Summary
Chuck Todd argues that Donald Trump is rapidly spending his political capital by prioritizing revenge and culture wars over governance.
His controversial cabinet picks, like Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, signal instability and risk alienating voters who supported him as a rejection of Biden, not an endorsement of Trumpism.
Todd warns that perceived overreach, like aggressive culture war policies or erratic mass deportation plans, could lead to public backlash and erode Trump’s support.
Without delivering stability and results, his presidency could quickly face the same challenges as Biden’s.
Trump is a lame duck president on day one. You can interpret this one of two ways: he has no political capital and will be running on authoritarian fumes for his whole term, or his political capital is limitless because he can’t run again and has unshakable blind loyalty from nearly half the country. Since it’s Trump, the worst option is almost certainly correct. Trump will never run out of political capital.
like aggressive culture war policies or erratic mass deportation plans
That was Trump’s campaign, no? It’s a bit late for voters to wake up to it or pundits to be bringing up what Harris has tried REALLY hard to get people to notice in the few months leading up to today.
Todd warns that perceived overreach, like aggressive culture war policies or erratic mass deportation plans, could lead to public backlash and erode Trump’s support.
Why would Trump care? He is transactional, and the people who voted for him can’t give him anything more. They are 100% irrelevant to him.
So why would he give a single fuck about alienating them?
Exactly.
What the fuck are the people going to do? Protest? He’s already discussed deploying the military/national guard/police/whatever to use lethal force against protestors/demonstrators, either jailing or executing ones not shot.
It would take a total and complete revolt for trump to face any consequences for what he’s going to do, or has already done.
And that’s not something I think Americans are willing to do until it’s much too late.
Trump’s power is not derived from a piece of paper. That was the Democrats mistake.
Trump’s power comes directly from the people. In a democracy, ultimately the people get the last say.
The transactions are far from over. There are many more transactions to come. From as little as continuing to support Trump-freindly representatives, all the way up to not actively rebelling against his administration.
Fascism is like fire. It can spread, but ultimately it destroys the things it needs to keep going. Trump will try and use minorities and Democratic leaders as kindling to keep it going as long as possible. A saving grace for the US is that fascists never voluntarily give up power and so Trump’s death will likely result in some reconciliation of how we would like the constitution to actually function. Will there be enough political will to change that? Probably not.
Trump is an actual terrorist. He tried to murder congress members. His support with voters will tank over the next 4 years and then people will forget most of it.
His legacy will depend on how well his fans gaslight and how well Biden’s recovery holds, just like last time with Obama’s recovery.
Which is why it’s a big ol’ four year hourglass for Republicans to make elections irrelevant. That is 100% their plan because while Trump is a verifiable moron, the scum attached to him aren’t stupid.
If you get evil, you hope for stupid evil. That was Trump term 1. This time there’s a LOT of smart evil along for the ride.
Only 2 years if midterms happen. Historically party in control does worse in those but we’ll see. Also more nazi seats are up with 20 nazi seats and 13 dem seats up for election in 2026. House is up for reelection as well.
Compared with 2024 which had 18 Dem seats, 11 nazi seats and 4 independents (including sinema and Manchin). Nazis converted 4, Dems got 1 (Sinema).
No. Trump will not face the same challenges as Biden, and his loss of support doesn’t matter one bit.
Neither the Republican controlled Congress nor the conservative SCOTUS will impeach Trump for overreaching or infringing on the Constitution.
Even if we were still able to protest, it wouldn’t change the lack of accountability Trump will see this term.
Prioritizing over governance? Fully half of his campaign, at least, was promising revenge, and most of the rest was culture wars. Governance has never been his priority, nor that of the dupes who voted for him. He could come out and say he’s leaving the actual busy work of running the country to Vance just so he can devote his full attention to hurting the people he wants to hurt, and the Cult would praise it as brilliant delegation and wish him happy hunting.
Or… destabilizing things is the point. Hitler rose to power during the great depression. Economic turmoil is an in for authoritarianism, and Trump understands this apparently much better than Chuck Todd.
Trump understands that he can do whatever he wants and things will go his way in the end. That’s been his whole life.
Trump doesn’t understand anything. He’s just a puppet.
Relentless attack against norms and institutions eventually causes fatigue. I know people who were politically engaged during the Bush and Obama years, but now just don’t want to hear about politics anymore. People are tuning out. What sucks is that they are not properly attributing blame where it is due, and not voting to punish those causing the democratic decay.
The man only knows so to burn through capital. See any of his businesses.
