Hey America, You’ve Been Played… Again

 

Hey America, You’ve Been Played… Again

And Is Trump Mentally Impaired or a Stable Genius?

“It’s not just bribery, it’s premium foreign influence with extra legroom.” 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D/NY)

Donald Trump has, for the most part, surrounded himself with the least qualified cabinet and subcabinet appointments in modern history with a disproportionate list of former Fox News reporters and anchors, each with strident MAGA views. Underscoring this reality is the “less than coincidental” sequential implementation of Project 2025 goals, which the President claims never to have read, and the fact is that Donald Trump and his merry band of conspiracy theorists seem to be following rather directly… or trying anyway with not a whole lot of meaningful resistance to stop him. Perhaps, we should look at the Project 2025 887-page agenda as the replacement for the US Constitution and note that it is being “implemented” by the weakest possible rule-making device: executive orders, which all too frequently step on congressional power and the clearest language of that languishing US Constitution.

We live in an era of massive “wink-wink” corruption, a mockery of the Constitution’s “emolument” limitations on “gifts” to the President and a transactional presidency where everything is a deal or an attempt to solidify power and silence critics. Gordon Gekko might have presented it this way: “A conflict of interest, for lack of a better term, is good.”

Do I think that interim Air Force One “gift” of a super-luxury tricked out Qatari 747-8 will actually be completed? Not really. As Trump described the craft and its potential future as AF-1, he sure used the words “I” and “me” a lot. That “Trump’s personal lawyer,” the Queen of retribution justice, signed off on the ethics of that proposed “gift” is no real solace; it seems that Ms Bondi, immediately before her appointment as this nation’s highest font of neutral and independent law enforcement, US Attorney General, served as a registered lobbyist for Qatar… at the modest rate of $115,000/month. This egregious “emolument” has drawn severe skepticism from both sides of the aisle. At a time when Trump is admonishing America to downsize into a “two doll” austerity move, his lust for outrageous luxury at any price is particularly absurd.

I am focusing on the recent grift today, but Trump’s legacy of taking US taxpayers for a ride is long and rife with outrageous examples, mirrored in amplified numbers by his appointed “grifter in search of fraud and waste” in chief, Elon Musk, whose rising revenues from federal contracts and decreased federal oversight are staggering. His Tesla losses are made up in all the other lucrative deals, and a man who apparently “saved taxpayers” 3%, if even that, of what he originally stated. And aside from making billions from his shares of Trump Media (which owns Truth Social), the former “sham” as Trump described it, crypto currency, has become another rather direct vehicle to enhance the Trump family wealth. “Want to know who, exactly, is putting millions of dollars, even tens of millions, directly into Donald Trump’s pocket through his ‘meme’ crypto coins, and what they want in return?

“Or whether his trip to the United Arab Emirates this week will include a visit with the state-backed firm that plans on using $2 billion of his ‘stable ‘ coin?... Well, too bad. According to the White House, none of that is any of your business… It truly is astounding, watching in real time as the president of the United States openly uses his office to enrich himself — the very definition of corruption — the way a third-world dictator might and, at least thus far, get away with it… ‘It’s like the government is for sale,’ said Norm Eisen, the top ethics lawyer in the Obama White House. ‘Trump is acting like some kind of a corrupt pirate or a medieval potentate.’” Huffington Post, May 11th. Trump’s cadre of press corps loyalists, replacing so many established news outlets, is indeed following their dear leaders habit of calling failure “success.”

But it’s all worth it, many might say. Trump’s tariff policies have scared even China and the UK into making tariff deals that benefit us all. Really? If you are buying a Rolls Royce, maybe, or if you were reeling from the proposed 145% US tariff on Chinese import and the 125% retaliatory tariff, perhaps… But the recently reduced tariffs to these two trading partners, albeit temporary, are still considerably higher that the tariff structures in place before Trump messed with the system. They still slam small businesses, and even with a few electronic and automotive components as well as essential minerals and construction/manufacturing necessities carve-outs; they still particularly hurt small businesses who, unlike the corporate behemoths, are unable to shift their supply chains with any efficiency. Indeed, Trump 1.0 claims of a liberal “war on Christmas” seems hypocritical as Trump’s de facto pricing policy (tariffs) seems like an even bigger war on Christmas.

The grift plan is to propose something outrageous, shooting from the hip and terrifying the world, and then reduce that outrageous to “less outrageous” (but still nasty) to make it look good. Yup, the stock markets always go up based on such “positive news,” but we are still worse off than during pre-Trump 2.0. Tout statistics that measure the past, where they make you look good… particularly since it takes months for the economy to reflect even big changes… and blame Biden where those numbers do not. Fabricating numbers, claiming obvious failures as mega – the best ever – success, and pretending that he accurately predicted everything that is happening (I meant to do that) when he certainly did not is Donald “flimflam man” Trump 101. Trump’s cadre of press corps loyalists, replacing so many established news outlets in the White House pressroom, are indeed following their dear leader’s habit of calling failure “success.”

But the bigger question, given Trump and his horrifically unqualified appointees, is whether there just might be more than just his narcissism, obsessive-compulsive and personality disorders at work here; is Trump’s increasing detachment from reality reflective of one more psychological issue: dementia? As news host, Jonathan Capehart noted after listening to the President: “"I wrote down this note immediately: why are we not talking about his mental acuity? How?" Barbara Comstock (R/VA) noted, "I mean he's talking about how it's great that those, right the [container] ships coming over are empty, that means we're saving money, it is literally economically illiterate."

"His own people –– look at Steve Moore, Heritage Foundation, a guy who opposes tariffs has been saying to people behind the scenes, actually, he's been saying it on Fox News, this is insane… You can tell –– Ken Griffin who gave money, huge money to Republicans last year, including Trump, has said this has made us 20 percent poorer in a month done permanent damage to the American brand and this isn't going to be something we can turn around from now. You know, and what he [Trump] does is he burns down the house and then he comes in and says, 'Oh, the market went up.' Well, no." Raw Story, May 13th. Ignorance? An obsessive-compulsive refusal to let go of even the most disastrous path, unable to live in the real world? Or one more mental issue: dementia?

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you are not into the stock market or bitcoin, you can still feed Trump’s uncontained avarice by buying his expensive watches, over-priced sneakers or even his politicized Bible.