Just days after the Pentagon canceled a weapons shipment to Ukraine, President Trump has ordered more weapons to be sent over. “They have to be able to defend themselves,” Trump said, referring to the Ukrainians. “They’re getting hit very hard now.”

The shipment that was canceled last week included missile interceptors that the Ukrainians need to defend their cities and that they can’t get from anywhere else. The new shipment Trump ordered will reportedly be those interceptors, though not as many as initially planned.

Trump made the right call here. But as Gen. Mark Hertling pointed out a few days ago, part of the problem with the initial cancellation was that it was made without any coordinated policy process, apparently on the whim of the Secretary of Defense. Having one whim cancel out another is no way to run a superpower.

Happy Tuesday.

Enthusiastic Surrender

by Sam Stein

Is Donald Trump a stronger and more skilled politician than he was eight years ago—or are the guardrails that once hindered him just weaker?

That question has come up often over the last six months as Trump has enjoyed a series of successes that eluded him during his first term in office. Clearly, he has used the power of the presidency in ways neither he nor any prior president has before. He hasn’t just changed the shape and direction of the executive branch and moved his agenda through Congress, but reshaped entire sectors of American society—from academia, to entertainment, to the law itself.

Yet what has stood out along the way is not how far Trump has pushed the envelope but how little resistance he’s encountered. In yesterday’s newsletter, Bill delved into the crevices of Trump’s mind to imagine the glee he must feel about how frictionless it has all been. Trump hasn’t had to put up much of a fight. He seems totally aware of—and perhaps even liberated by—how subservient everyone around him has been, especially his fellow Republicans.

That subservience wasn’t nearly as prevalent during Trump’s first term. Nor did it sprout up after November 5, 2024. Rather, it took root in between the two Trump administrations, as documented in 2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America, a new book out today by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf.

The book is a richly reported look at the three distinct storylines that made up the last election: Joe Biden’s fall, Kamala Harris’s scramble, and Trump’s resurrection. The last of the three may have seemed like the most covered. But there are vignettes in 2024 that are new, and they serve as powerful reminders of just how quickly, fully, and unilaterally the Republican party chose to acquiesce to Trump during a period many took to be his political nadir.

Perhaps the most telling and startling moment recounted in the book happened the day after the January 6th attack on the Capitol, during a meeting between then–RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and RNC members. While with these lawmakers who had just witnessed the violent mob’s attempt to take over the Capitol, she put Trump on speakerphone “letting him hear them shout, ‘We love you!’”

Expressing affection for the man who had inspired the attack on the Capitol and threatened the peaceful transfer of power may seem like an act of ignoble groveling. (And it was.) But such acts would come to define Trump’s period in exile. Two years later, Trump was indicted in the hush-money case in New York. After stewing on the plane ride home to Mar-a-Lago, he woke up the next day to an “outpouring of support from Republicans.” The Trump campaign, the authors report, quickly fielded polls showing that his support in the Republican primary was topping 50 percent and growing.

The more Trump came under fire, the firmer his support would grow among Republicans. The authors report that Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) briefly reconsidered his decision not to run for president as his home state governor, Ron DeSantis, stumbled. But then he saw the results of voter research he commissioned:

In one focus group, when Trump supporters were shown the facts about his shortcomings on building a border wall, one woman explained that Trump must have done that on purpose, in order to funnel the migrants through gaps where they could be apprehended more readily. Scott decided to stay out of the race.

As for DeSantis’s camp, they found it maddening that Trump’s political standing kept getting stronger as his personal standing weakened. Unable to reach Republican voters as Trump’s indictments dominated the news, campaign aides “began to joke that maybe DeSantis should try getting arrested.”

By the time of the first GOP primary debate, several key figures assumed the contest was finished. Every candidate was asked if they’d vote for Trump if he was convicted in a court of law. All but two, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, put up their hands. Christie, who eight years earlier was one of the first Republican politicians to endorse Trump, would go on to tell the authors that he was stunned by “the fact that these folks would absolutely prostitute themselves that way.” He would add: “That’s the day the primary ended.”

It was a conclusion McDaniel reached, too. She privately told her team that night, “This is over.”

It’s hard not to wonder how Trump must have felt in these moments. He was not even on the debate stage that night, but nearly all his “opponents” seemed eager to take his side. Years earlier, he was on the precipice of being impeached for the second time, and he got a rousing attaboy from RNC members. The man gets indicted for hiding a hush-money payment to a porn star, and his numbers go up!

Yes, Trump has benefited from the perception that he’s the subject of political prosecution—few play the victim card as aggressively or as skillfully. And yes, he has cultivated immense loyalty among his base over the years—often by putting loyalists in positions of power. But as we marvel at the political powers Trump now possesses, it’s worth noting how infrequently he has been challenged from within his own party, not because they agree with everything he does, but because they simply don’t seem interested in trying. At times, even Trump himself couldn’t quite believe how easy he had it.

“I was a little surprised,” he told the 2024 authors of the fact other Republicans rallied to his defense after the hush money indictment. “I was impressed because they were campaigning against me.”