What a loser.

Donald Trump racks up a multitude of defeats. And it's only Wednesday.

Donald Trump has become the thing he feared most.

When I worked in the first Trump administration, I watched him sort the entire world into two columns: winners and losers. The obsession was pretty much total. In fact, those of us who’d served in other presidential administrations realized that we weren’t going to be able to present complex issues, challenges, or options to the president without reducing them to a binary. Everything needed to be dumbed down into this schema. Winners. Losers.

By mid-2017, word came down from the White House to stop sending the president documents of any meaningful length. No binders or slide decks or briefing papers or even multi-page summaries of long documents. If a memo had a staple in it, it was too long and had to be cut. Fifteen-page updates on life-or-death issues were chopped down to a single page or, better, a half-page. Bold fonts. Simple words. BIG pictures.

When the moment came to decide whether to keep troops in Afghanistan, for instance, the briefing memo was beyond the man’s comprehension. I remember sitting up late at night reading the sixty-or-so-page document at the White House and thinking, “There’s no way he will process this. Ever. He won’t get through the introduction.” Apparently others had the same feeling. I got a phone call from White House chief of staff John Kelly, who sought my help.

I was asked to rewrite the national security document — the most important such decision memo so far in his first term — in Trump’s voice. Overnight, I shortened it as much as humanly possible and put it in words he’d understand. The end result was two pages (already a page too long, but I figured the lives of American troops and the 45 million Afghan people might be worth it). The title I gave the unclassified version felt like a parody: “Afghanistan: How to Put America First—And Win!” Pull out too fast, I wrote, and the terrorists would mock us as “losers.” Stay, fight smarter, cut a great deal, and he’d be a “winner.”

It was a pretty easy setup. He feared nothing more than being a loser. If you think this is stupid, you’re right. It was very stupid. And it was the only reliable way to get the attention of the president of the United States.

Nearly a decade later, all that energy spent chasing the word “winning” (instead of chasing the actual thing) has cost Trump mightily. I woke up today and observed that it seems to have already cost him the courts, the Congress, and the country, in various ways. He really looks like a loser this week. And it’s only Wednesday.

Let’s start with the courts. As we covered last night on DEFIANCE Daily with our friend Beto O'Rourke (episode below), this was a week of nothing but losses. A federal judge in Maryland blocked the administration's bid to seize state voter files, marking the ninth such ruling against the effort. Nine losses, zero wins, and five of them handed down by judges Trump appointed himself. Ouch. Then a judge struck down the unlawful overhaul of the SAVE database, the Orwellian system the Trump administration has been trying to use to decide whether someone gets the right to vote. The Trump team has coerced states to run their voter databases against this master database, quietly merging the private data of millions of Americans into a system that’s been found to be “accidentally” flagging naturalized citizens for removal from the rolls.

Meanwhile, a California judge tossed the lawsuit against Los Angeles over its sanctuary policy, marking yet another failure in the White House’s effort to force cities to comply with Trump’s deportation blitz. And after the Justice Department subpoenaed reporters at the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post to force them to reveal their sources, the papers fought back… and DOJ quietly folded.

Now onto Congress. In a stunning rebuke from his own party, the Senate voted yesterday 50 to 48 to order Trump to end the war in Iran or seek authorization to continue it. Paired with the House vote, it’s the first time since the War Powers Resolution of 1973 that both chambers have directed a sitting president to end a war. Four Republicans crossed him in the Senate and even more in the House. Meanwhile, Trump’s cherished voter suppression bill (the one that would make it hard for anyone to vote without a passport or a birth certificate or proof of their name change) is dead on arrival in the Senate, where members of Congress are lining up today to tell him at a private lunch, to his face, to give it up.

And finally, there’s the country as a whole, which he’s losing catastrophically. A new poll puts Trump’s approval rating at 30 percent, which marks the lowest of his second term. The figure is only a single point away from where Trump was in January 2021, after he tried to steal an election, fomented an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and refused to attend the inauguration of his successor. Abroad, it’s even worse! A brand new Pew survey of 36 nations finds a meager 23 percent of foreigners have confidence in Trump’s leadership. He now ranks well below France’s Macron, Ukraine’s Zelensky, China’s Xi, and even Russia’s Putin.

The self-styled “winner” is trusted less than the strongmen he envies. How about that?

There is, I suppose, one place left in Washington where Trump still wins every single time. He need only lean over the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial and gaze at the one man who has never once voted against his wishes. Himself. In his own eyes, he’s always winning. Unfortunately, if he looks at that reflection this week, he’ll see an algae bloom laughing back at him.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor
P.S. Help spread the defiance by sharing this post.

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THE DEFIANCE WATCHLIST

We are tracking these stories today.

1. TRUMP JUST NOMINATED HIS OWN TAX LAWYER TO RUN THE IRS’S LEGAL OFFICE. Trump has nominated James Gadwood (a lawyer from the firm that represents Trump’s own holding company in tax matters) to be the chief counsel of the IRS. This is the same IRS that Trump sued to stop from auditing him, and the same IRS whose acting attorney general just granted Trump and his family sweeping protection from future tax audits. The current acting chief counsel also previously represented Trump on tax issues and has had to recuse himself. Trump has now installed his own tax lawyers at the top of the agency responsible for investigating his taxes. Gee, we wonder why that is. We’ll be watching to see if Mr. Gadwood is also willing to participate in a suspected effort to use the IRS to go after Trump’s enemies.

2. THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO RESUME DEPORTING PEOPLE WITHOUT A JUDGE. A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration can resume speedy deportations of undocumented migrants anywhere in the country — not just near the border — without giving them a chance to appear before a judge. The policy had resulted in ICE agents showing up at courts to arrest-and-deport immigrants who were already there for their hearings. The two judges who sided with Trump were both Trump appointees. The ruling reverses a lower court decision that had blocked the policy after finding evidence of significant errors, including people who had lived in the US for far longer than two years being wrongly deported. The court acknowledged those errors happened but blamed individual officers rather than the policy itself. The ACLU called it “an unfair and error-prone system” that undermines due process. Not everyone who gets deported under this policy will be undocumented. Some of them already weren’t. But but but… the fight ain’t over yet… see below.

3. ACT OF DEFIANCE — A JUDGE JUST TOLD ICE TO GET OUT OF THE COURTROOMS. A federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction blocking the Trump administration from arresting people at immigration courts, ruling that the policy was arbitrary, violated federal law, and was “based on a false premise.” The practice allowed ICE agents to arrest immigrants who had shown up to their own court hearings, leading to dramatic confrontations in courthouse hallways. The judge also struck down the policy allowing ICE to hold detainees for more than 12 hours without cause, ruling it violated their Fifth Amendment rights. DHS called it “naked judicial activism.” A separate federal judge in New York reached the exact same conclusion last month. Showing up to your own immigration hearing and getting arrested for it is not due process. The courts agree — and they’re not done yet.

WHAT’S COMING UP

• TONIGHT — WEEKLY MISSION BRIEFING — This week, we’ll be announcing something we’ve NEVER done before. And it’s something you’ll have a chance to put your name on, literally. By the way, Wednesday’s are the “beating heart of DEFIANCE.org.” Every Wednesday @ 5pm ET we do a special episode of DEFIANCE Daily and announce real actions to combat Trump’s corruption. So tune in. Replays available afterwards.

• TOMORROW — DEFIANCE DAILY — Every weeknight @ 5pm ET, you can watch our hour-long podcast LIVE on our DEFIANCE.News page, YouTube, or X — and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Most recent episode is pasted in the article above!

• FRIDAY — WEEKLY COFFEE — Come one, come all! But only DEFIANCE.org Members can ask questions. This is where Xander and Miles let their short hair down. No question is off limits. We go LIVE on www.DEFIANCE.News and post the video afterwards.

• ADD US TO YOUR CALENDAR — You can access the DEFIANCE.org Google Calendar here. That way, you’ll never miss a meeting, event, or broadcast.

ONE MORE THING

Forward this email to someone who should join the defiance. We are growing the club. I won’t let a wannabe dictator destroy the country I spent my career protecting. That’s why I launched DEFIANCE.org — a club for courageous Americans asking, “WHAT CAN I DO?” Each week, we defy Trump by taking real action to thwart his abuses of power. Become a Member today at DEFIANCE.org/join or here on Substack. 100% of proceeds go to the pro-democracy fight. Or sign up for occasional updates for free below. We publish breaking news and analysis at DEFIANCE.News.