This is the so-called honeymoon phase of Donald Trump’s presidency. Pro-democracy Americans likely find such a description — and the underlying reality — disheartening if not outright terrifying and sickening. Trump’s MAGA people and other followers should be happy, on the other hand. America’s brokenness is that deep and severe — and likely irreversible.
During these first weeks of his honeymoon period, Trump successfully launched his shock and awe campaign against America’s democratic institutions, the rule of law, and a sense of normalcy and consistency. With his almost one hundred executive orders and other edicts, Trump has done such things as attempt to void the 14th Amendment, reverse 60 years of civil rights progress, launch a nationwide mass deportation campaign, declare a national emergency to combat the “border crisis," free his MAGA followers who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, weaponize the Department of Justice as his personal enforcers, removed non-partisan inspectors-generals from government agencies so that he can put his loyalists in power, and ordered a freeze on federal grants and loans totaling many billions of dollars. Further cementing his personalist rule, Donald Trump’s Cabinet appointees are also being quickly confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate. Trump’s so-called mandate is his own making.
