Here on Lost Island

By Abe Greenwald

Friday, March 28, 2025

 

Earlier this week on the podcast, Matt Continetti noted the degree to which Donald Trump is turning his second presidency into a TV show. I then added that Trump is really producing several shows in addition to his own, and he’s casting them with assorted figures from the administration. At least one of them is on the air at any given moment. Trump is the star of the Executive Order Hour and Tariff Time, but there’s also Witkoff’s World, the Rubio Roundup, Divesting with DOGE, and so on.

 

Trump, being the master programmer that he is, knows what gets viewers to come back for more. Which is partially why all these shows seem to be perpetual cliffhangers: Will he or won’t he slap on the new tariffs? Will the court rule against the latest deportation effort? Will the administration defy the judge? Will Putin say yes to a deal? Will Musk reveal his work? To find out the answer to these and other questions, tune in next time.

 

The president likes to whet the public appetite for the next big reveal—which often ends up being another tease. But as I say, that’s only a part of what’s going on here. Maybe the cliffhanger strategy is disguising the fact that we’re in another genre altogether. Seeing the Trump shows play out, I’m starting to get the feeling that we’re watching what we could call Lost TV, after the thrilling show whose creators nonetheless had no idea what story they were telling or where it was headed. The aimlessness of Lost frustrated a lot of viewers, but its success inspired many copycats. It now seems clear that Severance is one.

 

And so, I suspect, are the Trump shows.

 

In the Lost genre, nothing gets resolved. As one question goes unanswered, two more are raised to divert the viewer’s attention. What happened to the Canada-statehood plotline? Never mind, JD Vance is headed to Greenland now. So we paused tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods? That was weeks ago, we’ve got a 25 percent tariff on cars coming up. If DOGE got rid of 24,500 federal workers, why are they back? Let it go, Elon Musk found a $1 billion wasted on a useless park survey. Hey, wasn’t Putin ready for peace a few episodes ago? Peace-shmeace, he prayed for Trump and gave him an oil painting.  Whatever came of that mineral deal? It’s in rewrites, but Zelensky is now a good guy, by the way. What’s the latest on the Trump Gaza plan? Haven’t heard much, but Steve Witkoff thinks that Hamas might not be “intractable.” Wasn’t that Columbia Hamas supporter supposed to be out of the country by now? It hit a speedbump, but they’re rounding up a lot more troublemakers. How is inflation supposed to go down with a trade war looming? Forget that, Hyundai is building a new plant in Georgia. And on it goes.

 

To be fair, statecraft isn’t screenwriting, and no administration knows where the plot is headed. And we are little more than two months into the new administration. But this is ridiculous. Everything is up in the air, and nothing comes back down. This is what happens when you rely on executive orders, outside advisers, and sheer impulse to enact sweeping change. All those EOs are floating in space waiting for legal clearance to land. And Elon Musk and Steve Witkoff are taking one step forward and two steps back as they try to get their bearings. The Trump storylines will resolve at some point, but they’ve largely been taken out of the administration’s hands. Courts will rule and foreign leaders will decide on peace or war.

 

In the meantime, we’ll keep watching the Trump shows as if they’re going to satisfy our questions. Because with so much hanging off so many cliffs, we can’t afford to tune them out.