In August 2018, Rick Wilson, a longtime Republican Party media consultant, published a book titled Everything Trump touches dies. In it, he argued that MAGA and Trump will ruin the reputations, careers, and stability of people and institutions that choose to align themselves with him. Recently, Paul Krugman and Heather Cox Richardson published separate posts on Substack that bring Wilson’s warning to the present.
The climbing trap
Krugman based his article on the writings of Robert Pape, author of Substack Escalation Trap, who argues that as loss of control of the House and possibly the Senate becomes more likely, Trump becomes more dangerous than ever. Krugman wrote:
“It is a well-understood proposition that business owners on the verge of bankruptcy often engage in destructive behavior. And Trump is on the verge of bankruptcy, not financially but politically. So he, as a failed businessman, has strong incentives to wreak havoc.
“Pape’s argument is basically a version of the phenomenon often called ‘resurrection betting’. When a company is on the brink of failure, it makes sense for the owner to make highly speculative, even wild, investments that are highly likely to fail but could, perhaps, generate enough money to pull the company back from the brink. After all, for the owner, heads he wins, tails, his creditors lose.
“In Trump’s case, everything indicates that his party is headed for defeat in the midterm elections. And while a normal president could live with a Congress controlled by the opposing party, there has been so much corruption and malfeasance in the last two years that Democratic control of Congress, and the subpoena and investigative power that will come with it, will have catastrophic consequences for Trump and everyone around him.
“So Trump has an incentive to do something – anything – that could 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 about what’s good for America wouldn’t pursue disastrous policies for the slim chance of saving his own political skin. But, after all, we’re talking about Trump.”
things have changed
According to Richardson, the Wall Street Journal It has been reported that Vladimir Putin has proposed a meeting next month with Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to decide the fate of Ukraine.
The report explained that “a tripartite summit with China and the United States 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 recognize that the United States has broken away from Europe and allied itself 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 a deeply unpopular man tear up the global system we have lived under for eighty years to sleep with Vladimir Putin.”
Leaving America
writing in The AtlanticNational security expert 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 America’s national interest… Instead, Trump appears to have jettisoned the world order due to his own personal interests, his admiration for Putin, his resentment toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and quite possibly other factors that have until now remained hidden from the American public.
“Outrage over Trump’s actions comes from across the political spectrum,” he wrote. “Nichols points out that former federal prosecutor turned conservative commentator 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 “making war on or adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”
“McCarthy’s exciting article in the National Review Saturday reminds readers that Putin is a murderous dictator who actively supports Iran’s military operations against the United States with intelligence and drones and provokes America’s allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And yet Trump is on their side against Ukraine, a US ally. McCarthy demanded that Congress hold ‘immediate hearings on this week’s shocking escalation of the Trump-Putin alliance.’”
A rat is more dangerous when cornered
Krugman warned that a cornered Trump may resort to what he calls “policy plunder” by “using his remaining power to take actions that are both deeply unpatriotic and deeply unpopular, but that conform to his own preferences and prejudices. With nothing to lose, he will be free to be his worst self: a malignant narcissist who instinctively supports authoritarians and is preoccupied with revenge for anything that threatens his fragile greatness.” In other words, a raging madman with access to the nuclear codes.
“Anyone who believes that Trump will become more cautious, more moderate after the midterm defeat simply does not understand the new political reality. The truth is that political bankruptcy will free Trump to pursue his true desires. And those desires are horrible,” he wrote.
Left to his own devices, Trump is an existential threat to America who emerged in 1776. Let us not overlook the fact that he has been enabled and emboldened by the United States Supreme Court, 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.
Resist tyranny
Richardson concludes his 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 that American representatives would be so afraid of a leader’s abuse of power that they would impeach any president who exceeded his authority, and that American senators would be so jealous of their own power that they would condemn, and tyranny could not take root.
“The framers especially did not anticipate that senators, whom they deliberately gave longer terms than they gave the president, would put party before country and stand by while the president and his appointees captured the prerogatives of the Senate.
“And yet here we are.
“But even given the evidence of the last ten years, it is truly astonishing to see Republicans, who for more than forty years have defended President Ronald Reagan for his stance against the Soviet Union, stand by while Trump trashes the post-World War II global security system to ally the United States with a Russian dictator.”
In the end, the people who wrote 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 someone like you again.
Paul Krugman likes to end his Substack posts with a song. Here’s one that seems pertinent, given news reports that the United States has warned Gulf nations to expect new attacks on Iran soon after the midterm elections.
