What is Trump’s End Game? “The Whys.”

April 1, 2025.

This is a good day to start digging into “the Whys,” the big questions that get us to President Trump’s end game?

It is a good day because Corey Booker has been on the Senate floor since 7:00 pm last night, talking mostly to an empty Senate chamber. Other Senators have been coming in this morning to ask questions, so that Booker can have a break without relinquishing the floor. It is 11:00 am as I start writing, he has been at it for 16 hours. If he continues past noon, it will delay the start of a scheduled session of the Senate.

Booker is attacking Trump at the macro level. He came with a list. He is tackling Trump’s agenda piece by piece and putting them into a larger context. He is waving a copy of the Constitution as I type.

It is a good day because last month, in Raising An Army, I faulted Booker for thinking too small. When asked on Meet the Press if Democrats should be arguing that Trump was creating a Constitutional crisis, Booker balked. His focus, he said, was on how specific Trump policies were hurting individuals.

Senator Booker is finally asking the Whys. Why is Trump demolishing American democracy? Why is he tossing away 80 years of post WWII international relations? What does Trump really want? Is there a grand plan? And why does he have to be so angry and cruel?

Spoiler alert. Nobody is sure why. That may include Trump.

Hillary Clinton does not know. “If there’s a grand strategy at work here, I don’t know what it is,” the former Secretary of State and presidential candidate said in a March 28, NYT Opinion piece, How Much Dumber Will This Get?

Republican members of Congress do not know. “GOP lawmakers don’t yet know the full scope of what Trump has dubbed ‘reciprocal tariffs’ and possibly other duties the White House is preparing to unveil Wednesday,” Politico reported two days before they are to be announced.

Ukrainian President Zelensky did not  know when he arrived in the Oval Office last month. After being shouted at by Vice President Vance and Trump, he walked out with more questions than he came in with.

Xi Jinping does not know. In this, “rather wild and hard to interpret moment in the US China relationship,” Daniel Kurtz-Phelan began the March 27 Foreign Affairs Interview podcast, Xi and China are waiting for Trump to signal his intentions on tariffs, Taiwan, and a host of other issues.

“From Beijing’s perspective, I don’t think that they are gloating, I don’t think they are cowering in fear,” Ryan Haas said on the podcast. “I think they are struggling to make sense of what is going on.” Haas is a Fellow at the Brookings Institute and former policy expert at the NSC and the State Department.

Political opponents, other Republicans, allies, and adversaries do not know what Trump is up to, or what his end game is. One must wonder how that can be good for the US, or good for the world.

But it is 2:00 pm. Booker is 19 hours in and still going strong. “Don’t let this be another regular day in America,” he just pleaded.

A steady stream of Democrats is rallying to his side, uniting to make a larger point about a bigger picture than Trump du jour.

So, thank you to my Senator. Thank you to those joining him. Thank you for realizing we have a big picture problem. I hope it is not too late.

The next few posts will be chunks of the bigger picture. I will share information and theories others propose  about the Whys. I hope that taken together they add up to something helpful. And I will try to keep each short.

Notes.

https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/6394446540685225955/2695900683990683190   

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/28/opinion/trump-hegseth-signal-chat.html?searchResultPosition=11

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/31/republican-tariffs-trump-states-exemptions-00259301

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/where-us-china-relationship-headed

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/where-us-china-relationship-headed