The Trump presidency is entering a new phase. As with everything related to the man, it will be unique, defy easy description and be unorthodox, improvised, controversial and dangerous.

When attempting to form a mental strategy to think about the Trump presidency, keep one thing in mind: The new normal is not normal.

Typically, a president’s power starts ebbing around the midterms of their second term. He (and, at some point in the future, she) will have either accomplished or failed at the key promises upon which they were elected. The game, win or lose, is over. People are tired of them and their attention gradually shifts to the next election and a new set of personalities. The president also is tired and increasingly irrelevant. A lame duck.

Clearly, Donald Trump’s second term is changing. On one hand, the lame duck period is here early. Dramas big (the Epstein saga, gutting the East Wing of the White House, quite possibly murdering two fishermen off the coast of Venezuela, pardoning a drug kingpin) and small (calling a female reporter “piggy,” falling asleep on camera) has led to falling poll numbers and a general sense of exhaustion. He is considered an embarrassment by a growing portion of the electorate, is aging visibly and quite likely battling a significant health issue.

The New Normal is Not Normal

But three years is a long time for anything to end. It’s hard to imagine the most powerful office on earth simply fading into a holding pattern awaiting the next occupant to bring fresh ideas and new energy. Especially when the person holding the office still has awesome statutory powers and is a narcissistic drama queen. 

What can we begin to make sense of all this?

There are two related questions which I believe provide a starting point to analyzing what is happening at a deeper level than the massive amount of daily news usually allows:

Why is Trump abusing his base? Why is he doing it so blatantly?

Tariffs, flirting with a war of choice, drowning farmers in debt, letting ACA tax credits expire, burying the Epstein files, feuding with right wing heroine Majorie Taylor Greene and focusing primarily on foreign affairs all are positions diametrically opposed by MAGA.

Three potential reasons come to mind when considering ways to think about the Trump Presidency:

The first is that Trump never is going to run again and simply doesn’t care. He almost certainly thinks that MAGA adherents are dupes and is fine with it fading. The base, in this interpretation, enabled him to make billions of dollars and, in the second term, avoid prosecution for the crimes with which he would have been charged if Kamala Harris became president. 

A second possibility is that Trump feels he doesn’t need to pay as much attention to his base because he is confident the fix is in for the midterms and he therefore doesn’t have to play nice to any particular group, even the one that put him in the White House twice. This fits in nicely with his sense of arrogance and invulnerability, which may be exacerbated by age and illness. 

The deployment of the military to various cities during the past several months could be seen as circumstantial evidence for this interpretation. It may be a dress rehearsal for widespread intimidation at the polls next November.

The final reason (or one that supports the first two) is that the president’s physical condition is more dire than is commonly thought. Perhaps others are governing. Videos of him trying to stay awake during press events and how terrible he looks in apparently authentic recent photos suggest something is wrong. 

These reasons seem overly dramatic, superficial and/or simplistic. Perhaps they are. But remember that in the world of Donald Trump, scenarios that sound like far-fetched movie plots very often come to pass. It’s useful to think the way when searching for ways to think about the Trump presidency. 

We clearly have a crisis in leadership. Determining the reasons he is hurting MAGA and adjacent non-college rural white voters is the key to thinking about the true nature of the threat. Doing so does not ensure we can defeat it. It does, however, point to how we should try.