How did he get this way? Presumably 40 years of being a real estate hustler from Queens. “This is the greatest view, this is the best quality, the marble comes from Italy” - when the truth is he builds cheaply, doesn’t pay his contactors in full, and fits a few gilt bathroom fittings. Everything that comes out of his mouth is just a crude sales pitch, a rambling mixture of out-of-date opinions and outright lies.
The joke is that Trump thinks this makes him a “dealmaker”, when the truth is that nobody, and no country, wants to deal with Trump since he lies constantly and tears up agreements that he has signed when they don’t bring the success he hoped for. He is a hopeless businessman with 40 years of well documented failure and bankruptcies. The only thing he knows how to do is to “flip” properties – a significant number of them having been sold to Russians over the past 20 years. Very strange...
This has led to the United States having a president who is uniquely unqualified for the job. A compulsive liar, a terrible businessman and a complete failure to understand the US Constitution or how government works.
The result was a failed tariff policy in 2025, ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in a crystal-clear judgment. His success in arresting the president of Venezuela led President Trump to the folly of joining an attack by Israel on Iran, in the expectation of a decapitation of the regime and a swift “deal”. Only a complete fool would have launched a war against Iran, a revolutionary regime that destroyed the presidency of Jimmy Carter and was behind the Marine Barracks bomb in Beirut in 1983 that caused President Reagan to immediately withdraw all US military from Lebanon.
The outcome of Trump’s attack on Iran is unknowable. It demonstrates, yet again, that the current US president ignores US Intelligence Briefings and makes reckless, impulsive decisions. He is a gambler who dresses up a minor success as a “deal”, the complete failures are described as “fake news” and then just ignored. Another mess for a better future president to clear up.
The real harm that Trump is doing to America is economic. A report in yesterday’s Financial Times (The Economic Cost of Trump’s Migrant Crackdown) illustrated the chaos that has been unleashed on farming and construction. Hispanic workers in these industries are fearful of going to work in case there is an ICE raid. Miller, the White House aide, has a theory that America was great between the 1920s and 1960s when immigration was very low – but demographics are against him. Besides both Miller and Trump seem to hold racist views that regard non-white Americans as inherently undesirable, that they should be discouraged from voting if possible. This view is of course completely insane and at odds with modern, diverse America.
This is the point at which the Trump administration starts to resemble Mussolini’s Italy. For 20 years Mussolini ran Italy with a mixture of bombastic empty speeches and an attempt to direct the economy. He had some initial success, and for a while fascist Italy had foreign admirers, but a series of reckless foreign military campaigns (having followed Hitler into WWII) led to the complete destruction of Italy.
This is a warning to America – allowing a series of foreign misadventures to be led by an impulsive man, fond of making speeches but reluctant to take advice, is a terrible form of government. Great presidents, such as Lincoln or Roosevelt, were team builders. Always listening, working with Congress, believing in the Constitution.
The most obvious harm that Trump is currently doing is to the long-term health of the US economy. Donald Trump is obsessed by headlines and gives little thought to the future. Immigrants are vital to construction and picking crops. Tariffs are stifling investment – how can GM or Ford invest when a factory takes years to build, and President Trump constantly wakes up and tries to change tariffs. Renewable energy is clearly the quickest way to boost the output of electricity, but Trump hates “windmills”. In general, he is stuck in the 1980s, being convinced that fossil fuels are the real source of wealth in an economy. He lacks insight into computing and AI, probably because Silicon Valley is in California, so not a state that brings him electoral advantage.
The US economy keeps growing, largely thanks to the AI datacentre boom, but everything else (autos, construction, farming and now airlines) are showing signs of distress. The airports, roads and bridges are indicative of a country that increasingly resembles a Trump built property. Superficially ok but starting to look a little shabby. Needs some work.
Everything that Trump touches he devalues because he brings his reputation with him. A failed businessman who lies a lot. Citizen Trump.