Trump 2.0

Will it be Different this Time Around? Don't Count on It.

“Standing in the middle of nowhere,
Wondering how to begin
Lost between tomorrow and yesterday, 
Between now and then.
Now we’re back where we started,
Here we go 'round again
Day after day, I get up and I say
It's time to do it again."
-Ray Davies, The Kinks ("Do it again")

You’d be forgiven if you thought that we had seen the last of Trump running things when he left Washington four years ago. The worst of sore losers, not only did he incite an insurrection aimed at overturning an election, but he refused to partake in the normal, traditional appearances signifying a transition to the Biden White House. He refused to meet with Biden and he ignominiously left D.C. before the inauguration for Mar-a-lago days before.

So here we are in 2025, about to go through the wringer of a Trump Presidency again. The stench is already rolling in as a large contingent of the State Department Diplomatic Corps resigned en masse on Sunday evening rather than subject themselves to Trump foreign policy again. When Trump’s Secretary of State bluntly assessed Trump as a “f**king moron,” he wasn’t the only person thinking that in our foreign service. I had a conversation last week with someone who’s husband has worked at the DOJ since George W. Bush, and was retiring as well.

Listening to Trump’s speech, it was another hodgepodge of ridiculousness: Panama Canal? Gulf of America? Half of it was just retreaded “American Carnage” all over again, but if you look out your window, America is pretty great right now. Sometimes I wonder what world MAGA lives in. Except this time, Trump claimed to have God on his side due to the fact he survived an assassination attempt. The MAGA faithful all agreed as they swooned.

We’re about to do a complete redux, a sequel, a reboot, a new version of the same thing we went through four years ago. So what is that going to look like?

1. You’re going to get a revolving door of incompetence. You’ve already gotten a sneak preview of this with Trump’s Cabinet Appointees. Despite the utter lack of quality and ability among these clowns,¹ most of them are going to actually get into the office. They’re going to quickly realize that the bureaucracy they are inheriting is much larger and uncontrollable than they anticipate. That the job is more than chummy golf games, corporatist slogans and ruling a fiefdom by fiat. Many won’t last a few months and I wholly anticipate the average span to be about 6 months, or the equivalent of 12 Scaramuccis.

2. Trump will say ridiculous shit. This is a given. He will rant on Truth Social daily. His indoor inauguration, which will have a small contingent in person, he will claim as the greatest attended inauguration in history, like he did last time. He will say after Greenland, we will buy Iceland. He will wonder why Ukraine and Russia just can’t get along. He will say that he’d like to put up a Trump Tower in Gaza because its such great seafront property. He’s stupid, we just have to accept that, shake our heads, and hope he doesn’t start WWIII.

3. Trump’s moneymaking grift will continue. His new cryptocurrency will go up as adherents buy into it. His DJT stock (Truth Social) will be the meme stock that will mirror his Presidential approval. The backdoor ways he will hustle and scam money out of people will be done right out in the open and it will be appalling. There will also be nothing anyone will be able to do to stop it since Republicans hold all the levers of power.

4. He’ll do something so horrible it will be worthy of impeachment, again. Republicans will give him a slap on the wrist, again. The only question is what it will be about and how horrible it will be. Will there be enough public outrage to do anything about it? Probably not; Republican voters reflexively assume any allegations against Trump (or any Republican really) are just Democratic sour grapes, regardless of the worthiness of the allegation.

5. He will crash the economy. People forget that 8 of the top 10 and 13 of the top 20 single day point drops in NYSE history occurred under Trump, and many were well before the COVID crisis. Trump tends to say and do stupid things when it comes to the economy that have wide ranging impacts and puts markets into chaos. His economic policies that he ran on would cause more inflation and increased prices, not less. Markets depend on security, stability and reliability for supply chains, and Trump’s foreign policy encourages the opposite. If we were to take him at his word (we can’t), we should be worried about the US market.

6. The Oval Office will look like a rotating audition for Celebrity Apprentice. D-List stars bragging about their proximity to the President, while Trump gets appearances with tabloid list nobodies.

7. I actually anticipate Trump will pull America out of NATO.² He threatened it last time over and over again. Despite Biden’s reassurances and reforging of those alliances Trump damaged, and despite the effectiveness of NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump doesn’t like Europe, Europe doesn’t like Trump and you can just see him letting it go. Putin never smiled so large, and he has Trump’s ear, not any European leader.

8. He is going to toy about running again in 2028 even though he is Constitutionally prohibited from doing so. Journalists will ask, he’ll say “Maybe I will, we’ll look into it, yada yada yada” and act like it is an open question, especially since he did not win consecutive terms. There is no question, he can’t be President again. But just the fact journalists are asking the question will raise a level of doubt, his supporters will take it and run with it, and you’ll get this confused gray area growing larger and larger about it.

9. But he can play kingmaker. Republicans wanting to run for office in 2026 and 2028 are going to go and kiss the ring and bend the knee and debase themselves in ways no honorable politician would want to be seen, just so they can get Trump’s stamp of approval.

10. Finally, 2026 will be a disaster for Republicans, and 2028 will likely be too. When you have every lever in Washington, there’s only one place to go and that’s down. If there is one consistency in politics, it’s that Americans REALLY do not like single party control. You’re going to see a blue wave in 2026, the only question is how high and what issues fuel it. Come 2028, with new GOP candidates seeking the nomination, none of them will excite the base and drive voters to the polls in the same way Trump did; Trump really was a political unicorn exciting GOP voters all the way down to the bottom of the grassroots. People will want to turn the page in four years from the chaos, the craziness, the self-sabotage and overall Trump era. We tend to vote for the opposite of the predecessors, and it will be interesting to see who becomes the torchbearer of that mantle and guides us toward the 2030s.

There is always the possibility Trump actually doesn’t last four years in office. If he serves a full term, by the time he leaves he will be the oldest President ever. That didn’t work out so well for Biden as his age caught up to him. Trump’s faculties could begin to falter (how could we tell?), he could have a heart attack (he eats garbage all the time), or he may just get tired and quit (he has the attention span of a fruit fly). In that sense, J.D. Vance will inherit the Presidency, and that changes the dynamic somewhat. Nonetheless, four years is a long time, and we are in for a wild ride.

PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner

I’ve been reading how people are shocked Trump’s approval rating right now (mid 40s) outshines Biden’s (mis 30’s, lowest of his Presidency). Give it some time. As people remember what Trump is like as President, you can bet he’ll get that down into the 30s pretty quickly.

Inaugurations are about turning the page, and everyone wants to turn the page from COVID, inflation, Gaza protests, and other aspects of the Biden White House era. Once Trump takes office again, it’s his era, along with all the negative things in the world going along with it. Many forgot what a Trump presidency was actually like. It’ll sink in pretty quickly this time around.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

I suppose it’s too much to hope that Trump doesn’t last as long as William Henry Harrison. He gave the longest inauguration speech in history, outside, on one of the coldest days of DC history, without a coat. He got a cold and died 31 days later.

Not that I’m hoping he dies, but if he were to just say “F**k this, I don’t need this again” after a week, I think Americans would be thrilled with it.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

“So help me God.”

-Words added by our first President, George Washington, at the end of taking the oath of office. The words are not actually a part of the oath, but are given as part of it every inauguration.

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. I was about to say “Despite the fact that had they been appointed by any other President they wouldn’t see the light of day to get through,” but we all know that’s not true. Republicans are such tribal partisans these days a Republican President could nominate Doctor Nick from the Simpsons as the head of Health and Human Services, or Lionel Hutz as Attorney General and a Republican majority would push it through.

2. Trump doing so will be the biggest foreign policy debacle since Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich giving Czechoslovakia to the Nazis.