There was a moment at the end of 2017 when, if you squinted hard enough, it seemed as though the Trump presidency might be approaching normal.
Republicans in Congress had passed tax reform. The economy had grown at more than 3 percent for a second consecutive quarter. Unemployment was down. Stock markets were up. The president was at Mar-a-Lago, mostly avoiding making headlines. He was golfing, basking equally in the Florida sunshine and in plaudits from supporters and even some longtime critics.
For all of the worry, these folks argued in unison, Trump had turned out to be a pretty conventional Republican president. Commentators who once called Trump a cancer on the Republican party were enthusiastically praising his policy accomplishments. His leadership was hailed. He was favorably compared to Ronald Reagan. There were predictions that his good month might even portend electoral success in the 2018 midterms.
No doubt some of those who made these arguments believed them with great conviction. Others sounded like they were trying to persuade themselves as much as they were their TV audiences.
It’s true that Trump had some real accomplishments in 2017. But there’s still nothing normal about his presidency—a fact that was made abundantly clear less than 72 hours into 2018.
On January 2, Trump tweeted a nonsensical attack on his own Justice Department and, implicitly, the leaders he handpicked, as captives of the Deep State. The president seems to believe justice will be thwarted unless Hillary Clinton, Huma Abedin, and James Comey soon find themselves in jail. Or, as he prefers: “Jail!”
Almost exactly 12 hours later came a Trump tweet taunting the unstable leader of a nuclear-capable rogue state. Apparently Kim Jong-un’s nuclear “button” isn’t as big as Trump’s. That’s really what he said. In between, Trump took shots at the “failing New York Times” (despite record numbers of subscriptions and digital ad revenues) and suggested, fancifully, that he was responsible for a year of aviation travel without a fatality.
The next day, an excerpt from a forthcoming book by Michael Wolff appeared online. Wolff, who had nearly unfettered access to Trump’s inner circle for the better part of a year, quoted former White House adviser Steve Bannon accusing Trump’s son of treason for meeting with shady Russian sources. In response, the president released a statement—an official White House statement—claiming that Bannon, a man he had trusted to run his political operation, was not of sound mind. Donald Trump Jr. took to Twitter to trash Bannon. Among his most ferocious attacks came one on Bannon’s political acuity, citing as evidence the former Trump adviser’s support of Roy Moore’s losing Senate candidacy in Alabama and eliding, for convenience, the fact that the president endorsed and campaigned for Moore, too, despite plausible accusations he had sexually assaulted teen girls. Later that evening, Trump’s lawyer sent a letter to Bannon demanding that the former aide stop criticizing the president, citing a campaign nondisclosure agreement.
Trump has a long history of threatening lawsuits—not for legal reasons, of course, but for political and psychological ones. Trump frequently threatens to sue those who frustrate him—the New York Times (for publishing the accounts of women who’d accused him of sexual impropriety), the women themselves (for “lying”), the makers of an anti-Trump ad on veterans (for saying he didn’t love the veterans when he really did love the veterans), Ted Cruz (over his citizenship), the Club for Growth (for ads in Iowa he didn’t like). Trump was seeking less to silence Bannon than to remind him of the consequences of leaving the circle.
Bannon knows a lot, perhaps more than anyone other than Trump family members, and he is tentatively scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on January 11. What’s more, Bannon has long privately expressed concerns about Trump’s dealings with Russians. If Trump’s goal was to neuter Bannon, to bring him back in line, it seems to have worked. “The president of the United States is a great man,” Bannon said, shortly after the letter went out. “You know I support him day in and day out.”
The following morning, Trump lawyers sent a letter to the book’s publisher threatening legal action and demanding it cease publication immediately.
So the president wants a book banned. He wants a political opponent in jail and, for good measure, maybe the former FBI director, too. He thinks his former top adviser is insane.
This isn’t normal. And it’s not just “Trump being Trump,” the preferred dodge of elected Republicans. It’s a reflection of the president’s troubled mind and of his erratic, irrational judgment.
Trump’s media defenders will tell us, once again, that he was joking, that we shouldn’t pay attention to his antics. Seriously not literally and all that bunk. And they’ll point, once again, to tax reform and Justice Neil Gorsuch.
I’m glad Trump signed tax reform that Republicans in Congress have been working on for years. I’m glad he’s taken the advice of Federalist Society leaders and nominated conservatives rather than liberals to the courts. And I’m glad he’s listening to conservatives who have long advocated giving the administrative state a trim.
But this is a president who played a mine-is-bigger-than-yours game in public with the leader of a rogue nuclear state. This is something more than abnormal; it’s dangerous.
We were lucky in 2017. The United States didn’t face a crisis that required presidential leadership. We didn’t have to have the sober judgment of a thoughtful statesman. We won’t be lucky forever.
