After lighting a fuse under global financial markets, Donald Trump stepped back – all the way to a Florida golf course. A week later, having just caved to pressure to ease his trade tariffs, the US president defended the retreat while hosting racing car champions at the White House.
Trump had spent the time in between golfing, dining with donors and making insouciant declarations such as “this is a great time to get rich”, even as the US economy melted down.
It was a jolting juxtaposition that prompted comparisons with the emperor Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned, or insane monarchs who lost touch with reality. It also provided a clear illustration of how Trump governs during his volatile and extreme second presidency: erratically, with little attention to convention, and often on the hoof from one public engagement to another surrounded by courtiers who never disagree with him.
“He’s certainly living up to the caricature of being a mad king,” said Kurt Bardella, a Democratic strategist. “When you’re addressing a ballroom in a tuxedo, telling people to take the painful medicine, or on your umpteenth golf vacation while economic chaos is rippling throughout this country and others, at best you’re completely out of touch.
“At worst, you’re a sociopathic narcissist who doesn’t give a crap about anyone suffering. Ultimately there will be a political price to pay for that.”
Trump had swerved past April Fools’ Day to make 2 April his so-called “liberation day”. Against a backdrop of giant US flags in the White House Rose Garden, he announced sweeping tariffs – taxes on foreign imports – on dozens of countries, using a widely discredited formula to upend the decades-old order of global trade.
Trump did not decide on the final plan until less than three hours ahead of his splashy event, according to the Washington Post newspaper, but found Vice-President JD Vance and other staff constantly deferential. The Post quoted a person close to his inner circle as saying: “He’s at the peak of just not giving a fuck any more. Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a fuck. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”
A day later, with markets suffering trillions of dollars in losses, Trump boarded Air Force One bound for Miami, Florida. He arrived at his Doral resort for a Saudi-funded LIV Golf event in a golf cart driven by his son Eric Trump.
Trump woke up on Friday at Mar-a-Lago, his gilded private club in Palm Beach, Florida, and donned a red “Make America great again” cap and white polo shirt. His limousine glided down a street lined with palm streets and cheering fans before arriving at his golf club.
He also spent the morning defending himself on his Truth Social media platform and vowing to stay the course. “TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE,” he wrote.
Trump remained in Florida during the dignified transfer of four US soldiers killed during a training exercise in Lithuania, sending Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, to Dover air force base in Delaware to represent him. Instead the president attended a candlelit dinner for Maga Inc, an allied political organisation, reportedly charging $1m a plate.
Maggie Haberman, a Trump biographer and New York Times reporter, commented on CNN: “I think long ago he stopped caring about certain optics, and he’s made very clear during this presidency, he’s going to do what he wants … He is not messaging this in a way that suggests that he understands what average people might be going through right now.”
On Saturday, Trump played at another family golf course, in Jupiter, Florida, prompting an official White House announcement: “The president won his second round matchup of the senior club championship today in Jupiter, Fla., and advances to the championship round on Sunday.”
When Sunday came the president played on even as his cabinet members scrambled to political TV shows and offered conflicting signals, with some insisting that his tariffs were set in stone and others suggesting that he remained open to negotiation.
Trump returned to Washington and a growing chorus of dissent from allies, captains of industry and his own Republican loyalty, pleading with him to change course before a potential recession turned into a depression. Yet his first public event was a celebration of baseball’s World Series winners, the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he was presented with a “Trump 47” baseball shirt.
On Tuesday, in bow tie and tuxedo, Trump told a fundraising dinner in Washington: “I know what the hell I’m doing.” He claimed that the tariffs were forcing world leaders to negotiate with him, boasting: “I’m telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are. They are dying to make a deal.”
But the following day, Trump blinked. He posted on Truth Social that, while escalating tariffs on China, he would pause others for 90 days to allow space for negotiation. His bubble of wealth and power had finally been punctured.
Trump has often proved impervious to the kind of scandals or gaffes that would damage another politician, but his casual attitude even as the markets were on fire suggested a man uniquely detached from the anxieties of ordinary people, including his own voters.
Larry Sabato, the director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said: “Let them eat cake: Marie Antoinette kind of fits. He won his own golf tournament at his own club. How about that? Bill Clinton also cheated at golf a lot and people would let him win because he was president. It’s just the way they are. Rules don’t apply.”
This is not the first time that Trump, accused by critics of demanding absolute loyalty from courtiers, pursuing vengeance against perceived enemies and displaying scorn for his subjects, has been likened to a monarch.
Speaking at the Politics and Prose bookshop in Washington last weekend, Maureen Dowd, a New York Times columnist and author of the book Notorious, compared the president to William Shakespeare’s Richard III.
“Richard III comes up to the edge of the stage and wraps the audience into the bad thing he’s about to do,” Dowd told the Guardian during a question and answer session. “He tells them and he uses humour so that he’s supposed to be the villain, but the humour kind of counters it so you don’t think of him as badly.
“Trump does the same thing … He has this kind of wacky side so then when he does the very authoritarian stuff you get deflected by the crazy side he has. I think the SNL [Saturday Night Live] mimic captures this where he’s sort of being funny, so then when he turns authoritarian, you’re thinking: wait, is he really doing what I think he’s doing?”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
