Taking questions in the Oval Office with the prime minister of Norway sitting next to him, President Trump just responded to a question of what concessions Russia is willing to offer to end the war in Ukraine. His response? “Stopping the war, not taking the whole country.” That’s a concession? That’s something Russia would give up to end the war? Do we blame this answer on speaking off-the-cuff, or on President Trump’s Russian patriotism?
donald trump
Pump-and-dump, the Trump way
While I’m glad President Trump wised up and paused the tariffs, I’d have been much happier if he’d canceled them outright. But the whole activity—indeed, the past week’s worth of financial news coming out of the White House—points out that we don’t have a thoughtful, considerate person sitting in the Oval Office. We have a capricious, egotistical fool. And while such a person is not normally dangerous, the fact that he’s the president of the United States gives his every utterance global import.
I have to wonder how much of his decision process was driven by a recognition of the global pain he’d caused, and how much of it was yet another misuse of governmental power for his own financial benefit. A week ago, he started a global trade war all on his own (on the flimsiest of reasons and with absolutely execrable math to justify it). He continued harping on his attacks for a week. Last night, he told us he was thrilled with how other countries were “kissing his ass” to negotiate lower tariff rates (all class, that president of ours, just not high class). And just after 9:30 this morning, he apparently truthed out [is “truthed” the word for tweeting on his proprietary Twitter competitor?] “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT.” He followed it up with “BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!”
Remember, this is the only presidential candidate in a generation to not release his tax returns, and the only president in memory to not divest himself of his non-presidential businesses. Will we ever know how well he and his super-wealthy buddies did today after he “paused” the tariffs and popped the stock markets more than we’ve ever seen before?
I don’t think he knuckled under, and I don’t think he’s stupid. I think he’s an excellent grifter, and he’s just pulled off a brilliant scam for himself and his friends. For those of you not seeing it: he depressed the price of almost every stock in the US by fifteen or twenty percent, in one week, giving his cronies a great chance to buy. And today, he popped those prices back up ten percent.
He’s in the Oval Office to steal as much as he can, and he’s doing a pretty good job of it.
Trump Bloviates on Tariffs
I want to comment on President Trump’s long “announcement” of a global tariff agenda just now in the Rose Garden, but what the hell was he talking about? He rambled from “my predecessors were stupid” to “there were shenanigans during the 2020 election” to “the United States is broke because every other country has been taking advantage of us forever.” The one specific that did catch my ear is that, in the world according to Trump, the Great Depression was caused by the Sixteenth Amendment (which introduced the income tax, in 1913), and that it did not end until sometime in the 1950s or 1960s (he said it was a long time after Franklin Roosevelt left office).
The one thing I can say is that he’s gotten away from claiming all those other countries will be the ones paying the United States for the tariffs. Apparently, somebody finally got to him to point out that the United States doesn’t pay “tariffs” to any other country.
After I posted the above on April 2, I saw what happened to the world’s stock markets, and late on April 3, I emailed President Trump the following:
I just looked at my accounts: I’m not happy with you, President Trump.
The economy was good, despite your campaign rhetoric saying otherwise. And then I watched your Rose Garden bloviating yesterday, and I looked at your chart of tariffs being charged against the US. And then I looked to see just where you got those numbers. We know where they came from, we know those aren’t actual tariffs charged on us, and we know you’re destroying the country (and quite possibly the global economy).
I also notice you never did bother releasing you tax returns. Are you, indeed, working for a foreign country?
And then this morning (April 4), I found this video from CNN, in which Phil Mattingly explains where the “tariff” numbers on that chart came from.
And then I found this other CNN video, in which Jim Cramer explains just how wrong these tariff over-reactions are.
Defunding intellectual freedom?
What is the value of intellectual freedom? of academic integrity? of political independence? The story just now on MSNBC was about the forthcoming meeting and negotiations between Harvard University and the Trump administration; that the government is demanding… well, I’m not entirely sure, other than the Trumpians are angry with the “liberal agenda supported by colleges and universities.”
I’m wondering what will happen if the leadership at Harvard can bring themselves to say “Our intellectual freedom, our academic integrity, is more important to the Harvard community than our federal funding. We have this massive endowment, so we’re going to draw on it to make up for the shortfall in federal funding. President Trump: you can shove your ideology.” Such a move, I think, would lead to an alumni fund-raising windfall. While the Trumpians might tout it as cutting needless federal spending, it could be viewed as a win by both sides. And who better to take that hit to show that Trumpism is not forever and ever than a university which was founded more than a century before the country in which it stands?
Mind you, I am emphatically in favor of rooting out the antisemitism poisoning college campuses. But it doesn’t seem to me that Harvard is dragging their feet on this issue.
And I’m going to throw in a few numbers which caught my ear. According to that MSNBC story, Harvard receives “$9 billion in federal grants and contracts.” Though the same report did also say that Columbia, after having theoretically acquiesced to similar demands, is still waiting for the $400 million in federal funds it receives to be restored.
I question that $9 billion, which may actually be an aggregate of many universities. This Washington Times piece from 2023 said Harvard had $3.3 billion in grants and contracts over the 2018–2022 period.
And in January, the Harvard Crimson said “In fiscal year 2024, the University received $686 million from federal agencies, accounting for two-thirds of its total sponsored research expenditures and eleven percent of the University’s operating revenue.”
But the point remains: can—should—a university bow to political whims, and change its policies to suit a presidential administration, which is by design temporary?
Yes, there is no place on college campuses—or anywhere else in the country—for supporters of kidnappers, rapists, and murderers. But on the other side of the discussion: is this what we have a government for? Isn’t this rather an issue to which a true Republican would have a laissez-faire attitude? Let the market decide, such a Republican would say. If people disagree with the university’s policies, they’ll stop donating to it, stop applying to be students there, stop respecting it. Apparently, the Trumpians are not so secure in their own beliefs to think they’ll win out in the marketplace of ideas, so they have to put the government’s financial thumb on the scale.
Democrats Can No Longer Afford Moral Purity
I’ve said it before in a different context: when only one side is playing by the rules, they’re setting themselves up for a moral victory accompanied by a crushing actual defeat.
The Democratic party’s insistence on moral purity is what led them to purge their own Senator Al Franken. It’s what allowed Antonin Scalia’s Supreme Court seat to sit vacant for ten months, while Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s was filled in ten days. And it’s what continues to cause massive headaches for those of us who actually worry about the future of the country.
Chuck Schumer was absolutely correct in his vote for the “continuing resolution” to keep the government funded: voting against it is what the Trumpians wanted. There may have been moral purity in rejecting the bill, but then what? Shut down the government? Declare moral purity by not voting for the bill? That is exactly what the Trumpians wanted.
Indeed, they’re already doing it. Look at what has happened during Trump 2.0: USAID has been shut down. NOAA has been shut down. The Department of Education is nearly shut down. They’re shutting down the government piecemeal while patriotic ex-employees file pitiable lawsuits, hoping to keep their jobs.
Not adopting Speaker Mike Johnson’s continuing resolution would have done in one fell swoop what Trump & Co. are doing slowly, department by department: it would have shut everything down.
“But then shutting down the government would have been the Republicans’ fault,” the purest of the pure cry.
“So what?” respond the rational people. “That’s what they’re doing today. That’s what they want to do.” And that appears to be what the voters asked for.
Regardless of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi’s commentary, there was no pathway to negotiate a clean four-week extension. If that negotiation could have occurred, it would have happened weeks ago. But Trump’s minions in the House had no interest in doing so. They have the majority there, so they don’t need to talk to the Democrats about anything.
Had the staunch Democrats succeeded in delaying the bill and shutting down the government, the Trumpians would have been celebrating. And they would have had no reason to negotiate anything to re-open it. We would be suffering through a government shutdown that would last until the next election, all while Trump and Elon Musk determine which pieces of the government are “necessary” and which are not. They would have had the time of their lives, selling off pieces of the government to their cronies at bargain prices, while the Democrats would be mewling for negotiations to fund and re-open the government.
I disagree—vehemently—with almost every action taken by the president and his gang of thieves. I disagree with their policies, their stated goals, and their methods. But the moral purity of the Democrats is a danger we can no longer afford. Adherence to the rules is a path to victory only if both sides are playing by the rules, and if the judges of the contest care about them. November 5, 2024, showed us that a plurality of American voters don’t care about following the rules, and that saddens me. But if we’re going to save our country from the predations of Trump 2.0, we’re going to have to get dirty, get down in the mud with our foes to fight back, hard.
Was Schumer morally impure for allowing the continuing resolution to pass the Senate? Yes. But was it the right thing to do in an attempt to save the country? Also, yes.
Trump is still running… his mouth
Tonight, Donald Trump bloviated for an hour and 39 minutes. It was a campaign speech, it was a complaint, it was a brilliant example of verbal masturbation, Donald Trump-style. It wasn’t terribly surprising, and it wasn’t at all unifying.
It took him only eight minutes to get around to telling us that Joe Biden was “the worst president in American history.”
He gave a long list of programs he called “fraud”—which in Trump English seems to be a synonym for “programs I don’t like or disagree with”—including money for a program “in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of.” I’ve heard of it.
And he continued to threaten Panama and Greenland, saying “to enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal.” And that the canal was built for Americans, not others. He also encouraged Greenlanders to voluntarily associate with the United States, but then said “we need Greenland for international world security. And one way or another, we’re gonna get it.”
He rambled on about many other things, but frankly, there wasn’t enough new or interesting for me to bother reporting on it again.
One thought I did take away from the speech: whether he’s read the story or not, he seems to have completely embraced the idea in my story “The Necessary Enemy.” Specifically, that it takes a villain to make a hero, that we need an enemy in order to be the victor. Perhaps that’s why he’s always talking about enemies, and why he declared a variety of emergencies the day he was inaugurated. Perhaps that’s why he’s always struggling to “make America great again,” as if someone had somehow made America less. The only one making America less is Donald Trump, as he cedes our position of economic, political, and moral leadership on the world stage.
He doesn’t speak for all Americans
28 February 2025
Dear President Trump,
Today, I am ashamed. You sit in office as the most powerful man on the planet, but today, you used that position not to ennoble or uplift. You used it to belittle, to attack President Zelensky, a man who is the president of a smaller, weaker country. A man who was a guest in your office, seeking our help.
It was a shameful performance. A performance that—in hindsight—it appears you and your vice president have been plotting for the last several weeks. The cynic in me wonders how much President Putin is paying you, to so totally upend our history of defending the weak from the predations of the strong and ruthless. Rather, it appears you would prefer to be seen as one of those strong and ruthless.
Any man who must say “I am the king” is no true king. Similarly, any person who must attack a weakling is not truly powerful, and any man who demands obeisance and then belittles is no true man. And any president who takes every opportunity to attack his predecessor is obviously not nearly as great as that predecessor.
Today, I am embarrassed to be an American. That the rest of the world might think I agree with your words and condone your actions today is abhorrent to me. Thus, I make this letter public. Your words and actions in the Oval Office were not presidential, were not the words or actions of a true president, and have brought shame to our country.
In disappointment,
Ian Randal Strock
P.S. – Looking at all the toadies thanking you for “standing up for America” (in https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/02/support-pours-in-for-president-trump-vp-vances-america-first-strength/), I have to wonder who they thought you were standing up to? Do you think Ukraine is such a threat to the United States that you have to “stand up to Zelensky”? You didn’t stand up; you attacked a much smaller and weaker country.
Trump’s newest presidential tradition: protection rackets
Words matter. And in all the discussion around President Trump’s proposed rare Earth elements deal with Ukraine, why have we never heard the proper words used to describe it? It’s not a “deal,” it’s not a “negotiation”: it’s extortion.
The thug holding the Oval Office in the United States is demanding the ravaged nation of Ukraine to pay us protection money. “Nice country you used to have. Be a shame if we let the Russians just take it from you.”
Not, mind you, that we should be surprised. Anyone who has any familiarity with Donald Trump’s business career knows this is precisely the thing he is good at. “Give me what I want and I won’t hurt you. Don’t give it to me, and I’ll find your opponents, and then get it from them.”
And why are President Macron of France and Prime Minister Starmer of the UK coming to Washington this week to meet with the president? Because they don’t want to be next.
This is how low we’ve stooped with the election of Donald Trump: the United States of America is now a thug running a protection racket.
Brie Stimson reports Trump told reporters “I think they want it, and they feel good about it.” Come on baby, you know you want it. You know it’ll be good for you.
Nick Paton Walsh, in this piece, at least says the United States has become “a transactional predactor.”
Trump and Musk: Setting Up the Government to Pay Them
I hear a lot of consternation over Presidents Trump and Musk and DOGE taking over the federal payment system in the Department of the Treasury. Representative Gregory Meeks on MSNBC just now couldn’t get beyond the fact that one of Musk’s henchmen is 19 years old. But it’s all misdirection; it’s the sound and fury signifying nothing that they want you to look at. Is Elon Musk going to steal my identity when he finds my social security number? I doubt it.
Meanwhile, over in the shadow (well, perhaps not that dark), Donald Trump is doing what he’s done his entire career: planning big real estate deals which offer him the maximum opportunity to skim and grift for his (and his compatriots’) benefit, while stiffing those he’s going to use.
His announcement that the US is going to take over the Gaza Strip is simply the latest instance of his lifelong aim of self-aggrandizement through real estate dealing. Replace “US” in that headline with “Trump Organization,” and it could have been the 1980s: throw out the people who have no money in a run-down neighborhood, rebuild it with the Trump name writ big on the buildings, stiff the construction workers who did the dirty work, and proclaim his own greatness while lining his own pockets.
And the GSA selling half the property it manages? That means a large number of buildings coming onto the market in a short span of time, meaning the prices will depress through oversupply. What does Donald Trump do? Remember, he’s the first president in history to not divest his business interests, or place them in a blind trust. I wouldn’t bet against The Trump Organization (and his allies) buying up a lot of that property, and then leasing it back to the government.
As much as he talks about shrinking the government, there is a the government does that cannot simply be thrown away with the stroke of a pen. But removing those pieces from the government’s control, and parceling them out to private companies offers so much more opportunity to skim.
None of it is irrational; all of Trump’s moves make perfect sense, if we only remember his goal. It has never been “what can I do to make things better for others?” It is always “what can I do to make the most money for myself?”
Will President Trump demand we shift to all-electronic transactions?
Just now (4:57pm on February 3, 2025), on Fox news’ The Will Cain Show, the host asked his guest, Margarito “Jay” Flores Jr (credited as “former Sinaloa cartel kingpin”) how we can disincentivize the cartels from bringing fentanyl into the US? In response, the key point Flores said was, “We need to focus on the bulk use of US currency.” The drug cartels want the almighty US dollar, so we need to remove their ability to get it.
This makes me wonder how long it will be before President Trump tells us we need to shift entirely to an electronic currency, “to protect us from fentanyl and Mexican gangs.”
I’ve written many times of the utility of physical currency, starting with my AnLab-winning article “The Coming of the Money Card: Boon or Bane?” (which appeared in the October 1996 issue of Analog). The ease of its use for person-to-person transactions, its desirability for things like tipping, the fact that using paper money enables the recipient to receive 100% of the value of the transaction (as opposed to a bank or clearinghouse taking a transaction fee, which is what happens with every credit card transaction, and is one of the insidious drivers of long-term inflation), and so on. While there is definitely a role for electronic currencies (I take credit cards when I sell books [though I have to charge an extra transaction fee to make up for the cost of doing so], and I receive electronic payments from distributors when they sell my books for me), requiring all transactions to be electronic strikes me as a monumentally bad idea.
There’s the tracking of every transaction, the fees associated with them, the fact that one has no real control over one’s own store of electronic currency, and so on.
And, with the current president and administration, I also wonder how much of that move will be in order to enrich those people personally. The Official Trump “meme coin” is currently valued at just under $20 per unit, with one billion available (https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/official-trump). Donald Trump is also the “chief crypto advocate” of World Liberty Financial (https://www.worldlibertyfinancial.com/), in which his family has financial interests (all of his sons are employed by the company).
Ian Randal Strock 