The Tribune

By CHARLIE HARPER

WE’VE talked here before about lame ducks. In American politics, a “lame duck” is a political office holder who is either about to be, or already has been, forgotten -- but not yet gone. Most of the time, a politician in such a situation has lost an election but whose successor has not yet taken office. American elections build in a two-month period between defeat and departure.

Pundits are calling US president Donald Trump a lame duck already after the transformative 2026 mid-term American elections, which have bestowed upon Democrats a likely seven seat majority in the US Senate and potentially a 40-seat majority in the House of Representatives. It was one of the great repudiations in modern American political history.

Trump, after appearing to make this election mostly about himself and doing less than he certainly could have done to help preserve the Republican Party’s previous slim majorities in both US legislative chambers, initially told the New York Times that he accepted the results of the election and could see himself working across the political aisle with newly empowered Democrats on some legislation.

In the nine days since the election, the president has comprehensively blown up whatever hopes his allies or opponents may have placed in those initial statements. Anyone who believed him on election night needed to recall that this man is probably the sorest loser in the modern history of public life anywhere in the world. Sooner or later, whenever he does lose, he simply tries to will away the defeat and perpetuates lies and conspiracy theories disputing his loss that inevitably gain the support of millions of gullible supporters. Trump remains a peerless demagogue.

We will all recall that after his last loss, to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, a mob of angry, impressionable supporters descended on no less an American institution than the US Capitol. The idea was basically to bully Congress into ignoring the American constitution and certifying that Trump had really prevailed in the election. We’ll doubtless be reminded of that January 6, 2021 riot many times in the weeks and months to come, as Democrats recall for voters Trump’s numerous past sins and transgressions.

Trump’s lame duck status was neatly summed up by the New York Times with the following sentence: “As Americans absorb a stunning new political reality, they face a gap between the time they effectively decided to be done with President Trump and the time he is actually done.” Welcome to lame duck-hood, Mr President.

After his apparent gracious response to electoral defeat wore off about 24 hours after last Tuesday’s polls closed, Trump began to remind us all of who he is and how little he is able or willing to change or adapt to new circumstances. He began with a profound statement of defiance. He pushed out Susie Wiles, his only chief of staff during this second term as president.

Trump had cycled through four chiefs of staff during his first presidential term. They were former GOP chair Reince Priebus (6 months), former Marine general John Kelly (18), former congressman Mick Mulvaney (14) and another former congressman, Mark Meadows (10). To varying degrees, each of these men took the job as Trump’s gatekeeper and right-hand associate in order to enjoy and exert the extraordinary influence over national affairs that the chief of staff position customarily confers.

And each came to realize that, as Trump settled into a job as president, for the rigors and nuances of which his previous life experience had in no way prepared him, the president had progressively less interest in listening to anyone who didn’t flatter and agree consistently with him. So, Wiles’ tenure marked a clear departure from previous form and an evolution in Trump’s thinking about what he wanted from senior staff.

It's not apparent that Wiles was able to influence Trump very much or dissuade him from indulging his impulses. Maybe if she writes a memoir we will learn differently, but it seems that she was able to survive for two years in the chief of staff job principally because she did not aspire to change or modify Trump’s behavior.

In the nearly two years since Trump resumed his presidency, he has sought to impose his will not just over the executive branch but also over big business; the tech industry; major universities; law firms; the central bank; private banks; entertainment; sports; museums; the news media; national parks; the financial sector; the energy sector; the military, and nonprofit foundations. He has seemingly become obsessed with remaking the nation’s capital city along the dramatic, gaudy lines of some previous global empires. 

Is Trump chastened by his party’s big losses? It doesn’t seem that he is.

Last week, Trump promoted Wiles’ deputy, 41-year-old Duke University graduate Stephen Miller, to the top job in the oval office. The appointment of Miller, whose tendency to smirk in public is eerily reminiscent of Russian president Vladimir Putin, expressed more persuasively than perhaps any other possible single act the president’s intention to ‘double-down’ on the nativist domestic policies that have marred his presidency and greatly diminished America’s standing in the world.

Miller has been around Trump since the president formally entered politics over a decade ago. A longtime associate of influential MAGAn Steve Bannon and several other characters who have remained in Trump’s inner orbit, Miller immediately assumed the role of chief lightning rod in this last quartile of Trump’s two terms as president.

Miller will have competition for this role. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was the subject just this week of an impeachment resolution in the House of Representatives where Republicans still hold a working majority. That resolution failed, but efforts to oust Hegseth appear to be inevitable when the new House takes office in January.

Speaking of the House of Representatives, Republicans there followed Trump’s lead in refusing to change course by electing as their new leader the combative former Ohio State wrestler Jim Jordan. Jordan, who has represented Ohio’s shifting, often gerrymandered north-central fourth congressional district for 20 years, won reelection last week with 65 percent of the vote over two largely anonymous opponents.

Some observers saw a change in course, since Jordan defeated the deputy GOP House leader in winning election. An unusually ambitious, pugilistic legislator, Jordan has already chaired the House Appropriations and Judiciary Committees. But he has also firmly aligned himself with Trump. Like Miller and Hegseth, he is unlikely to defect from Trumpism during the coming two years.

The news media has been full of efforts to put into context the enormous wipeout defeat suffered last week by Trump and the Republicans. Accounts have reminded us that each of the five presidents who were elected twice and served two full terms since World War II — Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, George W Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — faced an opposition Congress in the final two years of his tenure. Each of those presidents found their ability to set policy and enact legislation was severely limited by that opposition.

A former key adviser to George W Bush told the New York Times the other day that “the spell of Trumpism is broken, and the veil of invincibility pierced. The genuflection is likely to cease, and those who paid tribute — whether for ballrooms or meme coins or to settle frivolous lawsuits or to make ‘documentaries’ or to secure regulatory favors or government contracts — may well be called to account.”

Maybe we’ll see that happen. Maybe not.

A lot of Democrats are now asserting that they most need to make America more affordable for its citizens, not exact retribution on the “crooks and cronies who’ve been leading the country for the past two years,” as one pundit said. California’s pit bull congressman and incoming Oversight Committee chair Robert Garcia, a fast riser who is gay, was born in Peru and was first elected to Congress from Long Beach just four years ago, seems determined to press for sweeping investigations.

Other Democratic leaders, while acknowledging the need for accountability for the Trump administration’s numerous failures and corruptions, seem to realize that if the Dems cannot rein in inflation and lower gas prices, they may be excused from authority after just two years.

That is, after all, what has just happened to their Republican opponents.