At the 2026 NATO Summit in Ankara, the President openly confided to the press: “My whole life, that’s all I do is deals… That’s how I became president, I guess.”
Why did he say it? He became president because he had made a certain deal? With whom? What kind of a deal?
MAGA has created the doctrine, a mentality, of Us versus Em and openly advocated racism that successfully sent Donald Trump into the White House.
People could surmise that the president had a deal with MAGA. What else explains the MAGA Congress so taciturn and compliant where the president’s acts are concerned? Such a deal would be a fabulously profitable deal. Not people’s welfare, not national interest or even security. Just a profitable deal for the parties to the deal.
Now that the president has obtained all he wanted, would the deal continue?
The instance in Bruxelles in 2017 where he pushed the leader of another country aside so he could emerge to the first row of world leaders standing, indicated that the president constantly, instinctively, and intuitively looks out for himself to be the first. For such programmed personality, anything he says or does could not be casual, shooting from the hip, or off the kilter but in fact well thought out in advance, programmed to serve the goal of whatever game he is playing.
MAGA has made elections not about political high-minded ideals, the economy or prices of groceries but Us against Them. And that could be a fad, the novelty of the MAGA phenomenon that, like Hollywood’s all other fads, would fade away. Voters voted MAGA because they wanted the messiness of the state of the nation to be cleaned up as it had promised. But there are signs the voters have probably turned back to live their normal life and are no longer extremist. Democratic way of life such as paying for gas at less than 3 dollars a gallon, knowing for sure who are those who ride the truck in mask and carrying weapons, paying the same price or cheaper for a comparable American device made abroad, etc., is probably too enchanted to ordinary people for MAGA to uproot it, throw it away, and replace it with their choice of a despotic political system.
It seems MAGA has nothing new to offer. Its attack on Anthony Fauci, clamoring on the false claim of election fraud, are stale tactics that it is wheeling out seemingly without bothering to find out if its base may get tired of them. With MAGA in total power, occupying all four branches of government, for almost two years, its supporters should now see that MAGA is even messier, negligent, and strange in managing the economy, international relations, and national security.
With MAGA in charge, American politics has stopped being an Art. It is reduced to bulldozing. MAGA’s MO is just bulldozing forward, and all their statements that a regular politician needs to be careful about speaking are just shooting air that don’t mean much, and they suffer no consequences because MAGA possesses the bulldozer and the roads. MAGA swooped in at midnight to take a leader of a foreign country to prison. Was it to get more oil and prevent drugs from getting into the U.S.? Out of the blue, they sent cruise missiles thousands of miles away to kill the top officials of another. Was it to prevent their country from making nuclear weapons? Wasn’t there a more nuanced method to get the same or better result?
Where are we? Dejà vu? The U.S. dropped 7.6 million tons of bombs on Viet Nam, three times the tonnage used in WWII, and much more than the bombs dropped on Iran so far AND put boots on the ground – for ten years, trying to prevent the North Vietnamese Communists from crossing Parallel 17. The War ended up with the North Vietnamese not just crossing the 17th Parallel but taking the whole country.
In ordering the bombing of Iran, MAGA leadership has forgotten the lesson or maybe too young to remember. Or maybe the hubris of wanting to do one better than the achievement of a black Democratic president was in the way of thinking clearly and rationally.
The president said that he became president after he had made deals. Does it mean a deal with the American people? -Unlikely as we know that he does not talk deals with a nobody such as an American voter. It must be with MAGA a large number of its members are billionaires. Is he implying that starting the Iran War was part of the deal, but is no longer his thing or responsibility? Is he washing his hands off the war? Does he signal to the nation that he is contentedly sailing into the sunset, and now MAGA will be on their own? As if saying to MAGA you must see that I have had no quality time with Barron. I want to play EA Sports FC 25 with him.
But MAGA does not seem to be competent on its own. The dominance of the president has stunted Republican leadership. Representative Jim Jordan is still loudly investigating election fraud, and Senator Rand Paul subpoenaed Dr. Anthony Fauci to answer his question concerning the origins of COVID and triumphantly referred him to the DOJ for contempt charge.
Democrats can entertain some hope. Three candidates who have persistently claimed election frauds won the Arizona GOP primaries for the three most important state offices, governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. People just wonder if there is no sunlight in Arizona for these people to see that the emperor has no clothes on. Or probably they do know but continue insisting on the false claim, trusting that it will work for them banking on many Arizonans still dazed in the illusion.
The Fauci fallacy won’t work either despite the labored and persistent effort by Rand Paul, a doctor himself. Dr. Fauci was just a director of an agency who had answered questions on the subject extensively. Rand Paul is not just a doctor but also a U.S. senator with much more power and means to find the answer for himself. What have he and his Republican colleagues done to answer the question if they are so obsessed with finding it? Putting him on the witness stand before his committee was more of a show than a serious endeavor to find the truth.
If the Democrats could convince the ordinary people of Arizona to vote these MAGA delusional demagogues off the ballots and show the American voters how many Americans would have died if Dr. Fauci had not championed preventive measures during the COVID pandemic, they would be able to find their way back to governing.
JOHN P. LE PHONG
(This article appears on X, thelephongjournal.com, and Facebook
