The suicide mission against the most powerful force in America

The thing about Donald Trump is that he's bad at being president. I don't mean tyrannical or fascist or criminal or corrupt. Those adjectives obviously apply, but I mean just plainbad.

The basic job of being president is reflecting the will of the majority of the American people as faithfully as possible. When you run afoul of public opinion, you change course quick.

Trump doesn't do that. No one around him does that. I mean, who in their right mind thought it was good idea – in the run up the congressional elections, when GOP voters are starting to believe he doesn't care, when no other president has polled worse, according to G Elliott Morris, not even George W Bush in 2006 – to push 760,000 people off Obamacare?

Sure, fraud. That was their reason for doing it. It's a lie, according to Charles Gaba, but even if it were true, why do it now? And why risk pushing your own people off their health insurance. (According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 75 percent of Obamacare enrollees live in states that the president won in 2024.) What on earth is the White House trying to prove? Not that Trump is a good president. More like proving his enemies right.

This, for instance, from Brian Beutler: "Trump is the imperfect figurehead of a corrupt cabal of plutocrats and ideological fanatics, who have used his political movement to foment something like a revolution, short of igniting civil war: Collapse the democratic order globally, replace it with great power spheres, and subservient, corrupt courtier states. Collapse the democratic order domestically, replace it with a rightwing autocracy."

Trump might avoid this were he good at being president.

He's not. This is the result.

What is Trump good at? Scamming. He told the American people during the last election that he would bring down the cost of living and restore the country's greatest. All they had to do was ignore the fact that he's a cheat and a liar, that he's a criminal and a traitor, that he was convicted on 34 counts of felony fraud, and that he was determined by a judge to be a rapist. In essence, Trump asked a majority of voters to trade democracy and the rule of law for an IOU, and to the shock and horror of the civilized world, a majority of voters accepted.

I think the rage we are seeing now in public polling, especially among those who voted for Donald Trump, is the rage of people who realize they are never going to get what they were promised and, perhaps, that what they have sacrificed is never coming back. It is now mainstream that Trump's IOU isn't worth the paper it was written on. Even his attempted bribe of $5,000 per US adult if his party wins was met with crickets. Voters can respond in two ways: stay home on Election Day or vote Democratic. Either way, historic GOP losses.

Trump could mitigate those losses if he were good at being president, but he isn't. Instead, he takes people's healthcare away. He brutalizes immigrants even more. Above all, he lies about the true cost of war. "It’s a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done,” the president said of the price of gas. His surrogates are worse: "Everybody is obsessing with the price of gas," Sebastian Gorka said today. "This is much bigger than the price of gas. Think about what would happen to the price of gasoline if [Iran's] missiles were nuclear tipped."

In 2024, Donald Trump gave the American people a choice: the Constitution of the United States or greed. A majority chose greed. But two years later, he's acting like there won't be consequences for that decision. No one alive has seen a president choose to walk into the teeth of American selfishness. No one alive has seen a president pretend it won't be deadly.

Ask Me Anything: September 24, 2026

I asked you to ask anything. Here are some question I received. If you want to ask me something for next week's Ask Me Anything, leave a comment below or send a reply.

John Richardson asked:

What are the chances for impeachment and conviction if the Democrats win the House and Senate in November?

My answer:

I think the chances of indictment by the House are extremely high. The chances of conviction by the Senate are not as high, but I think there could be an even chance if the Democrats take the upper chamber with 53 senators. I also think those chances will increase in the weeks and months after a new Congress is seated. During that time, we will see how Donald Trump reacts to the fact that he is a lame duck president. He will want the center of gravity in Washington to remain fixed on him, but everyone will shift their focus to 2028 in due course, meaning that the man who has never been ignored is about to get the shock of his life. There's really no way to know what he will do, except that it will be no good very bad. The degree of badness will probably correlate with the will of Congress to remove him.

But his reaction to being a lame duck isn't the only factor. As I have been saying, no matter what happens in the midterms, Trump is still going to be president, he's still going to be in charge of this war, and the war is still going to drive up the cost of gas and diesel and everything else. I mean this seriously when I say there is no limit to how high prices could go, given that the war is happening while monopolies are already fixing prices with AI. A year from now, if diesel is selling at $9 on average, we might look back with fondness. Remember when it was only $6! The new Congress could revoke his war powers, but would he obey a Congress that he has never obeyed before? What would his incentive be? The crisis could get so damaging to voters that even some Republicans senators might want to remove him.

Then there's the next election to consider. I think it's an open question as to whether Trump wants to help his party or sabotage it. Given everything we know about him, and how completely mono-dimensional his lizard brain is, the smart money might be on sabotage, which would suggest that the Republicans in the Senate might have an incentive to remove him in order to give JD Vance the best possible start to 2028. Then again, JD Vance is pretty unlikeable, even in the GOP. For Republicans, it might be better to gut it out until the end.

All this may be moot if Trump dies by natural causes.

At the rate he's going, no one should be surprised if that happens.

Leona Beauchamp asked:

I am concerned that the Democrats will blow their chance to shut down the grift. What are they realistically able to achieve with just a majority in the House?

My answer:

The House could send an indictment over to the Senate, then hope against hope that he will be removed, but otherwise, the House can't force Trump to stop doing anything, no matter how criminal or disgusting, as the Congress is not the "active" branch of the government.

That said, Trump isn't the only target of impeachment. Robert F Kennedy Jr is insane and responsible for the death and suffering of those who decided to believe his lies about vaccines. Measles, mumps, whooping cough – these preventable diseases are roaring back thanks to him. Plus: No one likes him, not even Senate Republicans who would otherwise defend Trump. Pete Hegseth is also a target. He is not only a failure as the "secretary of war" but he's also an embarrassment. He'd rather speechify on TV about phony "holy wars" than do the hard of prosecuting a real one. He is also deeply disliked, if he is not despised.

Point is that all the focus is on Trump and making him pay for his transgressions, but he's not alone. As I have said before, his administration is a criminal enterprise in all but name. The public does not see it as such. Control of the Congress means Republicans can defend it, deflect attention away from it, and sandbag efforts to expose it. Everything changes once the Democrats are in charge. There is, for instance, no legitimate reason for Trump's stock trading. There is no way to defend it in terms of presidential immunity. If the Democrats did nothing else, they could spend the next two years investigating that crime, releasing drip after drip of scandalous news, discrediting his reputation in the eyes of the public, even more than he himself is doing, while salting the earth for any Republican who wants to succeed him.

To me, that would benefit the common good more than impeaching him.