Here is a topic that isn’t as consequential in itself as the wholesale and illegal reshaping of the federal government. But it is of a piece with it and captures the mood and pretensions of DOGE and Trumpism generally. News emerged a few days ago that the FBI has created a 20-person security detail for FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. Bongino is the first deputy director who doesn’t come from within the FBI. That’s customary because often the director is a judge or a prosecutor who lacks knowledge of the agency from the inside. The director’s deputy, as a veteran of the bureau, provides that operational knowledge and thus a hands-on managerial control. Since Bongino has been a failed political candidate and podcaster for as long as he wore any kind of uniform, one might be tempted to ascribe this security detail to his personal quirks and pretensions. But it’s actually pervasive across the Trump administration, often especially within DOGE and with DOGE-adjacent appointees, whose firing squads often show up at target agencies with security details of uncertain origin.

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate and Josh talk tariffs and the Supreme Court’s latest on the Alien Enemies Act deportations.

I’ve now seen a couple articles claiming that Democrats are missing an opportunity with Trump’s tariff catastrophe or generally trying to thread some moron needle over whether they’re good or bad. Jon Chait did it here. Now Lauren Egan has written a similar piece in The Bulwark. Both these pieces seem vastly overstated to me. I’m pretty immersed in Democratic voices and almost everything I hear is that Trump tariffs are a catastrophe. But to the extent there is some hedging from a few Democrats, I don’t think there’s even any real issue here to hedge, not over anything actually recognizable as trade policy. Joe Biden embraced what used to be the anathema of industrial policy. He also employed targeted tariffs. In fact he had a pretty all-policy, holistic focus on re-shoring specific industries that are either particularly high-value in economic terms or are tied to critical technologies with national security dependencies. Those policies were very broadly embraced by Democrats.

Most of what happened today is obvious. And I’m no expert on macro- or international economics. But allow me a few observations. Start with the obvious: Trump rolled out an absurd policy which on its own terms would need to be held to for years to have any hope of success. After repeated pledges never to relent, he caved after one week. He now looks like an even bigger fool and menace on the international stage than he already did which is a feat of some magnitude. I also doubt he undid the damage he’s done to himself domestically as a custodian of the nation’s prosperity. Perhaps most of all he looks weak, reckless and stupid.