Seven Myths Shattered by Trump 2.0 (and One True Thing)

Watching Trump, Musk, and their band of arsonists set fire to the shining city on a hill.

President Donald Trump before signing an executive order in the Oval Office on February 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

THE PAST FEW WEEKS have been a master class in myth-busting, starting with the fantasy that the government should be run like a business and the corollary delusion that winning candidates don’t follow through on their campaign agendas.

Donald Trump and Elon Musk are running government right now just like they run their own businesses. It’s all about them and their profits, from Trump’s possibly criminal idea to forcibly remove all Palestinians from Gaza and build a resort there (“I would own this,” he told Bret Baier) to Musk’s so far doomed attempt to get a judge to approve his possibly shady $56 billion Tesla payout.

They are slashing and trashing federal employees, programs, livelihoods, and futures without having the slightest clue about who does what and the consequences that could follow. They appear to be undermining aviation safety, nuclear weapons safety, the safety of classified data, even the safety of Americans working for USAID overseas.

A February 11 executive order called “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” meanwhile, says the plan requires “that each agency hire no more than one employee for every four employees that depart.” That sounds drastic. And random.

Many of us have seen this type of move-fast-and-break-things philosophy up close when friends or relatives have lost private-sector jobs. That’s capitalism: “Creative destruction” that is often callous and disruptive in service to its “essential feature,” the profit motive.

By contrast, our government has life-and-death responsibilities, from national security to public health. It has moral and patriotic imperatives, values, rules, laws, oaths, and history. And it has three branches, one of them a 535-member legislature with control of spending under the constitutional “power of the purse.”

Maybe there’s some business person somewhere who could jump in and figure this out. Neither Trump nor Musk is that person. In fact they’re the last people who should be in charge.

The voters who chose Trump last year because of his business prowess must have forgotten about his six bankruptcies, hundreds of stiffed contractors, $25 million Trump University fraud settlement, and terrible reputation among peers. Maybe they have an affinity for the racism, cruelty, and misogyny he brings to politics. Maybe they like presidents who grift off their supporters, encourage insurrection against their own government, or bury their first wife at their golf club. Or maybe they were upset about egg prices.

Maybe they feel like Musk’s money, or the 13 children he’s had with four women, make him a real man. Maybe they think he’s really smart to start his rampage at eleven agencies engaged in “more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions” into his six companies, according to a New York Times investigation.

And maybe they are surprised by what is happening, as lives are upended all over America and the world. Except, what did they think would happen?

A presidential sequel foretold

TRUMP HAS SURROUNDED himself with exactly the kind of people you’d expect from his first term, his 2024 campaign, and his first few weeks in office. Yes, he tried feebly to renounce Project 2025, the right-wing MAGA manual for a second Trump presidency, but that was no surprise given its many unpopular provisions—including firing civil service workers, abolishing the Department of Education, restricting contraception, and cutting federal support for renewable energy.

As Tim Walz said at the Democratic convention, “I coached high school football long enough to know, and trust me on this: When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.” They drew up that playbook in three different lengths, including the voluminous Project 2025. And shortly after Trump won the election, they dropped the pretense and proved Walz right.

As he and Musk busily disassemble the Deep State, Trump has already pardoned the January 6th rioters and imposed some of the tariffs he threatened. He has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord and is on his way to decimating the U.S. wind power industry. He mentioned defunding schools with vaccine requirements and now anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the secretary of health and human services. He didn’t end Russia’s war on Ukraine on Day One, but he’s been working hard to sell out Ukraine to Vladimir Putin.

As for lowering grocery prices, the Day One promise that may have won him the election, Trump promptly confessed that it would be “very hard” to do. The only surprise was that he confessed at all. Presidents don’t control food prices, but his indifference to the possibility of an avian flu pandemic could haunt him some day.

It’s a fact that most presidents either do or try to do what they laid out to voters. President Barack Obama made 533 promises in his two campaigns, according to PolitiFact, and delivered on nearly half of them. He partially achieved another 28 percent by making compromises. PolitiFact labels the remaining 24 percent as “broken” promises, but that’s often not for lack of trying. Obama was repeatedly foiled and blocked by a hostile Republican-controlled House, Senate, or both from 2011 to 2017.

President Joe Biden encountered similar problems during his single term, but kept a third of his promises—including big ones like getting the COVID pandemic under control, putting America on course for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and improving the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA). He compromised on 32 percent of his agenda and broke 34 percent of his campaign promises, mostly for lack of congressional support.

Trump kept only 23 percent of his promises in his first term, from raising tariffs and defunding Planned Parenthood to refusing to say “Happy Holidays,” and compromised on another 22 percent. He broke more than half of his promises, including major pledges to repeal the 2010 ACA health law, restore U.S. manufacturing, and invest in infrastructure. That’s even though he had a Republican Congress for two years. The author of The Art of the Deal turned out to be a nightmare negotiating partner—and political negotiating turned out to be complicated. Who knew?

American dream, alive or dead?

YET ANOTHER REPUBLICAN MYTH, the myth of the perfect dealmaker, imploded. And I could go on. How about these? (And try not to laugh.)

● Presidents have limited power and must not overstep. For Republicans, including many of the conservative judges and justices they have installed, this clearly applies only to Democrats. If Obama or Biden had tried a power grab led by an unelected government contractor using immature twentysomething tech bros to destroy agencies created by Congress, fire thousands of civil servants willy-nilly, and access private taxpayer and employee information, all without any oversight or disclosure, we’d be awash in hellfire, brimstone, and articles of impeachment.

● Tax cuts pay for themselves. This doesn’t happen. Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts were followed by tax increases starting with him and ending with Bill Clinton, who achieved a balanced budget and a debt-reduction trajectory. George W. Bush and Trump threw that away and launched us into frightening levels of debt. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts not only are adding a projected $1.9 trillion to the deficit over ten years, more than 80 percent of the cuts went to corporations, tax partnerships, and people with high net worth. Workers saw very little benefit and black taxpayers saw even less. But Trump wants to renew his tax cuts, which expire at the end of this year.

● Presidents should obey the law, defend the Constitution, and uphold their oath of office. Also, Trump and Musk are champions of free speech. (Okay, now I’m the one laughing.)

● The American dream is about self-determination—people free to chart their destinies and follow their dreams. Except of course if you are a transgender teenager who needs health care, a woman who needs an abortion, a refugee fleeing violence, or anyone else who doesn’t conform to the expectations and requirements of leaders obsessed with money and power.

Here’s one true thing, no myth:

America is indeed an exceptional nation—exceptional in this current moment for the selfishness and cruelty of its leaders, their willful ignorance of recent history (from systemic racism to Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union), their rejection of pluralism, and their determination to make 330 million people speak, think, and live as they say.

Trump and Musk have set fire to “the shining city on a hill.” The only mystery is whether it will survive the flames.