It's a disaster, not gonna lie.

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Trump has been in office for less than 100 days and it is an unmitigated disaster. He's plunged the world into chaos and hired a federal contractor, Elon Musk, whose companies rake in billions in federal contracts, to shed jobs and contracts and leases from the federal government, all of which were funded in budgets passed by Congress. Many of Musk's decisions are being challenged in court. Federal lawyers refuse to say who heads up DOGE (the poorly named Department of Governmental Efficiency, named to honor Musk's favorite cybercurrency.) It's not a new department - it's not even a department, which, as I understand it, needs to be created by an act of Congress. Trump via executive order has temporarily renamed the United States Digital Service as DOGE. Oddly enough, the USDS website is still up and running. None of it makes any sense. 

The actions of DOGE have included firing thousands and thousands of federal employees, most involved in social services or humanities research; canceling leases of governmental offices; halting payments to Fulbright scholars studying overseas, stranding them; shutting down Meals on Wheels and Head Start; canceling funding for library services, etc. Musk jumped on stage at a CPAC event at one point with a chain saw, gleefully shouting about taking a chain saw to government services and he's done just that. 

Musk is usually credited with these actions, though in court, Trump administration lawyers struggled to identify the head of DOGE, which is really weird and not very efficient. But there is a massive conflict of interest when a large government contractor is also a government employee taking a chain saw to social services and other items funded by congressional budgets passed into law, so it appears that when in court, the Trump team wants to hide who is in charge of these enormously disruptive actions. 

On the international stage, Trump sent his unpopular, dishonest and venal VP to Greenland to let them know how much Trump wants Greenland. Denmark and Greenland are united in opposing this radical saber rattling from America. Trump keeps talking about how Canada, one of our biggest trading partners and ally to the north, needs to become a 51st state. It's truly astonishing, his arrogance and alignment with Putin. Rightwing media is obediently sharing Trump talking points about how America needs Canada and Greenland to survive, and apparently there are now millions of Americans who think this is true. Dishonesty is a hallmark of this administration and rightwing media is all-in on widely sharing the lies.

Concurrently as Trump unilaterally shreds the social safety net with his (likely unconstitutional) DOGE cuts, he has unilaterally imposed tariffs on many goods imported into the US. Markets tanked significantly last week after this happened. From the BBC:

"Nevertheless, these are the biggest and quickest declines we have seen in world markets since they were gripped by the panic of Covid-19 in early 2020.

A decline of 20% from a peak is considered a "bear market" - a description of a market that appears to be more likely to go down than go up. We are very close to that description right now."


Trump is telling people – and his lies are being shared widely by rightwing media outlets like Fox News, etc. – that tariffs will strengthen the American economy. From the White House "fact" sheet:




Unfortunately, the national emergency is the result of Trump's actions, not the cause of them. Likely what will happen is that small businesses will not be able to afford to operate and go out of business on a massive scale. He has also shared a video claiming that he "purposefully crashed the markets." 

                                         Imagine the shrieks from the right if Joe Biden ever 
                                         crashed the markets and then bragged about doing it on purpose.
                            

From Day 1 in 2016, Trump has shown that he is venal, cunning and out for himself. As he has been "Purposely CRASHING the Market," he has been raking in money from the Saudis (and God knows who else is bribing him to look favorably on their needs.) As the global economy crashes because of Trump's tariff war, as four American soldiers died in a training exercise in Lithuania, Trump went golfing with the Saudis. He cannot seem to help himself as he flaunts his wealth and power as the world is in turmoil thanks to his actions. Why honor dead soldiers when there is a golf tournament to win? 

The worst thing about Trump 2.0 is that his party is 100 percent behind his destructive actions. And we will all pay a massive price for the right's anti-constitutional support of an authoritarian president. What many of understand: Putin could not have, in his wildest dreams, imagined that Trump would destroy Russia's biggest enemy in such a short time. But here we are. 

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