Nobody’s Good at Jenga:

A Mongoose Analysis

Nobody’s Good at Jenga. The tower always falls. That’s not a prediction — it’s the rules of the game.

For those unfamiliar: Jenga is a game where players take turns removing wooden blocks from a stacked tower and placing them on top. The tower grows taller and less stable with every move. There is no winning condition. There is only “not losing yet.” The game ends when the tower falls, and whoever touched it last loses.

This is the game the Trump coalition has been playing for years now. Every norm violated, every institution captured, every obvious lie defended, every crime excused — another block pulled from the base, another momentary wobble, another collective held breath... and then the tower holds. Still standing. See? Nothing to worry about.

The problem with getting away with things is that it teaches you the wrong lessons. You start to believe you’re *good* at this. You pulled a block and the tower didn’t fall, therefore you are skilled at block-pulling. You develop theories about which blocks are safe to pull. You get cocky.

But the tower doesn’t care about your theories. The tower is just physics, waiting.

The Last Table

Here’s what changed: there’s no next table.

Trump’s entire career was built on a simple principle — make sure when the tower falls, someone else is standing closer to it than you are. Contractors don’t get paid. Banks take the loss. Investors hold the bag. The tower collapses, but Trump is already across the room, starting a new game with new money.

This is the man who bankrupted casinos — *casinos*, where the house edge is literally built into the mathematics — and walked away richer each time. Not because he’s good at Jenga. Because he was good at making sure someone else’s hand was on the block when it fell.

But the presidency is different. There’s no restructuring. There’s no next venture. There’s no walking away to let the creditors sort through the rubble.

For the first time in his life, Donald Trump is playing Jenga at the only table in the room.

The Wobble

This week, the tower wobbled in a way everyone could see.

The Department of Justice released over 30,000 documents from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation — rushed, sloppy, with inconsistent redactions and victim names exposed. This wasn’t careful disclosure. This was panic. When institutions move fast and messy, it means someone did the math and decided the cost of *not* releasing was higher than the cost of releasing badly.

That’s a tell. That’s the sound of someone looking at the tower and realizing they might be the one with their hand on it when it falls.

Meanwhile, CBS News killed a *60 Minutes* segment on the deportation of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison. The new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, reportedly wanted access to the administration before airing criticism of it. Classic 20th-century information control thinking: spike the story, protect the relationship.

Except this is the 21st century. The Canadian affiliate had the segment already. They aired it. Now the story is everywhere *and* CBS is the story — a prestigious news organization self-censoring for access, getting scooped on its own journalism by *Canada*, looking like exactly what its critics always said it was. Because they forgot about the Streisand Effect.

The block Weiss pulled didn’t stabilize anything. It just made the tower sway harder.

The Math Changes

Here’s what matters about this moment: the institutions that have been carrying water for Trump are doing new math.

Not the institutions of democracy — we’ve been watching those struggle for years. No, the interesting calculation is happening among the people and organizations that *chose* Trump. The senators who made their peace with it for judges and tax cuts. The media figures who built brands on access. The donors who wanted deregulation. The evangelical leaders who sold the “flawed vessel” argument.

They were willing to look the other way on a lot. That was the deal. You hold the tower steady while we pull our blocks, and we all benefit.

But there are documents in that 30,000-page release. There are things that make “I didn’t know” impossible to say. There are revelations that test even the most committed not-knowing.

And here’s the thing about institutions — they’re made of people. People have self-preservation instincts. “Defending Trump” was the safe career move for years. But if it stops being safe? If the exposure spreads wide enough, if the documents are bad enough, if the poll numbers shift enough?

Then all those people start doing their own private math. And rats have an excellent sense for when ships are taking on water.

The Fundamental Miscalculation

The Trump coalition’s error is the same error every Jenga player makes toward the end of the game: they think their past success predicts future results.

They pulled so many blocks. The tower swayed but held. They developed confidence. They started to believe they understood something the rest of us didn’t — some secret to keeping an unstable structure standing through sheer will and cleverness.

But that’s not how the game works. In Jenga, every successful move makes the next move harder. The tower doesn’t get more stable as you play. It gets less stable. Your “wins” are just delayed losses. The physics accumulates.

Nobody’s good at Jenga. You just get lucky until you don’t.

Whose Turn Is It?

The tower is swaying. Everyone can see it.

The question now is simple: whose hand is on the block? Who’s going to be touching the structure when it finally gives way?

Watch the next few weeks. Watch who starts backing away from the table. Watch who suddenly discovers principles they forgot they had. Watch who decides that maybe it’s time to be somewhere else when the tower comes down.

Because somebody in that room is starting to realize: they’ve been playing the game wrong this whole time. They thought they were partners. They thought they were players.

They were blocks.