Politics
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April 21, 2025
Trump’s Weekend at Bernie’s White Home is inherently chaotic.
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President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after signing a proclamation within the Oval Workplace on the White Home on April 17, 2025, in Washington, DC.(Win McNamee / Getty Photos)
Donald Trump makes use of the time period “strongman” as excessive reward. “Typically you want a strongman,” Trump stated final September of the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán. In Trump’s utilization, “strongman” connotes not simply dictatorship but in addition what he sees because the admirable traits of decisive and efficient management that does what’s obligatory with no regard to the niceties of norms and even legal guidelines. You don’t should be a psychologist to know that aspirational need is usually compensatory. If Trump is a would-be strongman, we should always remember that he’s additionally at his core additionally a weak man: His chaotic presidency is a results of a shaky, not sure command of his personal ideas, which makes him simple prey to the conflicting agendas of his advisers.
Trump’s complete profession is a triumph of picture over actuality. He’s bought himself because the masterful boss who isn’t afraid to say, “You’re fired!,” whereas all of the obtainable proof reveals that he has no govt management over his personal impulses, not to mention over his employees. That is true most of all of his two phrases as president, the place repeatedly he has been simply swayed and manipulated by extra single-minded subordinates.
On Friday, The Wall Avenue Journal reported on a putting instance involving the Trump administration’s roller-coaster commerce coverage. Like different necessary points, notably negotiations with Iran and Russia, the coverage is inherently contentious as a result of Trump has gathered round him advisers with wildly conflicting objectives. This administration model is typically described as a “crew of rivals” strategy—one employed by Abraham Lincoln, amongst different nice leaders. However a “crew of rivals” authorities solely works if in case you have a commanding chief like Lincoln, who finally decides among the many conflicting recommendation given and, having decided, sticks to it. With Trump, nonetheless, every resolution typically rests simply with whoever is within the room with Trump at a specific time.
On commerce, Trump is torn between two factions. One faction (led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent) sees tariffs as an instrument for prying open international markets. For this faction, the purpose is to escalate tariffs with a purpose to persuade different nations to take away their commerce limitations and finally convey down tariffs. The opposite faction (led by commerce adviser Peter Navarro) are hard-liners who need to use tariffs to make america economically self-sufficient (extra technically, an autarky).
Trump’s launching of a worldwide commerce battle on April 2 was a victory for Navarro—however it terrified each the inventory and bond markets. Per week later, Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, hitherto a commerce hawk, determined that they wanted Trump to pause the commerce battle with a purpose to calm the markets. In keeping with The Wall Avenue Journal:
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There was a giant impediment: Peter Navarro, Trump’s tariff-loving commerce adviser, who was continuously hovering across the Oval Workplace.
Navarro isn’t one to again down throughout coverage debates and had stridently urged Trump to maintain tariffs in place, at the same time as company chieftains and different advisers urged him to relent. And Navarro had been commonly across the Oval Workplace since Trump’s “Liberation Day” occasion.
Bessent and Lutnick noticed their huge alternative the morning of April 9 when Navarro had a gathering. They rushed into the oval workplace for an unscheduled discuss with the president. With Navarro now not current, they quickly made their case to Trump. The Wall Avenue Journal additional experiences:
The 2 males satisfied Trump of the technique to pause a few of the tariffs and to announce it instantly to calm the markets. They stayed till Trump tapped out a Fact Social submit, which stunned Navarro, based on one of many individuals acquainted with the episode. Bessent and press secretary Karoline Leavitt virtually instantly went to the cameras outdoors the White Home to make a public announcement.
College students of Trump lore will bear in mind that there have been many tales of Trump’s first time period depicting him as a weathervane who shifts course relying on which adviser is filling the room with wind. Bob Woodward’s e-book Worry (2018) opens with a narrative about Trump dictating an order calling for america to withdraw its troops from South Korea—solely to be outwitted by his financial adviser, Gary Cohn. In keeping with Woodward, “Cohn eliminated the letter draft from the Resolute Desk.” Cohn himself informed an affiliate, “I stole it off his desk. I wouldn’t let him see it. He’s by no means going to see that doc. Acquired to guard the nation.”
Woodward experiences that Cohn and Trump’s employees secretary, Rob Porter, routinely “labored collectively to derail what they believed had been Trump’s most impulsive and harmful orders. That doc and others prefer it simply disappeared. When Trump had a draft on his desk to proofread, Cohn at occasions would simply yank it, and the president would overlook about it.”
Hillary Clinton was maybe too beneficiant in a 2016 debate when she warned that Trump can be a “puppet” to Russian president Vladimir Putin. In reality, Trump is a puppet whose strings simply fall into many fingers, these of his main donors in addition to his advisers.
After all, the issue of simply manipulated presidents goes past Trump. In 2020, writing in Commonweal, journalist Matthew Sitman in contrast the diminished state of Joe Biden with the titular character of the film Weekend at Bernie’s (1989). In that movie, Bernie is an insurance coverage govt who will get killed whereas attempting to homicide two of his staff, Larry and Richard. For classy plot causes, the workers Larry and Richard should fake Bernie continues to be alive at a giant get together thrown at his home. As Sitman summarizes, “A part of what’s alleged to make the film humorous is you could’t consider nobody can inform Bernie is lifeless. Is everybody blind, or not paying consideration, or simply too well mannered to ask the plain questions?”
Noting the political silence surrounding Biden’s clear indicators of cognitive decline, Sitman warned that Democrats had been having a Weekend at Bernie’s major. The fact was even worse; like Trump in each phrases, Biden had a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency. There’s ample motive to suppose that Biden’s presidency was in reality run by highly effective advisers such because the hawkish nationwide safety adviser Jake Sullivan, whose militarism roadblocked negotiations with Russia, Israel, and Hamas. Sarcastically, the sturdiest and most mentally acute of the three aged presidential candidates in 2020 was Bernie Sanders, who, judging by his sturdy efficiency barnstorming the nation 5 years later, wouldn’t have had a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency.
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However as a result of america retains electing cognitively restricted presidents, the Weekend at Bernie’s presidency has defenders.
Writing in The Atlantic in 2020, Graeme Wooden recommended {that a} Weekend at Bernie’s presidency by Biden or Sanders would convey a welcome stability to America:
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One doable final result for the Weekend at Bernie’s presidency can be an administration that’s merely muted in its results, with no delegated official desperate to provoke main change from the established order. It might be, in that sense, a extra conservative presidency…. Government energy wielded via sweeping coverage modifications and fiat is just a foul means to make use of the presidency; the gradual and laborious strategy of cooperative change is simpler, whether or not your purpose is immigration reform or socialized drugs.
Wooden’s hopes can generously be described as wildly, maybe ridiculously, optimistic. Of their alternative ways, the Biden and Trump presidencies each present the risks of a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency. Biden wasn’t erratic, however he was far too gradual to vary course; his advisers had a set agenda and, not being politicians, couldn’t reply to shifts in public opinion. A extra nimble and mentally alert president might need realized that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza had been politically damaging, in addition to dangerous for the nationwide curiosity. Biden confirmed no such capability and as an alternative remained in thrall to national-security-state fantasies. Trump is a extra heterodox and changeable president, however on main insurance policies he’s simply pushed round by warring factions, creating an instability that undermines a few of his extra welcome initiatives. Rewriting world commerce guidelines is sensible, however not within the anarchic and wildly swinging vogue pursued by Trump. It additionally is sensible to barter with Russia, Iran, and Hamas—however why would any get together belief Trump, realizing how changeable he’s?
In the end, the Weekend at Bernie’s presidency is a part of the bigger disaster of American democracy. It’s a direct outgrowth of polarization and partisanship within the age of the imperial presidency. Celebration elites appear to love the Weekend at Bernie’s presidency: There’s a motive Democratic powerbrokers coalesced round Biden. A diminished president is one who will be extra simply manipulated to serve the agenda of vested insiders. Trump’s presidency is barely going go get extra chaotic and will finish in catastrophe, whether or not dictatorship or home strife. In criticizing this unfolding catastrophe, it’s essential to transcend Trump’s many persona faults and ask why he was twice elected. What are the failings within the American political system that make the nation susceptible to the Weekend at Bernie’s presidency?
The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows every week.
Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world economic system and arrange yet one more constitutional disaster at residence. Plainclothes officers proceed to abduct college college students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown overseas to a mega jail in opposition to the orders of the courts. And Signalgate guarantees to be the primary of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence on the core of the American empire.
At a time when elite universities, highly effective regulation corporations, and influential media retailers are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is extra decided than ever earlier than to carry the highly effective to account.
In simply the final month, we’ve printed reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to different nations, uncovered the administration’s attraction to obscure legal guidelines to hold out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of courageous pupil activists focused by universities.
We additionally proceed to inform the tales of those that battle again in opposition to Trump and Musk, whether or not on the streets in rising protest actions, on the town halls throughout the nation, or in important state elections—like Wisconsin’s current state Supreme Courtroom race—that present a mannequin for resisting Trumpism and show that Musk can’t purchase our democracy.
That is the journalism that issues in 2025. However we are able to’t do that with out you. As a reader-supported publication, we depend on the assist of beneficiant donors. Please, assist make our important impartial journalism doable with a donation immediately.
In solidarity,
The Editors
The Nation
Jeet Heer
Jeet Heer is a nationwide affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He additionally pens the month-to-month column “Morbid Signs.” The creator of In Love with Artwork: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Artwork Spiegelman (2013) and Candy Lechery: Critiques, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for quite a few publications, together with The New Yorker, The Paris Assessment, Virginia Quarterly Assessment, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.
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