Saturday, November 14, 2026
The Felon: A Mediocre, Miserable Man
In the course in international relations I took with him as a Harvard undergraduate in the early 1960s, when he was still a mere professor of government, Henry Kissinger had certain personal observations that he would frequently reiterate, a main one of which was, “In retrospect, everything looks inevitable.” [The Felon]
President Donald Trump, halfway through his second term in office, suddenly—and, I would guess, to a certain extent unexpectedly, to him—finds his political power severely circumscribed. Was this midterm election outcome, more extreme in its repudiation of his government than virtually anyone anticipated, foreordained by Trump’s egomaniacal approach to business, politics, and other people in general?An argument could be made that the undoing of his presidency was bound to happen. Another concept I picked up in my undergraduate studies was that of “omnipotence of thought.” This is the conviction that one’s thoughts or beliefs can not only influence the external world but control it. Trump came into the business world and later political office with a set of misguided and inflexible beliefs and habits, instilled in him first by a stern and un-loving father, which were extended and fortified by the man who became not only his attorney but his political mentor, the notoriously ruthless and unprincipled Roy Cohn, chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch-hunt hearings in the 1950s.
In the three books that his niece, Mary L. Trump, has written about him, she has made clear that her uncle was raised by a cold, ruthless, mercenary father and a largely absent and sickly mother. The lack of love in the household, to Mary, is the most telling aspect of Donald’s upbringing. The film The Apprentice (2024), which highlights Cohn’s mentorship of him, makes clear the essence of Cohn’s tutelage of Donald: No matter what, no matter how wrong you might be or turn out to be about a given matter or issue, you must never bend, never give up your adherence to a position, no matter how misguided it might turn out to be. And incidentally, the film also highlights the instance in which “The Donald,” as his first wife, Ivana, called him, allegedly raped her as she was spurning his unwanted conjugal advances.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Trump would stake out positions that are autarkic in nature, for himself as an individual as well as for the country. Autarky is a state of self-sufficiency and self-absorption that is as complete as possible. Trump does not brook advice from other people as to what he should or should not do in a given circumstance. Therefore, in his first term as president, when anyone in the government or the White House of high caliber—say, for instance, his first chief of staff, retired Marine General John Kelly—tried to offer advice contrary to his own inclination, he would chafe against it in annoyance. In his second term, he stacked his Cabinet with pliant, mediocre individuals who would never dare challenge his inclinations, no matter how wayward or bizarre they might be.
Having managed to kidnap the president of Venezuela, which has an estimated population of 28.6 million and no more than 150,000 military personnel, he then fantasized that he could similarly subdue the vastly larger nation of Iran, with its estimated population of 93.4 million and approximately 610,000 military personnel, including its notoriously brutal Revolutionary Guard. In this latter case, U.S. bombardment killed the nation’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and subsequent strikes did away with many of the country’s top leaders, including, it is believed, many of the identified moderate leaders, those who U.S. analysts believed would have been open to striking a reasonable deal with the United States over the issue of nuclear weapons.
During his 2024 campaign, this magazine ran a picture of him with a faint mustache and short haircut that suggested he might be an American Hitler. We were far from alone in making such a comparison. But as it has turned out, he was not such. . . . . He did not cancel the 2026 political elections, or make any serious moves to undermine them, much to the surprise of many. His reaction to the election results, so far, has been muted, and it appears that he may content himself with pursuing his various construction projects during the rest of his second term. Which is not to say that he won’t get up to some forms of mischief. His top priority, clearly—and one doomed to failure—is and has been trying to turn the United States back into an overwhelmingly white country; hence his attacks on all programs involving affirmative action and his relentless efforts to deport as many noncitizen residents of color in the country as possible as rapidly as possible . . .
Beyond that, I think he aspires to reduce every aspect of excellence in the country to a level of mediocrity, which is to say, down to his very own level. And at this, I confidently predict, he will woefully fail, as he has failed so often at his major endeavors throughout his miserable life.
Friday, November 13, 2026
We Just Witnessed an Electoral Regicide
The Felon views himself as a monarch or dictator with unfettered powers and has engaged in levels of corruption and excesses that are reminiscent of out of touch monarchs of fallen dynasties. Constant lies and untruths have flowed from his mouth and that of his sycophants who view themselves as the would be monarch's untouchable courtiers. Last week's mid-term elections witnesses a resounding rejection of the Felon and his policies - he stupidly asked voters to vote like he was on the ballot and that's precisely what they did - in what in some ways is akin to a regicide. Both the Felon and his Republican enablers in Congress paid a high price at the ballot box for shocking overreach, endless lies, gross incompetence, and "Marie Antoinette" moments - not to malign France's one time queen - and policies that benefit the very rich while slashing social programs that saved millions of Americans from an even uglier and more brutal existence. As a column in the New York Times lays out, such drastic resets have happened in the past when all too powerful presidents have seen their wings clipped by voters who want a return to normalcy and the traditional separation of powers. Unlike past presidents faced with such a public rejection, the Felon so far appears to be ignoring the will of the voters. Indeed, his appointment of Stephen Miller as chief of staff, defense of Pete Hegseth, and his DOJ's threats to members of Congress exercising oversight responsibilities are tantamount to giving the middle finger to voters. Here are column highlights:
The American political system is enormously elastic. In times of genuine emergency, our institutions have proved themselves remarkably adept at unified action, usually under vigorous presidential leadership. Those are the moments — from wars to terrorist attacks — that are prominent in our history books. Few recognize, however, that our system is just as capable of institutional contraction. When a powerful presidency is no longer seen as necessary, voters know how to end it.
This year’s midterms were a rare instance of such a restoration election. They have occurred in the past — after major wars, mostly — when crises have subsided and voters have chosen to restore something approaching status quo antebellum or, as Warren G. Harding put it after World War I, a return to “normalcy.”
Most of these elections produced, as happened last week, a loss for the president’s party in both chambers of Congress. In every case, the message has been unmistakable: It’s time to go back to normal procedure and no longer be beholden to the sitting president’s rule. These restorations have been so painful for the incumbent that they are essentially a unique form of American regicide.
There have been several restorations throughout American history. Three are especially informative. As the armistice was being prepared to end World War I, President Woodrow Wilson feared that his leadership would be undermined by a midterm change in party control.
Wilson had, in recent years, directed the movements of millions of soldiers and sailors; he had confiscated the nation’s railroads for public purpose; his agents instructed Americans how much sugar they were allowed to put in their morning coffee. Still, Wilson found it necessary to go to the American people in the 1918 midterms with an appeal to continue his rule; they refused and sent Republican majorities to each chamber. Wilson, who once had near-dictatorial power, was kneecapped.
He subsequently embarked on a vast publicity campaign to salvage his dearest postwar aim: the League of Nations. Unable to pass his signature treaty in Congress, he tried to go directly to the voters to drum up support. It was an exercise in futility that undermined his health and effectively ended his presidency. The institution he bequeathed to his successors in the 1920s was a mere shadow of his wartime office.
That situation lasted until the early 1930s. The Great Depression and World War II once again vested exceptional power in the executive. After the war concluded, Harry S. Truman had an awful time of it. The 1946 midterms saw Republicans sweep Democrats out of power, not unlike the defeat Winston Churchill suffered across the Atlantic.
Like Wilson, Truman still had two years to go. In 1948, voters would elect him to a full term, a byproduct of the emerging Cold War. But a presidency that had controlled a managed economy, mobilized perhaps the largest military effort in history and deployed the deadliest weapon ever assembled was no more. “Our American concept of government rests upon the idea of a dominant Congress,” the new Republican House speaker declared — and quickly set about making it a reality once again.
The restoration election after the Cold War came at the expense of Bill Clinton. Newt Gingrich’s argument that the country ought to return to a proper constitutional order, one that placed Capitol Hill at the center of political gravity, was persuasive in 1994. The House of Representatives and the Senate came under unified Republican control for the first time since the 1950s.
Of course, President Trump’s claims to emergency leadership did not repeat the usual pattern. His contestable emergencies — including an alleged flood of illicit drugs across the Canadian border and a threat to the “free expression rights of United States persons” by Brazil — bore no resemblance to Pearl Harbor or the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Crisis normally makes the president, not vice versa. Mr. Trump’s advisers no doubt had read their primers on American politics and knew that their constant declarations of emergencies would help them avoid those pesky checks and balances that typically constrain presidential behavior. A friendly Congress barely noticed. A new, oppositional one will.
Before last week, Americans could not be sure if Mr. Trump’s artificial emergencies would end, as all legitimate emergencies have, with the American people energizing the independent legislative branch. But on Nov. 3, they asserted their rights; Mr. Trump’s emergency claims will no longer be his alone to make.
One might think that the magnitude of his defeat would moderate Mr. Trump’s aggressive unilateralism. The early signs are not encouraging.
The president, by one account, “must exercise power alone.” One observer noted that the president is known to anger at any challenge to his authority and “his will must prevail.” Those words were written not about Mr. Trump, but Woodrow Wilson. This history is decidedly unhelpful to Mr. Trump. As Wilson discovered, a restoration Congress will not share the president’s sense of urgency. Any emergency the president now asserts will be understood as a direct affront to a congressional majority that is unlikely to take intrusions on its turf lightly.
The Cold War very likely saved Truman’s presidency; an unexpected event could do the same for Mr. Trump. A lesson of history is that no election — and no set of conditions — is ever permanent. We are always one war, or one peace, away from a profoundly different institutional equilibrium.
When Mr. Trump’s term expires, some candidates will doubtless attempt to follow in his footsteps and seek to turn an overweening presidency to non-Trumpian ends. Those opportunists would use his excesses as guideposts, attempting similar action perhaps on health care, affordability or business regulation. Others will remain committed to time-tested constitutionalism and return fully to a system of separate institutions sharing power — including a robust executive, but only when it is needed.
The constitutionalists have the better of the arguments. Our history amply demonstrates that Americans are functionally believers in Madisonian separation of powers, even if they don’t realize it, repeatedly dividing the government against itself to compel compromise and consensus instead of seeking always the efficient rule of one. That’s the very source of restoration elections.
This year’s midterms are a vivid reminder, then, that for all its deficiencies, a separated system of government has proved both durable and self-correcting. It is precisely our ability to rein in the presidential license to dictatorial power, whether issued under false pretenses or legitimate strain, that keeps Americans ready to deploy a dominant presidency again when conditions genuinely demand it.
Thursday, November 12, 2026
Wednesday, November 11, 2026
Stephen Miller Will Drag the GOP Further Into the Electoral Abyss
As a high school student, Stephen Miller once told a booing crowd of his classmates that he was “sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do it for us.” Now he gets to reckon with a colossal political mess of his own making as the next White House chief of staff.
President Donald Trump announced on Friday that Miller, his deputy chief of staff and domestic-policy advisor, would take the top job in a post-midterms shakeup starting on Monday.
Friday’s announcement came after Trump and Miller had effectively handed control of Congress to the Democrats. Two years of disastrous results on corruption, immigration, tariffs, and the Iran War alienated enough of the electorate that Texas went blue after 40 years of GOP control. Now Trump may have just handed Democrats the White House in 2028 as well by promoting his most extreme and destructive advisor to oversee the last two years of his presidency.
The shift was met with applause in the most far-right corners of American conservatism. “Stephen Miller is a wartime chief of staff,” Brent Scher, the editor-in-chief of The Daily Wire, said on Twitter on Friday. “This is going to be awesome.” Benny Johnson, a far-right YouTube personality, wrote on the social-media website that White House aides kept texting him “it’s Miller time” after the news broke. “It’s like the dogs have been let off the chain,” he added.
As Trump’s top domestic-policy advisor, Miller has functioned as a servile but ruthless shadow president for a chief executive who cares more about television footage than policy details. Like all authoritarians, Trump has attracted a mixture of thugs who revel in violence, weaklings who crave service to bullies, and opportunists who hope to advance their own fortunes. Miller has championed the deportation of as many immigrants as possible from the United States, taking an extreme approach even by GOP standards that evokes ethnic-cleansing campaigns and white nationalism.
Miller is also hostile to the American constitutional order and to international law. He argued unsuccessfully for Trump to suspend habeas corpus to round up immigrants last year and told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a January interview that the U.S. should acquire Greenland by force.
His own leadership qualities are hardly stellar. Miller has a reputation throughout D.C. for openly berating junior staffers and senior officials alike for not effectively executing his draconian policies. A 2020 New Yorker profile recounted how he ended one such meeting with Department of Homeland Security officials by emotionally letting down his guard. “I didn’t mean to come across as harsh,” Miller reportedly confessed, describing his obsession with deportations. “It’s just that this is all I care about.
During Trump’s second term, he escalated a series of immigration raids in Los Angeles in 2025 by reportedly telling federal immigration officials to arbitrarily gather people off the streets. “Miller came in there and eviscerated everyone. ‘You guys aren’t doing a good job. You’re horrible leaders.’ He just ripped into everybody. He had nothing positive to say about anybody, shot morale down,” an unnamed DHS official told The Washington Examiner last May, recounting a meeting that he had attended. “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’”
The snatch-and-grab tactics that DHS officials pioneered in Los Angeles and other major cities throughout 2025 came to a deadly conclusion this spring. Miller had championed the administration’s siege of Minneapolis, where thousands of federal agents poured into the city and began grabbing suspected immigrants off of the streets at will. Massive protests and community actions disrupted some of the raids as Minnesotans tried to protect their neighbors. One federal agent shot and killed Renee Good, a writer with three kids, as she tried to drive away from one clash in her neighborhood in January. Another agent gunned down Alex Pretti, a local nurse, who tried to render medical assistance to a woman that the agent had knocked to the ground.
Footage of the shootings and protests prompted an intense public backlash to Trump’s immigration policies. Millions of Americans were horrified at the sight of masked federal agents gunning down their fellow citizens in the street with no consequences. Miller was not among them. He described Good and Pretti as “domestic terrorists” . . .
Miller has often argued in recent years that Democrats are “not a legitimate political party,” but rather a “domestic extremist organization.” Nonetheless, his elevation is good news for Democrats in the short and long term. Trump had initially struck a rare conciliatory note in the wake of the GOP’s crushing losses this week. He accepted the election results after more than a decade of election denialism when things didn’t go his way. His administration’s half-hearted, half-baked efforts to challenge ballots and candidates in Alaska, California, and elsewhere faded away overnight.
A defter and more chastened Trump might have made life difficult for Democrats in Washington by trying to compromise with them, dividing a fractious political party that is normally united in opposition to him. Miller’s promotion has brought that potential honeymoon period to a close. “Stephen Miller is a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands,” Jeffries said in a post on Twitter on Friday. “His presence in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor. Fire him today.”
Trump’s announcement is also the first major shake-up of his administration’s top ranks since Democrats recaptured Congress by overwhelming margins on Tuesday. The president said he wouldn’t dismiss Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday despite calls by conservatives for him to step down or be fired. Democrats and Republicans alike blame him for the disastrous course of the Iran War. . . . Congressional Democrats are reportedly eager to target him with oversight hearings next year as well.
Trump is notoriously capricious and mercurial. He is prone to trusting long-time sycophants like Miller over newer faces and more experienced voices. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s second chief of staff during his first term, later publicly warned Americans ahead of the 2024 election described the then-ex president for whom he had worked as a fascist and predicted that he would govern like a dictator if re-elected that fall.
Indeed, during the first half of his second term, Trump exulted in his lack of constraints—thanks to a MAGA-stocked executive branch and congressional Republicans’ supine posture—and simply did whatever he wanted.
Now, Miller gets to supervise the wreckage of his own mistakes. He enthusiastically championed Trump’s tariff policy, which drove up prices for Americans and wiped out entire markets for U.S. agriculture and manufacturing. After the Supreme Court struck down most of the tariffs in January, he denounced the justices in the majority as “cowardly.” Even many devout MAGA enthusiasts regarded the Iran War as a betrayal of Trump’s promise to avoid wars in the Middle East and prioritize American interests. Miller has vocally defended Trump’s decisions even as the economic and political fallout doomed his fellow Republicans at the polls.
For Democrats, Miller represents all of the Trump administration’s worst decisions—its authoritarianism, its bigotry, its arrogance, and its foolishness—in one person. There is little doubt that Miller will continue to push the second Trump administration down its self-destructive path, and that he will drag the rest of the GOP down with him. . . . Republicans on the campaign trail will have to decide between embracing Miller’s unpopular policies or distancing themselves from an angry, vengeful power center of far-right American conservatism.
Past presidents have spent the last two years of their administration trying to make things a little easier on their party and their successors. . . . . With Miller at the helm, there will be no quiet twilight for the Trump era. The two men will continue to inflict as much harm as they can on the country—and, by extension, on any remaining hope for the GOP to stay in the White House or reclaim power in two years’s time.
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