Washington Merry-Go-Round

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 18 July 2025
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column Founded 1932
The Manchild in Chief
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – He is both a manchild and the most powerful man in the world. It is not a debatable description. He does not conceal it. He rants, name-calls, bullies, coerces, and is loyal to no one. He is as impulsive as a seven-year-old.
We have a manchild in the Oval Office, and anybody who deals with him had better act accordingly. That means cowering and praising and hoping he will back down.
Not only erratic, impulsive. and vengeful, he backs down enough to earn the moniker, TACO, for Trump Always Chickens Out, a potentially dangerous taunting phrase.
The dictionary definition of President Trump’s condition is an adult man who exhibits childlike behavior and does not behave in the calm, serious, or sensible way you would expect from an adult.
His latest tantrum has to do with Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, whom Trump originally appointed and now calls “stupid” and a “knucklehead” because he and the 12-member FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) refuse to lower interest rates until they are convinced inflation is at bay or unemployment is rising.
Meeting with Republicans in the Oval Office, Trump waved the letter he had supposedly written to fire Powell, asking the lawmakers for their blessing. Powell’s term is up next May.
Trump claims they gave him the go-ahead, but what they likely did was humor him, tell him he is right to want Powell out, but maybe not right now, even if he has the constitutionally questionable authority. “If you fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve, you will see the stock market crash, and you will see the bond market crash,” warned Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy.
Investors are increasingly ignoring Trump, knowing that he will back down on some of the most draconian tariffs he is threatening to put in place. At the same time, they know they are dealing with a manchild, and if Trump is taunted enough with TACO monickers and other insults, like the child in the schoolyard, he might strike back and make matters worse.
The psychology of dealing with a manchild is tricky, and most foreign leaders have mastered the art, treating him very gingerly. Offering praise and flattery. they avoid anything that might rile him.
Exhibit A is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who learned his lesson after failing to grovel in his Oval Office encounter with Trump. Zelenskyy, a former actor, turned that around during a brief meeting with Trump at the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome.
All these leaders know they’re dealing with a manchild whose behavior is troubling, but you don’t argue with the guy holding the gun, or in this case, the free world-dependent U.S. military and the world-dependent U.S. economy, which he has tied to the blunt instrument of on-again, off-again tariffs.
Ignoring sovereignty, the way a child might ignore another child’s property, Trump said the U.S. wants Greenland, Panama, and Canada, even disrespectfully calling former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “governor.” The rhetoric inspired a rush of Canadian self-pride, and Trudeau’s successor, Prime Minister Mark Carney, has won praise at home and abroad for his masterful handling of Trump.
Canada, Greenland, Panama, and Fed Chair Powell are staying put for now, but the Republican-controlled Congress is so far falling in line with whatever Trump wants. With the midterm elections a little more than a year away, Republicans find it safer to go along with Trump than to face a primary opponent who could take them down with Trump’s backing, reelection being more important than patriotism for them. In their subservience, they have ceded much of the legislative branch’s powers to Trump.
The question is whether patriotism is more important to the public than their pet projects. And here is where fealty is beginning to fail as the public is discovering that the 6’3” man waving from the parade is shrinking with each block he travels. The public opposed his fiscally irresponsible tax-cut-for-the-wealthy bill. The public that agreed with immigration control has been reviled by its heartless and Gestapo-like execution. His MAGA base was split between those opposing foreign interventions and those supporting friends and allies abroad but unified in their opposition to Trump’s go-it-alone bombing of Iran, when he failed to even inform congressional leadership.
In the end, the public that focused on the politics instead of the politician is beginning to understand it never was about politics, only about the reins of power in the hands of a manchild.
 
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
© 2024 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
Distributed by U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND