'Backtracking and blowing things up' defines Trump’s 'whiplash' second year: report

If Americans during President Donald Trump’s first term were exhausted by his “controversy and chaos,” they now appear to be similarly distressed by his “backtracking and blowing things up,” according to a report by Politico.

In the second year of his second term, President Trump “intensified the volatility” from year one “with a succession of whiplash-inducing policy swings, several of which have almost immediately withered in the face of Republican opposition and public outcry.”

For example, the Trump administration just withdrew thousands of federal law enforcement officers from Minneapolis, following the two violent deaths of U.S. citizens and after “clashes with protesters turned the tide of public opinion against the president’s immigration crackdown.”

There is the Greenland gambit, which appears to be paused, at least for now. There were the “Liberation Day” tariffs he announced in April, only to partially, but quickly, lower them “within days following tremors in global bond markets.”

Trump threatened to decertify Canadian aircraft, then dropped the threat. He declared he would drop credit card interest rates to ten percent, then dropped that, too, and in a rare move, asked Congress for legislation to do so. His push to create 50-year mortgages appears to have subsided.

He paused millions of dollars in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding for state programs, then reversed course about a day later.

“The whiplash has real implications,” Chrissie Juliano, the executive director of the Big Cities Health Coalition, told Politico. “It’s incredibly disruptive, even if you can get back to continuing the work, you know, two days later.”

Domestically and internationally, Trump’s “unpredictability” has become a “feature, not a bug.”

“In many matters, especially negotiations with other countries, his mercurial opacity is often an attempt to gain leverage, but his threats seemingly lead just as often to backtracking as blowing things up, be they Iranian missile depots, Venezuelan drug boats or the transatlantic alliance,” Politico reported.

The risks are real.

“Even proposals that don’t ultimately move forward have consequences,” a financial industry insider, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly without fear of blowback from the White House, told Politico. “Markets react. Issuers reassess risk. When policymakers float price controls, it creates uncertainty that can translate into tighter underwriting and reduced access — particularly for higher-risk or lower-income consumers.”

Trump’s poll numbers are now at the lowest point of his second term, Republican pollster Whit Ayres told Politico.

“There’s a sense that this is a pretty chaotic administration and seems to remind people of the pandemic period in the first term,” Ayres said.

When a president’s approval rating is above 50 percent, the party in the White House loses House seats in the midterms, “but not that many,” Ayres noted. “When the president’s job approval is below, the average loss of seats is 32.”

Ayres “said that Trump’s approval numbers largely mirror those from his first term, when the public over four years grew exhausted by constant controversy and chaos.”

“Joe Biden’s fundamental message in 2020 was to restore normalcy,” Ayres said. “And that seemed to be persuasive to enough people to get him elected.”

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