Here’s two paragraphs from two different articles on the same subject from the same site:
The man is getting laughed at every day, by judges, by world leaders, by European soccer players. Most of the world is responding to him with a collective eye roll. But that does not mean we can dismiss him entirely, because when this president gets embarrassed, when he feels cornered, that is when he’s most likely to try to cling to power. [former Biden Administration Press Secretary Jen Psaki, MS NOW]
And
The New York Times reported last week:
President Trump is trying to use the levers of the federal government, along with personal influence over state and local lawmakers, to reshape the rules governing the 2026 midterms and future elections in extraordinary ways.
Many of these efforts have been blocked by courts, stymied by the Constitution or stopped in Congress. But the relentless assault by the president on the electoral process — both administratively and rhetorically — is likely to sow doubt and lay groundwork for extensive challenges to election results.
The lengthy and detailed Times report highlighted what is effectively a “whole of government” initiative, with officials and agencies from across the executive branch — from the Justice Department to the Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence agencies to the U.S. Postal Service — launching dozens of overlapping efforts aimed at tipping the electoral scales in the Republican Party’s favor months before a single ballot is cast. [Steve Benen, Maddowblog]
It’s fascinating how one characterizes President Trump as a doddering old fool, while the other suggests the President is a clever schemer.
The best conclusion I can come up with is that the President is someone’s somewhat rogue thumb puppet, signing Executive Orders when so told, but other times pursuing his own dreams of self-aggrandizement, regardless of the wishes of the puppet-master.
It’ll be interesting to see who is revealed as the puppet-master at the end of this macabre show.
