In his never-ending efforts to test the extent of the power of his presidency, Donald Trump is unintentionally proving its limitations.
Despite—or perhaps as a result of—his pathological appetite to be the center of every conversation, America’s narcissist-in-chief is defining the best way of dealing with his over-reach: Ignoring him.
Tune out his pronouncements. Sidestep his power grabs. Proceed without him. Discount him and his army of slavering flunkeys as credible players.
Each passing day reveals new examples of how this strategy is working.
The leaders of Ukraine and the EU may flatter Trump; they may go through the motions of working with him. But they know better. They know that while he pretends to “seek peace,” he is daily reading Kremlin-issued talking points and advancing Russian interests. They see that Trump has made it clear he is no friend of democracy or the alliance established in the wake of World War II by the United States.
So, the plan of Zelensky and his European partners is clear. Get what help you can from the United States. But don’t count on it. Instead, make plans to ensure Ukraine is supported with or without the US—that European peacekeepers are up to the job of preserving Ukraine’s security when the time comes whether the US ponies up real support for the effort or, more likely, it does not.
While paying lip service to negotiations with the US, our allies around the world are increasingly seeking new trade partners as Trump tries to flex his muscle with new and nonsensical tariffs. Time and again, the big winner here is China.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Shanghai summit revealed just how potent and potentially geopolitically significant the desire of many countries not to be bullied by Trump has become. It’s a big blow to American power and, thanks to Trump, the US appears to be losing global influence fast.
Take India. Whereas once Trump thought he and Narendra Modi—nationalists with little use for democracy— were kindred spirits, the relationship broke down when Modi publicly rejected Trump’s Nobel-prize-seeking lie that he ended the conflict between India and Pakistan.
Trump then imposed punitive tariffs because his feelings were hurt. Modi went to China. Early Friday morning, Trump revealed he got the message when he posted on social media a lament: “Looks like we’ve lost India and Russia to deepest, darkest, China. May they have a long and prosperous future together.”
And the strategy of tuning Trump out is not just being embraced beyond our borders. Slowly but surely, we are starting to learn what “soft secession” really is as states and cities and other independent actors are stepping in to say, if the federal government has lost its mind, we’ll find a way to do without them.
For example, as we heard during RFK, Jr.’s debacle of a congressional hearing (for sure that worm died of starvation, nothing is working inside the head of our top health official), if the US government is not going to protect the health of our people, states are stepping up and saying, “We’ll do it ourselves.”
The hearing also revealed, yet again, why independent groups of doctors have concluded that they can no longer trust Trump’s administration on vaccines—and so they are going to make their own independent recommendations. They have no choice really. Kennedy has gutted the credibility of what was the world’s most respected public health apparatus. It’s not just his policies, ignorance and obvious and demented biases; it’s also that he is such a terrible spokesperson for, well, anything.
But I digress. Cities and states are also stepping up to promulgate their own policies on AI because Trump, listening to his money guys, is embracing the approach that no regulation is the right regulation. And they’re also doing the same in other policy areas where the federal government’s approaches are dangerous—from climate to immigration to policing.
In other words, Donald Trump is once again, doing the impossible.
He has taken what once was seen as the most powerful office in the world and he has made it increasingly irrelevant. Foreign leaders and those here at home alike have concluded that the only way to live with Trump is to learn to live without him, to never count on him—to do as his wives and kids have done. Unfortunately, the result is to weaken and shrink the presidency, the executive branch of the U.S. government, the institutions on which we depend and the stature of the United States worldwide.
The post Opinion: Donald Trump’s Presidency Is Making America Irrelevant appeared first on The Daily Beast.
