Washington Merry-Go-Round

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 7 November 2025
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column, Founded 1932
The Trump Bubble
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – Although Queen Marie Antoinette did not actually say, “Let them eat cake,” the sentiment has served as a callous disregard of the Haves for the Have-nots and epitomizes what we are witnessing in America today, as the disregard and disdain encompass everything from subsistence to senselessness, and someone – we know not whom – in the White House is setting the stage.
Is it the president or simply those who have the president’s ear? He has been known to run with the last advice he heard. What is clear is that the president is becoming increasingly isolated, even in a bubble disconnected from the public, ala Queen Antoinette, to wit:
While he is golfing and entertaining Gatsby style at Mar-a-Lago or pursuing the Nobel Peace Prize by engaging and meeting with foreign leaders, American leaders are left in a quandary. He refuses to meet with Democratic leaders or intervene with members of his own party to end the government shutdown, except to demand that they remove the filibuster from the Senate rules, a nonstarter because Republicans know they will not always be in the majority.
Meanwhile, food for the needy under the SNAP program languishes. The funds have long been approved by Congress, but the president said he will not release all of them despite a court order, which he is appealing. Yes, he is taking time off from his leisure activities to ensure that people in need, and children in particular, are denied subsistence. This loss of touch or care is incomprehensible unless he has simply become a mouthpiece for ear whisperers.
The list continues. Insurance credits under Obamacare are about to expire, and insurance rates for people dependent upon those credits are going to jump unless Congress extends them. But the president and the majority of Republicans in Congress do not like Obamacare, which is fine if they have a viable alternative, which they have yet to divulge. As a result, the only way Democrats can extend those credits is to attach the funding to the CR (Continuing Resolution) that funds the government. They well know that the Republican offer of bringing Obamacare credits to a vote after the CR is passed would have no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Congress or gaining the president’s signature if they did.
Life in a bubble insulates the president from the nagging details of running the government, so he bypasses Constitutional, international, and regulatory constraints, ordering the Navy to blow Venezuelan boats out of the water rather than following UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on Law of the Seas), which entails boarding and searching craft suspected of criminal activity. He has released ICE agents to ignore racial profiling and other unconstitutional restraints. He ordered the demolition of the White House East Wing to make way for a ballroom, bypassing the National Capital Planning Commission.
And, of course, there are those pesky tariffs, for which he bypassed everyone, including the members of Congress who have the Constitutional authority to levy such taxes. For this, he relied on the president’s emergency powers under the Constitution, a reliance based on bogus emergencies. The Supreme Court weighed in on this and is likely to overturn those tariffs.
Using other imagined emergencies, he ordered the National Guard and some U.S. military troops to patrol several U/S/ cities, all without state governors’ requests or input from Congress.
The list goes on and on, with him shuttering Congressionally approved agencies, withholding disbursement of Congressionally approved funds, firing civil servants without cause, instructing the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies, etc.
So, if the Common Man is not his constituency and Congress and the courts are not his leash, to whom is he playing and playing with? We need only look at what he dubbed his Big Beautiful Bill of tax breaks for the wealthy, including a reduction from 37 percent to 29.6 percent created by “business pass-throughs,” the bonus depreciation allowing a 100 percent deduction in one year, raising the estate tax exemption to $30 million for a couple, and raising the exclusion on capital gains.
What this wading in the weeds of tax policy means is that his billionaire buddies are the beneficiaries, and no one epitomizes this more than Elon Musk, whose public company just granted him a conditional pay package of $1.1 trillion. This deserves repetition: $1.1 trillion.
All of this is astounding, and even looks intricate, but there is no intricacy when operating from a bubble detached from reality, regulations, or oversight.
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
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END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND