The Trump Presidency: A Synopsis
On those occasions when, primarily to avoid being paralyzed and embarrassed by his complete ignorance of a situation, Donald Trump allowed himself to be coached or coaxed into a certain course of action by his large team of establishment Republican advisors, he ended up doing a few sensible-looking things that any — literally any — Republican president would have done. Both his cultists and those wishing to vote Republican in spite of Trump cheered him on for these concessions to his establishment betters, though of course framing their praise as Trump having done a brilliant job as president, “even better than we expected.”
On every occasion, however, in which fear of being exposed as a completely ignorant moron did not cause Trump to moderate or cede his own wishes in favor of following his establishment advisors, Trump did whatever he wanted to do, and in all or nearly all of those cases, what he did was exactly the wrong thing — the most harmful thing, the most corruptive thing, the most authoritarian thing, the most immoral thing, the thing most destructive of civil society, most pleasing to America’s enemies, and most insulting to her allies — all these horrible decisions and words (the presidency is largely a soapbox) cumulatively accelerating the final breakdown of political discourse and the decimation of any hint of limited republicanism that remained in America before Trump took office.
To summarize: Anything slightly good, or at least non-disastrous, that came out of Trump’s one term as president was the result of ordinary establishment Republicans taking advantage of Trump’s fear of being exposed in his ignorance to steer him into doing something marginally rational, or at least normal. Almost everything else in Trump’s presidency, meaning almost everything that he personally controlled or decided on his own “judgment,” was significantly or catastrophically harmful and anti-republican, i.e., anti-freedom.
That, of course, is precisely what I predicted a Trump presidency would look like five years ago, for which very simple prognostication I lost my popular writing platform — a fact for which I am very grateful in the long run, and which I selfishly regard as perhaps the greatest unambiguous good to come out of the Trump presidency. And by the way, I am not suggesting my prediction involved any remarkable power of vision on my part. Any reasonable observer strong enough to resist the weird allure of the Cult of “The Wall,” and non-tribal enough to see through the GOP’s cynical gambit with Trump, could see, from years of public performance, what Donald Trump was, and what a Trump presidency would mean.
Trump, in 2016, was a complete fraud, and of course he knew he was a complete fraud, because he is a professional fraud — that is what he has been all his life. He therefore knows, from decades of experience in that field, that in order to sustain any of his fraudulent games, he must always hide behind others in those areas where he is most vulnerable to exposure. And hiding, in this presidential case, means allowing the establishment to take the reins and decide for him in such areas. Thus, you got some normal-looking, typical Republican “accomplishments” during Trump’s one and only term. That is to say, at its best, the Trump presidency was a straight, middle of the road, GOP presidency. The swamp ruled, and that was the most you could have hoped for from a Trump presidency.
Anytime Trump believes he has enough understanding and cleverness to get away with making a decision on his own without looking like a fool, he does the most foolish thing — because he is a fool, and always was.
Everything I have said here is merely a recap or synopsis of what I said would happen, back in 2016, when for my troubles I lost most of my readers, and several personal friends, to this idiocy — simply for having the nerve to say out loud what every reasonable person knew to be true. Newcomers to this website are welcome to comb through the archives to see for yourselves how consistent reality appears to one who chooses to look at it with his own decently informed and honest eyes.
