Treating Trump's Abuse of Power as a Spectator Sport
What is a "win" or a "victory"? Those words can only meaningfully describe having prevailed in a contest that could have gone the other way. For example, even though 50.2 percent of counted votes were cast against Donald Trump in 2024, he did eke out a plurality of the popular vote, with his total being 1.48 percent higher than Kamala Harris's (and thus the sixth smallest plurality in US history). But that outcome is correctly described as a win or a victory, because it was very much not in the bag in advance, and it even seemed likely that Trump would repeat his 2016 performance and become President again only via the Electoral College -- or perhaps through a successful coup this time around. As I noted in my column earlier this week, however, it is infuriatingly obtuse (bordering on insane) to describe what has been happening in the last six months in the way that The New York Times recently did: as Trump "tall[ying] wins." No, he is in fact g...