The POTUS of Oz

He sold himself as master of the business universe who would fix everything. But at the end of the road we’ve found a floundering, vengeful bully who doesn’t even know what a tariff is.

Musk and Two Bored Children Hold a Presser.

To a critic of texts, it was an episode brimming with telling detail. The 4-year-old (full name X Æ A-Xii) did what you’d expect any kid dragged with his father to work would do: made faces, amused himself with his own body, tried to talk to the scowly guy with the sharpie. Lil X was puzzled: that desk was so big and shiny and the guy’s hands were folded so nicely but it looked like he, too, had been dressed up neatly by his mommy and dragged to work. His dad always got to wear whatever he wanted. And he talked a lot. A whole lot. To Lil X that showed he was the boss. Who was this other guy?

The guy at the desk—“President Donald J. Trump”—looked alternately grumpy, admiring, tired, and bored. He looked at his fingers, shifted positions, and tried to ignore Lil X picking his nose.

After the event, late-night hosts had a field day and more serious commentators remarked how “humiliating” it was for Trump to have Musk “take the spotlight.” Everyone seemed to have forgotten how, before the election, it was almost universally agreed by journalists that Trump was running to avoid jail, and had no real interest in the actual job of POTUS. He’d bragged about what he’d accomplish “on the first day” but when he debated Kamala Harris he babbled incoherently and it was clear he hadn’t thought through much of anything. He got his talking points from fortuitous events (an attempted assassination, which showed that God had spared him to Make American Great Again), his intense hatred of all who dared oppose him, and his one true talent: selling himself. He was so good at that he managed to convince both “family values” evangelicals and bros who emulated his pussy-grabbing that he (and he alone) would be their retribution for all the lefty wokeness they’d had to endure.

Once the get-out-of-jail mission was accomplished, the presidency became what it always had been for Trump: an opportunity to make money, play the Big Man, and perhaps most of all: Get Even. Actually governing was not on the agenda. And if you could help him make money, punish his enemies, or sell the never-before-seen-in-the-entire-universe greatness of his accomplishments, his so-called “mandate,” or his towering masculinity, he has been perfectly happy to let you show off, happy to let you try to charm the press with your weirdly-named human accessory, happy to let you be the “efficiency expert.” It’s all fine, just as long as you genuflect to the beneficent king at the start of your performance.

If you bankrolled his election, he’d even shill for you.

So, was Trump humiliated by letting Musk take the stage with his own brand of bullshit? No. Probably a little pissed off at having X dig for buggers at the Resolute Desk. Probably wishing he was on the golf course or eating a burger. But humiliated? Hardly. I mean, could he go any lower than selling cars for Musk on the front lawn of the White House? (The child was there again, too.)

That bizarre February 11th “press conference” was the day I knew for sure that Trump 2.0 couldn’t give a shit about what fresh hell Musk could drag our country into. During his first term, Trump had, on occasion, pretended he was a responsible, compassionate leader. He wasn’t, but he at least tried to act the part. Now that he’s safely installed and surrounded by obliging underlings as well as protected by the “Supreme” Court, he’s given up on that show. No need for it. He’s evaded jail, he’s bludgeoned the GOP into submission and has a bunch of lethally incompetent supplicants for his cabinet, he feels no need to pretend anymore.

It should have been clear during the election—was clear to many of us, but never became the Big Story for the corporate media—that Trump had no plan himself for what’s actually happened this second term. Although of course he was lying when he said he “knew nothing about” Project 2025, it’s for certain that he never even read a cartoon-illustrated summary of it. It was good enough for him to know that it got the Democrats’ pants on fire. During his campaign, there was lots of talk about immigrants eating pets, the specter of sex-change operations at school, Biden’s (and then Harris’) incompetence, and how he’d fix the economy and end the war in Ukraine his first day in office. I don’t recall any mention of mass firings or empowering a bunch of adolescent boys to rummage through our personal data. We never heard that we’d be subject to what Ruth Ben-Ghiat has described as a “power-sharing arrangement with an unelected private citizen who is essentially executing a hostile takeover of the U.S. government to capture data, neutralize investigations into his private companies, and use our country as a laboratory for a new form of authoritarian techno-governance that requires the wrecking of democracy.”

This should be the Big Story every day in every media outlet. Not complaints about what the Democrats aren’t doing right, or morning headlines about outrageous emails and official “declarations” that we know by now are likely to be “walked back” by the evening. They crowd and cancel each other out in people’s minds, and we’re left going “Wha…?” Some commentators have suggested it’s deliberate whiplash, to distract and confuse. I don’t agree. I think it’s constant blundering improvisation.

The Big Story is that Trump 2.0 has no idea of what he’s doing—while he takes a wrecking ball to our country.

Trump Just Can’t Quit His Love Affair with Tariffs

He’s been in love with them for decades—which may by itself explain why he can’t quit. It would be admitting that he’d been confused about his “signature” policy all his life—and that would be intolerable to his narcissism. Sometimes I think he just likes the word—you know, the way he discovered he liked the word “groceries.” Or, if not the word itself, what you can do with the word, like “slap” them on your competitors. “Slapping on a tariff” satisfies his unquenchable desire to redress grievances, which are boundless: Every other country, according to Trump (and including Canada!) has been “taking advantage” of the United States, and it’s time to “stop it.”

Some of his grievance-claims are so far-fetched that they have to be seen as either demonstrations of insanity or mindless improvisations in response to challenges to his tariff orgy. Or maybe he learned his “history” from telephone suck-ups with Putin: “The EU was set up to take advantage of the United States.” And this wasn’t even the craziest thing he said during that press conference, the Irish Prime Minister by his side.

It’s hard to find a non-paranoid, non-ego-driven justification for what he’s been doing.

Or maybe he’s just a terrible student:

Whatever is going on in what Lawrence O’Donnell described as Trump’s “broken brain,” it boggles more rational minds. How hard is it to figure out that if you “slap” an extra charge on imports, it’s the country buying the stuff that’s paying? Even I—math-phobic from birth—get it. But Trump isn’t ruled by reason, but by the glittering object that he’s fallen in (self-)love with and that’s he’s sure he can impress and sell to others. If the product turns out to not deliver as promised, he just revises the sales-pitch to accommodate.

“There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that. It won’t be much.”

“There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing.”

“Little disturbance,” “period of transition.” It isn’t in the narcissist’s playbook to admit he’s been wrong. So just improvise a little revision of the plan.

You can also “double-down.” So, when questioned about his having admitted recession was a possibility (a demonstration of Trump’s decline, he actually told the truth) it didn’t take long before he was back to “We’re going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, and we’re going to become so rich you’re not going to know where to spend all that money. I’m telling you, you just watch….But as I said, [SB: when?] I can do it the easy way [SB: which would be?] or the hard way. The hard way to do it is exactly what I’m doing [SB: which is?] but the results are going to be 20 times greater. Remember, Trump is always right.”

Trump is always right. Remember that.

So why is he constantly going back-and-forth on his tariff threats?

“Flexibility,” he said when questioned by the NBC reporter:

Trump’s broken brain, it appears, still has some muscle-memory left from his days as a marketer. If you can’t defend the malfunctioning product—in this case, Trump himself—just re-brand it.

But don’t forget to discredit the reporter. And trash Biden.

As a Don, Donald is no Vito Corleone

Although he’s content—so far—to let Musk (or, as Rachel Maddow calls him, “Trump’s biggest campaign donor”) take the spotlight, Trump can’t bear it when a genuine leader who is admired and respected (as opposed to a strongman like Putin, who he worships) won’t genuflect to him. He had a toddler’s tantrum when Hillary Clinton called him a “puppet” of Putin’s. And he lost it entirely when Zelenskyy stood up for his own country rather than accept Trump’s version of things. It may have been orchestrated for the media, and the political purpose may have been to please Putin, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Trump’s explosion was fueled by personal fury at Zelenskyy for all the admiration that had been bestowed on him during Biden’s presidency. If Zelenskyy had bent the knee to Trump, that might have been forgiven. But Zelenskyy (calmly and politely, although the media reported it as though it were a two-sided brawl) wouldn’t do that if what was required was taking a “deal” that would leave Ukraine defenseless. You can’t trust Putin, Zelenskyy reminded Trump, and his designs are bigger than Ukraine. The United States, while currently protected by a “nice ocean” would someday feel the pain, too.

Vance, probably as pre-planned, had taken the lead in what was clearly an attempt (and Putin certainly saw it that way) to “cut” the audacious Zelenskyy “down to size.” But when Zelenskyy wouldn’t behave like a grateful puppy but like the “real man” that Trump has (falsely) advertised himself as, any pretense at acting presidential gave way to the bully.

For a brief period, the media speculated that this revolting spectacle might break Trump’s hold on the GOP. But no, after a few of them spontaneously expressed shock, they were quickly back to their usual obedience.

What, if anything, will break their lemming-like allegiance to this guy? Have they no shame?

The only thing I can compare it all to is the power the mob boss exercises. That power operates in part through the (implied or explicit) threat of retribution on those who disobey—which Trump and his gang certainly do engage in, especially before crucial votes. And while Trump himself, in those late-night phone calls, may not threaten to break anyone’s kneecaps (just to destroy their careers) the Proud Boys are, you know, standing back and standing by.

Pondering the comparison, I was browsing through film versions of the mob boss, and discovered one that reminded me of Trump’s behavior with Zelenskyy. It isn’t Don Corleone, who never loses his cool over business deals, and who exercises his authority quietly and strategically.

No, Trump is more like Paul Vitti (Robert DeNiro) in “Analyze That,” who when released from prison, tries to find a legitimate job, one of which (ironically, given the recent display on the lawn of the White House) is as a car salesman. Unlike the Godfather, Vitti is unable to behave strategically and with emotional restraint:

Paul gets fired for this outburst.

If only that had happened when Trump bellowed “You don’t have the cards!”at Zelenskyy.

But “Analyze That” is a fiction and a comedy (and a pretty forgettable one) while Trump is our actual President whose revenge-agenda—on anything and anyone who challenged, insulted, or opposed him in any way, no matter how trivial—is causing what may be irreparable damage.

We need to fire him.

P.S. There’s lots more on BordoLines about Trump. Among many other stacks (including a week-by-week commentary on the 2024 election) see: