Trump tells MAGA to prepare for "disturbance"

In his speech to Congress Trump told his base what he didn't say on the campaign trail: He's not bringing prices down now and the tariffs will cause pain. It exposed his fears about the economy.

Donald Trump’s speech to Congress was a boilerplate Trump screed, filled with horrendous lies, over-the-top boasting and hateful attacks on transgender people (you can read the fact-checking, otherwise I’d be here for days), all of which was sickeningly applauded by his cult followers in the GOP.

But there were some subtle twists and turns. Trump wasn’t speaking to the American people. He was solely speaking to his MAGA base, having given up on ever reaching anyone else. As ugly as his speeches were during his first presidency, he always held out the delusional hope that he’d bring people in to his vile governance, that they’d come around or whatever. But no more. This speech reflected the essence of governing from the minority, and cementing authoritarianism.

Trump even admitted as much when he stated there was nothing he could say that would make Democrats in the room applaud him, and, in true dictator style, admonished them for not cheering his supposed accomplishments:

I look at the Democrats in front of me, and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud, nothing I can do.

I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations or announce the answers to the greatest economy in history, or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded, and these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements.

Of course, Trump has not cured any devastating disease. He actually mismanaged Covid and caused more death and suffering than there ever should have been. Nor will he cure any disease, not after having slashed the National Institutes of Health budget and workforce, and putting an inexperienced crackpot, RFK Jr., in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services. And no person with any morals would be cheering him in that room for wreaking havoc on the country and the world and bragging about it.

As his approval drops, most Americans are with the Democrats in the room, concerned and often angry about what Trump and Elon Musk have done. But Trump truly doesn’t care about the majority. He’s consolidating power, as the speech showed over and over, and ruling as a monarch.

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He has his loyal minority, which includes an even smaller cult of super-loyalists willing to do anything—including promoting or engaging in the violence we saw on January 6th—and those are the people to whom he spoke. But he seemed to realize the perils of this approach because if that minority is not happy, the rug can be pulled out from under him.

After having heralded tariffs as the be-all and end-all during the campaign, Trump now warned his based that there will be a “little disturbance,” then added, “but we’re okay with that. It won’t be much.” He’s telling them to take the pain and promising them it won’t last long. This might not seem like a lot, but it’s something he never did on the campaign trail. And he spoke last night after the markets tanked and economists warned of a recession—even a massive depression.

From the Wall Street Journal yesterday, on the day of his speech:

The world economy could face a crash similar to the Great Depression of the 1930s unless the U.S. rows back on its plans to impose steep tariffs on imports, a senior official at the International Chamber of Commerce warned.

“Our deep concern is that this could be the start of a downward spiral that puts us in 1930s trade-war territory,” said Andrew Wilson, deputy secretary-general of the ICC, which promotes global business and trade.

High tariffs on foreign goods imported into the U.S. in that decade contributed to a damaging global recession. The downturn plunged nearly a third of the global workforce into unemployment and slashed production at heavyweight industrial economies Germany and the U.S. by half, according to research from the International Monetary Fund.

Trump was indeed on the defensive at times, not mentioning the plummeting markets—and the stock market is what he always heralded as a mark of his success—and claiming interest rates dropped, a “big beautiful drop” (mortgage rates had an ever-so-slight downturn in recent days), while laughably blaming Joe Biden for the price of eggs.

That was pretty ludicrous, as egg prices have soared the most from the end of January until now, under his watch, while the administration has done nothing to address bird flu, except for Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins idiotically telling us to raise chickens in our backyards.

Trump then launched into a litany of things he will do to bring down prices—all of them long-term, vague projects (“drill baby, drill!”) that will take time and won’t do much—when he had promised that prices would drop on day one of his presidency. Looking at his weak numbers on the economy and inflation, Americans—including many Republicans—believe he’s not making it a priority or that his actions have made it worse rather than better. It’s hard to see this speech doing much to change perceptions.

As stated at the top, the speech was all lies, bragging and brutal, hateful attacks on people. I want to point to the vicious vilification of transgender people, as it was perhaps worse than ever. It was a theme throughout the speech. He kept coming back to assailing gender-affirming care, claiming there are only two genders, insinuating transgender people are mentally sick and accusing schools of indoctrinating children into a “transgender ideology.” He had people in the audience whom he focused on, people doing anti-trans work, whom he heralded, and had the Republicans in the room applaud them. It was grotesque.

The attacks on trans people and the defensiveness about the economy worked in tandem. Trump’s admission that there will be “disturbance” told us he’s worried about the tariffs and what’s happening in the economy. The attacks on trans people were meant to distract, changing the subject to rile up the base, and scapegoat a minority—which is classic demagogue fare when people are worried about the economy.

As ugly as the speech was, it showed Trump is not confident, knows that he’ll never win over the majority, and that the minority that supports him is a bit rattled—seeing veterans being fired in mass purges and prices going up. He’s hoping this speech will buy him some more time.