Reversal of Fortune

It seems like the Heritage Foundation is taking its pointers from the Kremlin as they look to consolidate power in the executive branch.  Our Constitution is a little older than that of Russia, but no reason that the ultra-conservative advisors in Trump's administration can't find a way to undercut it.  One means is impoundment, whereby the White House exercises what amounts to a line-item veto on Congressional appropriations by impounding allocated funds.  The last president who tried to use this authority ran into a brick wall, but with a compliant Republican Congress and Supreme Court who knows this time around?

I still can't wrap my head around how Trump won the election after three successive electoral defeats from 2018 to 2022.  He lost the House in 2018, then the Senate and the White House in 2020, and his party was barely able to retake the House in 2022 after what many thought would be a "red wave" that would see the Republicans regaining control of both chambers of Congress.  The peak of inflation was in 2022.  An inflation reduction act passed that year significantly brought inflation down over the next two years.  Yet, this was still the number one issue on most voters' minds, if we are to believe the 2024 exit polls.  None of it makes any sense, but here we are facing the daunting prospect of a second Trump administration despite the convictions and what looked like a massive erosion of his cognitive abilities in the final months of the campaign.

Like many of Trump's campaign promises, the first to be thrown out the window is that he had nothing to do with Project 2025.  He's already tapped its authors and influencers for cabinet and advisory roles, which I'm sure is just fine with Republican Senators, as they too want to streamline government and give the "rebates" back to their billionaire patrons in the form of tax cuts.  

The only trouble Trump is running into is with nominees who have rubbed Republican Congresspersons the wrong way, like Matt Gaetz, who has since withdrawn his nomination for Attorney General.  Trump has replaced Matt with another contentious nominee, Pam Bondi, but she will probably get through with little problem.  Lindsey Graham described her as a "gold medal pick."  Lindsey had previously described the questions raised about Gaetz as that of a "lynch mob."  This was his own Republican party, mind you.

Well, none of these are gold medal picks.  Most come from the Fox Rogue's Gallery and are basically "disruptors" intent on turning government on its head and shaking out what they view as the liberal deep state.  

Chief among these disruptors are Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are proposing as much as a 75% cut in the federal civil service, which would mean up to 2.25 million pink slips.  They will run into little resistance on this one, either from Congress or the public at large.  Most people think the federal government is too big.  It has a workforce of nearly 3 million persons stretched around the globe.  The largest single employer in the US.  The only problem is what happens to these people when they suddenly find themselves out of a job?  It's doubtful our slowly eroding job market will be able to absorb them.

It's generally being reported that the Trump administration's bark is worse than its bite, but there is good reason to worry about what is going to happen over the next two years, not just on the domestic front but the international front as well.  Europe has been bracing for this contingency since late last year, when Biden's poll numbers began to drop.  Many European leaders feared a Trump presidency was inevitable given Biden's slipping cognitive abilities, and so they began making contingency plans for the US scaling back on its international commitments, chief among them NATO.

President Macron of France has long been calling for a "European army" for the simple reason that the US can not be counted on should the EU be faced with war.  Macron initially took a pacifist stance toward Russia prior to the invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022, but has since grown more belligerent and now downright hostile toward Russia.  France does have a nuclear weapon arsenal, unlike Germany, and Macron figures he can call Putin's bluff.  The EU countries have more than enough firepower to counter Russia on their own if worst was to come to worst.

Where would that leave Trump?  He's not the kind of guy who likes to be outside the action.  Yet, he has shown little commitment to NATO or any international organizations the US is currently connected with.  Nonetheless, the US has massive armed forces in Europe, including a full battalion in Lithuania that would be on the front line if Russia chose to invade the EU.  He would face his own "Benghazi" if American troops were killed in such an invasion.

I suppose he could work out some deal with Putin to hold off any future annexations until he can get these American troops out of harm's way.  After all, his buddy Vlad is still bogged down in Ukraine.  However, Putin has shown little inclination to work with Trump in a second term if we are to take this vexing congratulatory statement by one of Vlad's favorite news agencies as a sign.  Putin has been feeling pretty comfortable these days as he tightens his relationship with China and other BRICS countries, figuring he can easily withstand any further sanctions the US or EU tries to impose on his country.  As such, there is little Trump can do to deter Putin's imperial ambitions even if he had the willingness to do so.  

Instead, Russia seems to be serving as some sort of model for his administration, in which his advisors hope to create a similar autocratic state whereby Congress is nothing more than a rubber stamp for its own imperial ambitions.  They have two years to achieve this massive overhaul because if past is prologue the midterm elections in 2026 will not be very friendly toward Trump.  He faced a "Blue Tsunami" in 2018 that saw Democrats retake the House by 40 seats!  This assumes his disruptors don't find a way to hack the polls, like they appeared to do this time around.

I won't say that no one saw this coming, but it is hard to fathom Trump winning the election given all that we saw over the past six years.  Not only did he face electoral defeat and a massive number of criminal indictments, but his cognitive abilities seemed even worse than those projected on Biden.  Whether by hook or crook, his campaign team managed to convince 77 million voters that Trump would make a better president than Kamala Harris.  We are now left to face the consequences of this "unpresidented" reversal of fortune.

It's not just going to affect Americans, it is going to affect the whole world, as the US is still the main power broker in global economics and diplomacy.  There is no way to make the global economy "Trump-proof" and if he goes forward with all the increased tariffs he has promised to offset what his incoming administration views as an unfair playing field, then we are going to have some mighty big trade wars on the event horizon that threaten to bring about another global recession similar to what we experienced in 2008.  This will only create economic and social unrest that will allow more populists to come to power, shaking the very foundations of the global order.  Maybe this is what Trump's cynical Project 2025 advisors want, but be careful what you wish for!