Thursday, November 5th, 2026
Bill Bonner, from Ardmore, Ireland
“Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.”
—Remark supposedly made by Professor William T Kelley
The elections are over. The ballots counted. The king is dead. At least, many people seem to hope so.
And here’s the Wall Street Journal with a post-mortem:
Rarely in American politics has a president traded away so much political support so quickly.
The losses that Republicans suffered on Tuesday marked one of the most decisive repudiations of a president in modern history. President Trump had re-entered the White House with advantages he lacked in his first term: A victory in the popular vote, a cadre of aides eager to expand his authority and cultural currency that had NFL players doing the “Trump dance” in the end zone.
Only two years later, his political standing has collapsed… A war of choice with Iran and tariffs imposed on U.S. trading partners betrayed his promise to avoid foreign entanglements and tame inflation.
As for the man himself, he blames the media for Republicans’ grim night. MSN:
President Donald Trump lashed out at Fox News as he tried to blame the news network for the GOP’s devastating midterm losses. The Republican said the conservative news channel “bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse.”
Fox News, meanwhile, blames Trump:
Conservatives stunned by ‘catastrophic’ midterm blue tsunami, blame Trump’s Iran war, high gas prices
The real trouble was that Trump set out to be a ‘strong man’ leader...a Caesar...a Duce...a hero to the masses. But he just wasn’t any better at despotism than he was at running a casino or a university. His enterprises almost all failed. Now, his ‘strong man’ presidency has gone belly up too.
‘L’etat, c’est moi’ he might have said if he had had more of an historical perspective. He might have taken Juan Peron as his model, if he had ever read a history book...or maybe even Julius Caesar. There, the similarities were striking. Caesar famously crossed the Rubicon; hadn’t Trump crossed the East River?
All along, Trump’s brainpower was vastly exaggerated...especially by himself. It was thought to be so outstanding that neither education, creed, nor ideology was needed; the truth just came to him, without study or reflection, like manna to the Israelites. He could play his ‘three dimensional chess,’ relying on his own unfailing instincts and stable genius gifts.
He sang from neither the Liberal songbook, nor the Conservatives’ old time favorites. Instead, he made ‘deals.’ He was a disrupter. But he did so like a drunk who turns left when GPS says to turn right. But then, Trump had no idea where he was going.
It might have turned out much differently. Had he actually stayed awake when he was at the Wharton School, for example, he would have known what every sophomore knows — that tariffs were likely to cause domestic price increases.
And had he bothered to acquaint himself with Athens’ disastrous misadventure in Sicily...or Guy de Lusignan’s parched crusaders on the Horns of Hattin...or even the freezing Wehrmacht at the gates of Moscow...he might have learned that ‘lethality’ is a word for recruiting sergeants, not for military strategists. Real leaders put their thinking caps on under their battle helmets.
And if he hadn’t purged his competent military advisors, replacing them with numbskulls like Pete Hegseth, they would have told him that a war with Iran was likely to be more trouble than it was worth.
And now it is he, his family and his cronies who face the ‘incoming.’ They’re getting their stories straight already, rehearsing like schoolboys waiting outside the principal’s office. They’ll soon need to tell them to hostile inquisitors. MSN:
Top Democrat tells Trump and Republicans to lawyer up after US midterm defeats
And poor Mr. Trump will hand out pardons like Halloween candy.
What a shame. After so many exceptional highlights to his long career, here is another one. Mr. Trump is now the lamest duck to ever waddle across the White House lawn. We’ve never seen anything like it. Repudiated high and low, far and wide...in the most dramatic mid-term turnaround in US history...what can he do now?
The good news is that he says he’ll do what he should have been doing all along. El Cronista:
Veto, veto, veto: Donald Trump says he’ll kill every bill a Democratic Congress sends him after Tuesday — and there’s almost no way to overrule him
The veto is the perfect tool for him. It requires no real skill or preparation. Just say ‘no.’ And if he says no to enough spending measures...who knows...he may redeem himself.
But Trump’s trouble all along was that he could never figure out a reasonable course of action, and stick with it. That was true even of the strong man role; bobbing, weaving, whirlwind-ing and non-sequitur-ing...he just couldn’t buckle down to the task at hand.
In his business career, same thing. He jumped from one sinking ship to another, shrewdly leaving creditors and investors without even life preservers.
Where Trump was successful was on TV — where his lines and his character were written out for him. But in the White House...at 2 am on Truth Social...he was on his own. He had to write his own lines and develop his own character. And a surprisingly large part of the population didn’t like the script. He said things he shouldn’t have said. He made deals he shouldn’t have made. He made enemies where he should have made friends. He made war where he should have made peace.
And now, his race run...his hour upon the stage strutted and fretted away...he will growl, like an old dog at the mailman...snarling at the press, and then limping away, occasionally forgetting who he is talking to...sometimes falling asleep in cabinet meetings...and generally acting like the disgraced codger he is.
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Wow! For someone who lives in Ireland, Paris, and Argentina most of every year I don't know how you are even qualified to write what you write.
The Donald has tackled some huge problems for the U.S. - i.e. illegal immigration, fraud, etc.
The Donald also has a lot of faults which you so often like to call out.
Our whole political system sucks. The press sucks even more. We should mind our own business and just sit back and wait for the nuke(s) to land.
Won't be renewing my subscription.
Perhaps you should have pursued a political career in lieu of wine making.
Please let me know how to follow Tom Dyson without following you.
Thank God I am an old timer from MN and don't have many of these years of shit left.
I have seen some stats from past presidencies. Trump is down 25 in the House? But Obama and Clinton both lost more in their midterms.