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Just as record stock market gains this year were driven by anticipation of interest rate cuts, Donald Trump’s prospects were driven by irrational exuberance in political markets.
This week demonstrated how the conventional wisdom surrounding the inevitability of Trump has solidified – and why these assumptions, like those around rate cuts, must be corrected.
It has been almost an open secret in the diplomatic corps that America’s allies and adversaries are anticipating a Trump restoration. Debating who will serve a second term in the Cabinet and White House isn’t just the stuff of parlor games in embassies and foreign capitals — it’s taken on a “what will we do” urgency since Trump sealed the GOP nomination last month.
It’s one thing for Hungarian President Viktor Orban, the continent’s contrarian and supposedly authoritarian troll, to come down to Mar-a-Lago for a substitute state visit. But the degree to which other countries are bracing for a Trump victory was illustrated by a much more unlikely visitor this week to the former president’s exile in Xanadu: British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
The British government was quick to say how common it was for senior officials to meet with American opposition figures. But when he was prime minister in 2012, Cameron didn’t send his foreign minister to Boston, let alone Lake Winnipesaukee, to visit Mitt Romney. The British welcomed Romney to 10 Downing Street, his territory, when he was in the city for the start of the Summer Olympics.
In fact, as I remembered this week, it was around this time in 2012 that Cameron came to the White House for a pompous visit and state dinner. The then prime minister compared then-reelection candidate Barack Obama to Theodore Roosevelt and practically supported his reelection, praising Obama for having “hit the reset button on the moral authority of the entire free world.” (Yes, diplomatic sports history students, that was the same trip Obama took Cameron to the NCAA basketball tournament play-in game in Dayton, which was certainly difficult to translate into the Queen’s English.)
To be fair to Cameron, who may have left with the rest of the conservatives when Trump takes office again, he had a more urgent task in Palm Beach: softening the former president’s Ukrainian opposition ahead of a House vote on aid to Kiev. this month.
Yet Cameron, more than any foreign minister of any country, knows the message he sent by appearing at Trump’s gilded door.
And, of course, Trump knows the message being sent. An official from another Western country, not Britain, told me that Trump’s circle is advising a number of embassies to send ambassadors and ministers to Mar-a-Lago to, well, repair relations.
A senior Biden official said it was not surprising but rather “disturbing” that Cameron would go to Mar-a-Lago. “They are scared of how destructive he is and are seeing if he can moderate it,” this official told me, somewhat sympathetically, because the British know that Trump is determined to get revenge.
Yet just as major countries began to appease Trump six months before the election, there were reminders that his electoral advantage in key states may not last. The assumption in vogue among Trump’s elite critics – perhaps the way to demonstrate this time no one is out of reach – the fact that he is a lock seems increasingly misguided or at least premature.
His most blatant defiance at the end of the week is the one at the beginning of the week, when he practically read the stage directions to say he was trying to put the miscarriage behind him.
Biden’s campaign couldn’t have a better script: Trump said Monday that his answer, and he certainly hoped his last, on abortion access was one for the states to decide. Then, on Tuesday, the Arizona Supreme Court made a de facto decision – upholding a 19th century law that bans virtually all abortions.
Trump still thinks he can accept the states’ rights response and deny Biden his best opening.
“The only issue they think they have is abortion,” Trump said, speaking over the reading of stage directions. “And now all I say is the states are dealing with this.
The problem for Trump is that he will be asked to comment, as he did this week with Arizona, on the abortion policies of every state in which he campaigns. And he will be pressed on the six-week ban in his adopted state of Florida, as well as how he will vote on a ballot measure in November protecting abortion rights until viability.
Republicans Are On The Defensive On Abortion Since Overturning 2022 Ruling Roe, without any effective or unifying strategy. This week illustrated how that hasn’t changed one bit. And the more he is pressed on an issue he clearly wants to reject, the more likely it is that Trump will exacerbate the political difficulties inherent in someone who doesn’t want to talk about his most important accomplishment: nominating the three judges who ended legal abortion in America.
What does Trump he does This issue is also why his election is hardly a certainty. Of course, there is constant praise for the January 6 protesters as “hostages” and promises to pardon them, which excites his core voters but alienates independents and Republicans who would otherwise not be enthusiastic about Biden.
Equally embarrassing for these same voters was what The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman reported Trump told rich donors at a fundraiser in Florida last weekend.
“Why can’t we allow people from good countries to enter?” Trump spoke about migration to America, citing Denmark, Switzerland and Norway. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the common thread of those countries that Trump found attractive was not single-payer healthcare.
Immigration still clearly offers Republicans an advantage. Yet when Trump ventures from tough talk on the border to Great Replacement-adjacent rhetoric more familiar in the 1920s than the 2020s, well, millions of voters are reminded that a vote for him is a vote for a demagogue. which provokes racial issues.
And speaking of Trump being Trump, he still hasn’t done anything to win over the crucial voters who supported Nikki Haley in the Republican primary. They were barely enough to make the nomination contest competitive. But he represents about a third of the party and any defection would be devastating for Trump, who cannot count on a multitude of new voters in his third consecutive campaign.
However, he fails to reach Haley’s voters, let alone Haley herself. It’s been more than a month since she dropped out of the race, and I’m told Trump still hasn’t called her.
It’s not just symbolism. While much of the Republican finance crowd has turned to Trump, there are still holdouts who are more inclined to Haley’s views. Wall Street Journalaligned conservatism. And while Biden puts more than $100 million into ad bookings This fall, thanks to his financial advantage, Trump’s financial deficit becomes more apparent.
Biden still faces enormous difficulties. After all, he’s an unpopular 81-year-old incumbent seeking re-election at a time when post-pandemic sourness lingers and, well, those high interest rates could linger too.
Many Democrats are almost begging him to stop touting his accomplishments and start talking about what Trump has done – and will do if elected again.
While acknowledging that it’s just a spillover or escape response, Biden’s allies can’t help but revel in how the talk of Biden’s alleged infirmities has calmed since his heavily caffeinated State of the Union address. The change in coverage and his more frequent trips from the address improved his mood, I was told.
And that’s before the next phase of the campaign, the one that begins Monday in New York. When candidate Donald Trump becomes defendant Donald Trump.
This story originally appeared on Politico.com read the full story
