The Blunderbuss President

Between January 2017 and January 2021, I woke at dawn every single day, all 1,461 of them, and lunged for my phone to see what the con man in the Oval Office had done while I slept. At the time it felt like being married to an arsonist with Wi-Fi.

Then it ended, though not quietly. Unable to say the words "you lost", he tried to take the job back by insurrection, which is what great statesmen do when the paperwork doesn't go their way.

Back in private life, he returned to his true calling. His casinos, steaks, vodka, university, and airline had all failed long before politics, so he sold the one product left on the shelf: himself. Seventy-seven million Americans bought it. Like a recurring nightmare with a bigger budget, the sequel opened, and now I don't just check the phone at dawn; I creep out of bed at 2 a.m. to make sure I haven't missed anything.

But something has changed. For the first time in a decade, I can smell the consequences.

Start with the tariffs, fired at the entire planet and sold as an economic masterstroke, with Canada singled out for special treatment (nothing says "ally" like a punch in the mouth). The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, not exactly the Socialist Worker, has a name for it: "blunderbuss trade wars." A blunderbuss, for anyone who skipped the Napoleonic era, is a gun that sprays in every direction and hits whatever happens to be nearby. That is the doctrine. Point, fire, and hope the target is somewhere in the smoke.

Now check the scoreboard. On Friday, diesel hit a record $6.44 a gallon, thanks to his "forever war" in the Middle East, the one he swore he'd never start. Turns out "never" has a shelf life, and it's shorter than a tank of diesel.

J.P. Morgan, hardly a hotbed of Marxism, admitted: "We simply don't know how to model the endgame." Don't feel bad, J.P. Neither does Donny. Neither does anyone, which in this administration is as close as we get to bipartisanship. The difference is that J.P. Morgan owned up to it. The president is out there telling the base that America is winning, the country is in a golden age, and Iran is begging for a deal. He once promised we'd win so much we'd get tired of winning. Mission accomplished on the tired part.

Tehran, as an adviser to the Supreme Leader says, sees it differently. The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until Donald and his pal Benjamin Netanyahu are out of their respective offices. So the peace terms are, in fact, a resignation letter, in duplicate. Say what you like about Iran; it has certainly mastered the art of the deal: one demand, two names, no room for a counter-offer. That doesn't sound like winning. It doesn't even sound like a draw.

Then Bloomberg reported that Saudi Arabia has told Europe's refiners there will be no crude for them next month because the East-West pipeline is out of action. One of the world’s great oil exporters is now sending out "sorry, we're closed" notices like a bakery on Christmas Day. It was enough to make the president choke on a Big Mac.

Regular gas is already $4.47 a gallon, and nothing puts the voting public in a forgiving mood like a trip to the pump, where every fill-up now comes with a free lesson in foreign policy. Economists say it will get worse. Donny says it's fake news, a bold position to take against a number glowing red at the corner gas station.

So he fired the second barrel straight at the press. After a week of headlines about soaring prices, the president announced he was banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, and warned that other outlets would follow suit if they didn't write nice things about him. The First Amendment be damned. Asked why, he said: "No reason." It's probably the most honest thing he's said all year.

By Friday evening, CNN's reporters were still at their White House desks, and even some of his own press staff had reportedly learned of the ban online. The man who can't run a country can't even run a blacklist.

The timing was interesting, too. CNN and Politico had both spent the day on Pentagon stories that weren't exactly flattering, and the Pentagon, where they run wars for a living, had a rough week.

CNN reported that this spring the US military set out to intercept a Chinese ship in the Middle East after an intelligence report claimed it was carrying components for a nuclear weapons programme. Boarding parties were being readied, and aircraft were in the air. Then someone noticed the report had been generated by AI and, in one source's words, was "entirely false." A chatbot hallucinated a nuclear freighter, and the most expensive military on Earth very nearly took it at face value. Hegseth's Pentagon, which has previously shown what it can do with a group chat, has now shown what it can do with a chatbot. At least the software is in good company: the Commander-in-Chief has been confusing fantasy with fact since 2015.

Meanwhile, a shipment of F-35 parts, en route from Australia to the US for repairs, was reportedly diverted to Hong Kong and disappeared. Hong Kong, in case anyone at the Pentagon needs a map, is in China. This is the most expensive weapons programme in history, and someone has just shipped the parts to the competition, with free delivery. Somewhere in Beijing, a roomful of very clever engineers is unwrapping the finest free upgrade they've ever received.

The campaign trail isn't a picnic either. A Fox News poll (Fox!) shows voters trusting Democrats over Republicans on inflation and prices, 55 to 40. In 2022, Republicans held that edge, 49 to 40. That's a 24-point swing, the only thing this administration has delivered ahead of schedule.

So Donny now has an affordability crisis, an oil crisis, an Iran crisis, a military crisis, and, for anyone feeling left out, a deportation crisis. Republicans are beginning to feel they ordered one crisis, but the kitchen sent out the whole menu. Their strategy is to beg in private and cheer in public. Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, a loud tariff fan on television, has been quietly asking whether manufacturers back home might receive an exemption. Katie, you cheered for the Tariffer-in-Chief. Now you get to live with him.

The Trump endorsement, once the Holy Grail of Republican primaries, is now treated like a bad rash. In Texas, more than twenty current and former Republican officials have backed Democrat James Talarico rather than Trump's man, Ken Paxton. The president says Talarico looks like Alfred E. Neuman of MAD Magazine. "What, me worry?" Come to think of it, that is the White House's entire crisis-management strategy.

Karl Rove, once known as "Bush's Brain," has published "Why I'm Voting for a Texas Democrat," citing what he calls Paxton's raw racism and Trump's elbowing John Cornyn out of his own Senate seat. When Karl Rove has found a conscience, the party is in trouble.

Hispanic voters won’t ride to the rescue. Even loyalist Maria Elvira Salazar has gone on air to say the administration has gone too far, noting that half of the 50,000 people detained in July had no criminal record. Everyone's mother, father, brother, sister and half the cousins have been through ICE's hands. I wouldn't count on their gratitude or their votes.

Then there's JD Vance, who this week asked voters to "give us another chance" before hurriedly correcting himself to "another couple of years". Nobody asks for another chance unless they know what they did with the first. And voters may be forgiven for hearing "a couple of years" as a sentence.

So, Mr. President, put the blunderbuss away. Every shot has missed, and the only foot left to shoot is your own.

I'll be awake at 2 a.m. tonight, phone in hand, as usual. The arsonist is still in the house. But for the first time in a decade, I'm not checking to see what he's set alight. I'm checking to see who's turned up with the hose