Early in the Trump Administration, there was a store in Grand Central Terminal that sold novelty gift items, many of them critical of President Donald J. Trump. Some were innocuous enough (a troll doll). Others were too scatalogical for reportage. But one that elicited a chuckle was a take on the old paper dolls that showed images of Trump and BFF Vladimir Putin to which you could attach outrageous clothing. It was called “Bad Hombres,” after the phrase Trump coined to characterize many of the Mexican immigrants thronging the U.S. southern border.
These have not been the best of times for the “bad hombres.” In Ukraine, Putin had to pull back from Kherson. When last seen, he was doing some soothing ribbon-cutting and the generals were managing the retrenchment/regrouping/retreat. On the same day, the Republicans turned in a less-than-stellar performance in the midterm election — setting many to blame Trump for pushing through his chosen 2020 presidential election-denying candidates, most of whom went down to defeat, and to anoint Trump archrival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as the new It Guy for the 2024 presidential race.
Putin and Trump are, however, not going anywhere. Russia still holds 20% of Ukraine. Ukrainian president Vlodomyr Zelensky, described the reclaiming of Kherson as “the beginning of the end of the war.” But he might do well to heed the words of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, to whom he is often compared, who said in the midst of World War II: “Now is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” The Ukrainians know this. They’re in it for the long haul.
But are we Americans, here and abroad? Any Republican who thinks his party can nominate DeSantis and Trump will simply walk away is a fool. He will form a third, MAGA party and split the Republican vote. That’s good news for the Democrats. What’s bad news for both parties is that Trump will keep running and influencing. It’s the path not only to identity for him but to avoiding legal jeopardy. Already his latest run has forced Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint a special counsel in the federal government’s investigation of the president to avoid the appearance of partisanship. But how does this avoid partisanship when Garland is still appointing the counsel? How does this not just add another layer of time-wasting bureaucracy that makes Garland look weak?
Like Garland, the Jan. 6 Committee is left to play defense as Trump will not testify before it. He’ll do what he always does — sue, countersue, stall, deflect. And he’ll probably get away with it, although there are still criminal charges into his business practices and election interference in New York and Georgia respectively as well as civil suits.
Just as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has skated away from the murder of journalist/Saudi critic Jamal Khashhogi, because as prime minister he is Saudi head of state and thus immune from prosecution, even though U.S. intelligence says MBS signed off on the hit. Could Saudi’s oil wealth have anything to do with this? (I admire the Biden Administration for many things, including its handling of Covid, infrastructure and Ukraine. But the decision not to prosecute MBS, along with the Afghan withdrawal, the continued muddle at the southern border and the appointment of a special Trump counsel, is a mistake.)
Are Putin, Trump and MBS too big to fail? Power: Once entrenched, it is difficult to wrest away. But it can be done if you have the stomach to quit stalling and confront it. As the anthropologist Margaret Mead said: “Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”