Trump Has the Look of the Weak Horse; People Are Acting Accordingly

One of my watchwords for understanding politics is that all power is unitary. In the case of presidents, you don’t have one set of power in one area and a siled, separate, unallocated set in another. The power of a president is a uniform commodity wherever it arrives. What strengthens or hinders it in one area affects it everywhere else. This is the best way to understand President Trump’s position, ten months into his second term. It’s unclear whether it was the five-week government shutdown that focused public attention on the draconian cuts to health care, the election night bombings, the first signs of defection by MAGA diehards, Epstein’s grotesque and absurd game of cat and mouse, or a dozen other comparable examples. What makes it both difficult and perilous to distinguish the different factors in the decline of a president is that these different factors feed on themselves. They become both cause and effect in an upward spiral.