Donald Trump is a tool
Speaking of the logic of fear, Paul Krugman offers some observations this morning on where Trumpism means to take us all. What drives our cult-leader president, Krugman writes, is “rage toward people who, he imagines, think they’re smarter or better than him.”
Since Donald Trump is clearly the smartest and best person in every room he enters, anyone who doesn’t abase themselves at his grandeur is a potential target for that rage:
And he and the movement he leads, composed of people possessed by similar rage, are seeking retribution. Retribution against whom? Yes, they hate wokeness. But three months in, it’s obvious that the MAGA types want revenge not just on their political opponents but on everyone they consider elites — a group that, as they see it, doesn’t include billionaires, but does include college professors, scientists and experts of any kind.
A student of 20th-century history knows where that leads. But Trump was never much of a student of anything except “winning” at all costs.
Don’t try to sanewash what’s happening. It’s evil, but it isn’t calculated evil. That is, it’s not a considered political strategy, with a clear end goal. It’s a visceral response from people who, as Thomas Edsall puts it, are addicted to revenge.
If you want a model for what’s happening to America, think of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
[…]
Once you’ve seen the parallel between what MAGA is trying to do and China’s Cultural Revolution, the similarities are everywhere. Maoists sent schoolteachers to do farm labor; Trumpists are talking about putting civil servants to work in factories.
Except there is calculated evil. It’s just not Trump’s. The teetotaler-in-chief is drunk on power. He may not be strategic or have “a clear end goal” beyond revenge, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one behind what his White House is doing. Trump thinks he’s the smartest person in the room. He’s not. He is clearly not smart enough to know that he is being used by the suck-ups around him to advance their evil plans, not his. But they do align with his menu of grievances.
Trump’s obsession with tariffs seems to have come from Peter Navarro, plucked from an Amazon book list. His obsession with immigrants? From Stephen Miller, the “Rasputin-like” architect of the Muslim ban and family separation. Trump’s dismantling of the government? From Elon Musk and his “tech bro Maoism.” And from Russell Vought, a principal author of Project 2025 and now director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Trump is no strategist. He wants revenge. In his second term, his thirst for power has overtaken his natural avarice. Navarro is an economic crank. Miller would look snappy in an SS uniform. Musk is another self-obsessed kook, but so rich that Trump warms himself in his glow. Burned once by hidden-camera video, Vought operates now more behind the scenes than the rest. The American Torquemada, is a Christian nationalist who wants a cultural revolution … for Jesus:
Vought is convinced that America is facing an existential threat – a situation he has likened to 1776 and 1860: (Counter-) Revolution and total war, that is what America must face if it is to survive. What gives Vought hope is his devotion to Donald Trump, “uniquely positioned to serve this role” as the leader of such a revolutionary counter-offensive against the evil forces of “unnatural” leftism. Literally, in Vought’s words, “a gift of God.”
This is oversimplified, of course. The point is, Trump only thinks he’s in charge. He famously “does whatever the last person in the room tells him to do,” writes Marcy Wheeler. “And often as not, the last person in the room is Stephen Miller.” Think of Miller as Tolkien’s Gríma Wormtongue:
We’ve already seen that the three cabinet secretaries struggling to assert control over their own agencies deferred to Stephen Miller when he told the participants of the famous Signal chat what Trump thought.
That is, it’s not just that Stephen Miller is often the last one in the room with Trump. It’s not just that Stephen Miller’s policy ideas are batshit insane (and that he’s the author of Trump’s most egregious abuses of power). It’s also that Miller often stands in as the Word of DOGE, the Word of Trump.
If Miller is Wormtongue, then Vought is Saruman working a strategy deeper but less visible than Miller’s. Contra Krugman, there are political strategies at work. They are just not Trump’s. He’s a tool, a puppet.
Point that out to him every chance you get.
* * * * *
Have you fought dictatorship today?
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense