A Delusional Trump Meets Reality

The way Donald Trump sees it, things are going splendidly. According to the president, the economy is “roaring back,” “inflation is plummeting,” and “America is respected again, perhaps respected like never before.” In addition, the war with Iran has been won and its military completely destroyed.

Reality tells a different story.

In the final quarter of last year, the economy grew at a glacial annual pace of 0.7 percent. Since last April, when Trump announced his global tariffs, employers have laid off more workers than they have hired.

In addition, the president has been unsuccessful in lowering the cost of living for Americans, many of whom have to cut corners to make ends meet. Now, inflation is back on the rise again… and that was before Trump’s war sent the price of oil above $100 per barrel.

With the Strait of Hormuz largely closed by a country that the president has claimed to have defeated, all kinds of products are about to get a lot more expensive. Maybe their prices won’t rise as quickly as that of gasoline, which is up 25 percent since the US and Israel attacked Iran, but it will be noticeable… and the effects of that closure will be felt for months. For example, the premium farmers have to pay for fertilizer, whose production relies on raw materials from the Middle East, won’t be passed down to consumers until their crops are harvested in the late summer.

This has caused Trump to beg other countries to bail him out and help open the Strait of Hormuz. Note that we are not saying “allies” because the president has turned many former partners of the US into adversaries. And who can blame them? Trump treats them like enemies and then tries to get them to do his bidding with all of the grace of a mobster threatening business owners with bad things that could happen to them if they don’t pay for “protection.”

On Sunday, for example, he told the Financial Times that failing to send warships to the region to secure maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz would be “very bad for the future of NATO.”

Trump, who frequently talks about his desire to take over the territory of two members of the alliance, claimed that the US has always been there for NATO, adding that it is “helping” with Ukraine. Under his administration, “helping” means selling weapons to Ukraine using a European procurement fund and propping up Russia’s economy by buying previously embargoed oil in a desperate bid to bring down the cost at the pump back home.

After spending a year alienating most of the world, there is a good chance that Trump’s mobster-style tactics won’t work this time. And they shouldn’t. He has proven to be an unreliable and untrustworthy partner and the current crisis is entirely of his own making.

Trump isn’t any more popular at home than abroad. His approval ratings are in the dumps, and even the war hasn’t given him the kind of short-term bump that the previous two Republican presidents enjoyed when they sent Americans to die in the Middle East.

Finally, Trump has not gotten over last month’s Supreme Court decision declaring his tariffs, i.e., his favorite tool to bully other countries, to be illegal.

That’s hardly surprising. After all, he is still consumed by his 2020 election defeat, the worst loss of his life.

Trump isn’t taking any of this well, as evidenced by his social media posts, which have always provided an insight into his soul.

While he spent Saturday trying to (again) convince Americans that Iran had been completely defeated while simultaneously convincing other countries to spend their blood and treasure to fix his mess in the region, Sunday was largely dedicated to venting about his domestic setbacks.

In a lengthy post, he attacked the Supreme Court majority invalidating his tariffs, and especially took the three conservative justices to task for not simply doing his bidding.

“The decision that mattered most to me was TARIFFS!” he wrote. “The Court knew where I stood, how badly I wanted this Victory for our Country, and instead decided to, potentially, give away Trillions of Dollars to Countries and Companies who have been taking advantage of the United States for decades.”

A quick reality check: It is American companies and consumers who are paying for virtually all of the tariffs, and they brought in a couple hundred billion dollars, not “trillions.”

“Our Country was unnecessarily RANSACKED by the United States Supreme Court, which has become little more than a weaponized and unjust Political Organization,” Trump ranted, before whining about the 2020 election again and falsely claiming that it has “conclusively proven” to have been rigged.

In a separate post, the president criticized another federal judge for putting a stop to one of the many attempts in which he has attempted to weaponize the Department of Justice.

In this case, the judge shielded Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, whom Trump wants to replace with someone who will cut interest rates for him to give the economy a (dangerous) boost, from a DOJ investigation.

Finally, the president is not pleased with how the media is portraying his many failures.

In an earlier post, he suggested that “some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations” should lose their licenses and “brought up on Charges of TREASON” for using AI-generated content provided by Iran.

All of this makes it pretty clear that Trump is not handling things well. And by “things,” we mean “reality.”

Unfortunately for the president, the country, and the world, things aren’t likely to get better, and it’s not helping that Trump lives in a fantasy world in which he is beloved and a success.

This week, for example, it seems highly likely that the Senate will fail to pass the voter suppression bill that he has made his legislative priority because it gives Republicans a chance to preserve its majorities in Congress.

When that happens, we can expect some epic unhinged rants.

Needless to say, it isn’t great that the world’s most powerful man is untethered from reality at a time when crises, many of which he has caused, are popping up all over the place – especially not when it becomes more likely with every loss and setback that he will do something drastic to change his own fortunes.

We wish we had better news.

However, there may be a silver lining. With the president becoming more and more of a political liability for Republicans, maybe a few of them will finally cut the cord to the MAGA cult and put country before Trump before he causes even more damage.