Trump Isn't Playing 4D Chess. He's an Idiot Who Golfs While Burning Down the World.
Even the most loyal MAGA acolytes are having trouble polishing this tariff turd that Donald Trump dropped on the world that is threatening to trigger a trade war and global recession.
Trump apologists, Republican officials, and MAGA acolytes are gaslighting the world right now, trying to make you think Donald Trump is an unorthodox genius who is playing 4-D chess as the global economy collapses around us.
A convicted criminal who was held liable for sexual assault and fraud and has been bankrupted six times is somehow the master of the “Art of the Deal” despite clearly not understanding how trade deficits work. A man who said the most beautiful word in the English language is “tariffs” and is now imposing them on remote islands whose population consists only of penguins and seagulls is probably not the person you should trust with your retirement plan. After all, Trump’s first term in office was a disaster during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic in which he gave tax cuts to the richest people and lied about COVID-19. But we are still told to believe he is the Chessmaster and all of us are his simple pawns because we have Affirmative Action for the world’s most mediocre white men.
Trump is a man who refuses to listen to actual experts and instead relies upon the advice of hate-monger and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer and Peter Navarro, who created a fictitious source Ron Vara, which is just an anagram of his last name. This is a man who promised to bring down the price of eggs and solve inflation, which is a major reason why he barely won the 2024 election, and turned and told Americans, “I don’t care” when Sean Hannity of Fox pressed him on the country’s economic anxieties after he was elected.
As the stock market continued to crash and Americans were terrified about losing their 401Ks and jobs, Trump was hosting a $1 million a plate dinner at Mar-a-Lago and golfing. His Press Secretary showed off her $4,800 Louis Vuitton bag. His Director of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, flashed her $60K Rolex while she stood in front of alleged gang members Trump sent to be tortured in an El Salvador prison. Multi-millionaires like Megyn Kelly and JD Vance are now telling Americans to take the short-term pain. Billionaires are advising Americans to “buy the dip,” except Americans can’t because they have no money to pay for basic goods, whose prices will rise in light of Trump’s disastrous tariff policy, which is now triggering a trade war. It’s gotten so bad that MAGA champion Bill Ackman, a billionaire, has now taken to Twitter to complain about Trump’s tariff policy after seeing a drop in his portfolio. Billionaire Jamie Dimon did a complete 180 as well. In January, he said, “If it’s a little inflationary, but it’s good for national security, so be it. Get over it.” Today, he said, “The quicker this issue is resolved the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse.”
Whoopsie!
These greedy sociopaths were perfectly fine supporting Trump’s cruelty and racism as long as they were receiving their tax cuts and making money. They didn’t care about him illegally kidnapping and deporting innocent men and students for simply being brown or being pro-Palestinian. They were fine with his crackdown on trans people because “the woke” had gone “too far” with identity politics. Well, the new mantra of MAGA has to be updated. It should be “Go Broke But Don’t Go Woke” if they want to polish and spin this giant turd sandwich that Trump dumped on the global economy.
Even the most fervent MAGA sycophants are having a difficult time convincing themselves and their base that Trump is playing “4-D chess.” Being a masochist, I appeared on a Piers Morgan panel earlier today where Piers and the two MAGA guests tried to convince the audience that Trump might be going against traffic, but he has a tank, and somehow, maybe, magically, this unorthodox trade war and tariff policy would work and every country will get out of the way and bend the knee.
Sure.
Or, maybe he will crash into dozens of cars, kill innocent people, and destroy the road. In retaliation, maybe other people will bring out bigger tanks and cars that can, you know, move around in the snow and not self-explode or fall apart like a recalled Cybertruck, and all of this starts an avoidable bloody, violent standoff. Maybe if Trump simply fixed the roads, worked with our allies, and decided to drive on the correct side, he’d be praised for making infrastructure more efficient and workable instead of destroying it.
See, Trump is the type of guy who promises to repair your house and instead blows it up and starts a fire that burns the entire neighborhood down. Instead of apologizing or admitting he was wrong, he sticks with his mentor Roy Cohn’s strategy and doubles down on his lies and incompetence. Without shame, he demands you pay him in full, asks for a 5-star review on Yelp, and then surveys the damage and declares it to be the most beautiful home repair in the history of home repairs.
The world’s dumbest people are currently destroying America and the world. The worst part was that it all could have been avoided if enough people had simply voted for a competent, Black, Indian American woman. Sadly, racism and greed have always been America’s sins that we have been unwilling and unable to confront. Unfortunately, we’re all in it now - from immigrant workers to GOP voters in the Rust Belt who depend on Social Security to upper-class suburbanites who wanted tax cuts to sniveling billionaires.
Alas, we learn the hard way in the United States of Amnesia, and even then, most of us still don’t learn. There is still some time to turn this around if a few Republicans in the House and Senate use their majority to apply checks and balances on Trump’s tour of destruction. Tragically, none of them have the spine and courage to stand up to their “Daddy.”
The rest of us, however, can and must stand up and speak out to protect our nation, our communities, and our families who are about to enter a world of avoidable pain thanks to the arrogant idiocy of a fool who thinks he’s playing chess as he’s burning down the world.
*In honor of hitting 50K subscribers, The Left Hook is offering a 20% discount for paid subscribers: https://thelefthook.substack.com/discount
This is the truth. Trump and his cult are nothing but greedy, narcissistic sociopaths bent on destruction.
And Congress just watches. I’ll never forgive them.