Here we are, Black Friday, officially Christmastime now. America is in a sour mood. Grocery prices are up, and so are energy prices. Donald Trump lies incessantly about both. The American people are onto him. They’re pessimistic about the future.
The distrust goes way beyond the economy. Over these last few weeks, ever since the government shutdown, it’s finally begun to sink in on people that Trump and his entire administration are a bunch of raging ideologues or incompetents or both, peddling a fantasy version of their strength that people no longer buy. There’s no longer any doubt about it: The MAGA crack-up has begun.
Look at a few things that have happened in just the last week:
• Trump tried to sell Ukraine down the river to Putin. The howls of outrage were instant, loud, and bipartisan to some extent. The administration backpedaled. Or appeared to. But then, on Tuesday, we got the leaked transcript of the phone call between envoy Steve Witkoff and a top Putin aide in which Witkoff offered tips to the Kremlin to help sweet-talk Trump. (Remember: Our ally here is Ukraine!) The fact that something like this was leaked, whether by someone inside or outside the United States, is a clear sign that people aren’t afraid of this administration the way they might have been six months ago.
• Trump, bumbling around on domestic policy because he knows nothing, desperately said he was considering extending the Obamacare coverage subsidies on Monday. Congressional Republicans were up in arms. It would actually be a sane thing to do, but it would never get through Congress, and he sounds ridiculous, considering that he just kept the government shut down for 43 days over this very issue.
• Trump and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth’s push to reinstate Senator Mark Kelly as an active-duty soldier (he’s 61!) so they can court-martial him is quickly turning into one of the leading disasters of this administration. There is no chance they’re going to convince a majority of Americans that a guy who flew 30-something combat missions is a disloyal American. Hegseth’s tweets chastising the Arizona senator for the state of his uniform only drew attention to Kelly’s heroism—and made the defense secretary seem ridiculous and the whole saga seem petty. Kelly and the other five Democrats who made that video advising troops not to follow illegal orders no doubt have surprised Trump & company by not taking this lying down. The revenge crusade is crashing and burning.
• It was a disastrous week for Attorney General Pam Bondi as she stood there watching a federal judge dismiss the laughable indictments she directed against James Comey and Letitia James. And she stood up there, in perfect East German Communist Party circa 1957 fashion, repeating the assertion that everyone knows to be a lie, that Lindsey Halligan is “an excellent U.S. attorney.”
• FBI Director Kash Patel somehow had a worse week than Bondi. He acknowledged that the Epstein files may never be released in full. He took more stick for spending taxpayer dollars providing his country-singer girlfriend with security and then exploded when he learned they ditched her right before she was set to sing the national anthem at an NRA convention in Georgia. They’re now openly leaking that Patel is on the way out. He’s been every bit as horrible as many people predicted he would be.
• Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was revealed by a Justice Department court filing to have personally ordered the continuation of those flights to Central America after a federal judge said they had to stop. This involved, you may recall, loading 261 people onto three planes and sending them to El Salvador, many to the notorious CECOT facility where they endured subhuman conditions. Noem, in other words, directly violated an order from a federal court. This is illegal. It could lead to contempt of court charges—and fines and even imprisonment.
I could go on. RFK Jr.’s been on a pretty bad streak too. There was the Olivia Nuzzi stuff, which was titillating even if perhaps not of overwhelming public interest—except that it might indeed be a matter of public interest if Nuzzi is correct that the ex-junkie in charge of the nation’s health is still using drugs, which she writes he admitted to her. And before that, he took the country further into dangerous surreality on vaccines and autism.
That’s pretty much the whole murderers’ row of Trump’s awful appointments (well, the top-tier ones). All except Tulsi Gabbard. Wonder what happened with her. Surely she did something stupid too. It just hasn’t been reported. (Actually, surprise surprise, she did do something pretty weird.)
Everywhere you look, in other words, Trump and his people are wrecking the country. He doesn’t know what to do about the economy. Presidents don’t have a ton of power to lower prices in the first place, and people are now understanding that fact, and that Trump swindled them last year. He’s going to give Putin most of what he wants. His pursuit of his perceived political enemies is going to be massively unpopular and drive his numbers down into the mid-30s before too long if he keeps it up. And all these incompetent and corrupt henchpeople aren’t helping. The movement is collapsing.
And this will embolden both Trump’s opponents and those he’s had in his gunsights. Seven months ago, law firms and universities were terrified of Trump. I bet not so much now. It’s been so inspiring and important to see citizens in Chicago and Evanston and so many other places rise up to oppose Trump and his masked agents in their roundups. It was gratifying to see Zohran Mamdani run circles around him, and Trump’s passive demeanor that day was telling. Even the Beltway Democrats, or some of them anyway, are showing some game.
People may not hate incompetence. They may not hate corruption. And they may not hate extremism. But all three at once? It’s getting to be too much for people, and it’s a great way to close out the year.
