Remember how April 2 was “Liberation
Day”? That was the day Donald Trump announced his tariff regime; it was, I
think, the third grand announcement out of about six total. I know you remember
it—the shock to the markets created headlines that are hard to forget.
What you may not remember is that
it was also Trump’s second Liberation Day. The first, I was reminded
recently as I reread
his inaugural address while reflecting on the administration’s 100-day mark
that arrives this week, was Inauguration Day itself: “That is why each day under
our administration of American patriots, we will be working to meet every
crisis with dignity and power and strength. We will move with purpose and
speed to bring back hope, prosperity, safety, and peace for citizens of every
race, religion, color, and creed. For American citizens, January 20th,
2025, is Liberation Day.”
How’s that working out?
There is much to say about these
100 days. The odor of fascism is unmistakable—and entirely intentional. The
bullying of universities and law firms; the probably illegal firings of those
18 inspectors general (you’d forgotten that one, I bet!); the ghastly
executive order instructing the Justice Department to investigate two U.S.
citizens for expressing their political views; the purposeful lawlessness of so
many actions, designed to force showdown after showdown at what Trump assumes
will be a pliant Supreme Court; the daily inversion of reality peddled by
Karoline Leavitt, Cabinet officials, and not least Trump himself.
And more: the brazenly indefensible
treatment of Mahmoud Khalil, a legal resident and green card holder, arrested
without a warrant and held in a Louisiana detention facility where he missed
the recent birth of his son, apparently just for engaging in political activism
that Trump didn’t like. The clearly illegal deportation of Kilmar Abrego
Garcia. The list goes on and on, and now, as of last week, includes a two-year-old
U.S. citizen who
was deported and another child-citizen with metastatic cancer who
was deported without access to medication.
But hey, let’s not focus on the
extreme cases. Let’s just think about your average Americans.
It’s not working out so great for
them, either. Here’s another key line from the inaugural address: “I will
direct all members of my Cabinet to marshal the vast powers at their disposal
to defeat what was record inflation and rapidly bring down costs and prices.”
Gee! That … doesn’t seem to have
happened. Inflation is down a bit from last year, at 2.4
percent right now, largely because energy prices have fallen. Which, by the
way, isn’t a Trump accomplishment: Energy price decreases are a function of
overproduction, the explosion in EV car production in China, and fears of
recession (okay, he does get credit for that!). Meanwhile, the worry that
Trump’s tariffs will spark new inflation is widespread: Fully 71 percent in a
recent poll said they believe the tariffs will spike inflation. Even 47
percent of Republicans agreed. And this is the kind of topic on which public
perceptions drive behavior and help create reality.
A New York Times reporter noted
last week that the paper had heard from “hundreds” of businesses across the
country “who said they have been stunned into paralysis by Trump’s barrage of
tariffs.” An airplane parts manufacturer in Alaska was shocked at how
“quickly and chaotically,” in the Times’s words, the tariffs have been
applied. The company has no choice but to import some parts because they’re
made only overseas. It has raised prices 17 percent, the owner has moved to
Brazil where the living is cheaper, and he’s consulting a bankruptcy lawyer.
Liberation Day.
When we think of the word
“fascism,” everyone’s mind races immediately to Adolf Hitler. But the world has
seen many variants of fascism, Nazism being only one. There’s Italian fascismo,
there’s Francoism; there’s Banderism (that was Ukrainian) and Ilminism (South
Korean) and more. There’s neo-fascism and crypto-fascism
and ur-fascism and
Islamofascism. But Donald Trump has given us something new: clown-show fascism.
Clown-show fascism describes a
regime marked simultaneously by hubristic and defiant assaults on the
democratic and constitutional order on the one hand and, on the other, a nearly
laughable incompetence in just about every other area of the regime’s activity.
The first characteristic certainly applies to the Trump administration, and
it’s chilling and frightening and not at all funny. Just ask Mahmoud Khalil.
Yet at the same time, in other
areas, the incompetence has been staggering. Trump’s constant about-faces and walk
backs on tariffs have been an international embarrassment. Elon Musk’s DOGE has
fired federal workers willy-nilly only to turn around and rehire many after the
Musketeers realized they weren’t deep-state bloodsuckers and the work they did
was kind of essential after all—you know, like the people who tend after the
country’s nuclear
weapons stockpile.
It can be hilarious to watch. But
it carries two consequences that are no laughing matter.
First and more obviously, we have
the prospect of the impact of Trump’s tariffs policy on real people. Will they
cause inflation and a recession, as most experts now believe? As fate would
have it, Trump will go to bed the night of his 100th day in office—Tuesday—and
wake up the very next morning to the release of the first quarter GDP number.
Economists expect anemic results. The Atlanta Fed even predicts negative
growth, around -2.5 percent. During Trump’s first week in office, its
forecast nudged a gaudy 4 percent, but the president’s actions have liberated
that figure ever downward.
Second and more insidiously: Even
the gross incompetencies take us into treacherous territory because they
contribute to making this all about one man, the man who must be in front of
the cameras every day. He doesn’t have policies so much as he has urges, which
he must announce to the world on a constant basis in a desperate plea that we
keep him front of mind at all times. Some of those urges are cruel; some of
them are a joke. What unites them is that they make the story entirely about
him.
That is not how it’s supposed to
work in democracies. Which we still are, for now, as we reach this 100-day mark.
Only 1,361 to go.
The post In 100 Days, Trump Has Invented Something New: Clown-Show Fascism appeared first on New Republic.
