Trump Probably Can’t Believe How Easy It’s Been

He’s becoming a more effective bully, and no one is getting in his way.

Terrible news out of Texas, where more than eighty people have died as a result of floods, and scores remain missing. We spend a lot of time discussing manmade tragedies, but with natural disasters like this, there’s much less to say, other than: We’re thinking of those who lost their homes, livelihoods, loved ones, or their own lives. If you’d like to do something to help, here are a few charities we recommend:

• Kerr County Flood Relief Fund

• World Central Kitchen

• American Red Cross

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President Donald Trump participates in the Military Family Picnic on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, on July 4, 2025. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Reading Trump’s Mind

by William Kristol

Honestly, I can’t believe it’s been so easy.

Actually, I can. Because you know what? I’m good at this. And I’ve gotten even better.

I’m much better than I was eight years ago. You learn from your mistakes—though of course you can never admit to making any. They all told me back in 2017, You gotta get along with the establishment, you gotta hire this general and that big shot, you gotta pull your punches, you gotta be careful.

Bullshit.

I listened. But I should have followed my instincts back then. I should have fired Mueller, dumped Mattis and Kelly and Barr and McGahn earlier, all of them. They said the blowback would have been too much. More bullshit. I could have handled it.

Anyway, now I’ve got my team in there. They’re folks who everyone thought I was crazy to nominate. But they’re loyalists. And that’s what matters. And I got them through. Honestly, it wasn’t even that hard. All we had to do was to keep pushing and ignore the bleating from the “establishment.”

Because you know what? The establishment is pathetic. The elites are pathetic. The Republican party, Congress, the Court, the law firms, the universities, the media—they can’t fight. Roy Cohn (God, I miss that guy) used to tell me: Push, push, push—and they’ll all fold like a cheap suit. Such a great expression! Roy really had a way with words.

Anyway, we’ve had the best first six months of any administration, ever. They told me some historian from that weird college in Michigan—Hillsdale or something—did a study and said so. But I think it’s really true.

I mean, we got my bill through before July 4. They all said, Oh no, sir, it’s gotta be two bills. Oh no, sir, they can’t do it by the 4th. Bullshit. All I really had to do was call it “big” and “beautiful” and they fell in line, just like they did with the nominees. The wimps were wrong. Bigly.

But getting that stupid bill passed is huge. It keeps the rich guys happy. But the key is the $170 billion for the internal police. I saw early on—maybe it was the ghost of Roy Cohn whispering in my ear—that “mass deportation” was the path to seizing and consolidating power. Steve Miller believes all that stuff about foreigners. And, yes, he’s a weirdo and I really try to avoid spending time with him. But he’s been great at keeping everyone whipped up and pushing, pushing, pushing. More importantly, he’s loyal. There’s that word again. It’s a beautiful word. It’s being recognized more and more, I notice.

So, yeah, the mass deportations have started, and they’re not going to stop. We do that for the next few years, keep the issue front and center—and meanwhile get ICE built up, and get people used to using the military at home. “Boiling the frog slowly”—that’s another great expression Roy loved to use. I guess he invented it.

And Roy would like how I’ve got the Justice Department totally under control. That’s something I learned from the first term. Now Pam okays everything I want. And they’re getting people used to my Article II powers—I love that Article II, by the way. A lot of people are saying it’s the greatest article.

So 2026 should be fine. With DOJ ready to roll, and ICE and the military around, we can create disturbances, investigate Democrats for breaking the law, and get the country terrified about putting the Democrat traitors in charge.

And you know what will help more than people realize? The celebration of the 250th anniversary. People love all that stuff. Though someone showed me the actual Declaration of Independence the other day. “All men are created equal.” Give me a break! Jefferson was such a bullshit artist. What a beaut.

Still, I guess it worked. And now we can use the 250th for our purposes. We’ll “educate” the public on what really makes America great: money and power. They’re making fun of me saying we’re gonna have a UFC fight at the White House next year. But people gotta get used to the fact that’s what America’s about. There’s a quote Roy learned at Columbia—they had some “Western Civilization” course there he liked to talk about. It’s from that guy they talk about a lot, Genghis Khan. Big Article II guy. I got it written down: “The greatest happiness is to vanquish your enemies, to chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth, to see those dear to them bathed in tears.” That’s true greatness. I may have to use it on Elon.

The other thing that’s going to help for 2026 is Supreme Court confirmation fights. I really gotta talk with Sam and Clarence soon, and arrange their resignations. I’m thinking we do one this month, one in the winter, so we have a Court confirmation story going over the whole next year. Those worked for me in 2018, and even in 2020 though they stole that election. We’ve got to nominate total loyalists, of course, to replace the two of them. But also ones who will get confirmed. I’m thinking first Judge Ho, then maybe Judge Rao. Steve Miller will have a heart attack—What about some white men, boss!—but tough shit.

So we make it through 2026, and at least hold the Senate. Then I go for the third term in 2028. If FDR did it, I can do it. He said they needed to break the two-term rule because of the threat of war. Well, we have a war against the communists and the foreigners raging here at home. Just like in 1940, we can’t afford to risk anyone else in charge.

And there’s no chance John Roberts and the guys will have the nerve to tell me no. Even if they did, they know I’ll ignore them anyway.

So we’ll make 2028 work. We’ll do what we didn’t do in 2020, and tilt the field so we win. And I’ll promise everyone a pardon if we don’t win and can’t overturn it. But we’ll win. Because that’s what I do. And I make it look easy. Roy would be proud.

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AROUND THE BULWARK

• If We Don’t Stand With Ukraine, What Do We Stand For? The decision to cancel a weapons shipment is a sign of weakness, writes GEN. MARK HERTLING.

• Trump’s Crypto Scheme Shows… that we need new rules now. On How to Fix it, THOMAS PACCHIA joins JOHN AVLON to discuss.

• What Does ‘Heterodoxy’ Mean During Trump 2.0? Crowing about victory over wokeness seems out of step when MAGA is bludgeoning American higher ed. CATHY YOUNG reports from the annual Heterodox Academy Conference.

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Quick Hits

WHO’S GONNA TELL HIM? Donald Trump couldn’t contain his incandescent rage at Elon Musk for starting a new political party over the weekend. So Trump did what he usually does: pick up his phone and type into his own personal social media platform until the emotions die down.¹ The result this time was . . . well, words can’t really do it justice.

Just a few thoughts: Having watched Musk go “completely ‘off the rails,’” Trump perhaps now understands how the rest of us felt when the batshit billionaire endorsed Trump and pretty flagrantly broke the law to help elect him, or when he paid $44 billion for Twitter, or when he accused a man who saved a bunch of boys trapped in a cave in Thailand of pedophilia, or . . .

This Trump feud is unlike other Trump feuds, however, in that it appears to be at least partially about policy. Neither Musk’s interests in electric vehicle subsidies nor Trump’s denunciation of what he calls an “Electric Vehicle (EV) Mandate” are altruistic or even disinterested. But it is notable that Trump isn’t accusing Musk of going woke, or becoming a radical left Marxist, or whatever—likely because he can’t. Those accusations wouldn’t stick.

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I GUESS WE’RE GETTING RE-LIBERATED: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced over the weekend that Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs are due to go into effect on August 1 unless the the administration reaches some sort of agreement with other countries on . . . ya know, something something trade and money and making America great again.

As a reminder: Trump originally announced the tariffs on “Liberation Day,” but then put a 90-day pause on them. Does that mean we’re unliberated now? Or do we get re-liberated on August 1? Or is the initial liberation just delayed? And why would Trump delay our liberation anyway? Weren’t there supposed to be “ninety deals in ninety days”? So far he’s made a few announcement of quasi-deals, or frameworks for deals, or agreements to make a deal in the future with the United Kingdom and China. The administration said it had cut a deal with Vietnam this past week, but the details remain unclear. Is Bessent trying to arm-twist 87 more countries to negotiate trade deals in less than a month?

So far, Trump seems to be bouncing back and forth like a pinball between his long-held, unteachable idea that tariffs are good and the financial markets’ clear message that they are not. We’re not really in the predictions business, but as Trump’s term goes on, it seems likely that he’s going to get more and more stressed,² and when he gets stressed, he’s likely to placate his id. So bet on the TACO in the short term if you want to, but in the long run, one of these days he’s probably gonna really do it. Just not necessarily on July 9, when the 90-day window expires.

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MARJORIE TAYLOR: GREEN? The representative from Georgia apparently spent her Independence Day focused on chemtrails—i.e., the conspiracy theory that the streaks of condensation produced by airplanes are actually part of a secret plot whereby they use dangerous chemicals to control our minds/the weather. Well, Greene announced, no more of that:

There are many reasons to object to such a proposal, but two stand out: one legal, and the other scientific.

The legal one concerns Trump v. United States, the case in which just over a year ago the Supreme Court ruled that the president is, for all intents and purposes, not subject to criminal indictment for things that are within his power to do. Now, if someone is putting weather-control chemicals into the atmosphere, it’s probably the government. Which means ultimately the president is responsible. But he couldn’t be indicted for breaking this law because he’s immune—and because he has the pardon power, he could ensure that any subordinate official whom he directed to violate MTG’s law would also be free from criminal accountability. So in reality, the bill MTG proposes would apply to precisely no one.

The scientific objection is simpler: Why would anyone need chemicals to control the weather when we have space lasers?

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Cheap Shots

1. Remember that time they died down so much he fell asleep mid-tweet?

2. Trump in his first term seemed to be the only president in history who wasn’t appreciably aged by the office. But that makes sense—he wasn’t really trying to accomplish anything, so what did he have to stress about? By contrast, 2020 and Biden’s term seem to have aged him a great deal. And this time, he’s really trying to do things, which is actually hard—who knew?