Part 157: The Madness of Donald Trump – Government Takeover and Counterfactuals

Published February 21, 2025.

Feb 22, 2025

Image of Donald Trump and Elon Musk cutting down a cherry tree on the White House lawn created using Deep Dream Generator by author (Artificial Intelligence).

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By Zachary Ellison, Independent Journalist

Donald Trump is unhinged, but does that mean America has lost its sense of reality too? Trump’s totalitarian approach to leadership threatens the core idea of American democracy, that the President isn’t a king. King Trump has forced the Republican Party into line, ending any speculation that the party of Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower would return to its roots as a voice of moderate decency whether on complex issues such as slavery or the military industrial-complex. After all, it was President Lincoln who famously declared in his inaugural address striving to prevent a civil war, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.” In his farewell address, Eisenhower said the following, “We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow. No one would accuse Donald Trump of being a great orator, but is he a leader, or simply an apparition.

Never before has an American President had a literal temper-tantrum over a geographic name on a map, much less retaliated against a news agency, the Associated Press. Growing up as history wonk, I always loved reading counterfactual history, an account of what would have gone differently had a certain event or change not occurred. Some have suggested that there’s a method to Trump’s madness, that this is simply a businessman-like approach to presidential leadership. After all, if Trump’s first term was defined by political appointees, his current approach is to amount the wealthy, such as the leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by Elon Musk leading purges of career civil servants. Trump has even succeeded in installing political appointees, but unwealthy men such as Kash Patel at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Pete Hegseth at the Department of Defense (DoD).

Patel and Hegseth represent the worst of American paranoia, servileness, and repugnancy. Neither nominee was confirmed with bipartisan support, with Hegseth’s confirmed requiring the tie-breaking vote of Vice President J.D. Vance. You know things are bad when you can’t trust the leaders of the FBI and the U.S. Military. At this hour, Hegseth is being warned in writing against pre-emptive terminations of high-ranking military officers by a bipartisan group of lawmakers who wrote to him: “There are valid reasons to remove a general or flag officer, but there must be clear, transparent and apolitical criteria and processes associated with any such dismissal.” The declining validity of Trump’s mandate to govern is becoming rapidly apparent with 84% of Americans disapproving of his clemency for violent January 6 insurrectionists and majorities disapproving of his handling of the economy and federal government management.

So things are already not going well within a matter of weeks, and yet Trump who has survived two impeachment attempts for subverting the rule of law and peaceful transfer of power isn’t likely to be removed even if similar misconduct occurs. Scarily, many seem to question even the basic value of the federal government in a way that makes you question whether his election isn’t so much a mandate as it’s a right-wing coup. Trump’s extremism isn’t news, but the bigger question of whether it’s calculated is keeping the media myth alive that there’s some method to his madness. Clearly, the wheels are going to come off the clown-car at some point no matter how many federal employees are fired for having participate in investigations of violent insurrectionists or even more bizarrely worked somehow on federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The crash ending of Donald Trump’s presidency isn’t so much a matter of when, but of how and why. If this goes on for four years, it just might be the end of democracy.

People right up to former President Joe Biden had argued that democracy was on the ballot, and yet the American people didn’t respond to the argument so much as they did to the idea that Trump would be deliver of cheap eggs and gasoline. As he increasingly fails to deliver on that promise in no small part because of his erratic behavior toward our largest trading partners, including a loyal ally in Canada, you’ve got to question if this isn’t simply insanity. The weakness of our democratic system has been fully exposed in a crude and profoundly frustrating way. It’s one thing to be anti-intellectual, but it’s another thing to be anti-government, and that’s where we’re at these days. For their part, Democrats in Congress as of yet have failed to mount an effective resistance in diving the Republican Party in a way that would block Trump’s directives.

Whether courts can effectively succeed in corralling a person who lacks respect for the law is an even more vexing question. Trump who demands total loyalty of his followers may be an agent of chaos, but is the price of disloyalty public execution? Trump’s disrespect of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his first term in demanding in a mafia-like manner an investigation of President Joe Biden and his son Hunter over foreign investments followed by his more recent false accusation that Ukraine started the war with Russia led to him being accused of living in a “disinformation space.” Does it matter though? Most importantly in Trump’s chaos-agent strategy is he simply succeeding in overloading the news space with false information to the extent that the average American no longer cares to distinguish actual reality.

Trump’s onslaught on reality isn’t a new playbook. No matter how many people warn against him, the cult of personality around him is so powerful that it can’t be punctured. Trump who lacks any saving graces is hailed as a marvelous leader, a man so clever that the average American can’t help but be impressed at his ability to bully through every situation. Last summer when an assassin tried to shoot him, Trump turned the moment into political gold with the unwitting support of the media. No matter how many headlines they write about him with a discrediting slant, or investigations done by Congress or law enforcement, the guy just doesn’t seem to want to go down. So here we are again, rudderless being lead toward catastrophe.

Trump whose made no secret of his fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin does the same with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu even suggesting that the entire Palestinian population of Gaza be displaced and blustering grandly about turning it into a riviera. Should CNN simply start running a daily headline: “INSANE TRUMP PRESIDENCY DAY 32” and spare people the details. George Washington facing a revolt from his own military officers on March 13, 1783 said the following about such dangers: “And let me conjure you, in the name of our common Country—as you value your own sacred honor—as you respect the rights of humanity, and as you regard the Military and national character of America, to express your utmost horror and detestation of the Man who wishes, under any specious pretenses, to overturn the liberties of our Country, and who wickedly attempts to open the flood Gates of Civil discord, and deluge our rising Empire in Blood.” Donald Trump is “the Man” who Washington had feared.

At the end of the first Trump Presidency, his own Vice President and Cabinet refused to exercise the sole clause of the constitution that allows for the Executive branch to remove its own leadership: the 25th Amendment. This despite Trump having instigated a violent insurrection quite foolishly, but also intentionally against Congress. The rule of law in the United States of America lies not ultimately with the Supreme Court or the Executive Branch, but with the Congress. Yet now Trump leads a purge against his own government with a newly created arm of government, the DOGE in a way that undermines the very internal and external securities of the country. Donald Trump’s approach to leadership is fundamentally un-American, it’s the worst possible reflection of leadership in a way that no extra-marital affair could ever compete with for attention. Trump’s sin isn’t moral or personal, but political; it’s profound disrespect for history.

The presidency of Donald Trump is so ahistorical you might think he’s going to plunge us back into the days of slave-holding. In casting away the idea of affirmative action, he’s given exceptional credibility to the idea that treating people unfairly for upholding diversity, equity, and inclusion is somehow the very act of fostering a just society. Trump’s nonsense campaign works because it’s divisive. By creating an endless feud with reality he’s succeeding in creating a false reality that many tens of millions of Americans have bought into wholesale much like how generations ago Americans fell victim of land speculators. Trump has convinced these people that he’s actually their friend, when in fact he’s defrauding them of their very civil rights while creating the perfect conditions for a prolonged economic depression. Whether that depression comes in the face of concerted efforts to keep banks and stock markets afloat remains to be seen, but it’s the ultimate test of whether presidential power and market stability are aligned.

A counterfactual for Donald Trump might look something like an economic collapse combined with military tragedy finally undermining the confidence again of Congress despite his best efforts at petty intimidation over social media. Trump’s mass removal of civil servants might be billed as an attempt at efficiency, but whether it’s the first step towards complete totalitarianism hasn’t been fully tested. Undoubtedly doing so will harm the economy without really balancing the budget. Instead of seeking new revenues through taxation, Trump’s instead levying tariffs and trying to cut down government to the barest of bones. Economists have long speculated that the United States of America enters a recessionary cycle every ten years, and yet it’s been nearly twenty years since the great recession of 2007-9. Our dangerously overleveraged national budget depends upon foreign creditors as much as it does internal economic assets.

To date, our allies haven’t fully panicked, instead largely seeking to placate while dismissing our lunatic leadership. Some efforts have been waged to re-assure them that we haven’t totally lost our national mind. Trump’s justifications, often fleeting, do work as palabras that soothe his followers so that’s what’s keeping fuel in the political vehicle at this time. So long as there’s confidence things aren’t going badly, they’re going to follow him even as he threatens to again lead the country off the proverbial cliff. Thomas Jefferson on August 18, 1821 wrote to former Speaker of the House and then U.S. Senator Nathaniel Macon, “there does not exist an engine so corruptive of the government and so demoralizing of the nation as a public debt.” Despite being somewhat ignored, this critical issue is emerging as principal political cudgel of Trump and Musk as a way to gain mass political support by bringing an axe unto the government itself.

Donald Trump’s systematic use of threats now increasingly leverages around the idea of cutting federal funding, whether over water policy or gender in sports. The effective ability of Donald Trump to demonize his opponents is integral to this political strategy to compel coercion even absent the role of courts as arbitrators much less a system of federalism. So can American democracy, much less a republic, survive the challenge of the nightmare leader of this countries founders. John Adams, a former Vice President and President of the United States on December 17, 1814 weighed in on this very dynamic writing to John Taylor, a legendary member of the Virginia House of Delegates: “There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.” Adams added, “It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy.” The great debate at the outset as the organization and character of our government might very well soon be renewed.

Why is it so rare today in our media to hear the contemplations of our Founding Fathers? Do we not trust their wisdom to continue to lead us through the best and worst of times? It was recently suggested to me that I should stop calling this series investigative journalism, but instead historical journalism. Yet I don’t think that the idea of investigation is indistinct from the writing of history, much less personal account. Our ability to tell our national story is now being encumbered in a way that isn’t just the pleasure of a counterfactual but is in fact ahistorical. Trump’s profound lack of meaningful education in the meaning, much less the practice of democratic government isn’t so much about fear of foreign entanglements or national debt as it seems to be about personal acclamation. Sitting far away from Washington D.C., I came upon a couple in the jacuzzi of a hotel, the wife soon suggested to me that Trump had really shown the officials how to quickly respond to a wildfire after being told I was displaced, I couldn’t agree, yet I felt no profound need to disagree on the goodness of their character even as many wisely have questioned the increasingly rushed response to clear debris and reinhabit burned zones.

Americans despite our quarrelsomeness outside of the Civil War have never quite come to open blows and violence. This is the saving grace of our democracy, and it lasted all the way up Trump’s insurrection. Our episodic violence is part and parcel of a difficult process, never mind the failings of interment or displacement of Native Americans. Trump who fancies himself as perhaps the most native of Americans never discusses his own family’s history of immigration even as he targets those who have sought a better life with deportation. The wantonness of the Trump Presidency, it’s very cruelty some have argued is the point. Yet Trump carries himself not as a cruel man so much as someone who gets results, “He sure showed them didn’t he” the woman told me with a laugh under a clear night in the Coachella Valley. In a place that’s long been a crossroads, all I could do is wish them safe travels on their return to Orange County.

Donald Trump might be a strongman, but I’m less sure he can change our national character. The fact that his presidency is a charade doesn’t mean that all Americans have grown fundamentally unkind even as extremist elements have gained popularity, and indeed high positions. Absent mutinies or cataclysms, Trump just might make it through the next four years even as we face an increasingly alarming degree of chaos. Change is natural, indeed good leadership requires some changes, but doing so for arbitrary or false reasons undermines confidence in goodness of our government. The Associated Press’s claim in the lawsuit was simple: “The press and all people in the United States have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government.” This was hardly a new question either in American history, but it’s increasingly important, and I’ll continue to express thoughts freely.

Link: First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln (1861)

Link: President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address (1961)

Link: AP sues Trump administration officials after being blocked from presidential

Link: Senate confirms Kash Patel as Trump’s FBI director

Link: Hegseth confirmed as Trump’s defense secretary in tie-breaking vote despite turmoil over his conduct

Link: Lawmakers warn Hegseth against political firings of generals

Link: 83 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons: Poll

Link: Trump falsely calls Zelensky ‘a dictator’ after Ukraine’s leader accuses him of living in ‘disinformation space’

Link: George Washington Newburgh Address (1783)

Link: Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 19 August 1821

Link: From John Adams to John Taylor, 17 December 1814