The first two weeks of President Donald Trump’s return tour of the White House have been a whirling dervish of executive orders, governmental reform and thermonuclear transparency, leaving his biggest fans in unmitigated ecstasy. But is he risking going too far, too fast?
On February 3, three issues dominated the news, all of which pitted the MAGA base’s impulse to burn it all down against the more independent Trump voters who want change, but in less radical doses.
The fight over the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was a perfect example of the fundamental tensions Trump is dealing with, and his approach to easing them.
At around midnight on February 2, Elon Musk, head of the still somewhat murky Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), announced during a conversation on his social media platform X that Trump had agreed that USAID must be ended.
Musk asserted that the agency wasn’t an apple with a worm in it, but just a ball of worms that could not be salvaged.
By morning, MAGA world was on fire, boasting about the latest alphabet agency scalp that DOGE had secured, but this was also likely around the time Secretary of State Marco Rubio was waking up, as the very real and senate confirmed Secretary of State, and realizing this whole situation is actually his problem.
Rubio spent much of the day giving interviews in which he said he had personally taken over administering USAID, that it would be folded into the State Department, and all programs reviewed, but stopped short of saying the agency would cease to exist, or that its core function, foreign aid, would be abandoned.
These are not mixed messages; they are different messages for different parts of the Trump coalition. It is a kind of good cop/bad cop routine in which Musk threatens to fire the entire federal government and Rubio says something like, ‘Wouldn’t you rather deal with me? I’m nice.’
This arrangement neatly allows Trump to stay, more or less, above the fray, and to judge public reaction to his proposed policies before settling on them.
We saw something similar on display the following day, with the tariff brinkmanship against Mexico and Canada. After months of promising harsh 25% tariffs on our closest neighbors, Trump pirouetted and jetéd back to a one-month reprieve having gained a few minor concessions.
Just as with USAID, Trump was making it clear that his finger is on the tariff trigger and that he is willing to pull it, even if he doesn’t want to.
Finally, that same day, we saw Trump float a proposal to continue aid to Ukraine in its war against Russia as long as Ukraine promises the United States access to the rare earth minerals deep in its soil.
Republican voters are split about 50/50 on money for Ukraine, and for those who back the blue and yellow news of continued aid was welcome.
But let’s be clear, much of the MAGA base at this point is opposed to sending Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky so much as a used toaster oven, and yet the president refused to throw the embattled nation, and the western order, under the bus.
So much for Trump being Russian President Vladimir Putin’s puppet. And what’s more, the stability Trump is maintaining puts a lot of nervous Americans at greater ease.
In all three major stories February 3, Trump used chaos to his advantage. To his most die-hard supporters he affirmed his willingness to take a hammer to the deep state, and to those less ardent in their affection, he showed patience and a willingness to compromise.
Just as with USAID, Trump was making it clear that his finger is on the tariff trigger and that he is willing to pull it, even if he doesn’t want to.
Trump was carried to a shock popular vote victory on the back of a new coalition of Republican and Independent voters. It is a diverse and growing gaggle that could open the door to generational political power, provided everyone feels they belong and are heard.
The author Henry Miller said that, ‘chaos is the score upon which reality is written,’ Trump seems to understand this in his bones, even his wavy blond locks express a controlled chaos.
And isn’t this ultimately what Americans voted for? Radical change under a steady hand, whether one’s emphasis is on the former or the latter?
So far, Donald Trump is giving the American people both, with breakneck speed, reforming government, while keeping the gears in motion. In other words, he is listening to the people who elected him and giving them what they asked for.