Surprisingly, providing more evidence that he is crazy doesn't help Trump to regain public support
Remember “Sharpiegate,”
a relatively inconsequential but uncommonly stupid episode from Trump’s first
term?
The Sharpie is back.
In the surrealist performance hall that is the Oval Office,
Trump grabbed his pen, took out a map of the Great Lakes, crossed out “Lake
Ontario” and wrote
in “Lake America,” part of a pointless new trade war he has started
with Canada.
“Lake Ontario, that’s gone. Lake America,” he said. “So now
we have a lake and now we have a Gulf because we have the Gulf of America and
now we have Lake America.”
Stirring words.
Like so much of what Trump does, this was meant to be a show
of strength. Yet it actually demonstrated just the opposite: Trump is weak and
getting weaker.
He can instruct the federal government to change its maps,
as he did with an
executive order late last week, and will even find that many people
will submit to his desires.
As of this writing, Google Maps has changed Lake Ontario to
Lake America for those searching in the US, while Apple Maps has yet to do so —
though since Apple Maps did change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on
Trump’s instruction, it may fall in line soon. (MapQuest loudly refused to
make the change, in what may be a bid to inform people that it still exists.)
Instead, the “Lake America” inanity will be slotted
alongside Trump’s ballroom, his quest to keep his name on the Kennedy Center,
his helipad, and his Reflecting Pool faceplant. These are the things a failing,
frustrated president does in a desperate bid to look strong, because he hasn’t
been able to accomplish much of anything that might improve Americans’ lives.
A misbegotten trade war, on top of everything else
The attempted renaming of Lake Ontario was a petulant way to
lash out at Canada over the latest episode in the trade war he started not long
after taking office in 2025.
Despite a long and mutually fruitful trading relationship — including the US-Mexico-Canada-Agreement, a free trade pact Trump himself signed in his first term — he recently decided to impose yet another round of tariffs on Canadian goods. Among the demands the administration made to settle the dispute were that the US would get to dictate Canadian trade policy with third countries, so if the US imposed tariffs on another country’s goods, Canada would have been obligated to do the same.
Only an ignoramus of truly world-historical proportions
would fail to anticipate that this kind of demand would produce tremendous
resistance from Canada, a country where the determination to maintain a unique
cultural identity and sovereignty as more than a vassal state of the US unites
people across the political spectrum.
And so it did. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced
that the country would respond to American tariffs in kind, boosting his own
popularity in what has become a
test for Canadians of their mettle and independence.
Rather than find a mutually agreeable settlement to an
idiotic dispute he started — one that will do economic damage to both countries
— Trump decided to rename Lake Ontario.
What we are witnessing is that Trump’s personal pathologies are damaging not only the United States’ interest but his own goals.
He wants not just to be seen as powerful but to humiliate
other countries and leaders; in his mind, you aren’t strong unless you dominate
someone else and show the world that they’re weaker than you. But his demand
for visible submission produces inevitable pushback as countries assert their
sovereignty in the face of his threats. And the more grandiose his threats, the
more important it is for leaders like Carney to very publicly oppose him in
order to reinforce their own domestic political standing.
The result is that when Trump is trying hardest to look
strong, he winds up producing political conflicts and policy outcomes that end
up making him look weak. In this case, he not only wants Canada to be economically
dependent on the US, which in many ways it already is, he wants Canada to
essentially announce to the world that it has no choice but to do whatever
Trump wants. That, the Canadians will not do.
As a bonus, China could be the big winner of a US-Canadian trade war, if Canada starts importing more goods from there as its economic relationship with America deteriorates. By challenging Canada’s sovereignty in such unnecessary ways (including continuing the “51st state” rhetoric that Canadians find unspeakably insulting), Trump forced Carney’s hand. And he doesn’t even seem to understand what a mistake he is making.
Campaigning in 2024, Trump promised some things that he had
in his power to deliver (including an immigration crackdown) and some that he
couldn’t (including an immediate drop in consumer prices). But he is clearly
unable to distinguish between the two.
It may be that he sees legal limits on his
authority as his only real impediment, and one that can be circumvented,
removed by friendly courts, or simply ignored. That has often proven to be the
case, which has allowed him to amass more power than many presidents before
him.
For instance, he set about firing members of commissions
that have traditionally been insulated from such presidential spite, and
eventually the Supreme Court, deploying its “Republican presidents get to do
what they want” doctrine, ruled that
he could do it. While the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 prevents the
executive branch from refusing to spend money that Congress has appropriated,
the administration has done
so anyway. Likewise, it gutted or even shut down some agencies entirely
(most famously the
Agency for International Development), betting that even if it lost the
inevitable court challenges, by the time the slow legal process reaches its
end, the actions would be a fait accompli.
Should the Supreme Court one day rule that the
administration broke the law by destroying USAID, it will be essentially a moot
point, since the agency no longer exists. In an even more visible case, Trump
had scant legal authority to tear down the East Wing of the White House to
construct his hulking ballroom, but he just brought in the bulldozers, and now
it’s gone. The deed is done.
What Trump didn’t seem to understand, however, is that he
lacks the power to achieve some of his most important goals not because of an
inconvenient statute or an obstinate judge who can be bullied into submission,
but because his success would require the cooperation of people with their own
goals, or entire systems that are difficult to simply order to change.
It’s why he has almost no meaningful legislative achievements outside of a tax cut for the wealthy (not exactly a heavy lift when Republicans run Congress) — legislating successfully requires understanding what other people want.
He couldn’t end the war in Ukraine, because the Ukrainians
refuse to surrender to Russian aggression and Vladimir Putin won’t cut his
losses. He can’t prevail in Iran because the regime is willing to endure
enormous pain and now believes it is in a stronger position than ever. In all
these cases, other people have agency; they do not exist merely as
weaklings to be bullied in a performance whose inevitable end is Trump’s
victory. When it came to Ukraine and Iran, Trump claimed his strength would be
irresistible, and in almost no time at all; in both cases, America has emerged
looking weaker.
Even more difficult is the economy, where Trump can’t simply
order prices to go down or wages to rise. Worse, where he has exercised the
government’s power, he has pushed prices up, with his erratic tariffs and a war
that any fool could have seen would produce a spike in gas prices.
No one asked for this
And where Trump is exercising power, he is doing it almost
exclusively to serve goals that few Americans actually want.
His trade policy, like the Iran war, is highly
unpopular. His immigration crackdown, which has been perhaps the purest
expression of his violent nationalism, has likewise caused
Americans to recoil. And the circus he creates around himself wins him no
converts, no matter how much he puffs out his chest in a parody of strength.
How many voters watch him changing the name of one of the Great Lakes, then
posting a deranged
AI slop video in which geese with Trumpian blonde bouffants carrying
assault rifles march to take control of Lake Ontario, and say to themselves,
“Wow, he’s so strong, I’m definitely voting Republican in the midterms”?
That kind of juvenile silliness was disturbing enough when Trump was in a better position politically; now it looks merely pathetic.
“He spends much of his time, according to those close to
him, working on a growing list of construction projects, from the White House
ballroom to a proposed triumphal arch, seeking to create physical reminders of
his time in office,” reports the
Wall Street Journal. “Republicans privately worry that Trump’s focus on himself
is backfiring with voters, complicating their efforts to keep control of
Congress and giving Democrats plenty of ammunition for attack ads.”
No kidding. A president who spends all day choosing colors
for the ballroom drapes in between tearing down alliances, lying about the
state of the economy, and claiming the disastrous war he started is about to
end in triumph is not one who projects strength. And if Republicans lose one or
both houses of Congress in the midterms, Trump will be hamstrung and besieged,
less able than ever to do whatever he wants.
Previous presidents who found themselves in that situation
late in their terms reacted by focusing more on foreign policy, where they have
a freer hand to act. Trump, on the other hand, will be likely to look for more
surfaces on which he can slap his name and some gold leaf, to make himself feel
strong while even much of his own party can’t wait to be rid of him. And every
time he busts out his Sharpie — perhaps next time, as he threatened,
against the Atlantic and the Pacific — he will only demonstrate how petty and
insecure he is.
Thanks for reading Public Notice. This post is public so
feel free to share it.