No, Donald Trump isn’t three steps ahead of us
When Donald Trump nominated Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, I was careful not to try to put specific odds on the pick succeeding. This is just too uncharted of territory. But I did say that the nomination had a chance to fail, because Trump stupidly picked one of the very few people who couldn’t have easily gotten by as a recess appointment.
I also said that if Gaetz did get confirmed, the doomsday types would insist it was proof that Trump can do anything he wants – and that if Gaetz didn’t get confirmed, the doomsday types would insist that Trump had been using Gaetz as a distraction all along. Either way it played out, the doomsday types were going to insist it was proof that Trump is all-powerful and that there’s no point in fighting him.
Sure enough, now that the Gaetz nomination has failed in embarrassing fashion, we’re seeing a thousand contrarian hot takes about how this was somehow Trump’s secret evil genius plan all along. But this is such an absurd take, I’m not even sure where to start. First of all, the whole thing made Trump look like an inept idiot. People in the middle voted for him because he promised to magically bring prices down, and instead they’re seeing him try and fail to install an alleged child sex trafficker as Attorney General. This failed nomination will drive Trump’s approval rating down before he even takes office. It also emboldens the Senate to reject more of Trump’s other picks if it decides to make that particular power play. After all, Trump just weakened himself.
More to the point, if Trump had simply nominated Pam Bondi to begin with, she’d have had a nearly 100% chance of getting quietly confirmed, in spite of her extremism and corruption scandals. But because Trump’s failed Gaetz nomination has brought so much attention and scrutiny and scandal to the process, Bondi’s nomination now also has a chance to fail. In other words, Trump simply blew it.
Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz was such a dumb and self defeating idea, it reeks of Trump’s senility. Anyone with even a very basic understanding of the political landscape would have understood that it was a bad idea. But Trump lacks that basic understanding. He clearly has less of an understanding of politics than he did the first time he was in office – and that points directly to his cognitive decline. It also points to the people advising him being as politically naive as he is. They thought the Gaetz pick was going to work? They didn’t bother talking him out of it? Trump’s handlers are as bad at this as he is. He has advanced dementia. What’s their excuse?
Look at the big picture. Things are awful right now. Dark. Terrible. Trump has way too much power. We need all the angles we can find for fighting back. Every time he makes a mistake or reveals a vulnerability, we have to identify it and pounce on it. And right now Trump is handing us a huge opening. He just flubbed his highest profile cabinet nomination in a way that makes him look like an inept idiot in the eyes of the people in the middle who just voted for him.
We need to be out there shouting from the rooftops about how Trump is so unfit and senile, he’s already making insane cabinet picks that are being forced to withdraw amid scandal. We need to be using this against Trump, not running around yelling “oh no Trump has us right where he wants us.” Even if that were true, what would be accomplished by using it in our messaging? Our messaging needs to be 100% focused on damaging Trump in the eyes of the people in the middle who determine his approval rating.
It also doesn’t matter that Pam Bondi is also a bad pick. While we’ll work to also force her to drop out, it almost doesn’t matter if she’s confirmed. Trump was always going to pick an awful Attorney General. We knew that going in. But because his first pick had to withdraw in such scandalous fashion, this weakens Trump. The Gaetz flub probably knocks three points off Trump’s approval rating all by itself. And if we get Trump’s approval rating low enough, he’ll have no political muscle at all.
Now more than ever we need to tune out the people who keep assigning magical powers to Trump and insisting that he’s three steps ahead of us. Not only is that inaccurate, it’s not strategic. Ask any expert on authoritarianism, and they’ll tell you that the authoritarian’s biggest weapon is the notion of inevitability. “Don’t bother resisting me, because I’m going to get my way anyway.” Our job is to take that notion of inevitability away from Trump. Our job is to (accurately) portray him as in inept senile idiot who can’t pull off the evil that he’s trying to pull off. That’s what strategic messaging looks like.
