Eight months into Trump 2.0 and the world is on edge.
Everyone is worried about the future.
Trump is also worried. But mostly (as usual) about himself.
"His own mortality is weighing on him," says David Rothkopf, in a new Daily Beast podcast with Joanna Coles. "And the Epstein thing is weighing on him. And he just looks like he can't handle it."
As the economy crumbles, Trump's physical and mental collapse accelerates
After weeks of growing concern about Trump's physical and mental deterioration, the president (who has a long history of videotaped spasms, verbal paraphasias, and brain glitches) appeared to be suffering "a hallmark symptom of a stroke" as he struggled to stay awake during a 9/11 commemoration at the Pentagon on Thursday.
Soon after, more questions about the aging president's cognitive diminishment were raised when he responded to a question about how the murder of Charlie Kirk had affected him by speaking at length about the construction of the new White House ballroom.
Trump was apparently well enough to golf Saturday, where he took the opportunity to tell Newsmax host Rob Schmitt, "Charlie's shooter was living with a trans girlfriend," which (if true) would show how forgetful our mentally feeble president has become.
Less than eight months ago, Trump signed an EO to combat "gender ideology extremism" making it verboten to use the terms "woman" or "girl" when talking about a trans woman.
A disastrous week for the Trump economy — and for America
Trump's face wasn't the only thing drooping this week. New economic data and immigration news combined to highlight the strong headwinds Trump has singlehandedly created for the US economy.
A foreign investment crisis:
The devastating fallout from the ill-conceived ICE raid on a massive new Hyundai-LG plant being built in Georgia continued.
For Trump, the humiliation became personal when hundreds of South Korean workers rejected his entreaties to stay in America to train their replacements and flew home to Seoul instead.
Hyundai now says the $26-billion plant will be delayed for months, delivering a severe blow to the local economy. The Georgia development in which Hyundai was investing, reports the BBC, would have created thousands of new jobs and was previously "hailed as the largest economic development project in the state's history."
Making matters worse, South Korea's president says that all $350 billion in new US investments his country pledged in July will now have to be reconsidered. The fear is that all countries that have made promises to invest in the US will now ask similar questions.
An inflation crisis:
During December 2024, Biden's last full month in office, inflation was 2.9%.
Today, inflation is 2.9% — and rising.
Nevertheless, as prices surged again in August, Trump claimed ridiculously on Friday that he had "solved inflation."
Grocery prices are going through the roof. Electricity bills are rising at twice the inflation rate. Motor vehicle repair costs are up 15%. Audio equipment and college textbooks are both up over 12%. And things are still getting worse. CNBC reports that Trump's tariffs are expected to show up in higher prices for goods like clothing and furniture in the months ahead.
A consumer debt crisis:
In the "latest terrifying sign Americans cannot pay their debts," Texas-based auto dealer Tricolor Holdings, the third-largest used auto retailer in Texas and California, collapsed this week.
The bankruptcy renewed concerns about the proliferation of "subprime consumer pain" at a time when more than 5% of all auto loans (and 10.2% of all student-loan debt) are delinquent by more than 90 days.
According to Bloomberg, JPMorgan Chase, Fifth Third Bancorp, and Barclays are among banks that could face hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
Trump shows more weakness on the world stage
As Putin sent drones into Poland this week in an incursion designed to test NATO's resolve, Trump alarmed allies and foreign policy experts by responding only with weakness.
Trump's initial response was a deranged Truth Social post that read in its entirety, "What's with Russia violating Poland's airspace with drones? Here we go!"
During a news conference on Wednesday, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski told reporters that "Putin laughs at Trump's peace efforts."
On Friday, Trump told reporters that Putin's latest aggression "could have been a mistake."
By Sunday, Putin was laughing at the feeble Trump even more loudly, sending drones into Romania, too.
A rapidly aging president who "seems weaker every week"
According to Rothkopf on The Daily Beast podcast, Trump not only "seems stressed out," but also "seems older with each passing week":
You could even see it with the Russian drones (that) flew into Poland and he's handled it badly from a foreign policy perspective. But but you can also see sort of that he's like, okay, well this will work itself out. It's like he doesn't have energy to deal with Gaza any more, energy to deal with Ukraine, or energy to deal with the Congress anymore... If I was Trump's family, I'd be I'd be worried about his health.
Meanwhile, "the Epstein thing" that Rothkopf said is weighing on Trump is getting heavier every day.
Both The New Yorker and The Atlantic highlighted why the newly released Epstein birthday book was far, far worse than you might have imagined based on the single creepy note Trump wrote to the "wonderful pal" with whom he shared so many secrets.
As Jessica Winter writes in The New Yorker :
Sometimes it reads like a catalogue raisonné of outsider art by registered sex offenders. Sometimes it’s like you’ve stumbled into the masked ball in “Eyes Wide Shut” and everyone is wearing Shein, and smells like Burger King, and there’s that tacky gold shit that Trump likes all over the walls. Sometimes it’s like you’ve discovered a rich man’s contract with the devil, and, next to his signature, he’s drawn a little penis cartoon.
In The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel says he knew it would be bad, but he still wasn't prepared for how bad:
Given the crimes Epstein was convicted of, I steeled myself before scrolling. Somehow, my internet-addled imagination failed me. This book is a nightmare.
To make matters worse for Trump and Deputy AG/current Trump fixer Todd Blanche — who interviewed "Madam" Ghislaine Maxwell before helping her switch to a "country club" prison to serve out her time ahead of an anticipated pardon — Bloomberg this week reported on hundreds of emails that exposed many of Maxwell's lies to Blanche.
Katie Phang breaks it all down here:
The news is bad. The strain on Trump is showing
As I wrote last week, data point after data point keeps illustrating the damage Trump is doing to America.
And no matter how much Trump tries to downplay it, this was another terrible week for the country.
You didn't even have to read the news to see how fast we're sinking. It was written all over Trump's face.
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