President Trump has created a massive gulf in America.
No, I am not talking about the half baked promise “to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America” that Trump announced in his news conference on Tuesday. The gulf that our country actually is going to have is the one between our current reality and the one we will be experiencing when Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
This news conference, which was the first since Trump’s re-election was certified by Congress, was a wild one — even by Trumpian standards. In a little over an hour behind a podium at his Mar-a-Lago beach club, the president-elect, along with promising to rename an ocean basin, threatened potential military force against Panama and Denmark. He also suggested he might use “economic force” to make Canada the 51st State.
“They should be a state,” Trump said of one of America’s closest neighbors and allies.
And, if Hamas doesn’t release the remaining hostages taken in the October 7th attack before Trump’s inauguration, Trump vowed that would also result in a massive show of force.
“If they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” Trump said. “It will not be good for Hamas and it will not be good frankly for anyone. All hell will break out.”
Trump’s feverish foreign policy visions were mixed up with his other weird obsessions and blatant lies. He ranted about President Joe Biden’s efforts to promote electric power and suggested heat generated this way will make you “itch.” As he vowed to make “major pardons” for some of his supporters who attacked the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection, Trump reiterated some of his preferred, debunked conspiracy theories about that day including that, the FBI is concealing the identity of the unknown pipe bomber and that, somehow, the Middle Eastern terrorist group Hezbollah might have played a role in the violence.
“We have to find out about Hezbollah. We have to find out about who exactly was in that whole thing because people that did some bad things were not prosecuted,” Trump said.
Trump also continued his longstanding beef with windmills.
“The windmills are driving the whales crazy, obviously,” he said.
The whole thing was objectively bizarre and it’s difficult to track how much of Trump’s comments were bluster or how many of these wild ideas are even remotely feasible. Can you even effectively rename an ocean? Does he really intend to try to essentially annex Canada? Would he really consider using military force to take over Greenland or the Panama Canal? Would the military stand for that? Would Congress?
If the infamously fickle Trump really sticks with some of these outlandish proposals we will learn the answers to these questions in time. But one thing was immediately clear. As ever, some of Trump’s hardest core supporters on Capitol Hill are willing to back him on anything. Within minutes of Trump’s event concluding, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) announced “legislation to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.”
“As soon as President Trump made his announcement, I directed my staff to get the bill drafted,” Greene said in a subsequent statement.
The bill text specified “any reference” in U.S. records “to the Gulf of Mexico shall be deemed to be a reference to the ‘Gulf of America.’” It’s like cartographic Freedom Fries on steroids.
And the whole spectacle came at the same time as we saw yet another instance of institutions that might curb Trump’s excesses shut down as Judge Aileen Cannon moved to block the release of the report on Trump’s misconduct from special counsel Jack Smith. Trump, who called Smith “deranged” and a “moron” reacted to that news in real time with yet another effort to dismiss the substance of the many charges that were levied against him before his re-election quashed the investigation.
“He wanted to do a report just before I take office probably,” said Trump. “It’ll be a fake report just like the investigation was a fake investigation.”
Behind all of the conspiracies and craziness, the news conference revealed something important: Trump’s second term is beginning from an absolutely extreme and intense place. America previously experienced four years of Trump. However, that first Trump administration started with a divided Congress, more reason to have faith in institutional checks and balances, and some more traditional political figures on Trump’s team. The guard rails are down and Trump’s own comments are making clear his id has been fully unleashed.
We are about to jump into the gulf.
Indeed, after monologuing nearly a half hour of threats against friendly nations, Trump himself declared everything is about to change.
“We’re approaching the dawn of America’s golden age,” Trump said, later adding, “I think we’re also at a golden age of common sense.”
The Best Of TPM Today
NEW from Josh Kovensky: Trump Loses Bid to Block Friday Sentencing
Catch up on our live coverage here: Appeals Court Hears Arguments On Blocking Trump’s Sentencing
Aileen Cannon Purports To Block Public Release Of Jack Smith Report
The latest from Kate Riga: Louisiana: Racism Doesn’t Exist Anymore, So Let Us Racially Gerrymander
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
Why Are Publications Sugar-Coating Livilsberger’s Political Minifestos?
What We Are Reading
Man who exploded Tesla Cybertruck outside Trump hotel in Las Vegas used generative AI, police say
As Rick Wilson and George Conway sagely observed, the “man” (Trump) is clearly off his rocker and headed down the sorry path to dementia that he inherited from his father, Fred the Klansman. In 12 months he won’t know who he is, but in his rages he will declare JD Vance an enemy of the people and tell the Secret Service to sever his head from his body.
In 12 months, Trump won’t even know who he is or where he is headed.
He already has dementia. It will only accelerate and metamorphose into more disturbing and unpredictable manifestations, as ‘good’ days become less frequent.
We have no idea what we’re in for.
January 20th: Inauguration
January 21st: Invoke the 25th Amendment to save the nation.
January 22nd: Repeat invoking the 25th Amendment as necessary to save the nation.
If you had to take a bet would Trump finish his full 4 year term??
He learned from Putin that if you just claim something to be true, then you can employ all means necessary and eventually people will come around to your way of thinking.