While multiple critics of Donald Trump have characterized his decision to put his sweeping tariffs on pause for 90 days as "blinking" due to pressure from the billionaires who backed his 2024 presidential bid, a columnist for Salon suggested the turnabout goes deeper than that.
In a column published Thursday morning, longtime political observer Amanda Marcotte made the case that Trump's proclamation on Truth Social that he had a change of heart gave off a cult leader vibe that elicited a similar cultish response from his fans who praised it as a genius move.
As Marcotte wrote, "We're getting a compelling illustration on the national stage of how a cult leader can induce his followers to stick by him, even as he loses his mind and his behavior becomes too erratic and dangerous to defend. Almost every Republican on Capitol Hill knows that Donald Trump's tariff plan is political suicide, but few are willing to admit that Dear Leader fully intends to see this idiocy to the very end."
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Calling Trump's move a "victory" among his true believers, she noted it will likely be "short-lived" because of his underlying problems.
"Trump has a messiah complex, which has only grown since that missed assassin's bullet from July was hyped by his followers into 'proof' that he's the Chosen One," she wrote before suggesting, "Even as he blinks momentarily on his tariff mania, his behavior is getting even more erratic in a way that's got 'last days of Waco' vibes from a president who has already unsubtly compared himself to David Koresh. His Truth Social meltdown when announcing the 'pause' indicates a decline in Trump's already-fragile mental state."
To make her case she noted some telling ways in which the president tried to explain away his about-face just days after posting on Truth Social he has no intention of backing down from his policies.
With Trump writing, "They are dying to make a deal. 'Please, please sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything sir,'” Marcotte called it "...a moment quite reminiscent of how late-stage cult leaders experience a total collapse between reality and their grandiose fantasies," before pointing to Trump also boasting, "Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!"
"It all feels like the final stage of a cult, when the leader's frantic efforts to retain control result in escalating dictates and prophecies that become increasingly hard for followers to make sense of," she wrote before adding, "Republicans would be foolish to treat this 90-day pause as a victory big enough to justify scurrying back to their holes, to hide from the wrath of Dear Leader. He is spiraling and sees these tariffs as the final proving ground of his total conquest of the GOP. He will keep going back to that well — which means economic tumult, more stock market crashes, and more panicked constituents — unless this tariff nonsense is put to bed entirely."
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