Give Thanks for Incompetence Destroying Trump’s Second Term

A funny thing happened to Donald Trump in the past month. After spending much of the year on a sort of revanchist blitzkrieg that terrified the left and convinced many that his second term would far outpace his first, Trump has begun to genuinely fail. And the failure, for those who followed the last time closely, is familiar: Rising autocracy is headed off by rank incompetence.

The collapse of the indictments of James Comey and Letitia James speak to the rot at the heart of the Trump administration. Lindsey Halligan, predictably, was found to be appointed illegally after her predecessor was driven out of office after rightly concluding that the cases did not have legal merit. The Senate never confirmed Halligan, and her interim appointment couldn’t be indefinite as a matter of law. In a fascist society, where the rule of law means nothing, it would not have mattered that the deeply underqualified Halligan was illegally appointed or that the cases were incredibly weak. The dictator decrees his political enemies must go to prison, and they are marched off. MAGA was plainly hoping, on some level, this was true now. Trump would get his glorious revenge for his own state and federal indictments, cowing all the Democrats who dared to resist him.

But Comey and James are not going anywhere. Trump is free to pressure his sycophantic attorney general, Pam Bondi, to bring indictments against anyone he so chooses. He can prosecute through Truth Social posts. What he’s not entitled to, though, is actual legal victory. We do have judges in his country and we do have juries. If Halligan’s cases against Comey and James somehow reached the trial stage, it’s hard to fathom how she’d win. For all the talk, sometimes justified, of college-educated liberals living in their own bubbles, MAGA is plainly worse. What sophisticated political movement would try to attack its enemies this way? Compare the ham-fisted Halligan saga to how the late Dick Cheney ran roughshod over his opposition.

Trump’s second term has been less internally chaotic than his first, with fewer resignations so far or leaks. Trump has retained one chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and one press secretary, Karoline Leavitt. The infighting that so characterized Trump’s early years in office is mostly absent. The administration seems united around the goals of punishing immigrants, imposing tariffs, and slashing the social safety net. Trump even wised up to the political damage Elon Musk was doing to his administration and drove him out. DOGE hollowed out the government, but Musk is no longer the face of this hollowing. Trump was able to get Musk to fade from view, which is no small feat.

Old habits, though, die hard. Trump is thirsty for revenge, and he has thrown off the guardrails of the first term during which plenty of conventional Republicans still functioned within his orbit. John Kelly, his chief of staff from 2017 to ’19, and William Barr, his attorney general in ’19 and ’20, were two powerful members of his administration who openly defied him. Those days are gone. The Justice Department completely belongs to Trump. This is unsettling and has brought back all the predictions of American democracy’s imminent collapse. Trump is certainly behaving like a strongman, and the law to him is merely a suggestion. If there’s strength to be found in this approach — the Republican Party is fully MAGA controlled — the weaknesses are now being made plain.

With no one, at all, to discipline Trump, half-baked cases against his political enemies are concocted. For years, his supporters and critics have treated him like a public-relations Svengali with every controversy distracting, successfully, from some other matter and his popularity remaining durable. Sometimes, though, a failure is a failure. Trump gains nothing by having his indictments blow up in his face. His margin for error is also much smaller than it was in the past. He’s a lame-duck, second-term president now. His approval rating has fallen close to 40 percent. Americans are angry that he hasn’t tamed inflation. Republican politicians themselves, while still unstintingly loyal, are starting to consider their futures. Trump will turn 80 next year. The odds of him violating the Constitution to seek a third term are remote and even if he did, it’s difficult to see how a four-time GOP nominee in his 80s with an underwater approval rating could defeat a standard Democrat who has triumphed in a primary. In the first term, Trump could always bounce back because there was the promise of tomorrow — another term, another campaign. That’s all gone now. Trump is in twilight.