It is hard to find thoughtful people who believe President Donald Trump is intellectually deep or curious. It is also hard to find people who know anything about organizational mechanics who think Trump knows how to make a large organization—particularly the federal government—run smoothly.
Many who vehemently disagree with Trump’s policies also believe their implementation by his administration is unconstitutional, illegal, cruel—or just really sloppy. Still, there is a large number of U.S. citizens who believe the contrary.
Many did not believe that Trump would actually try to implement most of the controversial ideas he championed on the campaign trail. Against them stood those who warned that Trump should be taken not just seriously, but literally as well.
These disagreements among the public make sense. After all Trump is—and nearly always has been—a hugely controversial and polarizing figure. One thing, however, that most observers on both sides of the aisle agreed on is that Trump has pretty damn good political instincts.
Issues that he staked his campaign on, including closing the borders and clamping down on the flow of immigration; pushing back on DEI initiatives; ending so-called forever wars—particularly the war in Ukraine; reducing government spending; and, of course, bringing down inflation and consumer prices, matched the concerns of a majority of American voters.
(Of course, in the process of turning his promises into action, Trump and his team have acted haphazardly and chaotically, with little-to-no regard for the law).
It is his promise to reduce inflation and consumer prices that deserves special attention. It was that issue more than any other that, in the end, enabled him to pull out a very narrow victory. (If he had lost 115,000 votes across three states, out of the close to 150 million votes cast, he would have been defeated). Then-Vice President Kamala Harris simply proved incapable of articulating an economic message and was unable to convince key swing state voters that she was a qualified steward of the economy. She did not focus sufficiently on the Biden administration’s record in successfully fighting inflation, or on the Trump campaign’s proposals, which would clearly ignite it all over again.
Trump’s hyperbole was beyond overstatement when characterizing the Biden economy as a “total disaster,” but his instincts were right that much of the country was upset enough about high consumer prices that he could sway them to his side.
So, Trump narrowly wins the election on the high price of groceries and other consumer items, and then, about 75 days into his presidency, he imposes massive tariffs that, whatever else they are intended to do, will significantly raise prices and catalyze inflation. He decides, a blink into his term, to turn 180 degrees against the very narrative that was critical to his political success. The obvious question is, what the hell happened to Trump’s political instincts?
Trump couldn’t have thought that there was no need to worry about public sentiment on prices. Even before the big tariff announcement the first week of April, his approval ratings on handling the economy were underwater. Consumers were still very uneasy about the cost of goods and inflation. Many had believed in Trump’s power to tame high prices and put cheaper eggs back on the table for millions of Americans. After all, management of the economy was always the area Trump’s where approval ratings were the highest.
So, what was he thinking before his fast reversal on the very issue that won him the election?
Was Trump thinking that the emperor can do no wrong? That he wouldn’t face overall disapproval on his handling of the economy? That the public cared more about other issues than the high price of living? That with nearly full employment voters would care more about the far-off prospect of creating manufacturing jobs rather than the several thousand dollars more a year tariffs would cost them?
Where did those vaunted political instincts go?
Wherever they went, Trump has been abandoned by them. He loves to create alternative facts and paint a picture of an alternate reality. But the reality of high prices pinching the household pocketbook is the reality that Americans—including the entire MAGA constituency—must live with. But when Trump’s tariffs come home to roost, and he can no longer paint the picture that higher prices are the previous administration’s fault, it will be painfully clear the emperor has no clothes. It is already clear the emperor has no political instincts.
Tom Rogers is executive chairman of Claigrid, Inc. (the cloud AI grid company), an editor-at-large for Newsweek, the founder of CNBC and a CNBC contributor. He also established MSNBC, is the former CEO of TiVo, a member of Keep Our Republic (an organization dedicated to preserving the nation’s democracy). He is also a member of the American Bar Association Task Force on Democracy.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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