“They are who we thought they were,” NFL coach Dennis Green famously said, in full meltdown mode. But his words could just as easily apply to President Trump, Elon Musk and the parade of Republicans who have unleashed so much chaos these last few weeks.
If you’re watching Musk gut USAID like it’s a Black Friday sale, or Trump going full Bond villain on Gen. Mark Milley, or appointing white supremacists like he’s assembling an evil Justice League — I get it. I do. But don’t act surprised.
Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign with the word “retribution.” That was the pitch. Not unity, not hope, not even a catchy jingle — just straight-up vengeance.
And guess what? He’s delivering. He said he was going to burn it all down, and now people are shocked there’s smoke?
Amazingly, Trump (or, more precisely, his minions) literally wrote their whole playbook. CNN reported that, of the 53 executive orders and actions Trump signed during his first week in office, 36 were straight out of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation document referenced frequently during the campaign.
As a buddy of mine (not known for pulling punches) quipped, it’s like “Mein Kampf” meets an oil lobbyist’s PowerPoint. The playbook is set. And now, it’s merely execution time — figuratively, of course.
Say what you will about Trump, but he never tried to hide his agenda or his style. Yet, despite his utter transparency — not to mention that he already gave us a four-year sample of what he would be like as president — some people really do seem surprised. This is sort of like dating a stripper named Cashmere and then being stunned to learn that she is seeing other guys on the side.
Indeed, according to CNN’s Harry Enten, just 1 to 2 percent of people surveyed think Trump should focus on tariffs, and more people were Googling “tariffs” than Taylor Swift.
But why? During his campaign, Trump constantly talked about raising tariffs, saying it would do everything from revitalize the auto industry to pay for childcare. “We are going to be taking in trillions of dollars. And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it is relatively speaking not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in,” he said last September at the Economic Club of New York.
Perhaps the only surprise was that, after threatening to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico, he suddenly swerved and decided not to. Folks, that’s the pattern — the old bait and switch.
But here’s what really gets me: It’s not just the clueless voters who didn’t see this coming. It’s the people who did see it coming, and are still flipping out every time he does something nuts.
I get it — staying outraged keeps the resistance alive. But at some point, outrage starts to sound like Captain Renault in “Casablanca”: “I’m shocked — shocked — to find that gambling is going on in this establishment!” Meanwhile, Trump is handing out chips to his supporters.
That’s not to say everyone should go along with the craziness, or that we should just roll over and tune out so as to preserve our sanity. There may indeed be some calculated strategic benefit to “performative outrage.” If nothing else, maybe it will slow Trump down a bit. Or maybe it will position Trump’s rivals to capitalize if and when some exogenous event comes along and upends MAGA’s best-laid plans.
My main point, however, is that whether you were ignorant, naive or utterly freaked out about the possibility of another four years of Trumpian madness, nothing that is happening right now should come as a surprise.
If you were counting on “norms” and “institutions” to rein him in, you weren’t listening to the many warnings we gave you, explaining that Trump and his team would be better positioned in a second term to work around those norms and institutions.
And if you thought sensible Republican politicians would somehow stop him, then you obviously weren’t paying attention to how Trump had systematically purged or tamed them all. Right now, they seem poised to rubber-stamp Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard into the Cabinet.
We are now getting exactly what we voted for, exactly what we were promised and (presumably) exactly what we deserve.
And if you’re wondering why I can so flippantly make light of things that are so shocking and new — to the degree that I was in mourning, it all happened on Election Day in November.
Everything after that? Just a slow-motion car crash. That day the die was cast. I have now had three full months to come to terms with reality, and you know what? I’m actually not in any way mad at Trump for doing what he was always going to do. “Impressed” is actually a better word for it. The only thing that saddened me was that the American people knew exactly who Trump was, and still prioritized egg prices.
So if you’re looking around now, thinking, “Wow, how did this happen?” — well, Trump’s got a poem for you. You knew damn well he was a snake before you took him in.
Matt K. Lewis is a columnist, podcaster and author of the books “Too Dumb to Fail” and “Filthy Rich Politicians.”
