Trump, Ukraine, and Russia

Posted on April 25, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 25, 2025

Disingenuous: lacking in frankness, candor, or sincerity; false; hypocritical; insincere. The way Dictionary.com describes it, disingenuous is the perfect word to describe Trump’s approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Some people I respect believe we don’t have a dog in that fight. They argue that the time is long past when we should be spending billions of dollars policing Europe and risking our own military there. That’s a point worth debating, but one I strongly disagree with. If failing to stop Hitler in Czechoslovakia and Poland led to World War 2, there’s good reason to fear that failing to contain Putin’s ambitions for Russia might lead to World War 3. That must be our most important consideration, though there are some who believe confronting Putin directly will lead to World War 3.

Whichever of those arguments is correct, it’s clear that Donald Trump’s approach is wrong, and riskier than any of the others. It’s dishonest, and it’s time our other elected representatives said so. Trump, probably inadvertently, gave us a clue yesterday, when he said he wants to be remembered for expanding American territory. Not since Andrew Jackson have we had a president with so little regard for other nations’ sovereignty. Perhaps that explains why Trump sounds so sympathetic to Putin’s ambition to reconstruct the Soviet Union.

Historically, when Ukraine was part of Russia, it represented a large portion of Russia’s industrial capability, food production, and access to warm water ports in the Black Sea. It’s easy to see why Putin wants all that back, but the fact the he believes Russia needs those things doesn’t justify his aggression. Moreover, when the Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight, Ukraine was promised guarantees of its sovereignty in exchange for giving up its stockpile of Russian nuclear missiles. If countries are allowed to break treaties whenever it suits them, and no one stands up to them, the rule of law is worthless.

Trump said, yesterday, that his motivation for wanting to end the war is to stop the killing of 5,000 young soldiers a day. It’s appalling that he values the lives of Russian soldiers attacking a peaceful neighbor equally with those defending their homeland, and more than the thousands of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian bombs and missiles. I also find it odd that Trump expects us to believe he gives a damn how many soldiers die in Ukraine. This is the same president who killed USAID, placing the lives of millions of innocent children in Africa at risk, the same president who wants to kill FEMA and rely entirely on states for disaster recovery, the same president who is willing to cut Medicaid and Food and Nutrition services to millions of American children who depend on them, the same president who put someone who doesn’t believe in either vaccines or  medical research in charge of funding both, and the same president who prefers to ignore the long-term dangers of climate change and other environmental threats because all those actions together enrich his wealthy donors. Trump is also the only president who called the thousands of Allied troops who died fighting to take Europe back from the Nazis suckers and losers.

Even worse, there remains a significant Congressional majority in favor of supporting Ukraine to the end. If not for Trump’s personal need to dominate world events, and his unique ability to terrify everyone around him, we wouldn’t be having this debate. Let’s call a spade a spade – the time for polite sugar-coating is long past. Putin and Trump are not buddies, despite the fact that Trump’s proposed peace plan would reward Russia by allowing it to retain all the territory they captured, including Crimea. Putin considers Trump a clown, no matter how much Trump wants us to believe he can influence him. Putin has been laughing at Trump, and his ramped up attacks since pretending to be considering Trump’s peace proposal have killed more civilians and destroyed more neighborhoods in Ukraine than in the past six months combined.

The sucker and loser in this picture is Trump. Like everything else he does, Trump’s position on Russia and Ukraine is entirely driven by his narcissism. Suck up to his buddy Vlad who laughs at him behind his back, but show how tough he is by ambushing a Ukrainian president under siege and attempting to publicly humiliate him before the world. That’s Donald Trump in a nutshell. He won’t be impeached because there are enough MAGA people in Congress to keep him in office, no matter that he represents the most dangerous existential threat to America in recent history.

Our founders never counted on the level of cowardice and self-interest that presently resides in Congress. We can only hope that oversight doesn’t kill what they created.

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The Real Art of the Deal

Posted on April 24, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 24, 2025

Courses in effective negotiation stress that the most successful outcomes are those in which both parties walk away feeling like they won something. That’s the true Art of the Deal, regardless of anything Tony Schwartz (Donald Trump’s ghostwriter) said in the book Trump didn’t write. Achieving a win-win in a negotiation is simple in principle. Assuming both parties negotiate in good faith, the most important tasks of a negotiator are to actively listen to the other side’s needs and desires, treat each other with respect, and build trust so each side believes the other wants a fair outcome.

Effective good-faith negotiators avoid anxiety producing interactions, because it’s well established that anxious people are likely to make bad decisions. You might convince an anxious opponent to accept a deal they hate, but that usually leads to trouble down the road. Remember how well the Treaty of Versaille worked? It’s much healthier and more effective to build the foundations for a long-term relationship based on trust and mutual courtesy and respect. That requires each negotiator to expect and accept compromise. It’s okay to specify certain things as non-negotiable deal breakers, but they should be exceptions, not the basis of a final agreement.

Negotiation training often spends more time on “Don’ts” than “Dos.” Most of the Don’ts are obvious. Don’t trash talk behind the other side’s back. Don’t be arrogant or supercilious. Don’t be rude. Don’t insult your negotiating partners. Don’t make demands you know are unacceptable to the other side. Don’t allow emotion to drive a negotiating position. Don’t try to embarrass or intimidate your opponent. Don’t argue your case in the social or broadcast media.

An important corollary of all the above is motivation. To achieve an acceptable agreement each side must understand the other’s motivation, which brings us to Donald Trump’s trade war. Very few Americans favor trade agreements that take advantage of America. They understand that many of the trade imbalances we see today began as deliberate, generous attempts to help our allies recover from the devastation of World War 2.

As our allies grew stronger, previous administrations probably should have been constantly renegotiating our trade agreements, but it doesn’t usually work that way. What more typically happens, even when parties act in good faith, is that unbalanced agreements remain in effect until anger and resentment cause one side to act precipitously and inappropriately.

Even when that happens, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. Some countries, specifically China, have no regard for rules and international law. China regularly pirates intellectual property and does virtually anything short of armed conflict to achieve its economic goals. Combining that with the profit motives of American manufacturers who move their factories and assembly lines to countries that don’t care whether their workers earn a living wage, results in the situation that exists today.

We would all love to see the Trump administration negotiate deals that strengthen our manufacturing and lower prices for Americans, but as Trump’s first hundred days rush to an end, his efforts have come to naught, and the reason is clear. Trump is not motivated by a good faith desire to score a win-win. In Trump’s universe, only his side can win. If Trump’s people really wanted fairer trade agreements, they, and Trump specifically wouldn’t be violating every item on the Don’ts list and ignoring the Dos.

As with everything he does, Trump’s trade war is the ultimate expression of his narcissism. For him, a successful negotiation ends with everyone else vanquished and crawling back to him in supplication. But he failed to heed the first lesson learned by Lemuel Gulliver in his famous travels. No matter how  big and tough you are, you can’t take on the entire world and expect everyone to cave in to your demands. Trump has always played the divide and conquer game, but this time, he seems to have badly miscalculated. Instead of falling like dominoes, the nations attacked by Trump’s tariffs are banding together in defiance.

Bullying, flinging insults, and ambushing allies on worldwide television are the worst possible ways to achieve what Trump claims to want. What he really wants is something else entirely. Trump desperately needs the entire world to bow to him, and that is not going to happen. If Congressional Republicans don’t start standing up and stop rubber-stamping his actions, Americans will be the ultimate losers in this unnecessary war.

Trump’s billionaire supporters and well-respected Conservative corporate leaders are sounding the alarm, just in case the volatility of the world’s financial markets escaped our attention. Who knows what assurances Trump offers in private, or how much he’s helping his wealthy friends profit from that volatility? His public statements have produced chaos, confusion, and losses as high as twenty percent in Americans’ retirement savings without showing a single successful outcome. The final carnage will depend on how long it takes for a few of Trump’s key people to jump ship.

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A Transparency Shell Game

Posted on April 22, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 22, 2025

Throughout Donald Trump’s business and political careers, his hallmark style has been  to create chaos and confusion. One thing Trump is masterful at is manipulating our legal system, and the most effective way to do that is to assure that reasonable doubt always exists. He learned this from his lawyer and mentor, Roy Cohn, and his association with organized crime figures who had been evading the law for decades.

Trump has always treated laws and regulations as mere inconveniences. He understands that even when he lies or defrauds or defames someone his liability is limited because lawsuits are expensive. He has always spent millions on lawyers, knowing that a formidable team of highly-paid litigators will intimidate most opponents. When that doesn’t happen, and cases go to trial, he often loses, because a fair-minded jurist won’t allow laws to be flouted.

The key phrase, above, is “fair-minded.” That’s what our founders intended when they created three co-equal branches of government. But human nature being what it is, and power and wealth being as seductive as they are, when powerful people lose in court, they do what any ruthless sociopath would do: rig the courts with extremist judges with a wink toward future rewards based on loyalty, and for those judges who retain their integrity, threats, harassment, and calls for their impeachment become the rule.

But there’s a more sinister side to the chaos and confusion: lack of transparency. Given how much it cost for hundreds of MAGA people to create Project 2025, and Trump’s attempt to disavow any knowledge of it, we should have known his campaign promises were more than bluffs. Actually, most of us did, and many of those in the middle, who have no ideological axe to grind, are beginning to see it, too.

It works like this: at one level, Trump and his supporters are completely open about what they intend. Could they have used any blunter image than a madly grinning Elon Musk wielding a chainsaw? Unless you’re cutting firewood, chainsaws are about mayhem and destruction. But the image was also comical, and so inappropriate, it was easy to take it as a joke. That’s a very sophisticated way to replace transparency with opacity.

Start with the obvious fact that the federal government, like all huge bureaucracies, is fat and inefficient. Then use that as an excuse to decimate programs you don’t like while somehow failing to notice the waste everywhere else. And if you look closely, you’ll see a pattern. The programs being cut tend to serve the poor and working class among us and are considered a nuisance by business leaders and extremists. They also transfer wealth from billionaires to the rest of us which is their death knell. On one hand Trump communicates an extremely transparent intent to change America into a fascist MAGA nation, which is too outlandish for most people to take seriously, while at the detail level, very dangerous things are occurring out of our sight.

Musk seems to be mining data from every federal agency and feeding it  into a massive AI-activated database, and for the average person, there’s a good deal of appeal to that idea. We see it in crime and spy dramas, as computer experts and hackers manipulate data to solve crimes and avert international crises. But always lurking in the background is the question – what if they knew everything about all of us? In the hands of a power-mad, unscrupulous leader, that same capability would ensure the end of our personal liberties. We’ve tested our balance on slippery slopes before and so far avoided catastrophes. But will we this time? Have we ever faced a fifth-column effort within our own ranks that is as rabid and well-funded as MAGA?

At a deeper level, Trump has surrounded himself with committed loyalists. Indications are that an essential element of their loyalty to Trump is adopting his cavalier approach to rules, laws, and standards of behavior. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth seems to treat our national security laws the same way Trump does. By discussing imminent plans to attack terrorists in Yemen on unsecured lines, he and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz showed such complete contempt for national security and the lives of our military personnel as to make Colin Powell and Hilary Clinton’s inadvertent mishandling of emails trivial by comparison.

Everything we’ve seen in three months smacks of a rogue administration bent on power and control, with no cohesive plan for our economy, our relationships with our allies, or how to end two wars that could escalate into nuclear conflicts at any time. When it comes to the true beliefs and intentions, assuming any but personal greed exist, of the people in the Trump administration, opacity is the rule.

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A Profound Lack of Humility

Posted on April 20, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 20, 2025

Have you ever heard an American president say, “I was wrong?” Kennedy never said it after badly mishandling our relationship with Cuba and committing troops on the ground in Vietnam. Johnson came close, acknowledging that his expansion of the Vietnam War left him unable to govern effectively and causing him to withdraw from the 1968 election. Nixon never admitted he was wrong, either about Vietnam or Watergate, asserting instead that if the president does something, that makes it legal. Ford never said he was wrong, but his brief stewardship of the Oval Office was as error-free as any president’s.

Carter never said he was wrong, despite freezing our economy with record high interest rates and inflation. Reagan, who ushered in the era of supply side economics never admitted that is was a fraud designed to enrich the wealthy even further, although he did accept responsibility for Iran Contra. Bush Senior never admitted he was out of touch with average Americans on the economy – he may not have even known until the 1992 election results. Bill Clinton never admitted he did anything wrong, despite testimony by police who witnessed his sexual peccadillos as Governor of Arkansas and the disclosures about Monica Lewinsky. Bush Junior never recanted declaring victory on that aircraft carrier, while dragging us into a twenty-year war with Iraq and Afghanistan, nor did he acknowledge that his family’s relationship with the Saudi royal family blinded him as to who was really guilty of nine-eleven.

Obama never admitted he was wrong to allow Russia to annex Crimea without taking a stronger stand against Putin, or that attempting to appear even-handed in the Middle East made him appear to diminish our support for Israel and offer legitimacy to Hamas. Joe Biden, despite having saved our post-COVID economy, hasn’t admitted perpetuating the lie that his physical and mental health were up to the job of another term as president, thus conceding a second term to Donald Trump.

The acclaimed winner of the “I’m never wrong” sweepstakes is Trump himself. Semantically, Trump is either always wrong or never wrong, a consequence of pathologically lying and regularly contradicting himself and impulsively changing direction on critical policies without forewarning or explanation. He demeans and slanders anyone who disagrees with him. He ignores advice and counsel from experts, unless they all support his views – but advisors who support everything he says and does simply enable his narcissistic need to always be right.

Our former presidents’ inability to acknowledge their errors have cost the lives of tens of thousands of American military personnel and trillions of dollars that could have been spent shoring up our factories and infrastructure, and providing health care and energy security for all of us. But no president, until now, has declared a no prisoners economic war on every nation we trade with. No president has ever sided with America’s enemy when they invaded one of our allies and systematically dismantled the fabric of their country. No president has deliberately and systematically dissed our allies while praising our adversaries. And no president has ever played a nonnegotiable hard-line game of chicken with the entire world.

When Trump admitted, shortly after he was inaugurated, that his promises about bringing prices down were lies, he claimed it was necessary to lie in the cause of getting elected, because in his view, he needed to be President to save us from our progressive, fair-minded natures. He’s still lying about tariffs not being a tax on all Americans, just as he’s still lying about who benefits from his tax cuts. He still lies about their sole motivation being the greatest upward transfer of wealth in America’s history, as he continues to push to make his 2017 tax cuts that mostly enriched billionaires permanent.

All this should be a warning, accompanied by clanging bells and flashing red lights. His narcissism and sociopathy make it impossible for Trump to ever admit he was wrong, because to him, winning and power are everything. To Trump, winning justifies his means no matter how much chaos and disruption they cause in the lives of all Americans. If you or I insist that we’re always right, we chalk it up to a lack of humility. With Trump however, doubling and tripling down against all opposition, threatening anyone who disagrees with him, weaponizing the courts and the federal justice system to effectively outlaw dissent – these things are not about lack of humility. They’re about a mentally ill man whose lust for power and wealth know no limits or boundaries.

With a president who believes humility is a sign of weakness, who intimidates everyone around him, lacks basic morality, and continually launches missiles of intimidation and bullying in every direction, every day brings the world closer to economic catastrophe and nuclear war.

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Competent Crisis Management

Posted on April 13, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 13, 2025

In 1962, as a college junior, I needed an elective to fill out my program. Given the state of the world and the Cold War, I thought Americans ought to be learning Russian, so I registered for Russian 101. I had already studied Spanish and German, both of which are similar to English in important ways, particularly in the use of tenses. Russian, however is different from English in subtle but important ways.

To a beginning student Russian is deceptively easy. The Cyrillic alphabet is similar enough to both Greek and Hebrew that what looks impossible to some people felt like fun, breaking a secret code. What makes the early stages of learning Russian relatively easy is that there are no irregular verbs in Russian when they’re used in past tense. That eliminates a ton of complications that drove me crazy in Spanish and German. But my professor warned us not to get cocky – the hard stuff was yet to come. It came quickly when he explained that past tense is a misnomer in Russian, because the language does not use tenses as we know them. Instead, it uses “aspects” which are subtly different from tenses, but similar enough to be dangerous if a student, or, say, a diplomat doesn’t pay close attention.

John F. Kennedy was president. I was seventeen when he was elected, and as a  Freshman at an Ivy League school, I was overly impressed with silly things like the absurd competition among the Ivies over which was best. Rankers usually picked Yale or Harvard, which infuriated Columbia. (I would have picked Princeton since Albert Einstein was there.) In that context, Kennedy’s Cabinet picks made a lasting impression. His predecessors had relied on established diplomats and professionals with impressive real-world experience,  but Kennedy selected a Cabinet of Harvard academics.

A lot of people, mostly academics, thought that was wonderful, but experienced critics warned that lack of real-world experience would ultimately be a problem. In 1962, as tensions between Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev rose precipitously, my Russian professor spent our lecture sessions ranting about the lack of anyone in Kennedy’s Cabinet who could speak fluent Russian or was an expert on the Soviet Union. He said in the shrillest terms, as the Cuban Missile Crisis worsened, that Kennedy’s people were overmatched by the Russians. But having better, more knowledgeable diplomats isn’t enough if the other side is incompetent.

Effective diplomacy, which means knowing how to resolve differences without dropping bombs, requires that both sides understand each other clearly, in terms of  both language and cultural norms. If you’ve ever tried to debate someone who is either uninformed or not very smart, you understand the danger. If two sides armed with nuclear missiles miss the subtle differences in their languages, or simply don’t understand how their opposite numbers think, the result could be the end of civilization. Ask someone who was there in 1962 – we all thought we were going to be nuked.

I’m concerned that Trump may have made a similar error with respect to both Russia and China. The way he campaigned that he  would end the war in Ukraine in one day suggested he really believed he and Vladimir Putin were buds, and he could easily wrest a cease-fire agreement that would end the war without leaving Europe exposed. When he essentailly threw Volodymir Zelensky out of the White House, humiliating him in front of the world, and Zelensky was forced to come  back and accept Trump’s plan, Trump strutted around, fully expecting his friend Vlad to go along with it. Instead, however, Putin broke off truce talks and increased attacks on Ukraine, and those attacks are more successful every day because we’ve withheld arms shipment to Kyiv. Nice work, Donald!

The jeopardy with respect to China may be more extreme. Not only do Trump’s tariff warriors not speak Chinese, Trump doesn’t seem to understand the Chinese psyche. In his transactional way of doing business, everything is a short-term give and take. But Trump, who has repeatedly shown a lack of understanding of history, clearly misread the playing field with China. Playing chicken with Xi Jinping is not a good idea, because Xi will never back down. Trump fails to understand the Mandarin philosophy that has dominated Chinese leaders for millennia. Xi is more than willing to sacrifice the lives and livelihoods of millions of his citizens, as his forbears always have been. China takes a thousand-year view, while Trump cares only about his own remaining years on Earth.

If getting China to cave is the lynch pin to Trump’s trade war, we’re in for a long confrontation that will have catastrophic consequences for the world economy and greatly increase the risk of major military confrontations. If saner, more well-informed heads don’t start guiding policy, Trump’s legacy will be one of destruction.

 

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Chinese Chicken Salad

Posted on April 9, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 09, 2025

Today’s big news was that Trump backed down from his bullying bluff on tariffs. His supporters will spin the whole debacle as a brilliant negotiating tactic, but don’t be fooled. He backed down because our major trading partners, particularly China, made it clear that weren’t going to. Their reaction was believable because they had more invested in the game than Trump. Trump’s tariffs could have done irreparable damage to some of them, but Trump was simply playing a narcissistic game.

If you want to understand why Trump backed down, ignore the hype and really look at the issues. There’s some truth on both sides of the tariff argument, although leading economists from every major trading nation were nearly unanimous in condemning the heavy-handed bullying approach taken by Trump and his trade advisor, Peter Navarro, a no-compromise, toxic hard-liner who was one of Trump’s strongest defenders after the January 6th insurrection. His loyalty to Trump played out in court, where he refused to answer questions and did jail time for contempt.

Trump’s pet billionaire, Elon Musk, seemed to be giving cover to other Republican billionaires who supported Trump but were shocked and nervous about the magnitude of his tariffs, more so, at the belligerent way Trump treated our allies. Musk and Trump strongly disagree over trade and globalization. Open global trade made Musk the “richest man in the world,” and he wasn’t likely to bend to Trump.

Musk tried unsuccessfully to change Trump’s mind, but Navarro held sway over the president’s tariff policy. Musk, who seems immune to either criticism or public outrage, tweeted that Navarro “is truly a moron.” We can’t know what was said behind closed doors, but Musk’s opposition made Republican donors and House members holding seats in competitive districts feel safe breaking with Trump. Never underestimate the craven self-interest of an incumbent office-holder.

We disregard our tariff history at our peril. Trump claims the  whole world is ripping us off, but that’s a gross distortion of reality, like a parent telling their children that when they turn eighteen they’re on their own, and any child who expects to continue living under their roof has to pay their fair share. Like the tariff argument, that point of view has some merit, but it’s not reasonable to expect a kid graduating (or not) from high school to instantly transition from dependent to self-supporting adult.

After World War 2, our European Allies were devastated. They struggled to feed their people and their cities needed to be rebuilt. Americans were all on board when President Truman endorsed the Marshall Plan and the creation of the NATO alliance. We felt proud and virtuous taking on the role of savior. And our allies didn’t forget. For decades, America was revered all over the Free World.

It’s also true that our generosity was very much in our self interest. A strong Europe was good for everyone. What Trump calls a rip-off started as an incredible outflowing of good will to shore up our allies. The Soviet Union and China were powerful nations bent on expanding both their territory and their economies. In the 1960s, American economists and politicians believed that expanded trade and using tariffs as a necessity only in targeted situations, was the best way to both enrich everyone and avert nuclear war. The theory was that the more countries’ economic futures become inextricably tied together, the less incentive they have to destroy each other. That may well be why we’re all still alive.

The loss of our industrial base to China and other developing nations was an entirely different situation. The serpent in this story is Greed, and the apple is the promise of higher corporate profits. When Adam accepted the apple, he did so knowing he might bring the wrath of God down on his descendants, but human nature being what it is, our leaders went for the low-hanging fruit, pretending there would be no consequences. Cheap, virtually slave labor in China meant more goodies for us and huge profits for corporate stockholders.

We all sat idly watching our manufacturing capacity wither and die. We did it to ourselves. China repeatedly took advantage of our trade agreements and violated international norms on intellectual property, but Trump’s attempt to make China the villain ignores our own complicity.

I support ending our dependence on Chinese factories. I avoid buying anything made in China, and I support putting a tax on American companies that manufacture their products in China. Our history with tariffs proved that they simply don’t work when used as a blunt force economic weapon.

The stock markets’ sharp declines reflected investors’ beliefs that Trump and Xi Jinping are two leaders who will never back down unless they are compelled to, which risks plunging the world into a Depression and greatly increases the risk of nuclear war. Once that was clear, Trump had to back off to avoid a revolt within his own party.

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Tariffs, Bullying, and Intimidation

Posted on April 5, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 5, 2025

Serious presidents who believe their country’s policies need a major overhaul and care more about their constituents than their own delusions of grandeur surround themselves with the smartest people they can find. The surest sign that a president does not have the best interests of the country at heart is surrounding themselves with zealots and yes-people instead of experts with diverse points of view. Yet, that is exactly what Donald Trump has done. Two of the loudest voices in his White House, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Vice President J. D. Vance do not inspire confidence that the administration cares about anything but destroying things they hate.

Diversity has become a dirty word in Trump’s White House, even though every competent leader, whether a corporate CEO or president understands that facilitating a solution by considering every relevant point of view is the is the most likely route to success. The Wharton School of Business surely teaches that. But even the best business school in the country can’t change the impulses of a sociopathic narcissist.

Curing our nation’s economic woes with tariffs that are bashed daily by virtually every prominent economist and financial manager sounds suspiciously like drinking bleach to cure COVID. The main difference between those situations is that COVID presented what a majority of world health experts considered an existential threat. It was a real menace that demanded a real solution. Trump’s love affair with tariffs is more like inventing a problem to fit a solution.

We can be angry at Democrats for failing to be honest about President Biden’s mental state in 2024, but that should not color our view of the effectiveness of his fixes to our post-COVID economy. Biden handed the Trump administration the strongest economy in the world, one as strong as any America has seen since the Reagan administration. Its only major failing was the only thing Trump and his donors care about: it didn’t increase the income gap between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else.

In order for Trump’s ego to be satisfied, and that’s really the only thing that matters in this White House, he needs to posture himself as a knight on a white horse charging in to save the country from catastrophe. In fact, however, the only catastrophe facing America last Election Day was a dysfunctional Democratic Party that did everything wrong and conceded the election to the fantasy world of MAGA.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the world’s reaction to Trump’s tariff war, yesterday. That in itself was bizarre. Wouldn’t it be better for an economist or the Treasury Secretary to be out front defending a dangerously radical economic policy? He said the financial markets, which lost ten percent of their value in two days, weren’t really crashing. They were simply adjusting to Trump’s new reality. He suggested that that was a good thing, that in selling at rates not seen since the COVID lockdown, and before that since the market crash of 1987, business leaders and billionaire investors were demonstrating their ability to react quickly to changing circumstances. He then absurdly asserted that the stock markets accurately reflect the state of our economy.

Wow! Is that the best they can do? If Rubio was correct, a fifteen percent drop in the last week should scare the hell out of us. More to the point, Rubio doesn’t understand that markets aren’t about the current state of corporate health. The investors who drive markets are interested in future prospects. Stocks rise when corporate earnings are expected to increase, usually by double digit percentages. They fall when investors expect earnings and revenue to drop.

Trump’s mantra is that it’s all about making deals. If that were actually true, the idea of massive tariffs as an opening gambit would at least have some merit. But Trump made it clear, yesterday, that he has no intention of changing his policies, and that’s something we can take to the bank. He didn’t count on the rest of the world fighting back, and now that they have, Trump is uniquely unsuited to fix things. His extreme narcissism makes it nearly impossible for him to compromise, because he interprets anything that suggests backing away from a decision as a sign of weakness, and that will never fly with him.

The reality is that Trump has thrown the economy of the world into chaos, and he is probably the worst possible choice of a leader in those circumstances. All his instincts are about intimidation and playing chicken, and other world leaders understand that when dealing with an ignorant bully, the worst thing they can do is back down. Economists, therefore, are using the R word (recession.) How long before they dust off the D word?

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The Loyal Opposition

Posted on April 3, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 3, 2025

The phrase “loyal opposition” is normally used in describing parliamentary systems of government. It refers to parties not currently in power who oppose the policies of the ruling party or coalition, with two important understandings. The loyal opposition must seek common ground by negotiation, and is loyal to the country’s leader and its Constitution. In the context of present-day America, the loyalty referred to is not the blind loyalty that Donald Trump requires in his attempt to expand the power of the presidency. It’s what most of us naively thought was obvious until recently: that country and patriotism always come before politics and personal ambition.

Regardless of how naïve that notion may be, the preservation of democracy requires a loyal opposition. The alternative is what we saw in Europe when Fascists outlawed opposition parties, and today in places like China, Russia, and North Korea. China suppresses opposition by shooting people or locking them away in prison, Russia poisons them, and North Korea makes them disappear. Even Iran tolerates opposition in the form of political factions – not exactly democratic, but at least autocratic leaders don’t go unchallenged.

Is that why our most dangerous adversaries were spared in Trump’s trade war, which began in earnest, yesterday? Trump seems to believe that cozying up to dictators makes his quest to destroy the protections in our Constitution okay, since in his view, those leaders understand how essential strong leadership is.

Strong leadership is critical on both sides, but there’s a lot of space between autocrats and strong leaders who take their oath to support our Constitution literally. At a time when our democratic norms and traditions are under attack by Trump’s MAGA movement, it’s difficult to see how our system can survive without an equally strong leader organizing and speaking up for democracy. The most serious problem America faces today may be the lack of that leadership.

Without it, our only hope of surviving Trump-2 is the Supreme Court. I’m confident that in the end a majority of Justices will uphold the Constitution, but as expensive as eggs are, these days, we shouldn’t put them all in one basket. It’s appalling that among Democrats, centrist Republicans, and Independents, all of whom are horrified by Trump’s actions, not a single person has emerged to seize the mantle of  leadership of the opposition, despite the fact that the opposition are the majority of Americans.

In 1992, following twelve years of Republican presidencies, Democrats faced a similar leadership void. Out of the blue, a relatively unknown Governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton, rocketed to prominence and seized that role. Sixteen years later, after ruinous tax cuts and misguided wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, another leadership void was filled by another shooting star, Barack Obama. We’re waiting with baited breath for a new savior to arise, but scan the horizon in every direction, and you won’t find one.

If it were up to me, I’d follow Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar. If Joe Biden was the perfect antidote to Trump in 2020, she could fill that role today. Smart, eloquent, somewhat, but not extremely left of center, and someone who understands our heartland, she’s perfect if she wants the job. But the only two people speaking out loudly against Trump are both extreme Progressives, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The loyal opposition needs a leader who can inspire a wide range of people.

Far too many people in Congress who disagree with Trump have chosen a different route. Rather than oppose MAGA and risk being primaried or having their families and careers threatened, they’re quietly scurrying like rats living in the walls, searching for some way to placate Trump so he doesn’t target them or their districts. But if the opposition continues to play the self-interest game, and the Court falters, we’re going to wake up one day soon and not recognize our country.

I can’t leave this subject without mentioning Cory Booker, the New Jersey Senator who delivered a 25-hours speech on the floor of the Senate, to demonstrate that one person has the power to freeze our government. Was Booker just reacting to his frustration or was he seriously offering himself as the leader of the opposition?  Perhaps Booker is trying to resurrect the Obama coalition that won the White House twice. I hope so, but even more important, I’m waiting to see who else emerges to inspire us to act.

Since the election, we’ve heard very little from the Clintons, Obamas, or Harrises. Their silence is deafening at a time when leadership is critically needed in America. If no one else emerges, I’d support Booker, but I fear he’s too much of a risk, given the things MAGA stands for.

This isn’t the first time we’ve faced a leadership crisis. When the country was reeling from Watergate and Vietnam, the rock group Chicago sang:

America needs you, Harry Truman
Harry, could you please come home?
Things are looking bad
I know you would be mad
To see what kind of men
Prevail upon the land you love

America’s wondering, “How we got here?”
Harry, all we get is lies
We’re getting safer cars
Rocket ships to Mars
From men who’d sell us out
To get themselves a piece of power

Was that a prescient reference to Trump and Elon Musk?

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Special Elections in Florida and Wisconsin

Posted on April 2, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 1, 2025

In yesterday’s three special elections, we saw the predictions James Carville made a few weeks ago begin to bear fruit. Carville expected support for Trump’s policies among Republicans and Independents to rapidly tank, and that that would throw fear into the hearts of those in contested districts in next year’s midterms.

In Florida, Republicans won the two House seats vacated by Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz, but those two districts were bright red to start with. Republicans vastly outnumber Democrats on the voter registration rolls in both, and Trump won them by 37% and 33%, respectively, last November.

Republicans won, yesterday, but the results reflected more voter disaffection with the Trump administration’s first ten weeks than support for them. In both Florida races, the Democratic candidate raised far more money than the Republican, and the Republican margins of victory were less than half of Trump’s, last November. In Florida’s 1st district, Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s former Chief Financial Officer should have breezed to victory in his Pensacola-based district, but his margin of victory was only 15%. That means 22%  percent fewer people voted for Patronis than Trump.

In Florida’s 6th district, Randy Fine, who was running to replace Waltz, Trump’s National Security Advisor, should also have breezed to victory if voters supported what Trump and Waltz have been doing. But when polls showed Fine in a tight race, only a massive, last-minute get-out-the-vote effort by Republicans allowed him to win by 14%, which was 19% less than Trump won by in November. What these two results tell us is pretty clear. Trump’s MAGA base stuck with him in these House races, but Independents and people who voted more against Harris and the Democrats than for Trump last year did not.

That does not bode well for Republicans in contested districts. Those Republicans generally won by smaller margins than Trump, last year, in an election Democrats lost more than Trump won. We’ve seen, ever since Trump crashed the Republican Party, that the first priority of the Republicans who hold those seats is being re-elected. They’ve been cowed into supporting Trump’s agenda by threats that Elon Musk will spend whatever it takes to primary them if they’re not sufficiently loyal. But they know that Trump’s base, while large, is not sufficient to carry elections by themselves. If they see voters angry and distressed by Trump’s words and actions, they won’t continue to support him.

In Wisconsin, where a seat on the State Supreme Court was on the ballot, a potentially far more important race was won by Democrats, despite the election being technically nonpartisan. This election should terrify MAGA Republicans. Wisconsin has been described as the most purple state in the country, yet, its House delegation contains five Republicans and two Democrats – a three seat edge for Speaker Mike Johnson. The reason for this is gerrymandering. Under former Governor Scott Walker, who presided over a Republican majority in the legislature, Wisconsin’s voting district map became one of the most egregiously biased in the country. With that gerrymandered map in place, Democrats received 61% of the vote, but won only 49% of the seats in the following statewide election. That map is also responsible for the 5-2 Republican majority in Wisconsin’s House seats.

Wisconsin’s gerrymandered districts have been challenged in the courts, and the case reached the Supreme Court, which has been extremely reluctant to overturn state legislatures’ maps. But Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion, which upheld the gerrymandered map, also reflected its unfairness, but it was impossible to accurately quantify. He suggested a better way to present the case.

That’s why yesterday’s victory by Judge Susan Crawford is so important. With Crawford on the State Supreme Court, a re-submitted challenge to the district map will receive a far more favorable response. In her victory speech, she promised to put fairness ahead of other considerations when she is on the bench. If Wisconsin’s voting districts more fairly represent the state’s population, the Democrats will gain at least one seat in the U. S House, and probably two. That should give Trump and Johnson sleepless nights as they see time running out to pass Trump’s radical agenda.

This is what Carville foresaw in his New York Times Op-Ed. In Carville’s view, voter dissatisfaction with Trump’s agenda among federal workers and veterans is likely to throw Virginia’s gubernatorial election next November to Democrats. That would surely stop Trump’s blitzkrieg attack on the Constitution in its tracks. Since Virginia’s present governor, Glenn Youngkind, is all in for Trump that should ice things for Republicans running in swing districts..

Another thing Crawford said last night may be even more telling. She said she never expected to be running against the world’s richest man. She proved that money can’t buy elections when voters can clearly see the country moving in a dangerous direction.

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Elon Musk’s Obsession with Mars

Posted on March 31, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 31, 2025

Elon Musk is a complicated individual. He’s a genius whose self-confidence knows no limit. He has bold ideas and an impressive record of accomplishments. He also suffers from Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism, which he revealed when he hosted Saturday Night Live in 2021 in his opening monologue: “I reinvented electric cars, and I’m sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?”

In 2022, during an interview with Axios, Musk talked about how growing up with Asperger’s shaped him. He is aware that his inability to recognize social cues makes communication difficult for him, and people are often offended by his remarks or tweets. On the other hand, his disorder also enables him to focus with an obsessive intensity most of us cannot match, enabling him to do things like spend entire nights studying advanced physics, because he is determined to understand how the universe works.

To the rest of us, Musk is a guy who appears single-mindedly fixated on getting what he wants and who seems incapable of feeling empathy for other people. He is pragmatic in everything he does, and his autism enables him to take cold-blooded actions in ways most of us couldn’t. In his role as the driving force behind DOGE, a fake government agency created by Donald Trump as a fundamental challenge to the checks and balances in our Constitution, he appears completely insensitive to the collateral damage he causes. When thousands of people lose their jobs and millions lose access to critical services they depend on, Musk chalks it up as the cost of progress without batting an emotional eye.

When most of us act in a way that causes others pain, even when we feel justified, we still pay an emotional price. People like Musk and Donald Trump don’t. Lack of concern for other people is equally characteristic of Musk’s autism and Trump’s sociopathy. But while we know Trump is primarily driven by greed and lust for power, what drives Musk is complicated. And it’s important to acknowledge that autistic geniuses, even when they believe they act with good intentions are prone to committing colossal errors.

Musk seems to revel in wielding his chainsaw when he trashes government agencies. He’s clearly having fun, although we also have to remember that fun doesn’t mean the same thing to people with Asperger’s as it does to the rest of us, and assuming we know what’s in his mind is a mistake. He loves being characterized as “mercurial,” but that gives his image a playful aspect that’s patently false. There is nothing playful about Elon Musk. He is deadly serious about everything he does.

The question is, what is his real motivation? I do not believe Musk is evil, but that doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. He doesn’t think the way we do, which means his real intentions can be easily lost in translation. Despite all that, I  think Musk’s motivation is pretty clear, although his multi-tasking brain surely has more than one.

Many cosmologists and astrophysicists believe the long-term survival of humanity depends on finding another place to live. There’s a consensus in the scientific community that the possibility of a catastrophic astronomical event that could destroy life on Earth is more a matter of When than If. Such events are rare, but we know they have occurred in Earth’s past, and on an astronomical time scale, they appear inevitable.

Many scientists and visionaries like Musk believe that colonizing Mars is critical to assuring that humanity will not be wiped out the way the dinosaurs were. That’s a very real thing, not just a sci-fi story line, although it seems impossibly remote and unlikely to most people. And while many, myself included, share that belief, Musk has the singular ability to act on it.

Musk’s motivation, beyond accumulating wealth, is his belief that he will be humanity’s savior. He is not a Trump loyalist – he is every bit as transactional as Trump is, and he is using Trump’s dependence on financial support to take over NASA and redirect its focus away from anything that doesn’t support his goal to colonize Mars. To do that, he will have to monopolize NASA contracts worth billions of dollars. That will reinforce his status as the world’s richest man, but for Musk, that’s almost beside the point.

Musk couldn’t care less about government efficiency any more than Trump does. For Trump, dismantling government agencies is about killing things he despises. For Musk it may simply about believing he’s capable of saving humanity from destruction. He may destroy the lives of a lot of people in that quest, but he believes he’s doing the right thing.

Musk isn’t entirely wrong, but he cannot be allowed to enable Donald Trump’s efforts to transform our government and undermine the Constitution, even if he believes he’s responding to a higher calling.

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