Trump’s 'chaotic' ways are making him an 'easy mark' for 'friends and foes alike': analysis

18 June

U.S. President Donald Trump with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the White House Oval Office on May 6, 2025 (The White House/Flickr)

On Wall Street, the TACO meme (Trump Always Chickens Out) was invented to mock President Donald Trump's erratic approach to tariffs. Trump will announce a steep new tariff only to pause it.

But the TACO meme spread beyond Wall Street and is also being used to ridicule Trump's erratic behavior on a variety of other issues — from Medicaid to Russia's war with Ukraine.

In an article published on June 18, Salon's Heather Digby Parton warns that Trump's love of chaos is making the United States vulnerable in a variety of ways — and this time, there are fewer people to rein Trump in.

"To say that Donald Trump's second term is more chaotic and volatile than his chaotic and volatile first term is, at this point, a cliché," Parton observes. "There are no guardrails to stop him from making destructive decisions. By 'guardrails,' most people generally mean serious, experienced hands who can advise him of a more sensible and judicious course in his decision-making, and who are perceptive enough about his psychology to understand how to handle him with misdirection and diversions to focus his attention on a safer path than he would otherwise choose on his own."

Parton continues, "It's not the optimal way to run a presidential administration. But when dealing with Trump, a person who seems to possess a very limited understanding of the way the world actually works, and very little desire or capacity to learn about it, such a process is probably the only way to ensure that the country doesn't go completely off the rails."

During Trump's first administration, Parton recalls, there were more advisers to "manage" him — whereas now, "everyone now knows they can manipulate him for their own ends," including "foreign adversaries, and even certain allies with their own axes to grind."

"The Wall Street traders who coined the TACO meme (Trump Always Chickens Out) have figured out how to take advantage of Trump's inexplicable stop and start process by simply observing that his bullying tactics are bluffs," Parton explains. "They have learned to anticipate his moves — and to make a lot of money in the process…. His immigration policies have also been scattershot…. Friend and foe alike have figured out that Trump is even more clueless and mystified by the job of being president than he was in his first term. And they are all becoming adept at using his ignorance and confusion for their own ends."

Parton adds, "He has become an easy mark. And so has our country."

Heather Digby Parton's full article for Salon is available at this link.

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