Summary
Seventy days into his second term, Donald Trump faces growing internal turmoil and public backlash. Allies report he’s making late-night angry calls, upset over negative press and policy setbacks.
The “Signalgate” scandal and GOP resistance to new tariffs have shaken his administration. Trump blames National Security Adviser Mike Waltz for a messaging blunder and resents criticism of his deportation efforts.
His attempts to end wars in Gaza and Ukraine have faltered.
Republicans fear economic fallout from his trade policies, raising concerns about recession and inflation.
And all he had to do was shut up, and take credit for the federal apparatchik doing all the work for him with COVID. Blather at a press conference to his followers to stay home and ‘beat the China virus so America stays strong’ - and then play golf. Push on industry and suppliers to build ventilators, hospital capacity, and facilitate lockdowns and remote school/work.
Imagine if instead of nearly a million direct deaths, we had a mortality similar to Europe - better even as we bought our way to the front of the vaccine line. An actual ‘America first’ in recovery from COVID and the economic slowdown, instead of fumbling the ball so hard in his fourth year and making Biden president.
How anyone thought that he would be the right choice to manage any crisis, let alone economic woes is dumbfounding. The ‘smartest person’ in every room he enters, he’s incapable of anyone else to having the right answer.
I’ve always been told that the aim would be to to find people SMARTER than you with more education and experience and expertise than you, and surround yourself with such people, but a whole lot of people in dumbfuckistan seem to think that being a loudmouth bragging and bloviating idiot who has surrounded himself with lots of people who are even dumber and/or more inexperienced and/or too afraid to speak up is a great model for “leadership”.
People with dumbfuckistan mindset hate seeing someone smarter than themselves; they call this being “elite”. For some reason, people don’t feel the same way about athletics as they do politics. People don’t think you should put “outsiders” into their favorite sportsball team, they want elite athletes. Somehow, that’s not elitist. But having the smartest people running a government - well, that’s just elitist talk.
Boggles the mind.
Absolutely. My best learning experiences in life - both collaborative like mentoring/educational setting, or competitive like sports - have been when I was massively outclassed. Because if you put aside your lizard-brain feelings of being less than or inferior and listen/observe, you can see how it’s working for them and understand what it is you are/aren’t doing or do/don’t know.
Observe. Ask. Understand. Decide… and Review.
But humility is understated. It doesn’t sell on TV, it doesn’t captivate a crowd or rally the masses. “I don’t have the answer, but let’s find out” is honest but doesn’t have the same pull as “the problem is clear, and I know the solution”