March 9, 2026
How We’re All Now Paying the Price
for the Myth of Trump’s Competence
The administration’s war with Iran is
setting a mountain of taxpayer dollars on fire every day—mostly because he
doesn’t know what he’s doing.
At
some point, early Wednesday morning, the cost of the Iran war will top $10
billion. The Center for Strategic and International Studies released a paper last
week pegging the cost of this latest misadventure at $891 million a day. I’ve
seen higher estimates, but CSIS is a respected nonpartisan outfit, so let’s go
with its number for now. The report states that the vast majority of this money
had not been previously budgeted, especially the spending on munitions. One
Patriot interceptor missile costs close to $4 million, and we’re
apparently burning through them. And
“War” Secretary Pete Hegseth promises that we’re just getting revved up.
None
of us knows how long this war is going to last. But it’s certainly no
Venezuela, which took—ready?—two and a half hours.
Donald Trump may have told British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the weekend
that the war was “already won.” But
also over the weekend, a prewar intelligence report was
leaked to two Washington Post reporters showing that the
National Intelligence Council, a panel of independent intel experts, seems to
think that dislodging the regime could take a very long time indeed—at $37
million an hour, a rate that is almost sure to rise, especially if ground
troops get involved.
Meanwhile,
gas prices went up about 60 cents a gallon in
the war’s first week. The Dow fell 453 points Friday. (It’s currently well
below 50,000, so I guess that means, per Pam Bondi, that we’re now allowed to
take the Jeffrey Epstein scandal seriously.) Also on Friday, the Bureau of
Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. In the year
and change since Trump returned to office, the economy has added around 140,000 jobs.
In a year. The St. Louis Fed estimated last spring that
simply to keep pace with the growth in the number of people who age into the
labor force, the economy needs to add around 150,000 jobs a month.
In
other words, everywhere you look, the news isn’t merely bad. It’s terrible.
We’ve
seen numerous examples in these last 13 months of Trump’s mendacity and
malevolence. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans will never see him that way.
There are those who adore him unconditionally, but beyond these dead-enders,
there are others who know he’s not a good person but aren’t all that bothered
by it.
That’s
hard for millions of us to accept. But I hope to God that these people are
finally starting to move themselves toward the conclusion that, even if they
aren’t that troubled by the mendacity and malevolence, the man is just wildly
incompetent. A mountain range of mythmaking has gone into creating the Trump
persona over the years; by him, by a pliant business press in his real estate
days, and, since he entered politics, by a right-wing media that would make the
old Soviet press agencies blush and a party of cowardly sycophants, most of
whom know very well that he shouldn’t be in charge of a high-volume McDonald’s,
let alone the executive branch of the federal government, but would rather let
the country collapse than say so.
I
remember a conversation I had with a Biden White House official in the spring
of 2024, when Joe Biden was still running. I was asking about Trump’s
weaknesses, and this official said something to me that may stand as the single
most depressing couple of sentences I’ve ever had directed at me in 30-plus
years of covering politics. We’re not going to dislodge people’s belief that
he’s a great businessman, this official said; forget it. It’s hardwired in
there, and undoing it, for a significant percentage of the people, just isn’t
going to happen.
I
believed this person, whom I’m known for a while; yet another part of me just
couldn’t quite accept that people could be so—well, choose the word you prefer.
And I was staggered during the 2024 campaign at all the voters who believed him
when he said he’d bring down prices on day one.
Really.
Who is that—OK, I’ll supply my own word—stupid? Presidents can’t control
prices. Prices—of eggs, beef, oil, refrigerators, computers, you name it—depend
on dozens of factors. Xi Jinping, who runs a command economy in a country where
most electronics happen to be made, probably has far more control over the
prices of refrigerators and computers than any president ever will. The price
of beef has more to do with decisions made in Brazil than in Texas—and
certainly at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
We
all learn this in school. So how did so many millions of Americans unlearn it?
Another
thing presidents don’t normally control is who runs other countries. At times,
of course, American presidents have indeed made that choice for other
countries. By the way, I can’t think of a single time that worked out well for
the country in question. Cuba (in 1933, not 1959), Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile,
and perhaps most of all, back in 1953, the same Iran we’re now
“re-obliterating.” I hate to say it: It never ends well.
In
more recent history, American presidents haven’t had, or exercised, that power.
Yet Trump is going around now talking as if he has the power to appoint Iran’s
next leader, as if it’s no more complicated than naming the next GOP chairman
of Mississippi. As if there won’t be factions within the Iranian populace that
will fight the elevation of anyone with the taint of a Trump association to the
death.
Again,
who can possibly believe his nonsense?
His
poll numbers are bad. But they’re not nearly as bad as they ought to be. The
man is, whatever his other faults, just way in over his head. Maybe Democrats
should say that more often. The fact that he’s costing taxpayers a billion
dollars a day on a war most of them didn’t want may be a good place to start.
