Here’s What a Saner Trump Would Do Now
The post-election pivot he (probably) won’t make.
All eyes were on the Supreme Court yesterday for oral argument in a case considering whether Donald Trump had overstepped his constitutional authorities by imposing sweeping tariffs around the world this year, a case with massive implications for presidential power and the U.S. economy and—hey, wait a minute—is that John Mulaney? The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood reports:
As documented by C-SPAN’s Howard Mortman, the front row was a who’s who of Washington power players, from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, to Senators Mike Lee and Amy Klobuchar, to Meta president of global affairs Joel Kaplan.
And there, near the back, was John Mulaney. The comedian and actor, dressed in a sharp suit with a dark blue tie, was listening along as the justices pressed the lawyers on the legality of Trump’s tariffs, according to multiple people in the room.
Apparently, Mulaney is gathering string for a TV show he’s writing about the court. We thought maybe he had some business interests in Brazil or something. Happy Thursday.
The Day Trump Truly Became President?
by Andrew Egger
For a president, a major off-year election loss is the political equivalent of a punch in the mouth. But it can also be a wakeup call, a warning sign that carrying on as you have been is a recipe for greater electoral pain later.
Republicans are keeping a stiff upper lip after Tuesday’s shellacking, scoffing it off as “Democrats winning in blue states.” Behind the scenes, though, they’re seeing the same things we’re all seeing: an across-the-board shift of voters back toward Democrats relative to 2024, driven by Trump’s cratering popularity among groups whose newfound MAGA curiosity helped propel him to victory last year, particularly young people and ethnic minorities.
If there’s good news for Trump here, it’s that the damage was contained to a couple of governorships and state supreme court and legislative elections. The GOP’s coalmine canary has croaked, but the miners are still alive. They may even remain so. But that will depend largely on how Donald Trump responds.
Now, take a trip on the Magic School Bus with me. Throw out everything you know about how stubborn and unreliable the president is. And imagine: What might a do-popular-things pivot from Trump look like at this moment? More importantly, could such a pivot work?
It would start with him actually engaging in negotiations to break the ice on the government shutdown, which grows more painful for the American public by the day. And he could do it.
Trump has a great advantage in negotiations like these over both congressional Republicans and congressional Democrats: His base is pre-primed to treat anything he declares to be a victory as a victory in fact.
Imagine if Trump were to announce today that the White House was endorsing a version of the “statement of principles” deal a small bipartisan group hashed out in the House this week—ending the shutdown by agreeing to extend the Obamacare subsidies Democrats want, but only for a period of two years and with new stricter phaseouts for higher earners. He would then be able to claim—and would likely receive—the lion’s share of credit for ending the shutdown just as it was getting really hairy.
Or imagine if Trump were quietly to yank Stephen Miller’s chain on immigration enforcement. Detentions and deportations would continue, but the base-titillating robocop cosplay would be quietly wound down. The sizzle-reel videographers shooting lascivious B-roll of migrants in wrist-and-ankle chains or of Border Patrol agents rappelling down from helicopters into apartment buildings would be unobtrusively reassigned. The word would go down through the ranks: All things being equal, we’d really rather NOT see you on the local news. In its place, the White House would put out daily statistics of illegal immigrants seized, criminals taken off the street, and border-crossing reductions. And they would leave it at that. The numbers, they’d say, speak for themselves.
Or imagine if Trump were to get serious about actually addressing affordability. Instead of pushing the pillow of tariffs down ever harder on the face of the economy, he could do what he did on trade with Canada and Mexico in his first term: strike deals allowing free trade to resume while including a few pot-sweeteners from other countries to help him save face. He could then declare the negotiating period over and the Golden Age launched. For good measure, he could demand Congress pass a bill converting the tariffs already accumulated into a rebate to help the American consumer with prices. Who says no?
He could then turn to energy. Instead of continuing his pointless war on green energy as electricity costs spike dangerously, Trump could embrace an all-of-the-above approach—keeping up the “drill, baby, drill” rhetoric about oil, gas, and coal while quietly allowing renewables to thrive, too. He could go into Russ Vought’s office tomorrow and say: Hey, those projects you froze, unfreeze them. It would be that easy.
You might find this all very fanciful. Not just because it’s so out of character for Trump, but because you can’t imagine voters would let him get away with such an abrupt 180. But why not?
Trump has kept the electorate cranked up to a posture of maximum aggression over the last year. But electorates have short memories. If Trump tried even a little to take that pressure off—to inhabit the classic Is this the day Donald Trump truly became president? role for a while—the rewards he would reap would likely not be small. This strategy wouldn’t even require him to give up on his authoritarian ambitions. It would just require a little creative substitution: Every time he got the itch to put a new tariff on Brazil, he could just fire a mid-level bureaucrat or tweet out a picture of Liz Cheney in a prison jumpsuit instead. Have at James Comey, sir, we just want the wind turbines to be turned on.
Other presidents have made pivots before. Barack Obama turned abruptly to fiscal austerity after a backlash to his stimulus-heavy first year. Bill Clinton leaned further into triangulation after his health care initiative blew up.
It is perhaps not as outlandish as you might think to wonder whether Trump himself will try his version of this. He has spent the entirety of his first year back in office unbelievably high on his own supply—totally convinced that the great and good American people are as into his presidency as he is into himself. Now that they’ve declared they’re not, it would seem like a natural moment to reassess that assumption.
But I’m not holding my breath. Donald Trump didn’t get where he is today by learning to accommodate himself to the shape of the world around him. He got here by trying to bludgeon the world into shape until it accommodated him.
That’s gotten him farther than you, me, or even he would have ever expected. But whether it will get him safely through the midterms remains to be seen.
Tonight: Look out for the first installment of Receipts by Catherine Rampell—the newest addition to The Bulwark family.
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AROUND THE BULWARK
Hey, Republicans: Blame Trump… Exit polls show Tuesday’s election was indeed a referendum on the president and his policies, writes WILL SALETAN.
Dems Are Suddenly Very Serious About Retaking the Senate… In The Opposition, LAUREN EGAN reports on how Tuesday’s blue blowout has buoyed spirits for retaking the upper chamber.
Which Conservative Justices Will Fall for Trump’s Tariff Power Grab? Emergency powers “tend to kindle emergencies,” as a great justice of yore once observed, writes MONA CHAREN.
Now That’s a Landslide… Semafor’s DAVE WEIGEL joins TIM MILLER on the flagship pod to break down Democrats’ big wins in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, and California, the backlash to Trump’s weak economic record and nativist policies, the shifting redistricting map, and what Mamdani could teach Democrats.
Bulwark interviews! Two great interviews elsewhere to peruse this morning with two of our founders: SARAH LONGWELL joined Business Insider’s Peter Kafka for an interview about the growth of the company, and BILL KRISTOL was interviewed by The Forum’s Shiv Parihar and Dhriti Jagadish on friendship, neoconservatism, and Zohran Mamdani.
Quick Hits
END OF AN ERA: Nancy Pelosi announced this morning in a video posted to social media that she will not run for re-election in 2026. “With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative,” she said. Scion of a Baltimore political family, Pelosi has represented California in the House since 1987—making her the second longest-serving woman in the history of the House. She made history in 2007 when she became the first woman to serve as speaker of the House, where she earned a reputation as a skillful political operator. Adding together both her stints as speaker (2007–2011 and 2019–2023), she is the fifth longest-serving speaker in history.
END THE FILIBUSTER . . . PLEASE?: Is it still a bully pulpit if you’re not actually bullying anybody?
If Donald Trump’s big strategic takeaway from Tuesday’s elections was Senate Republicans must nuke the filibuster or we will all face electoral disaster, he’s being uncharacteristically dainty about getting his people to fall in line for it. Speaking to the Senate GOP yesterday morning, Trump rattled off a list of terrible consequences he said would follow if Republicans declined to heed his advice. But he stopped short of declaring political war on any holdouts. “It’s possible you’re not going to do that, and I’m going to go by your wishes,” the president allowed. “You’re very smart people. We’re good friends. But I think it’s a tremendous mistake.”
For the most part, Senate Republicans have responded to days of such entreaties with a polite sure, grandpa, let’s get you to bed. Majority Leader John Thune, a longtime defender of the filibuster, was blunt on Monday: “The votes aren’t there.” On Tuesday, he seemed unmoved: “I know where the votes are. The answer is, there aren’t the votes.”
There’s plenty more Trump could do, of course. He could demand Thune call a vote on the question anyway, which would crank up the pressure on the Senate’s filibuster enthusiasts considerably. According to our old pal, Marc Caputo, he is threatening to literally torture GOP holdouts by calling them up at 3 a.m. to bitch about the need to get the filibuster scrapped. But, so far, no calls.
ROBERTS IN RETREAT: Kevin Roberts is backpedaling so fast they should put him in the Olympics. It was just last week that the Heritage Foundation president came galloping to Tucker Carlson’s defense over his chummy interview with antisemitic podcaster Nick Fuentes, scolding the “venomous coalition” of those “sowing division” over the interview and pledging Heritage’s undying friendship to Carlson. But when that video kicked up a firestorm that Roberts somehow didn’t anticipate (how could he have possibly known!?), he spent the following days making a series of statements and media appearances trying to clean up the mess. It culminated in an all-hands Heritage meeting yesterday at which Roberts disavowed and apologized for the remarks, claiming the whole thing had been a misfired brainchild of his now-former chief of staff. The Washington Free Beacon has more:
Roberts said he was willing to resign but felt a “moral obligation” to repair the situation and had told the organization’s board of directors: “I made the mess, let me clean it up.” . . .
He added that he wasn’t actually very familiar with the white nationalist, Stalin fan, and J.D. Vance critic Nick Fuentes. . . . “I didn’t know much about this Fuentes guy,” he said. “I still don’t.” . . .Roberts said his former chief of staff, Ryan Neuhaus, who has since resigned, wrote the script for the video and deceived him into believing colleagues had approved the message. “Our former chief of staff had the pen,” he said. “When the script was presented to me . . . I understood from our former colleague that it was approved, it was signed off on by the handful of colleagues who are part of that. Still my fault, I should have had the wisdom to say, ‘Time out, let’s double check this.’”
The right-wing backlash against Roberts’ equivocation about Fuentes has been a bit surprising, and very much welcome. One person who seems pretty unconcerned about it, though, is Fuentes himself. In his post-election livestream Tuesday night, the podcaster sneered at Roberts’ sweaty contortions, dismissed MAGA as a “dead” and “failed” movement, reaffirmed his own movement’s dedication to taking on “world Jewry,” and promised that 2028 would be the year the groypers started to really flex their political might.
“Don’t you understand? We’re not fighting for control of the hinterlands,” Fuentes said. “We’re not fighting for control of some empty plot of land. We are fighting for control of the capital.”
Now that, folks, is a “venomous coalition.”
FIFA, LOL: We know by now that Donald Trump is aggrieved that he did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize. We also know that soccer’s international governing body FIFA is not exactly above bribing world leaders to get on their good side. And so, we could only chuckle and nod our heads at the news yesterday that FIFA appears to have created a new peace prize, almost certainly for the purpose of awarding it to Donald Trump. Here’s the AP:
FIFA has announced the creation of a peace prize, which it plans to award at the draw for the World Cup on Dec. 5 in Washington.
The award, called the FIFA Peace Prize, will “recognize exceptional actions for peace,” soccer’s governing body said Wednesday.
. . .
President Donald Trump, who has a close relationship with Infantino, was passed over for the Nobel Peace Prize last month despite lobbying from fellow Republicans, various world leaders and himself. Infantino and Trump were both scheduled to speak at an unrelated event in Miami on Wednesday.
FIFA recently added another link to Trump by appointing his daughter Ivanka to the board of a $100 million education project part-funded by 2026 World Cup ticket sales.
Cheap Shots
While I voted for HRC, I thought when Trump ran, he would hire experts like Chris christie and Mitt Romney and basically golf for 4 years. And all would be fine. But that was a sane Trump. .............. He does not exist.
“Cheap Shots: Justice Gorsuch, where have you been? (Sam Stein) • Gorsuch suggests Trump's arguments on tariffs could lead the president to ignoring Congress on literally everything!”
Seriously, you think? Can you say an unconstitutional immunity clause? Gorsuch seriously lacks any semblance of self awareness!…:)