Honoring President Carter, Trump 2.0 Continues To Stumble, Badly, Out Of The Box

Got to see the Impressionists exhibit at the National Gallery this weekend - go if you can, it is worth your time

Good morning all. Got a few things for you today:

Honoring President Carter - President Biden released this statement yesterday:

Today, America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman, and humanitarian.

Over six decades, we had the honor of calling Jimmy Carter a dear friend. But, what’s extraordinary about Jimmy Carter, though, is that millions of people throughout America and the world who never met him thought of him as a dear friend as well.

With his compassion and moral clarity, he worked to eradicate disease, forge peace, advance civil rights and human rights, promote free and fair elections, house the homeless, and always advocate for the least among us. He saved, lifted, and changed the lives of people all across the globe.

He was a man of great character and courage, hope and optimism. We will always cherish seeing him and Rosalynn together. The love shared between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is the definition of partnership and their humble leadership is the definition of patriotism.

We will miss them both dearly, but take solace knowing they are reunited once again and will remain forever in our hearts.

To the entire Carter family, we send our gratitude for sharing them with America and the world. To their staff – from the earliest days to the final ones – we have no doubt that you will continue to do the good works that carry on their legacy.

And to all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning – the good life – study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith, and humility. He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people – decent and honorable, courageous and compassionate, humble and strong (love this line).

To honor a great American, I will be ordering an official state funeral to be held in Washington D.C. for James Earl Carter, Jr., 39^th President of the United States, 76^th Governor of Georgia, Lieutenant of the United States Navy, graduate of the United States Naval Academy, and favorite son of Plains, Georgia, who gave his full life in service to God and country.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing articles and videos of folks reflecting on the life and work of our 39th President. Paid subscribers should feel free to share their remembrances in our chat over the coming days.

Trump and Trumpism Are Deeply Unstable, And Trump 2.0 Is Off To A Very Bad Start - Silly me. I thought the Holidays would be a quiet time and we could all escape politics for a stretch. Instead, what we got over the last few weeks has been a searing display of just how unstable and wild Trump and Trumpism are, and how challenging the next few days, months and years are going to be. I think what we also saw, for those willing to look, why it is unlikely that Trump 2.0 will be successful.

In my last post to you from a week ago Monday we discussed what a remarkably bad stretch Trump all of a sudden found himself in - markets and the Fed spooked by Trump’s inflationary agenda, another consequential defeat in the Courts, the end of year budget bill fiasco, the release of the shocking report - “statutory rape” - on Matt Gaetz. In this brief stretch right before Christmas we were reminded that there was this other side to the strongman, the one we saw with our own eyes throughout the campaign. We saw just how ugly, impulsive, weak, dangerous - unstable - Trump could be.

As a way of distracting us from these awful few days Trump then started posting about his just batshit crazy desire to annex/invade/whatever Canada, Greenland and Panama. Here’s his now infamous Christmas day Truth:

Yes Trump was able to distract us for a few days but events brought us back to the challenging realities Trump now faces:

The Treasury Secretary announced we would be bumping up against the debt limit in mid-January, and extraordinary measures would have to be taken. Here’s how The Hill described the coming battle inside the Republican Party over raising the debt ceiling to prevent the US from defaulting in Trump’s early days:

President-elect Trump is headed for a battle over the debt limit with conservative lawmakers who are demanding steep cuts to federal spending that will significantly complicate Trump’s ability to pass his agenda next year.

Thirty-eight House Republicans sent a warning to Trump last week by rejecting his demand to extend the nation’s borrowing authority for two years, casting doubt on Trump’s influence over GOP conservatives.

Conservatives now say Trump will need to agree to deep cuts in spending if he wants their support for raising the debt limit in 2025.

“We’re about 33 percent overdrawn. We bring in about $4.8 trillion [in revenue] and spend $6.8 trillion [per year], so you got to get about $2 trillion worth of spending down,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Paul hailed the defeat of Trump’s plan to raise the debt limit as part of a stopgap government funding measure. He said it shows the leverage fiscal hawks will have over the White House next year.

He said there are blocs of conservatives in both chambers who will insist on matching a debt limit increase with big spending cuts.

A new Congress is sworn in this Friday and it is not clear that the Republicans will be able to elect a new Speaker. Trump’s opposition to the big bi-partisan spending bill weakened Johnson, who can only afford to lose a single vote in the vote that will take place this Friday. If Johnson fails to get a majority the House will go into chaos, again, endangering among other things the certification of the 2024 election on Monday, January 6th. From The Washington Examiner:

Fresh off a government spending deal that left many Republicans unhappy with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill on Jan. 3 to swear in new members and determine whether Johnson keeps his gavel — three days before the House meets to the certify President-elect Donald Trump’s Electoral College win.

However, discontent is circulating throughout the Republican conference, and any defection from Johnson supporters could result in a lengthy speakership battle and a possible delay in certifying their party leader’s ascent to the White House….

Former Speaker and California Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy won the speaker’s gavel after losing 14 rounds of voting in 2023. McCarthy’s ouster in the fall later that year brought the House to a standstill for three weeks due to Republican infighting over who to select as their leader. The conference finally landed on Johnson, who many regard as the most conservative speaker in U.S. history.

Now, Johnson’s gavel is in peril — and so is the certification of Trump’s win over Vice President Kamala Harris.

But the craziest stuff that happened in the past week was a series of events involving our new Chief Oligarch, Elon Musk. For time and space reasons today I won’t be able to go into the level of detail this incredible shitshow deserves, but essentially more traditional MAGAs are growing worried about Musk’s growing - and in their minds damaging - influence over Trump, and many opened up on Musk and his techbros over their enthusiastic embrace of high-skilled worker visas known as H1-B visas. Their attacks on each other on Twitter escalated, with Elon leaving us all with this wonderful sentiment:

Elon went to war with MAGAs, banning many from Twitter, promising to kick them out of the Republican Party that he, and not they, apparently now control. While Trump eventually sided with Musk, sort of, this riff inside the already deeply wobbly Trump coalition - a riff/fissure different than the one over spending and the debt ceiling - has become a serious problem for Trump as there may be no more foundational position of Trumpism than the scapegoating of immigrants for all our ills.

Here is the famous/infamous Tweet from Vivek Ramaswamy that added extraordinary amounts of fuel to the fire last week:

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if we’re really serious about fixing the problem, we have to confront the TRUTH:

Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long (at least since the 90s and likely longer). That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG. A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers.

A culture that venerates Cory from “Boy Meets World,” or Zach & Slater over Screech in “Saved by the Bell,” or ‘Stefan’ over Steve Urkel in “Family Matters,” will not produce the best engineers.

(Fact: I know *multiple* sets of immigrant parents in the 90s who actively limited how much their kids could watch those TV shows precisely because they promoted mediocrity…and their kids went on to become wildly successful STEM graduates).

More movies like Whiplash, fewer reruns of “Friends.” More math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons. More books, less TV. More creating, less “chillin.” More extracurriculars, less “hanging out at the mall.”

Most normal American parents look skeptically at “those kinds of parents.” More normal American kids view such “those kinds of kids” with scorn. If you grow up aspiring to normalcy, normalcy is what you will achieve.

Now close your eyes & visualize which families you knew in the 90s (or even now) who raise their kids according to one model versus the other. Be brutally honest.

“Normalcy” doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.

This can be our Sputnik moment. We’ve awaken from slumber before & we can do it again. Trump’s election hopefully marks the beginning of a new golden era in America, but only if our culture fully wakes up. A culture that once again prioritizes achievement over normalcy; excellence over mediocrity; nerdiness over conformity; hard work over laziness.

That’s the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence. I’m confident we can do it.

Vivek’s view - that immigrants are virtuous and high achieving, and “normal” Americans are lazy and mediocre - is literally the opposite of core Trumpism and MAGA, and a profound condemnation of the vaunted “working class” by a Trump top advisor.

A few final takeaways from these wild, chaotic - Trumpian - last few weeks:

• Trump is facing immediate, serious governing challenges that will require him to dexterously manage his fractious, unruly and perhaps unsustainable political coalition

• Trump has looked weak, impulsive and reckless these last few weeks. He twice caved to Elon on things that were not clearly politically advantageous to him. He weakened his Speaker - and his emergent governing coalition - in ways that undermined his own interests. His own party bucked him in a critical vote, and many prominent core MAGAs are deeply and very publicly unhappy with him. I think all of this has done damage to Trump’s ability to manage Congressional Republicans, making an already challenging governing coalition far less manageable and making it far more likely his more outrageous Cabinet nominees - Gabbard, Hegseth, Patel, Kennedy - fail.

As I publish we are getting word that Trump has endorsed Speaker Mike Johnson for another term. We will see if this does the trick this Friday, and Rs avoid another disastrous fight over the Speakership. But these last few weeks have been bad ones for Trump. The warning signs are there. The chaos, instability, extremism and fractiousness have all been on display. It is one thing to run around the country spouting all sorts of crazy shit, and another one to govern a large and complex country, particularly after a very narrow win and without a functioning majority in the House. Trump’s honeymoon has already ended, and now this old man, the oldest man who has ever been elected to the Presidency, has to now not play President on social media but be one in real world, every day, not just on rainy days when he can’t get to the golf course. And let’s be very clear - Trump 2.0 is off to a very, very bad start.

“Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment” At The National Gallery - Got to visit this remarkable exhibit this weekend and if you have the chance to catch it before it leaves on January 19th I strongly recommend it. My wife and I wandered through this exhibit and nearby galleries on a warm, winter day in Washington yesterday and it was restorative and wonderful. Here are two photos I took of paintings by Claude Monet in the permanent Impressionists gallery in the National Gallery’s West Building. Enjoy!

Keep working hard all. Proud to be in this fight with all of you - Simon