"Exceptions and exemptions are weakness," said a Trump adviser who has discussed tariff policy with him. "Trump is for strength."
Why it matters: President Trump's determination not to
appear weak — or wrong — on tariffs and his erratic, real-time tweaking of his
policy have confused investors, deflated the dollar and shaken the stock
market.
Investors and the nation's financial system crave stability and predictability — the opposite of what Trump's delivering.
Zoom in: The president's trade policies revolve less around
traditional economic theories and more around semantics — and his desire to
project power.
Amidst the dubious claims made by Tom Homan, the President's border czar maintained
El Salvador makes that decision. Now, the court says we have to facilitate. We'll facilitate but- but El Salvador has full authority on this. Again, a terrorist- now if somehow he comes back and that happens, he's going to be detained and removed again.
Homan on Abrego Garcia: "If somehow he comes back and that happens, he's gonna be detained and removed again ... what's the sense of bringing someone back who's simply going to face deportation again?" pic.twitter.com/VgKGvgLfnd
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 15, 2025
Obviously, Homan is lying when he claims "El Salvador has full authority" on whether Kilmer Abrego Garcia is released from one of the most brutal prisons in the world and returned to the USA. (And note to the US Supreme Court: this is an immigration issue, not a foreign affairs issue.) We got Homeland Security secretary Kristi "Dress Up" Noem into the prison and we got her out. We can do the same for anyone we want.
Nonetheless, what the public sees most clearly is that Garcia remains in El Salvador. Instead, in what Republicans won't acknowledge and Democrats are blind to, President Trump is in effect lowering the greatest superpower in world history to its knees. His failure to assert the power and authority of the United States of America to secure the release of the man they contend, with very limited evidence, is a member of MS-13 is an affirmation of American weakness.
The Donald Trump of today is relatively unchanged from the Donald Trump of 2019, when David Axelrod recognized that the President "is playing a role and the role, much like on 'The Apprentice,' was of the strong, able character but it's a role. Every foreign leader and every practicing politician has taken a measure of him and understands the basics, that he responds to strength and there's not a lot behind the facade."
Yet, there is a great opportunity for the Democratic Party to paint the portrait of President Trump as a pitiless, helpless giant. President Trump's popularity has not dropped since January 20, 2025 commensurate with the damage he has imposed upon the country, as well as aviation disasters and other factors beyond his control.
President Richard Nixon understood how important it is to the American people that we identify with our nation as being strong and dominant. Announcing on April 30, 1970 that he had ordered an incursion into Cambodia, Nixon explained
My fellow Americans, we live in an age of anarchy, both abroad and at home. We see mindless attacks on all the great institutions which have been created by free civilizations in the last 500 years. Even here in the United States, great universities are being systematically destroyed. Small nations all over the world find themselves under attack from within and from without.
If, when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.
Despite the nation being in apparent freefall, Donald Trump's approval rating stands at 48%, his disapproval rating only at 46%. The President is recognized as doing things, though most of them bad. he is seen as being in charge, despite having created a co-presidency with Elon Musk. Most of all, he appears to the public as being strong.
The memory of Donald Trump, playing a strong man (now being a strongman) in The Apprentice lingers. He is viewed as being in control because that's the role he is playing because he realizes Americans respond to a perception of strength.
It's critical that Democrats break that, in part because voters will continue to believe K.A. Garcia is a terrorist, whatever the evidence. Democrats must uniformly slam Trump because he is the head of an extraordinarily powerful nation who is unable to force a tinpot dictator from Central America to do as he wishes.
In December of 2002, Bill Clinton stated "We (Democrats) have got to be strong. When we look weak in a time where people feel insecure, we lose. When people feel uncertain, they'd rather have somebody who's strong and wrong than somebody who's weak and right."
People sense that liberals, wedded to facts and reality, usually are right. Democratic pundits and politicians frequently maintain that most people are with them on the issues. Yet, Republicans now control the White House and both houses of Congress. "Wrong and strong," they are not, or at least that's how they appear to most voters. Donald Trump consistently appears, inaccurately, as strong and roughly half the country approves of the guy who could be no more horrific were he trying to be so. It's time to It's time to wrest Elon Musk's chainsaw from him and bust up the myth of a manly Donald Trump.
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