The mouth that roars

When is it safe to ignore Trump?

Hi to everyone who subscribes and everyone who just stumbled across my substack. It’s absolutely free to subscribe so what have you got to lose?

I am a reactive writer, which means I am triggered by what I read and feel a need to respond to. Substack, whose computers never seem to tire of counting things, told me in an email that I made 1609 comments during the summer months. Most of the time, I write to enhance or correct someone else’s remarks.

Today I write simply to amplify the best thing I’ve read on the Internet in the last two weeks. Jonathan V Last (JVL) of the Bulwark has given us a great heuristic (rule of thumb) for figuring out when Trump is serious and when he is just blowing inconsequential clouds of terror gas.

Trump will be our burden for the next four years. He will promise and threaten outrageous things. We need to learn to carry that load in the most efficient manner so that it doesn’t drain us dry. The big question is when do we need to take Trump’s threats seriously?

JVL points out that Trump has shown in the last nine years that he can remain focused only on one concern: the pursuit and maintenance of power for himself.

The Evidence

Whenever Trump’s hold on power was threatened (Access Hollywood tape, Mueller investigation, impeachments, electoral defeat, criminal indictments), Trump became a single-minded propaganda machine. He could speak and think of nothing else. He put out hundreds of social media posts and droned on about these threats at every single rally and encounter with the press.

On the other hand, nothing else ever became an obsession for him. For example, looking at Trump’s major campaign promises from 2016, namely building the wall and the Muslim ban, he put up little fuss when these projects were thwarted. He made no persistent effort to work around the roadblocks. His followers didn’t seem to mind much either.

JVL concludes that Trump doesn’t really care whether anything else actually gets done. He cares to a moderate degree about tax cuts because they make billionaires happy and the billionaires are a big part of his power base. He’s willing to delegate deregulation to others because he knows that makes various big pockets people happy, but if deregulation doesn’t happen, it’s not something that trump will obsess about for months on end.

As for radicals like RFK Jr, if this menace to modern medicine is installed as Secretary of HHS, Trump will be OK with whatever he manages to do, but if another HHS Secretary comes on board, Trump will not care at all that RFK’s ideas were never implemented. For this reason, it is important to oppose as many of Trump's lunatic appointments as possible—e.g., Kennedy, Hegseth and Gabbard.

JVL thinks that a similar dynamic will be seen in the case of the mass deportation of undocumented aliens. In the end, it will be no more completed than building the wall. Aliens who have been convicted of a crime and are currently under a deportation order will be booted from the country with great fanfare. A few meat packing factories will be raided, and busloads will be deported in a highly dramatic manner—the video will be shown endlessly on the right-wing media sphere. However, when Trump manages to round up citizens or green card holders, these efforts will get tied up in the courts, and the impetus will stall. The great majority of the undocumented are almost certainly to remain undeported, just as the wall remained unbuilt. After all, the owners of factory farms are Trump supporters, and they need their work force.

How to test the theory

On Nov 25, 2024, Trump announced that he planned to slap a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico because they were allowing drugs and illegal aliens into the country. He stated:

This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!

Because Mexico and Canada are the two largest trading partners of the United States, economists believe this would create turmoil in the US economy and would reignite inflation. The announcement triggered dozens of news reports in the MSM, not one of which welcomed the news.

JVL sees little reason to worry. Trump never showed himself to be in love with a particular tariff level during his first administration—he will remain in power whether tariffs rise or fall, and his followers will accept any choice he makes.

JVL makes the forecast:

On January 20, Trump will issue an Executive Order with his 25 percent tariffs. The trigger date for implementation will be some point in the medium-future. Fox will talk about this great achievement nonstop. The mainstream media will talk about how potentially destabilizing the tariffs are.

And then at some point—maybe before the tariffs kick in, or maybe shortly afterwards—Trump will declare victory. Magically, the supply of fentanyl coming from Mexico and/or Canada will dry up and illegal border crossings will no longer concern Americans.

To support JVL's reading of the future, remember that Trump has already moved away from the 60% tariff that he promised to slap on China during the campaign. Now, he's only talking about a 10% increase.

Bottom line

When it comes to human beings, we are who we are. Over the last nine years, Trump has shown us that he can keep a sustained focus only on maintaining his own power. Most of the other things he says are intended to simply entertain his followers and terrify the libs. Holding power and terrifying other people are what he lives for. Unless his own hold on power is threatened, there will be very little follow through. This man is a blabber, not a doer. Don’t let him jerk your chain. I know I won't—in fact, I see great pink clouds of something very like serenity in my future.