The Tribune

with CHARLIE HARPER

ALTHOUGH it seems like it has been half a lifetime already, Donald Trump has actually only been in office during his second term as US president for 16 months. The meticulous preparation by conservatives for his return, encapsulated in two seminal documents created during the latter stages of the Trump interregnum from 2021-25, has resulted in profound changes to American government and its relationship to society.

Those two documents were the FY 2025 GOP Budget Resolution outlining congressional fiscal policy, and Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation-led mandate to restructure the executive branch of the US government. Effects from these documents have ranged from billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s slashing of several key US government agencies, to Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that permanently extended his 2017 tax cuts for many of the very wealthiest Americans and codified substantial new economic policy directions, while simultaneously enacting the largest cuts to basic services for the American people in American history.

So now millions of Americans have lost their health coverage or found it no longer affordable, as Trump and the Republicans continue their relentless assault on Obamacare, the single most significant achievement of Barack Obama’s two terms as American president.

The US role in the world is no longer unassailable. Trump’s narcissistic outrages have led the US into a seemingly aimless war against Iran that, while it has undeniably produced some positive results, lacked the assiduous planning that characterized the conservative preparations for government policy ahead of Trump’s 2025 return to office.

How has this been allowed to happen? The millions of Americans who have been shaking their heads in wonderment at the astounding servility and obsequious obeisance to Trump shown by Republican majorities in the US Congress got a crisp reminder of the reason on Tuesday.

Thomas Massie, a ferociously independent-minded, seven-term, MIT-educated Republican congressman from a Kentucky district that does not include either Louisville or Lexington, has been at odds with Trump for most of the president’s two terms, despite voting for Trump’s legislation much of the time. He’s ascended to a position very high on Trump’s enemies’ list.

Massie experienced on Tuesday the same fate as that of most Republicans who have dared to speak out against him and some of his most egregious initiatives. He was ‘primaried’ by a GOP rival on Tuesday, and defeated by a 10-point margin by a man who had carried Trump’s personal endorsement with him like the determinative badge of honour it turned out to be.

Others who had in lesser ways defied the president’s will in one fashion or another also were stunned by their primary defeats, including incumbent Republican senators in Texas and Louisiana.

You don’t mess with Trump if you’re a Republican in Congress and want to keep your job.

That’s why Congress, controlled by the Republicans after Trump’s emphatic victory in 2024, has so consistently bowed down to his will. Congresspersons and Senators want, very much, to maintain the perks and cachet that accompany their current positions. They have repeatedly shown their willingness to put personal comfort and ambition above what they consistently whisper off the record to reporters are their enduring personal convictions and unflagging adherence to the US constitution that Trump challenges at almost every opportunity that his attorneys can identify.

The US Senate dutifully confirmed in early 2025 virtually every significant Trump cabinet and sub-cabinet nominee for his new administration, and we see the results. Such stunningly unqualified senior government officials such as the heads of the Departments of Justice, Defense and Health and Human Services, the Directorate of National Intelligence, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were all passed through the Senate, even though evidence of their professional unpreparedness and inadequacy was clear for anyone to see.

The only major exception was Matt Gaetz, the dogged, aggressive Trump sycophant, apologist, and former Pensacola-area Congressman, who resigned from the House after Trump nominated him to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer as Attorney General and head of the Department of Justice.

This is the same Matt Gaetz whom Justice had investigated for two years after allegations surfaced that he had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and possibly violated federal sex trafficking laws.

Even the notoriously forgiving House Ethics Committee had opened an inquiry in 2021 into those same sexual misconduct allegations, along with claims that Gaetz misused state identificawwwwwwtion records, converted campaign funds to personal use, accepted impermissibwle gifts under House rules, and shared inappropriate images or videos on the House floor, among other transgressions.

It took all of that to persuade Trump to pull the nomination. And while the Senate later dutifully confirmed former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi to the top law enforcement job, she bungled the release of the Epstein papers, certainly appeared to be overmatched by the responsibilities of her position, and was eventually fired by Trump in April.

But the outrages still keep coming. Just this week, the Treasury Department’s general counsel, a senior member of Trump’s first administration and holder of key jobs at both Justice and Treasury, resigned as the administration announced a huge “anti-weaponization fund” as part of a deal to settle Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leaking of his tax returns during his first term in office.

Brian Morrissey, who was confirmed by the Senate in October 2025 and served as Treasury’s top legal officer, stepped down on Monday. His departure came the same day the Trump administration announced it would create that $1.776 billion fund to resolve Trump’s lawsuit, an unusual arrangement that has provoked bipartisan criticism.

The amount of this new fund cannot be coincidental in this 250th year celebration of American independence from Britain.

The new fund is designed to reward protestors at the US capitol after his electoral defeat by Joe Biden in November 2020. And while details are still emerging about this deal, provisions of it also may indemnity Trump and his family against future charges of financial malfeasance while he is serving as the nation’s chief executive.

Trump will ewventually leave office. And, by the way, we will see if what we get in his place is any better. But leave he will. And after he is gone, we are sure to witness one of the greatest episodes in American Congressional history of passing all sorts of legislation designed to ensure that his unethical and blatant misbehavior in office cannot be repeated without the imposition of penalties that his attorneys have discovered to be missing at present.

Some have actually speculated that Trump aspires to leave office with his family established as the wealthiest in the world. He and his legal team seem to have found millions – even reportedly billions -- of dollars’ worth of cracks and crevices in the American legal system to exploit for his and his family’s personal gain. It’s been so astounding for so long – only 16 months, remember– that even the most experienced observers have lost the edge of their fury and humiliation at the president’s disrespect of his office and the government he was elected to lead.

And no one can say that we didn’t see this coming. While campaigning for a return to the White House two years ago, Trump denied all the plans and plots revealed in print in the Budget Resolution and Project 2025. And he and his administration have carried out many of the mandates found in those documents.

In the end, though, it may be the unanticipated crisis of Trump and his extraordinary sensitivity to the release and potential contents of the personal papers of long-time friend Jeffrey Epstein that brings down this president.

Because of the seeming absence of expressed strategic goals and objectives supporting the president’s decision to join Israel in attacking Iran, the real goal is becoming clear to some critics: to distract the American public from what Trump clearly perceives to be the disastrous implications of releasing an unredacted version of the infamous Epstein files.

Now the Iran War is Trump’s War. And we’re witnessing the US Senate, the constitutional check on such presidential folly, showing signs that it’s prepared to resist him.

Is this the beginning of Trump’s end?