Donald Trump is a total loser

Some serious notes on a surrender

Welcome to a Wednesday night edition of Progress Report.

I’m on my way back from DC after a long day of interviews with folks who are leading the fght back against Donald Trump. Today’s newsletter looks at Trump’s brand new weaknesses and the problems piling up: political pressure, engagement among young people, and not having to answer to any critic.

Note: Unlike many progressive advocacy journalists, I’ve gone fully independent, with no special advertising deals or close relationships with powerful politicians to temper what I write. My only loyalty is to you, the reader, and to the cause of progress — economic justice, democracy, human rights, and standing up to oligarchs.

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Donald Trump is a loser.

Versions of this charge have been staples of liberal attacks on Trump for more than a decade, but I don’t mean it as a moral judgment about his bullying or psychological assessment of his vanity. I’m being literal here: Donald Trump is fundamentally a loser, who shrinks from actual fights and accepts humiliation on a global scale.

Take his decision today to “suspend” almost all of his administration’s big, beautiful tariffs, the masterplan that underpinned both his economic agenda and foreign policy vision. Positioned as a way to stop other countries from “ripping off” the United States, the tariffs were essentially the first punch in a war that Trump seemed eager to start with foreign governments and so-called globalists… at least until they started punching back.

Markets crashed and Trump’s allies lost their minds. The private equity vampires who had spent the previous six months sucking up to him questioned him on Twitter. Leonard Leo, his Supreme Court Svengali and the financier to the far-right legal apparatus, filed a federal lawsuit challenging Trump’s authority. Republicans in Congress began to indicate some support for bills that would tie his hands (even if sycophants then moved to block them).

Other countries stepped up their own retaliatory tariffs. Canada began hitting cars imported from the US with 25% markups, the proceeds from which it promised to give to businesses harmed by Americans. China pummeled the US with higher tariffs and defiant statements, its confidence buoyed by other nations turning to Beijing for help. And the European Union announced that it was slapping $20 billion in tariffs on products largely imported from Republican-run states.

Hours later, Trump blinked and pulled most of his tariffs. He postured as best he could, pretending that the 75 countries he was granting a reprieve had actually fallen in line and obeyed his orders not to retaliate, but he was clearly just taking the L — again. Remember, Trump also folded on attempts to place tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico back in February, settling for lip service and silly promises and pretending they were victories.

This is a guy who spent most of his public life eating shit and bragging that it was Trump Chocolate, and even in politics, any victory he’s enjoyed since after the 2016 election has been facilitated by powerful Republicans, far-right donors, and the jokers on the Supreme Court who are ideologically devoted to executive power (so long as the executive is a Republican). Republicans lose midterm elections and special elections for their association with him, while his own popularity at the ballot box is driven by a right-wing media that is built to protect him.

Any time Trump is placed under pressure, without the cosseting of conservative sycophants on the bench and in control of the algorithms, he proves that he’s a gutless loser. It doesn’t even have to be that big of a fight: New York decided to simply ignore the White House’s order to end congestion pricing and the administration wound up letting the issue go.