Until yesterday, the biggest heist in history by a dictator known for killing his own people was credited to Saddam Hussein of Iraq, who pilfered $1 billion from the Central Bank of Iraq in a 4 a.m. raid on March 18, 2003.
That record was blown away on February 20, 2026, when the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that an audacious heist conducted in broad daylight by Donald Trump, America's best-known living sex predator, had netted (as of mid-December) $133 billion in illicit gains, syphoned directly from U.S. businesses and consumers.
A "Liberation Day" that will live in infamy
Trump's illegal tariffs crushed small businesses across America. Many closed for good. Many fired employees they will never hire back.
Consumers were forced to pay higher prices for everything from coffee and bananas to furniture and refrigerators to cosmetics and toys.
So we're all getting refunds, right?
Not so fast.
One of Trump's main accomplices in the heist, Argentine bailout overseer and nominal U.S. Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, has other ideas. "I got a feeling the American people won't see it," he told the Economic Club of Dallas on Friday.
Trump's illegal tariffs destroyed businesses and jobs
In July 2025, The New York Times reported on the closure of the beloved NYC toy store West Side Kids.
The store, which Jennifer Bergman owned for 44 years, was first started by her mom.
Bergman spoke to NPR after the "bittersweet" ruling that came too late to save the store the Times had described as a "neighborhood fixture" whose closing signs prompted a "say-it-isn’t-so reaction from people who grew up with toys" bought there.
In Merriam, Kansas, Hendrick Svenson's furniture store, which he opened thinking it would be "the retirement for the kids," was forced to close in August. "We had to liquidate everything," he said.
The Spanish Table, a specialty foods grocery store in Berkeley, CA closed in August after 24 years, when Trump's 15% tariffs on European imports became the final nail in the store's coffin.
Even businesses that survived 2025 have suffered greatly.
Across the country, small businesses, which traditionally account for the vast majority of all jobs created in America, were forced to fire staff, reduce wages and/or put all hiring and expansion plans on hold.
Trump's illegal tariffs turned the "Biden Boom" into the "Trump Tailspin"
The sad part is that none of this was necessary.
Trump inherited an economy that was the envy of the world, but his stupidity, corruption and chaos have hurt us all.
As I wrote the day after the November 2024 election, he could have chosen to keep America strong:
The booming, low-inflation Biden economy that Fox News viewers have been trained to hate could simply be rebranded as “the best economy in the history of our country” under Trump.
The manufacturing investment that Biden has initiated through the CHIPs Act could simply become the "Donald J. Trump Very Powerful Manufacturing Supercycle."
The infrastructure projects that Biden has funded could all be finished but with Trump's name slapped on to keep him happy.
Instead, the President who left office in disgrace in 2021 with the worst jobs record since Hoover has picked up right where he left off.
Trump's first year back in office was a disaster:
- Outside of the care economy, America LOST jobs in 2025.
- Manufacturing SHRANK for the final 10 months of 2025. Tens of thousands of jobs evaporated.
- Yesterday we learned that inflation has surged back to 3% as quarterly GDP growth slowed to just 1.4%.
The tragedy for America is that all of this economic damage was as predictable as Trump's actions were illegal.
We re-elected a con artist with mob-like tendencies.
He just pulled off the biggest heist of all time.
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