WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, once a casino owner and always a man in search of his next deal, is fond of a poker analogy when sizing up partners and adversaries.
“We have much bigger and better cards than they do,” he said of China last month. Compared with Canada, he said in June, “we have all the cards. We have every single one.” And most famously, he told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in their Oval Office confrontation earlier this year: “You don’t have the cards.”
The phrase offers a window into the world view of Trump, who has spent his second stint in the White House amassing cards to deploy in pursuit of his interests.
Seven months into his second term, he’s accumulated presidential power that he’s used against universities, media companies, law firms and individuals he dislikes. A man who ran for president as an angry victim of a weaponized “deep state” is, in some ways, supercharging government power and training it on his opponents.
And the supporters who responded to his complaints about overzealous Democrats aren’t recoiling. They’re egging him on.
“Weaponizing the state to win the culture war has been essential to their agenda,” said David N. Smith, a University of Kansas sociologist who has extensively researched the motivations of Trump voters. “They didn’t like it when the state was mobilized to restrain Trump, but they’re happy to see the state acting to fight the culture war on their behalf.”
OR… even worse, they liked the idea.
Tribalism. We don’t care what our teams do as long as we beat up the other team. When a ref throws a yellow flag on us for obvious unsportsmanlike behavior, the fucking ref is wrong. But, they better throw that flag when the other team fucks up. Speaking of which, who was supposed to pay off the ref, again?
Yeah, people seem predisposed to pick sides, Coke/Pepsi, Ford/Chevy, Apple/Android, Intelligent people/MAGA. And they seem to prefer to get militant about it.
I don’t understand this. I have no trouble hating both sides, myself.
Or they constructed a false “both sides” narrative just like they always fucking do: “ermagahd, well Taco had to get this photo taken when he was getting booked! It’s only all too fair that Taco gets to go after his opponents!”