Enablers

 Buried in this Sidney Blumenthal op-ed is a reference to the famous "adults in the room" during Trump's first term. 

In Trump’s first term, he was relatively constrained through an alliance struck between the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon, and the secretary of defense, James Mattis, former commander of US Central Command, who filtered the options that would be presented to Trump, insisted on the importance of Nato, and argued to keep the US within the Iran nuclear agreement.

Gary Cohn, the former director of the national economic council, stopped Trump from signing executive orders that would cause economic and national security “catastrophes”, and prevented him from withdrawing from the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. “I stole it off his desk,” Cohn told an associate, as Bob Woodward reported in his book Fear. “I wouldn’t let him see it. He’s never going to see that document. Got to protect the country.”

The “committee to save America”, as they were dubbed, included the chief of staff, former general John Kelly, who made a pact with Mattis that one of them would always be in the country to keep tabs on Trump’s impulsivity. Kelly would reflect that Trump did not understand the constitution and had “nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law”.

Not enough credence was given to this basic fact when Trump ran again in 2024. The median American voter was upset by nominal prices and they didn't like Harris' laugh, so they voted not just for Trump, but Unconstrained Trump. The result has been unprecedented corruption, skyrocketing inflation, illegal tariffs, the shooting of unarmed Americans on the streets of Minneapolis, a disastrous war of choice in Iran, slowing growth, the literal destruction of part of the White House, the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance, the murders of people in boats in the Caribbean, and that's all I can come up without googling it.

The recent string of absolutely lawless Supreme Court decisions that have basically enabled Republican mid-cycle gerrymandering while striking down Democratic efforts is an attempt to deny voters the ability to hold Trump accountable for his many crimes and incompetencies. We have to hope that Trump's incredible malice, incompetence and corruptness will overwhelm the banks of the gerrymandered districts.