Trump may or may not know that it was David Farragut (pictured in the old drawing used in a WWI recruitment post, shown above) who is alleged to have said “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead” or something like this. (You can read the history of this here and also here.
During the Civil War water mines were called torpedoes.
Farragut was fearless and when leading the Union fleet in the Battle of Mobile Bay, which the Union won, he demonstrated bravery.
Suffice to say that Donald Trump is no David Farragut although he likes to identify himself with real and fictional heroes.
There are many true stories, and certainly fictional ones, of soldiers and sailors prevailing even though they were against overwhelming odds.
Rambo and other make believe characters dodge machine gun bullets and Trump actually had a real bullet miss him. While he didn’t dodge a bullet, he had the presence of mind to turn the near miss to use this advantage by striking a defiant pose.
Currently Trump is testing the limits of his power. He says that he’s not sure whether he has to obey court orders. He can’t wait until he knows orders that go against him aren’t worth the paper they are printed on.
With a GOP controlled Congress he doesn’t have to worry about defying this branch of government. He intends to make sure his power is so absolute that even if the Democrats control Congress in two years they will be a paper tiger.
Today he wanted to come across as a man of the people by putting on a show as someone who cared about people struggling with high drug prices. There will be a time when he doesn’t even care about bothering with such performances. I can see an advisor suggesting that he do something to remind the people what a great president he is and him saying he’d rather play golf or fly in his palatial Air Force One to some country where he’ll be treated like royalty. I can see a time when Trump tires of governing and even faking that he’s doing this.
As far as public opinion, for him this is already like water off a duck’s back. If millions of people take to the streets and protest as long as they stay away from his properties he may not even order his armed thugs to deal with them.
There will be a point in the next year or two when Trump realizes that the torpedoes fired to thwart his dictatorial ambition are nothing more than Nerf balls fired from a plastic gun.
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