Before his death at the hands of an assassin in September 1935, Senator Huey Long produced his second book, entitled “My First Days in the White House,” a tongue-in-cheek fantasy. He fashioned a cabinet that included political adversaries and Republicans. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, were included, as well as a few eccentrics. With Donald Trump finishing his first hundred days, Long seems prescient in predicting an administration that emerged ninety years later.

Long created a scenario that was both unrealistic and comical. He wanted to create a cabinet position for his Director of the Budget, a move that anticipated Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. Long’s imagined choice for Secretary of War was Smedley Butler, who resembles Pete Hegseth. Butler, who denounced war as a “racket,” seemed as prepared as Trump’s selection for Secretary of Defense.

Moreover, Long included personalities such as Gerald L.K. Smith and Charles Coughlin, the radio priest from Royal Oak, Michigan. Trump has Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Charlie Kirk, and Jack Posobiec, MAGA personalities. It is a crazy quilt collection of political figures under a Trumpian umbrella. They barely agree with each other in fundamentals, Populist in tone but trapped within by traditional Republican constraints.

Unable to pursue their version of economic utopia, MAGA is reduced to peddling schemes. One deals with tariffs, which they imagine will bring back manufacturing jobs, and they hope it will increase revenue. Although Bannon wants to raise taxes on the rich, he is hemmed in by Republican donors. What they want is “Project 25”, all budget cuts, and a mammoth tax bonus for billionaires.

Given these events, Trump is stuck. DOGE did not find substantial cuts commensurate with the goal of balancing the budget. He is in a similar position that Governor Long found himself when he tried to tax Standard Oil. He was impeached in 1929, although exonerated. When he finally passed a tax, he later agreed to rebate 80% back to Standard. Trump is dealing with a situation just as confounding. So, given these obstacles, MAGA is resorting to the old Populist response to stress, gimmicks.

By next year, Trump might try to reup Canadian annexation, Panama Canal seizures, and, of course, annex Greenland. Even the attempt to rebrand the Gulf of Mexico may have to be rethought. Maybe he’ll revive the Gold Standard or flood the world with oil as a way to create his “golden age.”

These conundrums and calamities are a byproduct of an uneasy marriage between Trump and the Republican Party. Although he has won three nominations, he must still accommodate the old regulars, bond salesmen, neocons, libertarians, and social puritans. Not until Trump makes a case to all Americans will he be able to reach a sympathetic electorate. Or he might do what Theodore Roosevelt did –create his own party.