Help! My Zone is Flooded

Trying to Keep Track of Trump

You have to give Steve Bannon credit, even if he is a moral baboon. His strategy, Trump’s attempt to “flood the zone” with executive actions, most of them probably illegal, has my head spinning. It’s difficult to keep up with the outrages—and frustrating because so many of them appear to be “good politics,” casting chemically-soiled red meat before a dullard public, and even more frustrating because the Democratic Party still stews in its identity juices. (More on that in my next posting here.)

What on earth is happening? I mean, really. What follows is my attempt to take a medium-deep breath, stand back and assess the damage. After two full weeks on the job, what has Donald Trump accomplished, in terms of its actual significance on the ground? Here’s my summary:

(Nota bene: The blitz has been so sweeping that I’ll probably miss something…Become a paid subscriber to Sanity Clause so you can fill me in with an official comment. )

1. Himself—As always. Retribution comes first: purge the Justice Department, purge the FBI, purge the Inspectors General, pardon the January 6 traitors, blame the DC air crash on DEI, pull Mark Milley’s and SecDef Enser’s photos off the wall and the legacy press from their offices at the Pentagon. (Replaced by the odious Breitbart and One America Network.) Why is this important beyond assuaging the tyrant’s pique? Because it is a necessary precursor if Trump decides to go full monty and slip us into a dictatorship. I’m not sure he will, or we will let him if he tries, but he’s certainly feeling his oats…and nobody seems to want to stop him—except the courts (but that will take time) and the federal public employees unions. (Yes, yes, I know, but if it’s a choice between public employees and dictatorship, I’ll live with the unions.) These rant-purges are the most important actions he’s taken and reflect his most important cause: to get back at anyone who tried to prosecute him for his illegalities. To crush them. To create an atmosphere of fear. These actions will ripple through the government and give him greater leeway…and his greatest accomplishment: a legacy of fear.

2. Musky Business—More panic. I don’t know if Elon’s bludgeon will survive the courts, Bill Galston thinks it won’t, but worries that Congress may not have the spine to enforce its Constitutional prerogative. A good deal of government trimming needs to be done—and other areas require more spending—but axing USAID? It is a rare and tiny example of official American compassion in the world. Too often, the money has been wasted by corrupt governments (Not a penny for Pakistan!) But a good deal of it has gone to non-governmental charities that do the Lord’s work, especially since Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush came along. In my fantasy, a president would scalpel—and improve—AID. The Department of Education is another story; a meat cleaver might be the appropriate weapon here, leaving only those programs that help the poor, regardless of hue—and which fund excellence (measured by relative improvements in test scores). In my fantasy, a president—as Mike Bloomberg suggests— ensures that federal funds go to those communities that pay teachers more to work in poor neighborhoods. But that’s not what is going to happen: Musk will burn the wheat with the chaff. It will take decades to rebuild the things government does right, across the federal spectrum. If we choose to.

3. Tariffs and Immigration—This has been mostly showbiz, but showbiz that will have an intermediate sucking effect on the economy. Does anyone think that Trump will re-impose ridiculous tariffs on Mexico and Canada in 30 days? Probably not, because there is no longer a border crisis. The illegals have gotten the message. They’ve stopped coming. The ICE raids, if they cut deep into the law-abiding population of long-time US residents, will quickly become cruel and counter-productive: Who will cut Tucker Carlson’s lawn? And also inflationary: Tucker’s new “legal” landscaper will charge more. Tariffs, in general, are a lousy idea in a global economy. The 10% Trump levied on China will have an inflationary impact—you know it will, because even Donald has indicated the forecast calls for pain. Yes, we allowed our essential industrial base to atrophy. I was wrong about free trade with China in the 1990s. But the way to restore our necessary industries is by subsidizing the things we need—like computer chips, military equipment, cell phone production and a best-in-world electric grid. Yes, industrial policy can be wasteful—the creative destruction of capitalism will pick winners and losers, even if the losers are funded by the government (File under China: state industries.) This is an area where we need to spend more. Cutting taxes is an area where we need to spend less.

4. Appointments—Hegseth, Bobby, Tulsi…so many others. The real impact here is, once again, spreading fear-fog. Exhibit A: Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor and a strong advocate of vaccines voted to approve the scoundrel Bobby Kennedy as HHS Secretary. I hope Cassidy has a strong stomach—because any silly-science that flows from HHS and affects human lives, especially of children, will be his fault (if Kennedy is confirmed by the full Senate). Ditto for the Republican Senators—Young, Moran and Collins—who were clearly horrified by Tulsi Gabbard’s unwillingness to call the traitor Edward Snowden a traitor. Next time a human rights activist who has cooperated with the USA somewhere in the world is killed or imprisoned by a Wikileak, it’s on them. Somewhere in a frozen dacha, Bashar al-Assad is smiling.

5. Transactions—A mixed bag here. Putin may be nervous that Trump apparently favors supporting Ukraine if he can swing a deal to harvest that country’s rare-earth minerals. But foreign policy can not live by deals and posturing alone. What if Putin decides to test one of his tactical micro-nukes in Dnipropetrovsk? What if the Iranians decide the only way to protect themselves is to fast-forward their bomb program? What if the Chinese decide to test Trump militarily? Being chesty in the world, or the appearance of same, can have its advantages, but it can also land you into unnecessary wars. Trump doesn’t like wars. Bad for business. But he likes bluster. Good for wars…and who will negotiate our way out of crises, if the State Department—anorexic as it already is—is further hollowed out?

This, as I’ve said, is an incomplete list. We should be prepared to repent at leisure. But repent we will: a great deal of barnacled corrosion has accumulated of the years in the federal government, but a great deal of wisdom—and security, and help for those who need it has accumulated, too. As my friend Mary Gauthier sings, “We all need a little bit of mercy now.”

And again, please join the Sanity Tribe, soon to celebrate its third anniversary: