The recent controversy about the Trump administration’s impoundment of federal funds, the quick judicial injunction against it, and the quick backtrack by the Trumpers is evidence for a theory of mine. Or maybe call it speculation.
First, a couple of axioms before I attempt my proof.
- Trump does not care about policy. He only cares about himself.
- He is motivated by a desire to strike at those who have failed to massage his ego by playing up to him.
- He has surrounded himself with people who have a right wing agenda and are perfectly comfortable with kissing his ass if it helps them advance those agendas.
- Trump is an essentially lazy person and is perfectly willing to let those ass kissers implement their agendas so long as he gets no blowback.
- Trump is not a very intelligent person, except that he has an advanced ability to scam other people who also aren’t very intelligent. That has been his one talent his entire life.
So here’s my theory. As noted above the people who are now surrounding him are far right wing ideologues. You know, Nazis. During his first term he surrounded himself with more or less establishment figures, probably taking suggestions from other Republicans. About 99% of those people have now turned against him in one form or another. But, while they were doing Republican dirty work on his watch they knew to avoid doing things that would provoke a reaction such as occurred with the impoundment order. Better to do things, as we lawyers would say, sub silentio. That’s the Republican playbook because, as the Wicked Witch said “these things must be done delicately”, inch by inch, step by step. The people around Trump now don’t see it that way.
So the theory is that one of his lackeys had the idea to defund these programs. He or she may have run it by Trump, but in a way that would assure he’d have no idea of the reaction it would cause. After all, as I said, he’s not really very smart except for that one talent, so it’s unlikely he would have seen through whatever bullshit they ran by him, assuming they ran anything by him.
I think we can look forward to more of this kind of stuff. It is to be hoped that the Democrats will learn how to call it for what it is, and mount an endless and coordinated attack on the perpetrators and on Trump. I realize that’s unlikely, but you never know, they may learn.