Donald Trump's lousy week

The President endured setbacks and failure all week long.

A week ago Friday, the administration sent a blustering letter of demands and threats to Harvard. It insisted that the school surrender its independence and bring on MAGA faculty and administrators to police the thoughts and speech of students and professors. After thinking about it for the weekend, Harvard refused.

After Columbia's earlier capitulation, this was a surprising and brave decision. Of course, Harvard could see that Columbia's kowtowing led to ever-increasing demands by the President – appeasement wasn't working. Academia is beginning to stand up to Trump, forcing the President to fight a costly war of public relations and lawsuits.

Then we learned that the original letter had been sent by mistake! The incompetence is honestly breathtaking.

Trump hired Chris Krebs to run the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, during his first term. Krebs famously declared the results of the 2020 election legitimate, infuriating his former boss. Trump retaliated this week with an Executive Order targeting Krebs and his current employer. Like Harvard, Krebs has announced he will fight. I am pleased and impressed.

During his campaign, Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine in a single day because he is such a talented negotiator and master dealmaker. This week, his Secretary of State said they might have to quit trying because it's really, really hard. Promises made, promises broken.

Last week, Trump was forced to roll back his tariff plans by falling markets and howls of outrage from Wall Street leaders who had backed his campaign. This week, he insisted that food prices are down (they're up) and threatened to fire Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. Those same leaders are demanding he take no such action. The President will have to choose: Crater the markets and destroy US leadership, or appear weak to Fox viewers?

Two judges have issued rulings against unlawful deportations to El Salvador and warning of contempt charges against cabinet members. These legal fights are headed to the Supreme Court, but the legal system is imposing the checks and balances that the founders intended and that the President detests. And in the wee hours of Saturday morning, the US Supreme Court ordered the administration not to deport any of the Venezuelans it is holding in Texas, pending further legal review.

As Trump approaches the 100th day of his second term, he has no clear success to celebrate and plenty of failure to flee. He is a fundamentally weak President. Despite controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, he has signed virtually no laws and been forced to act only by Executive Orders of dubious legality, which are easy for successors to reverse. In his first term, competent people around him contained his worst excesses; in his second, he and the incompetent people around him are tanking his key initiatives.

Policy chaos and economic pain driven his approval ratings lower even than in his first term, and well below those of Biden and Obama at the same time in their Presidencies – a galling comparison to an image-driven narcissist.

Presidential failure is nothing to celebrate, but failure of these policies is much better than the alternative.

Weekend reading

Here are a few things I read this week that I thought worth sharing:

Molly White published an excellent article on all the crypto grift of the Trump family and its hangers-on.

Paul Krugman has a thoughtful post on why Trump cannot win his trade war.

Noah Smith wrote two great pieces. The first is on the likely trajectory of China's dominance in this century, a topic that fascinates me. He also wrote a great explainer on the disaster looming for the US and global economy due to Trump's policies. This second piece is paywalled – you can read the first part for free, but need a subscription for the whole thing. I know folks disliked paywalls and I hardly ever post them, but Noah's excellent.