The Magician

They say that magic is mostly sleight of hand–directing the focus of your audience away from something while you seem to do the impossible.  If this is true, Trump is a political magician.  His speech to Congress was full of attention grabbing emotional pleas, and a litany of tragedies he has rectified.  We heard what would keep his audience focused on how he is or has or will do things that others have found impossible.  All the while Trump  hoped nobody noticed just how unreal his so-called accomplishments are.

The war in Ukraine will end within a few days.  Trump will wave a magic wand and an intractable conflict will magically disappear.  All he needs is for Zelensky to do his bidding.  Trump single-handedly solved the border crisis.  Legislation and comprehensive reform were always unnecessary.  And let’s not forget Gaza.  A conflict that has raged unresolved for decades can be solved with a simple plan in just a few months.

But for everytime Trump seems to work his magic there is something he does not want us to see–something he hopes we will be too distracted to notice.  He asks us not to notice that his magical end to the Ukraine conflict will perpetuate Russia’s ascendancy as a dictatorial power in Europe.  He appoints a child survivor of a brain tumor to his secret service detail and asks us to forget that his DOGE has cut funding for overhead in NIH grants, gutting their ability to perform life saving cancer research, calling it “wasteful.”  Trump tries to convince us that we need not notice that his plan to “solve” the Israel-Hamas conflict would mean forcibly displacing millions of people from their homeland.  Focus on the “Riviera of the Middle East,” not on the wishes of the Palestinian people, or the wishes of their neighbors.  All of those problems can be fixed later.

Trump ascribes magical qualities to bullying.  If Canada wants to maintain its sovereignty then he’ll just put traffits on them.  In the Middle East, he claims that the Palestinians won’t want to go back.  Translation: he’ll just intimidate them into leaving.  If he doesn’t get his way in Ukraine, Zalensky won’t get military support.  Trump thinks bullying will get him whatever he wants with ease.  We are asked not to notice the long term negative consequences of angering both enemies and allies.

More than anything Trump distracts us from his true character. “Focus on how I’m a tough guy.  Watch me deliver on promises to take control.  Forget I’m a felon, a rapist, the leader of an insurrection,” says Trump. 

 “They said it couldn’t be done.” say Trump supporters.  It hasn’t been.  Trump’s magic answers are illusory.  They are at best a band-aid, at worst a sleight of hand distraction from real solutions.  If his acolytes are not wrong to follow a man who is divorced from democratic values, they are foolish to believe in someone who thinks he can pull a rabbit out of a hat.