A short time ago I got email from a TPM reader with a version of this question: Josh, are you sure there's going to be a November election? Because everything I'm seeing tells me they don't think there are any consequences, even political consequences, coming from any of this. It wasn't a challenge so much as a question: are you sure? I have no way to predict the future. But yes, I am as confident there's going to be a November election as I've ever been. I'm not trying to get in an argument about that. This is my opinion. You might have another.
A couple months ago, I said that we were starting to see a pattern. As Trump grew less popular and less powerful at home, he would need to compensate to maintain his psychic equilibrium. He'd lean more and more into the presidency's prerogative powers that are untrammeled and unrestrained regardless of what's going on at home or how much support he has. He'll be increasingly aggressive and violent in those realms of power and he'll become more constrained and limited in others. In Trump's world, there is dominating and there is being dominated. For him, the latter is a psychic death. So leaning hard into these prerogative powers where a president is, in effect, all powerful amounts to a kind of grand and bloody self-care.
There's less logic to it than most imagine. Sure, there's a backstory to Venezuela and Iran and Cuba and Greenland and whatever other country is next. But Trump has a constant stream of courtiers and toadies hitting him up with all sorts of insane or absurd ideas. The difference now is that he seems to be saying yes to all of them at once as long as they're within those prerogative powers where he can do anything he wants. As I said above, I can't predict the future with certainty. I can only tell you what I think about the November election. To my mind, Trump is doing these things abroad precisely because he's lost control of the situation at home.
Let me give you a few examples from the last 24 hours. News reporting suggests that Iran's Assembly of Experts will choose Ali Khamenei's son Mojtaba as his successor. President Trump insisted Mojtaba is not acceptable to him and that he, Trump, will have final say over who becomes Iran's next leader. "I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodriguez] in Venezuela," Trump told Axios.
Earlier today, CNN's Dana Bash managed to get Trump on the phone. He wanted to talk about Cuba which he insists will "fall pretty soon." He also insists that he's going to be give Secretary of State Marco Rubio, already subbing in as National Security Advisor, yet another job as what sounds like Viceroy of Cuba. "Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon, by the way, unrelated, but Cuba is gonna fall too," he told CNN. "They want to make a deal so badly. They want to make a deal, and so I'm going to put Marco [Rubio] over there and we'll see how that works out. We're really focused on this one right now. We've got plenty of time, but Cuba's ready — after 50 years."
Trump continued: "I've been watching it for 50 years, and it's fallen right into my lap because of me, it's fallen, but it's nevertheless fallen right into the lap. And we're doing very well."
All of this is is rooted in Trump's psyche, which is as transparent as he is malevolent. His need to compensate for ebbing power is inevitable and unstoppable. Each day there are more interview monologues like this with grandiose expressions of his absolute power, now more abroad than at home. Every president has his needs and his drives, his levers of compensation to pull when things go south. But there's never been a presidency this deeply personalized, with almost all the padding and assistanting and delegation already stripped away. So all of us, not just at home but increasingly abroad, are along for this ride.
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