Timothy L. O’Brien
โNobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.โ โ Donald Trump, at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
The US president has always been a loner, in politics, business and life. His inherent distrust of others, belief that every contest is a zero-sum game, inherited wealth, detachment from reality and abiding self-regard all play into this. He also harbours a long-standing fascination with swift, bold and unilateral solutions to complex challenges โ whether that involves prosecuting a perilous war in Iran, launching inflationary trade battles or jumping headlong into this weekโs bruising midterm election.
Trumpโs preference for piloting solo also encourages him to double down when he fails, with little regard for consequences. The shellacking the president and Republicans endured in the midterms โ with Democrats handily winning control of both chambers of Congress โ formally ushers Trump into the lame-duck chapter of his second White House tour. That might recommend compromise and collaboration, in the interest of responding to an epic electoral implosion by considering and meeting votersโ needs.
Trump certainly gestured in that direction once the magnitude of his defeat became apparent. โI think I can work with everything,โ he told Fox News in the wee hours when asked if he planned to cooperate with Democrats. He generously congratulated his opponents and didnโt question the bona fides of their victory.
He could have left it at that, but, of course, he didnโt.
โTheyโre in control, but theyโre really not in control,โ he allowed, reminding the Fox crew and its audience that he still has the power to veto Democratic legislation he doesnโt like.
That sounds much more like the Trump who rarely concedes or collaborates; the same Trump who defiantly ploughed through careers as a real estate developer, casino operator, serial bankruptcy artist and reality TV curiosity before becoming president. A Trump cornered in his previous incarnations was usually a Trump who lashed out, and itโs likely thatโs the president the world will live with for the next two years.
It would be a welcome surprise if a more evolved Trump emerged on the other side of his electoral defeat, but his history and histrionics teach otherwise. After all, introspection hasnโt been his strong suit. He once dismissed the idea of seeing a therapist when I inquired as we drove to his New Jersey golf course on a weekend morning two decades ago.
โI have found I am not a disbeliever in it,โ he told me. โBut I look at reports that psychiatrists have by far the highest rate of suicide than anybody โ that means theyโre pretty f–ked up, and I donโt have the time for it.โ
When I asked him during the same drive about public figures he admired, he cited Orson Welles, the legendary film director.
โHe was like this great genius that after 26, never ever did it. He became totally impossible. He thought everybody was a moron, everybody was this, everybody was that; if he had a budget, heโd exceed it by 20 times and destroy everything. He became impossible. I loved that.โ
This passes for self-awareness from a man who also thinks heโs surrounded by morons and doesnโt blink at being impossible or a human wrecking ball โ especially when he inhabits an empowering venue like the White House.
James Talarico, the Democrat who just secured a lopsided Senate victory in Texas, told his supporters he looked forward to instilling bipartisan civility and a โpolitics of loveโ in his work. Kumbaya, alas, isnโt Trumpโs go-to melody. The politics of retribution, financial grifting, monument-building and authoritarian flexes are his comfort zones.
So what should the US and its observers around the globe expect from Trump between now and 2028?
The president has grown accustomed to an acquiescent Congress, courtesy of Republicans who ceded their institutional powers and prerogatives because of shared ambitions, realpolitik and raw fear. Trump went on to tax, spend, manage and mismanage the federal government, send armed and masked immigration agents onto US streets, fire off tariff salvos, run roughshod over the law and go to war in the Middle East as he saw fit. He dismissed the social, geopolitical and economic malaise that sprang from this as little more than hoaxes.
Congressional Democrats certainly will be more assertive than their Republican counterparts in monitoring the executive branch, and Trumpโs tolerance of that independence may be, at best, short-lived. He will certainly exercise his veto powers. Democrats will try to leverage legislative majorities to override his vetoes โ or settle for scoring political points. Tech and AI regulation, healthcare, affordability initiatives and immigration will likely be among the primary policy battlegrounds. Gridlock may prevail.
Democratic investigations, including exploring the contours of White House corruption and the conduct of the Iran war, are being teed up. If the Democrats can force a winding down of the war and an end to Trumpโs tariff follies, they could snare relatively quick economic and geopolitical victories. But again, Trump will come out fighting against probes he will inevitably, relentlessly brand as witch hunts and policy reversals he will personalise and wonโt stomach.
Presidents of both parties, especially second-term ones, have historically tended to venture overseas when theyโve found themselves stymied domestically. The Constitution and an uncertain world offer latitude and freedom from congressional control many presidents have prized. For a loner, the magnetism is even more potent.
Trumpโs peregrinations, fundamentally bellicose and strategically haywire, have already mired him in Iran and found him essentially abandoning Ukraine in its war with Russia. Heโs engaged in meandering but muted fisticuffs with China. He didnโt bother learning until after the fact that an Iran under siege could tie up oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz and a China threatened with potentially suffocating tariffs could withhold rare-earth metals from global supply chains.
Even so, expect Trump to choose overseas theatres when he wants to fly solo. Will he either offer Taiwan as a sacrificial lamb to China or, to keep the world off balance and everyone guessing, engage in a more pointed economic or military smackdown with China? Will he try batting Europe around some more and continue leaving Ukraine to dangle? Will he escalate in Iran rather than embrace a diplomatic resolution? I donโt know. And I suspect the president isnโt sure himself just yet.
Trump thinks about the world and himself cinematically, not strategically, and how he dominates centre stage drives his decisions as much as anything else. He loves and needs an audience, even when heโs hoodwinking them.
โI could say the stupidest things, and youโd clap,โ Trump told a gathering of his political supporters last month. โItโs true.โ
They laughed and clapped.
A comeuppance and reckoning arrived with this weekโs midterms, however, leaving Trump, for the time being, isolated and constrained. It could be a very long and caustic two years.
From our partners
About the Author
