Trump's Changing Everything!

except the stuff that really matters

What is going on? On April 2, 2025 Trump tanked the stock market with his Liberation Day tariff billboard. Now, a month later, he’s got a temporary agreement with China and the stock market is soaring.

Then Trump goes to Saudi Arabia and does the YMCA dance with Saudi president Mohammed bin Salman (MbS to you and me). Wat? I thought the Saudis never descended to such frivolity.

The Qataris offer Trump a surplus 747-8 and Chuck Schumer is so enraged that he’s going to halt all DOJ nominations.

What is going on?

I think the answer is that 97.2 percent of politicians are actors and placemen. “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.”

But Trump is different. He has spent his life as a businessman, making real deals — and also suffering real failures. He spent his working life developing the cojones to do really hard stuff.

And he’s doing a reset on the post-WWII US Empire.

Fact is that 97.2 percent of all of us just don’t want to risk it. If we have a nice secure job we stick with it rather than go work for a start-up — or even create a start-up company.

So 97.2 percent of politicians work within the framework and the narratives currently in place. They don’t want to risk their career with something disruptive.

So, how about changing the rules of international trade? Well, let’s put together a working group to come up with some suggestions right after the midterms.

Instead, President Trump blew up the current system — that seems to have been a system appropriate for a nation presiding over a global empire that needed to look after its vassal states.

So how about easing out of NATO now that the Soviet Union has been gone for 25 years? Well, let’s put together a working group with our NATO allies and come up with some suggestions right after the 2028 presidential elections.

Instead, President Trump has put everyone on notice that he doesn’t appreciate doing all the heavy lifting. But he hasn’t actually dumped NATO.

So how about reforming Social Security and Medicare so workers save their own money for pensions and end-of-life healthcare. Well, let’s put together a Presidential Commission to come up with a Ten Point Plan for Social Security and Medicare.

Instead, President Trump has promised not to touch Social Security and Medicare although there is talk of reforming Medicaid. I think they call Social Security the Third Rail.

Now, I think that the Number One need for reform is to replace Social Security and Medicare. I think they are monstrous burdens put on working Americans, and a proper savings program with ordinary people creating the savings that will support them in old age is basic justice. And, guess what: it would create real wealth for the ordinary American. Put it this way. If President Clinton had put in place a 30 year program to privatize Social Security and Medicare we would have a federal budget without the current $1.5 trillion for Social Security and $1.15 trillion for Medicare. But President Trump doesn’t dare. Wow! You mean we could have cut nearly $2 trillion off the $7.2 trillion federal budget, but we didn’t?

Do you realize what that means? It means that we could save almost 10 percent of GDP, bringing federal spending down from 24 percent of GDP to 15 percent of GDP. Imagine that!

So really, President Trump isn’t really that transformational. Not on the stuff that really matters.

But he sure manages to rile up all the right people with modest changes to international trade.