Be Prepared
Trump is sabotaging the economy, but we shouldn't assume public opinion will follow automatically.
Donald Trump has done rapid, serious damage to the U.S. economy, and the MAGA elite knows it.
Saturated as the Trump movement is in fantasies and conspiracy theories, many of the people who manufacture myths for the Republican base do keep abreast of material reality. They fear being caught by surprise. They don’t feel any obligation to prepare for and mitigate risks on behalf of American citizens, but rather to generate storylines about looming crises that hold Trump personally harmless, or paint him as victim or hero.
In a recent New Republic article, the writer Greg Sargent documented the wave of panic washing over Fox News as its hosts and contributors reckon with the fact that Trump has already squandered his inheritance.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent admitted to CNBC that “this economy that we inherited” could be “starting to roll a bit.”
Even Trump himself seems to understand that headlines and indicators are about to turn south.
Which is to say: When they shit-talked the Biden economy throughout the 2024 campaign, they knew they were lying. They know that Joe Biden bequeathed Trump a strong economy, and they know Trump’s convulsive policy edicts (indiscriminate firings, indiscriminate tariff threats, the imposition and partial removal of actual tariffs, etc.) have already throttled growth and driven prices higher.
We may not see recession, we may not see inflation, we may not see the dreaded combination of the two. But we’ll be incredibly lucky to avoid all three.
And if any occur, we’re going to test the power of MAGA propaganda techniques. Can concerted lying convince enough people to deny the existence of economic hardship, or celebrate it, or blame it on Democrats, such that it doesn’t become a political drag on Trump?
For all the brain poison MAGA propagandists pump into our information environment, these early signs of discomfort suggest they know the truth of the matter. Which means they’re conscious of the coming deception: they’ll blame Biden and foreigners and liberals and Jews for causing economic pain, and circle their wagons around Trump, fully aware of their own lies.
TWEET BRITTLE LIES
The nonsense will likely follow a familiar style of right-wing shit-flooding, wherein all lines of propaganda absolve Trump of responsibility, often in contradictory ways. Think back to the aftermath of January 6, when we’d hear—sometimes from the very same people—that the riot at the Capitol was righteous, but not actually a riot at all, but incited by FBI plants, but actually an Antifa false flag. The right went to similar absurdist lengths to obfuscate Trump’s pandemic failures, from lying about the lethality of the virus to contorting case and fatality rates.
The problem, though, is that absurdity isn’t self-defeating. Trump’s style of obfuscation often works quite well. Not usually well enough to convince outright majorities, but to convince minorities large enough that the country never reaches meaningful consensus. Journalists feel compelled to report the controversy. Responsive accountability becomes impossible. In 2020, as Americans died needlessly by the tens of thousands and the labor market crumbled, Trump’s approval barely budged, and most Americans believed spin that held him harmless for the economic collapse.
Working in our favor this time is the fact that Trump has made such a spectacle of breaking things for no discernible reason. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) was correct when he wrote, “The stock market is tanking, labor markets are wobbling, personal debt is up, and prices are rising. All of these things are a direct result of the radical actions taken by team Trump.”
But I balked just a bit at the addendum: