Don't Fall for Trump's Strongman Gambit

Trump's first two weeks reveal a chaotic and incompetent administration trying to mask weakness.

At his core, Donald Trump is a performer. Throughout his years on the national stage, Trump has played various roles: a playboy, a real estate developer, a business tycoon, and a populist. He doesn't inhabit these roles or do the duties that come with them. Instead, he finds the nearest spotlight and performs the tasks. He was never a successful businessman, choosing instead to mimic the way people think a successful tycoon should act. Trump played the role so well that NBC hired him to impersonate it in full on the reality show The Apprentice.

Over the last two weeks, Trump has been skillfully selling himself as a mighty and domineering president — one who can bring anyone and everything to heel. Everyone from the media to most Congressional Democrats bought this narrative hook, line, and sinker. Trump has faced criticism over his rapid-fire transformation of the federal government; he has radically reshaped much of American life and culture in less than three weeks. Trump’s White House is being characterized as aggressive, strategic, and competent (at least compared to his first term).

But amidst all of the sturm and drang, a different reality emerges. There is much less here than meets the eye. Trump’s actions are more thunder than lightning — loud, often scary, but not particularly impactful.

Don’t get me wrong, Trump is the President of the United States. He has immense power — he can do dangerous things. He can persecute and prosecute his enemies. What he is doing in immigration enforcement is very real. Elon Musk is wreaking havoc throughout the federal bureaucracy. I won’t dismiss the danger, but there is one thing we all need to remember about Trump — his demonstrations of strength are designed to hide his inherent weakness.

If you break with conventional wisdom, and look at the details of Trumps’ first two weeks the picture that emerges is a lame-duck president unable to execute on fairly simple tasks and too weak to get Congress to pass his agenda. Instead, he is relying on a series of legally dubious executive orders that resemble press releases more than policy documents. In his first two weeks, he has made countless errors, backed down from fights he picked, and been rebuked by the courts.

Don’t buy his strongman schtick.