Trump voters need to confront the reality about Trump's economy

As the president escalates a stupid tariff war with Canada and other trading partners, a new line of thought is emerging. It goes like this:

All the evil stuff Donald Trump is doing is being masked by the mistaken but widespread belief that he’s a business genius. Once the facade falls away, all the evil stuff he’s doing will look like what it is.

This seems almost uncontroversial, as the stock market is reacting badly to tariff news, state and local businesspeople are struggling to understand and adapt, and even some rightwing pundits are sounding the alarm. More than anything else, though, Trump promised boom times. But in the wake of a backlash, he won’t rule out a recession.

Perhaps Greg Sargent captured this line of thought best: “Numerous Fox News figures are now openly panicking about Trump's economy, warning that it's in real trouble. It's a sign that the MAGA project is quite fragile: If voters keep turning on him here, the whole edifice could collapse. … Perceptions of Trump's economic prowess are the scaffolding that holds up the whole MAGA edifice. If that goes, the mass deportations, the Trump-Musk destruction of government agencies, and the serial abuses of power lose what's left of their cover.”

I would like to believe this new line of thought. I would like to believe that the people who voted for Trump will finally have to “confront reality” if and when they lose their jobs, their 401Ks evaporate and the price of milk and eggs soars out of sight. I would like to believe that the pain of Trump’s policies will teach them the errors of their ways. I would like to believe that once they see that Trump is a businessfraud, not a business genius, “the whole edifice could collapse,” as Greg said.

But I don’t.

What I do believe is that Trump’s supporters, and not just his supporters, will believe pretty much anything he says. I believe that the Washington press corps does not know, or won’t bother trying to figure out, how to cover a White House that lies with such malice.

And I believe something else: that most of Donald Trump’s liberal and moderate critics are going to be shocked to discover that allies and supporters accept the president’s excuses for inflicting damage on the economy and harming them personally. Trump’s critics will be shocked in the same way they have been shocked over the last 40 years every time white working-class Americans voted against their economic self-interests. That never made sense to them. Neither will this.

During a White House briefing today, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked by the Associated Press why the president is prioritizing tax hikes in the form of tariffs over tax cuts, which he promised voters while on the campaign trail. It was the kind of gotcha question that I am sure the AP reporter expected Leavitt to wiggle out from under.

Instead, she lied: “Tariffs are a tax hike on foreign countries that have been ripping us off. Tariffs are a tax cut for the American people.” Elsewhere, she said that the stock market is reacting to the transition out of “the mess that was created by Joe Biden and the previous administration. Joe Biden left this country in an economic disaster."

Again, these are lies. Tariffs are a tax, not on foreign countries, but on consumers who buy imported goods. Biden presided over a miracle recovery from the covid pandemic. But in Trumpworld, lies are facts. Lies were the basis for the entire 2024 election. “They’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats” was only the most conspicuous. Voters who chose to see the truth didn’t vote for Trump. Voters who didn’t did.

They are not going to stop believing Trump’s lies, no matter how much suffering they feel. They are going to believe that friendly nations like Canada have been taking advantage of the US for decades. They are going to believe honest, hard-working Americans like themselves have been victims of some kind of injustice committed by “globalists,” and that fighting back, in the forms of tariffs, is necessary for righting that wrong, and that even if it leads to a recession, it will be “worth it.” As Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told CBS News yesterday: “The only reason there could possibly be a recession is because the Biden nonsense that we had to live with. These policies produce revenues. They produce growth. They produce factories being built here."

Again, all lies.

But lies are facts in Trumpworld.

I think my liberal brethren make an understandable but self-defeating mistake. Though we concede to the power of the rightwing media apparatus, which is global in scale, to ensnare the minds of most Americans (including Democratic voters, by the way), we cling to the belief that at some point they are going to have to face reality, and that that reality is this: all the suffering they feel – job loss, inflation, the high cost of living, sickness, death, whatever – is Trump’s fault.

This is why there’s so much attention being paid to the stock market, to business leaders struggling to make decisions amid uncertainty, and to rightwing pundits who seem to be panicking. All of that suggests to my liberal brethren that a reckoning is brewing, and that with that reckoning, as my friend Greg pointed out, is the possibility and hope that finally, at long last, “the scaffolding that holds up the whole MAGA edifice” could fall to pieces, revealing the evil that’s lying within.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. If given the choice between confronting reality or continuing to believe lies, my money is on the people who voted for the president continuing to believe lies. Reality is hard. Trump’s policies hurt. Why face that at all, especially when Trump always gives them someone else to blame?

Before the last election, every serious person believed in the link between the economy and the presidency, which is to say, that the party that controlled the White House during boom times is going to be the party that wins the election. Bidenomics created the strongest economy of our lifetimes, with wages rising higher than the rate of inflation, and unemployment at historic lows, while dodging a recession, unlike virtually all the other rich countries in the world.

It didn’t matter.

The lies about the economy were stronger than the economy itself.

Perhaps more than anything else, this should tell us that the maga project isn’t fragile. It is resilient and robust, not because it’s based on something real, but because it’s not. (Ultimately, it’s based on little more than whatever Trump is feeling on any given day.) Thanks to the power of the rightwing media apparatus, and to a Washington press corps that plays along with it, the people who voted for him inhabit a “reality” separate and distinct from the one the rest of us live in.

Whatever pain they feel will be felt inside theirs, not ours.

Liberals say that in time, they will have to confront reality.

Which reality?

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