Trump is Getting Desperate

We're in an extremely dangerous moment

Last week’s big non-Epstein news was Friday’s very bad jobs report and Donald Trump’s immediate reaction — which was not to rethink his policies but to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

What will he do when his tariffs and deportations start showing up in inflation numbers? I don’t know how much we’ll see in the next release, coming Aug. 12. But anecdotal evidence suggests that companies, which have been holding back on passing tariff costs on to consumers in the hope that Trump would back down, are getting ready to raise prices. And private surveys, like the S&P Global Purchasing Managers’ Index, suggest that a significant inflation bump is just around the corner:

Source: S&P Global

The thing is, official economic data are basically starting to confirm what mainstream economists have been saying all along. Erratic policy that creates uncertainty depresses growth and job creation; tariffs raise prices. Trump has been betting that he’s smarter than economists warning about the downsides of his policies. After all, they’re all at Marxist institutions like … Goldman Sachs. And he may try to order the statistical agencies to report better news. But nobody will believe it.

All of this takes place against a political background in which Trump faces massive public disapproval, not just overall but on every issue:

Source: gelliottmorris.com

So does this mean that Trump is done — that a weak economy will sap his political support, leading to big Democratic wins in this year’s gubernatorial elections and next year’s midterms? I wish I were sure of that. Unfortunately, one possible effect of the bad economic news may be to induce MAGA to put the real Project 2025 — the plot to destroy American democracy — on an accelerated schedule.

Or as I think of it, I don’t think we’re in Hungary anymore.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about: Many observers, myself included, have looked at Hungary’s descent into soft authoritarianism as a model for what can happen here. (And right-wingers have seen Hungary as a role model.) Since taking power in 2010 Viktor Orban and Fidesz, the ruling party, have systematically undermined democratic institutions, creating a de facto one-party state. But the process has been gradual and relatively nonviolent: Salami tactics that sliced off effective opposition a bit at a time rather than tanks in the streets and detention camps.

Why did Orban take a gradualist approach to destroying democracy? Partly, no doubt, because too overt a power grab might finally have roused the rest of the European Union from its slumber. But it’s also true that Fidesz had the luxury of time because until recently the party remained quite popular with the Hungarian public:

Source: Politico EU

Some of this popularity may have resulted from Fidesz’s takeover of the news media. But it was also true that for a long time Orban could claim to have made Hungary prosperous. He took power at a time of extremely high unemployment: Hungary, like much of the European periphery, was caught up in the disastrous slump caused by Europe’s debt panic. And he was able to preside over a large fall in unemployment as austerity was relaxed:

It's now clear, by contrast, that Trump and MAGA don’t have the luxury of time. Trump’s approval has already cratered. He inherited an economy with low unemployment and subdued inflation, but is now presiding over a weakening job market and will soon face a burst of inflation, with nobody but himself to blame. He may manage to bully government statisticians into cooking the books and making the numbers look good, but that’s harder than it looks. And even if the official numbers say everything is great, nobody will believe it.

So if Trump and MAGA want to hold on to power, they’ll have to do so in the face of low public approval and poor economic performance. This, unfortunately, doesn’t necessarily mean that they can’t demolish democracy. It does mean that they’ll have to do it quickly and blatantly.

Indeed, as CNN reported the other day, Republicans are trying in multiple ways to, in effect, rig the midterm elections. Their actions include a plan for an extreme, mid-decade gerrymandering in Texas that could cost Democrats multiple House seats; attempts to interfere in voting procedures, for example by banning states from accepting mail-in ballots after election day and forcing states to require proof of citizenship. Much of this is clearly unconstitutional, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

And what if these actions aren’t enough? Remember, Trump supporters, with his clear encouragement, already tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

The important point is that right now Trump has immense power, thanks in large part to the cowardice of many of the institutions that should be holding him in check. But he’s also rapidly bleeding support, in large part because he’s completely failing to deliver on his economic promises.

That combination makes this an extremely dangerous moment. And if authoritarianism does come to America, don’t count on it being soft.

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