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Trump’s 2nd Crazy Circus is Coming

Sheila Markin

On January 6th, 2025, the Electoral College will meet and Trump will be declared the winner of the 2024 election. On January 20th Trump will be sworn in as the president and will move back into the White House.

What should we expect when Trump returns to power?

Trump has warned that he will begin with “shock and awe”– firing many government workers, rounding up immigrants, and installing some staggeringly unqualified cabinet members to run our government. This kind of shock and awe won’t help the American people have better lives or reclaim the American Dream that has become unattainable for too many Americans even as the rich get richer.

Some people who are excited about Trump’s return to the presidency expect him to be good for business.  They are excited about the idea that many of the people Trump will put in charge of government are planning to deconstruct the agencies they will be leading. If the business world flourishes in our country that could be good for America. But will this effort be done thoughtfully? Much depends on the man running the show, the leaders he installs, and who is in charge in Congress. That’s where the rubber meets the road.

WHAT SHOULD WE HAVE LEARNED ABOUT TRUMP FROM HIS FIRST TERM?

Many people who voted for Trump thought back on their experience and liked his first term. Either they forgot or don’t know that the reason it went so well was that

  • Obama turned over a very strong economy to Trump after 8 years of stewardship.
  • Trump was prevented from doing great harm by people who were providing guardrails who stopped him from doing the crazy stuff he wanted to do.
  • Trump did not face any real emergencies until the pandemic happened in 2020.

Americans should have learned about who Trump was and still is from the way he handled the pandemic. One big reason the pandemic was so lethal was because Trump had cut back on CDC epidemiologists in China who could have identified and contained the outbreak. Few Americans seem to remember or ever knew about that. But we need to remind ourselves what happened because it is a window into what is going to happen with Trump at the helm of our ship of state.

In 2020 Reuters reported that:
The Trump administration cut staff by more than two-thirds at a key U.S. public health agency operating inside China, as part of a larger rollback of U.S.-funded health and science experts on the ground there leading up to the coronavirus outbreak, Reuters has learned.
Most of the reductions were made at the Beijing office of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and occurred over the past two years, according to public CDC documents viewed by Reuters and interviews with four people familiar with the drawdown.
The Atlanta-based CDC, America’s preeminent disease fighting agency, provides public health assistance to nations around the world and works with them to help stop outbreaks of contagious diseases from spreading globally. It has worked in China for 30 years.
Trump rolled back the funding and the number of CDC experts stationed in China who were there to identify and contain just the kind of outbreak we got with the pandemic. Trump has been a purveyor of conspiracies as well as rampant mis and dis information. He doesn’t value science, facts or accuracy. His failure to understand the need to support the truth and support science turned out to be one of the biggest reasons the world was caught off guard by a pandemic that could have been contained but was not.
Trump’s decision to cut back on the CDC was bad judgement. Other prior lethal pandemics had been contained in the past. https://www.cdc.gov/global-health/about/our-impact.html
After that, Trump compounded the damage by suggesting people try some crazy stuff like injecting bleach and using hydroxychloroquine as a treatment. Americans listen to their commander-in-chief and a bunch of them tried these stupid home remedies that Trump suggested ending up in the emergency room. In fairness to Trump he also poured money into rushing a vaccine into production which saved lives. But as the MAGAs turned against the idea of vaccines and masks, Trump stopped talking about his successful vaccine program and hoped that his base would not blame him for those life-saving vaccines.
TRUMP’S PERSONALITY AND LACK OF ETHICS ARE BIG PROBLEMS 
Maybe Americans don’t vote for a president based on his character, ethics and psyche, but their failure to care about those traits is going to come back to bite them. Trump’s personality is shaped by impulsive and desperate personal needs instead of a strong moral code of ethics. Trump has a strong felt need to be admired and approved of, for example.  If his adoring base consists of white supremacists and they are acting badly then he will find a way to condone what they do even if it is immoral or illegal to insure their continued support and admiration.
Trump is desperate to be a winner. He must pretend to win even when he hasn’t won. When Trump lost the election in 2020, he engaged in a massive effort to overturn the results of the election and promote the Big Lie that he won when he lost which his followers then dutifully supported. Remember how he used the “fake elector scheme”? Remember how he got a protector in the Dept of Justice to interfere to help him stay in power? Then as a last ditch effort he ignited the January 6th attack on the Capitol refusing to stop the assault even though his political allies and his family begged him to call off his followers. He acted against the advice of his close advisors when he engaged in those violations of law and public trust. Trump’s lack of character should have mattered when people cast their ballots, but for too many Americans it didn’t.
Has Trump learned anything from his first term? Yeah. Looks like he did. This time around his cabinet and the close advisors he is choosing are all “yes” men and loyalists who will obey him without question. No guardrails.
Good leaders rely on information that is accurate, factual and based on science and reality. They listen to advisors even if the information is not what they want to hear. Good leaders would make decisions for the good of the American people not the good of oneself or the 1%. What is the likelihood that Trump will be that kind of leader in his second term?
Given who Trump is and who the MAGAs are, Americans should anticipate that we are in for the kind of crazy we got before with Trump but without the guardrails of his first term.

WHAT GOES ON IN TRUMP’S MIND?

Trump is a narcissist and a control freak. We know that from his first term in office. Those traits don’t go away when you are elected for a second term. Neither will his worsening dementia disappear. That’s still there too and will interfere with his judgement in his next term as president. There was a reason why he mused about sharks and electrocution and Hannibal Lector in his rallies. These ramblings came from his dark imaginings, bubbling up from his unconscious when he was afraid of going to prison for breaking the law and seemed to be facing accountability, financial ruin and incarceration.

This election was all or nothing for Trump. Now that he has regained the ALL, not only the power of the presidency but a grant of seemingly unlimited immunity from the Supreme Court for criminal acts as long as they can be claimed as official acts, we hear his musings about taking over Greenland, the Panama Canal and “jokes” about adding Canada as a state. Trump seems to be playing with the idea of territorial conquest as many authoritarian leaders do. More power. More land. More of everything. Grandiose musings bubbling up from his unconscious now that he is the king of it ALL in his own mind.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?
How was it that millions of voters failed to factor in what they should have known about Trump from his first term?  Americans don’t seek out accurate news. They are on their devices watching TikTok or listening to influencers or picking up news from other untrustworthy sources that want to entertain and please them instead of giving them information that runs counter to what they want to hear. Some have turned off their news feeds because they don’t like what they hear when they do get the news these days. Americans seek out news that reassures them they are right.
Some American voters also believed the fake populist message Trump has been selling.  Others just weren’t paying attention. When they had to choose between a man and a woman for president, they didn’t do their homework to find out what Harris stood for. They thought the man looked more like a president.

Americans have also been groomed to be cynical these days. A lot of Americans don’t believe there is any difference between Democrats and Republicans – they think that all politicians are only out for themselves.  That thinking is promoted by Republicans because it helps them to win elections. Painting all politicians with the same negative brush is just as unfair to them as it would be for someone to say all women are alike or all men are alike. I wish you, whoever you are, reading this post could meet the concerned, thoughtful, dedicated, service-oriented congressional representatives, governors, senators and local politicians I have met and talked with. They really do exist. They are in the Democratic Party these days.

SERVICE ORIENTED POLITICIANS ARE DEMOCRATS 

These days service-oriented politicians are Democrats. They got into politics because they want to improve the lives of Americans. These people are reminiscent of Jimmy Carter. They have character. They want to help Americans have better lives. They are not using politics as a way to enrich themselves or get themselves more social media hits unlike most of the MAGAs including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Laura Loomer, Paul Gosar, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz and others who are engaged in the performative politics that is the hallmark of MAGA Republicanism.

We need more people in politics who believe in service no matter which party they represent. Not all Democrats are great guys either, of course. But these days the Democratic Party appeals to more of those Boy Scout and Girl Scout types who are trying to do the best they can for their constituents in the districts or states they were elected to represent.

People are elected to serve their voters but they also need inform the voters with accurate and truthful information. There are not a lot of Republicans who fit that description anymore. The litmus test for being a Republican these days is whether you buy the Big Lie instead of whether you have the balls to tell the truth. Those who tried to stand up against the Big Lie – the moderate Republicans- have left congress at this point, hounded out by MAGA extremists who threaten them.

If we had a well-functioning democracy that insisted on upholding the rule of law, these threats would be impermissible and swiftly followed up with well publicized arrests. Instead, too often these days, rightwing extremists use the First Amendment idea of free speech as both a shield and a sword to prevent retaliation for their threats and against those who don’t comply with their demands.

SO WHAT WILL THE 119th CONGRESS BE ABLE TO ACCOMPLISH?

The 118th Congress (our last Congress) passed just under 150 bills over the last two years, according to the Quorum data provided to Axios.

  • That’s down from 350+ passed in the previous Congress, when Dems controlled both chambers and the White House.
  • The 17 Congresses since the start of George H.W. Bush’s presidency in 1989 have passed an average of 380+ laws.

 Flashback: Aside from this Congress, the previously most unproductive sessions were the 112th and 113th — in which Republicans controlled the House and clashed bitterly with President Obama. [Axios]

When the 119th Congress convenes, the Republican majority will be composed of more extreme MAGAs, but will only have a one or two vote majority, which is even smaller than the makeup of the 118th Congress. If even one or two Republicans cannot be present in the House to vote or if one or two side with the Democrats, the MAGA agenda will hit a brick wall.  Whoever the Speaker of the House may be will need Democrats to vote on a bill to get passage and that means Republicans will need to work with Democrats. Since MAGAs are extreme and don’t want to work with Democrats, very little will get done legislatively.

And that will create more cynicism.

Republicans like cynicism because they use it to convince Americans that government doesn’t work. MAGAs always try to blame the Democrats for government failures. “See? Government doesn’t work. We need to make Trump a dictator to get anything done!” (Only they will say ‘consolidate power in the president’).

In short, given the 119th Congress and Trump as president, Americans are about to become more cynical and dissatisfied with their government. Until working Americans wake up and realize that Trump and the MAGA Republicans are to blame for that, our country will continue to be manipulated by this extreme rightwing movement and a president who is all in on helping himself and the ultra wealthy, not working Americans.

Here is the good news: There is a chance that Americans will realize that Trump and MAGAs are to blame for the clown show we are about to get because Republicans own all branches of government. Trump and the MAGAs are about to show us once again that they suck at governing.

Trump’s second clown show is about to start. Get out your popcorn. Watch the news. The worse it gets the more likely better people regain control in 2026.

 

 

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