AMERICA'S STABLE GENIUS HAS A FLAWLESS FLAIR FOR SHOWMANSHIP
Beyond the bluster, Tyrannosaurus Trump may be making America normal again
To many in the US, it’s the Democrats who are the extremists, not the new president. While his style is to keep ’em guessing, don’t ignore the political substance.
This is why he won.
This is how he will govern.
Late in the evening on Monday came a moment that captured the political genius of Donald J. Trump.
The new president had made it to his desk in the Oval Office and was signing executive orders —which in theory lead to immediate action — in front of an assembled group of reporters.
One of them, Fox News’s Peter Doocy, a friendly voice, asked him if Joe Biden had left the traditional letter to his successor.
The response was pure Trump: “He may have. Don’t they leave it in the desk? I don’t know.” With that, the new president rummaged in the drawers of the desk and discovered the letter. “Thank you, Peter. It could have been years before we found this thing.”
Performative, possibly even planned, yet unscripted.
Made for TV, made for YouTube clips. Made, indeed, for TikTok.
Jokey, inclusive, reactive.
And then on to signing something else: leaving the World Health Organization (“This is a big one”) or ending birthright citizenship; the first easily done, the second probably impossible but what the heck, both signed and dispatched.
The point everyone made after the immediate fun was that the contrast with the humourless, semi-moribund end to the Biden years was so extreme as to be psychologically, almost physically, shocking to the nation.
Violent criminals pardoned, Panama threatened, sex and gender sorted; it carried on long after midnight and, like the Spanish Inquisition, could strike without warning.
Ah yes, the conventional wisdom went, he was indeed energetic but wait till the hurdles come. Wait till it all gets tricky, with the courts rendering some of the orders void, with the immigration ambition — get rid of all those without proper papers — coming up against the fact that many of them are living decent American lives vital to the economy and to keeping inflation low. Ditto for tariffs, if they are imposed: muscular but self-defeating.
But this, perhaps, is a misunderstanding of the second age of Trump.
The hurdles?
Bring them on. And crash into them. Jump some, dump some. Pretend they weren’t there. Swerve round them even if the course is now a new one.
To many in the US, it’s the Democrats who are the extremists, not the new president. While his style is to keep ’em guessing, don’t ignore the political substance
www.thetimes.com
