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.