Trump Derangement Syndrome is a Myth
Opposition to Trump is rational.
Congrats, you have officially made it past the one-year mark of Trump 2.0. And if you read my Jackal from a year ago, you are probably thinking that my prediction of impending doom has been proven right. But in my own assessment, I got one major thing wrong.
It has been worse than I imagined. Trump 2.0 is an objective disaster, and even his worst critics underestimated the damage.
A disastrous first year.
The title of my Jackal from a year ago, “It’s All Downhill from Here,” was apt but the content was not. I want to go through it a little bit, touch on some things happening this week, and also give a few thoughts on a potential SCOTUS decision on tariffs, but first let’s take a pit stop.
When Trump took office, his approval rating - according to The Economist - was around 46%, with his disapproval sitting at 48%. Trump has never been a very popular figure and after such a close election, it’s unsurprising that a hefty chunk of the country wasn’t thrilled with him. But still, most presidents will take -2% approval if you ask them.
Here’s what it is now:
That is bad. When you break it down by each state, it gets even worse. The only states where Trump has a positive approval rating are:
Alabama
Arkansas
Tennessee
Oklahoma
Kentucky
South Dakota
West Virginia
Wyoming
Utah
North Dakota
Montana
Idaho
Of those states, the only ones where his net approval is higher than 3% are:
Idaho
West Virginia
North Dakota
Wyoming
Montana
Tennesse
Yes, that means Trump’s approval rating is underwater in states that he won in 2024, including Georgia (-18%), Arizona (-16%), Pennsylvania (-16%), Wisconsin (-17%), and Michigan (-15%).
Trump supporters can spin or justify this in lots of different ways. Maybe he’s playing 4D chess or maybe the coming gains are going to turn things around. Maybe the rest of us just don’t “get it,” but for him to go from -2% to -19% in just one year is really bad, politically speaking. Things do not look good for the Trump Administration right now, and the elections from only 2 and a half months ago prove the relevance of the polls, which will remain relevant as we head into the midterms.
The week where it all ended.
I think what I failed to capture in my initial assessment/prediction of Trump 2.0 was the capacity for unmitigated failure. This past week has driven Trump’s incompetence home and shown us the consequences of his Presidency. At Davos, Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, gave a speech announcing the end of American hegemony and that a “new world order” had to come about. He talked about the West “moving on” from U.S. dominance, effectively saying that our time as a global superpower had passed.
He received a standing ovation.
Carney also announced that Canada would be rescinding its 100% tariffs on China’s electric car market, which will give them their first major foothold in North America. It’s a huge blow to Tesla and Elon Musk (more on him later), because even BYD’s cars are superior to Tesla’s, and Americans will eventually get a look at them as Canadians venture south.
It is an incredible, crushing failure on Trump’s part, who is pushing more and more of our allies into China’s arms. Whether he knows it or not (and he most certainly doesn’t), the rest of the world no longer sees him or his ideology as an aberration but as a possible permanent fixture in American politics, so they are readjusting. Put simply: Our former Western allies are bullish on the emergence of American ignorance. They do not trust us to elect a Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or even a George H.W. Bush again. Earlier today, the European Union canceled its free trade deal with the U.S., following Trump’s speech at Davos.
I took heart in the fact that financial markets remain one last check on Trump: After he announced a possible military invasion of Greenland to “take it over,” the Dow Jones, S&P, and Nasdaq all plummeted. He came out today and said he wouldn’t do a military takeover of Greenland, and markets surged again. But I think the damage is done.
For one, the rest of Europe can see Trump for what he is, even if his sycophantic supporters and - to some extent - the American media cannot: Insane. Earlier this week, the Norwegian Prime Minister confirmed what many people had assumed was a joke: Trump texted and said he wants Greenland because Norway didn’t give him a Nobel peace prize. Seriously.
When I say that Donald Trump is “insane,” I don’t mean it’s “hard to believe” he’s President or that he’s just some wild guy; I mean he is mentally ill. The Europeans see this too (most likely because they don’t have Fox News there), and have taken note that he was elected twice.
The Greenland pivot isn’t something that popped up out of nowhere. At the end of Trump’s first term, he did multiple interviews where he said he wanted Greenland because it was big (Greenland looks huge on a map, but is actually smaller than Chad) and that he viewed it as a real estate acquisition and described it as something he “just had to have.”1
So, even if he eventually backs down (he will take an off-ramp if the markets keep tanking), the desire will linger on for him. All it will take is for some reporter to say, “Hey, whatever happened to Greenland?” and we could be right back to where we started. I know this. You know this. And now our allies know this.
They are no longer giving the American public the benefit of the doubt.
Here’s what I got wrong.
I think looking back at my piece from last year, a few big oopsies stand out.
I underestimated Trump’s weaponization of ICE and his desire to deport immigrants. I mocked the Administration for doing fewer deportations than Joe Biden. While it is still true that Trump 2.0 is deporting fewer violent criminals than Biden did (at least per capita), they have used ICE to go after everyone else.
“Sit back and watch them fail.” Yikes. This was a good statement for mental health purposes, but I don’t like it anymore.
I said Elon Musk is not a Nazi.
Point 3 is a pretty big surprise for me. Over the past year, Musk has made it clearer and clearer that he is a white nationalist, as he has continually reposted and amplified insane Neo-Nazis. His website is now filled with them as he has stopped banning accounts, even the ones that engage in the most vile racism. And since his infamous “salute,” we’ve gotten another angle showing that it was, in fact, simply a “seig heil.”
Twitter is also completely useless. It rarely works and is filled with bots. You are more likely to see random pornographic content than a unique political take. And something happened while Elon was doing the Great Replacement Theory: Facebook beat him at social media. Threads is now more popular than X.
I definitely did not see that coming. Part of me is plaintive about this, since I think Musk was perviously a net force for good stuff in America. But I do think he allowed his Twitter overuse to mess with his brain, and also probably did too many drugs.
I think I also underestimated how much Trump’s tariffs would devastate the economy, even if I shared those sentiments every now and then. Look at this chart to see the damage:
We are now rolling into 2026 with 2025 being the worst year for job growth (outside of a recession) in the past 25 years. It is a disaster, and one that could have easily been avoided (especially when you look at how much better the rest of the world is doing). This brings me to SCOTUS potentially bailing us (and Trump) out.
The Supreme Court heard the tariffs case late last year, and lots of people were expecting a quick decision given the economic turmoil they are causing. Even if they were to side with the Administration, you’d want to get a definitive answer so that companies can adjust.
We are now mostly through January and we have no tariff decision. Technically, we do not have an opinion day scheduled until late February (although opinions theoretically could come at any time). To me, that means someone is writing a lengthy dissent that is holding up the decision, and I don’t think it’s one of the conservatives. If a conservative - say Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito - were dissenting to a decision striking down Trump’s tariffs, they’d be motivated to do it quickly, so that the Administration could start paying everyone back as quickly as possible.
If a liberal were dissenting, the timing doesn’t really matter, since no one is going to get paid back anyway. Looking at those tea leaves and disregarding the oral argument (where it seemed like SCOTUS was going to decide against the Administration), it seems to me like SCOTUS will side with Trump.
However, there’s another set of tea leaves. Over the past couple months, a huge chunk of companies have started to file in Federal Court and have asked for their tariff fees to be returned. Costco and Wal-Mart are two of the really big names, but lots of corporations have filed in kind. Maybe they got wind of something and are getting out ahead of a favorable ruling for them.
Or maybe SCOTUS solidifies Trump’s tax increases. Either way, I think the damage is done.
When you add all of this together:
Trump’s cratering polls
Trump’s cratering economy
Allies turning against us
Trump’s collapsing brain making 2024 Joe Biden sound like 2008 Joe Biden
Legal failures left and right
Tariffs
Greenland
ICE agents shooting a woman in the face
It is clear that there is only one kind of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and it applies to those who think Trump is doing a good job.
I will be back in a few weeks with a piece on the dire straits of conservative media.
Remember this in case some relative sends you a video of some dude explaining why Greenland is important and Trump is doing 5D or 6D chess. His Administration put tariffs on an island of penguins. There is no strategy deeper than a paper plate.