Sunday Issues-March 9, 2025

What is President Trump's endgame?

Photo by Elvert Barnes from Silver Spring MD, USA via Wikimedia Commons.

I no longer see President Trump as a joke. I won’t be calling him a clown again. He is no longer funny or entertaining.

While I once wondered what his next Executive Order would address, it has become difficult to read them. Most of all, I have quit waiting for Congressional Democrats to somehow stop him. Maybe, I worry, Trump cannot be stopped.

The world is not ending, but the stress of multiple criminal prosecutions and the toll of aging appear to have left the president a changed man—changed from the inept clown who unexpectedly found himself in the White House in 2017. In that president’s place is a Trump who knows he’s getting older and who is committed to “repaying favors” owed to people he calls lunatics, Democrats, psychos and any other name that sounds good to him on a particular day.

A friend, Craig Fuller, who writes Decade Seven here on Substack and writes for the same community newspapers I do—The Spy Community Media papers serving Maryland’s Eastern Shore—commented last week that Trump is obsessed with winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The conclusion makes sense. President Obama unexpectedly won the award in 2009. And Trump inherited the war in Ukraine—a war crying out to be over and a war in which, because of essential America’s military support for Ukraine, Trump is in a unique position to broker a settlement.

What better way for Trump to prove he is a great president and to get something new to put on the credenza behind his desk at the same time? Who would not replace his Golden Globe with a Nobel Peace Prize if given the opportunity?

I will not begrudge Trump his prize if he ends the war without handing Putin a bigger prize—Ukraine itself—in the process. But what about the other favors that need to be repaid?

First, one might argue that Trump’s approach to ending the war in Ukraine is repaying a favor to Putin. (I still suspect Putin has something on Trump.)

Second, think about the gusto that Trump had in not only firing everyone at DOJ and the FBI who engaged in prosecuting him for various crimes over the last four years. Jack Smith and others should be very afraid. When Trump spoke of retribution during the 2024 campaign, he meant it. But I never guessed it would go as far as to threaten law firms involved in the prosecutions.

And will Trump’s retribution go as far as to try to indict President Biden for whatever he did, or whatever Trump thinks he did, involving Ukraine when Hunter Biden was serving on the Burisma board of directors?

Trump’s efforts to punish his enemies extend to people who work for or with the government, at colleges and universities, and, of course, in the media. Georgetown Law Center, where I studied law, has been ordered to halt its DEI programs and all academic content (such as courses) that promote DEI. Dean Treanor of Georgetown is pushing back. I’m proud to be a Hoya.

Columbia University has been stripped of $400 million in federal grants and contracts because Trump has concluded they haven’t done enough to combat antisemitism. And colleges across the country—or I should say students at colleges—have been warned that they will be deported or arrested if they engage in “unlawful protests.” An example of such a protest would be protesting Trump’s firings of public employees or ending foreign aid.

Why is Trump so angry? Why is it necessary to threaten Americans? Ridicule the Prime Minister of Canada, threaten to send U.S. troops into Mexico, or retake the Panama Canal? Could it be that Trump’s psyche was somehow seriously damaged during the four years he simmered over his 2000 election loss and was pursued for various crimes, including image-destroying trials like the “hush-money” case?

A friend told me this week that “Trump isn’t right,” meaning that Trump isn’t right in the head. I didn’t bother to respond—what my friend said was a self-evident truth. During the weekend, I read a piece that suggests that Trump is a “psychopath.” I shrugged my shoulders. I’ve heard it before. And just saying something like that convinces Trump’s base that he is right—that criticism of Trump is criticism of America.

Let’s say that Trump isn’t “mentally debilitated,” insane or something else. What is his endgame? Why is he pursuing an agenda of violations of the Constitution—seizures of legislative authority executed with the confidence that his fellow Republicans won’t object—that will be challenged in court and could get him his third impeachment?

Why is Trump conducting a downsizing of the federal workforce in a manner that likely will radicalize many of those affected by it, something that could endanger him and his family? And why doesn’t Trump, who incessantly brags about any poll that shows he is popular, see that his personnel cuts will make him unpopular?

Why doesn’t Trump understand that his obsession with tariffs will alienate key allies and throw the world into a recession? Does he realize how difficult it will be to blame a recession caused by his tariffs on Joe Biden?

I wish the president would play more golf, which would be a challenge given the amount he is playing. The president won the election, but voters did not sign up for the nightmare of illogical, counterproductive policies and actions that are overwhelming many of us following Trump 2.0.

Thank you.

Thank you for reading Sunday Issues. We live in troubled times, which I why I once again wrote about Donald Trump. I worry about America’s future.

I mentioned Craig Fuller’s Decade Seven in today’s piece. I recommend his work if you are not a reader of Craig’s. Fuller’s observations are based on working at the highest levels of government and are, IMHO, objective.