The Most Dangerous Five Words in Trump 2.0

Some thoughts as we begin President Stephen Miller's first 100 days

To stay in surf shape, I’ve been swimming. This has created an interesting personal barometer for the state of our country:

How quickly, after exiting the pool, do I check my phone to see what terrible things have happened while I was submerged?

In February and March, I was opening my NYTimes app on the bench in the locker room, still dripping wet. More recently, things have improved. I often dry my hair – and sometimes even change into shorts and t-shirt – before catching up on the news. Occasionally, I’ve made it all the way home.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that now that we’ve gone from drinking from a firehose to drinking from a garden hose (deeply awful after more than a few seconds, possibly deadly, but also quite possibly survivable), I’ve noticed a five-word phrase run occasionally through my head.

It is, I think, the most dangerous thought a person can have during this period of American history.

This will run its course.

From Shock and Awe to Thrashing Tuna

Like many of us, I’ve been thinking about courage recently. I’ve been thinking about cowardice, too. Here’s something I’ve noticed: cowards don’t usually identify as cowards. Selfish people don’t usually identify as selfish. They need a way to justify their bad behavior.

From conversations I’ve had, I get the sense that whether it’s the elite law firms or universities who caved to Trump, the business leaders who think Trump is driving the economy off a cliff but won’t stick their necks out to say so, the hangers-on who hope to collect the crumbs of Trump’s corruption, or the Republicans in Congress who refuse to stand up to a lawless president, “This will run its course” is the justification du jour.

It's a handy phrase. It doesn’t just excuse caving to Trump or enriching oneself by getting in bed with him. It rebrands those acts of cowardice and callousness as wisdom. We, the thinking goes, are cool, calm, and collected enough to take the long view. Anyone who sees this as a five-alarm fire isn’t just wrong, but hysterical. Immature.

As we put Trump’s first 100 days behind us, the run-its-coursers are probably feeling vindicated. His approvals are down. He walked back his tariffs from their most depression-inducing heights. Court orders have been toyed with in unprecedented ways but not violated outright. The conventional wisdom is that fair and free midterm elections will occur.

But none of this proves the second Trump term will run its course. It proves that courageous people changed the course of the second Trump term.

I’d actually argue the big milestone for Trump 2.0 wasn’t the end of the first 100 days, but the beginning of April. Through the end of March, MAGA was steamrolling American life. And then? Elon got his butt kicked in a Wisconsin State Supreme Court election. “Hands Off” protests erupted around the country. The next week, Harvard told the Trump Administration (in its Harvard-y way) to screw itself.

It's easy, in retrospect, to see these events as inevitable. Gravity at work. But when Word Salad readers raised more than $17,000 for Wisconsin; when millions of us protested; when Harvard publicly stood its ground; the Trump administration still felt like a steamroller.

The only reason these fights ever began to seem winnable is that people were willing to fight them when they didn’t.

I’m not trying to be rosy about Trump’s first 100 days. Tons of horrible stuff has already happened; tons more will. I guess I think about Trump’s self-proclaimed “shock and awe” strategy as a (much-less-violent, lower-stakes) version of England during the Blitz. While the onslaught the strategic objective – cowing a people and their institutions into submission – wasn’t achieved.

Which brings me to the tuna.

It’s been a while since I’ve been deep sea fishing. But I remember, from a trip as a kid, being told that the most dangerous time to be around a big tuna is after you’ve hauled it into the boat. On one hand: congratulations, you caught a tuna! But on the other hand, when a creature that weighs dozens or even hundreds of pounds, most of them muscle, starts flailing, it’s hard to understate how badly it can hurt you.

Trump isn’t yet in the Hail Mary phase of his presidency. But I do think he’s in the thrashing tuna phase. The people around him genuinely believed they could bully the country and world into submission. Not only that, but Americans would like it.

That’s not what happened. The administration’s victories, while discouraging, were far from total. The only president less popular than Trump this time is Trump last time.

All of this is good. It makes it less likely that Trump will win. But it doesn’t make him less of a threat. As his window to seize complete control of America closes, Trump is going to lash out more desperately than ever. And for all his early missteps, he’s still the president of the United States.

That’s a big, dangerous tuna.

Our New Shadow President

While was no white smoke coming from the White House, but the Vatican wasn’t the only place with a major change in leadership this week. Elon Musk appears to have backed away from his official role in Trump-world like the Homer-Simpson-in-the-bushes meme.

In his place is our new shadow president, Stephen Miller.

Miller always made more sense as co-chief executive. He’s fully comfortable to wield power while remaining in Trump’s shadow. He’s been in Trump-world forever. And he has an actual relationship with the boss. (To me one of the most noteworthy revelations of SignalGate was that Miller was the only one with the authority to speak for POTUS.)

A Stephen Miller shadow presidency is going to look very different from a Musk one. In many ways, it’s going to be a lot scarier.

First of all, where Musk could tweet about locking people up for treason or otherwise arresting political opponents, Miller has the juice within the administration to actually give that order. It’s not surprising that a Wisconsin judge and the mayor of Newark were arrested around the time Miller replaced Elon as the country’s second (or maybe first) most important person.

Miller doesn’t have the credibility with swing voters that Musk does. Nor does he have the Tony Stark, I-build-rockets thing that made Elon popular before America got to know him. Miller’s vibe is more “If Squidward from Spongebob got hooked on Fox News.”

Mr. Miller, in a candid photograph

This probably makes him less dangerous if we can get through the short term. But getting through the short term won’t be easy. Where Musk ignored the law – and didn’t seem to think it was worth of his attention – Miller wants to use the law to crush political opposition. And he’s smarter about doing it.

That’s why the Trump administration is suddenly talking about suspending habeas corpus, declaring an “invasion,” and arresting members of Congress.

It’s also not a coincidence that these attempt to turn America into a police state are happening the context of immigration. Miller has always been a nativist, not a conservative in any broader sense. He’s obsessed with immigration. And the rest of the White House is fine with that, because immigration remains Trump’s best issue.

The last thing about Miller – he’s a maximalist. He’s not the kind of person who boils the frog so slowly it doesn’t notice. He’s the kind of person who tries to smash the frog with a sledgehammer.

Fascistic. Immigration-obsessed. Maximalist. Over the long term, the chances of a Miller-ist approach succeeding might be lower. But in the short term, it’s a scary time to be a frog.

All of which is to say while first 100 days of Miller’s co-presidency are no more guaranteed to be successful the first 100 days of Musk’s were, it’s going to take a lot of effort and a lot of courage.

In other words, this still won’t run its course.

How to Win Round Two

The biggest challenge for the anti-MAGA coalition right now is, in my view, being confident without becoming complacent. We know these guys are beatable. But we also know that there’s a difference between beatable and destined-to-be-beat. Everyone’s role in the next 100 days is going to be different – but I think these three things broadly apply.

1) Acknowledge successes. Just a few recent events:

• Trump had to withdraw Ed Martin’s nomination to be the District Attorney for Washington, D.C.

• A judge ruled that ICE can’t indefinitely detain a student for writing an op-ed – and ICE, for all its bluster about ignoring courts, released her.

• Governor Janet Mills of Maine wiped the floor with Trump’s team when they tried to bully her by threatening to withhold agriculture funding.

• Courts finally ordered the opponent of Allison Riggs, the North Carolina State Supreme Court judge who won a razor-close State Supreme Court election, to concede.

Does this mean I can stop checking my phone after swimming? Nope. But it does mean that one of the central arguments MAGA made just a few months ago - resistance is futile – is obviously untrue. When we highlight that fighting back works, more people become willing to join the fight.

2. Stay Focused on Winning Issues. I’ve written a bunch recently on how we can talk about both the economy and the rule of law. But if I were forced to choose what Democrats focus on, it would be the economy. And I think that over the past week we’ve tilting too much toward exclusively focusing on the rule of law.

Obviously, ICE arresting Newark’s mayor – and threatening to arrest members of Congress – for protesting an immigration detention facility is wrong, and thuggish, and we can’t just ignore it. But I worry that every Democrat is eager to protest an outrage involving immigration, and very few of them are putting that kind of energy into pointing out how Trump is hurting American citizens.

The best way to protect the rule of law – including for immigrants – is to bring Trump’s approvals down to rock bottom. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, while Trump’s still underwater, his approvals have ticked up a bit as immigration and justice replaces the economy in the news.

3. Embrace “Work-Life-Fight” Balance

I know. Work-life balance is tough enough already. But that’s the thing about living in times we didn’t ask for – the reason we didn’t ask for them is that they’re really hard!

I don’t think protecting our country from Trump, Musk, and Miller has to be your full-time job. (Though I admire people for whom it is.) But it should be your part time job, and you should think about what that means for you. It might be giving money, it might be protesting, it might be sharing things on social media, it might be attending town halls, it might be some combination of all that stuff. And the same time, this is going to be a marathon. It’s okay – in fact, it’s essential – to be a person and not just a patriot. There’s no one right answer for how we should approach the next 100 days and beyond.

But “this will run its course” is the wrong one.