Reality Has a Vote, in Politics as in Entertainment

Reality has a vote. That is one lesson administered to the body of politics in the first 100 days of President Donald Trump's second administration.

After the president gleefully announced his "Liberation Day" tariffs on April 2, stock market prices fell sharply, and the bond market became, as Trump put it, "yippy." So after just one week, on April 9, he put the Liberation Day tariffs on a 90-day pause.

Perhaps contributing to this choice was automaker Stellantis' April 3 decision to lay off workers in five U.S. factories.

That can't have been what he expected to happen and what he expected to do. Reality and widespread reactions to a policy I and many others regarded as "lunatic" caused him to change course. Reality has a vote.

Something like that scenario has been playing out, in slower motion, on Trump's attempts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. Trump ultimately got Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire after his contentious White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Feb. 28.

But his confidence that he could similarly muscle Russian President Vladimir Putin has, so far, proved unfounded. Putin evidently calculates that prosecuting the war is a political necessity that outweighs any damage Trump could inflict. The issue simmers, momentarily out of the headlines. Reality has a vote.

In the headlines last weekend was Trump's anger at Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for not somehow reducing interest rates. That's a longstanding Trump cause, like his 40-year embrace of tariffs. Real estate developers operate on borrowed money and always want lower interest rates.

However, Trump's contemplation of firing Powell, contrary to statute, raised fears of a protracted legal struggle and chaos in monetary policy. It did not help that automaker Volvo announced it was laying off workers at three U.S. facilities. The stock market juddered downward again on Monday.

On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported, "Word leaked that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a private investor conference that he expected trade tensions between the U.S. and China to ease soon." Trump then signaled that his triple-digit tariffs on China might be lowered and that he has "no intention to fire" Powell. Reality once again has a vote.

There's been limited damage to Trump's poll numbers so far. But his job approval is already negative and, as Clinton administration veteran Doug Sosnik writes in The New York Times, "If past presidencies are any guide, the worst is yet to come." Precedent might not be a guide for a politician who inspires unusually strong and durable feelings, both positive and negative, but Trump's approval did dip below 40% at least momentarily in his first term.

Through all this, Democrats have concentrated their attacks not on his wildly oscillating tariff pronouncements (some Democrats like tariffs) nor on his lack of success in ending Russia's war on Ukraine (launched during former President Joe Biden's time in office). They've been emphasizing instead his dispatch of an alleged gang member to El Salvador and its stringent prison.

Legally, it's a complex case: Defendant Kilmar Abrego Garcia undeniably illegally immigrated to the United States when he was 16 and is subject to a deportation order to anywhere but El Salvador; the Trump Justice Department is acting under the dubious legal authority of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The politics of it is more easily explainable. The spectacle of a Democratic senator and multiple House members flying to El Salvador and portraying Abrego Garcia as a "Maryland father" appeals to liberal college graduates with "in this house we believe" signs proclaiming "no human being is illegal."

But, as election polling guru Nate Silver argues, Abrego Garcia is "far from the ideal test case," and most voters approve of Trump's immigration policy. The issue may protect Democratic incumbents from primary competition, but it doesn't appeal to moveable voters.

I share the view that it's unseemly for the U.S. government to send anyone to the grim El Salvador prisons. But I also think it has only limited responsibility for what happens to alleged illegal immigrants removed from this country.

Trump's focus on El Salvador surely has what lawyers call an in terrorem effect. If you're an illegal immigrant and you think there's a one in 100 chance you could be sent to a Salvadoran prison for life, you may very well decide to go back to where you came from.

We have no way of knowing how many illegal immigrants have chosen or will choose self-deportation. But judging from the sharp decline in incoming foreign travelers, due largely to fears of U.S. policies, and the almost total elimination of illegal southern border crossings, the number of people self-deporting isn't going to be small. It could easily be far greater than the number deported.

I see Trump's policies on trade, like his policies on immigration, as aimed at incentivizing people to do what he wants voluntarily. Salvadoran prisons will get illegal immigrants to self-deport, he thinks. Tariffs will get investors to build factories. A "warrior culture" defense secretary will spur enlistments.

Remember that, in the decades before that escalator ride, Trump was in show business as a casino owner, resort franchiser and reality TV host. The goal is to attract the largest audience; the problem is that it's not clear how. Or, as the screenwriter William Goldman said of Hollywood, "Nobody knows anything."

Trump thinks he knows something. Contrary to almost all expert opinions, he's been elected president twice. So far, he's taking more risks than in his first term but is adjusting when reality votes no. Whether that suppleness will continue is unclear.

Unhappily, he seems unaware of the lasting damage he may be inflicting on the economy and body politic by his wild and difficult-to-predict major policy changes. Nothing in politics is free. Who will pay the price for that, and when, are matters yet to be determined.

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Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. His new book, "Mental Maps of the Founders: How Geographic Imagination Guided America's Revolutionary Leaders," is now available.