If there is one good thing about this upcoming repeat of having Donald Trump in the White House, it’s the sad fact that it will be much harder to anticipate what’s coming day to day.
Mainly because Trump himself doesn’t know.
In other words, it will be eerily reminiscent of what we endured before. Just with extra doses of clownishness.
Consider the president-elect’s attempts to reframe his tariff insanity. Remember, he was clowned relentlessly about his stance before the election. In reality, since his last term. Nobody has ever seemed to make him understand that consumers bear the costs of tariffs, so when The Tariff Threat hit the web Monday evening, two things happened.
First, everyone started analyzing the demand in terms of judging Trump’s sanity. Because no matter how many times he claimed to have “aced” a cognitive test, We The People had spent an entire campaign season listening to him babble absolute nonsense. So, of course, the questions were asked. Did Donald Trump not KNOW about the how the border [exploitation] “crisis” no longer existed?
Then most people remembered Donald Trump’s reputation for lying about anything and everything and stopped paying attention to him then and there. As part of the ongoing nationwide dedication to self-care.
Those who kept paying attention moved to the second thing: the analysis of the costs of such tariffs. What followed included plenty of bitter laughter about how utterly insane it was to purposely threaten to raise the price of imports at the same time he is planning to disrupt multiple domestic industries with mass deportations.
Unsurprisingly, by Tuesday morning, you know what was flying off the fan. Nobody wanted to see this happen. Especially MAGAs still desperately trying to pretend that they had voted for cheaper grocery prices. Automakers were using words like “betrayal.” Media analysts were predicting the onset of an instant recession while pundits explained how delusional the basis for the threat was. All capped off with a bit of unspoken “no jodas conmigo” in the new Mexican president’s now viral clapback to the president-elect that realigned whatever power play Trump had hoped to establish.
But Mexico was not done. By Wednesday afternoon, Mexico’s Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard was stepping up to the podium with receipts, including predictions that the US auto industry alone would lose 400,000 jobs if the threatened tariff was ever implemented.
By Wednesday evening, Trump was on the phone to President Sheinbaum, clearly crying uncle as it was obvious that he had lost whatever leverage he imagined he had to start with. Which was only made more obvious by the syrupy follow up fantasy post from his app talking about how President Sheinbaum had “agreed” to his demands. Because, as noted from the start, peak clownishness is destined to be the star of this upcoming administration:
Never mind that there would not have been any reason to converse about stopping migration through Mexico. As she had made clear to everyone who read that epic letter, that had already happened months ago under the Biden Executive Order. Nor, as she has subsequently made clear, was there any discussion about closing the Southern border, neither metaphorically nor effectively.
It simply did not happen.
Of course, this kind of ploy was far easier for Trump to pull off during AMLO’s presidency because of his limited command of the English language. But President Claudia Sheinbaum does not have that limitation and will not be used as the object of Trump’s bluster. Which in turn, made MAGA attempts to paint this as a “victory” for the president-elect fall flatter than a pancake.
In short, Donald Trump is going to have to come up with some new material. And a new bully act.
That’s a problem for a man of his age and ignorance. Which is why the only thing he has left to offer is clownishness.