Saturday, May 10, 2025
As the world goes to hell, Trump is living his best life
As the world goes to hell, Trump is living his best life
The
president has no permanent alliances, only personal financial interests.
May 9, 2025 at 6:00 a.m.
EDTYesterday at 6:00 a.m. EDT
It was, President Donald Trump teased, “a very, very big
announcement to make, like, as big as it gets … one of the most important
announcements that have been made in many years about a certain subject.”
When Trump actually announced his trade deal with Britain Thursday
from the Oval Office, it wasn’t quite as sensational as advertised: It turned
out to be just the outline of a deal, and “final details are being written up
in the coming weeks.” The British ambassador said it was “just the end of the beginning,” and a reporter
for Britain’s Sky News asked whether Trump was “overstating the reach and significance of
this deal.”
Still, Trump did use the occasion to highlight what for him
is the most important subject: his own business interests. “We have a lot of
investment over there,” he said, speaking not for the United States but for the
Trump Organization and its golf properties. “We have Turnberry, Aberdeen. We
have, as you know, Doonbeg in Ireland, right on the ocean. They’re all on the
ocean. I only have interest if they’re on the ocean. And we have, we have good
investments over there, beautiful.” He even recounted how Sean Connery helped
him win zoning approval for a golf course.
So this is why Britain went to the top of the trade-deal
waiting list? It was just the latest reminder, as if we needed one, that Trump
has no permanent alliances, only personal financial interests.
As you’ve no doubt heard, the president has spent a good
deal of time in recent days deliberating in public about just how many dolls he
will allow American children to have. First, he told his Cabinet that, because
of his tariffs, “children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls.” On “Meet
the Press,” he revised this upward: “They can have three
dolls or four dolls.” Aboard Air Force One, Trump offered a more flexible range
for what a girl would be permitted: “She could be very happy with two or three
or four or five.” (Trump has shown no such wavering on the number of pencils
children will be allowed to have: “They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They
can have five.” Not four, and not six.)
Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, adding to this
bit of Soviet-style planning, addressed himself to “that young girl” who might
be concerned about the new doll-rationing policies. “You and your family,
thanks to President Trump, can now be confident again that you will have a
better life than your parents,” he explained to
whichever 10-year-old girl was watching Fox News at that moment.
But Trump and his family are subjecting themselves to no
such sacrifice. In between the administration’s explication of the Two Doll
Policy, Trump enjoyed two extravagant excesses: He spoke at a dinner for his
super PAC, MAGA Inc., for which donors paid $1.5 million apiece for
access to Trump and to his artificial intelligence and crypto “czar,” David
Sacks. And he posted yet another promotion for a “Most Exclusive Once in
Lifetime Invitation” — the chance to “Join President Donald J. Trump at his
Private, Members-Only Club in Washington, D.C. for Dinner!” on May 22, awarded
to the 220 people who make the largest investments in Trump’s crypto meme coin.
This access-selling scheme is part of a larger crypto
racket that has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into the
pockets of Trump and his family and friends, some of it from foreign businesses
and governments. Billions more in paper earnings may soon be headed into
Trump’s accounts. It appears to be corruption, plain and simple — he’s directly
using the presidency to further enrich himself — with the added insult that
tens of thousands of novice investors who are presumably his supporters
have lost their shirts buying the Trump coins.
While American kids surrender their dolls, Trump is
charging $20 million a pop for people to have dinner with him. One
international trucking logistics firm is spending as much as that on Trump coins
(it’s issuing debt to buy the crypto), because it believes that “the addition
of the Official Trump tokens” will help it “advocate for fair, balanced, and free trade between
Mexico and the US.” At the same time, an investment firm in the
United Arab Emirates announced that it is making a $2 billion investment using
Trump’s stablecoins, another crypto scheme the president’s family is running.
And Trump’s allies in Congress are aiming to pass the crypto-friendly Genius Act, which would
make it even easier for Trump to engage in his get-richer-quick schemes. The
Trump family’s crypto grifting is on top of a new hotel in Dubai, a tower in
Saudi Arabia, a golf course in Qatar and a club in Washington. When the New York
Times’s Eric Lipton and David Yaffe-Bellany asked Donald Trump Jr. about the
schemes, the president’s eldest son said it
was “laughable” that he would “cease doing what I’ve been doing for over 25
years to earn a living and provide for my five children.”
While other American kids face a pencil quota, Don Jr. must
provide for his children with billions from the Persian Gulf — which Trump
reportedly plans to rename the “Arabian Gulf” at the request of his sponsors.
Trump and his family aren’t the only ones exploiting his
presidency for personal profit. As the Post has reported, government messages
from the State Department and U.S. embassies have pushed foreign countries to approve
Starlink, the satellite business of the world’s wealthiest man,
Trump sidekick Elon Musk, who also gets to pressure leaders in private
meetings.
Even in his first term, Trump was an I-me-mine kind of guy,
often arranging the presidency for his benefit. But what’s striking about the
second term is that he has increased both the threshold for the pain he is
willing to inflict on others and the amount of his devotion to his own
pleasure. The world may be going to hell, but don’t worry: The president is
doing well!
This week brought alarming hostilities between India and
Pakistan, both nuclear-armed powers. Russia hasn’t budged in peace talks
despite the concessions from Ukraine that Trump forced; even Vice President JD
Vance now says Russia is “asking for too much.”
Israel has stepped up its demolition of Gaza, which faces another humanitarian
crisis. Imports at the Port of Los Angeles are anticipated to drop 35 percent this week from a year ago, as
carriers cancel sailings because of the trade war with China. Federal Reserve
Chairman Jerome Powell, freshly branded a “FOOL” by Trump, warns that Trump’s
tariffs, if they continue, “are likely to generate a rise in inflation, a
slowdown in economic growth, and an increase in unemployment.”
But Trump seems unconcerned about Americans suffering.
Asked by NBC’s Kristen Welker if it would be okay to have a recession in the
short term, he replied: “Look, yeah. Everything’s okay.” After campaigning on a
vow to solve the housing crisis, he proposed in his new budget to cut federal housing programs by about 43 percent.
He also called for slashing the National Park Service, some education funds,
energy assistance and medical research, among other things. His $500 million proposed cut to the FBI is
so severe his own FBI director, Kash Patel, objects. The European Union has
launched a campaign to exploit the brain drain of
scientists caused by Trump’s attacks on universities and government research.
Reports of cruelty to migrants are multiplying, including
alleged deportations of mothers of breastfeeding infants and children
undergoing cancer treatments. Federal authorities fanned out to several Washington restaurants this
week in search of illegal immigrants, spreading intimidation but reportedly
producing no arrests. His attacks on the federal civilian workforce (about 80
percent of which is outside the Washington area)
have only just begun to be felt. And millions of Americans could be affected by
Musk’s DOGE as it rushes to build a centralized database of records
of U.S. citizens and residents, as The Post reported, potentially without
adequate privacy protections.
Yet Trump is living his best life, directing the federal
government to pursue whatever catches his fancy at the moment. His and the
White House’s social media accounts both posted an AI image of him dressed as
the pope, drawing an angry reaction from the Catholic Church as cardinals began
their conclave. He announced that he was directing the government to “REBUILD,
AND OPEN ALCATRAZ!” as a prison 62 years after it closed — an idea that came to
him hours after the PBS affiliate in the Mar-a-Lago area aired the 1979 film,
“Escape From Alcatraz,” as the Hollywood Reporter noted.
Trump announced that he would impose a 100 percent tariff on movies filmed
overseas — inspired by an idea presented to him at Mar-a-Lago by his
actor friend Jon Voight.
He said this week that he was “hereby declaring a National
Holiday” on Nov. 11 to mark the World War I armistice of 1918, and another on
May 8 to mark the “victory day” for World War II. He seemed unaware that we
already have a holiday on Nov. 11, Veterans Day, which was called Armistice Day
before the name change during the Eisenhower administration, and that while V-E
Day was May 8, the actual end of World War II — V-J Day — came a few months
later. In any event, the confused Trump said “we’re going to have a major
celebration of each day,” adding that Americans would not get time off work for
these days because “we have too many celebrations already.”
Trump acknowledged this week that he is using trade policy
as his personal plaything. “I could announce 50 to 100 deals right now because,
you know, I’m the shopkeeper and I keep the store. … And I can just set those
terms and they can go shopping, or they don’t have to go shopping, because
everybody wants to shop here,” he reasoned.
In other Trump-centric activity, the administration, which
has been thwarted in court in its attempt to shut down Voice of America,
announced that the government-funded outlet would broadcast One America News, a right-wing
outlet — thereby treating the world to Trump hagiography. Likewise, after
ousting Democratic board members from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum before
their terms ended, Trump has named replacements who are predominantly his
friends and allies, including a pair of Mar-a-Lago members (one
of them a “Real Housewives” star) and a media personality who called Democrats
“Jew-haters and lowlifes.” To his task force preparing for soccer’s 2026 World
Cup, he named Rudy Giuliani’s son as executive director. Now his Justice
Department is investigating New York Attorney General Letitia
James, a transparent bid for revenge against one of those who
brought legal cases against Trump.
Trump’s usual emphasis on himself becomes more jarring as
global problems proliferate. As the world grappled with the India-Pakistan
crisis Wednesday morning, Trump went on Truth Social and renewed his
complaints about CBS News’s editing of an election interview with Kamala
Harris. Asked by reporters about the India-Pakistan hostilities, Trump answered
that “I get along with both.”
Meeting Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, in the
Oval Office, Trump urged him to “see the new and improved Oval Office as it
becomes more and more beautiful with love. We handle it with great love and
24-karat gold.” Trump, calling himself “a very artistic person,” further
explained to the Canadian that North American maps would look better if the
border with Canada were erased.
On “Meet the Press,” Trump explained that, when it comes to
economic news, “the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the
Biden economy.” He called Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) a “low-IQ person,”
the latest Black lawmaker to receive that
label. He celebrated Cinco de Mayo by reposting his “wonderful” post from 2016
attesting that Trump Tower has the best taco bowls.
And what is Congress doing to return the commander in
chief’s attention to matters of state? Well, on Thursday the House passed
legislation sponsored by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) attempting to
codify Trump’s decree that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America.
The courts, at least, have tried to keep Trump on the
straight and narrow. A Trump-appointed federal judge ordered the administration
to facilitate the return of a second migrant who was deported in violation of a
legal settlement. Another federal judge warned the administration that its
alleged plans to ship immigrants to Libya would violate his existing order. A third judge
ruled that Trump’s order punishing a law firm for working for Hillary Clinton’s
campaign was unconstitutional, saying “no American
President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this
lawsuit.”
Trump’s response: that judges “must” let him do as he
wishes, or else “our Country, as we know it, is finished!” He said he wouldn’t
be “held hostage to criminals, thugs, and Judges.” Asked by Welker whether he
has a responsibility to uphold the Constitution, Trump replied “I don’t know”
before punting the question to his “brilliant lawyers.”
But maybe he could learn the right answer. After all, he
changes his mind all the time. In March, he threatened that the Houthis “will be completely annihilated” by
American bombing; this week, he said the two sides had reached a ceasefire, and
he said of the Houthis, “there’s a lot of bravery there.” Last month, his
administration cut off certain education funds for Maine as part
of a dispute over transgender athletes; now the administration has abandoned its punitive effort. Trump has been
changing personnel at a rapid clip: this week, he ousted the acting FEMA chief (a
day after the official dared to say the agency shouldn’t be eliminated) and
withdrew his nominees to be U.S. attorney for D.C. (replacement: Fox News’s
Jeanine Pirro) and surgeon general (she misrepresented where
she got her MD).
Could Trump likewise reverse himself and decide to take
seriously his oath to the Constitution? Of course he could. It’s just a matter
of how much $TRUMP crypto the judges are willing to buy.
THE SECOND DUMBEST...
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