“Trump’s challenges” is an interesting perspective from an international point of view. The following article appeared in The Times (London) this past week by Mike Murphy, who is one of the Republican party’s most successful political strategists. It analyses the challenges Trump will face in his first 100 days without any of the usual U.S. media gloss/bias. Even though it is from a supporter of Trump, I thought it was worth re-printing in its entirety, even though it is bit long for a normal blog of mine.
“All Americans should always want a new president to succeed. Yet when Donald Trump moves back into the White House this month the honeymoon will be short: probably shorter than the opening 100 days by which the incoming leader is traditionally judged. To survive, Trump has to show he can manage government, not simply lambast it.
The president-elect is a peerless critic, pummelling his opponents with invective (some of it even true) and encouraging Americans to believe that the world is stacked against them. Being a tireless attacker from the outside is how Trump has won two presidential elections. This is not due to a massive, cult-like following (despite the media claims, he doesn’t have one) but because he is an expert conductor of a much more powerful force that he did not create.
What Trump understood far better than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, his two democratic rivals for the presidency in 2024, is that a large swathe of Americans feel alienated from the economic, cultural and governing elites. For two years, more than 60% of voters had been telling pollsters that the country has gone badly on to the wrong track. The cruel tax of inflation in particular hurts the middle class more than anyone. For that, America’s wage earners and retirees are increasingly happy to push the big “eject” button on the governing party.
Historically American voters have appreciated continuity. Between Franklin Roosevelt taking power in 1933 and the departure of George W. Bush 76 years later, the party in control of the White House switched only seven times in 18 presidential showdowns. In each case popular dissatisfaction with the economy (or at least voter perceptions of the economy) was the driving factor.
Trump’s biggest lever last year was the foggy but attractive popular memory that things were “much better” economically when he was president from 2016 to 2020. After the relentless inflationary pain of “Bidenomics” the hope of relief was enough for many angry voters. Trump’s simple offer of a better economic life if he got a second shot at the presidency was like a free lottery ticket to them. It proved so powerful it even shattered the Democratic party’s once-commanding lead with Latino voters (down from 33% in 2020 to just 5% in 2024). But now, the merciless wheel of politics is about to turn again. The voters who backed Trump in November now have very high expectations for the new president and if their behaviour over the last four years is any guide, their patience will be limited.
As soon as he is sworn in, Trump will become the new status quo. It’s harder to blame the bunglers and fools in charge in Washington when you are the one behind the desk in the Oval Office (though he can be expected to try, a familiar new-president trick that quickly wears thin). Now instead of simply railing against the mess of inflation and carping about how screwed up government is, he will own the problem. That is why, from a purely strategic point of view, Trump’s opening staff moves have been so self-defeating.
Usually when a president picks a cabinet, the guiding formula is to choose loyalists who are politically skilled and, most importantly, ruthlessly competent. Each major federal agency is a smoking powder keg that must be watched and managed closely to protect the president’s image. These huge agencies are an empire to themselves, connected to a vast orchestra on interest groups and power centres, from Congress, to mighty labour unions, to various states and regions, and to big business. A smart president wants cabinet secretaries who can keep this orchestra tightly in tune and playing pleasant background music. Instead, Trump has chosen to “own the libs” by assembling television personalities and Maga celebrities to run his cabinet agencies. Many of them, such as Tulsi Gabbard at national intelligence or Pete Hegseth at defence, will, if their nominations are confirmed by the Senate, be easily eaten alive by the powerful and entrenched bureaucracies inside their mega-agencies.
Business leaders are quietly aghast at the appointment of Lori Chavez-DeRemer (she lost her Congress seat last year after a single term) at the Department of Labor. And what more can be said about vaccine-sceptic Robert Kennedy Jr. running the vast Department of Health and Human Resources with its 80,000 employees and $1.6 trillion budget? There is a good chance that some of Trump’s nominees will fail confirmation, but it will not be many. There is a strong instinct in American politics to give a new president what they want and Trump’s great strength in the grassroots of the Republican party makes most of its politicians loath to buck him, when his ire can plunge them into a hellish future primary contest.
Away from the cabinet, the most significant face by far around the president-elect is Elon Musk, his Mar-a-Lago lodger, most influential backer and biggest looming headache. Musk and Trump’s complaints about government waste have struck a chord: 2024 polling from the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank shows 58% of Americans believe government money is spent inefficiently. The problem is how to do anything about it. The U.S. government is not a private company; you cannot simply fire everyone named Joe or Charlie or wipe out the entire air fryer division on a whim. Most wasteful overlaps and inefficiencies are there for a reason, often because a group with great power (farmers, unions, business, the military) wants them there. (Surprise: the U.S. military is the world’s fourth-largest operator of golf courses).
In government, form follows (political) function, so think of the federal government as the world’s largest camel, a proverbial horse designed by a very big, political committee. My best guess is that Musk will find himself barking his waste-slashing orders into an impressive red telephone that the White House staff will have been careful not to plug in. They understand that a lot of “waste” is politically popular with voters when seen through the prism of the specific spending programmes they benefit from. They also know that an attention-seeking billionaire egomaniac running amok in Washington is a recipe for certain political disaster, even if he is a genius. For example, Muck has said the military should abandon the F-35 fighter; a huge defence programme that employs thousands of workers, especially in Republican Texas. When Musk starts to move fast and break things on Capitol Hill, the populist glory will be his, while the resulting political pain will pile on Trump. Ultimately, Musk and Trump are tomcats trapped in one pillowcase, and it will not end well. There is only room for one bright sun in Trump’s universe and it is not Musk. He will be lucky to avoid being duct-taped to a NASA rocket to Mars.
Beyond managing that relationship, Trump faces immediate challenges. There will be huge pressure to show economic progress, but here his bizarre affinity for destructive tariffs may be self-defeating while his vow to cut subsidies for electric cars could dramatically hurt automobile production jobs in America’s new electric vehicle plants.
He has promised mass deportation and a closed border with Mexico: both surefire applause lines on the Maga campaign trail, but difficult and expensive to accomplish. His end-of-year attempt to eliminate the pesky debt ceiling failed – even 38 Republican congressmen and women ignored his wishes – so he will face the next debt-bomb vote on his watch, as well as a fight to pass costly tax cuts.
On Capitol Hill, Republicans control the new Senate by four seats and must manage a precarious five-seat advantage in the more rambunctious House of Representatives. This is not helped by the president-elect who has nominated three members of Congress to high positions, temporarily cutting the margin to two seats. In time the lead should grow, since all three of the now missing members of Congress are from Republican districts and should in theory be replaced by new Republicans in special elections. In practice these contests can be unpredictable.
It is also normal for several members of Congress to die during each two-year congressional session or resign for health reasons, legal trouble or because they have snagged a cushy million-dollars-a-year job at the National Bolt and Fastener Association. In the last Congress, nine members died or resigned in the first two years. That too could threaten the narrow Republican majority.
Meanwhile the clock is ticking. Midterm congressional elections will be held in November next year (2026). That might seem far off to voters, but Republicans on Capitol Hill are already fretting. Why? New presidents lose an average of 28 seats in the House of Representatives in their first midterm election. American voters are quite happy to fire the party of whomever they elected president just two years before. Although partisan redistricting by both sides has reduced the number of true “swing” seats midterms have almost never been good for a new sitting president. (In 2018 Trump lost a near-record 38 House seats. Biden lost only nine in 2022; it was still enough for Republicans to flip the House).
Twitchy Republican leaders know they are probably under two years away from losing control of the House – and handing Democrats authority over federal budget matters as well as flashy investigative powers. I think they and the White House will try to push through a lot of what Trump wants as soon as they can, but the House margin will make that difficult. Then, as the midterms loom closer, the first rule of politics will come into play: to thine own re-election be true. The more political blunders the Trump White House makes, the sooner he will find himself alone.
Last year Trump won as an outsider. Now, he’s an insider and about to plunge into shark-filled political waters that devoured Biden and Harris. To be remembered as a transformative leader rather than merely a formidable insurgent, the president-elect needs to pivot from throwing political bombs to defusing them. I hope Trump succeeds but, watching his early choices, don’t ask me to bet on it.”
