Here he is, having trapped the United States in a war with Iran that no one outside of his inner circle seemed to want. Peace talks have broken down, largely because Trump delegated them to Vice President J.D. Vance and a crew of businesspeople who have less experience in diplomacy than your average crew of kindergarteners.
Before the president ordered the first attack on Iran, the U.S. economy already was struggling. Inflation, which Trump promised to end immediately upon taking office, was running a half point to a full point higher than it had been when former President Joe Biden was in the White House.
Worse, job growth has slowed to a trickle.
Under Bidenâs leadership, the U.S. economy added 15.5 million jobs. Under Trump, in February of this year, the American economy lost jobsâ133,000 of them, to be exact.
Even in his relatively good months, job growth under this president has trailed the marks set by Biden and former President Barack Obama.
This has left Americans squeezed by an unrelenting vice. They have been forced to pay more for goods and services at the same time that many of them are finding it harder and harder to find work.
With challenges such as these, one might think that Trump would have more than enough to keep him occupied.
But ⌠no.
This president has taken time, focus and energy away from the two major crises facing the United Statesâcrises that he in large part createdâto insert himself into six Indiana Senate primary races.
And he has done so for the smallest and pettiest of reasons.
Trump is angry with these six Hoosier state lawmakers because they didnât vote with him on his ill-conceived and quite possibly illegal plan to gerrymander Indianaâs congressional districts in the middle of the decade and thus steal a seat or two in this yearâs midterm election.
The Hoosier legislators didnât buck the president because they disliked him or werenât loyal Republicans.
Most of them have far longer GOP pedigrees than Trump does. He didnât fully commit to the Republican Party until he decided to run for president and, even then, he refused to rule out running a third-party campaign if he didnât get the GOP nomination in 2016.
The Indiana lawmakers on Trumpâs hate list also have been much more consistently conservative than the president, the needle of whose ideological compass gyrates like a weathervane in a windstorm, depending upon his mercurial mood swings.
No, the Hoosier sixâand 15 other Republican members of the Indiana Senate, a majority of the caucusâvoted against Trumpâs foolish redistricting plan for a good reason.
Their constituents did not want it.
The ones who held town halls to gather public sentiment learned that the presidentâs election-rigging scheme was about as popular as a terminal disease. The mail and phone calls the senators received on the issue ran to 90% against. The few polls taken revealed similar opposition.
None of that deterred Trump.
He wanted the senators to defy the people who had put them in office.
And thatâs what he still wants.
Recent reports suggest that Trump staffers in the White Houseâtreading closer to the line of illegality than any competent attorney would want them toâhave been pressuring and bargaining with a woman, one of two, challenging Indiana Sen. Greg Goode, R-Terre Haute, to get her to drop out. Goode, whose record of partisanship is remarkably rabid, is one of the six lawmakers on Trumpâs list.
The presidentâs minions have been threatening and enticing this primary candidate because they think Goode will be easier to beat in a two-person race. Their blandishments and blustering have been recorded by the candidate.
(Yes, even though Trump himself got into legal trouble for encouraging Georgiaâs secretary of state in a call to alter vote totals in 2020, his troops still havenât learned not to have damaging phone conversations in states where only one party has to consent to recording the talk. Quick learners, they are not.)
So, as the United States lurches toward being stuck in a quagmire in the Middle East and the American economy struggles and stumbles, the president of the United States diverts his focus to Indiana legislative races for no reason other than feelings of personal pique.
Gee, do you suppose thereâs a connection there?
