How Screwed are We?
A quick round-up of insanity.
Guys. GUYS. I have to do a quick update because it feels like things are quickly spiraling. After this, a Jackal on birthright citizenship is coming later this week.
What. The. Hell. Is. Happening.
I think I can summarize this section with just a few visuals:
Yikes.
Double yikes.
Triple yikes. But let’s also have some fun:
And then let’s do one more thing that doesn’t make sense:
Now I want a cheeseburger.
Things obviously have not been going so well for the new Trump Administration. I wrote about their rough start a few weeks ago, and we have completely fallen off a cliff since then.
Recession fears have spiked dramatically, with J.P. Morgan upping the chances of one happening this year. Even when Fox News asked Trump directly if he thought there would be a recession this year, he couldn’t definitively say no (which led to another market selloff). Couple all of this with a ton of other bad economic indicators and you can feel why the wheels are not just coming off the bus, but almost rolling down the street. Things change and markets rebound, but the overall economic outlook has definitely soured.
So, I wanted to use this Jackal to quickly address a point that I have seen a lot of people making: Are they doing this on purpose?
Before I get into the crux of this Jackal, I have to come clean about something. A lot of people talk about an “unbiased” media without really understanding what that means. It is, ultimately, impossible to remove a bias when you are writing or reporting because everyone brings their own backstory to the table. For example, when it comes to writing about the economy, I have an inherent bias because my wife’s job depends on the economy being strong. I am always hesitant to write about bad news in the economy because I know bad news can feed a worsening economic sentiment.
So, I am doing my best to be transparent. Writing about this stuff isn’t easy or fun, but it is the truth! OK, on to the coming economic collapse and Mad Maxification of the Western world.
Why would they tank the economy on purpose?
Here is the way this theory goes: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and a hoard of other wealthy billionaire-ish folks are purposefully tanking the economy so they can see prices plummet, buy everything at a reduced price, and then sell it back to us regular folks over the next few years and make a killing. There are other things mixed in with this theory, such as them ending the dollar as the reserve currency of the global market, which would allow them to choose whatever currency they want (Bitcoin, in this telling) and manipulate it to their benefit. But the overall gist is that they want the economy to go into a recession in order to get their hands on the lower prices.
I feel like I have to say this repeatedly, but I want to be clear: I put nothing past Donald Trump, because he is an evil man. I think everything above is in the realm of possibility, but I do not think it is the most likely explanation. Here is why.
Deep within Donald Trump (and trust me, it’s deep) is a need to be liked and admired. He has had a chip on his shoulder since he was a teenager, and dreamed of moving his father’s (relatively small) real estate company from lowly Queens to Manhattan by the time he reached 25 years old. Trump actually wants to be adored by America’s elite and craves their approval. If you’ve been reading the Jackal for a while, you’ll know that Trump’s main political influences are Reform Party/White Supremacist Republicans from the 1980s and 1990s. But he took a break from those guys after America elected its first black president in 2008 and repeatedly praised Barack Obama when his popularity was sky-high (his questioning of Obama’s birthplace came later). Trump famously had fake Time Magazine covers made where he was celebrated and hung them up in his golf clubs. Trust me, the guys wants to be liked.
With all of that said, I think it is clear that Trump really does want the economy to perform well. I even think on some level he realizes that tariffs are harmful, which is why he has wavered back and forth between rescinding them and enacting them. But they are really his only economic policy and he doesn’t know what else to do without them.
And he doesn’t know what else to do because he is an idiot. I really can’t say this enough: Our country is currently being run by some of the dumbest people in history. Elon Musk - also a deeply stupid man - said this weekend that he has to do cuts to Social Security because Democrats hand out the benefits to illegal immigrants.
Illegal immigrants do not get Social Security, because they do not have Social Security numbers. In fact, most of them pay into Social Security and never see the benefits. Illegal immigrants are the least likely demographic to utilize any public resource, followed by legal immigrants, and then American citizens, who consume the most (with citizens in GOP states making up the bulk of that consumption).
I’ve known this since I was 18 years old. Elon Musk is 53 years old and is supposedly tech-savvy, and you’re telling me he doesn’t know how to Google? I fully accept the theory that Elon is lying so that he can make cuts to Social Security down the road and lower his own tax burden. But then spouting his lie on live television and giving Democrats a sound bite to use is equally dumb!
I think this can be hard for normal folks to understand but hyper-wealthy people do not fully understand the repercussions of being wrong because they rarely have to face any repercussions at all. If you never have to worry about being wrong, then you never have to learn or do any self-reflection. Trump has been a millionaire since he was five years old; do you think he’s done any real self-examination since then?
You also don’t have to take my word for it. Just listen to the people who used to work with Trump:
Trump’s first term did great harm to the country, but a lot of it was mitigated by the smart people that surrounded Trump. That’s not happening now, which is why things are falling off the rails so quickly.
Should-reads:
This is a great piece on Chuck Schumer’s major fail this weekend. No matter what you think of what Schumer did, I think it’s clear that Democrats are going to be moving towards new leadership next year.
This is also a great piece from Chris Geidner about how the Trump Administration came close to defying a court order. That has not happened, yet, and it is important not to concede that it has. The Trump Administration is definitely waiting for the nihilism to kick in: “They are going to defy the courts anyway, so what does it matter?” The courts are moving slowly, but they are actually catching up to the Administration. Do you remember what I said in the last Jackal, that there was a scenario that everyone fired by “DOGE” is rehired? A Federal judge ordered that very thing last week.
Birthright citizenship is headed to the Supreme Court. I’ll have my take later this week. See you then.