Unrelenting
We were warned. Experts told us how bad it was going to be, laid out the timeline for how it would unfold and what was likely to happen.
So I guess we all have to get used to weeks that feel like a month. Again.
Of course, we were warned. Experts told us how bad it was going to be, laid out the timeline for how it would unfold and what kind of destruction and disruption was likely to happen.
As Storm Éowyn battered the island of Ireland this past week though, people knew that bad as it was, whatever happened was going to be survivable. Folks hunkered down and figured out how to cope, knowing that down the road there would certainly be more of this to come. But at least we knew that no rational person would actively choose this.
Imagine a chaotic and dangerous event where half the people affected wanted it to happen. When supporters of the man who is once again President would frequently describe themselves as “the storm” it was just one more thing that attempted to normalise what was fundamentally abnormal.
Now, though, what’s left of those norms are disintegrating and that force of nature has returned, willed into existence by our fellow citizens, many of whom are as unsure as the rest of us whether their house will be left standing when it passes through.
The first week of Donald Trump’s second term – what The Economist described as America’s “first imperial presidency in over a century” – began as forecast, flooding the zone with a blizzard of activity designed to antagonise opponents and appease adherents. (A full list of the first day’s actions is here, via the Washington Post; while presidential expert and Red Sox fan Prof Andrew Rudalevige went on NPR to discuss how we might expect Trump 2.0 to operate.)
“[E]xecutive orders are supposed to be used to faithfully execute the law. That's a presidential duty in the Constitution. It's a little hard to square that with an executive order telling the attorney general, for example, not to enforce the law or in the birthright citizen case to effectively rewrite the Constitution. That's not within presidential authority. So in that sense, yes, there is an abuse of power.”
No matter what Trump had done in his initial days, though – and no matter whether some of his pronouncements end up snagged in the court system – it was always going to be different from 2016. This time he knows what he’s doing; or at least the people in his ear have a clearer idea of what they want. And that requires that the country and its institutions be initially gripped by confusion and fear; thrown off balance by the thought of whatever might be coming next.
To that extent, the opening week has been Mission Accomplished for the new regime. As Peter Baker says in the New York Times, Trump is now “the single most important player in any decision he cares to involve himself in.”
Patrick Cockburn, writing in the I-Paper, reminds us of the importance of optics over substance, especially when setting a tone for what might lie ahead:
“Trump has an instinct for what buttons to push and how to push them to appeal to a certain type of American voter. This masks the fact that his accomplishments are often minimal, in comparison to his messianic rhetoric. For him perception is all.”
And everything this President will do, of course, is primarily performative – witness the inaugural day scenes contrasting teleprompter Trump’s “conventional” inaugural speech and off-the-cuff Trump an hour later, addressing his faithful at Emancipation Hall fuelled by grievance and ego.
The first convicted felon to become President also became the first President to claim in his inaugural address he had been placed in the office by God himself. Not merely saved by God’s grace, but by being miraculously and literally saved to carry out his agenda.
In that context, picking a personal fight with an Episcopalian Bishop who dared to confront him over a fundamentally American appeal for mercy may seem like yet more theatre, but in a normal world it should disturb Christians who voted for him. Instead, Trump’s response was rationalised, excused and justified – all par for the course by now.
*
‘Fuck it, release them all…’
When Trump rails against immigration at his rallies, he often talks about other countries “emptying their prisons” into the US. The most contentious move of his first week, of course, was to pardon or commute the sentences of about 1,500 people convicted of offenses related to the attack on the Capitol of Jan 6th 2021.
Marc Caputo reported at Axios that the decision, which contradicted previous statements about case-by-case reviews or ruling out clemency for violent assaults on police officers, was spontaneous and highlights Trump’s “unpredictable decision-making process”.
There was one small glimpse of sanity, though, when 71-year-old Pamela Hemphill turned down the pardon, saying: “I broke the law that day, period. Black and white."
Of the rest, putting aside the message of the consequences of political violence, Charlie Mahtesian at Politico wrote that ‘Your Next Congressperson Just Got Pardoned’:
“Trump has just genetically altered the GOP candidate pool, undamming a river of highly motivated and radicalized prospective candidates who will be seeking elected office for years to come. Armed with the president’s blessing of their behavior from the “day of love,” their criminal records now cleared, they will be streaming into federal, state and local primaries.
“Don’t believe it? Within a year of the storming of the Capitol, at least 57 individuals who either attended the Save America rally that preceded the riots, gathered at the Capitol steps or breached the Capitol itself ran for elected office. The majority of them lost, but that was before the whitewashing of the violence began, before the GOP memory-holed the entire experience and before a sitting, popularly elected president described rioters as “J6 hostages” whose prosecution was “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people.”
And that same GOP subsequently fell in line to confirm Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary by the smallest possible margin on Friday night – the second time a cabinet appointment was confirmed on a VP’s casting vote (the only previous one was Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in Trump’s first term.) As Trump’s team emerges, the GOP continues to morph into the MAGA party, largely committed to dismantling the administrative state (and, of course, laying the groundwork for Trump’s further consolidation of power).
It’s probably appropriate that the President ended this storm-battered few days on a visit to see the wildfire damage in California and hurricane destruction in North Carolina, suggesting at the end of it that he could do away with FEMA, as well as firing the Inspectors-General responsible for curbing illegality within government departments.
Since this past week was genuinely like few any of us have witnessed, for some sense of history – and to reassure ourselves that we can still find humor amid the hysteria – you can re-live each day through the eyes of Stephen Colbert’s writers here:
Wednesday and
Former Obama speechwriter David Litt wrote at The Contrarian about how best to counter the whiplash messaging from the incoming administration.
“It's easy to seem like a comms genius during a presidential honeymoon, but so far, Trump’s scattershot strategy is paying off. One CBS article about his immigration crackdown said Trump “invoked muscular presidential powers,” which is a bit like saying Jeffrey Dahmer, “displayed omnivorous taste.” And that’s the kind of coverage Trump wants. MAGA diehards are pumped up. Swing voters who don’t like everything about Trump still see him as strong and decisive. The half of the country that voted against Trump is frightened.”
One of the best analyses I read this week of Trump’s accession and what was likely to come was by Anand Giridharadas who wrote that, like it or not, we used to say that Trump ‘isn’t who we are’. But he is.
“Today, painfully, we are witnessing the inauguration of us. It is not the triumph of some Americans over other Americans so much as the triumph of the small-hearted tendency in American life over the generous one, the cruel impulse over the humane one, the vengeful drive over the magnanimous one, the safety of the smaller “we” over the dream of the bigger one.
“And, again and again in history, the generous tendency, the humane impulse, the magnanimous drive, the bigger “we” has ailed and then returned stronger than ever.”
Personally, I prefer to think of who we are as Cecile Richards, the fearless reproductive rights activist who passed away this week. She once famously wrote: “Why should your life be just about you?”
*
Clock is Tikking, Stock Is Soaring (For Now)
One of the incoming President’s initial pronouncements was to decree a 75-day extension stalling the congressional ban on TikTok, reversing his previous support for a ban and apparently putting political predelection – and potential profit – over national security.
This weekend, Trump pushed back on a report that Oracle was in discussions about buying the Chinese-owned social media platform, saying that he is “actively working to select a buyer.”
Fifteen years after the passing of the Citizens United ruling, which changed the playing field on regulating money in politics, the logical throughline from that brought us to the Crypto Ball ahead of Trump’s inauguration, during which he announced the launch of the $TRUMP memecoin which – technically – could make it easier for foreign donors to put money directly into a President’s pocket with limited accountability.
One of Trump’s executive orders this week was to set up a working group to explore changes to crypto regulation – potentially looking at creating a national cryptocurrency reserve.
*
The Other Election
Ok, whose vote are we missing?
As expected, Ichiro Suzuki was voted into Baseball’s Hall of Fame, accompanied by CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner. What was surprising, though, was that one member of the electing Baseball Writers Association apparently didn’t think the Seattle Mariners’ legend deserved a vote, so he missed out on joining Mariano Rivera as the only entrant to go in unanimously. Before this week, Derek Jeter was the only entrant to fall short on unanimity by a single vote.
The former #51 – and coolest outfield player I have ever seen in the flesh (the coolest pitcher is easily Greg Maddux) – enters the Hall at the age of, yes of course, 51.
As for the coming generation of Japanese stars, pitching phenom Roki Sasaki perhaps unsurprisingly signed with the Dodgers. It will be a joy to have him in the big leagues, but what a rotation that’s going to be…
***
Read Also:
Holding Our Breath - As emergency workers wrestle with the tragedy of the Los Angeles wildfires, Outgoing President Joe Biden warned how America itself could go up in flames.
‘Wait, Did We Vote For This…?’ - A glimpse of a potentially crucial splinter within the GOP, even before its figurehead has been inaugurated or its narrow majority in the House was sworn in.