Trump in Retreat

The laws of political gravity still apply.

, and

Apr 23, 2025

Hard to turn around these days without tripping over an embarrassing story about Pete Hegseth’s clown-car Defense Department, but here’s one particularly evocative vignette from Politico about his outgoing chief of staff, Joe Kasper:

At times, Kasper’s detractors say his leadership seemed almost juvenile. He graphically described his bowel movements to colleagues in one high-level meeting, according to two people who were in the meetings.
During that meeting, “he turned [and] he goes, ‘Can I just tell everyone around this table that I just took an enormous sh-t before coming in here?’” according to two people who were present.

Look, if we had to read it, so do you. Happy Wednesday.

Lonely at the top. (Photo by Nicholas Kamm / AFP via Getty Images.)

‘Trump Chickened Out’

by William Kristol

Donald Trump in retreat is a fine sight.

Trump told reporters yesterday that the very high tariffs on Chinese goods he’d imposed with great fanfare two weeks ago will soon “come down substantially.” The hashtag “Trump chickened out” went viral on China’s internet, with more than 150 million views on the social media platform Weibo.

Trump also said yesterday that he had “no intention of firing” Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. This newfound state of satisfaction came after weeks of non-stop criticism of Powell. Just the day before, Trump had called Powell a “major loser.” Last Thursday, Trump had said Powell’s “termination cannot come fast enough.”

The markets hadn’t liked the high tariffs or the threats against Powell. Sure enough, they’ve rallied, at least for now, in response to Trump’s U-turns.

And speaking of markets, I’d note that with Tesla’s stock price plummeting, Elon Musk tried to reassure investors by saying that his “time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly” starting next month.

So it was a day of Trumpist retreat.

And it was a useful reminder that Trump is not immune from pressure. The markets are the strongest form of pressure on Trump, as JVL argued the other day. But we’ve seen plenty of cases over the years of Trump backing off under political pressure too. Remember when he was pro-life? Or when he briefly backed background checks for gun purchases before being pressured to drop it? Or when he reluctantly agreed to leave troops in Syria? Or when public uproar led to halting the policy of separating migrant children from their parents?

On the one hand, it would be a mistake to make too much of these reversals. Trump’s commitment to autocracy at home and to dictators abroad isn’t going to change. Whatever tactical U-turns he pulls off, the fundamental danger of Trump and Trumpism remains.

Still, if Trump can be induced to occasionally interrupt his program of destruction, that’s a good thing.

But, you might ask: Isn’t it desperately important that Trump be weakened politically as quickly as possible?

Yes. Only a decline in Trump’s popularity can loosen the attachment of some Republican members of Congress to Trump, which is key to really limiting the damage he can do. Such a decline wouldn’t hurt with judges either, who—I don’t want to shock you, dear reader—are also aware of popularity ratings, non-political figures though they are.

So, if Trump’s reversals help him politically, isn’t that a problem?

To a degree. But the good news is that political U-turns in general don’t usually end up helping much. If politicians are moving full bore ahead, then suddenly reverse course, they look uncertain and undisciplined. Four years of such behavior—even two years of it—won’t wear well. So I doubt U-turns will stop Trump’s gradual downward political slide.

And that slide is real. A new Reuters-Ipsos poll shows Trump’s approval rating at 42 percent, down five percentage points in the three months since inauguration. And for the first time in Ipsos’s polling, Trump’s approval rating on the issue of immigration is negative, at 45 percent approval compared to 46 percent disapproval.

Indeed, Trump’s zig-zags raises the possibility the opposition can achieve the best of both worlds: A little less damage to the country and the world, along with a continued decline in Trump’s popularity.

One might also note that it’s the markets that forced this change. What lesson can politicians, especially Democrats, learn from this? Well, if I can put it this way, imitate the markets. Be tough. Send a clear and unequivocal message.

That message should be that Donald Trump is both a dangerous autocrat with destructive plans, but also that he is a bully who cowers in a real fight. The good news is that no figure is more contemptible than a bully in retreat.

“When people feel uncertain, they’d rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right,” Bill Clinton said way back in 2002.

Could we be entering a period when the public sees that Trump is both wrong and weak?

Join Sarah, Tim, JVL, and friends for an evening of politics among friends in Chicago and Nashville.
Tickets are on sale now for these two forthcoming Bulwark Live shows:

Wednesday, May 28 in Chicago
Thursday, May 29 in Nashville

INFO & TICKETS

Getting to the Bottom Of It

by Andrew Egger

One day after Attorney General Pam Bondi convened an interagency task force intended to eradicate supposed “anti-Christian bias” across the federal government—saying former President Joe Biden had “engaged in an egregious pattern of targeting peaceful Christians while ignoring violent, anti-Christian offenses”—other agencies starting to get busy.

In an agency-wide email sent this week and obtained by The Bulwark, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins encouraged employees to report any incidents of anti-Christian bias they witnessed from their colleagues to a (one imagines) newly created email account: Anti-ChristianBiasReporting@va.gov. The email included eleven specific examples of the sorts of conduct Collins was hoping to hear about. A sampling:

“any examples of adverse actions taken in response to an accommodation request.”
“any mistreatment or reprimand issued in response to displays of Christian imagery or symbols.”
“any observations of mistreatment from not participating in events or activities inconsistent with Christian views.”

Two possible forms of bias were particularly notable:

“any adverse responses to requests for religious exemption under the previous vaccine mandates.”
“any retaliatory actions taken or threatened in response to abstaining from certain procedures or treatments (for example abortions or hormone therapy).”

It’s hard to imagine what this last possibility even means: Is Collins imagining VA employees might have been discriminated against for not seeking transgender medical care?

One VA official who received the email and sent it to us called it “genuinely crazy pants.”

“I’ve been here for almost 20 years and have never seen anti-Christian bias or even the semblance of it,” the official added. They suggested that the new inbox would quickly become a vehicle for VA employees to settle personal scores.

AROUND THE BULWARK

The Trump Administration Is Preparing to Send American Allies to Their Deaths… If the Afghans in the United States are deported, they will likely be executed, warns WILL SELBER.
Rümeysa Öztürk’s Ordeal Is Our Nation’s Disgrace… There is clear evidence of serious wrongdoing in the Tufts student’s case—and it’s all on the part of the government, writes BILL LUEDERS.
Markets Can’t Be Gaslit… On Just Between Us, MONA CHAREN and JVL discuss Donald Trump’s confrontation with the judiciary and world markets.
Trump’s Trade War Lies… A masterful examination of gaslighting as explained by WILL SALETAN in 10 Minutes and 39 Seconds.
Look out below! On Bulwark+ Takes, TIM MILLER and SAM STEIN look at Tesla’s earnings and Elon’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, VERY Bad Quarter.

Quick Hits

ELON LEARNS HOW TO PULL OUT: Elon Musk’s days in Washington are numbered. The world’s richest man said Tuesday he plans to heavily cut back his time spent on DOGE, beginning next month, when his temporary status as a “special government employee” is set to expire. From then on, he said, he’d probably spend no more than “a day or two per week” working on the White House’s agenda.

The announcement came during a brutal Tesla earnings call, during which the company reported a 71 percent drop in profits this quarter (not a typo). The company has been squeezed by intensifying competition from other electric automakers and, of course, massive damage to its brand due to Musk’s increasingly public, erratic, and controversial behavior.

Musk appears as much in denial as ever about it all. During the call, he said that those participating in protests at Tesla showrooms around the country were simply the jilted former recipients of government handouts: “The real reason is that those who are receiving the waste and fraud wish it to continue.”

THEY’LL NEVER FIGURE IT OUT!: Although Donald Trump won reelection while promising not to cut Medicaid, House Republicans have been gearing up to do just that. Reasonable minds have wondered: How would the GOP sell the swerve?

In a Fox Business appearance Tuesday morning, Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.) revealed one possible strategy: Cutting the federal government’s Medicaid spending while asking individual states to make up the difference.

“When the Dems expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, they made that percentage match 90-10. So the federal government is paying 90 percent of the Medicaid expansion. And so what we have talked about is moving that 90 percent level of the expansion back,” Scott said. “Nobody would be kicked off of Medicaid as long as the governors decided that they wanted to continue to fund the program.”

You got that? It isn’t Congress’s fault your Medicaid is about to go up in smoke, struggling voters: It’ll be on your stingy state government!

It’s hard to imagine voters who trusted that Trump wouldn’t touch entitlements finding this line convincing. But spending hardliners don’t need to persuade voters—just Trump himself.

BOWING OUT: The Great Capitulation continues. Bill Owens, the executive producer of CBS News’s 60 Minutes, said Tuesday he would step down from the network, writing that “over the past months, it has become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it.”

It’s yet another scalp for Donald Trump. Last November, his campaign sued CBS for $10 billion (yes, billion) in damages over its editing of an interview with Kamala Harris, and has threatened to wield his administration’s powers against them further: “They should lose their license!” he roared this month.

Democrats, for their part, seem at last to be working to slow this wave of capitulation. Two top lawmakers are seeking answers from the five major law firms that together committed nearly $1 billion in pro bono work favored by the White House in exchange for getting out from under Trump’s bullying. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent letters to the five firms Friday demanding details on the deals and accusing the firms of being “complicit in efforts to undermine the rule of law and to turn private attorneys into President Trump’s personal law firm.”

WAS THE RED HEN CONTROVERSY ALL FOR NOTHING?: Sarah Sanders may be governor of Arkansas in large part because voters appreciated her time serving as Donald Trump’s press secretary. But those ties don’t appear to be doing her much good these days. Sanders’s state was hit hard by damaging tornadoes in March. But when she made a request for help to the FEMA, she was summarily rejected, according to the Arkansas Times. Sanders appealed the rejection, writing in part: “Given the cumulative impact of these events, federal assistance is essential to help our communities recover.”

But so far she’s gotten no response. With friends like these. . .

—Sam Stein