In August 2018, Rick Wilson, a long-time GOP media consultant, published a book entitled Everything Trump Touches Dies. In it, he argued that MAGA and Trump will ruin the reputations, careers, and stability of the people and institutions that choose to align with him. Recently, Paul Krugman and Heather Cox Richardson published separate posts on Substack that bring Wilson’s warning forward to the present.
The Escalation Trap
Krugman based his article on the writings of Robert Pape, author of the Substack Escalation Trap, who argues that, as the loss of control of the House and possibly the Senate becomes more likely, it is making Trump more dangerous than ever. Krugman wrote:
“It’s a well-understood proposition that the owners of businesses that are on the verge of going bust often engage in destructive behavior. And Trump is about to go bankrupt — not financially but politically. So he, like a failing businessman, has strong incentives to wreak havoc.
“Pape’s argument is basically a version of the phenomenon often called ‘gambling for resurrection.’ When a company is on the edge of failure, it makes sense for the owner to make highly speculative, even crazy investments that are highly likely to fail but might, just might, make enough money to pull the company back from the brink. After all, for the owner it’s heads he wins, tails his creditors lose.
“In Trump’s case, all indications are that his party is heading for defeat in the midterms. And while a normal president might be able to live with a Congress controlled by the opposing party, there has been so much corruption and malfeasance over the past two years that Democratic control of Congress, and the subpoena and investigative power that will bring, will have catastrophic consequences for Trump and everyone around him.
“So Trump has an incentive to do something — anything — that might shake up this election. Attacking Iran would probably lead to an even bigger Republican defeat, but it might, just might, rally Trump’s base enough to change the outcome. True, a president who cared at all about what is good for America wouldn’t pursue disastrous policies for the slim chance of saving his own political skin. But this is, after all, Trump we’re talking about.”
Things Have Changed
According to Richardson, the Wall Street Journal has reported that Vladimir Putin has proposed a meeting next month with Trump and China President Xi Jinping to decide the fate of Ukraine.
The report explained that “a three-way summit with China and the U.S. would cement Russia’s status as one of the world’s three great powers, a status Putin has sought since 2000 when he entered the Kremlin. Such a summit would formally acknowledge that the U.S. had broken from Europe and allied with Russia, a goal for Putin as he tries to take control of Ukraine.”
Richardson wrote, “After ten years of Trump insisting that reports of his cooperation with Russia were a hoax, here we are, watching one profoundly unpopular man tear apart the global system under which we have lived for eighty years in order to climb into bed with Vladimir Putin.”
Abandoning America
Writing in The Atlantic, national security scholar Tom Nichols said, “The American commander in chief has abandoned the Western order, the most successful — and powerful — security arrangement in human history.” Richardson observed:
“This decision appears to have had nothing to do with the national interest of the United States…. Instead, Trump appears to have thrown out the world order because of his own personal interests, his admiration for Putin, his resentment of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, and quite possibly other factors that so far have remained obscured from the American public.
“Outrage over Trump’s actions has come from across the political spectrum,” she wrote. “Nichols notes that former federal prosecutor turned conservative commenter Andrew McCarthy wrote that Trump is giving Putin ‘aid and comfort.’ Those words echo Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution, which defines treason against the United States, as ‘levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.’
“McCarthy’s blistering article in the National Review on Saturday reminds readers that Putin is a murderous dictator who is actively supporting Iran’s military operations against the United States with both intelligence and drones and provoking U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And yet Trump is siding with him against Ukraine, a U.S. ally. McCarthy demanded Congress hold ‘immediate hearings about this week’s shocking escalation of the Trump-Putin alliance.’”
A Rat Is Most Dangerous When Cornered
Krugman warned that a cornered Trump may resort to what he calls “policy looting” by “using his remaining power to take actions that are both deeply unpatriotic and deeply unpopular, but fit his own preferences and prejudices. With nothing left to lose, he will be free to be his worst self — a malignant narcissist who instinctively supports authoritarians and is preoccupied with revenge against anything and anyone that threatens his fragile grandiosity.” In other words, a raging lunatic with access to the nuclear codes.
“Anyone who believes Trump will become more cautious, more moderate in the aftermath of midterm defeat just doesn’t understand the new political reality. The truth is that political bankruptcy will free Trump to pursue his true desires. And those desires are horrifying,” he wrote.
Left to his own devices, Trump is an existential threat to the United States that came into being in 1776. Don’t overlook the fact that the US Supreme Court has enabled and emboldened him, based on a legal theory known as “the unitary executive,” a creation of conservative groups like the Federalist Society that has no basis in the Constitution.
Resisting Tyranny
Richardson concludes her essay with this observation:
“The Framers of the Constitution thought they had designed a system that would prevent the rise of a tyrant. They believed U.S. representatives would be so fearful of a leader’s abuse of power that they would impeach any president who overstepped his authority, and that U.S. senators would be so jealous of their own power they would convict, and tyranny would not be able to take root.
“The Framers especially did not anticipate that senators, to whom they deliberately gave longer terms than they gave the president, would put party over country and stand aside as a president and his appointees captured the prerogatives of the Senate.
“And yet, here we are.
“But even given the evidence of the past ten years, it is truly astonishing to see Republicans, who for more than forty years have championed President Ronald Reagan for his stance against the Soviet Union, stand aside as Trump trashes the post–World War II system of global security in order to ally the United States with a Russian dictator.”
In the end, the people who fashioned the Constitution simply failed to anticipate the overwhelmingly corrosive influence of power, nor did they provide a way to rein in a madman. RIP, America. The world may never see the likes of you again.
Paul Krugman likes to end his Substack posts with a song. Here’s one that seems pertinent, given the news reports that the US has warned the Gulf nations to expect renewed attacks on Iran shortly after the midterm elections.