Good morning. It is Sunday, November the 23rd. We've apparently entered the lame duck

news cycle. It's an old playbook, reflexively referring to a president's second and presumably

last term and writing about it as the so-called lame duck period. Headline after headline,

now frame Donald Trump as a lame duck, a term meant to convey a president not seeking

reelection who will remove themselves from power after the next election with diminished

authority and waning influence over the government, its institutions, and their own party.

A president acting like they're in their twilight phase,

except this is Donald Trump. And trying to squeeze his authoritarian impulses into old categories

doesn't just misdiagnose the moment. It normalizes his presidency. You'll hear and read the label

lame duck more frequently in the months ahead, as Trump's second

term, at least on paper, draws to a close. You'll see analysis that suggests that the growing

pushback from Republican lawmakers, particularly the near-unanimous support for releasing the Epstein

files and redistricting resistance in states like Indiana, Indiana and Kansas, is a natural outcome

of Trump being in his second and final stint as president.

The analysis is not inherently wrong, but as you consume it, it's important to maintain the context.

A lame duck is inherently softer and less threatening.

The term itself originated in the world of finance to describe someone who's broken down and powerless,

and its use may be a misdiagnosis of the current moment.

Trump is an authoritarian who cannot be understood through traditional presidential frameworks.

He literally told the New York mayor, Zoran Mamdani, on Friday in front of the press,

that he doesn't mind being called a fascist.

Lame duck and fascists don't go well together.

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