What The Hell America!

Seligman: I think that’s the big question. It’s hard to say—and the reason is because Donald Trump is an authoritarian bully but he’s also a coward. We see this in other aspects of his “art of the deal” negotiating style, where just this week he completely folded on tariffs with China. He talks really big, and then when there are actual consequences, when someone actually stands up to him, he ends up folding. So there’s some reason to believe that, well, this is just like the terrorist situation. Yeah, he’s going to issue these really scary-sounding Truth Social messages suggesting that he may defy the courts, but when push comes to shove, he’s a coward and so he’ll back down.

Now, there’s also reason to fear that that’s not going to happen. And the reason is because with tariffs, it seems like he’s the one … and Peter Navarro is the one guy in the administration who really believes in tariffs along with him. Everybody else around him, all of the business community, all Republicans really—they don’t believe in tariffs. So there’s really no support around him from within his own world to support that position. But with immigration and defying the courts, there is that robust support system pushing him to go even further than maybe his instincts would be. And the primary mover there is Stephen Miller, who is, I think, ruthless, intelligent. And I don’t mean those as compliments; I mean that as a way of saying he’s extraordinarily dangerous. He might be the most dangerous man in the administration. And with Miller and so many other people around Trump pushing him toward that confrontation, pushing him not to back down in a confrontation [with] the courts, I think that we may be headed toward a much more dangerous outcome in this confrontation than in the trade context.

Sargent: Right. At risk of seeming maybe a little soft on Trump for a passing second, you can see the possibility, at least, that Trump doesn’t want the ultimate defiance of the court. He doesn’t really crave that confrontation. He certainly doesn’t seem to crave it the way Stephen Miller and, I think, JD Vance do, which is the key, right? If you look at someone like JD Vance, in addition to Stephen Miller, it’s plainly clear that they want this confrontation because they want to break the Supreme Court completely, right? The whole point is to break the court’s opposition to Trump to create a situation in which the authoritarian ruler is carrying out the “pure will of the people,” the voice of the people—the people being of course only MAGA America—unfettered by silly little bureaucratic obstacles that are holding back the greatness of MAGA, right?