President Trump is demonstrating a skill at backing his opponents into corners that he didn’t show in his first term.
Of course, it helps that his enemies are, unaccountably, cooperating.
One of Trump’s best moves has been, repeatedly, to get the Democrats to take the “20%” side on the so-called “80/20 issues.” (To be fair, sometimes they’re more like 70/30 issues, but close enough.)
One reason he’s been able to do this is that Democrats reflexively oppose anything he does.
So when Trump promises to cut spending sharply and reduce the debt, Democrats go all-in against it, even though it’s something a huge majority of Americans support.
Agitating to continue waste, fraud and abuse — especially when there are truly glaring examples of it — is a bad look. But it was just the start.
Billions for USAID: an 80/20 issue. Dems took the 20% side.
Keeping boys out of girls’ sports: another 80/20 issue, and Dems took the 20% side.
Closing the border, energy independence, supporting Israel, deporting dangerous aliens, on and on.
Trump has the Democrats jumping to defend basically every issue that a Democratic strategist of 20 years ago, or maybe even 10 years ago, would have told them to avoid like the plague.
Heck, while Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) was performatively trading in his Tesla for a gas-guzzling Tahoe SUV, Democrats’ new bete noir Elon Musk was rescuing Kelly’s fellow astronauts stranded on the International Space Station. (You can tell this dramatic space rescue is a good look for Trump and Musk and a bad one for the Democrats by the non-coverage it’s received in the mainstream media.)
As a consequence, Democrats have hit a new all-time low in approval ratings, while Trump’s approval is up, and the most Americans since 2004 say the country is on the right track.
Now Trump is drawing out the nation’s partisan district judges, causing them to overextend themselves in ways that will cost them — and the judiciary itself — a lot.
Lower-level federal judges have been issuing orders against the administration, aiming to block Trump-ordered spending cuts, halt layoffs of government employees and more.
