The
uniting theme of Trump’s presidency? Ineptitude
Robert Reich
From
deportations to human rights to the economy, the president’s actions have
resulted in mayhem. Here’s a sampling
Tue 29 Apr
2025 17.00 BST
Some
Democrats fear they’re playing into Donald Trump’s hands by fighting his mass
deportations rather than focusing on his failures on bread-and-butter issues
like the cost of living.
But it’s not
either-or. The theme that unites Trump’s inept handling of deportations, his
trampling on human and civil rights, his rejection of the rule of law, his
dictatorial centralization of power, and his utterly inept handling of the
economy is the ineptness itself.
In his first
term, not only did his advisers and cabinet officials put guardrails around his
crazier tendencies, but they also provided his first administration a degree of
stability and focus. Now, it’s mayhem.
A sampling
from recent weeks:
1. The Pete
Hegseth disaster. The
defense secretary didn’t just mistakenly share the military’s plans with the
editor of the Atlantic; we now know he shared them with a second Signal group,
including his wife, brother and personal lawyer.
He’s a
walking disaster. John Ullyot, who resigned last week as Pentagon spokesperson,
penned an op-ed in Politico that began: “It’s been a month of total chaos at
the Pentagon.” Last Friday, Hegseth fired three of his senior staffers. His
chief of staff is leaving. As Ullyot wrote, it’s “very likely” that “even
bigger bombshell stories” will come soon. The defense department “is in
disarray under Hegseth’s leadership”.
It’s not
just the defense department. Much of the federal government is in disarray.
2. The
Harvard debacle. A Trump
official is now claiming that a letter full of demands about university policy
sent to Harvard on 11 April was “unauthorized”. What does this even mean?
As Harvard
pointed out, the letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on
official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official
and was sent on April 11 as promised. Recipients of such correspondence from
the US government – even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing
in their overreach – do not question its authenticity or seriousness.”
Even though
it was “unauthorized”, the Trump regime is standing by the letter, which has
now prompted Harvard to sue.
3. The
tariff travesty. No
sooner had Trump imposed “retaliatory” tariffs on almost all of the US’s
trading partners – based on a formula that has made no sense to anyone – than
the US stock and bond markets began crashing.
To stop the
selloff, Trump declared a 90-day pause on the retaliatory tariffs but raised
his tariffs on China to 145% – causing markets to plummet once again.
Presumably
to stem the impending economic crisis, he declared an exemption to the China
tariffs for smartphones and computer equipment. By doing so, Trump essentially
admitted what he had before denied: that importers and consumers bear the cost
of tariffs.
Now, Trump
is saying that even his China tariffs aren’t really real. Following warnings
from Walmart, Target and Home Depot that the tariffs would spike prices, Trump
termed the tariffs he imposed on China “very high” and promised they “will come
down substantially. But it won’t be zero.”
Markets
soared on the news. But where in the world are we heading?
4. The
attack on the Fed chair fiasco. When Trump renewed his attacks on Jerome H Powell, the chair of the
Federal Reserve – calling him “a major loser” and demanding that the Fed cut
interest rates – Trump unnerved already anxious investors who understand the
importance of the Fed’s independence and feared that a politicized Fed wouldn’t
be able to credibly fight inflation.
Then, in
another about-face, Trump said on Wednesday he had “no intention” of firing
Powell, which also helped lift markets.
An economy
needs predictability. Investors won’t invest, consumers won’t buy, and
producers won’t produce if everything continues to change. But Trump doesn’t
think ahead. He responds only to immediate threats and problems.
Who’s
profiting from all this tumult? Anyone with inside knowledge of what Trump is
about to do: most likely, Trump and his family.
5. The
Kilmar Ábrego García calamity. After the Trump regime admitted an “administrative error” in sending
Ábrego García to a brutal Salvadoran torture prison, in violation of a federal
court order, Trump then virtually ignored a 9-0 supreme court order to
facilitate his return.
To the
contrary, with cameras rolling in the Oval Office, Trump embraced Nayib Bukele
– who governs El Salvador in a permanent state of emergency and has himself
imprisoned 83,000 people in brutal dungeons, mostly without due process. Trump
then speculated about using Bukele’s prisons for “homegrown” (ie,
American-born) criminals or dissidents.
Meanwhile,
after the Trump regime deported another group of immigrants to the Salvadoran
prison under a rarely invoked 18th-century wartime law, the supreme court
blocked it from deporting any more people under the measure.
6. Ice’s
blunderbuss. Further
illustrating the chaos of the Trump regime, immigration officials have been
detaining US citizens. One American was held by Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (Ice) in Arizona for 10 days until his relatives produced papers
proving his citizenship, because, according to his girlfriend’s aunt, Ice
didn’t believe he was American.
Last week,
the Trump regime abruptly took action to restore the legal status of thousands
of international students who had been told in recent weeks that their right to
study in the United States had been rescinded, but officials reserved the right
to terminate their legal status at any time. What?
Freedom
depends on the rule of law. The rule of law depends on predictability. Just
like Trump’s wildly inconsistent economic policies, his policies on immigration
are threatening everyone.
7. Musk’s
‘Doge’ disaster. Musk’s
claims of government savings have been shown to be ludicrously exaggerated.
Remember the
claim that taxpayers funded $50m in condoms in Gaza? This was supposed to be
the first big “gotcha” from the so-called “department of government efficiency”
(Doge), but as we know now, it was a lie. The US government buys condoms for
about 5 cents apiece, which means $50m would buy 1bn condoms or roughly 467 for
every resident of Gaza. Besides, according to a federal 2024 report, the US
Agency for International Development (USAID) didn’t provide or fund any condoms
in the entire Middle East in the 2021, 2022 or 2023 fiscal years.
Then there
have been the frantic callbacks of fired federal workers, such as up to 350
employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration who work on sensitive
jobs such as reassembling warheads. Four days after Doge fired them, the
agency’s acting director rescinded the firings and asked them back. Similar
callbacks have occurred throughout the government.
Trump and
Musk are threatening the safety and security of Americans – for almost no real
savings.
8. Measles
mayhem. As measles
breaks out across the country, sickening hundreds and killing at least two
children so far, Trump’s secretary for health and human services, Robert F
Kennedy Jr, continues to claim that the measles vaccine “causes deaths every
year … and all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and
blindness, et cetera”.
In fact, the
measles vaccine is safe, and its risks are lower than the risks of
complications from measles. Most people who get the measles vaccine have no
serious problems from it, the CDC says. There have been no documented deaths
from the vaccine in healthy, non-immunocompromised people, according to the
Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Kennedy also
says: “We’re always going to have measles, no matter what happens, as the
[measles] vaccine wanes very quickly.” In fact, the measles vaccine is highly
protective and lasts a lifetime for most people. Two doses of the vaccine are
97% effective against the virus, according to the CDC and medical experts
worldwide. The US saw 3m to 4m cases a year before the vaccine. Today it’s
typically fewer than 200.
9. Student
debt snafu. After a
five-year pause on penalizing borrowers for not making student loan payments,
the Trump regime is about to require households to resume payments. This could
cause credit scores to plunge and slow the economy.
Many of the
households required to resume paying on their student loans are also struggling
with credit card debt at near-record interest rates and high-rate mortgages
they thought they would be able to refinance at a lower rate but haven’t.
Instead of increasing education department staffing to handle a work surge and
clarifying the often shifting rules of its many repayment programs, the Trump
regime has done the opposite and cut staff.
10. Who’s in
charge? In the span of a
single week, the IRS had three different leaders. Three days after Gary Shapley
was named acting commissioner, it was announced that the deputy treasury
secretary, Michael Faulkender, would replace Shapley. That was the same day,
not incidentally, that the IRS cut access to the agency for Doge’s top
representative.
What
happened? The treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, told Trump that Musk had
evaded him to install Shapley.
Meanwhile,
the Trump regime is cutting the IRS in half – starting with 6,700 layoffs and
gutting the division that audits people with excessive wealth. These are the
people meant to keep billionaires accountable. Without them, the federal
government will not take in billions of dollars owed.
At the same
time, the trade adviser Peter Navarro has entered into a public spat with Musk,
accusing him of not being a “car manufacturer” but a “car assembler” because
Tesla relies on parts from around the world. This prompted Musk to call Navarro
a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a post on X, later posting that
he wanted to “apologize to bricks”.
The state
department has been torn apart by the firing of Peter Marocco, the official who
was dismantling USAID, by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. Career officials
charged that Marocco, a Maga loyalist, was destroying the agency; Trump’s Maga
followers view Marocco’s firing as a sign that Rubio is part of the
establishment they want to destroy.
Worse yet,
Trump has fired more than a half-dozen national security officials after
meeting with the far-right agitator Lara Loomer, who was granted access to the
Oval Office and gave Trump a list of officials she deemed disloyal.
Bottom line:
no one is in charge. Trump is holding court but has the attention span of a
fruit fly. This is causing chaos across the federal government, as rival
sycophants compete for his limited attention.
Incompetence
is everywhere. The regime can’t keep military secrets. It can’t maintain
financial stability. It can’t protect children from measles. It cannot protect
America.
While we
need to continue to resist Trump’s authoritarianism, we also need to highlight
his utter inability to govern America.
Robert
Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus
at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His
newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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