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Addicted to Fox News and outlets even more extreme, the president finds support and justification for actions disastrous to Americans and the worldFri 14 Mar 2025 16.44 GMTShare
Not content with shattering the post-1945 international order, which delivered prosperity and power to his country for eight long decades, Donald Trump is seemingly set on destroying the US economy. And he’s doing it because he, and the American right, have lost their ability to grasp reality.
Start with the economic vandalism, unfolding in real time and mesmerising to watch. For weeks, you could see the US stock market falling and falling until on Thursday the S&P index passed an unwanted milestone: it stood more than 10% down from the peak it had reached less than a month earlier, a fall that meets the Wall Street definition of a “correction”. In other words, even if the market eventually rallies, this is no blip.
The talk now is of a recession and you can tell that Trump himself suspects it’s coming. “I hate to predict things like that,” he said this week. “There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America … It takes a little time.” Did you catch that? The great booster, who campaigned on a promise to turn things around “on day one”, is now adopting the lotus position, talking of “transition” and urging patience.
The source of the trouble is not mysterious. It is Trump himself. His actions since taking office less than two months ago have spooked investors. They crave stability but see a president who governs by whim. Those whims can change hourly – imposing a tariff after breakfast only to drop it before lunch. One minute it’s a 50% levy on Canadian aluminium, the next it’s 200% on European wine, only for one or the other to be binned within hours. It keeps Trump in the news, which he loves, but plays havoc with companies that have to plan for the long term. Confronted by chaos, they prefer to wait to see where things settle. That means orders on hold, workers without work, less money in everyone’s pocket.
Add in a wild-eyed guy with a chainsaw taking chunks out of a federal bureaucracy that provides services that, for all their Ayn Rand talk of a minimal state, business leaders rely on – whether it’s schools, roads or air traffic controllers to keep planes in the sky – and you can see why the only surging number on Wall Street right now is the one that measures pessimism.
To be clear, it’s not just the manic style of Trump and Elon Musk that’s causing alarm. Even if imposed calmly, tariffs are a prosperity killer. Trump may be their biggest advocate, but it’s clear he doesn’t understand how they work. He speaks as if the people paying them will be hated foreigners, the likes of China or Canada forced to pay billions into US coffers. When, in fact, tariffs are a sales tax levied on US consumers who have to pay extra for imported goods. A tariff on foreign cars, say, is not paid by Germany but by an American who buys a BMW. It drives prices up for Americans. When other countries hit back with tariffs of their own, making US products harder to sell, you’re in a trade war that only makes everything worse.
Hence the current dread of stagflation, the grim combination of zero growth and rising inflation. The word was born in the Jimmy Carter era, but the Trumpcession will have bonus features all its own. When I spoke to Heather Boushey, who served as an economic adviser to the Biden administration, for the latest Politics Weekly America podcast, she told me that Musk’s supremacy over so much of the federal government, even as he continues to run his own mega-businesses, is having one particular chilling effect. “Companies are looking at this and saying: ‘I can’t compete with an Elon Musk that’s in charge of the regulatory agencies, that’s going to do things only for himself.’ That’s going to stymie investment, it’s going to stymie innovation, and ultimately be terrible for the US economy.”
A news report plays in the background as Donald Trump speaks to reporters onboard Air Force One, 14 September 2017. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Boushey adds that Trump’s US will be less able to weather a recession, because the Trump-Musk cuts are stripping away so much of the infrastructure of support, cutting a combined total of more than $1tn from the Medicaid and food stamps programmes alone. When the storm hits, families will go hungry.
It’s bad for the country and bad for Trump politically: the people most dependent on soon-to-be gutted government help such as Medicare or Medicaid are Trump voters. As the impact of the cuts kicks in – national parks closed during the summer, delayed benefits for veterans, a deadly accident, for example, in an area previously safeguarded – many Americans could sour on the president who promised to make their lives better. Especially when they see him go ahead with his signature policy: a $4.5tn tax cut that will massively benefit the very richest.
Why, then, is Trump pursuing a course of action that can only damage the country and dent his own standing? The explanation lies in the way Trump sees the world. Which is through a lens clouded by the very phenomenon he once did so much to identify: fake news.
For most of the past decade, the focus has been on the likes of Trump and Musk as peddlers of falsehoods. There has been less attention paid to their role as consumers of lies. And yet it’s long been clear that Musk is spending too much time on X and is getting extremely high on his own supply. Witness his credulous swallowing of all kinds of far-right rubbish about Britain.
Trump is scarcely any better, believing provable nonsense about Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s poll ratings being in the single digits, when in fact the Ukrainian leader’s numbers are much better than his, to pick just one instance of Trump putting aside the briefings he could have from the world’s best-resourced intelligence agencies and preferring to gobble up internet slop instead.
It’s a function of Trump not shifting his core views in decades – he was banging on about tariffs in the 1980s – and being, as Zelenskyy memorably put it, “trapped” in a “disinformation bubble”. It consists of the team of sycophants that now envelops him – the “adults in the room” of the first term are long gone – and whose message is reinforced when he meets the press: note how many of the supposed reporters whom Trump encounters are, in fact, representatives from pro-Trump outlets so slavish they make Fox News look like Edward R Murrow.
The result, says one longtime Trump watcher, is that “he’s more sheltered from outside information than he ever has been before”. Like Saddam Hussein in his bunker as US forces approach the palace, he is being told that tariffs made the US rich in the 19th century and will do so again, that Elon Musk is popular and that the people are grateful to their leader, even when the economy is nosediving. Inside the info-bubble, any contrary voice can be dismissed, even if it requires acrobatics to do it. Trump’s latest target is the Murdoch-owned, conservative Wall Street Journal, which dared point out the dangers of a trade war: Trump countered that the “globalist” WSJ was “owned by the polluted thinking of the European Union”. Inside the bubble, there is no room for truth: it must be kept out by lies.
For now, and armed with the loudest megaphone on the planet, the US president can keep reality at bay. But eventually, Americans will be able to see with their own eyes and in their own lives what Trump has done to the US and the wider world. Their daily experience will expose him for what he is: a confidence trickster who has made them poorer and less safe. The only question is when.
I've updated this 15th Sept 2024 I'm Michael Casey from Birmingham England, the fat silver haired writer in shades. Beware of Others with the EXACT SAME NAME, they are not me, and would not want to be me ... use Google UK to find me, otherwise Posh Americans pop up I've done loads of writing, about 3,000,000 Words worth over 36years now But before I started to write, I LISTENED to BBC Radio 4 for 20 years, from the age of 10 or younger Frank Brown our lodger, went back to County Tyrone and he gifted us his Bush Radio. He'd be nearly 102 now if he is still alive, so say a prayer for him 56 years in love with words, and I still look so dashing. I have a picture in the attic, just like Dorian Gray I've also had an interest in Politics for 56 years with my dad heckling the tv and Politicians. I almost immediately had a hit, a play called Shoplife was accepted but not finally produced by a Theatre. The Kenneth More Theatre, so thank them for sparing you all. This was back in 1989 yes, 35 years ago, the play was written in 1988. So since then I'm more than good enough, as a writer. Anything else..... I also ignore those who just cannot write, pick your own candidate I tend to write Comedy as I'd rather make you laugh than cry I have written over 2000 short pieces of writing, yes 2000 " (c) by Michael Casey" If you include "chats" 5000 samples, all told, the chats do NOT go into my books when I compile them. My first book ,a full length comedy/drama is The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker You can read translations of it here on this site Up to 20 different languages/translations have been read on the same day via this site, here on Wordpress look fo Translations Galore page, and more And in over 167 Countries world wide too so you have no excuse, find your own language and read The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker or Quick Stories or any other of the books in Translation on my Wordpress This proves to me that the humour does travel I have readers in over 167 countries now, just to repeat myself From Nepal to American Samoa and all places North South East and West Or its just a hit man on the run, or whatever Unknown Region Means It may also mean that only non English Speakers like my stuff Coverage but lacking penetration as marketing folks might say I did get 21,000 readers in 3 weeks for the Polish version of In Search of an Indian Princess. which is basically the final 3 chapters of The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker all by word of mouth. And 50,000 plus in Christmas week 2021 If you add up all the downloads from my Wordpress + 13,000 when somebody stole the file. I have had more copies than Boris Johnson's Churchill book distributed. Maybe 40,000 copies . Not made a penny from it, free downloads in multiple languages. Reverse Logic, if the world knows me, eventually somebody will pay me But in reality I'll be dead first, and then just 2 pennies to pay the ferryman is enough I've cut the Plaudits, you can read/decide for yourself As for my life, I was born in the shadow of a Brewery, I was a computer operator for a market research company into alcohol sales, 21 years altogether, StatsMR Call centre guy, like everybody once in their life I was also a Trainee Betting Shop Manager I was a concierge and 10 other roles at Crowne Plaza NEC Birmingham for 3 years. Spent 3 years at Pinsent Masons Law firm in Birmingham I even hid a copy of my comic novel "BBU" in the Law Library at Pinsent Masons, well just for a day.. I did a few other jobs too, working life in reverse so to speak and I was an Esol English teacher in an Islamic school, for a year, I knew I could teach. I got Excellent, Excellent and Exemplary on the external assessment, yes really And I asked them to pray for me at least once a day beside which I've had a Shanghai connection for 20+ years now, including 2 bilingual daughters and being a hausfrau a long time too, I'm a great dad, as I've had lots of time with my daughters I can always make somebody talk or laugh I believe my short stories could be used to teach English, just package them up correctly or App them Or a Tale a Day from Michael, a story telling App What else, I was brawn and brains, I used to be as strong as an Ox, now I just smell like one We have a cat called Totoro, my daughters wanted a pet I said they could have a dog if I died , or a cat if I had a heart attack. A few weeks after that in Jan 2015 I had an Unplanned Quadruple Heart Bypass , it was supposed to be a triple but it ended up a Quadruple, 33% extra free so to speak. Now with an add on Hernia, the size of your fist, pushing through my bypass scar, it hurts when I laugh, so don't make me laugh I also have arthritis and other hindrances that hobble my body and give me pain galore. But my mind is free, though having read my stories you may wish I didn't bother But I'll ignore you, and carry on regardless. I do get heckled by my own Tinnitus these past 5 years+, so I have music on all night long to drown it out. I sleep with Miley, Taylor, Eric Clapton and Will Young, maybe I should buy a bigger bed, or just get a better mattress. Tinnitus is a curse, just trust me I know, each day I wake up, Tinnitus SCREAMS at me for a full hour till it calms down or not at all, a merry go around of noise That's the end of the tidy version of my life To finish here's the list of my 20 books, so far:- 1.The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker 2.Shoplife 3.Essays and Plays 4.Blogs 2011 5.300 and Not OUT 6.Shorts 2013 7.More Shorts 2014 8.Quick Stories 9.Still Alive 2015 10.Undiscovered Words 2016 11.Still Smiling 2017 12.Altogether Now 13.New Horizons 14.14 Up 15.15 Down 16.Sweet Sixteen 17. 17 Again 18. 18 New Views 19. The Final Cut of the 19th Hole 20. 2020 Words 21. Fresh Fields, i decided was a better title, when the USA election is over I'll launch it 96,000 words so far I write bullet point stuff mainly now as Tinnitus stops me from getting in the zone to write, story stories. (c) by Michael Casey stuff though my bullet points are better than some "writers" discuss, miaow. That's why I dream of a speed typist, so I could dictate from the sofa https://www.amazon.co.uk/Michael-Casey/e/B00571G0YC to buy ebooks Loads of Korean and Arabic translations downloaded from my Wordpress, 1000s of them Quick Stories in Korean is a big hit. Maybe Kim in North Korea should read my books, instead of wasting his countries resources on what? Just keeping one person in power, him? Instead of joining the real world and opening a string on golf courses. That way we could get rid of Trump too. Into the sunset, as they play golf. Tears for a Butcher will be the sequel to BBU, and it too will be 600pages, however I really need a speed typist to put it down, while I sit and dictate like Barbara Cartland, and hopefully my speed typist would be impressed. we'd marry have half Korean kids, and form a Kpop band with our 4 new kids, with me as manager. my 2 daughters are at University now, so if you finally pay me, I can pass it on to them And yes this is more for my bucket list, as Tinnitus keeps me awake too much, 6 months of not sleeping till dawn is really killing me, it is the worse thing in my life ever, and I've had far to many horrible things. That's why I go the other direction and write comedy Michael Casey aka the fat silver haired writer in shades from Birmingham England https://2.gravatar.com/avatar/efda2dca0de5b9269191b7c8b0102473?s=400&d=mm View all posts by michaelgcasey
