Distractions and Outright Buffoonery
Terry H. Schwadron
April 21, 2025
Picking an unneeded war with Harvard, and by extension with dozens of universities, by mistake? Replacing three leaders at the Internal Revenue Service in a week because of internal staff conflicts? Posting doctored photos to try to justify the deportee you mistakenly sent to endless prison in El Salvador? All in one weekend?
Among a string of self-forced trips, falls and legal end-arounds, Donald Trump’s reach for constant attention as the arbiter of all is running aground in the muck of public deception, cheap theatrical tricks and outright buffoonery arising from haste and inattention.
For a moment, set aside policies that are proving bad for our economy, spending choices that reek of cruelty to federal workers and the health of the nation, and decisions about mass deportations to focus on the other results we are seeing after the first 100 days of Trump 2.0: His government is incompetent.
From shared communications on hackable apps and phones about national security (news about another inappropriate sharing incident emerged yesterday) to seemingly endless numbers of personnel shifts, policy flip-flops, and plain old mistakes, Team Trump is showing itself to be an inexperienced, isolated, heartless group who can’t even drive straight.
Regardless of the outcome of legal fights over criminal contempt to ignore court orders, the very fact of spending our citizen time and money to have to defend the Trump administration to do whatever it deems necessary in accordance with the law is a sign of rot in the White House.
The combination of haste to make hay before the next congressional election looms and the forced campaign to put personal loyalty ahead of reason is causing almost more problems for Team Trump than chaotic tariff policies or the images of people being snatched from the streets to planes headed out of the country.
Slipshod, Hasty and Erroneous
According to sourced reports in The New York Times, the outrageous and increasingly dangerous showdown with Harvard began with a letter of demands apparently sent to the university by error — compounded by the White House then blaming Harvard for not questioning whether it should have sent. It is impossible to consider that a decades-long destruction of academic freedom and brain drain to other countries will have emanated from a mistaken email. And if it was a mistake, why are we still carrying on with offensive moves to deny medical research funds and undercutting tax exemptions just to make Trump feel in charge of yet another venue for which he lacks any understanding?
The Internal Revenue Service had another leadership shake-up on Friday, marking the third turnover the bureau has seen since tax week began and the fifth since Trump took office in January — all thanks to internal fights between Elon Musk and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over access to private personal information in government records. Where is competence?
Under criticism about the brouhaha over failures to lift a finger to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia after “administrative error” in deporting him, Trump felt it necessary to post what appears to be an obviously doctored photo of Abrego Garcia’s fingers to show an MS-13 gang tattoo, as if that is legal evidence required of a deportation hearing. Meanwhile, Trump now denies there was error and is ready to overturn 250 years of democratic checks and balances to resist court orders limiting his immediate powers.
Trump still doesn’t understand that it is due process at risk here, well beyond Abrego Garcia.
Trump already has made mass deportation into mass confusion.
Even the Supreme Court, which ruled 7–2, in the wee hours on Saturday, that it meant it that due process hearings are required before whisking deportees to El Salvador, must be asking why it is necessary for their repeated intervention on an emergency basis. The temporary ruling promises to give way to a fuller opinion when justices are ready.
The administration is going out of its way to make known the criminal records of some of those Venezuelans targeted for deportation in swift fashion, but skipping others whose crime appeared only to have certain tattoos or Chicago Bulls caps.
Avoidable Confusion
We’re seeing daily repetitions for power grabs for ends that were easily achieved just by checking before leaping. Getting upbraided by courts because your thirst for power to do whatever pops into your head keeps you from finding out what the law requires falls between stupid and incompetent.
Why do we need scores of lawsuits from the ACLU, unions, citizens and others to prove to Trump that there is something wrong about using private and protected Social Security and Internal Revenue Service data with no expressed goals, and the use of such information to target undocumented migrants. Declaring 6,000 immigrants as dead to cut off their Social Security identification, leaving them unable to work or borrow money and then seeking to cover the move by changing the name of administrative file is beyond cruel; it is a poorly coordinated execution of policy that is anything but public or responsible.
The standoff over whisking deportees to El Salvador is leading to political theater photo-ops by Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem and inane shenanigans by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to have a staffer put margaritas on the cafeteria table of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., in his meeting with Abrego Garcia, after a visit that Team Trump sees as theater of its own.
At the Pentagon this week, four high-level staff to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were escorted out of the building in a single day. Most of the staff cuts ordered by Trump and Musk are tied up in court or generating need to re-hire those dismissed because there was no determination of what was being eliminated. A spreading complaint is about Social Security customer services being fouled. The tumult over reciprocal global tariffs, now on hold for three months, is well documented, but the effects are just starting: Travel to the U.S. is plummeting, for example, down 12 percent over last year and 2 percent in a single month, according to the International Trade Commission in the Commerce Department.
to get his way, Trump has declared more national emergencies — more creatively and more aggressively — than any president in modern American history, says Axios.com. He needs those “emergencies” to impose the largest tariffs in a century, accelerate energy and mineral production, and militarize federal lands at the southern border. Legal scholars fear Trump is exploiting loosely written statutes to try to upend the constitutional balance of power.
Trump policymaking is designed poorly, executed sloppily, and increasingly unpopular. Why should we trust a team that makes so many mistakes?
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