Edition · September 24, 2018
The Daily Fuckup: Backfill Edition — September 24, 2018
Kavanaugh’s confirmation train kept wobbling, Trump’s trade war kept getting pricier, and the White House kept proving that chaos is a governing principle, not a bug.
On September 24, 2018, Trump-world delivered another ugly reminder that this presidency was running on escalation and improvisation. The biggest mess was the Kavanaugh confirmation fight, where new allegations and a growing demand for a real FBI look sharpened the sense that the White House and Senate Republicans had jammed the process past the point of credibility. Meanwhile, the administration’s trade war against China kept backfiring in ways that were starting to show up in the farm economy, and the White House’s own legal and messaging posture continued to look brittle under pressure. This edition focuses on the most consequential screwups that landed on that date, not the ones merely simmering nearby.
Closing take
If you want the short version of late-September 2018 Trumpism, it was this: double down, deny the damage, and call the smoke a success story. The trouble was that the smoke kept getting thicker.
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Kavanaugh pileup
Confidence 5/5
★★★★☆Fuckup rating 4/5
Serious fuckup
New allegations surrounding Brett Kavanaugh pushed the confirmation fight into a deeper crisis on September 24, with Senate Democrats demanding a withdrawal or a renewed FBI investigation. The White House was stuck defending a process that already looked rushed, selective, and politically rigged. That gave critics a fresh line of attack: this was no longer just a bruising confirmation, but a test of whether the administration cared about basic vetting at all.
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Tariff blowback
Confidence 4/5
★★★☆☆Fuckup rating 3/5
Major mess
The administration’s China tariffs were still rolling into the real economy on September 24, and agriculture was taking the hit. Farmers were already warning that retaliation was cutting into markets and forcing Washington into expensive damage control. The political problem for Trump was obvious: the White House was selling strength while a core rural constituency was paying the bill.
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DOJ credibility
Confidence 3/5
★★☆☆☆Fuckup rating 2/5
Noticeable stumble
On September 24, the administration’s law-and-order branding kept colliding with the reality of a highly political Justice Department. Official filings and DOJ posture continued to show a government that was willing to be aggressive in court and deferential in the areas that mattered most to Trump. The result was another reminder that the president’s fiercest defenders were often sitting inside the executive branch itself.
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