For me, of course, the first thirty days of Trump have been exactly what I predicted and feared: a toxic stew of blustering, bigotry, incompetence, corruption, and “alternative facts.” I didn’t vote for him, however, so he doesn’t have to care about my opinions. The question for today is, how is he playing to his supporters?
It depends on your reasons for voting for him. If you’re part of the base, you voted for sturm und drang, and you’re getting exactly what you wanted. He promised to shake things up, and he has; if actual meaningful change has been slow, it is only because the corrupt establishment is so entrenched, and so vile. If you voted for him hesitantly out of party loyalty or economic self-interest, on the other hand, you’re worried about what you see, but you’re probably still hopeful that the adults will be called in to tame him and make him a model Republican. After all, even though the optics aren’t good, he hasn’t started a war or caused a market collapse or taken away your health insurance yet.
And so, for a permanent shift in opinion, we will have to wait on events. I think I might have been wrong about one thing, however; he can’t really muzzle the MSM, because he needs them as a foil. His battles with the media connect him with his base in a way that can’t be reproduced in any other fashion.
The problem, of course, is that he isn’t just the leader of his base, but that doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.