Donald Trump’s shock-and-awe campaign — in which Trump 2.0 plays out with the all-too-familiar chaos (but even moreso) that we recall from Trump 1.0 — may be showing signs of starting to come apart.
And there’s even some small hope that Democratic officials — shown the way, in part, by Michael Bennet’s angry grilling of RFK Jr. and of Tulsi Gabbard in separate Senate confirmation hearings — are finally realizing that you can’t mount a resistance without actually, you know, resisting.
If that sounds a little wish-casting — and maybe it is — we need a little more of that. Despair won’t get us anywhere.
Here are some signs of Trump overreach. In just the past few days, Trump/Musk’s freeze of $3 trillion of federal funding — as a path to purging dreaded DEI hires — was unfrozen the very next day. The Elon Musk-concocted — and almost certainly illegal — resignation letters sent to millions of those in the federal government seem to be a bust, requiring new letters, maybe also illegal, from the Office of Personnel Management. Trump’s promise to clean up the so-called swamp began with the mass firing (also probably illegal) of inspectors general, who are independent government watchdogs. Of course, Trump’s plan to clean up government is to purge the FBI and to hire unqualified cronies and MAGA loyalists.
I could go on. And on. But that’s not the point.
The point is that the chaos could be jarring the memories of those who voted for Trump because they were worried about the price of eggs (still rising) or whether a faltering Joe Biden — or Kamala Harris, Biden’s last-minute replacement — was up to the job.
There was, I’d like to think, some Trump-amnesia at work last November, which might explain why the voters who had kicked Trump out of office in 2020 welcomed him back in 2024.
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But Trump’s news briefing following the tragic collision of a Black Hawk helicopter with American Eagle Flight 5342, in which 67 died, was a stark reminder of Trump at his very worst, particularly in times of crisis management. If you haven’t seen it, you should. Here’s the link. It shows Trump as everything a president shouldn’t be and everything we know Trump to be.
After very briefly offering pro forma condolences to those who lost loved ones in the crash, he launched into a racist rant — claiming, without any evidence, that diversity hires, obviously meaning Black people or maybe meaning Blacks and women and the disabled, were somehow responsible for the crash. He then went on to blame DEI policies by Biden and Barack Obama and Pete Buttigieg, making sure not to take any responsibility himself.
He prefaced his rant by saying, even as rescue and recovery teams were still at work searching for bodies in the Potomac River: “We do not know what led to this crash, but we have some very strong opinions.”
Some very strong, unfounded opinions, it turns out. Some very strong opinions from a president who doesn’t look for actual answers — he met with the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) after the briefing — but who says whatever comes to mind.
He spoke before reports citing the FAA and air traffic controllers that the safety system in place — which has faced several close calls on near collisions recently — broke down in multiple ways. That the helicopter was flying too high. That the airplane’s pilots, looking to land, probably didn’t see the helicopter. That an air traffic controller, who was tasked with the job of directing both planes and helicopters — normally requiring two people — may not have done enough to keep them separate.
Trump didn’t wait for any investigation. He wasn’t looking for facts. He lied about DEI instead. And he spread misinformation instead. And it was Trump back at center stage, just as he was during COVID, holding forth on critical matters that he didn’t understand by presenting his self-interested version of events. It was reminiscent of Trump’s suggestion to inject disinfectant to kill the virus.
When asked by a reporter Thursday how he could blame DEI without any evidence, Trump said,“I have common sense, OK, and unfortunately a lot of people don’t. We want brilliant people to do this.”
Later, he said, “For some jobs, they have to be at the highest levels of genius,” and referenced a supposed FAA directive under Obama that labeled workers there as “too white.”
Clearly, Trump believes you have to be a straight white male to be the kind of genius necessary for the job.
Interestingly, air traffic controllers — who are facing a worker shortage — are overwhelmingly white (75%), overwhelmingly male (84%), overwhelmingly without disabilities, physical, mental or otherwise (93%). They don’t keep records, not yet anyway, on gender identity.
Interestingly, the head of the FAA had resigned, under pressure, when Trump took office. And just days before the crash, Trump fired the head of the Transportation Security Administration and dismantled the Aviation Security Advisory Committee.
And maybe most interesting of all, when Trump took office in 2017, he actually left Obama’s program on diversity — the one he now blames for the crash, saying Obama had lowered standards — in place. And in 2019, during Trump’s first administration, the FAA put out a memo that called for hiring more people with disabilities.
There’s more. Trump just put out a memo calling for investigation into hires made by the FAA over the past four years (and not, of course, the past eight, which would include Trump’s tenure). And just 24 hours after the crash, the Trump administration sent out more official mass emails urging federal workers, including air traffic controllers, to resign.
”It’s despicable,” Buttigieg tweeted of Trump’s comments.
”It just turns your stomach,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said.
And while the fact checkers were at work — under Trump, that’s the hardest job in the news biz — Bennet, and others, were putting the lie to two of the major disruptors, Kennedy and Gabbard, whom Trump has nominated for positions requiring Senate approval.
The hearings were a farce. On Wednesday, Bennet quoted Kennedy on his years of anti-vax activism and asked the proposed HHS secretary if he had changed his views. Kennedy said he didn’t change views; he basically denied, in part, holding his previously stated views. This was part one of Bennet’s who-you-gonna-believe-me-or-your-lyin’-eyes strategy.
The second part of the game came a day later, around the time of Trump’s news conference, when Bennet asked Gabbard, nominated to be the director of national intelligence, about her past statements defending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on her visit with then-Syria-dictator Bashar al-Assad, her defense of Edward Snowden and more.
She either denied making the statements or blamed the media or said she was taken out of context. The exchange became heated when Bennet demanded answers.
“Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?” Bennet asked, following up on a question from Sen. Jamers Lankford, R-Oklahoma. “That is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high.”
She refused to answer.
The stakes are high. Trump is playing high-level poker with American security and American health by nominating unqualified people like Gabbard and Kennedy for no other reason than they are provocateurs who promise to shake up the so-called deep state.
It’s time for Democrats to fight back on these issues, on tariffs, on deportations, on purges, on lies. Trump will continue to overreach, of course. But were these hearings a start of some kind of organized resistance from Democrats, who have been sadly muted thus far in their response to Trump’s outrages?
I’d like to think so. I mean, it’s too depressing to think otherwise.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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