Conservative media is not happy with Trump

Old-school conservative media dislike Democrats on principle. 

But they don't like Trump on principle, either.

Old-school conservatives are not MAGA.

Most right-wing media is Trump-cult populist. They are cheerleaders, with an audience to coddle. These media include Fox News, One America News Network, Newsmax, Breitbart, The New York Post, The Daily Wire, and 99 percent of material on social media, including Trump's posts on Truth Social. These are not conservative; they are Trump.

The Wall Street Journal and Reason magazine are old-school conservative. The WSJ is well known as a newspaper of business, but it also reports on, and editorializes on government. Reason magazine is libertarian in outlook. It publishes six to 12 news-opinion articles a day. The WSJ is internationalist in outlook, seeking global business prosperity and American engagement with the world. Reason voices the isolationist, mind-our-own-business segment within American conservatism. Both the WSJ and Reason represent policies and tone that would be familiar to small-government, low-tax, separation-of-powers, pro-business, states-rights federalism that characterized the GOP from the end of World War II until the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and Trump.

This morning's WSJ has this newsy editorial, publishing facts well-hidden from consumers of Trump-friendly populist media:

Click: gifted article

Trigger warning to Republican readers: The editorial is heresy. Trump is lying to you:

No matter how often President Trump insists his tariffs are taxing foreigners to enrich the U.S., economic studies keep showing that Americans actually pay the bill. On Thursday it was the New York Federal Reserve’s turn. In an analysis on the bank’s website, four researchers write that last year “nearly 90 percent of the tariffs’ economic burden fell on U.S. firms and consumers.” . . . 

The figures for November suggest the tariffs had “an 86 percent pass-through to U.S. import prices,” the researchers say. “Our results show that the bulk of the tariff incidence continues to fall on U.S. firms and consumers." . . . 

Don’t forget the economic dynamism that’s wasted when companies devote time and talent to reacting to Mr. Trump’s mercurial tariff whims, or hedging against them, or trying to guess what the next one might be. The tariffs are economic losers, and in November voters may show they’re political losers too.

Reason magazine can be summarized by sharing yesterday's daily email, which listed the day's articles. All eight articles object to Trump's policies. The links are live, but simply scanning the titles of the articles reveal their drift. Reason magazine is free and available to everyone.

The ATF Created a Backdoor Gun Registry. Lawmakers Want an Explanation.

Federal law bans the creation of a gun registry, but regulators made one anyway.

By J.D. Tuccille

Kristi Noem's Response to ICE Killings in Minnesota Exposes Conservatives' Double Standard on Gun Rights

The Second Amendment protects your right to carry a gun at a protest.

By Steven Greenhut

How Much Is Kristi Noem's Alleged Adultery Airplane Costing You?

If the DHS secretary is actually having a high-flying affair with Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski, the taxpayers are the ones getting screwed.

By Eric Boehm

The Feds Used Threats To Silence Their ICE-Tracking Speech. Now They're Fighting Back.

A lawsuit argues that Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem coerced Apple and Meta to censor two popular ICE-monitoring tools, which violates Americans' right to freedom of expression.

By Autumn Billings

The Cowardice of the Republican 'Tariff Skeptics'

Finally given a chance to influence trade policy, the vast majority of House Republicans decided it was more important to keep President Donald Trump happy.

By Eric Boehm

A Federal Judge Explains Why Trump Can't Jail Legislators for Producing a Video That Offended Him

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon notes that Sen. Mark Kelly's comments about unlawful military orders were "unquestionably protected" by the First Amendment.

By Jacob Sullum

Trump's $10 Billion Lawsuit Against the BBC

A federal judge has set the date for the president's push to punish a news organization he dislikes, again.

By Reem Ibrahim

The El Paso Drone Scare Is the Future of National Security Paranoia

Fear over mysterious objects in the sky keeps disrupting society.

By Matthew Petti

The Wall Street Journal and Reason magazine generally reflect the values and policies of Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, the Bush presidents, and Mitt Romney. The Trump-GOP now rejects those presidents. They are RINOS -- Republicans in Name Only. The WSJ and Reason are RINOs, too.

The WSJ and Reason magazine are stranded, without a party to promote, but they have not capitulated to Trump nor given up. They are still embers of "conservatism."  Nearly all Republican officeholders and voters evolved from Reagan-Romney to Trump, loyal to the GOP brand not it principles. But the transition is not complete. There are still voices in the wilderness.

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How to launder money: a guide.

It is tax season.

You are watching the mail for your Social Security statement, your bank and brokerage reports, your 1099s, and the confirmation letters from nonprofit organizations verifying your charitable gifts.

The USA had a well-founded reputation for voluntary tax compliance. It was the law. The IRS had means to check up on you. And paying one's taxes was a cultural norm, the legal, patriotic thing for good Americans to do.

President Trump is eroding that public trust by flagrant self-serving grift: free planes, getting billion-dollar investments in his imaginary crypto coins, and his own tax returns that showed he paid exactly $750 in total taxes while living and spending like a billionaire. This week he adds a claim for a $10 billion settlement from his own IRS appointees, a settlement that will come to him tax free, which he can then publicly give away in an act of self-declared "charity." That would give him charitable deductions for use in eliminating billions of dollars in taxes on any taxable income his businesses generate that he could not hide in some other way. Clever! So generous!

In a 2016 debate, Hillary Clinton challenged him for his history of not paying taxes. Trump did not disagree. Instead, he explained: "I'm smart."

Trump encourages and enables a new norm for filing an honest tax return: Only saps pay taxes. He has fired the IRS auditors who audit complicated returns.

College classmate Erich Almasy's guest post is a mix of serious and satire. I consider it a version of Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal." It is a commentary on the Trump grift and loopholes to hide money that Trump has inserted into the law. Erich does it in the form of instructions on how to be just as cynical, dishonest, and unpatriotic as Trump. Erich and his wife Cynthia Blanton, also a classmate, live in San Miguel de Allande, in Mexico.

Almasy

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

Money Laundering

Do you have an illegal business somewhere in the world that generates a lot of cash? Need to find a place to put it where it can earn even greater Ill-gotten gains? I have just the place for you. It’s called the United States.

"What?" you say. How can that be? Isn’t the United States a country of laws? Doesn’t the FBI force Swiss banks to reveal miscreants like Bernie Madoff? Doesn’t the Treasury Department require a filing by banks of any suspicious transactions involving over $10,000 in cash? Isn’t the DEA going after drug cartels and dealers who amass huge amounts of cash? Hasn’t the United States Congress placed sanctions on Russian oligarchs? Didn’t the U.S. discontinue denominations over $500 in 1969? Well, yes, but that hasn’t stopped any and all of these people from laundering money here in the good old United States. How, you ask? Let me count the ways.

*** 1. Real Estate: Until the Biden administration, real estate transactions in the United States did not require disclosure of the beneficial owner. They could be bought by numbered or shell corporations. One estimate claimed that more than 1,300 (over 20 percent) of all the Trump Organization’s condos were purchased this way. In 2017, USA Today reported that more than 70 percent of Trump properties sold in the previous twelve months went to limited-liability companies, whose owners’ names were not disclosed. 

The United States was not the only country with this situation. In Canada, specifically British Columbia, nearly 40 percent of property in Vancouver had no listed owner other than a company. A new publicly searchable database established under the Land Owner Transparency Act (LOTA) ended this opacity. However, in the United States, the Corporate Transparency Act, which does the same, was suspended by the Trump Treasury Department in March 2025. Trump also canceled the Anti-Money Laundering rules that required real estate professionals to report on all-cash transactions involving legal entities or trusts. So, it is safe to park your illegal cash in real estate again. 

*** 2. Cryptocurrency: Technically, purchasing crypto is not anonymous but “pseudonymous” since all transactions are supposed to be recorded on a public blockchain ledger that could theoretically be traced to a bank account or name. Major platforms, such as Coinbase and Robinhood, even have KYC (Know Your Customer) rules. However, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) often use Uniswap or PancakeSwap, which do not require user accounts. Bitcoin can be purchased anonymously through ATMs. P2P (Person-to-Person) marketplaces offer direct purchases with no-name transactions. Privacy coins are cryptocurrencies designed to be anonymous. The large number of crypto transactions that appear to be made through the Tor browser on the dark web suggests a desire to mask and launder funds. The vast majority of respected economists believe that crypto’s sole purpose is to launder money. But, hey its legal. I know this because Trump, his sons, and his administration say so.

*** 3. Venture Capital: Private Equity, and Hedge Funds: Got a spare $20+ million lying around that you don’t want anyone to trace? Just set up a numbered corporation through a bank account in the Channel Islands or in the South Pacific island country Vanuatu, and invest in a private equity fund. By law, private equity funds are not required to disclose their funding sources publicly. Theoretically, they must comply with anti-money laundering (AML) laws, but there are significant loopholes, such as offshore private vehicles, like the one we just set up. Venture capital firms and hedge funds are covered by pretty much the same rules.

With this primer, you can now launder money: Set up a Middle Eastern private equity fund; create your own cryptocurrency fund, coins, and laws; and sell real estate to the Russian Mafia. Just as your favorite politicians do.

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Crime down in 2025

Crime dropped between 2024 and 2025. That is good for America.

It is also a pending political problem for Democrats.

Trump will take credit for the drop.

I expect to see more charts like these in Republican ads this fall:

Sharp drop last year in homicides

And this one, charting a drop in all crime categories:

Drop in all crime categories in 2025

Crime data is complex and cannot be summed up by a simple statement that crime declined immediately after Trump took office. Crime has been trending down from the Covid years of 2020 and 2021. Closed schools and businesses, and a country in lockdown, created idle hands so crime rates peaked. 

Moreover, Canada showed the same trend, and Trump can't take credit for that.

Source: Major Cities Chiefs Association

Trump is already selling the message that rough policing and removing immigrants are responsible for reduced crime. It will be a persuasive message if Democrats fall into the trap of being defined as anti-police. 

Trump succeeds by being a fierce partisan with blunt, absolutist positions -- tariffs on every country, pardon all J6 criminals, deport everybody here illegally, climate change is a total hoax, "wonderful clean coal," and don't wait around for consultants, just bulldoze the East Wing of the White House because he can. To the delight of his base, Trump isn't nuanced.

Tempting as it is for a Democrat to be the opposite of Trump on crime and immigration enforcement, that is a fatal misstep and exactly what Trump wants. He wants Democrats to be his opposite -- in other words -- to favor open borders, and ignore street crime, lawlessness, and disorder. It is going to require some courageous and deft Democratic candidates and message-leaders to voice a middle ground of better policing. It will require a message of nuance. 

Democrats face a test. Is there someone among the potential candidates for president who sees the requirement to be not-Trump, while avoiding being Trump's policy opposite. There is a middle-ground in the U.S. that wants ethical, professional policing, and which wants immigration to be well-regulated and some -- maybe many -- current immigrants to stay. But not all of them. Americans do want some deportations. It will require the oratorical skills of a Bill Clinton or Barack Obama. It will take someone who can take a position that seems to meet voters where they are: angry about ICE, but smart about it. It won't be the kind of position that gets enthusiastic clicks. It will seem mushy. Nuance and moderation looks weak when Trump is shaping the issues. 

That Democrat has a difficult task, and angry voices within the parry will make the task harder. A Democrat who can succeed in this environment would have rare political talent that I do not see quite yet on the party's bench. It may be there. I hope so. The situation requires it.

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Watergate déjà vu

"If you took all the girls I knew when I was single
And brought 'em all together for one night
I know they'd never match my sweet imagination
Everything looks worse in black and white."
        Paul Simon, "Kodachrome," 1973

I remember the Watergate era, 1972 to 1974, as a story with a happy ending. 

American democracy was preserved. Justice was done. Republican senators did the right thing and told Nixon that he had crossed the line, and must leave. Nixon's co-conspirators went to prison. This memory isn't my "sweet imagination." Things really did work out for America.

The Epstein matter is in progress. The outcome is unknown. Reality feels gritty and sleazy. Real life plays out in black and white.

The Epstein matter reminds me of Watergate. Both instances start with denial by the president.

The Watergate and Epstein denials fell apart because some people were caught, proving something needed explanation. Police arrested men who were burglarizing the Watergate offices of the Democratic Party. The men had incentives to talk.  Ghislaine Maxwell faces almost 20 more years. She had a story to tell. The coverup required keeping people quiet and documents secret.

In both instances the crime was too awful to confess. Nixon's campaign burglarized the DNC on instructions from Nixon's top people. That is a felony. A high crime. Donald Trump is up to his eyeballs in evidence showing he was part of Epstein's circle of participants in sex play with underage girls. 

The "limited hangout" approach failed in both cases. The slow dribble of revelations preserves the drama in an unfolding mystery. A metamessage emerges, that the president is fighting to hide the truth. He must be guilty of something. Nixon needed to claim "I am not a crook." Trump is in the same position, slowly retreating behind the moving wall of new revelations.

Trump is losing credibility, even with deep MAGA believers. People see things. Images of Trump and Epstein ogling women at a party. Emails and documents mentioning Trump. Video footage showing Trump bragging about behavior and desires that fit the Epstein narrative. It looked bad twenty years ago.

It looks very bad in the context of the Epstein revelations.

Click: One minute

We don't yet know exactly what Trump is guilty of, but it is undeniable that Trump was deep inside a culture of sexuality and privilege of wealthy men with young girls.

The Nixon and Trump presidencies lost critical public support because the public was offended by a matter of personal behavior. Evidence that Nixon had corrupted the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA didn't move the needle of support. Knowing that Nixon swore casually and frequently, did. Nixon leaned on people's respect for the office, if not himself personally.

Americans of polite sensibilities, good Republican churchgoers, were offended that Nixon swore in a sacred space.

Trump's well-established dalliances with models, beauty queens, and porn stars did not have the creepy illegality of sex acts with 12-and-13-year-olds, and this week, a new email the addition of a nine-year-old to Epstein's harem. The revelations passed a tipping point. Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis (R) announced that the news about models in their young teens had her questioning "what the big deal is?" Now she says she knows. A nine-year-old victim crosses the line for her.

John Dean narrated the story of Nixon's involvement in the immediate aftermath of the Watergate burglary. Ghislaine Maxwell is no John Dean. Her incentive is to lie, but the open quid-pro-quo "I will absolve you, President Trump, if you pardon me" is so open that it has no real value other than to document that Trump would happily corrupt the pardon power for personal gain. Both cases rely on documents, not testimony. Watergate had tapes. Epstein has emails, texts, and videotape. The documents paint a picture that even a Wyoming Republican officeholder cannot ignore.

I would have preferred that Trump lose credibility and power because of his crimes against democracy. That is his affront to the republic. Maybe Republican officeholders and Fox News viewers will rediscover that they care about laws and the Constitution and limits on presidential power once Trump is gone from office. But for now, the Epstein revelations that Trump is even sleazier than people realized is a catalyst for Trump's losing public support. It will serve.

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The dollar has lost value.

Americans have gotten poorer. 

The dollar buys less in the marketplaces of the world than it did a year ago.

This is a five-year chart of the U.S. dollar. It rose as the U.S. recovered from Covid shutdowns and hit a high at the end of Biden's term. It has fallen 10 percent since Trump's inauguration, with a sharp fall after Trump announced "Liberation Day." tariffs.

A falling dollar helps some people and hurts others. An economist sorts this out in a guest post.

Jim Stodder is a college classmate. After his junior year, he left college for a decade to knock around as a roughneck in the oil fields. Then he returned to formal studies and received a Ph.D. in economics from Yale. He taught international economics and securities regulation at Boston University. He has his own website at www.jimstodder.com.

Stodder

Guest Post by Jim Stodder

                       The Dollar Matters

The U.S. dollar has fallen by about 10 percent relative to major currencies since Trump’s 2025 inauguration. As we will see, there are good reasons for this. The currency markets bet “real money” – trillions wagered on the future value of the greenback. The dollar regained a few percent with Trump’s late January announcement of Kevin Warsh as his choice for Fed chairman when Jerome Powell’s term ends in May. But many commentators are concerned that Warsh may be swayed by Trump to cut interest rates, despite his previous reputation  as a monetary "hawk" – i.e., tough on inflation.

Most Americans earn their dollars through labor, and want them to be worth as much as possible. That’s why the Trump administration – and every U.S. administration – announces a “strong dollar” policy. That is usually BS, because most U.S. exporters benefit from a cheaper dollar. Trump, who is very pro-manufacturing, understands this, but he can’t say it too loudly. So he lets Scott Bessent, his treasury secretary, go on about our strong dollar policy.

Yahoo Finance

 Most U.S. exports – goods and services – have exchange rate sensitivity (economists call it an exchange rate elasticity) greater than one. This means that if the value of the dollar goes down by one percent, the quantity of U.S. exports goes up by more than one percent. Recent estimates of exchange rate sensitivity of demand for U.S. exports are much greater than one in the long run – between 1.75 to 2.25.

You might think that means that the U.S. trade deficit will shrink – and that is what Trump clearly believes. But this ignores the effect on imports. With a weaker dollar, imports will cost the U.S. more. Good, you say, then we’ll buy less of them. But some imports are vital inputs that are too important to do without (like Chinese rare earths). So a weaker dollar’s effect is ambiguous, and recent studies show it does not improve the U.S. trade deficit.

I taught international economics for many years to aerospace engineers in big companies, including United Technologies, Sikorsky, and GE. They understood their jobs will be more secure and their salaries will grow if the U.S. dollar got a bit weaker. Not only does it help such companies’ exports, it also pushes up the dollar value of their foreign investments. Let’s say GE has a plant in Poland worth $10 billion where it makes turbine blades for its jet engines. If the U.S. dollar loses half its value, that plant is now worth $20 billion. More U.S. inflation would be a small price to pay!

When Trump yells about the Fed keeping interest rates too high, he knows perfectly well – as does everyone on Wall Street – that a lower interest rate almost always means a weaker dollar. That’s why Trump’s pestering Fed Chairman Powell for not cutting rates has spooked financial markets this year. Foreigners won’t want their savings in U.S. dollars if that currency is falling or likely to fall – and neither will an American who has other options.

Big international banks like Citibank and Goldman Sachs have a more complicated relation to the value of the dollar than do export manufacturers. Whatever they gain from the rising value of U.S. exports they are likely to lose even more from lower foreign investment in the U.S.

This is especially true because the U.S. has run an overall trade deficit since the early 1990s. Trade deficits mean we have to pay for those goods and services by selling financial assets to foreigners and/or by borrowing money from them. This is contrary to the intuition of most Americans, but it is a consequence of the strong dollar – strong enough to be the main reserve currency for most countries.

Think about it – if another country keeps most of its foreign exchange (or FX, as the financial bros say) in U.S. dollars, that usually means it’s selling more to the U.S. than it buys from the U.S. The world as a whole has a big surplus with us, so about 60 percent of all FX reserves are in dollars and nearly 90 percent of FX transactions use dollars, even if only as the "middle term" between other currencies.

So Trump faces an obvious conflict around the U.S. dollar. On one hand, he wants a weaker dollar to promote U.S. exports and (he hopes) shrink our trade deficit. On the other hand, he wants a strong dollar because it gives the U.S. power over other countries - like the assets of Russia or Iran frozen by the U.S. Those assets are largely in dollars, even if they are stashed in European banks.

Faced with this conflict, Trump’s loyal economists have different ways to "square the circle." Take the “Mar-a-Lago Accord” of Stephen Miran, a Trump appointee who just left the Federal Reserve Board. This would involve either taxing foreigners for the privilege of holding U.S. Treasury bonds, or else forcing them to convert the U.S. bonds they hold – mostly with maturities less than 30 years – to ultra-long maturities of up to 100 years.

Either of these means lower net payouts on those bonds – an explicit breach of their contract with the U.S. So this would have to be forced on them by threats. Some "accord!" It’s just one more way Trump is ripping up the worldwide military and economic alliances the U.S. has built over the last 80 years.

A final word about the short-term prospects of the U.S. dollar. Dollar FX may decline, but no foreign currency can take its place in the near future. The Central Bank of China controls the yuan’s value too closely and won’t allow it to exchange in large amounts. So, it’s no good for big international settlements. The Eurozone economy is about 75 percent as big as the U.S., but its bond market is about 1/3 the size. And the bond market of its biggest economy, Germany, is about 1/10 the size. 

So, as Margaret Thatcher used to say, “There is No Alternative” -- The world is stuck with the dollar as the reserve currency, at least for now. But Trump’s weakening of the U.S. dollar is still weakening something else – our nation as a whole.

 

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Bad Bunny. America for Americans.

Trump's decision to trash-talk Bad Bunny was a foolish mistake.

"Foolish mistakes" are the ones that best teach us what is really going on.

I draw the analogy from biology and evolution, especially the peacock's improbably large tail. That tail flummoxed Charles Darwin for a while. 

The huge tail is cumbersome. It draws the attention of predators. One would think that in the competition for survival, peacocks with such a disadvantage would be bred out of existence. But the tails persist. There must be some value to the "mistake." That premise led to considering sexual selection as part of reproductive survival. Peahens are attracted to males with a big tail. The "mistake" clarifies what is really going on.

So, too, with Trump. 

Trump had every opportunity to nurture the constituent realignments of the political parties, with Hispanics voting for the GOP in increasing numbers. Democrats presumed that Hispanic voters would identify with their ethnicity and support mass immigration of Hispanics, whether legal or illegal. That was wrong. A great many Hispanic voters chose to vote like people who wanted laws enforced, including immigration laws. 

It would have made sense for Trump, upon learning that Bad Bunny would be the Super Bowl halftime show star, to embrace a show with a heavy Latin American vibe. It would have given nuance to his ICE policy of heavy-handed in-your-face policing. It would have sent a message that ICE enforcement was about illegality, not ethnicity. It would be reaching out to Hispanic citizens saying that they are fellow Americans, that he respected them -- but not the criminals hiding among them. 

Trump did not do that. 

Trump led a revolt against the halftime show. He posted on Truth Social after the show: 

The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn't represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence. Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World. This "Show" is just a "slap in the face" to our Country, which is setting new standards and records every single day. . . .

Trump encouraged a competing halftime show conservative media defined as the "All American" alternative. That defines the Bad Bunny show as the un-American show. Trump defined the Bad Bunny show not as additive to American culture; it is an insult to it. Spanish is unintelligible. Its dance arrangements are "disgusting."

Political scientist and psychologist Jonathan Haidt uses the word disgust to describe one of the deep moral instincts of American political conservatives. It is moral and physical revulsion against defilement, a reaction to rotten meat, vermin, putrefaction, infection or invasion by an insidious outsider. Trump is communicating that Hispanic culture does not belong here. 

Trump is repeating the message he used to scold Europeans, that immigration by the wrong people is destroying the ethnic unity and identity of their countries. It resembles the message that kicked off Trump's campaign a dozen years ago, that Obama is illegitimate and foreign. He can never really be one of "us." Then in 2015, in Trump's campaign kickoff, immigrants from Mexico were other. Then Muslims. Then people from Central and South America. Then Africans and people from Caribbean islands, especially Haitians. And "low-IQ" Black Democrats. Get out. You are unwelcome. 

Trump is saying that Hispanics in the country, including Puerto Ricans who are U.S. citizens by birth, are "other," too, speaking Spanish and having a bad folkways. Maybe they are outsiders forever, as long as they are brown. Maybe they are "other" only until they learn to speak un-accented English and drop markers of Hispanic culture. The USA is a melting pot, so melt already. Become a real American.

Long term, I suspect the unnecessary insult to Latin culture is a mistake, but it may work for him for one or two more elections, especially if the Democratic message comes across as being against effective enforcement of immigration laws. Unregulated immigration from 2021 to 2023 branded Democrats as permissive to immigration scofflaws -- with parallel scenes in conservative media of blue-city homeless encampments and California shoplifters casually walking out while stealing just under $950 in goods. This is a brand problem for Democrats, and it will haunt Gavin Newsom as he attempts to campaign in middle America. Voters may be slow to give Democrats credibility as willing to enforce the law. Democrats can fix this, but they might not want to.

Trump is selling a simple, clear idea, even if it narrows the GOP base: Crime is caused by outsiders, and Trump has no respect for them. Fear them. Ridicule them. Disempower them.

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Easy Sunday: Trump really, really doesn't want to be booed.

Trump won't be at the Super Bowl today.

He doesn't want to be booed. 

"Boooooooo!"

Or perhaps the most effective chant would be an accusation Trump would try to deny:

"Pedophile! Pedophile! Pedophile!"

Donald Trump has a weak spot. He needs the adoration of crowds. 

Sparks, Nevada,  2015

Turning Point USA, 2024

There is a flip side to Trump's neediness. He is notoriously thin-skinned. 

My career as a financial advisor taught me that people perceive loss with about five times the intensity that they perceive gain. It works that way for narcissists seeking adoration. Trump would hate widespread jeers from a crowd.

A crowd at an AWE network wrestling match in Los Vegas this week broke out in a chant: "Fuck ICE, Fuck ICE, Fuck ICE." 

Click. Eleven seconds

This chant is a political "tell." It is one thing when ICE loses the support of urban liberals in coffee shops and bookstores. But ICE got jeers at a professional wrestling event.

The political left has a tool that I have not yet seen employed: chants at public events. It is non-violent. Chants are unlikely to get people killed. They strike at Trump's weakness, his desire for affirmation and his assertion that he is the legitimate representative of the American people. 

A chant arises organically. I regret that the chant most likely to emerge is one that echoes "Fuck Joe Biden" or "Fuck ICE," but I suspect that is inevitable and unstoppable. "Fuck Trump" fits a mood. I would prefer Democrats try something else.

 A chant of the word "Resign" or "Resign Now" combines disapproval and Trump's increasing physical and mental deterioration. "Resign" forces Trump to insist that he won't resign, but it puts his competence and impermanence on the table. As I have written, Trump seems "off." His billionaire backers surely see this.

There is an accusation built into a chant of "Pedophile! Pedophile." "Pedophile" overstates the hard evidence, but it has the same sneering power of Trump's very successful branding of "Sleepy Joe," "Lyin' Ted," "Shifty Schiff" and "Pocahontas."  

"Pedophile" is an accusation that demands a denial. 

The evidence you have of me being a pedophile is circumstantial, and my slow-walking release of the Epstein files does not imply I have something to hide. Your suspicions prove nothing! 

Democrats are winning when Trump is claiming reasonable doubt as a defense. 

Is it unfair to force Trump to deny an accusation? It is less unfair than Trump asserting that Barack Obama was lying about being born in Hawaii. At least Obama released his birth certificate; Trump's Justice Department redacts documents that reference Trump.

I cannot script the chant. It will arise organically. A small group of people will start booing and it will catch on, and somehow a chant will start. I hope it is something other than "F-Trump."

I suspect that chants and boos can become a new feature of Trump's public appearances, and it will change Trump's public brand from "Conquering Hero" into "Besieged Trump." Trump would appear weak. He can avoid chants but cannot stop them. 

Displays of Trump's loss of popular support might give Republican congressmen and senators the courage to begin to exercise the power of their offices.

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