Donald Trump Is Looking Pretty Good in 2020

Back in the early days of the Trump presidency, I figured his best strategy was to just pass some ordinary compromise legislation and then hail it as the greatest accomplishment in all of human history. His fans would believe him and that would be enough.

But then he held out and I started wondering if I had been wrong. Maybe he really did have actual goals in mind?

Just kidding. All I had to do was wait until it was election year for Trump to start acting like a used-car salesman desperately trying to close out the month. Suddenly he just wants to pass NAFTA 2.0 and he doesn’t really care what’s in it. He’s made a trade deal with China that’s almost laughably trivial. He’s bragging about NATO partners spending more even though they aren’t, really. He’s going to build four miles of border wall and pretend it’s four hundred. He traded off parental leave for his Space Force and he understands what his opponents don’t: it doesn’t matter if it’s an empty shell. Bragging about the Space Force makes good TV, and that’s all that matters.

Plus Trump has several legitimate wins: lots of conservative judges; moving the US embassy to Jerusalem; cutting the number of refugees we accept nearly to zero; killing the Iran treaty; getting us out of the Paris agreement; keeping trans people out of the military; withdrawal from TPP; and several other wins that are small but focused specifically on Trump constituencies. He may seem like a buffoon to us liberal types, but to conservatives he’s sure looking like a winner.

UPDATE: Why does the chart below show real per capita disposable income? It’s because I was oh-so-subtly making the point that Trump also has a good economy in his favor, and the best metric for measuring how people view the economy is real per capita disposable income. At least, I think so. I might be remembering that wrong, though. And I suppose I could have just said so instead of trying to be so cute about it. Oh well.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate