Epitaph for Trump II, Part I

Ambitious empires always decline. They do so with a combination of over-spending... and overextending themselves militarily. Those risks, and their consequences, have been well known.

Monday, May 26th, 2025

Bill Bonner, from Buenos Aires

‘Maybe it’s time to begin an obituary for MAGA.’

—Dan Denning

‘To sum it up, gentlemen... we're in deep sh*t.’

—General Hentz in ‘Stalingrad’

Today we ‘jump the gun.’ The race hasn’t even been announced.

We’re talking about the dash to write an obituary for Trump II, Donald Trump’s second go-round in the White House.

It is, of course, far too early to pass judgement. More than three-and-a-half years are left for this administration. A eulogy would be reckless and premature. An appropriate epitaph might be like praising the Titanic before its encounter with the iceberg...or writing a history of the Lincoln presidency, before his visit to Ford’s Theater.

But we’ll take a shot at it anyway. A presidency is often defined by its ‘first 100 days.’ Those are over. What’s more, it is very likely that Republicans will lose their narrow majorities in the House and/or the Senate in the midterms (research shows that the party holding the Presidency has lost control of the House six times in American history in the mid-term election…but the last three times were in 2010, 2018, and 2022). From the National News Desk:

In the House, Republicans currently hold 220 of the 435 seats. That means if they lose just three seats, Democrats could reclaim the majority with 218. The Senate picture is slightly more complicated: Republicans have a 53–47 edge, but 35 seats are up for grabs in 2026, including two special elections in Florida and Ohio. For Democrats to flip the Senate, they’d need a net gain of four seats.

If Republicans lose control of Congress, they would be unable to act on any new initiatives...if they had any.

So hang the black crepe...sing the sad songs...and light a candle. Trump II is dead.

The real hope of Trump II, like Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, took the shape of a three-pronged attack. But as in the Third Reich’s ‘Barbarossa’ strategy, one thrust proved futile, another was suicidal, and the third...the one that really mattered... struck at the heart of the system, but lacked the support it needed to succeed.

There was also the weather; but who could have foreseen that?

And while WWII still had nearly two and a half years to run, the end was clearly in sight after the US declared war on Germany in 1941 and General Paulus surrendered at Stalingrad in 1943. A well-written death notice might have helped the Germans bring the war to a close then, and avoided millions of unnecessary casualties.

So, at the risk of being way too early...and wrong...let us look at today’s battlefield... in Washington, DC.

Amid much distraction — deporting immigrants and de-woking the society — Trump’s first serious attack was launched against ‘waste, fraud, and inefficiency’ and headed up by Elon Musk. Field Marshal Musk had already proven to be an almost invincible commander. In space, or deep underground...on the internet...or on the highway — Elon was unbeatable...arguably the most successful human being who ever lived. If he couldn’t identify waste, fraud and inefficiency, nobody could.

At first, his blitzkrieg rolled along nicely...sending the bureaucrats fleeing in riotous retreat. One agency was targeted...then another. Thousands of federal hacks were forced to lay down their laptops and turn in their security badges.

The DOGE effort, headed by Musk, would find savings of $2 trillion — it was promised — enough to eliminate the entire federal debt. Musk later confessed that that figure was ‘aspirational.’ One trillion was the new target. And finally, when Musk gave up his command, two weeks ago, his website showed $170 billion in savings, of which only $70 billion was thought to be genuine.

Still, many taxpayers held out hope of a ‘DOGE Dividend,’ in which they would share some of the savings. Few noticed that distributing the savings would defeat the purpose. No ‘savings’ at all would be left in the hands of the federal government...and no reduction in deficit or debt would be possible.

Like the northern prong of the German attack on the Soviet Union, Musk’s attack went nowhere. German forces arrived at St. Petersburg — aka Leningrad — in August 1941, and could go no further. The Wehrmacht tried to starve the city into surrender...tied down 750,000 of its own troops, along with innumerable tanks, guns, aircraft, trucks, and fuel...and failed.

And so did DOGE fail too. Begun with great fanfare and high hopes in January, by Memorial Day Musk was out of uniforms...and DOGE was, effectively, out of business.

And on May 22nd a federal judge ruled that the whole campaign strategy was flawed from the get-go. USA Today:

A federal judge on Thursday said President Donald Trump's administration cannot restructure and downsize the U.S. government without the consent of Congress and that she would likely extend her ruling blocking federal agencies from implementing mass layoffs. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston during a hearing in San Francisco agreed with a group of unions, nonprofits and municipalities that layoffs that began last month are likely illegal and would cause widespread harm to the public.

Die-hard Trump fans do not want to hear that their champion has failed.

But ambitious empires always decline. And they do so, generally, with a combination of over-spending... and overextending themselves militarily. Those risks, and their consequences, have been well known for at least 2,000 years.

And while Trump made headway in scouring the woke bias out of the federal government, universities, the media, and elsewhere... the deeper challenges were ignored and allowed to worsen.

Today, we’ve seen how the Wehrmacht’s attack to the north ran into a brick wall — literally — at Leningrad. Tomorrow, we’ll see how the thrust southward suffered a much worse setback. The German high command made the very foolish decision to send more than a million troops — German, Italian, Romanian and Hungarian — into the battle for Stalingrad. Only about half of them survived.

We’ll take a look, too, at Donald Trump’s second major line of attack — a remarkable assault on the whole structure of international trade and world prosperity.

Wait…on Friday morning came yet another frontal assault!

Stay tuned.

Regards,

Bill Bonner