Trump, Booker, Musk, tariffs: reading tea leaves of an extraordinary week
President Donald Trump, from left, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Elon Musk. Credit: AP, dpa-Zentralbild Pool
Well, that was a week. The kind of week that makes you wish you could see deep into the future to learn how history will record it. A blip or a boulder? A particle or a pivot? A fleeting moment in time or something with very long tendrils?
It was the kind of week that produced such a whiplash of news that even some ground-shifting election results Tuesday were specks in the rear view mirror by Friday. Which is not to say they ceased to have significance, just that we quickly lost sight of them. At some point, they will come back.
The week was a reminder that life, like politics, is a long game. And that no matter the stimulus, overreacting is seldom productive. Things rarely are as good or as bleak as they seem at the moment. And right now we are barraged with goodness and bleakness, depending on your perspective, on a more-than-daily basis. These days, each and every one, are truly extraordinary in the literal sense of the word, in the Latin root of extraordinary as being outside the normal course of events.
The question then becomes: How to read these abnormalities?
Take the Democrats. They were deep in the dumps, rudderless and floundering by their own estimation, firing at each other in a no-win blame game. Then New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker provided a jolt of energy with a record-breaking 25-hour speechathon about the dangers of the Trump administration, election results in a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice race and two Florida congressional contests proved favorable for the party out of power, and President Donald Trump’s tariffs upended the world, and suddenly the party believes it has recovered its mojo.
Next week or next month or next hour could easily find it in a funk again. Heck, by the end of the week came word that a new poll had liberal firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez leading establishment Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a distant potential 2028 primary. The new mojo apparently contains old notes of discord.
Take the Republicans. They’ve been riding high since November. Many party supporters have been enthralled with Trump’s deportation campaign, spending cuts, culture war broadsides, and attacks on elite universities. But then came news that some deportees were not violent felons, and conservative commentators like Joe Rogan and Ann Coulter began pushing back on Trump’s immigration crackdown. Wisconsin voters seemed to reject Elon Musk’s attempt to buy democracy, an argument many have made via their donations if not quite so crassly as Musk.
And, midweek, Trump’s tariffs. The promise of them was one thing, the execution another. Blowback has been fierce with even some up-to-now servile Republicans in Congress vocally pressing pause. Four Republican senators voted for a measure to revoke Trump’s tariffs on Canada, and GOP stalwart Sen. Chuck Grassley introduced legislation to reassert the authority of Congress over tariffs.
White House talking points to the rattled denizens of Capitol Hill were that Trump was “revolutionizing” global trade. And that might end up being true, though not in the way intended. If the president insists on keeping his tariffs affixed, we might find ourselves in a world where the U.S. is no longer the fulcrum, our allies are no longer as responsive, and the dollar is no longer as preeminent. That would indeed be a revolution.
But that could just as easily not be where we end up. And Republicans could easily find their stride again when the news cycle lurches in another direction.
Moments do have meaning, but give way to other moments with meaning. Panic rarely does anyone any good. Patience and steadily fighting one’s good fight are more productive. Good ideas, one hopes, will win out.
In Wisconsin, Musk said the course of Western civilization and the destiny of humanity were on the line.
Hyperbole, of course. Our destiny will be determined next week.
Columnist Michael Dobie’s opinions are his own.
Michael Dobie is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
