However bullying the tactics of the Trump administration, Donald Trump’s government is building a pile of uncomfortable agreements that supposedly advance its agenda — though it is unclear how magic distraction tricks are improving our lives as a result.
Despite occasional setbacks amid court challenges, Team Trump’s belligerent attitudes are winning grudging arrangements with businesses and universities to dump diversity programs, pursue a campaign supposedly to protect against antisemitism, score wins over political opponents to rewrite political history and more.
Clearly, it is a continuing exercise in exerting power for its own sake as well as political retribution for perceived snubs, investigations, public dissent against Trump personally, against MAGA and “conservative” causes. But the overly simplistic Trump answers are a poor match for a pluralistic and complex America, whether we are talking economics, race, education, environment or immigration.
News that Columbia University will cave in opposition to Trump and pay $200 million in fines to retain its federal science and medical research grants, accepting a negotiation in which federal officials impose restrictions on campus protest and the oversight of Middle East studies, all but dictating who gets admitted and what is taught, hardly seems to guarantee “safety” of Jewish (or any other) students on or off campus, or do much more than show the university to be another arena which Trump says he controls.
Columbia’s negotiated self-immolation to save itself from further Trump intrusion probably won’t even stop Trump’s campaign to control minds by any means possible. Who will be surprised to see faculty leave and student select other colleges?
Indeed, moves to stop critical thinking on campus, among law firms and courts, at the Fed or among the nation’s business suites, serve no one other than Trump’s personal crusade for king-like status. I find myself continually asking: Quite apart from how I feel about it, what did Trump accomplish here?
A Backlash Building
If public polling is to be believed, such agreements with colleges, law firms and other businesses, aren’t blunting the kind of questions Americans are raising about how Israel conducts its war on Gaza — which Trump insists is the measure of public antisemitism, even as he pushes for a white, Christian, straight nationalism.
Trump’s approval rating, already relatively low, remains a figment of his imagination rather than any rise because of what he does. If anything, it continues to fall, even as he declares his daily victories over woke.
Trump’s policies are not addressing how we can reduce tensions over race and identity in this country, or how America is viewed in the world as it burns food meant for the hungry as waste and fraud.
Indeed, the continuing flood of announcements about migrant crackdowns, “new” disclosures of decade-old meeting notes about Russian meddling in elections, the never-ending insistence that the Jan. 6, 2021 riots didn’t happen just seem to be creating their own backlash about attempted diversions from Trump policies that are cutting health care for tax cuts for the wealthy, and shrinking U.S. influence in world affairs.
What these actions share is a sense of overdue redress demanded by Trump for wrongs done against him personally, legally and politically, not achievements that make America “greater.” Indeed, most of them belittle the idea of American values over time for independence, free speech and open discussion for insistence on homogenized political support for Trump and whatever happens to come out of his mouth next.
In that context, the administration’s inability to stop discussion — even among his most conspiracy-addicted supporters — about Trump’s old, close friendships with child rapist Jeffrey Epstein or other mentions of him in the Epstein criminal investigation stand out as inept attempts even to recognize that the Trump presidency is in trouble for failure to address the matters head-on.
We’re being treated to an array of Trump twists and turns to avoid association with Epstein. The House has shut down for five weeks to avoid any resolution calling on release of documents, while Republican-led oversight commissions are issuing subpoenas not only for convicted, imprisoned, silent Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s running-mate, but Bill and Hillary Clinton. If they want more about who’s in the files, why isn’t the Oversight Committee calling Trump or his people at Justice and the FBI?
The answer, of course, is that the point here is that it is political kabuki at play.
If it all weren’t so cruel and heartless, it would be ridiculous.
