by Ken MacVey
Many have talked about Trump’s war on the rule of law. No president in American history, not even Nixon, has engaged in such overt warfare on the rule of law. He attacks judges, issues executive orders that are facially unlawful, coyly defies court orders, humiliates and subjugates big law firms to his will, and weaponizes law enforcement to target those who seek to uphold the law.
What is not talked about as much is that this is part of a self-reinforcing pattern. Trump’s words, conduct, and example have been an assault on norms we once took for granted. With Trump 2 the assault has intensified. The new normal is there is no normal.
Trump as a businessman has never been a producer in the way other businesses are. Businesses sell products and services. Businesses manage their operations. As Warren Buffet commented, Trump is not particularly good at business operations but is good at licensing. That is because Trump’s product is himself. He is the product people consume and we are all his consumers—to love him is to be a consumer; to despise him is to be a consumer. Fox News and MSNBC are equally fueled by selling his product, which again is Trump himself. His game and his product are the same: “Look at me!” And we all fall for it.
It has become a cliché to note that Trump is a convicted felon, a businessman who has gone through six bankruptcies and who boasts about how he stiffs others. It is widely commented he lies, cheats, and according to a jury and his own admission, sexually assaults women. He is constantly taunting and insulting others, testing and crossing boundaries. None of this seems to ultimately hurt him. This is all part of his “authenticity” his base finds so appealing. He is the ultimate “sticking it to the Man” guy and by each insult, each crossing of what for anyone else would be a bridge too far, has become the Man himself. As president in a second term he is taking selling his product, that is himself, to new levels. People can buy access by contributing millions to his inauguration committee, paying millions to his crypto fund, or millions for his Trump gold card. Again, the product is always Trump himself. This then is coupled with his two in the morning postings on Truth Social (another Trump product where Trump is the product) or his White House posted AI generated images of his basking in the sun with Musk at a future resort in Gaza or his portrayal as king or pope.
The point is Trump is always the product, the center of attention, and no norms apply. The more of this product we consume in the attention universe the more he monopolizes our attention and in turn the more normalized his breaking norms becomes. His attack on the rule of law is just part of his overall attack on norms. This is self-reinforcing. By attacking norms overall he makes it easier to attack the rule of law, which is denigrated to just being another conventional norm. By attacking the rule of law it also makes it easier for him to flout other norms, such as when he is talking about going for a third term, while sometimes pretending, sometime not, it’s all a joke.
This isn’t to suggest all of this is the result of a grand strategic master plan. It is the result of who he is. He has to sell himself to himself too. He is an empty man who expands himself by inhaling his own flatulence of self-promotion. Therein lies a pathway for his opponents to respond that does not fall into the trap of giving him what he craves the most: attention that generates more attention.
The dilemma to anyone opposing Trump is that Trump cannot be ignored. This column is itself an example of that fact. Attention must be given. But it does not have to be the kind Trump craves, instead it can be the kind that weakens his brand.
What the Trump 2 administration is doing is what Steve Bannon calls “flooding the zone.” The administration does one shocking thing after another so that attention is constantly diverted and the opposition is thereupon overwhelmed and any response will be about yesterday’s news. But it is becoming apparent the problem with this tactic is that the Trump administration is starting to drown in its own flood. Court after court, judge after judge, including judges appointed by Trump, are ruling against the Trump administration. Bad images of bad actions are starting to stick in people’s heads. Deporting children with cancer is not normal. It’s sick and cruel. Whisking off an immigrant to El Salvador without due process unsettles even Joe Rogan. A cabinet of “wacky lackies,” which includes a Secretary of Defense who unwittingly shares military attack plans with a journalist in an unsecured chat and a Secretary of Education who thinks AI stands for “A one” as in steak sauce, showcases shocking and laugh out loud incompetence.
To make it worse, Trump and his administration are stepping on their themes that got Trump elected. He promised lower prices and heightened prosperity. Instead his cross-the-board arbitrary tariffs to be imposed on the rest of the globe mean prices will go up, shelves will be empty, and jobs will be lost. Trump is even a self-certified Grinch declaring it’s ok for children not to get dolls for Christmas because of his tariffs. Handed an economy that was the envy of the world, Trump is driving it off a cliff into recession combined with inflation. The promise of not getting sucked into foreign ventures is shattered by Trump’s threatening to seize Greenland or annex Canada, which is also as crazy as it sounds.
Remarkedly, the Trump administration seems to be going out of its way to alienate the Trump base. Trade wars hurt Trump donors and voters. VA cuts hurt Trump supporting veterans. Musk trash talk about Social Security unnerves Trump leaning seniors. On top of this, people are beginning to “Bidenize” Trump. Social media are picking up on Trump falling asleep at the Pope’s funeral. Commentators are alarmed when Trump in an interview in responding to a question about his campaign against Harvard rambled about Harlem, with his response apparently only tied together by the fact that the words Harvard and Harlem both begin with “Har.”
Of course, more is to come. More missteps. More oversteps. More shocking moments. More non-stop talk centering on Trump. Eventually, there will be disasters as the consequences of an incompetent administration land. One thing is for sure, normal is out.
Trump’s brand is that Trump is a tough, shrewd and rule breaking and get it done businessman. The Trump campaign promised “a beautiful place” but the Trump administration is delivering chaos. The Make America Great Again slogan was an appeal to misremembered based nostalgia. Many are now becoming more nostalgic about when things were normal and maybe even boring. Will MAGA be replaced with MANA, “Make America Normal Again”? Trump may be winning his war in killing off what is normal. But in the process he also may be killing off his brand. The question is, will his opposition make effective use of what Trump is serving to them on a silver platter? There is certainly enough ever-mounting material to rebrand the Trump brand for a clearance sale.