Are you tired of the Trump era yet?
Every few weeks there's a new disaster that would have sunk any other president.
I get a lot of flak from progressives for being a “both sides” kind of commentator. I spend a fair amount of time criticizing leftist ideology and expounding on the very real failures of progressive governance, both of which have gotten much worse over the last decade. Yes, I support the Democrats, but that support is contingent — if their ideology and competence deteriorate to the point where the Republicans are less bad, I’ll switch to supporting the GOP. So it’s worth it to fight to halt and reverse the deterioration; in the long term, the cost of ignoring extremists and policy failures in order to have “no enemies on the left” is very high.
And yet right now, despite all of the negative trends on the left, the choice of which party Americans should support has never been clearer. The second Trump administration has unleashed a dizzying array of measures seemingly tailor-made to weaken the United States of America — sometimes at the behest of rightist extremists, sometimes due to Trump’s own mercurial whims, and sometimes in order to enrich Trump and his clique.
Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of everything Trump is doing to tear down the America I grew up in. In his first term, it was often said that he avoided criticism using a “DDOS” strategy — rhetorically attacking so many opponents at such blinding speed that they couldn’t focus on any one outrage for long. In his second term, the DDOS is actual policy; Trump inflicts real damage on such a broad array of U.S. institutions, with such incredible speed, that the news can’t keep track of them all.
To illustrate this, I decided to write a post about three mostly unrelated pieces of Trumpian insanity:
The assault on international tech industry employees and founders
The disastrous Iran War
Trump’s unprecedented corruption
Either the second or the third of these would have been a presidency-ending disaster for Barack Obama, George W. Bush, or Bill Clinton, while the first would have alienated broad swaths of the business community. But for Trump, it’s just business as usual. The stories crowd each other out of the headlines, and everyone just sort of gets overloaded and starts tuning out the news. Trump’s approval ratings drift slowly downward, but nothing else really happens. Hardcore MAGA supporters just keep screaming that everyone has “TDS”, while Trump’s wavering allies eventually manage to convince themselves that Democrats would be even worse.
But anyway, if you were paying attention, here’s the latest round of Trumpian disasters.
Trump kicks the tech industry where it hurts
A couple of days ago, without any warning, Donald Trump’s immigration agency announced a new rule. Foreign workers working in the U.S. on temporary visas, they announced, must now return to their home countries while applying for green cards — a process that can take years.
This rule would effectively kick most of the high-skilled visa workers in America out of the country. America’s typical pipeline of high-skilled immigration is basically “try before you buy” — people come to work on visas, then apply for permanent residency while in the country. This procedure is called Adjustment of Status. Almost all green card holders — except for investors — get their green cards this way:
The new policy would end this practice, thus shutting off the main avenue of high-skilled legal immigration to the United States.
There’s a good chance this new policy won’t stand up in court, since Congress explicitly passed a law specifying conditions under which people can be denied Adjustment of Status, so it may not be legal for Trump to simply issue a blanket ban. There’s also a chance that Trump’s allies in the “tech right” will frantically call his administration and get them to walk back the new policy.
The reason they’ll be trying to get him to walk it back is that if the new ban does go through, it will devastate much of the U.S. tech industry. The AI industry, which Trump promised to promote — and which is the only thing now keeping the U.S. economy afloat in the face of tariffs and the Iran War — depends crucially on researchers born outside the U.S.:
All of the biggest U.S. AI companies, and more than half of the top 50, were founded by immigrants, with India and China contributing the most:
This general pattern holds throughout the entire tech industry. Almost half of unicorn founders are immigrants, with Indians being the biggest contingent:
Meanwhile, Indian immigrant CEOs have done an incredible job at a number of America’s biggest companies.
Who asked for some of America’s top economic and technological contributors to be expelled from the country? The “tech right” certainly didn’t; many of them met the announcement with dismay. Gil Verdon, a semiconductor company founder from Canada who had been a prominent and vocal Trump booster, expressed dismay at the fact that he might now be kicked out of the country:
The American people didn’t want this either. Polls consistently show that very large majorities of Americans across the political spectrum support high-skilled immigration:
The only people who seemed to be happy with Trump’s new policy were anti-immigration activists on X — rightist types who see immigration as a race war, and want to ban it entirely. It seems highly likely that those online activists — or people who think very much like them — are driving at least a fraction of the administration’s policy.
It’s pretty clear how this happens. Perhaps even more than in the Democratic Party, the GOP is dominated by youngish staffers and think tankers. These people marinate all day in extremist online discourse, and form friendships with extreme right-wing activists who see immigration as a race war rather than as an economic matter or an important part of America’s heritage. Some rightist in the bowels of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services probably got the idea to ban Adjustment of Status and handed it to his higher-ups, who pushed through the policy without thinking too hard about the economic implications.
Welcome to the second Trump administration. If policy isn’t being made by the big man himself — who is growing increasingly erratic and corrupt in his old age — it’s being made by neo-Nazis on X. These are really the only people prepared to take over the MAGA movement once Trump shuffles off the scene, and their influence is growing as Trump’s acumen wanes.
That said, the big man himself still has a little bit of fire in him, and he still enjoys unprecedented support and devotion from his party. Unfortunately, he’s using his remaining vigor to do two main things: A) destroy America’s standing and power in the world, and B) abuse his office to enrich himself, his family, and his most ardent followers.
The Faux-Manchurian Candidate
Donald Trump was not a Manchurian Candidate, created in a secret Russian/Chinese lab to infiltrate and bring down the United States of America. Nor, I believe, is he personally in the pocket of Russian and/or Chinese interests, blackmailed and bribed into weakening his country at the bidding of overseas masters. But sometimes it’s very difficult to distinguish between Trump’s actual actions and what he would do if he were a foreign plant or catspaw.
That’s a very strong statement, but I’m not being hyperbolic for rhetorical effect — I think the facts back it up.
For example, take the war in Iran. Trump launched this war with no immediate provocation or casus belli — a simple opportunistic war of aggression that incinerated whatever shreds of goodwill remained towards the United States among much of the international community.
Trump then proceeded — so far, at least — to lose the war he started. Despite the preemptive strike, and America’s far greater technological capability, Iran reportedly retains most of its arsenal of weaponry:
US intelligence assessments show that Iran retains significant missile capabilities despite repeated claims by the Trump administration that Tehran’s military had been severely weakened, according to a report by The New York Times…The report said intelligence findings compiled in early May showed Iran had regained operational access to 30 of its 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz. Officials familiar with the assessments told the newspaper that Iran still possesses roughly 70 percent of its prewar missile stockpile and mobile launchers…Citing reports from military intelligence agencies, the report stated that Iran has regained access to roughly 90 percent of its underground missile storage and launch facilities nationwide, which are now assessed to be “partially or fully operational.”
And:
Iran has already restarted some of its drone production during the six-week ceasefire that began in early April, one sign it is rapidly rebuilding certain military capabilities degraded by US-Israeli strikes, according to two sources familiar with US intelligence assessments. Four sources told CNN that US intelligence indicates Iran’s military is reconstituting much faster than initially estimated…The rebuilding of military capabilities, including replacing missile sites, launchers and production capacity for key weapons systems destroyed during the current conflict, means that Iran remains a significant threat to regional allies…It also calls into question claims about the extent to which US-Israeli strikes have degraded Iran’s military in the long term…
Iran has been able to rebuild much faster than expected due to a combination of factors, ranging from support it is receiving from Russia and China to the fact that the US and Israel did not inflict as much damage as the two countries had hoped, one of the sources told CNN.
America’s own stock of weapons, on the other hand, has been dangerously depleted in the conflict, and our defense-industrial base is not managing to rebuild them.
Even as the U.S. has failed to cripple Iran’s military, Iran’s military has succeeded in closing the Strait of Hormuz, sending gasoline prices soaring and causing a significant bump in inflation:
Incapable of defeating Iran on the battlefield, and increasingly wounded by Iran’s economic retaliation, Trump is pushing hard for any sort of face-saving deal that would allow him to exit the conflict quickly. Whatever deal Trump eventually cuts is going to leave Iran in a much stronger position — and American interests in the region — much weaker than before Trump launched his war. Here’s Robert Kagan:
Defeat for the United States, therefore, is not only possible but likely. Here is what defeat looks like.
Iran remains in control of the Strait of Hormuz. The common assumption that, one way or another, the strait will reopen when the crisis ends is unfounded. Iran has no interest in returning to the status quo ante…The power to close or control the flow of ships through the strait is greater and more immediate than the theoretical power of Iran’s nuclear program. This leverage will allow the leaders in Tehran to force nations to lift sanctions and normalize relations or face penalties…
The new status quo in the strait will also occasion a substantial shift in relative power and influence both regionally and globally. In the region, the United States will have proved itself a paper tiger, forcing the Gulf and other Arab states to accommodate Iran…All nations that depend on energy from the Gulf will have to work out their own arrangements with Iran. What choice will they have?…
The American defeat in the Gulf will have broader global ramifications as well. The whole world can see that just a few weeks of war with a second-rank power have reduced American weapons stocks to perilously low levels, with no quick remedy in sight.
This is all, of course, on top of Trump’s other geopolitical blunders:
alienating U.S. allies by threatening to invade Greenland
attempting to force Ukraine to accept an unfavorable peace settlement with Russia, even as Ukraine was turning the tide of battle
alienating India for no reason whatsoever
capitulating to China on Taiwan arms sales in exchange for nothing whatsoever
various other erratic behaviors that make America clearly less reliable of an ally
As I said, Trump is not a Russian/Chinese plant, but at this point it’s hard to imagine what else a Russian/Chinese plant would even do in order to weaken America’s international standing.
America is ruled by a mafia now
While Trump was losing a war he started, destroying the foundations of American power, and attacking the foundations of American technological dominance, he was also working feverishly to use the presidency to get even richer than he already is. Rolling Stone had a good article detailing the breathtaking scale of the corruption:
Let’s say it plainly: There has never been a president as corrupt as Donald Trump. There is no close second in our history…
Americans just found out that in the first quarter of this year, Trump’s stock portfolio made 3,600 trades — an average of nearly 60 a day…Many of these appear suspiciously timed to benefit from actions approved by the president himself. For example, his Nvidia stock surged after Trump announced the company would be permitted to sell its cutting-edge AI chips to China. Similar suspiciously well-timed calls were made ahead of big government moves involving other companies, from Intel to Palantir to Boeing…
But the apparent insider trading scam being run from within the Oval Office is small change…compared to the self-dealing plunder of $1.8 billion tax-payer dollars being pushed through the DOJ and IRS.
There’s never been a sitting president who sued his own government for $10 billion. That’s because it’s absurdly corrupt. But that’s what Donald Trump did, arguing he had suffered damages from prosecutions pursued before he was reelected…The judge who heard the case convened an independent panel to review the suit, suspecting it might be a scam. Before the case could be dismissed, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — who had previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer — declared that the bogus suit would be preemptively settled, not for $10 billion, but for the symbolic sum of $1.776 billion, which Trump said will be distributed to…political allies.
This is a shakedown. The president is compelling a Justice Department he controls to redirect money from taxpayers — that’s you — to his most fervent supporters. This slush fund will set off a cash grab among MAGA lawyers and be used to reward partisan fanatics who attacked the U.S. Capitol — and police officers — on his behalf.
If that wasn’t enough of a blatantly illegal use of presidential power, it was revealed that the “settlement” deal included a pledge signed by the acting attorney general that would ensure — in the hysterical all caps of a Trump tweet — that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” any tax claims, audits or related prosecutions against Trump, his family or their businesses. This is an attempt to get a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card for the Trump family — a license to steal. [emphasis mine]
So basically, Trump:
Uses the government to interfere with specific companies,
Trades those companies’ stocks in advance, knowing how his own government interference will affect their prices,
Sues his own government for billions and then orders his government to settle the lawsuit,
Gives the billions of dollars of taxpayer money to his own activist thugs and cronies, and
Has the government promise never to prosecute the Trump family.
Rolling Stone is absolutely right: Nothing in U.S. history even comes close to this level of corruption. Trump is simply using the powers of the presidency to extract billions of dollars from stock owners and taxpayers — i.e., from you and me — and to put that money into his own pocket. Compared to this, the famous Teapot Dome land scandal in the 1920s was nothing. The total amount of money involved in Teapot Dome — just a few million of today’s dollars after adjusting for inflation — was tiny compared to the billions Trump is looting.
Anyway, these are all stories just from the past few weeks. In the next few weeks it’ll be something else. This is the most absurdly terrible presidential administration America has ever had.
I know a lot of Americans — including some of my own readers — are still able to convince themselves that The Left Is Worse And Therefore We Must Continue To Support Trump No Matter What. Frankly, I don’t know how those guys do it. But I guess I can take some small solace in the fact that the number of people who think that way is slowly decreasing, as Trump’s parade of outrages and disasters marches on.
I am promoting a new term: Trumpian Winning, the modern Pyrrhic Victory (Pyrrhic w/o the self-realisation).