Trump Is Incompetent

That makes him more, not less dangerous

Trump was a uniquely incompetent and ineffectual president, and no sooner was he elected to a second term than he began to demonstrate that he has not changed. One of the first things he did was to appoint congresswoman Elise Stefanik to be UN ambassador, congressman Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, and foreheadful MAGA pustule Matt Gaetz for Attorney General.

Trump can’t count

On the merits, Stefanik and Waltz and especially Gaetz are of course dreadful. But beyond that they are (again) congresspeople. The Republicans are looking at the narrowest of narrow majorities in the House—it could be as little as 219-216. But with Stefanik, Waltz, and Gaetz gone, that would be 216-216, at least until special elections. No one has a majority. Even if Rs do cling to a 1 or 2 vote lead, given their general level of disarray and infighting, could they even pick a Speaker? And what happens if Trump decides to poach another member or two? You can see Mike Johnson’s flop sweat from orbit.

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Trump’s inability to work with his own party, and his inability in this case to count, can sometimes give Democrats a tactical advantage, or make it easier to stymie him. He doesn’t really know how anything works, and is too lazy to find out, which means that he has little ability to get the government to do what he wants it to. Since most of what he wants is evil, this seems like it should be a good thing.

Trump smash

The problem is that part of being a competent president is having a sense of which policies or tactics are risky and unpopular, and avoiding those. Trump has zero ability to distinguish his own internal rambling monologue from reality. That means he blunders through guard rails more or less at random. And while that can harm his standing and make it more difficult to enact his policies, it can also damage democracy.

You can see this dynamic already in Trump’s demands that the Senate allow him to make recess appointments—in other words, without a Senate vote. “Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner,” Trump bloviated on twitter. “Sometimes the votes can take two years, or more. This is what they did four years ago, and we cannot let it happen again. We need positions filled IMMEDIATELY!”

The Supreme Court in the past has blocked recess appointments (though the current partisan dipshits in robes might reverse that.) But the Senate also requires a filibuster proof majority to go into recess—a much more difficult process than the simple majority needed to confirm executive appointments.

Trump has a solid Republican Senate this time out (probably 53-47), and any even vaguely reasonable appointment is going to sail through the chamber without any trouble. Stefanik and Waltz will certainly be confirmed easily, and will likely get a Democratic vote or two. Even manifestly incompetent bozos like Robert Kennedy might get confirmed—though Trump could make things a lot easier for himself and his party by, you know, not nominating manifestly incompetent bozos like Robert Kennedy, and instead sticking with conventionally awful goons like Elise Stefanik.

This is the point, though. Trump is a bumbling fool, who has neither the ability nor the inclination to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable appointees. He also doesn’t understand that he has a compliant Senate, and that he really doesn’t need to break the rules to get what he wants. Nor does he understand that breaking the rules is likely to put him at odds with his own party and generate tons of bad press.

Most presidents try to avoid fighting with their own party and generating tons of bad press for no reason, because even if they win the point it delegitimizes them and sets them up for later losses. In other words, presidential competence—a sense of how politics work and of what is and is not easy or hard to do—helps preserve norms and therefore democracy.

None of that applies to Trump though. He’s already picking a difficult and contentious fight to destroy constitutional safeguards even though he can get what he wants—loyalist conservative cabinet picks—easily and without fuss. And while the backlash is likely to damage him, it also could damage democracy, as Republican senators and Republican courts try to cater to the nonsense whims of the ignorant, blundering asshole to whom they’ve sworn fealty.

There are lots of other examples. As just the most obvious, Trump is planning to destroy our economy because he literally doesn’t understand how tariffs work or why they’re going to result in massive and unpopular inflation.

When a president doesn’t know or care how his party or the public will react to his actions, there’s little stopping him from taking actions which harm the party or the public. Again, this overreach can harm the president himself, which is why most president’s avoid taking unpopular or controversial actions when they don’t have to.

But presidents are very powerful, and in the process of harming themselves, they can also do a lot of damage to the constitution, to the country, and to the human beings who live in the country. The lesson of the first Trump presidency, with its botched pandemic response, is that presidential incompetence is often even worse than, or indistinguishable from, presidential malice.