Summary
Chuck Todd argues that Donald Trump is rapidly spending his political capital by prioritizing revenge and culture wars over governance.
His controversial cabinet picks, like Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth, signal instability and risk alienating voters who supported him as a rejection of Biden, not an endorsement of Trumpism.
Todd warns that perceived overreach, like aggressive culture war policies or erratic mass deportation plans, could lead to public backlash and erode Trump’s support.
Without delivering stability and results, his presidency could quickly face the same challenges as Biden’s.
Trump is a lame duck president on day one. You can interpret this one of two ways: he has no political capital and will be running on authoritarian fumes for his whole term, or his political capital is limitless because he can’t run again and has unshakable blind loyalty from nearly half the country. Since it’s Trump, the worst option is almost certainly correct. Trump will never run out of political capital.
It is interesting how people think he has “political” capital, or morals at all … he was carried in 2016, and is carried now, by a solid forceful group behind him who have the money to use him for their own goals. (Think about it: Trump was one guy, totally outside of the political system, and by himself alone made it to president and destroyed the GOP and the justice system)
He can’t run out of political steam now, no matter what he does, and it is naive to think he will be thwarted by democratic systems.
The USA will be torn down and remade into what a very small group of people want it to be, not what it needs to be, nor what the world needs it to be, so kiss that influence goodbye.
Untill they are done with Trump, he will be king and elections will be either “postponed” or clearly fraudulous.
Sidenote: No one took him serious when he laid out his project 2025 plans without calling it that, but it’s clearly going that way … and no one took him serious when he proclaimed “you don’t need to vote, we have all the votes, have all votes we need” months before the election… Look and behold: just about the whole country miraculously turned red in the elections … And everyone is afraid to properly investigate it.
If he dies during his reign, he’ll get to appoint either one of his children or has Vance take over, how useful either will be to the shadow government remains to be seen.
Perhaps it is a despot’s lesson the USA needs to learn, and after 10+ years, when the current children turn 18 to 20, they might realize a correction is needed and manage to get rid of the Trump hegemony.