The Mad King Announces a 90-Day Pause

Michael Tracey is at a Senate hearing today like a real journalist, so I’m flying solo.

My mood is becoming pretty dark, as reflected in my article on how Trump’s plan is to maintain a North Korea of the right. I discuss why things have gotten this bad, and the necessity of acknowledging where people who supported Trump went wrong.

Someone asks about the difference between me today and me on November 5. The big mistake is that I didn’t take my own ideas seriously enough! My opinion of Trump sycophants and assorted rightoids was already extremely low. But it’s sunk even lower, which I didn’t think was possible. There just weren’t any more guardrails. They lasted throughout the first term, but a lot has changed since then. I wrote about this extensively, but thought we’d somehow get lucky.

As I was streaming, we learned that Trump is putting a 90-day pause on tariffs, for now placing 125% on Chinese goods and 10% on other countries. This is still an insane policy, but much better than the previous plan. Maybe focusing all of his hatred on China can help spare the rest of the world. I discuss how I’m annoyed by China-bashing. I’m not a fan of the CCP, but I take issue with the belief that the problem with them is the fact that we trade with one another. This idea has taken hold as a form of bipartisan demagoguery, and I expect a lot of the anti-China policies Trump has implemented to stick, even if other tariffs get rolled back.