No fan of defeat, President Donald Trump appears to be taking his recent political beat-down very badly, reports the Guardian.
“Political obituary writers have been swift to describe him as a lame duck, defanged lion or cornered animal in the wake of the midterms. Democrats’ 13 percentage point victory was the second biggest of any midterm election since 1942, and the party conquered the Republican bastions of Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas,” reports the Guardian.
And the root of the Trump Party rout was obvious as the president’s eight-month war in Iran sent fuel prices soaring and tariffs blasted the cost of living into the stratosphere.
“The 80-year-old president’s response has swung wildly between conciliation, aggression and farce,” according to the Guardian, citing Trump presenting (possibly by accident) “violent fighter and warrior” Dana White of the Ultimate Fighting Championship with the job of White House press secretary, before bizarrely calling the invite a joke.
But the farce and insanity also apparently involves a fair bit of duck and cover, according to people familiar with Trump.
Miles Taylor, a whistleblower and Homeland Security analyst from the first Trump administration, told the Guardian that the finale of the Trump show “will certainly be weirder because Donald Trump was always going to end the administration with the bottom of the barrel appointees,” as suggested by Hillary Clinton.
“Like any wannabe autocrat, you end up in the figurative bunker at the end of the regime with the most hardcore loyalists, which tend to be the people who are willing to contort themselves into whatever shape the leader wants,” said Taylor. “These are the people who have no scruples and are willing to carry out the president’s most extreme edicts and, in some cases, are the ones who have been goading him for almost a decade to do the most extreme things.”
Trump’s new Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is a prime example, said Taylor, speaking of his experience with Miller in Trump’s first term. “[H]e was a guy that was all too willing to walk up to the line of the law and then leap over it and dare the courts to rein us in. That was literally the type of thing he said to me on multiple occasions.”
“One of my biggest fears about this next two years is: will Donald Trump cause the ultimate constitutional crisis by defying judicial orders, including from the supreme court, if he doesn’t get his way? I see it as very possible because he’s got a team around him that might be willing to make the case of why that would be justified,” said Taylor.
And Taylor said the chaos of Trump’s next two years could pale in comparison with what he does in his latter two years, when it comes to foreign policy — and that’s after he launched a disastrous and unprovoked war on Iran.
“Here are things to look for. Does Nato survive this period? Does the United States actually try to go seize more territory?” asked Taylor. “Both of those are things that Donald Trump has talked about doing and been walked back by advisors on over the course of two terms. I’m not sure that’s the case anymore.”
And despite their historic losses, the Guardian reports Republicans show little sign of revolt against Trump, or even a willingness to openly blame him for their misfortune.
“On Capitol Hill this week the party effectively killed the attempt to impeach Hegseth while also electing Jim Jordan, a pugnacious ally of the president, as its minority leader for the next Congress,” reports the Guardian.