Is Trump Corrupt Or Is He A Butthead?

As I’ve said before, it really can be both.

Over the last week or so, Trump declared a bunch of random nonsensical tariffs causing a terrifying collapse of the stock market. Trump’s polling also collapsed; stout Trump supporters like Bill Ackman, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and Ted Cruz wondered aloud what the fuck the administration was doing; Republicans in Congress started to tentatively suggest that they might have the vestigial spine necessary to claw back tariff power from the executive.

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Faced with broad resistance from the public and allies, Trump did what he usually does; he caved and retreated while claiming victory. He paused most tariffs for 90 days, babbling about how 75 countries had rushed to negotiate with him (he wouldn’t say which ones, because he’s a liar and no country actually rushed to negotiate with him.)

Some Trump sycophants insisted that this was all a masterful gambit rather than an obvious boneheaded clusterfuck. Some non-Trump sycophants also floated the idea it was all part of a brilliant plan. Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich, for example, suggested that the tariffs and the reversal was a plot to manipulate the market, allowing Trump and his family and his hangers on to buy low, sell high, and make a fortune. “It all feels like chaos until you look more closely at who is winning,” Reich concluded.

Reich’s a smart guy, and I think it is difficult for smart people to believe that Trump is as foolish, uninformed, impulsive, and ignorant as he appears to be. There’s a huge temptation to fall into what Jonathan Bernstein calls the “Clever Fallacy.” As Bernstein describes it:

I think we all really resist the idea that the President of the United States could be that simple-minded. There’s got to be a deeper explanation for it. But really? Probably not. Sorry. That’s what we have, and we should face the truth.

Trump imposes tariffs because he thinks tariffs show strength and manifest magic money—and because they fit with his fascist conspiracy theory politics of national victimization (as I explained here.) Trump put together a package of tariffs with big numbers because he likes tariffs and big numbers and didn’t really think about what would happen next.

Then it became clear even to him (or possibly to his advisors) that the tariffs were a political and economic disaster. So he backed off for now, because he tends to do whatever he’s told by the last person who flatters him. It isn’t more complicated than that.

The thing is, Trump can be an unthinking dolt and also be corrupt. When you’re the president, it doesn’t take much planning or thought to engage in insider trading. People around Trump certainly knew that his tariffs would tank the market and that removing them would cause a rally. The policy itself was put in place because Trump’s an egotistical ignorant fool. But if you’re engaging in egotistical ignorant foolishness, might as well make a buck off of it, right?

Most administrations attempt to avoid the appearance of impropriety. But Trump doesn’t care, and the dunderheaded corrupt hacks around him don’t care either. The Supreme Court and Congress have made it clear that they will do nothing to prevent Trump from engaging in the most straightforward grotesque corruption—he vastly overcharged the Secret Service to stay at his hotels in his first term, and he’s almost certainly doing the same thing in his second, just for starters. His crypto reserve policy is a giant scam. Etc.

There are really infinite ways for the president of the United States to make money if he has no shame and no oversight. He doesn’t need to push the country into a recession, and there are a lot of reasons why you wouldn’t want to push the country into a recession if you weren’t a fool.

But if you are a fool, and are pushing the country into a recession anyway…well, again, why not grab those billions? It’s even possible that some of Trump’s advisors used a corrupt windfall as a way to get him to back off tariffs for now. “Sir, you’ve masterfully shown the world how tough you are…and if you pause the tariffs now there will be the greatest market rebound ever and All Those Who Believed In You will benefit! (wink, wink.)”

Films, television, and basically all pop culture presents supervillains as super smart and crafty; destroying the earth, we’re told, requires a big brain. But it’s just not true.

If, for example, you are born with massive wealth and privilege, it’s not that difficult to get yourself in a position where you can just bumble around malevolently and hurt a lot of people by being straightforwardly horrible without much subtlety or brilliance. Similarly, if you have a lot of wealth and privilege, it’s easy to get even more wealth by being nakedly corrupt in the most gauche manner possible.

Trump doesn’t need elaborate clever schemes to enrich himself. He just puts his hand in the till and/or shakes people down for their lunch money. And/or he implements his nonsense, dangerous, reckless policies, and then picks up the riches lying about, like an arsonist grabbing abandoned purses after burning most of the building down. It is all chaos. But Trump wins anyway, not because of careful planning, but because we have collectively decided to give rich white men in general, and him in particular, virtually unlimited power.