What If Trump Believes His Own Bullshit?

 Paul Campos links to William Saletan making the point that Trump's statements - which are often objectively false - are not actually about dominance or "kayfabe" or "driving the narrative. He actually seems to believe this shit. He seems to actually believe that he can balance the budget via tariffs or that Denmark will sell us Greenland.

It's crazy to consider, but I think there's a core insight here. I refer you again to Fran Leibowitz's quote: "You don't know someone as stupid as Donald Trump; you just don't." He's always been a moron who was inoculated against consequences by his inherited wealth and celebrity. Now he's aging and cognitively declining. I've wondered when he's going to get tired of being upstaged by Elon, but maybe he's too far gone to realize it?

Anyway, if he really does believe this bullshit, then that explains why we are on the road to a very dark place. 

UPDATE: A good example of Trump's deep beliefs is his passionate belief that corruption is not just tolerable, but the way things should be. 

Fraud Never Works

 There's a scene near the end of The Big Short where Mark Baum (Steve Carrell) give a speech where he says "fraud never works".

The reason fraud never works is that markets tend to be merciless with information and once accurate information comes out, those markets don't give a shit about the trappings that wealth and power use to create a sense of invincibility. 

With the Trump decision - likely illegal - to end the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it is now open season for fraud again. If this stands, and even if Courts rule its illegal Trump can kill it via staffing, then there will be a financial scandal before his term is over. Trump himself is an engine of lawlessness and the remoras that have latching on to him are simply scam artists from root to stem. 

I've already said that there will be a Crypto Crash sooner rather than later. The gutting of the CFPB will accelerate this, I guess. Given that the Trumpists are signaling that they are preparing to ignore court rulings that they don't like this should speed-run the crashing of the American economy.

Let's hope the fallout from the crash will be contained, but I'm not sure how.

I Can't Even

 I came across a CBS poll that had Trump's approval at 53%. Now, that's an outlier. However, respondents say that Trump is "doing what he said he was going to do" especially around deportations, which are popular.

This is the real reason why American democracy is dying. People are incredibly ignorant.

Trump has not, in fact, done massive deportations. He's had people film dramatic footage of deportations, but the numbers are actually pretty low. He's creating the image of deporting a lot of people, and Google is apparently helping him by pushing these stories to the top of the search engine. Trump has also not "won" any trade wars with our neighbors. He promised "big beautiful tariffs" but hasn't done jackshit.

What Trump HAS done was exactly what he promised he was not going to do: Project 2025. This incredibly unpopular agenda was explicitly disowned by Trump during the campaign, and reporters credulously reported his denials (and Democrats stopped talking about it for some reason). Everything Musk is doing, the attacks on things like medical research or firing federal workers are all part of that blueprint.

Yes, Trump was lying when he disavowed Project 2025. Trump always lies. He is congenitally incapable of telling the truth. Yet, the media - bound by archaic norms - refused to note that Trump was lying or managed to do so in a way that blunted the impact of his lies. 

Now we are under full scale siege, a siege that is going to be largely invisible to Americans that think Trump is "doing what he promised" until the government blows up and collapses.

Razors

 Josh Marshall once posited "Trump's Razor" which was a spin on Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor is the logical tool that posits that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Trump's Razor is that usually the stupidest explanation is the correct one. Did Trump engage in a 24 hour trade war with our biggest trading partners, because he didn't really understand the impact of those tariffs until the markets tanked? Seems pretty stupid! Probably correct!

Paul Krugman, perhaps, offers us Musk's Razor. He was writing, in general, about the ongoing autogolpe against the Constitution. (An autogolpe is a coup by an already elected leader.) In the process, he offers this suggestion:

You should look at everything they do through that lens. Yes, we can ask whether a policy move makes sense in terms of its announced goals. But you should also always ask, “How does doing this serve the autogolpe?”

There's a similar lens to look at Trump, which we could call Xi's Razor. "If Donald Trump were to be an agent designed to destroy American influence in the world, would he be doing anything different than he is?" However, that suggests that Trump is some sort of Manchurian Candidate, and I think the said truth is that he's just a mental slob who manages to push the right buttons in America's Id and win elections because of it.

Musk's Razor is a good one. It's converse is the Democratic communication strategy of asking "How does this lower the price of eggs?"  But that only works when talking about things like invading Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico or banning trans people from doing stuff. For the full-blown assault on the Constitutional Order, we need to keep applying Musk's Razor. 

The destruction of USAID is a personal project for Musk, as an unrepentant Afrikaner Nationalist. However, it also serves the autogolpe by creating the precedent for shuttering an entire agency without Congressional approval.  Seizing control of the Treasury is, of course, the biggest threat, but so was the ham-fisted attempt to get Federal employees to take a "buy out" that had no legal justification or financial backing.

When it comes to Trump and Trumpy shit like releasing millions of gallons of water that farmers will need this summer in order to...something...that's Trump's Razor. There's no secret plan there, he's just an idiot.

When it comes to actions that revolve around Musk or even some of the Project 2025 people, pay attention to how it serves the autogolpe.

The Fifth Risk

 Michael Lewis - of The Big Short fame - wrote a book about the early Trump administration of 2017 called The Fifth Risk. The basic idea is that Trump and the GOP want to hollow out the 20th and 21st century administrative state. As Josh Marshall notes, this desire to hollow out the state bureaucracy is the one common thread uniting the factions of MAGA, Christian Nationalism and Muskovite techbros. 

Basically, Trump 1.0 failed to achieve what it wanted because America has a government built on the premise of avoiding harm. This does have the effect of making it inefficient, but that inefficiency is part of the design. It prevents too much power accruing in any one spot and therefore distributes public goods more fairly. Think of the DMV. Everyone has to wait in line; it's very democratic.

If Musk and Trump are successful in hollowing out the administrative state, then we are screwed for the foreseeable future. There will be some Katrina level catastrophe or worse. There will be a 2008 crisis or worse. As long as we have elections, that should lead to Democrats winning control of the government. Even after that happens, you will have to de-Trumpify the government and replace his loyalists with qualified people. Qualified people might be hard to find, given how they are being treated by the Republican Party.

One of the great delusions of the techbro, libertarian right is that government is some sort of burden, when in fact it smooths out so much of lives travails. The ease of 21st century life is invisible, because we take it for granted that the power stays on, the drinking water is clean, the road are paved, the schools are open, air traffic is safe, the dollar is sound. Musk and Trump's plan imperils all of that.

This Time Will Be Different

 I have a theory that America fights a major war every 20 years or so, because it takes about that long for people to forget just horrible war is. If they do remember, they dismiss the warning from Cleo, the Muse of History, as being irrelevant, because they are smarter than their fathers and they won't makes the same mistake.

The same applies to economics and recessions and depressions. The financial crisis of 2008 was caused, in large part, by people thinking that "this time will be different" and the "old rules don't apply." 

Paul Krugman takes something similar to this train of thought with regards to AI and the current tech boom, in particular comparing it to the market bubble of 1999. Basically, the Digital Revolution of the '90s did have a noticeable effect on GDP growth and productivity, but it was transient, not permanent. People got over their skis and created a bubble, which burst in March of 2000.

If you are currently thinking that the Elon Musk/Peter Thiel Axis of Evil is acting humbly before the historical precedents, I think you might reconsider. 

Whether it's crypto, AI or both, we are likely headed for another boom and bust. Real people will get hurt, because the people who lead and own this country never paid attention in history class.

Does This Work?

 I'm laid up with the flu and have been playing a puzzle game on my phone. When you get "stuck" you can escape by watching an ad. I've watched a lot of ads. A few things strike me.

One, there are a lot of games that involve some young mother in dire circumstances and you have to solve a puzzle to save her. Does the psychology of that appeal to people?

Two, the ads for most of the games are atrocious. There are the "fake street interviews" and the impassioned endorsements by... someone? People I'm supposed to know? This makes me wonder about the whole "influencer economy" and the prevalence of that in people's lives. Now, maybe the endorsers are obscure and the ad is supposed to trick you into thinking they are "internet famous". Or maybe for some odd subset of humanity, they really ARE famous, and I just have no insight into that world, except through this weird online ad phenomenon.

Anyway, the flu sucks and Elon Musk has launched a coup.

This Could Be A Gift

 First and foremost, we have to stop Musk's coup. They could crash the entire Treasury.

However, we are starting to see - mainly from Chris Murphy and others like him - a consistent line of attack about "unelected South African billionaires" seizing control of your money. 

Musk is a freak and personally unpopular. Billionaires as a group are unpopular. Trump is a billionaire (for reals, after his crypto scam/bribery scheme).

Hang it around their necks: The GOP is the party of billionaires.

Well, Maybe It's The Same Old Song

 So, Trump pissed off two of our closest allies - both politically and geographically - and then drops the tariffs when the markets tank without really accomplishing anything, besides pissing off Canada and Mexico.

That is very much a Trump 1.0 type move and his modus operandi. In the end, those who expected something more like the first go-round have been vindicated for the moment in this particular instance. 

The Musk stuff though.  That's really, really bad.

Trump 1.0 Fooled Some People

 The first Trump Administration was chaotic, counterproductive and largely a series of rhetorical outrages, interspersed with some pretty bad policy. When Covid came, it exposed the bad policy side of things and he was trounced. Then, people memory-holed the chaos, dysfunction and anger and just remembered that times were prosperous and Trump is "funny".

So, as we embark on what the Wall Street Journal has accurately termed the "Dumbest Trade War In History" it's worth noting what people got wrong about Trump 2.0 was rooted in Trump 1.0. 

As Paul Krugman notes, Trump is doing what he said he would do. It remains my conviction that politicians - even aberrant ones like Trump - will at least try and do what they say they will do. What Trump discovered in his first term was that the government is a complicated thing and there are a ton of veto points. The presence of John Kelly, James Mattis and even Steve Mnuchin helped thwart his lunacy and splenetic desire to wreak havoc on Americans.

The central part of Project 2025 that was so chilling to those of us paying attention was that it was a blueprint to bulldoze those institutional constraints. This is why you have the purges of civil servants. (Matthew Yglesias is right that if at all possible, civil servants need to hang on for as long as they can.) This is why Elon Musk is largely able to execute what is looking more and more like a coup - not just in Very Online rhetoric, but actual practice.

The rich people who thought they could just write Trump checks and he would bestow favors on them are going to be surprised that he is who his opponents said he was. He was always who we said he was. It's just that now there is no one around him to constrain him, just a ketamine-addled billionaire freakshow who empowers his worst impulses.

Now, we all have to live with the consequences.

Dirtbag Americans

 Scott Lemieux picks up on the theme of idiocracy that Campos started. He also notes that, of course, Trump's base and the new voters that swung hard for him in 2024 are infrequent voters. This also means, almost by definition, that they are poorly informed voters. 

I live in a very Trumpy town in a Blue State. You can usually guess with some accuracy which groups at the other tables of the restaurant are Trumpists. Even more so, I was doing some shopping and noticed an unusually dense concentration of, well, dirtbags. They reek of cigarette smoke, they have crass or offensive bumper stickers on their cars and you can almost see them seething. 

Here's the thing, I don't think even the Dirtbags (or Deplorables, if you will) are interested in Elon Musk's plans. I don't think they are interested in voting for someone who isn't Trump - himself a gilded Dirtbag. 

They will likely blame Democrats for the coming price spikes coming with the Trump Tariffs, but fuck'em. 

Notes On Stupidity

 Please read Paul Campos on our Idiot King for an Idiot Country.

I know this is deeply disrespectful of Real Muricans, but I am out of fucks to give.

Broligarchs vs Nazis

 Embedded in this post is a Bluesky thread from Dana Houle about the fundamental difference between our current broligarchic coup and the actual Nazis of the 1930s. It actual dovetailed with something I did in my International Relations class at the end of last week. The topic in class was about how individuals are usually constrained by institutions. As we know, Project 2025 and Musk's DOGE are an attempt to overwhelm and degrade our institutions, because they limited Trump from becoming King last time and he really hates that.

In the class reading, they talked about how some sort of crisis - whether military or economic - can empower a leader to overwhelm institutions. This is important when you consider Trump's actions, calling the border situation an invasion (it isn't), slapping tariffs on Canada and Mexico because they are "flooding" our country with Fentanyl (they aren't). His whole American Carnage bullshit is intended to justify the destruction of democratic oversight.

In Houle's thread, he compares the relative strength of the Nazis, namely that they had Stormtroopers ready to control the streets and they actually increased the size of the administrative state to gain more control and embarked on a military buildup that helped pull Germany out of the Depression. Keynes was right. So, for the Average German, life probably got a little or a lot better from 1933-39. 

Trump's tariffs have the potential to explode like a bomb in the global economy, but especially the North American economy. The assumption all along has been what's referenced in the Krugman tweet/blurst that begins the linked post: the Very Savvy Business leaders who supported Trump thinking they would only get tax cuts and massive deregulation are going to be surprised with this stupid, vindictive motherfucker actually does what he said he was going to do: Blow up the post World War II global order.

As we were in November, we are currently having to hope, actually, that Trump's programs are worst case scenarios, where the extraordinary economic pain crushes people across the country. There's this scene from The Big Short where Ben Rickert says that for every percentage point that the unemployment rate goes up, 40,000 people die. The correlation is actually real and not a throwaway line. But that's where we are. 

For American democracy to survive the combined assault of Trump's Christian Nationalist base and Elon Musk's unelected oligarchy, we have to watch them crush the American economy. Precisely because Trump does not enjoy the structural advantages that Hitler did in the late Thirties, the pain that he seems intent on creating should destroy whatever momentum he has in his nightmarish plans for America.

Is Elon Launching A Coup?

 Several commentators, like Cheryl Rofer, Paul Campos and Scott Lemieux all seem to think it is. Primarily because it looks like Musk is purging the government and shuttering its functions absent ANY legal cover. Even the normally balanced Josh Marshall suggests that what Musk is doing falls outside even the cascading horrors of Project 2025 and normal Trumpist/GOP bullshit.

I do not understand why Democrats are not unifying around a message of constant, consistent opposition. Nobody cares if you reached common ground with Trump, and your primary voters will actively hate you for it. However, I can squint and see some need to rhetorically signal that you will work with Trump, until he does something that "with great regret" forces you to change your mind. 

That's bullshit, but whatever. We go to war with the Dems we have, not the Dems we wished we had.

Going to war with the unelected broligarch, the ketamine addled weirdo, the billionaire disrupter who likes to fire people even more than Trump does...that's a no brainer. 

What's more, the GOP is in Trump's thrall. He absolutely commands their utter and subservient fealty. 

Musk doesn't. Musk can never be president, he can only pull the strings, which is clearly what he's trying to do now. Attack him and you attack the whole construct of the GOP being the Billionaire's Party.

What Musk is doing is illegal by any reading of the law, and unlike Trump, he is not president and not covered by John Roberts' extraordinary extension of presidential immunity from legal consequences.

You won't put him in jail, but you have to make his presence in the government absolutely toxic. Attack Musk and you attack Trump sideways, where he can't defend with his usual bluster.

Unreliable

 The root of American power since World War II has been our more-or-less dependable nature. Sure, individual president's altered the focus of American foreign policy, but there were some agreed upon ideas that carried over from one administration to the next.

Trump's decision to blow up the North American Free Trade zone is bad on multiple layers. It should lead to massive supply line issues. It should lead to higher prices. But, as Krugman points out, it will destroy the idea of an America that even pretends to honor their agreements. A hegemonic power that agreed to bind itself with treaties was a historical rarity, and now that special situation is leveled by the worst person to ever defile the Oval Office.