The Trump Hangover is Finally Here

And it’s not going away in 2028

At about 4am Irish Time, shortly after Democrats won a Senate Seat in Kansas for the first time since 1932 (the election right after the great depression), the President of the United States issued the following explanation for the results:

Readers, for years, have accused me of having “Trump Derangement Syndrome”, that being a burning hatred of Donald Trump that makes me incapable of seeing his good side or noting his accomplishments, while simultaneously seeking to blame every negative occurrence on him.

This is neither true nor fair: Trump has demonstrated real strengths. He has a preternatural ability to connect with an audience. A gift for identifying problems and speaking them in plain language. Occasionally, courage to do the unthinkable. And perhaps most importantly, a complete indifference to what the media says about him.

But he has also long had fatal flaws. All of them relate to his character and his inability to either admit or learn from mistakes. And collectively they explain last night’s results.

Of those results, let me just note that many of the same people who scoffed for weeks at predictions of a bad night for Republicans are now saying something different: “Well it was a midterm, John. The President’s Party always loses in the midterms”.

There are two things about that: First, if it is true today then it was true last week when many of those same people were yapping about fake polls and silent MAGA voters coming out in droves. People will say and often believe anything to make themselves feel better on a given day.

Second, there are losses and there then there are losses. Barack Obama lost a raft of Senate Seats in 2014, but those losses came in swing states. There was no “God a Republican just won in California” moment, like there was last night in Texas. And Iowa. And Kansas. And South Carolina. Obama didn’t make blue states red. Last night, voters turned red states blue.

They handed Democrats a far bigger win than anyone, including Democrats themselves in their most erotic fantasies, might have imagined.

But back to character.

Faced with such losses, a person with a reasonable political antenna and the interests of his party at heart would probably issue some kind of mea culpa to the voters: “I’ve heard you, and while we’ve made real progress on some areas, I know gas prices are still too high”. Such a person might also have acknowledged the good Republicans swept out of office on a wave of anger, and said sorry to them.

Not Donald Trump: To the voters, he said “you’d have voted for me if I was on the ballot”. To his own candidates, he said “you sucked” (ignoring the huge raft of them he picked by hand himself).

This poses an immediate problem for whichever poor bugger the Republicans nominate in 2028. I’m telling you now: That person is screwed.

Why?

Because Donald Trump won’t change – and he won’t allow anyone else to change. When that campaign rolls around, he will not take a back seat in the White House and let the nominee chart their own way.

No – it’ll be endless Trump rallies. With the faithful told to reflect on the greatness of his term, and the nominee expected to kiss the hem of his robes.

If the nominee is trailing in the polls, will Trump help? Or will he send tweets and truths like the one above, noting that the party would be doing so much better if he was on the ballot again?

If the nominee criticises him – something like “I think the President has done many great things but the Iran war was a massive error of judgment” – will Trump stay silent, or will he attack his own party’s candidate?

You know the answers to those questions. And if you don’t, you do not know Trump.

As to the results last night themselves, it is not hard to divine what has happened: The President promised to fix the Biden economy, and promptly unleashed tariffs that hurt his own voters, especially in rural America. Last night Republicans lost Iowa, Kansas, and Texas – and came very close to losing Mississippi and Nebraska. All states with big farm economies and rural populations that were devoted to The Donald.

He promised peace, and launched a disastrous war on Iran. He promised prosperity, and has delivered a mountain of debt.

And he’s done it all while engaging in an orgy of corruption and pocket lining that would make Charles Haughey look like a saint. Last week there was a story in one of the papers about how Alina Habba, one of his lawyers, got a 10million a year gig on the board of a Venezuelan company. The week after, the owner of that company got a Presidential Pardon. There are stories like it every week.

Americans hate that shit.

So would most Trump supporters, if it was happening under Joe Biden.

So, do I have Trump Derangement Syndrome? I don’t think I do. But I have believed since day one that Donald Trump’s deep and abiding character flaws would, in the end, do far more harm to “the cause” than anything he might do in office.

A decade on since 2016, I believe I was right about that. I don’t think the west is richer, more secure, more united, or more confident about its future after six years of him as President and ten of him as the leading character of the global right.

With two years to go until he sabotages the next election and ushers in an era of liberal governance in the USA, it might be time for the right to start learning some lessons.

J.