Is most of Trump’s damage intentional?

Beginning at the end of Feb. 2025, Trump’s actions in office started to look personally significantly intentionally destructive. It didn’t feel like just incompetence causing unintended damage. If so, one could argue that there is nothing incompetent in destruction if what he is trying to do. Since then, the feeling of intentional destruction has grown continuously. But so far, I’ve found little reporting, analysis, or commentary focused on intentional destruction. In view of how important this would be if it were true, what I found so far is scattered and isolated, e.g., a politician, a commentator, a historian expert on fascism and authoritarianism, a liberal think tank, and a prominent business school.

A Raw Story article, Tanking economy spurs stunning conclusion from analyst: Trump’s doing it ‘deliberately’, again raises this point. The analyst, James Downie (a opinion journalist/commentator) discussed in that article argues that unlike ordinary presidential economic failures, many of the bad outcomes under Trump are the predictable results of his or his administration’s actions.

So far, Trump appears willing to impose large, foreseeable harms to institutions, targeted groups, international cooperation, and selected parts of the economy in pursuit of personal objectives such as personal power, political dominance, fomented symbolic conflict (culture war), or rewarding favored constituencies/donors.

In view of the circumstances, it is reasonable to infer a destructive intent. Trump was repeatedly warned about foreseeable, avoidable damages, but went ahead anyway. He repeatedly ignored warnings, rejected less destructive alternatives, and continued bad behavior even after the damage was real and obvious. That does not amount to mind-reading. It is just a normal evidence-based way drawing conclusions about purpose from Trump’s sustained pattern of destructive behavior.

Relevant evidence of Trump’s destructive intent includes (1) Trump’s statements of contempt for the targeted individuals or institutions, indifference to its beneficiaries, and sometimes open approval of the harm, (2) a repeated pattern of damaging choices that produce the same destructive effects, (3) clear warnings of damage beforehand from knowledgeable officials, affected institutions, courts, markets, or experts, (4) feasible alternatives that would achieve the stated goal with significantly less collateral damage, and (5) persistence or escalation after harmful effects become undeniable.

Why would he do this?

Trump’s lust for vengeance is well-known. He tries to get even for real and imagined wrongs. He believes in asymmetric retaliation, “hit back 100 times harder than you’ve been hit”. Vengeance could explain some of his damage but not all.

Also, Trump’s character has a prominent kleptocratic/grifter component. His scams and grifts are well-documented. Greed could be another motive for some of his damage. By limiting or destroying democratic restraints on his power, his capacity to reach for wealth and power increases. Dismantling anti-corruption safeguards is a transactional model where self-interest and well-connected insiders and interests push aside public-service functions and norms. And since the USSC immunized Trump against liability for crimes he commits in office, the chances of him facing jail time or even prosecution are quite low, essentially almost zero.

Finally, all of those sources of destructive motive, personal grievance, authoritarian-kleptocratic power-seeking, and self-enrichment, could be mutually reinforcing. In other words, he could have multiple motives for causing so much damage to any given target.

Q: How likely is it that most of Trump’s damage to democracy, and rights and protections for citizens and the public interest is intentional and not mostly due to incompetence?

Regarding blogging about politics as a hobby

 

Context

America is at a major turning point about whether our experiment in self-governance will either continue to succeed for the foreseeable future or revert to the mean or norm, ending in some form of failure. The historical norm is most people living most of the time under various forms of tyranny, oppression, bigotry and corruption. The existence of modern democracies with citizens enjoying a non-trivial degree of wealth and power since the mid-1800s is far from the historical mean or norm. The likelihood of America’s near-term fate of continuing success or democratic collapse and failure ought to become pretty clear within the next ~2½ years. How the 2026 midterm elections play out could show the likely outcome if failure is in the cards. Continuing success is likely to take longer to project with reasonable confidence.

Democracy is rare – source

Online American pro-democracy politics as a hobby

Given the rarity of democracy, the importance of the US in world affairs and the human capacity to self-annihilate or at least collapse modern civilization, dealing with politics in some fashion is a reasonable thing to spend some free time with. Being grounded in all aspects of human cognitive biology and social behavior, politics is absolutely fascinating.

Being a hobby, there’s no external pressure for it to accomplish anything. Some people engage in online politics as trolls. Trolling can be seen as a politics-related hobby. Trolls like to provoke emotional reactions like anger or resentment for personal fun, self-satisfaction or even virtue signaling to like minded people. They engage in bad faith, with little to no concern for truth or whatever wreckage they leave in their wake. They happily do their troll hobby regardless of adverse consequences to anyone or anything else.

Other people engage with online politics in good faith to try to make things better as they see the concept of “better”. Most of them hope that their efforts can help at least a little. And for most good-faith operators there probably is some satisfaction in at least trying to engage, even if there’s no way to know what impact that may have.

What can reasonably be done, if anything?

Decades of radical right propaganda-demagoguery has deeply polarized American society. For tens of millions of Americans, it has normalized lies, deceit, bigotry, authoritarianism, corruption, and crackpot reasoning and rhetoric. To be fair, the left vs right difference is a matter of asymmetry, not an absolute. Some radical and non-radical left propaganda-demagoguery has polarized some on the left. Affective polarization, i.e., mutual dislike and distrust between Democratic and Republican self-identities, is significant.

Given the deep polarization and distrust, what can one reasonably hope to accomplish doing online politics in defense of democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties? For most people, little to nothing that’s tangible can reasonably be expected. But that’s fine for a hobby. There is no demand or requirement for any tangible or positive outcome.

But for people of good will acting in good faith, there are some things worth knowing. Social science makes clear that trolls and other closed-minded operators usually cannot be convinced of anything they have mental or social barriers against believing in. Their minds change on their own terms, for their own reasons. Externally presented facts, robust truths and sound, good faith reasoning that are inconvenient are usually not persuasive. For people with closed minds, mental factors such as self-identity, group or tribe loyalties, moral values and inherent biases are what controls beliefs and behaviors.

So what can be done, if anything, to better align-one’s politics hobby with current polarized American political and social reality? Welp, a realistic objective is to understand that a recitation of facts or a clear rationale will not cut through an identity-based falsehood or flawed reasoning. Instead, one can try to convey truth in a minimally painful way for open-minded people. Human beings have evolved mechanisms to evade inconvenient truths, particularly when truth conflicts with self identity or social belonging.

For example, try to separate facts from what might be humiliating identity threats. It means: when discussing political claims, distinguish between evidence about what people or institutions have done and language that others may hear as an attack on their personal worth, group status, or moral identity. A statement can be factually true but framed in a way that makes its target feel shamed or insulted. That tends to cause defensiveness and make careful evaluation of the evidence less likely or impossible.

Also, one can (1) try to emphasize shared values before presenting disputed or inconvenient evidence, and (2) point out emotional manipulation, scapegoating, unfalsifiable claims, and logic flaws such as ad hominem attacks, and false dilemma and straw man deflections. Those tactics tend to reduce perceptions of insult or threat to people who are in disagreement. In short, try to make friends or at least neutrals out of people you disagree with. If they see you as an enemy or insulting, they are much less likely to give your evidence and reasoning fair consideration.

Q: Are trolls and others who operate in bad faith worth the cognitive effort and emotional cost of trying to deal with respectfully or in good faith, e.g., when the cognitive load to deal with bad faith is much higher than the cognitive load needed to spew it?

Bad faith operators have a huge advantage

Info links:

Democracy — data about the rise of modern democracies

In most countries, democracy is a recent achievement. Dictatorship is far from a distant memory

Cultural Cognition and Public Policy — Our point isn’t that citizens behave duplicitously when they consider and debate such issues [abortion, environmental policy, etc.]. Rather, our argument is that cultural commitments operate as a kind of heuristic [mental shortcut] in the rational processing of information on public policy matters. ….. The people they trust, naturally, are the ones who share their values—and who as a result of this same dynamic and others are predisposed to a particular view. As a result, even citizens who earnestly consider empirical policy issues in an open-minded and wholly instrumental way will align themselves into warring cultural factions. ….. The key to debiasing here is to frame empirical information in terms that make assent to it compatible with, rather than antagonistic to, the commitments of individuals of diverse cultural persuasions. (emphasis added — it’s easier said than done)

Will the Dem establishment sell out to Trump and MAGA tyranny? There’s so damn much money there!

Three power centers

Although there are many factions and interests competing for influence in the rambunctious Dem Party, three major, non-homogenous groups seem to be crystallizing into more or less coherent power centers. One is the democratic socialists. They are leftist radicals who are so angry at how capitalism has screwed them over that they want to replace it with honest to Dog socialism. Those people are never going to get what they want, but they’re giving it the old college try anyway.

The next big power center is around groups of more or less moderate Dems who go by the label social democrats. In general, those people want to reasonably re-regulate capitalism like it was in the pre-radical right tyranny & corruption MAGA days. They want to leave capitalism mostly intact as it is, while trying to bring it back under a reasonable degree of pro-public interest control. In terms of policy, that’s where bipartisan majority or near-majority public opinion generally lies on many or maybe most major policy issues.

But there’s the third group, roughly the old Dem “establishment”. Those people and interests are mostly major donors, corporate “neoliberal” Dems, elected politicians and organized labor. That cluster of groups is starting to give off a very unfriendly vibe. The donor and corporate Dems have most of the power because they have most of the cash. As we all know, money is power. We do have a pay-to-play two-party political system.

What is that smell?

For average, normal people sensitive to the possibility of being sold out by politicians in power, a NYT article, Jeffries and Kushner Meet Privately as Midterm Attacks Fly, instantly raises a huge red flag about the direction the elite Dem establishment might want to take the party. They may want to sell out to Trump and MAGA to protect their wealth and power. That is not new. People and interests like Bezos, Zuckerberg and some big law firms have already sold out for the same reasons, i.e., protecting their wealth and power.

Jeffries is an elite Dem establishment-aligned creature. He was picked for power by Nancy Pelosi, James Clyburn and Steny Hoyer. They are the epitome of the elite Dem establishment that helped get us into the gigantic messes we’re in right now. It was Pelosi who once seriously believed it was OK for members of congress, their families, and staff to engage in insider trading, i.e., securities fraud. She reluctantly backed away from her support when it was pointed out that insider trading was securities fraud. Pelosi came from corporate wealth, corporate thinking and natural corporate sympathy to oligarchy (a form of authoritarianism). Her innate sympathy for that kind of crime is understandable.

As is well-known, Kushner is not a neutral bipartisan policy broker. He is Trump’s son-in-law, a former senior White House official, and an influential outside adviser. His political and business interests are completely entwined with Trump and MAGA politics and policy. Kushner and his family seem to be about as honest as a $4 bill or a Trump cell phone (and this).

The problem with the Jeffries-Kushner meeting is simple, it was in secret and what it was about is unknown. We are kept in the dark. There is no public account of the meeting’s commitments, limits, or agenda. It was said to focus on “common ground” matters. However, “common ground” is often politician-speak for rigged deals the elites want kept in secret. Assertions of “common ground” can also normalize the Trump administration that elite Democrats publicly and accurately say is corrupt and authoritarian. This smells rotten. It feel like the start of a sell-out in progress.

The open question is whether the Democratic establishment will use House power to defend congressional authority, investigate corruption, enforce subpoenas, curb conflicts of interest, and protect democratic institutions, or whether it will protect elite interests, donor access, and a narrow, authoritarian conception of bipartisan governance. Jeffries must answer such questions transparently and honestly. Vague assurances coming from the old Dem establishment about finding common ground are not remotely close to reassuring. That “explanation” is deeply troubling and not close to convincing.

Q1: Is distrust of the Dem establishment, Pelosi and Jeffries for example, coupled with MAGA’s overt authoritarianism and corruption, probably why there is rising power centered on replacing capitalism with true socialism?

Q2: Do you believe that reasonable compromise is necessary for a democracy to function reasonably well, while refusal to compromise based on political power alone is the epitome of authoritarianism, e.g., MAGA authoritarianism?

Q3: Is it plausible that reasonable compromise replaced only with finding common ground amounts to a reasonably functional form of democracy?

Info sources:

What The Word ‘Compromise’ Really Means — Reporter Leslie Stahl said governing means compromising. House speaker John Boehner replied that it means “finding common ground.” When pressed, he said, “I reject the word.”

Boehner: ‘I Reject The Word’ Compromise — BOEHNER: I made it clear I am not going to compromise on my principles, nor am I going to compromise the will of the American people. STAHL: What are you saying? You’re saying, “I want common ground, but I’m not gonna compromise.” I don’t understand that. I really don’t. BOEHNER: When you say the word “compromise,” a lot of Americans look up and go, “Uh oh, they’re gonna sell me out.” And so finding common ground, I think, makes more sense.

The Mindsets of Political Compromise — In this analysis, political compromise is seen as necessary for democratic governance to exist. It describes how permanent campaigning and unreasonable distrust make compromise difficult, often impossible.

Compromise and Democracy: How They Get Along — John Stuart Mill: “an indispensable requisite in the practical conduct of politics is the readiness to compromise, a willingness to concede something to opponents and to shape good measures so as to be as little offensive as possible to persons of the opposite view”.

Status update on what Trump and MAGA are delivering

Context

Trump and MAGA elites with their authoritarian, kleptocratic Project 2025 blueprint have been power long enough to start assessing what they are delivering. Not surprisingly, their product is broken promises for us and the public interest and a vast cornucopia of benefits for the rich and powerful people and allied business interests. The broken promises were necessary to put MAGA’s wealth and power movement in power, so there’s no surprise in what has been delivered. The cornucopia of benefits to the rich and powerful include gutted protections and loss of vast power for consumers, workers and the environment, with vast wealth and power gains for allied elite MAGA authoritarians and kleptocrats.

Of course, we’re not yet in a full blown kleptocratic dictatorship-oligarchy-Christian nationalist theocracy. But those are the main goals that Trump and MAGA elites are clearly working to attain in their ruthless quest for more wealth and power. The elite MAGA mindset is elitist, kleptocratic, and authoritarian. Most of the MAGA rank and file mindset is, more or less, the opposite of that. With their relentless demagoguery, lies, slanders, crackpottery, bigotry and irrational emotional manipulation, MAGA elites have successfully deceived, manipulated and betrayed most of the rank and file.

Some of what has been delivered

A NYT opinion piece, Trump’s Broken Promises, in 11 Charts, lays out some of what he and MAGA elites have delivered. This only scratches the surface. However, is it exemplary of MAGA’s overall authoritarian-kleptocrat wealth and power project. These are some of the delivered goods:

Q: Can widespread false beliefs among the MAGA rank and file about what they falsely believe they support vs what they rationally support a belief that their ignorance grounded in MAGA deceit constitutes an existential threat to secular democracy, the even-handed rule of law and civil liberties that MAGA elites target for elimination or major scaling back?

Info sources:

Democratic Backsliding Reaches Western Democracies, with U.S. Decline “Unprecedented”

Project 2025 — (the blueprint includes dedicated chapters on gutting or neutering the EPA, Labor Department, Treasury, CFPB, FTC, SEC, FCC, and Federal Election Commission, and reorienting their missions from service to the public interest to service to elite people and allied special interests)

The People’s Guide to Project 2025 — What we discovered was a systemic, ruthless plan to undermine the quality of life of millions of Americans, remove critical protections and dismantle programs for communities across the nation, and prioritize special interests and ideological extremism over people. From attacking overtime pay, student loans, and reproductive rights, to allowing more discrimination, pollution, and price gouging, those behind Project 2025 are preparing to go to incredible lengths to create a country only for some, not for all of us.

Heritage Foundation

Strategic anti-corruption communications: Guidance for behavior change interventions

Congressional Budget Office: Distributional Effects of Public Law 119-21 — The changes in resources will not be evenly distributed among households. The agency estimates that, in general, resources will decrease for households toward the bottom of the income distribution, whereas resources will increase for households in the middle and toward the top of the income distribution.

How Politicized Prosecutions Undermine the Rule of Law — The U.S. Department of Justice is the American people’s law firm. Traditionally independent from the political motivations of any given administration, the Justice Department is supposed to defend the rule of law without prejudice and protect the rights of all Americans. It is not the president’s personal law firm and should not be used for politicized prosecutions. But since starting his second term in office, President Trump has aimed his animus at political opponents through the Justice Department by threatening arrests, ordering unwarranted investigations and prosecutions, and jeopardizing military retirements.

The Department of Justice’s Broken Accountability System

Congressional Research Service: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Related Nutrition Programs in P.L. 119-21: An Overview