The New York Times notes that the Trump administration’s habit of buying ownership shares in companies it likes now involves $10 billion in taxpayer funds and “shows little sign of slowing.”

Remember, kids: Government ownership of the means of production turns out to be good, but socialism is still bad. Happy Tuesday.

The Trump Train Jumps the Tracks

by Andrew Egger

Ben Wittes famously summed up the spirit of the first Trump presidency as “malevolence tempered by incompetence.” But earlier this year, it looked like Trump might be rewriting that formula.

He had roared back into office with two things he didn’t have the first time: a sweeping set of actual plans and a vetted group of true believers who were determined to help him put them into action. For months, Trump rampaged through the government—purging “disloyal” intelligence and law enforcement officers, shuttering agencies, tearing up federal contracts, ramping up deportations without due process, pardoning J6 rioters, slinging around tariffs, flirting with open defiance of the courts, and so on. The overwhelming feeling was of sudden, surreal descent into lawlessness—into Hannah Arendt’s totalitarian world where “everything was possible” and “nothing was true.” Worse, it all felt deliberate, planned, rolled out on a schedule. What would be next? Would he actually deport U.S. citizen criminals for imprisonment in El Salvador? Would he try to seize Greenland, or the Panama Canal? He was doing the rest of his wish list—why stop there?

It wasn’t long before you could feel that overwhelming momentum start to slow. In retrospect, the Supreme Court’s slapdown of his lawless deportations to El Salvador was one inflection point; his shambolic rollout and subsequent panicked walkback of his “Liberation Day” tariffs was another.

But now, in the wake of the government shutdown, we seem to be hitting a third phase in Trump’s second term, in which his forward momentum is in danger of stopping altogether. And in that environment, the incompetence so endemic in term one is making itself known again, with a vengeance.

Suddenly, everywhere you look, you see a White House flailing.

Trump’s poll numbers are near historic lows, with many of the coalitions who helped him back to the White House last time, including young people and minority voters, expressing remarkable levels of buyer’s remorse. Meanwhile, his greatest political strength—the remarkable depth and durability of the MAGA base’s passion for him—suddenly appears less impregnable after MAGA zealots in Congress forced him to blink on the Epstein files.

His hamfisted tinkering with U.S. trade has put a pillow over the face of many American businesses, slowing hiring, spreading uncertainty, and creating the conditions for an economy whose health relies nearly entirely on the speculative AI sector, even as anxiety about a possible AI bubble continues to grow.

His policy agenda is adrift without sail. Consider his recent muddled attempts to triangulate on healthcare. After insisting for months that the government should not re-fund expiring Obamacare subsidies—to the point of being willing to shut down the government rather than give Democrats concessions on the issue—Trump seemingly had a change of heart. Yesterday, he planned to roll out a proposal to extend those subsidies temporarily while making some changes, like stricter income phase-outs. But he was forced to turn on a dime when congressional Republicans got wind of the plan and sent him an unambiguous message: No way are we supporting this. The White House, having apparently not thought to get congressional buy-in before floating the plan publicly, had to hurriedly cancel the rollout. It’s no longer clear when a plan will be introduced.

Even the stuff Trump cares about most deeply—wielding the might of government to punish anyone who has ever wronged him—is blowing up on the launchpad. The president was willing to move heaven and earth to get criminal indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. He even handed an entire U.S. attorney’s office over to an insurance lawyer on his staff with no prosecutorial experience because she was the only person he was confident would bring charges against the pair. But those indictments didn’t even manage to last two months. Yesterday, a judge threw them both out on the grounds that Trump’s lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, had been wrongfully appointed to the interim U.S. attorney post. This may have come as a relief to Halligan—none of the embarrassing, amateurish errors she was making in prosecuting the cases ended up mattering—but it remains a major embarrassment to Trump.

In theory, Trump could recognize the futility and cut his losses. After all, his failing attempts to get retribution are damaging him politically. Polls keep showing that strong majorities believe Trump is leaning on the Justice Department to file unjustified charges against his foes. And those foes aren’t even getting punished! Look at James Comey over there on Instagram, talking over the dismissal of his case! He’s positively glowing! The desired effect is not occurring!

But Trump seems only to be doubling down. As his ongoing political prosecutions fall apart, he is reaching more and more erratically for crazier and crazier forms of retribution against increasingly outlandish targets. After Democratic lawmakers shot a video reminding U.S. troops of their obligation not to obey unlawful orders, Trump appeared to order Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to crack down. Yesterday, Hegseth obliged: The Defense Department announced it had opened a military investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly for actions “intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.” Elevating a retired Navy captain whose wife survived an assassination attempt was a peculiar choice. One congressional Republican called it “amateur hour.” A top conservative commentator was left perplexed, as well.

But that’s been the best word to describe the second half of the first year of Trump’s second term—perplexing. Here is a White House that spent weeks portraying Zohran Mamdani as a communist boogeyman only for the president to welcome him with open arms in the Oval. Here is a president who introduced a “peace plan” for the Ukraine war without, apparently, getting the buy-in of anyone in Congress (or maybe even his own Secretary of State). Here is an administration that turned so fast on Marjorie Taylor Greene for her heresy of demanding the Epstein files be released that now a number of other House Republicans are quietly saying they may follow MTG’s lead and resign, as well.

Trump could, in theory, take a different course. He could triangulate. He could retreat and regroup, finding a new strategy to bring into the midterms. Voters have short memories; there is plenty of time.

But the obstacle isn’t time. It’s Trump himself. He didn’t get where he is today by triangulating—he got here by always being fully, undeniably himself. It looked like it was working for a while this time. But now the Trump Train is starting to jump the tracks.