How Trump's long con shatters your American dream

The president of the United States is cheating.

His tariffs are pushing up the price of everything, which means inflation remains high, which means interest rates remain high.

But instead of rethinking the wisdom of a ruinous national sales tax, which is what tariffs are, he’s bullying those who set interest rates.

Last night, Donald Trump claimed to have fired one of them. It was his first real attempt at taking control of the independent Federal Reserve.

He doesn’t have the authority to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. (She says she won’t resign. Her attorney says she will sue.) But the US Supreme Court could give it to him.

Then what? Trump will set interest rates more or less at random. The last time a strongman did that was in Turkey. Inflation soared. This time next year, you could be remembering $7 eggs with nostalgia.

And then, after it’s clear that Donald Trump is the cause of the biggest inflationary spike in American history, wiping out entire sectors of the economy, what will he do? Find someone else to blame for his terrible, stupid, malicious decisions. As he did with Lisa Cook, he’ll make up out of whole cloth the flimsiest of pretexts for doing what he wants to do.

He will cheat again to cover up his cheating.

And when I say “malicious,” I mean it. In Trump’s hands, tariffs were never a tool for achieving a policy goal, like bringing manufacturing back to America. They were and are tools for committing high crimes.

Everyone gets taxed, but there are exceptions – paid for by very obscenely rich corporate leaders who do not see the bribery of a president as treasonous but merely the cost of doing business.

The malice goes deeper. It’s not enough to make himself richer than he is. He has to take something away from you. With the national sales tax, cuts to government services, his toxic legislative agenda and more, he’s taking your money, your health care, your security and your hope. They must complement their wealth with a dollop of suffering, which is to say, yours. Watching you struggle is fun! The only thing better is watching their own supporters volunteer to struggle. Funner!

Feeling resentful yet?

You were told all your life that if you educate yourself, work hard and act honorably, you can succeed. That was the deal. You understood and accepted the terms. So you planned, you organized and you invested, accordingly, with the reasonable expectation of living up to your end of the bargain, thus making the American dream come true.

Trump, however, never met a bargaining partner he did not betray in the end. In his eyes, square deals are for suckers. There are winners. There are losers. And he’s always the winner, because he always cheats. The trick is hiding his intentions, getting you to buy into the idea and committing yourself. Then he’s got you. You have to live by the terms of his contract on you. But Trump?

Cheat, cheat ,cheat.

A normal president would see falling poll numbers and change course quick to get right with the American people. Not Trump. He sees falling poll numbers as reason to cheat harder. He’s squeezing more Republicans out of red states (gerrymandering) and creating conditions to scare voters away from voting next year with armed military personnel patrolling the streets of major American cities.

First, he picks our pockets. Then, he obstructs justice.

The perfect crime.

Here’s what I want you to do: Think about what it means for a criminal president to be the primary source of economic instability, disorder and chaos while, at the same time you, a normal law-abiding person, are doing everything you possibly can to get ahead or just get by.

Think about the fact that you’re falling farther behind, despite working hard and despite obeying the rules. Think about the feeling you have when you hear Trump say, as he did today, that he has “the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States."

Is that feeling resentment? It should be.

Liberals don’t usually talk about resentment. We think that’s what Trump and his people do. We think nothing good can come of it.

But there’s resentment based on bigotry and prejudice, and there’s resentment based on actual material harms done to you and your family by a president who breaks the terms of the social contract, with impunity, all while falsely claiming that the dream is coming true.

Liberals tend to think resentment is irrational. But there’s nothing irrational about getting angry at the sight of a president who cheats to cover up his cheating, and who could, in the coming months, take over the Federal Reserve, spike inflation, and vaporize lives and fortunes.

It would be irrational if you didn’t feel resentment.

In the years ahead, resentment is almost certainly going to be a major feature of American politics, if not the feature, as it will drive the resistance against Trump while forcing him to crack down on that opposition by whatever means are befitting of a criminal president.