Trump's Achilles Heels

Every strength comes with a weakness.   What are Trump's?

Yesterday this blog said Trump had steamrolled the civil institutions who block Presidential power.  The media, the judiciary, congress, regulators, academics, ethics officials, the CBO--indeed all the normal credible sources of independent judgement and power are scoffed at by Trump.  He ignores them and appears to get away with it.

Is he all powerful?  No.   His vulnerabilities are the flip side of his strengths.   

Weakness Number one:   He wants to be loved. 

Trump in Nevada.  People stood 3 1/2 hours to see him.

Donald Trump's responses to criticism are a "tell", in the language of poker.  He does not reward policy agreement.  He rewards praise.   He wants the cheering of the crowd.  This was a strength in the campaign.  I watched him up close feeding off the energy and opinions of the crowds he drew.   He was in sync.  He had rapport unlike anything that Hillary Clinton had. 

The weakness stems from the impossibility of staying popular once he implements policy changes that hurt his base.  He won't just disappoint the people it is convenient to disappoint: San Francisco liberals and blacks and Muslims and John Lewis and Rachel Maddow.   He will disappoint working people who lose insurance coverage and will be criticized.  The border wall will divide farms and cause disruption and cost money.  Sympathetic people will be deported and will be on TV complaining about it.  People will complain that the tax cuts help people other than themselves.   Veterans will still have problems.  

The budget hawks in the Congress care about principle and policy and they see value in making hard unpopular choices.   Trump cares about popularity.   Actually to govern will require Trump to make common cause with people who will destroy what he loves and what makes him frightening to the political establishment: the popularity of his self confident declarations.

Weakness Number two:  The egos and careers of Representatives and Senators.

Still risky now.

They have their own careers.  They face voters and interest groups in their own districts.  The AARP understands seniors.  They want their social security and medicare. Republican gerrymandering created a lot of Republican leaning districts and packed the Democrats into tight districts where their votes were wasted in 70/30 races.   But in creating Republican leaning districts they made themselves vulnerable to big tides of public revolt.  There are fewer "very safe" Republican districts, and even those have a flaw.  A popular revolt of a disappointed base can create a primary challenge, c.f. Eric Cantor's loss.   Republicans need to be wary and Democrats are aroused and looking for weaknesses.   House and Senate members will protect themselves.  There is no loyalty to Trump, only fear of Trump.  It may become politically more safe for vulnerable Republicans to oppose Trump than to go along.

For now, he is in the background.  But he is there.

Weakness Number three:  Plan B.  Mike Pence.

On day one of his presidency Donald Trump will be out of compliance with the Constitution. He may well still be out of compliance with the lease on the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue and he almost certainly will be out of compliance with the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.   At this moment no one seems to care enough to stop Trump.  He declares he has no conflicts of interest and his confidence steamrolls opponents.  But lawyers and Trump detractors have not disappeared.  Trump has properties around the world.   He may claim to be turning over management but he is not turning over control and certainly not turning over ownership.    Politically, at this moment, he is safe enough with the statement that the public knew full well he owned properties around the world and the people have spoken.   But the courts are charged with obeying the law, not the popular vote.

Mike Pence is a Republican current GOP officeholders can feel comfortable with.  Pence is safe and predictable.  There is less risk in jettisoning Trump than in keeping Trump, once Trump moves from unpopular to very unpopular, which is a real potential once he starts to govern.  And there is Mike Pence, ready, willing, safe, and sane.

Weakness Number four: media opposition.  Trump actually needs real news media.

The media sought ratings, not credibility

Trump is an existential risk to media institutions.   His strength is his weakness here as well.  He is ratings gold, but he commands his ratings by attacking the core value proposition of the media, which is that they gather, evaluate, curate and present credible news.  They aren't just a platform for distribution of whatever.  They are news organizations.   They do journalism.

Trump and his surrogates have been attacking the very essence of their value, declaring the essential equivalence of fact and opinion and all news to be essentially "fake."   When BuzzFeed presented un-verified and implausible--but interesting--news they were acting out of the new paradigm of news organizations: they present stuff for our amusement and consideration and the reader is told to decide for himself.   

That BuzzFeed model --and the Trump campaign model--is a disaster for the news industry, since it would make Facebook and the New York Times and CNN equivalent--simply vehicles for presenting non-curated information.  CNN happily profited by showing empty lecterns marked Trump.  Ratings were ratings.   The media is now re-thinking what Trump has done to them and what they have done to themselves.

Trump needs a curated media now

Trump himself used and profited mightily from the BuzzFeed model of let-the-public-decide but that when he was a candidate.  Trump blasted BuzzFeed at his news conference for failing to distinguish between real and fake and CNN for describing what BuzzFeed did. He was smart to do so.  Now he needs the distinction between the actual vs. the spectacular, between verifiable vs. false. 


Trump and the media have a common interest now--distinguishing between real and serious vs. fake and spectacular--and this will create a counterbalance to Trump.  Some aspects of governance won't be subject to spin.  If a BuzzFeed says his proposed tax plan was written by Vladimir Putin Trump will want a credible media to say that, no, it was written in the West Wing.   The establishment media wants that as well, but that will give them the credibility to voice criticisms of Trump.   Trump cannot de-value curated journalism and then use it when he needs it.