New York Times columnist Ross Douthat shared the most unintentionally funny tweet of the year on Thursday.
“Since a few people have asked, here’s a quick list of big and small things the Trump administration could do differently over the next 8 months to improve its political position,” the conservative posted on X.
It’s actually a great question. Under normal circumstances, it could spark a real debate. With Donald Trump as president, however, there is only one answer: His administration can’t improve its political position.
Because the problem isn’t the tactics. It’s the man.
Douthat’s exercise is a bit like publishing a list of things a shark could do to improve its reputation with swimmers. Still, that didn’t stop him from giving it the good ol’ college try. Let’s take a look at Douthat’s to-do list:
1) Don't flood the capital of a purple state with thousands of undertrained federal agents as a flex against political rivals.
It’s not just too late for that, but President Donald Trump is still flooding Minneapolis with his failed ICE invasion. If the suggestion is that he should stop doing it moving forward, that grossly misunderstands the situation.
Not only is it too late for that, but Trump and his lackeys are still flooding Minneapolis with his failed ICE invasion. If Douthat’s suggestion is that Trump should stop doing it moving forward, that grossly misunderstands the situation.
Trump isn’t the strategist so much as the enabler. Top White House adviser Stephen Miller—the guiding force behind the president’s hard-line immigration strategy—isn’t interested in sensible policy: He’s interested in immigration spectacle and chaos as political leverage.
Nothing indicates that Miller’s bloodlust has been sated. On his insistence, senior Homeland Security leadership has doubled down on labeling protesters “domestic terrorists,” further igniting incendiary rhetoric and politically fueling this operation rather than calming it.
And Trump himself still can’t stop smearing the victims of ICE violence. Even after federal agents fatally shot Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti, Trump said Wednesday that neither was an “angel”—a characterization that mirrors his administration’s broader defense of the operation.
Still, of all the items on Douthat’s list, this is the one where Trump clearly senses danger. He’s pretending to deescalate by pulling back a fraction of the immigration thugs he sent into Minneapolis, somehow coinciding with the sudden release of more Epstein files after the brutal press that followed Pretti’s cold-blooded murder—a reminder that distraction is the only deescalation tactic this White House understands.
But Trump is Trump. He’s going to get pissed at some Democratic governor like Gavin Newsom in California, or Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, who just cut state cooperation with ICE, and we’ll be right back here again.
And if anyone convinces Trump that declaring a state of emergency and invoking the Insurrection Act lets him cancel November’s elections, there will be no one left in the room to tell him no.
2) Pressure allies by all means, but don't threaten to use the U.S. military to seize their territory.
How about not behaving like a mob boss with nuclear weapons? Trump has offered no rational explanation for “pressuring” allies like Canada and Mexico over a trade agreement he himself negotiated during his first term. How about no more tariff threats? How about not cozying up to the world’s worst despotic regimes?
The Greenland insanity alone should have been grounds for impeachment or a 25th Amendment intervention. Trump’s foreign policy has obliterated U.S. credibility in ways that will continue to harm the country for decades—long after he’s dead.
Asking Trump to stop being an asshole to our allies and a lapdog to autocrats is just asking Trump to stop being Trump.
3) Don't issue any more gross pardons.
Rude. How are Trump and his cronies supposed to make money?
4) Put forward at least one piece of legislation linked to jobs and wages and cost-of-living issues (family policy/industrial policy/middle class tax cut) and talk a lot about it even if it won't pass.
This would require the guy who didn’t know that “grocery” was a word real Americans actually use to give a damn about jobs, wages, or the cost of living. Instead, he called all of that a “hoax” the last time his handlers tried to get him to talk about affordability.
If it’s not his gaudy ballroom, some tacky monument, or his own grievances, Trump has zero interest in it. Policy matters certainly don’t hold his attention.
5) Talk publicly about AI in a way that's keyed to public anxiety about its downsides.
Yeah, that’s not happening. The best this administration can do is trot out Dr. Oz to tell rural Americans that their self-inflicted loss of doctors can be remedied by chat robots.
6) Since Trump will always be abnormal, aim for extreme normalcy in the public engagement offered by staff, cabinet officials, etc. ...
Has Douthat seen Trump’s so-called brain trust? He had serious Cabinet officials during his first term, offering at least some guardrails against his “abnormality.” He made sure not to repeat that mistake this time. Competence, after all, is a form of disloyalty in Trump world.
This time around, he’s stocked the Cabinet with people like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, both of whom love cosplaying authority—donning the costumes of serious federal officials without any of the competence or restraint the jobs require. This isn’t an administration projecting calm or normalcy: It’s a traveling roadshow of grievance, theatrics, and institutional decay.
7) ... but at the same time, in places where Trump has better instincts than some of his allies, let Trump take down the temperature (as he seems to be trying to do with ICE).
The temperature hasn’t dropped. The cameras just moved.
Trump didn’t calm anything down; he just distracted from Minneapolis by flooding the zone with Epstein headlines. If that’s what Douthat means by “better instincts,” it’s hard to see how that helps Trump’s political standing, or that of his sycophantic party.
8) Don't post edgelord memes on social media accounts.
What else is Trump supposed to do at 3 AM? It’s not as if he’s working the phones to build support for jobs and affordability legislation, crafting messaging to lower the temperature around ICE, or developing a coherent AI policy that addresses voter anxiety. So what better way to pass the lonely hours when everyone is asleep and not thinking about him than by posting edgelord memes that ensure everyone is talking about him again by morning?
Trump doesn’t post edgelord memes because he’s bored. He posts them because attention is the only form of governance he understands.
“None of these suggestions are likely to save the House for Republicans,” concludes Douthat. “But an administration that followed them would stabilize its position, have a better chance of keeping the Senate, and put any potential Trump successor in a better position.”
Related | Oh yeah, Trump definitely knows he’s toast
Sure, he’s not wrong. But what Douthat is really offering is a fantasy in which Trump stops being Trump long enough for Republicans to survive him. That’s like asking a tiger to pretend it isn’t a predator until dinner is over.
Trump and his party are in this dire predicament precisely because Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about governing. The only thing he cares about is finding new and creative ways to feed the black hole in his soul where his dignity should be.
