The price of pleasing Trump grows steeper
Regret, Thy Name Is Hawley. And Murkowski. And Musk.
Serving a mad king is not easy.
You sell your soul to the mad king, but he renegs on the deal... while keeping your soul.
Or maybe these people had already sold their souls to the Devil, long ago.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Credit...Ben Wiseman
Is Senator Josh Hawley having second thoughts?
Sure looks that way. Last week, a mere 14 days after the Missouri Republican did as he was told and voted for President Trump’s megabill, he introduced legislation that would counter that monstrosity’s cuts to Medicaid and repair the very damage he’d just endorsed. It redefines the flip-flop. And reeks of regret.
So does Senator Thom Tillis’s recent decision not to seek re-election. Both in and after his announcement of that, the North Carolina Republican wrestled with what Congress under Trump had become, with the president’s broken promises and bad judgment, with his own indulgence of that. He told the CNN anchor Jake Tapper that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — who ascended to that position by dint of Tillis’s final-hours capitulation to Trump’s bullying — was “out of his depth.” If only that had been predictable! I salute Tillis’s candor, no matter how belated. But I see it as something else, too: atonement.
There’s a lot of that going around, as politicians and others who submitted to Trump reckon with the toll of that obeisance. The president may well be notching legislative victory after victory as a meek Congress abdicates its responsibilities and a cowardly Supreme Court looks the other way . But I sense a countervailing current.
“What have I done?” are the words in the thought bubbles above more and more people who have grudgingly and not so grudgingly supported Trump.
To judge by some polling, that includes voters; in a recent, fascinating Gallup survey , they gave him poor marks even for his handling of immigration, and that’s his signature issue. They wanted a more secure border, yes. But suspending civil liberties and feeding migrants to swamp creatures ? That wasn’t high on their wish lists.
Lowering the cost of living was, and yet, as Colby Smith recently noted in The Times, “Inflation accelerated in June as President Trump’s tariffs started to leave a bigger imprint on the economy.” Started is the key word there. “The June data still reflects only the initial impact of Mr. Trump’s global trade war,” Smith added.
Of course, the conspiracy theorists who reveled in Trump’s encouragement of their wildest fantasies feel jilted by his sudden command that they erase Jeffrey Epstein from their cognitive hard drives. As the tawdry twists in the Epstein tale keep coming, Trump’s most obliged defenders are being driven to exhaustion. Vice President JD Vance responded to The Wall Street Journal’s report that Trump had once written and doodled a special smutty, predators-in-arms birthday greeting to Epstein with a social media post that asked: “Does anyone honestly believe this sounds like Donald Trump?”
Does anyone honestly believe it doesn’t ? We’re talking Mr. Grab-Them-By-The-You-Know-What here. And Vance is giving off more than a whiff of panic, which is kissing cousins with regret.
It’s the Vances and Hawleys and Tillises who interest me most. The buyer’s remorse that more than a few voters feel is a common condition when politicians don’t deliver; some of Trump’s allies are in the grip of a different ailment. Theirs was a willed gullibility — they have always known deep down who Trump is. They wagered that they could live with that. They made a Faustian bargain, abetting him so that he didn’t eviscerate them. They just didn’t understand the full price they’d pay.
Elon Musk miscalculated. Thought his billions and his brilliance (in his own mind) inoculated him in a way unavailable to lesser mortals. Persuaded himself that Trump, who is steadfast and disciplined about exactly nothing, was steadfast about fiscal discipline. Musk’s regret is so intense he’s plotting a new political party to flex it.
To console and redeem themselves, Republican lawmakers are creating a whole new Kama Sutra of contortions, whereby they justify (or even nullify) yes votes with postscripts and asterisks such as Hawley’s newly proposed legislation and Lisa Murkowsi’s plea — after she, too, voted for Trump’s big beautifulness — that the House perform major surgery on it. Sorry, Senator Murkowski, that patient was dead, and you knew it: Remorse and shame were etched on your face as you sought to explain yourself .
Tillis last week imagined pulling a Hawley himself. “I suspect we’re going to find out there are some things that we’re going to regret,” he said on the Senate floor in the course of joining all but two other Senate Republicans to vote for a rescissions package that allowed Trump to claw back billions of dollars that Congress had previously appropriated. “And I suspect that when we do we’ll have to come back and fix it.” So regret is now baked in? Pacify the president now, mitigate the fallout later?
Unfortunately for Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, there’s no do-over for blessing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appointment as secretary of health and human services. Cassidy, a physician, grilled Kennedy during his confirmation hearing, then pronounced himself satisfied that Kennedy was trustworthy on vaccines.
Oops. Kennedy went ahead and fired all 17 members of the C.D.C.’s vaccine advisory panel. Their replacements included prominent vaccine critics. And Cassidy was left to sputter on social media that the new group’s first meeting “should be delayed until the panel is fully staffed with more robust and balanced representation — as required by law — including those with more direct relevant expertise.”
I’m not sure whether to be heartened that Cassidy and Tillis have snapped to (at least somewhat) or heartsick that they suffocated their better judgment in the first place. I do know that the regrets — and the ranks of the regretful — will only grow from here.
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Trump has turned on every one of his servants, even the most servile. Remember Rudy Giuliani?
Gauleiters on NT are safe. They are beneath their Lord's notice.