President Trump seems to be...going through it.
That's the only way to describe his journey, from lashing out at Fox News on election night to using his first public appearance since Republicans lost control of both chambers of Congress to give reporters a tour of his new White House ballroom. You know, the very corrupt nonsense American voters appeared to reject on Tuesday.
Erratic behavior, no? But I get it. As my colleague Pema Levy writes, voters on Tuesday did not just repudiate Trump and MAGA. They also repudiated the system of politics created by the Supreme Court:
Voters’ anger over corruption not just about Trump’s ballooning bank accounts, but also at the vast sums of money warping our politics—like the half-billion Elon Musk spent to prop up Republicans this year. The Supreme Court created this reality not only through Citizens United and subsequent cases letting billionaires and industry spend unlimited sums in our elections, but through a lower-profile line of cases in which they made it almost impossible to prosecute corrupt officials. The fact that Black voters surged to rebuke Alabama Republicans’ attempt to gerrymander away their power was a rejection of this Supreme Court’s destruction of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and its endorsement of ruthless—and racist—gerrymandering. Many Democrats ran explicitly against the rigged political playing field this court created.
Pema's piece, which I urge you to read here, goes on to outline the road ahead for Democrats as they use their new powers to take on a president endowed with king-like authority. All of which could explain why Trump is acting especially bizarre right now.
—Inae Oh
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