Wackocracy

Donald Trump needs help

In the days before Donald Trump’s massive failure of a speech, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez--in her inimitable and eternal quest to find the wrong answer to the right problem, proposed censorship. The networks should not broadcast the speech. It would be a projectile spew of balderdash about nonexistent election fraud.

And so it was.

Ultimately, Fox covered it…and then, hilariously, ignored it, as if it had never happened. NBC and ABC followed AOC’s advice and didn’t broadcast it. But the reaction at CBS was the most interesting. It broadcast most of the speech and then cut away from it—a humiliation I’ve never seen visited upon another president. CBS proceeded to trash the speech, exquisitely, using a roster of experts and network correspondents. It was a non-stop slagging of the President. This was, I believe, the most effective media response to Trump’s flagrant mental illness; indeed, it was devastating…and it should put to rest the notion that Bari Weiss’s CBS is going to be a Trump doormat.

The American people have the right to know that their President is mad. They should have access to every word that tumbles, chaotically, from his nastily puckered mouth. The speech came during yet another week when the threads of the Emperor’s clothes were coming undone. The war with Iran was back on. The price of gas was going up. Trump’s appointees for Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence embarrassed themselves at their confirmation hearings. Especially wince-worthy was the performance of Jay Clayton, a man of previously solid repute, abasing himself for his tyrant. As described by Peter Baker in the NYT, the cross-examination by an understated Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia was dispositive. Clayton had been asked who won the election of 2020 and replied that Joe Biden had been “certified.” Clever, that.

Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia, tried to pin Mr. Clayton down. “Who won the 2020 election?” he asked directly.

“I’ve answered it,” Mr. Clayton said. “I’ve answered it.”

“Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president’s delusions?” Mr. Ossoff replied.

Clayton had no response. Sorry Jay, but that moment will be your legacy—a silence for your children to explain to their children.

The President’s delusions are on technicolor display in Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s brilliantly reported book, Regime Change. There is a leitmotif throughout the book and it is…gold. Or, more accurately, gilt. Trump is remarkably cavalier about matters of substance: Let’s slap 25% tariffs on China; no, let’s make that 110%; actually, 50%; no, let’s wait a bit; no, no 10%. This, at the same time as Trump was allowing China to control Tik-Tok and giving it access to advance semi-conductor chips. And then, in Thursday’s speech, he claimed that China had stolen the voting records of 220 million Americans.

Of course they did. You can, too. Just go online. It’s all there, open-sourced.

Trump was even more cavalier about going to war with Iran. Blinded by his success in Venezuela and led astray by Bibi Netanyahu, he just, well, did it. He did it, I’m told, without ever considering the Iranian ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. He’s stuck in the muz now, reversing himself—as with tariffs—on a near daily basis. He has made the United States of America look foolish—and weak—in the world, a new reality reflected in a Pew poll:

The poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center, found that China was favored over the United States in 25 out of 36 countries that it surveyed between February and May, according to a report the organization released on Wednesday. It was the first time in the two decades that Pew has conducted the survey that China beat out the United States in a majority of the countries polled, according to experts.

China? Uighur-slaughtering, genocidal China? One child China? Central social engineering China? Industrial cheating, slip-streaming China? Of course, China is moving to eat our lunch on an array of issues that Trump deems irrelevant or hoaxes—electric cars, wind and solar and geothermal energy, AI and so forth. (Well, I imagine Trump doesn’t think AI is irrelevant—Haberman and Swan show him titillated by the demonstrations he’s shown—but he’s too lazy and preoccupied to research it very deeply. Or build a strategy to ride herd on the rampaging technology.)

I recently had a pub conversation with a reasonable, sort of, Trump-supporter. who said, “Yes he’s a total jerk, but look at the policies!” Okay, some of those have been good—closing the border, gutting DEI, the early Witkoff and Kushner negotiations to bring a cease fire to Gaza (according to Haberman and Swan). Others, like the ICE capades and DOGE and his tax politics, and his grotesque rudeness toward our NATO allies, have been atrocious.

At the same time, the alternative prospect of Democratic Socialism, running crazy foolish these days—higher taxes, more regulations, pro-Hamas proclivities, identity politics up the wazoo—should strike fear in the hearts of sane citizens. The DSA types are naive and ridiculous and tantrum-infantile; it takes a lot to tank our supple economy, but a succession of Trumpism and socialism might do it. Trump has had the government practicing real socialism—buying pieces of major corporations (I suspect he conflates the government with his personal corpus humongous.) The Democratic Socialists are not really socialists, as E.J. Dionne writes in the Times, they are Social Democrats. But why would they use so toxic a word as socialism, long after its sell-by date has passed? It is the political equivalent of teenage graffiti: they just do it to piss off The Establishment (i.e. their parents).

If the candidates in 2028 are AOC and JDVance, whom would I vote for? Not sure. AOC is, at least, true to her delusions. I’m fascinated by Vance, who is very smart but intellectually corrupt and locked into a putrid alliance with the MAGA base. (More on Vance in a future Clause, after I’ve read his book.)

By the way, one of the funniest tidbits in Regime Change involves Trump playing with the ambitions of Vance and Marco Rubio. At one point, a Trump advisor tells him that the next President will probably remove all the gilt Trump has slathered upon the Oval Office. Not necessarily, Trump replies, “Cubans like gold.”

Ah, Trumpo! It becomes clear, as Regime Change rolls on, that Donald is obsessed with gold, both decorated and accumulated—and, of course, fascinated by himself. He pays far more attention to the decor of the Oval Office—he personally applies the gaucherie with superglue!—and to the East Ballroom and the Arc de Trump than he does to tariffs or Iran. He calls Emmanuel Macron to discuss the pros and cons of a viewing deck atop the Arc De Trump. He is constantly poring over designs for the ballroom. He puts his name on the Kennedy Center; it is later removed by a judge. He puts his name on any edifice he can. (It was said that Nelson Rockefeller had an Edifice Complex, Trump is worse. His father must have been a scary bit of business.)

It hassling been suggested that Donald Trump presides over a kakistocracy—government by the worst people—but he is also presiding over a Wackocracy—government by the demented, especially the gratuitously sadistic. I don’t know how much more trouble he can cause. The possibilities are infinite. And I’m sure he’ll try to mess with the 2026 election in ways the Chinese can only dream of, but he has already caused a severe and terrifying distortion in the due processes of our society. You want tariffs? Stupid idea in most cases—except targeted national security—but okay. Pass it through the Congress. One wonders when, if ever, the emasculated Republicans in Congress—is Mike Johnson a perfect exemplar of zombified docility or what?—will finally call this fool on his vandalism, or will they continue their Gadarene slide off the cliff?

The final irony is that Trump’s electoral delusions were on display at a time when the United States showed a wonderful face to the rest of the world. The World Cup has initiated a horde of foreign tourists into the strange, smoked barbecue and convenience store glories of our country; according to a poll of visitors, 91% who have come here for the kicking came away with fond memories of our kickass culture. Erling Haaland, the Norwegian star, went home with a pair of cowboy boots and a stuffed racoon. Living in their cramped, un-air-conditioned apartments, the Europeans have come to admire our suburban lawns and frigid air and Big Gulps.

That’s kind of how I always felt when I came home from my annual cross-country reporting trips. I admired the Waffle House and Outback; not so much the chilled-too-chilly air. Most of all, I loved the American people, eccentric and unexpected and warm and often hilarious.

This World Cup has been a splendid triumph of liberated athleticism and globalism; the American team consisted mostly of players who would be kicked out of the country by ICE. This splendid non-denominational show of human unity has been an exercice in anti-Trumpism. It was all about the playful, competitive resolution of differences and the joys of common humanity. It should stand as a lesson for those on the right and left who reflexively poor-mouth our country. It won’t be a lesson for the demented Mr. Trump—except insomuch as he’ll portray it as his triumph. Aren’t his 35% of diehards getting tired of the Midass Touch?