Trump blinks on tariffs in face of GOP resistance — but he hasn't given up on his cult leader dreams

Yahoo

10-04-2025

History's most famous cults are known primarily for their final suicidal acts: the mass poisoning at Jonestown, the self-immolation of the Branch Davidians, the self-asphyxiations of Heaven's Gate. We know these things happen, but it's still a mystery to most of us how cult members get to this point. Why didn't they hit the eject button sooner, as their leader descended further into his incoherent megalomania? Why did they stick by him, even as it became increasingly clear he was putting the whole community on a pathway to self-destruction? Why didn't more people voice doubts or even confront the cult leader before things got this bad?
We're getting a compelling illustration on the national stage of how a cult leader can induce his followers to stick by him, even as he loses his mind and his behavior becomes too erratic and dangerous to defend. Almost every Republican on Capitol Hill knows that Donald Trump's tariff plan is political suicide, but few are willing to admit that Dear Leader fully intends to see this idiocy to the very end. Instead, most resemble the residents of Jonestown, many who hoped Jim Jones was testing their faith with all this poison-Kool-Aid talk, which allowed them to play along until it was too late to save themselves.
But while the Republican party acts very much like Trump's cult, there are still some obstacles between Trump and his Jim Jones fantasies. He doesn't have congressional Republicans geographically isolated, which is key to maintaining control over the flock. Their connections to the outside world, especially to constituents frantic about rising prices and lost savings, are pulling them away. Many Republican politicians aren't true believers, either, but cynical operators whose "loyalty" to Trump only lasts as far as their perceived self-interest. As a result, a small but growing number of Republicans in both the House and the Senate started to back bills to roll back Trump's tariff powers. For now, the pressure is working. On Wednesday, Trump agreed to a 90-day "pause" on most tariffs, while escalating the trade war with China.But this victory is small and short-lived. At the risk of sounding like a grubby leftist that Republicans want to ignore, but the GOP has what you might call a collective action problem. Trump has a messiah complex, which has only grown since that missed assassin's bullet from July was hyped by his followers into "proof" that he's the Chosen One. Even as he blinks momentarily on his tariff mania, his behavior is getting even more erratic in a way that's got "last days of Waco" vibes from a president who has already unsubtly compared himself to David Koresh. His Truth Social meltdown when announcing the "pause" indicates a decline in Trump's already-fragile mental state.
There have been various failed efforts, both from the White House spinsters and pundits, to sane-wash Trump's choice to torch the U.S. economy as some kind of "strategy." In a Tuesday speech before the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), Trump made it clear that he's just a malignant narcissist whose only goals are self-worship and imposing increasingly baroque loyalty tests on his cult followers, i.e. the entire Republican party. "I see some rebel Republican, some guy who wants to grandstand, say, 'I think that Congress should take over negotiations.' Let me tell you, you don't negotiate like I negotiate," he groused as the crowd nervously laughed to please Dear Leader. He pretended foreign leaders are "calling us up, kissing my a—."
'They are dying to make a deal. 'Please, please sir, make a deal. I'll do anything sir,'' he claimed, in a moment quite reminiscent of how late-stage cult leaders experience a total collapse between reality and their grandiose fantasies. "BE COOL!" he barked on Truth Social Wednesday, promising, "Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!" Then there's this confusing and chaotic "pause." It all feels like the final stage of a cult, when the leader's frantic efforts to retain control result in escalating dictates and prophecies that become increasingly hard for followers to make sense of.
"There is no grand plan or strategic vision, no matter what his advisers claim — only the impulsive actions of a mad king," explained Jamelle Bouie in the New York Times on Wednesday. "Trump's tariffs are not a policy as we traditionally understand it," he continued, but an expression of Trump's inability to "conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance."
Republican behavior helps illustrate the in-group dynamics of a cult that make it so hard for members to buck the leader when he puts them on the path to suicide, either literal or metaphorical (which is so far all that Republicans are contemplating). Few are willing to be the one seen questioning the infinite wisdom of Dear Leader, lest they draw his ire and be singled out for punishment. Instead, they resort to passive language, in hopes they can convey their concerns without daring to question whether the MAGA prophet is not the wisest man who ever lived.
"What's happening is not good. Now will it continue?" Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said in a typical comment. "I think it is a mistake to assume that we will have high tariffs in perpetuity," said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex. One would think they're talking about the weather, rather than a deliberate choice by Trump. Billionaire Elon Musk is trying a slightly different tactic of blaming Trump advisor Peter Navarro, rather than Trump himself. What ties all this together is a fear of criticizing Trump directly, and instead hoping that all this gentle hand-holding and blame-shifting will give their leader the space he needs to stop the madness.
Republicans would be foolish to treat this 90-day pause as a victory big enough to justify scurrying back to their holes, to hide from the wrath of Dear Leader. He is spiraling and sees these tariffs as the final proving ground of his total conquest of the GOP. He will keep going back to that well — which means economic tumult, more stock market crashes, and more panicked constituents — unless this tariff nonsense is put to bed entirely. Republicans need to realize, not to return to the commie talk, that this is a "hang together or hang separately" moment. If enough of them join with Democrats to pass a veto-proof bill stripping Trump of his power to pass tariffs, there isn't anything he can do but stand down. The irony is that they'd be saving Trump from himself. But that might be a price worth paying to save the rest of us — including their own party — in the process.