Republicans should be very worried about where this is headed in November.
Let’s consider a list of some of the things Donald Trump and his administration have been in the news for recently:
- The massive $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund designed to produce collusive payoffs to Trump allies who claim they were victimized by Democratic lawfare.
- In the same wider deal, sweeping immunity for Trump, his family, and his business from long-running IRS audits, signed off by acting attorney general Todd Blanche, who was formerly Trump’s personal attorney in cases touching on Trump’s taxes.
- The Justice Department launching a federal perjury investigation into E. Jean Carroll, apparently premised upon Carroll lying or concealing the truth about who funded her civil suits against Trump.
- Indicting Jim Comey over an Instagram post of seashells on the beach.
- A new $250 bill with Trump’s face on it.
- Fighting Congress over the new White House ballroom.
- Trump tearing into the pope and tweeting and then deleting a Truth Social post with a photo of Trump as a healing Jesus-like figure.
- White House Communications Director Steven Cheung tweeting, in response to criticism by Mike Pompeo of a rumored Iran peace deal, that Pompeo “has no idea what the f*** he’s talking about. He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals. He’s not read into anything that’s happening, so how would he know.” [Original profanity omitted.]
On and on this stuff has gone for months now. Insulting Rob Reiner after he was murdered. A primary and revenge campaign against Bill Cassidy, Thomas Massie, and against Indiana state senators who crossed Trump on redistricting. The Gulf of America. The Kennedy-Trump Center.
Even some of Trump’s major policy priorities, such as high tariffs and war with Iran, reflect things that don’t arise from any demands by the voters. The tariffs, in fact, are highly unpopular, fly directly in the face of the demands for a lower cost of living that got Trump returned to office, and don’t seem to be motivating many people to vote Republican. Contrast this to, say, Trump’s immigration policies; while aspects of those policies may not be popular or prudent, there’s little question that Trump got elected twice in good part to take a harder line on immigration that the voters couldn’t otherwise get from the government.
Individually, some of these things are more important than others, some can be defended, and some deserve stern condemnation. In the case of Iran, presidents are supposed to make decisions about war and peace for reasons more consequential than popularity, and the jury is still out on whether the Iran war will produce the needed visible victories to justify it. But that’s beside the political point: as much as Trump has shown canny populist instincts on many occasions over the years, his second term has been full of decisions and outbursts that nobody would advise a president or his administration to do if they were attempting to build and retain a voting coalition of ordinary citizens outside the Beltway. That’s not to deny that some of these moves are thrilling to Trump’s most plugged-in, always-online fans. But five months before a midterm election, those are the last people you need to worry about.
Some of this, as I’ve written before, is hubris. Some, especially the axe-grinding uses of the DOJ, is simply a bullheaded desire to settle scores and benefit the president and his cronies, a decision-making process in which the voters simply never enter the picture. It’s all about whether Trump can get away with it. As Jim Geraghty aptly summarized the wider picture on Wednesday in discussing Trump’s cabinet colloquy with RFK Jr. about circumcision, “Trump Is Laser-Focused on Anything but the Cost of Living.” The fact that Trump and his people are still acting this way suggests that the problem of just tuning out what’s important to the average voter, and not much caring how things look, will continue to be baked into how this White House makes decisions and communicates for the remainder of the year, elections or no elections.
Republicans should be very worried about where this is headed in November. And if it leads them to disaster, I don’t want to hear again about how the rest of us should take a back seat to the political genius of Trump and his team.