Avoid the Trump Trap

From Maduro to Iran to the Fed, reflexive resistance risks turning the left into defenders of an indefensible status quo. Don't fall for it, Corbin Trent argues

Is your autocrat’s enemy your friend?

Donald Trump’s accelerating pressure campaign to remove Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell came to a head this weekend with Powell’s startling video announcement that the Department of Justice had served the Fed with grand jury subpoenas and was threatening a criminal indictment centering on Powell’s alleged mismanagement of the renovation of his agency’s headquarters.

The threats have provoked a powerful response, with politicians across the spectrum — from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to formerly recalcitrant Republicans like Senator Thom Tillis — leaping to defend Powell and the Federal Reserve.

But in his guest essay today, Corbin Trent, the political strategist and publisher of America’s Undoing, asks: When so many leaders rush to defend Powell and his institution, what exactly are they defending?

In the essay, Trent makes a provocative argument: In rushing to be against the authoritarian things Trump does, his opposition sometimes risks falling into the trap of defending indefensible things. Trent argues for a delicate balancing act of fighting Trump’s methods without (on the Fed, Iran, or Venezuela) standing for the status quo.

Read on for Trent’s thoughts.

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We bring you this post courtesy of Corbin Trent and America’s Undoing, where you can read all of Trent’s thinking on the future of democracy and the political left.

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By Corbin Trent

The Trump administration is not like any we’ve had before. They are uniquely lawless. Uniquely shameless. Uniquely corrupt. Uniquely bad for this country. I want that out of the way first.

Now.

Friday, the Department of Justice hit the Federal Reserve with grand jury subpoenas. They’re threatening to indict Jerome Powell. The excuse is something about building renovations going over budget. The real reason is Powell won’t cut interest rates to 1% when Trump tells him to.

Powell put out a video Sunday night. Called it what it is. A pretext. He’s right. Using prosecution to bully the Fed chair into rate cuts is wrong. It’s dangerous.

But none of that makes Jerome Powell a hero.

Here’s the trap. Trump does something lawless. We oppose it. Then opposing the method becomes defending the target. Suddenly we’re not just saying “you can’t prosecute the Fed chair to get rate cuts.” We’re defending the Fed itself. Treating Powell like some guardian of integrity instead of asking what his institution actually did.

So let’s ask.

Since 1950, median income went up about 21 times. Sounds good until you see what that money buys. Housing went up 58 times. Healthcare up 175 times. A four-year degree up 114 times. Childcare went from something most families didn’t need - one income handled a household - to an expense that eats a quarter of what many families make.

The Fed says inflation averaged around 2% through all this. That number is a lie.

Your car costs $5,000 more but they call it cheaper because it has a backup camera. Your house doesn’t show up at what it actually costs - they use some made-up rent number instead. Healthcare explodes but they only count what you pay out of pocket. The nation drowns in debt to cover the rest. Their index stays flat.

Here’s what’s baked into all of it. They assume you’ll just accept less. Roommates in your apartment. Older cars. Crap processed food. And when you adjust, that’s not inflation. That’s you adapting.

Think about what that means. Your ability to accept a worse life is proof that prices didn’t go up. You can survive on less, so things aren’t really more expensive.

That’s bullshit. That’s not the mission. That’s not the promise. That’s a manipulation. That’s cause for a firing.

A Fed chair can be removed for cause. For not doing their job. What do you call presiding over all this while claiming prices are stable?

But Trump’s not making that argument. He doesn’t care that housing eats ten years of your life. He wants cheap money flowing into asset markets. He’s not after accountability. He’s after leverage.

Same dynamic just played out with Venezuela.

Maduro is a violent authoritarian. Economic collapse. Millions fled. He deserves to answer for that. But look at what we did. Trump kidnapped Maduro. Killed more than a hundred people doing it. Used a plane disguised as a private aircraft to blow up a boat. This is what we do now. Whatever we want because we can.

Meanwhile, China’s building. Infrastructure in Latin America. Clean drinking water in Africa. Electrification. Technology. They’re winning contracts and making friends across the planet. Not with missiles and bombs and kidnapping. With roads and power plants.

We’re backing another lawless regime. This time it’s us.

We opposed Trump’s Venezuela policy. Rightly. And somehow that got turned into “supporting Maduro.” It didn’t. We opposed the method. We still knew the target had real failures.

Same trap now with Powell.

When a president acts like a thug, everyone he goes after becomes a victim. Even when they’re not. Even when they’ve got victims of their own. Powell can be a target of Trump’s lawlessness and a failure at his job. Maduro can be a victim of American thuggery and a brutal dictator. Both things true at once.

Our system is broken for most of us. I’m not talking about the poor. I’m talking about 250 million Americans. We run faster and faster and go nowhere. We take on debt just to stay in place. Groceries on credit cards. Retirement pushed back another decade.

We’re breaking.

Look at Iran. Those protests aren’t just about headscarves. People risk their lives for freedom. But also for a shot at a decent life. Work that means something.

That desperation is here too. And that lawlessness trickles down. It doesn’t stay in the White House or the DOJ. It hits the pavement. ICE just killed Renee Good in the street. We’re losing our hearts. Our souls. Our minds. Turning on each other. More tribal every day. Looking for someone weaker to blame.

But it’s not them.

Not the Somalis. Not the Mexicans. Not the Hondurans or Venezuelans or Cubans. Not the Chinese. They didn’t do this to us.

We let it happen. Our leaders went corporate decades ago. The C-suites have worked against us for generations. They captured the Fed. Captured the regulators. Wrote the trade deals. Shuttered the factories and built condos in their place. Shipped the jobs. Kept the money.

Now we’re desperate enough to believe anyone who says they’ll burn it down. Even when he’s one of them.

So here we are with two fights ahead of us. Both massive. Both necessary.

We fight authoritarianism. Trump’s lawlessness. The DOJ as a weapon. Kidnapping foreign leaders. Killing people in our streets. Methods matter. Rule of law matters. At home and abroad.

And we fight the system that opened the door for him. The Fed that failed us. Regulators owned by industry. A Supreme Court that said presidents are above the law. Fifty years of our country being sold off.

Do just one and we lose.

Beat Trump but save the captured institutions? We get another Trump. Smarter. More disciplined. Riding the same desperation because nothing underneath changed.

Tear it all down but let an authoritarian hold the tools? We get what we have now. Power used to take, not to build.

We have to do both. Next two years we make a lot of choices. Primaries. Local races. Independents where the Democratic brand can’t win. We need candidates who see both fights. Who oppose Trump’s methods but still demand accountability from his targets. Who know the difference between protecting democracy and protecting the people who failed us.

Trump didn’t keep winning because things were going great. He won because people are desperate. The answer isn’t defending every institution he attacks.

We can’t just be the bodyguards for a broken status quo. We have to build something actually worth defending.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Don’t want to be stuck defending the indefensible? Listen to our interview with Corbin Trent from this past October on his plan for what those interested in building democracy should be doing instead.

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Photo by Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images