Things Are Bad For Trump and The Republicans. They Are About To Get Much Worse

Trump is a failed President. Congress must step up now and start cleaning up the many messes he has created......

Morning all. There was something deeply desperate and pathetic about Trump’s speech last night, a sort of “Mommy I’ve been a very bad boy” element to it. And then there was also the magical thinking, that others would subdue Iran (admitting his failure), reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and everything would snap back to the way things were, easy peasy.

In yesterday’s post and my video talk I spelled out what has to happen now, regardless of Trump’s willingness to do it - the US must enter into extended and humiliating talks with our allies and Iran to re-open the Strait of Hormuz and bring a rough peace to the region. Leaving the Iranian-Russian “Shahed Alliance” in charge of the region is not an option for the US, the Gulf Arab states, or energy-starved Asia or Europe. Trump can neither leave, nor, as he has apparently assessed, can he re-open the Strait by force (immense risk of failure, loss of lives, no appetite in the public). We have a vast military presence in the region so that may change, any day. Trump may decide to just go for it. But his moment to escalate and fight appeared to be last night, and so here we are this morning - Trump and the Republicans are now bogged down in three simultaneous and debilitating Trumpian quagmires - tariffs/weakening economy, DHS/ICE/mass deportation, and Trump’s failed war.

As bad as all this is for Trump and the Republicans things are about to get much worse.

Oil prices surged overnight, returning to a near war high. Markets are off today all over the world. Trump’s poll numbers saw significant decline in the past week, and Democrats now have polling leads in the AK, ME, NC, OH Senate races, which, if they hold, means Dems would not only retake the House but the Senate too. Ken Paxton is now favored to beat John Cornyn, the #2 Republican in the Senate, in their Senate run-off - a big humiliation for Thune and the Senate GOP leadership, and a strategic disaster for it means that Texas may actually be in play this year. The MAGA Golden Boy Victor Orban is likely to lose his election on April 12th. Mike Johnson joined Senator Thune’s retreat on DHS/ICE funding last night, another humiliating loss for Trump and the entire DC GOP enterprise.

Yep, pretty bad. But what is going to make all this far worse is that over the next week is that we are going to get the first tranche of major economic reports with post-war data. Tomorrow we will get the March jobs numbers, and next week we will get two of the main gauges of inflation, CPI and PCE.

Let’s now level set at where we are, and where we will likely be the end of next week. It’s a very ugly economic picture.

In five of the ten months since Trump launched his tariffs the US has seen job loss, not gains:

Here’s a comparison of average month job growth before and the tariffs:

The OECD’s new projections has the American economy continuing to slow:

Trump is now on track to have the slowest GDP growth of any American leader in the last 80 years:

Trump’s policies - tax cuts, war, tariffs, mass deportation, higher inflation - are causing a significant and potentially dangerous erosion of our fiscal condition:

So none of that is any good. Where things are about to get very bad for Trump and the Rs is with inflation and rising interest and mortgage rates. Here is what we were seeing before the war and soaring energy, gas, and commodity prices. Inflation was way too high and rising:

With the war however we are seeing this:

Mortgage rates have started taking off:

And using the Cleveland Fed’s Inflation Nowcast for CPI and PCE in March and April this is what the nation is likely to see in the two main gauges of inflation in the next two months (the March reading of each will be released next week). Explosive growth:

And this:

Adding to this deteriorating economic picture we need to anticipate a health care shock that will come later this year as the enormous cuts to the ACA and Medicaid start rippling through the health care system.

Donald Trump and his Republican allies have created a global geopolitical and economic crisis and a domestic economic crisis here at home. That they took a two week recess in the midst of all this shows that have not yet come to terms with the gravity of what Trump has done, the extraordinary mess he has created. But no amount of Fox News fluffing, magical and delusional thinking, Trumpian bluster and bullshit, can make these crises go away.

I think by the time Congress gets back a week from Monday we will be in a new place as a nation. It will be hard to conclude anything other than that Trump has failed us, and that Congress will need to step up and begin cleaning up the many messes he has created. While I think it is time for Democrats to announce an affirmative agenda along the lines of our Hopium agenda, I think we need to prioritize a few things now:

• Work to find a painful diplomatic end to Trump’s failed war

• Rescind the tariffs, and immediately re-pay the money owed to businesses from his first round of illegal tarffis

• Rescind Trump’s tax cuts, and restore funding to ACA/Medicaid and the clean energy subsidies

• Formally rein in ICE and end mass deportations

America now has a failed President. Trump and Trumpism have failed. Now the big fight is to replace it with something better, and that work begins today, not in January of 2027 when we formally take back power. We are in trouble as a nation, and our leaders must now step up and lead us out of these crises Trump and his allies have created. It is going to be hard, and painful, but it is the work that must get done now.

For time and space reasons our “Let’s Get To Work” section can be found here.

Keep working hard all. We have a country to save and an election to win, together! - Simon