In May 2017, just a few months into the first Trump administration, I wrote a column arguing that his incapacity was so obvious and destructive that he should be removed from office via the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.
This was a popular column, but its argument did not hold up well. Trump’s first-term White House remained abnormally chaotic, and Trump remained, well, himself — but relative to the initial months, his presidency stabilized sufficiently that the claim of incapacity and the call for constitutional intervention didn’t fit the facts. My column had been written in a spirit of “this can’t go on.” But it did go on — and more than that, it went on with better outcomes in economic and foreign policy than I had thought possible, to the point that within a few years of Joe Biden (who became a more exemplary 25th Amendment case!), voters were nostalgic for Trumpian results.
There have been many moments like that for observers of the Trump phenomenon — moments when it seemed his faults were leading to some irrevocable crash, or when it seemed he was finished politically forever. Time and again, those judgments have proved premature; time and again, Trump has tempted fate and lived to tell the tale.
Which is why, when he returned to office, I vowed to avoid premature declarations of catastrophe. I would criticize, but I wouldn’t act as though everything was irrecoverable for at least the first year.
This week has sorely tested that resolve. None of Trump’s first-term policies carried the comprehensive risks involved in his great trade war — the threat of recession at the very least, the potential threat to America’s global position and basic solvency as well. Even with the suspension of the country-by-country tariffs, the scale of the China trade war and the general uncertainty created by the Trump whipsaw portend economic pain without a clear path to a rebound.
That’s a very bad place to be for a president who has always depended on good economic vibes, and it’s happening against a backdrop of other wrong turns and disappointments. I wrote in December about the need for a fruitful balance between Trumpism’s populist and techno-libertarian factions, between the spirit of JD Vance and the spirit of Elon Musk. I was imagining, say, pro-family tax policy jointed to abundance-oriented deregulation — but instead, the balance so far consists of reckless trade war on the populist side and Musk’s crusade to reduce government head count without apparent regard to government capacity. It’s a synthesis of sorts, but not a happy one.
Meanwhile everything the administration does, it does with a dose of tough-guy excess, as though determined to alienate any part of its coalition that isn’t fully committed to the MAGA cause. It’s not enough to pursue deportations; we need to deport people to a prison in El Salvador without convicting them of any crime. It’s not enough to ask our NATO allies to bear more burdens; the ask has to come with a snarl, a trade war and a fixation on Greenland. It’s not enough to purge D.E.I. programs; we have to hack away at scientific research and humanitarian aid as well.
This all makes for a very bad trajectory, and the fact that Trump survived bad trajectories before doesn’t mean that this one is destined to reverse. Maybe this time he’s too cocooned and unrestrained, too surrounded by flatterers, too confident in his place among history’s decisive figures (someone should tell him about their often unhappy endgames) to steer toward stability and popularity.
But if he or his advisers did want to steer differently, we’re still at a moment when the course correction would be relatively simple. The economy isn’t yet in recession, and Trump is underwater but not yet deeply unpopular. That means he has options now that he won’t have if things get worse; it means he can still pursue his preferred policies if he does so with less reckless disregard.
He can have tariffs; he just can’t have the tariffs of “Liberation Day,” with their scale and cackhanded design. He can have deportations; he just has to accept the limits imposed by moral decency and the Supreme Court. He can have a version of the Department of Government Efficiency, just refocused on deregulation, where it should have been focused from the start. He can have yes-men and flatterers; he just needs some people in his cabinet to say, “Sir, maybe not.”
He can even pine for Greenland and woo its denizens. He just can’t threaten to go seize it.
Throughout his time as the dominant force in our politics, Trump has showed a capacity for what you might call temporary discipline, linked to a crude survival instinct and a sense of the prevailing winds.
If those instincts are still with him, this is the time to listen to them — and to remember that while fortune has her favorites, nemesis always waits.
