"In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the... Anyone? Anyone?... the Great Depression, passed the... Anyone? Anyone? The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered?... Raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects? It did not work, and the United States sank deeper into the Great Depression."
That was a lesson millions of Americans learned from Ben Stein in his role as the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, a movie that was released on 11 June 1986, three days before Trump's 40th birthday.
The fictional high school students in Ben Stein's economics class weren't the only ones who failed to grasp his lesson about tariffs not working. The message also failed to penetrate the "Very Large A Brain" of the then-New York City real estate developer Donald Trump.
Somehow, though, the idea of one day becoming President was apparently implanted in Trump's brain right around the time of his first visit to Moscow in 1987.
Trump doesn't understand tariffs—or economics in general
Throughout his life, Trump has demonstrated a dangerous level of stupidity combined with a shocking inability to process new information.
Nowhere more so than on the topic of tariffs.
In 2018, two months after Trump began claiming that "trade wars are good, and easy to win," the National Retail Federation hired Ben Stein to reprise his Ferris Bueller role with the seemingly idiot-proof message that "trade wars don't work, they never work."
With the confidence of a carnival barking clown, Trump put his ignorance and outdated ideas on full display yesterday as he unveiled sweeping new tariffs along with massive new "reciprocal tariffs," all set to begin within the next few days.
Because tariffs increase the cost of everyday goods—hitting poor and working families hardest—experts say the "lowest-earning households with an average disposable income of about $43,000 would see that figure drop by as much as 5.5%."
Trump's still processing the concept of "groceries"
The tariffs come at a time when Trump could have been bragging about the lower cost of eggs and marveling some more about that "old-fashioned word, groceries."
At the same time, as The Daily Show just made clear, the more Trump tries to explain what "groceries" are, the more feeble-minded he appears.
Even as he talks about lowering the price of "groceries," Trump is communicating that he couldn't care less if the costs of everything—including cars—goes up substantially.
And Trump is not just oblivious to the cost-of-living issues facing everyday Americans
From the basic concepts of "asylum" or "Western liberalism" to his failure to protect us from Covid—or even show us the "concepts of a plan" for healthcare—Trump's stupidity is no joke.
It's often deadly.
Increasingly, Trump's cognitive decline makes him unable to function for more than a few hours at a time.
Worse, it makes him even easier to manipulate by those who would flatter or enrich him—or just do the mentally challenging parts of his job for him.
Even dumb and in decline, Trump's still a psychopath
It's scary to think that Trump truly believes his tariffs, his budget-busting tax cuts for the rich, and his DOGE-driven destruction of the federal government will succeed and make the whole country love him.
Scarier still is the reality that Trump, driven by his incurable psychopathy, is equally happy to let it all come crashing down.
He's already empowered Elon to grab all the data, embed AI into everything, and make tech fascism impossible to un-install.
Meanwhile, he's potentially plunging the country into the kind societal and economic chaos that could soon become the pretext for declaring a national emergency and canceling all future elections.
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P.S. This really is the time to get off X once and for all. Please find me on Bluesky and these other places.
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