - because this trump sequel is darker and dumber than the plotline that came before. And there's a serious question if we're going to recover anything out of what's to come.