At the beginning of this week, I was feeling a sense I haven’t felt since March 2020. Trump was President then as well, and it was finally dawning on us that this new “coronavirus” that had started popping up in the news was actually something we needed to take seriously. We had this foreboding sense that something was about to hit, and the only unknown was how bad things would be.
By the end of the week, it felt like the Trump “honeymoon” phase had officially ended and we were entering the “consequences” phase. There will be more to say about the longer-term impacts of the chaos and disruption of the first couple of months of the Trump administration as they play out, but it’s worth reflecting on some of what happened over the last week. In it, I see cause for both horror and hope.
First, the horror. By far the most appalling development of the last week was the Trump administration’s indefensible response to the disastrous Oval Office meeting with Zelensky by not only cutting off aid but also access to intelligence including satellite imagery. Russia has already taken advantage of this by increasing its attacks, which Trump absurdly claims as evidence that Russia is the side that wants to end the war. As others have pointed out, there will be a cease fire the moment Russia ceases firing. The only reason this war started and the only reason it continues is because Putin wants it to. Trump’s actions are a blatant attempt to coerce Ukraine into making a bad peace deal and is directly putting Ukrainian lives at risk. That we are going out of our way to help Russia soften up Ukraine ahead of any negotiations is further evidence that Trump favors Russia in this conflict. I have never been more ashamed of my country.
On the domestic side, however, things have made me a bit more optimistic. Not because things are going well, but because they finally aren’t. First, Trump’s continued will-he-or-won’t-he tariff tactics are finally taking a toll on U.S. markets. He may be starting to learn that trade wars aren’t so easy to win after all, as the other side has agency too. It’s been awesome to see Canadians refuse to go along with Trump’s game of chicken and call his bluff. The result has been Trump being the first to back down after some big drops in the stock market and complaints from domestic constituencies. He may think there’s no cost to threatening tariffs and then immediately dropping them, but businesses hate uncertainty and are hopefully starting to realize that this is going to be an ongoing feature of this administration. I see this as a positive development because it’s an example that some guardrails still exist.
It’s also been encouraging to finally see some pushback against the Department of Government “Efficiency” from within the administration. It seems even Trump-loyal cabinet officials are realizing that Elon’s crew isn’t the brilliant A-team they were made out to be and are making embarrassing mistakes. This is coming too late to prevent a lot of the damage, much of it truly tragic, but it’s the first sign of what many predicted: that Musk’s going to end up being Trump’s fall guy when the consequences of indiscriminate cuts throughout the federal bureaucracy turns into a scandal that affects the lives of everyday people. It wouldn’t be entirely fair - Trump is asleep at the wheel and ultimately responsible for what his agent Musk does - but it’d still be entirely deserved.
I’ve also started to feel some hope that Democrats may be learning some of the right lessons from their months in the wilderness. This was not in evidence by the Democrats in the audience of Trump’s speech to Congress this week, which was embarrassingly lame. But the content of Elissa Slotkin’s response, though a bit lacking in outrage, was an encouraging sign. But not the only one: Charlie Sykes has an excellent rundown of other examples here:
One of the things I found most hopeful from this was some of the recommendations from the centrist Democratic group Third Way. Specifically:
• Allow candidates to express personal faith and values without fear of backlash.
• Push back against far-left staffers and groups that exert a disproportionate influence on policy and messaging.
This is just one faction within the large Democratic coalition, but it’s encouraging to see that at least some “get it.” That point about being more receptive to candidates of faith particularly struck a chord, as I believe that this is the single greatest opportunity that exists right now for those who oppose Trump (including conservatives who don’t consider themselves Democrats): reclaiming the language of faith. The moral bankruptcy of the MAGA movement has created an opening the size of the Gulf of Mexico for Christians who aren’t down with Trumpism to show a better way, informed by their faith. Here’s a great example from James Talarico, a Texas state representative from near where I live:
I remain deeply concerned about the next few years, but this week finally brought a return of what made Trump unpopular in his first term, particularly in his response to the pandemic. Chaos and incompetence are the hallmarks of his approach, and while the first weeks of this administration felt overwhelming because his team came in with a plan and were relentlessly executing it, we’re now seeing a return to form: ad-hoc, seat-of-the-pants leadership based on a willful disregard for expertise and truth. The consequences can’t be good, but at this point, that’s our best hope - that the fallout from these actions hits fast and hard enough to trigger a correction, both by the administration, but more importantly by its opposition. Opposition that I pray will emphasize a return to morality, justice and support for democratic allies.
I’ll leave you with a must-listen podcast recommendation from Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch, whose latest episode is an excellent treatment of recent events from a fair-minded and conservative perspective: The Present Creates the Past.