Opinion

In three weeks, on my birthday May 7th, it’ll be exactly 80 years since Germany signed terms of surrender at the headquarters of US General Dwight D. Eisenhower in Reims, France.

That year, 1945, also signaled the official end of the Republican Great Depression. And May 7 of this year may well signal the beginning of the Second Republican Great Depression, the fourth major economic crash in our history. Troublingly, every one of the prior three financial crises also tripped off a major war.

Everything Donald Trump is doing and will do makes perfect and sudden sense if you understand one simple fact: For him, it’s all a show.

He views the White House as a sound stage, like the set made to look like a boardroom where he performed for NBC on The Apprentice. He sees the people around him as a supporting cast, who can each be easily and quickly replaced (and often are) if they fail to play their roles the way he thinks will work best for the program.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer stands, as U.S. President Donald Trump (not pictured) signs executive orders and proclamations, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 9, 2025.

This article was paid for by AlterNet subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

— Trump’s legal serfs: when law firms bow to the Don. Trump is bragging about how he’s forced five more major US law firms to kiss his a-- and give away $940 million in free services to his favorite causes. So far, the rogues gallery of cowardly law firms which have put money above principle includes Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Allen Overy Shearman Sterling, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Cadwalader Wickersham & Taft, Paul Weiss, Skadden Milbank & Willkie, and Farr & Gallagher. On the other hand, three major firms are suing Trump’s administration for their efforts to intimidate and extort them (my words, not theirs), including Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale. And over 1600 attorneys who work for the big firms that have bowed down to Trump’s intimidation have signed a letter demanding they do better.

They wrote: “When we are united, we cannot be intimidated. These tactics only work if the majority does not speak up. Our hope was that our employers, some of the most profitable law firms in the world, would lead the way. That has not yet been the case.” One of the very first things authoritarians do when they seize control of a country — from Hitler in the 1930s to Putin in the early 2000s — is to seize control of the country’s legal system.

Trump didn’t just end his ill-conceived tariff drama, he only postponed it. Again. It’s not good news, it’s just delayed news.

Economists know that the best conduit to a healthy economy is stability. Yet the only reliable commodity from the Trump administration to date has been instability. In under three months of Trump’s second term, the chaos has been so relentless that even Fox News propagandists have, at times, fumbled their spin.

When I was a teenager, my dad decided it was a good idea to keep as much cash as possible in the bedroom safe. I don’t remember exactly when this was, but it was probably around 1987. That’s when the stock market crashed so badly that people feared another Great Depression.

My dad didn’t trust banks, because his dad didn’t. Grandpa came of age during the Great Depression. He remembered and feared bank runs and bread lines and not being able to find things, forget about not being able to afford them. He grew up to be the kind of man you don’t see anymore. No one saves jars and scraps of tin foil. In his youth, those were hard to come by. We live in an age of abundance now.

To ensure that the United States will always be led by a coherent, functioning President, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment provides for the prompt, orderly, and democratic transfer of executive power in the event the president is incapacitated, physically or mentally. Trump’s tariff debacle, where he thrust out his chest, flung economic incoherence at the world, then flip flopped only two days later, was the strongest evidence yet- in a roiling sea of evidence- that he is mentally incapacitated.

Despite inheriting the strongest post-covid economy in the world, Trump keeps insisting that the US economy is broken and in need of saving.He insists global trading partners who sell us more than they buy from us- even countries that are a fraction of our size- are “taking advantage.”

THE ANSWER: Racism.

THE QUESTION: How in the hell did we get here?

Now that trillions of dollars have vanished as a consequence of the Trump tariffs, I see that some liberals who are sitting on high perches are talking about how the tide is turning against the president. They tell us that even Donald Trump’s voters are changing their minds.

It’s things like this that worry me. It tells me that liberals still operate according to certain articles of faith that are well beyond their expiration dates. It tells me that liberals grossly underestimate the power of corruption, greed, arrogance and stupidity, and grossly overestimate the inherent goodness of the American people.