All too many events recently have appeared to reward Trump's favored strategy of trying to bully people into submission. When the president issued his recent unprovoked diktats against Canada and Mexico, for instance, both of their governments more or less indulged him (perhaps, sadly, out of necessity). When Trump, Musk, and their hordes of followers attacked Joni Ernst, for appearing to waffle on the Pete Hegseth nomination, she fell into line.
Because of this, it was particularly satisfying when House Republicans tonight finally defied his bullying threats by funding the government—without the debt ceiling increase that Trump tried to tack on. As the New York Times aptly summarizes: "President-elect Trump and Elon Musk threatened to ensure a primary challenge for any House Republican who voted for a bill that didn’t include a debt limit increase. Tonight, 170 of them did just that."
In other words—someone was finally willing to call Trump's bluff. They saw that, for all his huffing and blowing—many of his threats of titanic powers are actually quite empty. Thus, they had the same realization as Heinrich Heine's version of Adam, from his poem "Adam the First": "You cannot change the fact that I know/ How small and insignificant you are/ No matter how big you try to make yourself/ With all your death and thundering."
Let us hope this newfound courage will be contagious!
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