The Trump Bubble Is Impregnable for Now—but Boy, Is It Going to Burst
The new year is no longer so new, and we’re 10 months away from the midterm elections. Let’s take stock of where things stand in this country by acknowledging five central points that combine to tell us that we are at an unprecedented place in our history: We have a corrupt and incompetent president whom we are, for the time being, powerless to rein in; and on top of that, we have every reason to fear that, when the time comes to rein him in (this November), he will attempt to nullify the electoral process.
Point one: On a personal level, Donald Trump is becoming more and more unhinged. He rambles, he stumbles, he fumbles. We don’t know whether he actually pooped himself in that one much-discussed episode in the Oval Office. But the fact that it has been discussed as something that might have happened is bad enough. And even if he retains full control of those evacuations, it’s the ones coming out of his brain and mouth that remain more concerning. Politico reported recently that the prime minister of Slovakia—a Trump ally—met with Trump at the White House on January 28 and later told other world leaders that he was concerned about Trump’s “psychological state.”
That repost of the Obamas as apes has been widely interpreted as one more Trumpian effort to troll the libs. Sure, I guess it was that. But what if it was something else? It may also have been the act of a man who is losing some marbles. It was beyond anything even he has ever done along those lines. He’s losing it. The mainstream media is afraid to touch the topic. The right-wing media screams that everything’s fine, it’s Trump Derangement Syndrome. That’s an apt phrase, all right, but it means the opposite of what the Foxies think it means. The bottom line is that the rest of us, the majority that finds him repulsive, just has to sit here and watch.
Point two: Politically, the bubble in which he lives is becoming farther and farther removed from reality. His penchant for self-aggrandization, always prodigious, has lately reached the point of insane self-parody.
Case in point: Last Friday, the jobs report came in and was anemic at best, with 22,000 jobs added. The day before, it was reported that there were 108,000 layoffs in January—the worst number since the Great Recession. But the stock market also hit 50,000 on Friday. Of course, any president would brag about the latter and play down the former, but Trump went much farther, congratulating himself repeatedly on achieving this milestone in one year.
First of all, “he” didn’t achieve it. And second, the DJIA was around 44,000 the day he took office, meaning it’s gone up around 6,000 points in the last year and change. That’s really no different from the change in the last year of Biden’s presidency, when it went from just under 38,000 up to 44,000. That’s normal stock market growth.
People aren’t buying his economic palaver; they see it as self-serving and out of touch. But that isn’t even the worst part of the Trump bubble. He has come to believe that the American people actually want what ICE is doing where it’s been unleashed. They do not. He has created for himself a world in which he never hears a negative word about himself. This is not a plea for him and his people to wake up—they won’t, and I’m well past hoping they will. It is rather an observation that this, too, is one more Trumpian assault on democracy. He thinks himself answerable only to those who adore him and think he can do no wrong—in other words, to people who require of him no answers at all. The rest of the country—that is, the majority of the country—doesn’t exist.
Point three: The corruption becomes more blatant and open by the week. That Wall Street Journal story about the UAE sheikh who bought a huge stake in Trump’s cryptocurrency venture and then got AI chip contracts was just insane. But we now live in an era where the president can do a Teapot Dome or worse on a weekly basis and there’s no one who can hold him to accounts.
Well, check that: Someone can. As Andrew McCarthy noted in the National Review, House Oversight Chairman James Comer thundered ad nauseam about Joe Biden’s alleged corruption, even opening an impeachment inquiry, alleging that Trump’s predecessor had racked up $27 million in ill-gotten gains. Today? McCarthy: “Of course, Trump can’t be faulted for obstructing congressional investigations. There haven’t been any. Comer is busy tangling with the Clintons, the better to take the Epstein heat off a president whose poll numbers have declined as this year’s midterm elections beckon. Now that self-dealing has achieved heights so astronomical that $27 million would barely be a rounding error, Republicans have lost interest.”
Point four: Speaking of Jeffrey Epstein, we know that that story is far from over, either in general, or with respect to Trump. I won’t relate the rumors about Trump that surfaced recently as they’re not corroborated. But you’ve probably read them. I have no idea what the chances are that one fine morning this year, we are greeted by an explosive headline about Trump in this context that will blow our collective mind and change everything.
That said: Will it? Trump will deny any wrongdoing. The Republicans will rally behind him or be quiet. The right-wing media will defend him and say Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton, Bill Clinton. And while some Democrats will smell blood, too many others will say no, we can only talk about health care.
Finally, point five: He is of course preparing to steal the midterms. Pundits and talking heads on cable news should dispense with even wondering whether he will. Of course he will try. And if he can’t pull it off, he and the GOP will challenge every result they possibly can in ways that you and I can’t even imagine.
So here we are. Mentally deteriorating, unpopular, incompetent, corrupt, out-of-touch; and yet, in—for now—unshakably firm control of power, completely beyond any democratic accountability. And when that accountability moment comes in November, he will blatantly do whatever he can to erase and reverse it. Sox this year is going to be far worse than last, at least for a while.
But he can’t shut out reality forever. No one can. And the longer he manages to do so, the more thunderous and unequivocal will be the comeuppance. The Trump bubble will burst, and it’ll be like the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments, crashing down on Pharoah’s head. Until then—patience. And rage.