Let me explain to you why the "it's no one's fault" take is wrong:
This is about Trump's hubris completely stunting any capacity to lead the nation.
This is a president who was inaugurated on the positive swing of a recovering economy. This gave him the room to lead like a blustering fool in many ways, and one of the most evident factors here is the many, many replacements and shake-ups of his cabinet and staff. It's been nothing but disorder and chaos over there. Career officials and experts getting run out of their positions, replaced with sycophants and grifters. Even those grifters couldn't stay in place before long. There was little hope that anybody over there could put together a solid plan.
There has been no effective leadership since 2017, and we've seen it fall apart in several ways, among them the brutal and draconian immigration crisis, the failed North Korea talks, the failed Middle East talks, and the deadly lack of effective response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Especially with that last one, we have already got an ample preview of how managing a disaster would go for this admin.
The point is, the stock market trending upward (practically on inertia alone, despite his taking credit for it), is Trump's claim that his admin's confused and angry policy was effective leadership. He broke a lot of plates, claiming "we're rich anyway, who cares!". And now, we need something to eat on. That's the hubris. But moreover, this is not the first time the Trump admin botches the recovery plan on a disaster, it's simply the biggest one yet.
So before you wipe Trump's responsibility from what you're seeing today, think about how we got to this moment, how ill-prepared we were for it, and how much Trump claimed our market bubble as this divine sign that racism, corruption, bad disaster response and MAGA-ism was doing a great job.
This is about Trump's hubris completely stunting any capacity to lead the nation.
This is a president who was inaugurated on the positive swing of a recovering economy. This gave him the room to lead like a blustering fool in many ways, and one of the most evident factors here is the many, many replacements and shake-ups of his cabinet and staff. It's been nothing but disorder and chaos over there. Career officials and experts getting run out of their positions, replaced with sycophants and grifters. Even those grifters couldn't stay in place before long. There was little hope that anybody over there could put together a solid plan.
There has been no effective leadership since 2017, and we've seen it fall apart in several ways, among them the brutal and draconian immigration crisis, the failed North Korea talks, the failed Middle East talks, and the deadly lack of effective response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Especially with that last one, we have already got an ample preview of how managing a disaster would go for this admin.
The point is, the stock market trending upward (practically on inertia alone, despite his taking credit for it), is Trump's claim that his admin's confused and angry policy was effective leadership. He broke a lot of plates, claiming "we're rich anyway, who cares!". And now, we need something to eat on. That's the hubris. But moreover, this is not the first time the Trump admin botches the recovery plan on a disaster, it's simply the biggest one yet.
So before you wipe Trump's responsibility from what you're seeing today, think about how we got to this moment, how ill-prepared we were for it, and how much Trump claimed our market bubble as this divine sign that racism, corruption, bad disaster response and MAGA-ism was doing a great job.
