President Donald Trump's recent flailing attempts at "revenge" are becoming increasingly desperate and self-defeating for two reasons, according to Miles Taylor: his adversaries have learned to fight back, and he knows his own downfall is drawing near. Taylor, who served as Deputy Chief of Staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Trump's first term and later became known for leaking White House secrets — he revealed himself in 2020 as "Anonymous," the author of a New York Times op-ed and the book A Warning criticizing the administration from within — argued on Friday that the president is "genuinely terrified" as his power diminishes and the prospect of consequences looms.

"This week, it became clearer than ever that Trump's victims are no longer coming to the negotiating table. They're flipping the table over," Taylor wrote. In his view, "Nothing on earth scares Donald Trump like an opponent who fights back… Something remarkable tends to happen the moment a target stands their ground. Trump starts to come apart. He overcorrects. He crashes the clown car into the median. And when it's all said and done, he defeats himself."

Taylor pointed to the case of "Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, whom Trump has twice tried to fire on trumped-up mortgage fraud claims." Rather than stepping aside, Cook "didn't resign quietly. She sued, won at the Supreme Court, and this week her lawyers answered his second removal attempt by pointing out that Trump himself (along with his Treasury secretary and his attorney general) signed the very same kind of contradictory 'primary residence' mortgage paperwork he claims makes her unfit to serve. 'Surely the President does not believe himself "unfit for office,"' her counsel wrote. Trump reached for a weapon and basically handed it to his target." The case has become a focal point in the broader struggle over presidential power to remove officials from independent agencies, an issue the Supreme Court has repeatedly been asked to referee during Trump's second term.

Institutions, Taylor argued, are learning the same lesson. "When military news publication Stars and Stripes broke the story of the mental health crisis aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, the Pentagon's response was to move to fire the paper's leadership and seize control of a newsroom that has served American troops since the Civil War. But the journalists didn't throw in the towel. This week, they sued on First Amendment grounds, and in the process, they basically ensured that the story about the USS Lincoln and the administration's censorship campaign will continue to get a thousand times more attention than if the Pentagon had let it go."

Whole nations are also pushing back, Taylor noted. While many foreign governments once courted Trump with flattery, that habit is fading. Canada has faced Trump's threats and tariffs throughout his presidency, but "this week, Ottawa decided they'd had enough. They called Trump's bluff, slapping counter-tariffs on twenty billion dollars' worth of American goods." The Canadian retaliation fits a wider pattern of trade partners testing whether Trump's tariff threats carry real costs for their own economies when counterparts refuse to blink.

Trump's response, in Taylor's telling, was "flailing and petulant": "He signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario 'Lake America.' If he thought cartography revisions would somehow get his leverage back, he was wrong." Even mapmakers were prepared to defy him. "'We're not changing it,' wrote the company MapQuest on social media, pasting a map screenshot of Lake Ontario with the body of water renamed Lake Are We Doing This Again?. 'Name it whatever you want at your leisure.' The clown car has hit the median. Again."

Earlier in his term, Taylor observed, Trump was emboldened as target after target capitulated to him. "No longer. The targets have enrolled in 'revenge studies,'" he wrote. "And now that they've figured him out, Trump is genuinely terrified."

Taylor cited a story that emerged this week as clear evidence. "Jared Kushner requested a meeting with Hakeem Jeffries," Taylor explained, "and I can tell you firsthand that a meeting like that doesn't happen without the president's knowledge. The focus of the secret summit was reportedly on seeking 'common ground,' during which Kushner urged Jeffries to also sit down with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. You don't need a PhD to know what's going on here. Trump is trying to cut a deal with Democrats to blunt the scrutiny he knows is coming." Outreach to the House minority leader is notable because Jeffries, as the top Democrat in the chamber, would shape the investigative agenda if his party takes the majority.

The meeting surfaced just days after reports that Democrats are planning to put Trump-family corruption at the center of congressional probes if they win the House — a calculus tied to the upcoming midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress for the second half of Trump's term. "The same Donald Trump who called Jeffries a 'low IQ individual' and a 'THUG' who is a 'danger to our Country' is suddenly striking a softer tone and dispatching family members to make nice," Taylor wrote (New York Times).

"That ain't strength, folks. That's fear," Taylor concluded. "So how do you scare the living daylights out of Donald Trump? You fight back."

Source: Alternet