I get the sense that he has no idea what he is signing. Who is behind the curtain?
What gives you that sense? He seems to take suggestions from a lot of players, but this doesn’t appear to be a George W. Bush situation with a Dick Cheney pulling strings. Or the group that puppeteered Harding (See also Wilson’s & Reagan’s final years in office).
With Trump, he seems to favor some for a while and then moves on to others.
I’m pretty sure what’s happening is that he approves the orders, his team writes them, and then when they present it for his signature he just needs to be reminded which one it is.
Far be it from me to defend his competence, but I don’t think this is a situation where when he asks “which one is this?” he actually has no idea what it is.
Trump and whichever fascist grifter he spoke to last. There are no “adults” in the room, just incompetent fascist yes men who are only in the room because they have no qualities other than absolute loyalty to Trump.
I can’t resist:
A lot of it is coming directly from Project 2025. Some of the orders still have PDF metadata pointing directly to that source.
Again, whichever fascist grifter he spoke to last 
But it does beg the question. Who initially comes up with the idea for a specific XO. To pick just a couple of the most recent:
US Hostage and Wrongful Detainee Day
Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Establishment of the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
What do you imagine is the process whereby these become XOs?
Do you think Chump came up with these ideas on his own, and tasked his staff with working them up into XO form? Or is someone - a random or specific fascist grifter - feeding him these ideas.
I’m thinking of him as more of a disinterested pawn and figurehead, rather than puppetmaster. I’d imagine there is a smallish group of staff who regularly present him with ideas aimed at “pwning the libs”, getting back at his enemies, or making him look strong and decisive. And he either simply takes the advice of someone, or does his own eeny meeny miney moe.
Yeah. It was the same during his last Presidency; he’s well known to be easily influenced by whomever spoke to him last. Which is one reason why he’s always bouncing over the map in his positions since he’s not just listening to one Wormtongue but scores of them.
We had this discussion a few weeks ago. The real answer is, it’s a mix.
Some, like the tariffs, come from Trump himself. He’s got his favorite ideas, and his staff helps him push that.
As discussed above, some come directly from the Project 2025 people. They’ve been working on these plans for years, and it’s just a matter of finding the right time to talk Trump into signing them.
Others are random folks who come up with an idea, and have somehow gained access to Trump to convince him to sign their order.
So long as nothing the third parties ask for directly contradicts Trump’s personal goals, he’s fine with signing anything, so long as the price is right. Cash, votes, or adulation, no one Executive Orders for free!
Because he often seems surprised, bemused, or just confused by the order he just signed. It is very clear that he is at most skimming orders that have been written by others, or more likely someone briefly summarized the order. To be fair (if we must), this is probably true that most executive orders are drafted by some members of the President’s staff based upon some general presidential dictum and worked over by the Office of Counsel to the President and Vice President to ensure that they will hold up to legal challenge, but in this case it is apparent that a substantial of these orders are quite plainly implementations of the Project 2025 agenda (which Trump has claimed to not be aware of or read) and legal review is cursory at best (which is the charitable interpretation; the more nefarious one is that these are intentionally designed to test the boundaries of the federal courts and force Congressional GOP members into a mode of tacit compliance). Trump, of course, is incapable of writing anything longer than a tweet, and even those are often agrammatical and frequently incoherent, so it is quite evident that someone else is writing them with minimal if any presidential direction.
I think this is mostly correct except I’ll note that there are a substantial number of Heritage Foundation people working in the White House and ‘advising’ the President, and they definitely have a coherent if odious objective. Although these people are inept in the sense of understanding governance and definitely fall on the ‘fascist’ end of the spectrum of Christian Nationalism, I wouldn’t describe them as “incompetent” in the sense of figuring out how to dismantle substantial areas of the government functionality, undercut Congressional authority, and implement their theory of “unitary executive” control. I think that they don’t understand that they actually need some of those functions to achieve their specific goals but that’s inexperience for you. Of course, the ‘broligarchs’ just want government dismantled entirely so that they don’t have to pay taxes, be forced to comply with regulations, and turn the country into a technofeudal collection of corporate city-states, because nothing says “The Future Awaits!” like returning to the superstition and serfdom of the Middle Ages of European history. {cue Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference here}
Stranger
This is what gives me that sense
I would fully expect this to be the process, once the president has made policy direction to that effect. I don’t expect a president to noodle around with Microsoft Word, double checking the relevant constitutional law (although Obama taught law school courses in constitutional law). But I expect the president to drive policy.
Well, it’s credible he hasn’t read it, because he doesn’t read anything. My take is that someone said, “Do all of this, and you’ll get elected.”
My take is that Trump is a pen with a pulse.
Pretty much; Trump is on board with anything that will generate attention and outrage, and has no real principles or ideology beyond putting his name on every flat surface he can get someone to pay him licensing fees for. It is what he knows and what he does, and it’s worked out pretty well for him so far.
He clearly has no idea what is being explained to him here. “signing something something crypto something bitcoin something digital Fort Knox for digital gold!”
Stranger
I think the Project 2025 crowd has learned how to manipulate Trump. I doubt it is very difficult. They know to indulge Trump’s petulant impulses to appease him and then get him to sign whatever they come up with.
I am not sure who is running things though. I’d say the Heritage Foundation and/or the Chamber of Commerce and/or the Federalist Society.
During his first time in office, Trump seemed to originate the Muslim Ban and probably had a general desire for tariffs that was mostly staunched by wiser heads. Beyond that, I’m not sure that taking a sharpie to a map of the Gulf of Redacted would count as a policy idea.
Now, we could assume that during his four years of sitting around, thinking back over his first term and coming to grips with the powers and possibilities of the role, that he came up with a wide assortment of ideas. Personally, I don’t find that terribly likely. Almost certainly, the process has been that if someone displayed enough obsequiousness and could link an idea to the potential growth of Trump’s personal fortunes or personal power base, then he approves that idea.
That said, it should be pointed out that a leader’s job is going to include a large amount of collecting, sorting through, and selecting ideas. The leader might ask some questions like, “Hey, how do I follow through on that promise I made to get rid of Mexicans?” And then, days or weeks later, people will show up with EOs containing various legal wording that would make that task do-able. That’s not really different from Trump to Biden nor Obama.
The difference with Trump is that he’s (likely) dumb enough to accept a bunch of ideas as his own, given enough buttering up, and is motivated to do things purely for sensationalism or personal profit. Anyone who knows that, knows how to butter him up.
But the way to “butter up” Obama might be to give him an idea that seems like a “great idea for America”. And the details of said plan may well mostly rest in the hands of the person who originated that idea.
The devil is in the details…and in the man.
This is outrageously unfair. Compared to Donald Trump is Governor William J. Lepetomane is the very epitomy of effective democratic governance by and for the people, an incorruptible paragon of republican virtue.
Like, this is a joke, but it’s also literally true. There is not a hyperbolic caricature of an evil, corrupt and ineffectual politicians in fiction that doesn’t underestimate how bad Donald Trump is
It’s a pity none of those were able to dissuade him from the crazy tariffs.
I think a big part of managing Trump is indulging his crazy. They know not to push-back at him. But Trump is too stupid to have more than a few dumb notions so they let him get away with those and then get their policies through.