Bannon has spoken openly before about the idea of moving with “Muzzle Velocity”, the idea being do so much shit the bad stuff gets lost in the coverage under the the silly and bombastic stuff. In many ways it is an extension of the “flood the zone with shit” idea he brought into the campaigns. So there is definitely an element of that.
But he’s a fucking moron. Any plan any of the stooges had they thought they could implement under the cover of Trump winding up the press by saying something dumb, Trump is as likely to step all over with his moronic interpretation of the plan as they are to sneak it through. We know Trump has been concerned about foreign tariffs for decades with him on the record complaining about them going back to the 80s. His understanding of them then was as dumb as it is now. What I suspect has happened is someone who thought they were smart developed a plan to use Trump’s interest in tariffs to suggest something they could use to their ends (what I dont know, but it doesnt really matter), and then watched in similar horror to the rest of us as the melted brain shit for brains then ran with an utterly insane version of that plan and no one could steer him back on track.
For me Trump is about money and fame. If he gets clicks off this he’s happy. Those behind him though want the US carved up like Russia. Milk the system fir every cent.
Looking at Trump’s whole life, it is a textbook case of the three chief vices of man: money, power and sex. I’m adding sex, not because it is a vice per se, but it is when you are seeing prostitues when your pregnant wife is at home, or you are hanging around Miss America pageants to go backstage, and junior pageants, or perving on your daughter, or befriending Epstein and all the rest of it.
Money and power are fine too, in the right way; but for Trump, all three have utterly consumed him.
Coupled with his stupidity, his vices have made him so easy to manipulate, as Putin knows, and as the brains behind Project 25 know too.
Depends how you study it. One of my undergraduate majors was Economics and I got a Bachelor of science degree for it because of a more mathematical concentration (econometrics, statistics, accounting, game theory etc).
I have three brothers, we are the governing trustees of a family trust. I won the argument in early February about pulling all capital out of the US. The discussion this evening was about buying back in. One of my brothers see this as a great buying opportunity, which actually does fit with his belief 8 weeks ago that we should not have sold (he now agrees with that decision).
The fundamental problem is that there is now no reason to deploy capital (i.e. invest) in the US now. Any comparative advantage they had (and they had massive advantage in some sectors) is irrelevant. Get capital out now, there is no business case for investing in industrial equipment to get rednecks to produce what Chinese workers were happy to produce at 1/4 of the cost a month ago.
