Trump 2.0

In his second term in office, Trump is, truly, being Trump. He’s rigorously demanding that the government be “operated” the way he conducted business for decades — that is, solely and exclusively for short-term gain and self-aggrandizement. The result, it is becoming clear, is a regime that leaves chaos in its wake instead of creating anything approaching the foundation for a legacy.

Thus, far from setting out to institutionalize a sustainable right-wing revolution — like Ronald Reagan did, with some pernicious success — Trumpers are engaged in a project directed at sabotaging as much of the nation’s government, and destroying as much of its economic and political power, as possible.

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[Trump's DHS head, Kristi] Noem — who purportedly manages the agency responsible for carrying out Trump’s lynchpin immigration policies — has established that she’s not simply a bad faith actor, but also a genuinely and willfully stupid person.

She’s not alone. Profound inability and/or unwillingness to perform competently are job requirements for service as a senior member of the Trump regime.

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Noem — whose mélange of utter laziness and amorality makes her the ideal type of a Trump crony — is doing her best to exacerbate actual disasters. Apparently anticipating that it would please Trump, she declared that she will — once again, entirely illegally — dismantle the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is primarily responsible for coordinating and assisting in relief efforts by other federal agencies, without establishing any replacement for it.

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Noem’s actions have already set the stage for the potential disappearance of some rural communities, which are unlikely to have the resources required to recover from future hurricanes.

  Public Notice

And it's fair to say, as Missouri and Kentucky just found out, they won't even be getting any warning that tornadoes or hurricanes are bearing down on them.

In an administration in which the sole consistent goals are valorizing Trump and making him as rich as possible, any official who demonstrates an ability to effectively administer and carry out the business of the US government is viewed with profound suspicion.

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[Trump's Secretary of State, Marco Rubio is] serving as the figurehead of Trump’s shambolic gutting of American soft power infrastructure that has left vast numbers of children around the world at risk of starving as food rots in warehouses, and HIV sufferers to die in desperation for lack of lifesaving medication.

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[Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's] rimary function is to make nonsensical claims in support of his boss’s full bore assaults on the US economy.

Most recently, Bessent was heard parroting Dear Leader by contending that the panic in the bond markets induced by Trump’s irrational and constantly shifting tariffs — and the resulting increases in interest rates — should be of no concern to consumers because oil prices are falling. Left out of that “analysis” is the reality that oil prices have declined rapidly in anticipation of a potential recession.

Nobody, including the credit rating agency Moody’s — which just downgraded the US government’s longstanding AAA credit rating — takes anything Bessent says seriously anymore.

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Most of the cronies Trump has placed “in charge” of other critical agencies of the US government did not have to learn to be stupid like Rubio and Bessent. Instead, they were chosen precisely because had established track records of being lazy, ignorant, incurious, and morally obtuse, thus giving Trump confidence they would not bat an eye as the institutions they are charged with administering are destroyed.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was selected to “head” the Department of Health and Human Services — a sprawling agency responsible for everything from Medicare and Medicaid to pharmaceutical regulation and food assistance — precisely because he’s a conspiratorial wacko who’s perfectly willing to preside over the dismantlement of much of the federal healthcare infrastructure.

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This week, Kennedy angrily declared to a Senate subcommittee that he denied daycare funding to the children of working parents (even as he and Trump threaten to deny Medicaid to people who don’t work) because Sen. Patty Murray is somehow responsible for Americans suffering from an “epidemic of chronic disease,” a contention so bizarre and defamatory that it led the presiding Republican senator to intervene and bring an end to Kennedy’s rant.

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Pam Bondi was selected be the nation’s attorney general because she’s happy to devote her term to serving as a near daily guest on Fox News, where she proudly describes the efforts of Trump cronies to break nearly every core function of the Department of Justice, including its policing of financial crimes, government corruption, flouting of environmental laws, and violations of civil and voting rights.

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[T]his is not simply bad governance — it is systematic stupidity.

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Trump is unique among the nation’s presidents in having no interest in presiding over a functioning government.

I have to disagree. W Bush fit that description. He just didn't have an administration full of ignorant and incompetent lackies. He did, however, appoint people to positions they were either not qualified to run, and were of the GOP Tea Party stripe who wanted to throttle the federal government.

Stop electing Republicans!

What is shaping up to be Trump’s single substantial legislative “achievement” is a “big beautiful” bill that is largely comprised of the continuation and expansion of hugely regressive tax cuts (which were unpopular the first time the GOP passed them in 2017, setting the stage for the loss of the Republican House majority the next year) and an even less popular assault on Medicaid.

If only we make it to 2026 elections. And they're not so completely corrupted as to make anything other than a GOP Congress impossible.

Hence, while the party-line passage of this legislation will kill and otherwise harm many children and other vulnerable Americans while transferring even more wealth to the rich, it is highly likely to be rejected by voters, and to be substantially undone when Trump leaves the scene.

I think you mean, "if".

[T]he next president will be tasked with a massive rebuilding project, much as nations — including this one — have had to reconstruct themselves, sometimes for the better, in the wake of major wars.

Sadly, that's the best case scenario.