Trump Refuses to Fold a Losing Hand

Doubling down with a pair of deuces is not a winning strategy

Donald Trump’s dozens of losses in court, including multiple defeats in his lawless quest to deport people without due process, have not slowed his zeal for bullying and retribution. Raised at the knee of Roy Cohn, his learned modus operandi has always been “Never apologize.” Instead, he doubles down with ever more outrageous actions, rhetoric, and nominations.

But that may come at a price.

He lost 9-0 at the Supreme Court on the constitutional requirement to give deportees due process. So, he claimed he won 9-0 (with encouragement from his cabinet of sycophants). Courts enjoined him from deporting people under the Alien Enemies Act without any hearing and ordered the government to “facilitate” Kilmar Abrego García’s return. Courts also warned that the government will be held in contempt for noncompliance with immigration actions. Instead of complying swiftly, Trump’s minions foot-dragged and evaded court orders.

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Further enraging the public, the Trump goon squads then deported three U.S. citizens under the age of 8—one with cancer. As the New York Times reported:

“Lawyers for [two] families said the mothers were not given an option to leave their children in the United States before they were deported. In the case of the 2-year-old, whose 11-year-old sibling was also sent to Honduras, a federal judge in Louisiana expressed concern that the administration had deported the American child against the wishes of her father, who remained in the country.”

Next, the Trump regime decided to intimidate the judiciary. In Milwaukee, FBI agents arrested state court Judge Hannah Dugan on spurious grounds. Even reading the criminal complaint, one came away with the impression there was scant evidence she even obstructed an ICE enforcement. No matter: Attorney General Pam Bondi smeared Judge Dugan with arguably the most unprofessional, unethical statement ever to come from the lips of an attorney general: “This is a criminal judge sitting on a criminal bench,” she sneered. (A comment she made in addition to concluding that members of our judiciary “are deranged, is all I can think of.”)

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To keep the cruelty train fired up and reverse the impression that Trump is losing in court, the White House staged a press event on Monday to highlight its “success,” by signing more executive orders ramping up Trump’s immigration crusade. Officials seemed desperate to not only divert attention away from court defeats but also from the puny numbers of immigrants he has expelled. Scripps News reports that “federal data shows there has not been a significant jump in immigrants deported since Trump took office. Mass deportations have not occurred.” For all his bloviating, “The numbers show removals are lagging behind levels during the Biden administration.”

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Trump’s instinct to double down on losses is not limited to the immigration arena. He also tried to shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unilaterally. The court enjoined him. The Wall Street Journal reported on what followed:

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson is scheduled to hold a hearing on whether White House officials are flouting her orders to cease dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an action she found violated the Dodd-Frank law that established the agency.

“There is reason to believe,” Jackson said in an order last week, that officials “are thumbing their nose at both this Court and the Court of Appeals,” which upheld most of her orders to preserve the CFPB’s existence while an employee-union’s lawsuit against the layoffs proceeds.

Judge Jackson could well hold the government’s counsel in contempt. In the meantime, the D.C. Circuit Court restored Berman’s ban (which had been lifted temporarily) on CFPB reductions in force pending appeal.

As Cornell Law School professor Michael Dorf told the Wall Street Journal, “there will be cases in which the government is going to be on offense, where they need the courts, and the loss of credibility will harm them.” In other words, Trump cannot stop digging—and it could well cost him and his MAGA troops the support they need to continue wielding power.

Trump does not know when to try a different tactic in executive branch nominations. He already named a slew of unqualified and ethically challenged buffoons to his Cabinet. Figures such as Bondi and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have proved to be just as disastrous as anticipated. But rather than begin to exercise some quality control, he came up with an even worse choice for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia: Ed Martin, a man with zero prosecutorial experience.

ProPublica and other outlets have documented his atrocious record. He has attempted to intimidate and investigate Democratic officials (before he was forced to back off), Georgetown Law School, and assorted Trump opponents. He ignored a grotesque conflict of interest regarding Jan. 6 insurrectionists. He appeared on Putin’s propaganda network RT over 150 times, went after medical journals and Wikipedia, praised Nazi sympathizer Timothy Hale-Cusanelli; and racked up multiple disciplinary complaints. Any one of these would have been sufficient to sink a nomination under any other president. Martin will either get rejected—or vulnerable senators up for reelection (looking at you, Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Susan Collins of Maine) will be forced to take another ridiculous vote.

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In the economic realm, Trump’s consumer taxes (tariffs) threaten to jumpstart inflation, create shortages, and disrupt international trade. Rather than fold a losing hand, Trump pretends to celebrate higher car costs. He “couldn’t care less” if prices go up and American consumers get walloped.) Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave a back of the hand to concerns about empty shelves. Instead of quietly declaring “victory” on tariffs and moving on, Trump is just as likely to keep ratcheting up consumer taxes on Americans.

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But doubling down on a losing hand when it comes to the international trading system might be the hand that proves politically fatal to him and to the Republicans who refuse to criticize him (or worse, who fall all over themselves trying to rationalize his idiotic policies).

The MAGA cult once revered Trump’s belligerence and refusal to recognize reality. They interpreted that as “strength.” When he defied informed, sane advice—be it on the budget or Ukraine—the same people who refused to get vaccinated or wear masks during Covid (“You’re not the boss of me!”) cheered. Trump channeled their contempt for elite opinion, expertise, and science. But they are starting to notice that his recklessness means their chips are down.

Whether it is court decisions, nominees, or taxing everyday American consumers, Trump seems so wedded to boneheaded ideas that he might continue insisting on upping the ante rather than cutting his losses. In doing so, he will likely wipe out a table of Republicans who have stood by him but will soon have to stand for reelection.

It’s becoming increasingly easy to understand how he bankrupted all those casinos.