Trumpty-Dumpty's Great Fall
There are only so many mornings that Donald Trump can get out of bed and tie his shoelaces together
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One of my favorite statements on the pitfalls of democracy comes from the writer H.L. Mencken. A steadfast curmudgeon known for his biting commentary, Mencken predicted that, “On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” (The Baltimore Sun, July 26, 1920.)1 It took a century, but Mencken had it right. Trump and the incompetents who populate his regime- and I call it a regime because it does not function as an administration- comprise what the writer Michael Wolff2 calls a “moronocracy”. And in the Court of the Kingdom of Trump, the King and the Fool are the same person.
The first fifteen months of the Second Coming of Trump have provided an all-encompassing view of Donald Trump’s unfitness, intellectually and emotionally, for any public office, let alone the American Presidency. This is a man who, if he stepped on a rake and smacked himself in the face, would immediately claim he’s invented a new way to pick up a rake. There have been many public analyses of his personality and behavior: He’s been called a malignant narcissist, a sociopath, and a pathological liar. Some people claim he’s in the early stages of dementia. There are reports that he doesn’t read, has a learning disability, and is ignorant of history. What he does have is a need to be the center of attention, a trait that conflicts with humility, which one would believe is necessary to wield the awesome power of the American President.
For those of us, especially New Yorkers, who were acquainted with Trump before The Apprentice made him a reality TV star, the Trump we see in Washington today is simply an update of the Trump we saw in New York for decades. He was generally considered a buffoon, an attention-seeker more adept at attracting attention than building long-term business successes. The list of his failures would stun the MAGA faithful who voted for the tough businessman they saw on TV: Squandering hundreds of millions of dollars of his father’s real estate fortune, bankrupting three Atlantic City Casinos, failing in other businesses, and a plethora of cheesy branding ventures (Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks). His finances were a tangled web of renegotiated loans, tax write-offs, false statements to lenders and insurers, and unpaid contractors.3
Personal note: My experience with Trump dates back to the 1980s when he owned the New Jersey Generals, a professional football team in the USFL, a league that played its games in the spring. I had season tickets for the 1985 season. After that season, Trump bullied the other owners into switching to a fall schedule and competing directly with the well-established NFL. The USFL never played a game in 1986 and folded. It gave me insight into Trump’s persona: he wanted to be in the big time, regardless of the fact that there was no way the USFL could muscle its way into the NFL’s market. The older league was a sports goliath that drew large crowds and had lucrative TV contracts. The USFL was a sideshow that attracted football junkies. So much for Trump’s business acumen: Just as he is now as President, he was in way over his head.
Given his personal history, Donald Trump would seem unlikely to succeed on the biggest political stage there is, as many of us thought in 2016. However, to quote Mencken again, “The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.“ In the final analysis, perhaps the combination of the Trump persona, a racist backlash after 8 years of a black President, a lackluster campaign by Hillary Clinton, and the systemic antimajoritarian function of the Electoral College allowed the political outsider to take the Brass Ring.
For Trump the showman, getting elected was the easy part; governing, however, was a whole other ballgame. No person ever entered the White House more incapable of handling the responsibilities of the position than Donald Trump. What he had to show for those four years was two impeachments, the disaster of his handling of COVID, investigations into Russian interference in his election, and, of course, the insurrection that followed his refusal to accept his defeat in the 2020 election. One would think all those black marks against him would be enough to end Trump’s political career and perhaps lead to a prison term.. One would think.
But Donald Trump was returned to the office he had disgraced. We must admit it is a sad commentary on an American society that we’ve lost sight of the lofty principles of what Ronald Reagan called the “shining city on the hill”. Our republic has fallen into disrepair, and all of us, from the elites at the top, through those comfortable in the middle, to those struggling at the bottom, all bear some responsibility. We were not paying attention when, as Bob Dylan would put it, “the vandals stole the handle.”
So, now we have Trump 2.0, Trump Unleashed, who reentered the White House hell-bent on doing things his way. He surrounded himself with cronies, sycophants, and cosplaying clowns. He’s allowed a hate-mongering ideologue, Stephen Miller, to conduct an internal war on immigrants. He enlisted techno-weirdo Elon Musk and his DOGE nerds to eviserate the Federal bureaucracy, reducing staff and blocking spending authorized by Congress. He indulged himself in his pet project, tariffs: On April 2, 2025 (“Liberation Day”), Trump announced tariffs on nearly every country in the world.4 Of course, the economic impact has been higher prices and a fissure in the world order based on free trade that the United States helped establish after World War II. He blustered about making Canada the 51st state. He claimed he wanted Greenland, a Danish territory, to belong to the U.S. (Denmark is a fellow NATO member.) And when it comes to NATO, Trump expressed disdain for the 75-year-old mutual defense alliance and has threatened to pull the U.S. out completely.
As if to prove how unfit he is to be the nation’s chief executive, Trump has used the power he has as Commander-in-Chief of the military to entangle the nation in the clusterfuck of all clusterfucks, a no-win war with Iran. Days after joining with Israel to launch a series of bombing attacks on the Islamic Republic, Trump announced we had won. He then demanded the “unconditional surrender” of Iran. Iran, whose military assets Trump claimed had been obliterated, reacted by striking targets throughout the region- U.S. bases, Israel, and some of the Gulf states allied with the U.S. Iran was effectively able to threaten attacks on ships moving through the Strait of Hormuz, effectively blocking the flow of twenty percent of the world’s oil to global markets. Trump, master of the art of the deal, then lifted our sanctions on Russia, enabling the Russians to sell their oil on the world market at the higher prices the kerfuffle in the Persian Gulf had caused. This, of course, provides an injection of cash into a Russian economy battered not only by sanctions but by its prolonged war in Ukraine.
Trump was not done digging the hole he had made deeper. He was feeling the pressure of his growing unpopularity with the American public, clearly unhappy with rising gas prices and another Middle East war. He wanted it to end, so he threatened to unleash devastation upon Iran- “a whole civilization will die tonight”- if Iran did not reopen the Strait. He relented ours before his April 7 deadline when a Pakistan-brokered two-week ceasefire was announced. Talks between Iran and the U.S. did not reach any agreement, so Trump announced the U.S. would blockade the Strait.
What? Both Iran and the U.S. are blocking shipping in and out of the Persian Gulf. I’m guessing that most of us don’t have the mental acuity to understand why Trump has done this. The disruption in the world oil trade will linger for months, even if an agreement is reached today. The nations that pump oil have only so much storage; they depend on shipping most of it out regularly. Production is halted, and it will take time to spin it all back up. The economic impact, already manifesting itself, will be worldwide.
The world is not happy with America. And it’s all due to one addled old man. It seems he is experiencing some sort of mental disintegration and is oblivious to reality. Breaking his campaign promise not to involve us in wars of choice has alienated some of his MAGA base. Reacting to criticism by Pope Leo about the war, Trump attacked him on his Truth Social platform, claiming the Pope was “weak on crime”. Not a smart move when about 54 million Americans are Catholics. He has insulted our allies, the same allies that he did not consult or warn before attacking Iran, over their refusal to help open the Strait of Hormuz.
I don’t think Donald Trump ever read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.5 I also don’t think he’ll ever be put back together again.
Coda
There is so much to talk about when it comes to Trump as President. I will leave the psychological analysis to the professionals. It would take a number of other pieces to delve into the blatant corruption of not only Trump and his family, but the cronies and hangers-on around him. One thing is for sure: the nation is undergoing an endurance test. Can we outlast Trump, or will he outlast us?
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For those unfamiliar with Mencken, you can find some of his more memorable quotes here. You may be surprised to learn how little some facets of our society have changed in 100 years.
Michael Wolff, an award-winning journalist, has written four books on Donald Trump: Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (2018), Siege (2019), Landslide (2021), and All or Nothing (2025).
Wayne Barrett’s Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, and the Reinvention (1992, HarperCollins), exposes the realities of the early stages of Trump’s busiess career. TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald by Tim O’Brien (2005, Hachette Book Group USA) is a wide-ranging biography. O’Brien was sued by Trump for revealing in the book that Trump was not a billionaire. Both of these books are still available.
In February, the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, struck down Trump’s tariffs levied under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).
Dale Carnegie (1888-1955) was a self-improvment writer and lecturer . How to Win Friends and Influence People is still available.
If you look at the developments of 15 months--Trump 2.0--you'll see he's succeeding at several of his and his puppet managers' objectives. The war on Iran tightening petroleum supplies gave him the excuse to lift sanctions on Russia to give them more cash and boost the war again Ukraine and Putin's national economy. No oil transiting the Strait of Hormuz raises worldwide prices per barrel of crude oil everywhere--a 20% global shortage. Russia is said to be a gas station nation with an army, so they profit again and Ukraine has potentially more weapons bought with the cash windfall against it. Some of the oil that does leave Ira is going to China which has been supporting their partner Russia. Despite American excess production of oil, our multinationals are also raising gas prices to make a windfall pile of cash paid by you and me aside from national gas taxes and income taxes.
Lately Iran was joined in its blockade of the Strait by The Donald, himself, looking to piggyback on the extortion of tolls from tankers leaving the Iranian gulf. Always the one to profit from another's ideas, Trump can add that income to his coffers via more infamous shenanigans. Always looking to grift another buck.
Trump also favors China where his daughter holds lucrative rights to sell her cosmetics. So allowing tankers to leave Iran for the Far East is a bone for President Xi.
And of course there's Trump's fellow-traveler crooked Bebe Netanyahu. Abetting Bebe's ongoing war against Iran and its proxies is keeping him as Israeli President--out of courts and resulting jail. Without war, those Israeli courts will continue pursuing lawless Netanyahu till they throw away the key.
Meanwhile the Saudis under killer Mohammed Bin Salman continue to funnel billions of dollars to son-in-law Jared. So let's look for other drilling countries like Indonesia and OPEC, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, to increase production, as they have done in the past, to keep prices stable if a little higher, but not too high to encourage revolution as global inflation and economic productivity slow down. Norway comes to mind, a natural to supply Europe. Thankfully I don't drive like I used to so pump prices for me are a nuisance but not backbreaking.