Asleep at the wheel
What are the prevailing storylines right now? 1) Trump has ineptly alienated his own party’s House and Senate. 2) Trump is weakly allowing his buffoon sidekicks to run his faux-presidency into the ground before he’s even begun. 3) Trump is sitting there doing nothing while the various factions within his coalition publicly attack each other.
The trouble with these three storylines is that they all center around Trump’s weakness, at a time when the media has collectively decided that its best ratings grab is to portray Trump as dangerously powerful. Trump’s sidekicks are dummies, but they’re showing that they at least have enough marbles to manipulate the media. They’ve put words in Trump’s mouth about invading Mexico and seizing Canada and Panama, and the media has jumped on this distraction about as gleefully as it’s ever jumped on anything.
The media is unanimously going along with Trump’s fantasy of expanding the United States as if it’s something that could actually happen, with the only difference being that right wing outlets are heaping praise on it while the rest of the media is treating it as a negative. But none of them are willing to point out that Trump lacks the muscle to make any such thing happen, and that it’s all obviously just a distraction from what’s really going on.
Meanwhile Donald Trump is completely asleep at the wheel. He almost never appears in public. He almost never makes any social media posts of his own. He sat there like a bump on a log while his sidekicks alienated the Senate with insanely stupid cabinet picks and alienated the House with a bizarre attempt at forcing a shutdown. Now Trump is once again sitting there doing and saying nothing, even as many of his highest profile supporters are splitting into two camps and rather viciously feuding with each other over immigration.
On the one side you’ve got Elon Musk and Alex Jones (what a pair) insisting that tech industry talent be allowed to immigrate to the United States. On the other side you’ve got Ann Coulter, Matt Gaetz, Laura Loomer and others insisting that immigrants be blocked from taking jobs across the board. All of these buffoons are expressing a kindergarten level misunderstanding of their own positions, so don’t worry, you don’t have to feel queasy about agreeing with any of them. They’re all still idiots. But the point is that they’re all insisting that their position on immigration is Trump’s position on immigration. Meanwhile Donald Trump appears to have nothing to say about immigration at all.
You’d think that, with his coalition imploding in such vicious and public fashion, Trump would try to jump in and find some way to right the ship. Even if he simply gave a speech and tried to split the difference with double talk, it might be enough to satisfy both factions and make the problem go away for now. But Trump is too weak and oblivious to even try doing that.
In fact it’s increasingly clear that Donald Trump is too far gone to even know or understand that this splintering of his coalition is happening, let alone understand that he’s the one who has to do something about it. Anyone in Trump’s position would spring into action and try to do something to salvage this mess. The only way you wouldn’t take action is if you’re too senile to even be based in reality. Trump truly is asleep at the wheel.
