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Comment by ipaddr | Hacker News Reader

He has to do everything at once because he is a lame duck president so that part makes sense. The conflicting messages sudden reversal of plans causes the biggest issues.

Normally someone makes a case and tries to sell it to the public, congress. What's the purpose of tariffs to bring in income or to bring back jobs or to level trade agreements? You can't do all things at once and how does that work with other promises like lower prices. The lack of an overall plan is causing the issue.

If you take immigration he has a plan and he stuck to it and those are where his highest approval numbers are. Imagine he one day opens the border another day closes it starts kicking out American families the next day invites the world back in. That's his trade policy.

Get a solid plan, understand the downsides and if you can live with it stick with it and keep the personal insults out.

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> He has to do everything at once because he is a lame duck president

He is not. A President is a lame duck between the election of their successor and the end of their term, not at the beginning of their Constitutionally-final term.

That's the traditional meaning, but also commonly used to refer to politicians who are term limited, and can't run again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lame_duck_(politics)#United_St...

A president elected to a second term is sometimes seen as a lame duck from early in the second term, since term limits prevent them from contesting re-election four years later.

He does not believe he can't run again, so it's a doubly inappropriate description.

And who will stop him from running again?

How bad are the economy and midterms going to be? Will Republicans think that supporting a 3rd Trump term will be good for their own reelection prospects?

They turned right around to pick him after the insurrection.

It looks like we are in for a pretty bad time economically. But even so, he is running the party. Wouldn't shock me if he ran again and got nominated.

I'd not be surprised if Republicans supported an illegal 3rd term run, other than the fact that I think they'll save their own reelection prospects first if it comes to that.

Trump and Steve Bannon have talked about finding a way to run for a third term.

> he is a lame duck president

Doesn't his party control both houses of Congress?

Then why is he trying to rule 99% solo by executive order instead of working with congress to pass legislation?

1: I agree he should. Tariffs by presdential order is an obscene power for Congress to delegate.

2: What 10 democrats would work with Trump? It would be gridlock for four years (which is fine).

1.) I agree. However, if it other countries can impose tariffs at the drop of a hat and it takes a literal act of congress to pass a tariff, they'll never happen. Would that be a good thing? Maybe. Maybe not. Congress is obviously mostly useless. I was reading, of all things, a buzzfeed a few months ago where the biggest gripes of current house/senate members were along the lines of "it takes way too long to get anything done" and "I'm pretty sure most of my peers drink on the job"

I used the "act of congress" phrase intentionally, as it is generally a euphemism that describes, among other things, how long something can take or how hard it is to approve a thing.

I don't have a good solution to that problem.

Because he's a moron.

They have majorities, but arguably to "control" Congress, you need 60 votes in the Senate, otherwise most legislation can be blocked by the filibuster.

Do we love or hate kyrsten sinema for protecting the filibuster now?

By that definition there hasn't been a non-lame-duck President since Obama for a few months in 2009.

I'm just saying having a majority doesn't mean fully controlling congress. It has nothing to do with whether one is a lame duck.

Also, posting limits are annoying as fuck.

Still hate her (but Harry Reid far more). The filibuster is why we are in this mess - we can’t ever fix a problem. There will always be 41 Senators (often representing more cash and/or cows than people) to pass meaningful legislation.

Removing the filibuster can be done by majority vote, as it's just a rule of the Senate.

Yeah, that's why I blame Harry Reid.

How is he a lame duck President??

Hes the most powerful President America has seen in living memmory.

Or least-scrupulous, which looks similar in the short-term. :p

He is no more powerful than any other president. He has been using his power more than others - and demonstrating why most don't use it (well some of the reasons, there are a lot of other reasons not to use power).

However time is marching forward and as always happens other politicians are catching on - the house will be in full campaign mode in less than a year (except a few who retire - and the scary possibility that some have already lost a primary). 1/3 the senate is in the same situation. The 2026 election season is (as always) scaring a lot of politicians and in turn they will be trying to figure out what to do about it.

I can't tell you what will be done about it. Each politicians will make their own decision behind closed doors. Each will be re-evaluating their decision as every poll and constitute letter comes in (not to mention other indicators like the economy). As a result he will be losing power as congress starts to worry about the effect of his actions.

Given how much soft power the US lost by defunding USAID and alienating its allies, he’s actually the weakest president in a long time.

The strongest president of the weakest USA. It’s not mutually exclusive, there are lots of all-powerful dictators in tiny countries.

I'd argue post 9/11 Bush was the most powerful president. There was nothing that man wasn't allowed to do during that time. If Trump was president during that time.... Not something I want to think about.

> Get a solid plan

That is not the solution. In business yes, but for the president the answer is still NO.

Presidents should be eliminated for writing executive orders. It should be a constitutional amendment if necessary. Everything the president wishes to order is either under the responsibility of the legislature or is already within the President's scope of responsibilities.

Every president has used executive orders.

However congress shouldn't have left something so important as tariffs up for modification by executive order.

No, the executive order was an invention of Lincoln to bypass congress to expand war powers.

That is easy to refute.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federa...

While it might be easy to refute that article does not refute what I said. The only evidence to the contrary found in that article is an executive order from the 1830s that was repealed two years later, which doesn’t make a strong case of disagreement.

The article doesn't say what they were but George Washington issued eight.

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