It turns out that few believe Donald Trump’s insistence that the economy is doing well for most people – any more than those same voters turned on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris a year ago.

Trump’s shouted, rat-a-tat presentation of defense economy storytelling in a presidential address this week fell flat, despite his exhortation of favored, cherry-picked economic numbers that he insisted tell a better record than what you and I experience in the supermarket, looking for jobs or housing, or clearly face in rising utility and health costs.

But then so are his claims about why Venezuela deserves to be punished, or whether millions will lost Obamacare coverage, or that everyone being picked up randomly by border agents is a criminal in hiding.

The biggest potential growth industry right now may be fact-checking.

Our legacy-come-to-fruition is that too many people don’t want to believe anything beyond their personal experience – whether in economics, vaccine safety, perceived dangers from transgender care and distaste for undocumented immigration or “weaponization” of justice against preferred candidates. Even more want news coverage that matches their pre-conceived notions about their ideological side, particularly on prices, jobs and consumer confidence.

At end of year, Trump seems to be flailing to persuade voters that he even understands the complaints, never mind coming up with useful solutions. So he turns ugly about culture issues that are easier to digest and one-off schemes to send out checks to troops from the taxes we already paid.

It’s useful to note that even when there are “facts,” – inflation and jobless numbers emerged this week – the government’s manipulation of how to count, when to count, and delayed or hidden information makes any assertion these days hard to accept at face value.

The long-promised release of the Jeffrey Epstein files seems to have backfired on the Trump administration, which sought to hold them until a congressional revolt forced their hand, and now are responding with a broad blackout pen that makes even the illegally delayed releases less than useful. Though we know Trump is mentioned repeatedly, we almost nothing of his presence in the released documents.

On prices, polling and public reaction are showing that Trump has lost trust and credibility.

Trump’s decision to offer rapid-fire presentation of his favored facts have trouble lining with lived experience. Gas prices dropped precipitously over a year ago though no one can find under $2 a gallon gas at any gas station and heating oil is up 9 percent, egg prices declined after passage of a bird flu and government infusion of a billion dollars in eggs imports, and “housing” costs will decline shortly because borrowing costs may be forced downward without reference to availability or the cost of rent and home ownership while jobs are falling.

Politics, Sure, But Worse

The result is being described mostly in partisan political terms. Trump’s chosen blindness to “affordability” is seen as a fatal political blow that will result in a change in congressional majority next November, for example, or eating away now at his influence to dictate strategies foreign and domestic.

Fox News presented the Trump speech as if it were indisputable, though there were televised critics; Breitbart praised checks to military troops as a wonderful idea despite its predictable inflationary result and misuse of funds meant for military housing. Most mainstream outlets pointed out the gaps between what Trump says and what the various official and unofficial market surveys and voter polls say about the economy.

What we need, of course, is not more political cheerleading and more political spin. What we need are consistent measures of various economic trends that arrive on time and are useful for comparisons of the same measures over time. The Trump administration’s consistent strategy in economics and tariffs, immigration and crime, justice prosecutions and Homeland Security operations is to undercut, cancel and hide facts to make it more difficult to make useful comparisons – whether month to month or against previous presidential terms.

So, Trump simply asserts as true whatever he wants, whether it is about miracle cures for asthma and communicable disease, airline traffic, guns or environment. The same government that cannot count how many deportees actually had criminal records is now telling us what to believe about inflation and high prices that is not observable.

If he is only handed briefings pre-screened for spin, perhaps it’s no wonder he airs what comports with his autocratic choices.

That Trump lacks the wherewithal to question what he is handed and only has voice to insist is a bad quality for a leader.

The awful feelings from this week’s mass shootings and the twin murders of Rob and Michele Reiner come in waves.

The feelings mix despair and frustration for a society that accepts that violence — even loss of life— as an acceptable trade-off for ideological alignment and personal anger. It happens that our family is from Providence and we both and a daughter attended Brown, so the television images were unusually familiar. Bondi Beach may be a half world away, but attacks on Jews are not new for us. And like many, we’ve held Reiner in a certain shared respect for his work in film and politics.

Unfortunately, these shootings not so different from violence a year ago on the campus of Florida State University, where our daughter teaches in the dance faculty. The Australian antisemitism matches attacks on a Pittsburgh synagogue and calls of hate in the streets and on the internet.

The frustration is that unending mass killings don’t prompt successful gun limitations, that despite thoughts and prayers, we refuse to shun hate and its carriers. Indeed, I had not planned to write about these incidents which we are following closely because the shared revulsion is widespread.

What changed were remarks by Donald Trump, who posted that the Reiners’ deaths were “reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

No Empathy for Non-Loyalists

Somehow this egocentric autocrat whom we have chosen to be the most powerful man in the country is showing us that for him, only those who agree with his politics, who accept his leadership as flawless, are worthy of his otherwise empty powers of empathy.

Even as Republicans have started speaking out to say Trump’s remarks were both inhumane and cruel, Trump doubled down to add that he did not like Reiner’s politics. For that matter, Trump isn’t exactly in love with universities, including Brown. Nor, despite his protestations about antisemitism, Trump’s support for White, Christian nationalism has been a source of serious discomfort for Jews.

There is plenty of derangement syndrome to go around. It turns out that it is Trump who is deranged.

Who besides Trump can’t find empathy for a couple apparently stabbed to death by their own son, as Los Angeles officials have alleged? How devoid of recognizably human feelings is Trump?

How have we so walked away from “character” and “morality” in leadership to normalize Trump’s public behaviors?

If this is how Trump acts in a situation that just requires a moment of basic human solemnity, why should anyone be surprised about ordering the killing of shipwrecked smuggling survivors, or wrenching children from deportable migrant parents, or insisting that it’s perfectly fine to double and triple health insurance costs?

Students ought to be able to expect to attend classes without fear of mass killers. People should expect to celebrate religious and ethnic rites without worry about snipers. Parents ought not expect to be stabbed to death by their children.

How is this Trump, scion of cruelty, a “leader” worth our respect, even apart from any of his policies?

Maybe the world's major conflicts remain too fluid to draw hope towards ending anytime soon, but it's not too soon to conclude that all of Donald Trump's bluster about being the king of peace are overblown.

Indeed, his insistence that only he can settle years-long conflicts in Europe and the Middle East may just be making them worse.

The Nobel Peace Prize judges may want to hold off on any invitation to Oslo. Donald Trump the Peacemaker cannot settle the Russia-Ukraine war in a single day, as he had boasted many times, or in a single month or single year. Nor the Israel-Hamas war. Nor the nuclear threat from Iran or the various economic and intelligence threats from China or North Korea.

Trump's phone calls with Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday did not move those parties towards ceasefire. If anything, over the weekend, Russia hit Kiev and other cities with the largest drone attacks to date.

Trump's apparent petulance that his word alone does not prompt immediate cessation of combat and the bombing of Ukraine's civilian population only presage his own disengagement, suggesting that new Pope Leo XIV take the lead mediation role.

Trump is not even making clear whether by threatening to step back, he will seek to withhold U.S. weapons and intelligence again from the Ukrainians; signals were that he would refuse to join European leaders in a new round of economic sanctions against Russia to focus attention on peace efforts, instead expressing hope for big trade with Russia at some point. Zelenskyy continues to offer intermediate ceasefires but to reject land losses to the invading Russians; the Russians are insisting that they are open to ceasefires only if it gives them exactly what they would take by military means.

How is this stand-back Trump helping anyone in the conflict or America's strategic interests?

The Middle East

Nor is Peacemaker Trump proving successful as intervenor and would-be solver of the Israel-Hamas war.

Instead, we see story after story about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu feeling ignored by a frustrated Trump in decisions affecting the region and the renewed air and ground war destruction of Gaza recast as permanent occupation by Israel with evident starvation of its Palestinian population.

Even in the face of continuing pleas from Israelis to focus on retrieval of Oct. 7. 2023 hostages, Israel's right-leaning government insists on crushing an uninhabitable Gaza to kill remaining Hamas fighters. European allies are openly breaking with Israel over its announced re-occupation plans for Gaza. This week, there were reports of the death of Muhammad Sinwar, brother and successor to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

Trump has come up with another version of his plan to ship out a million Palestinians, this time to Libya, the same place our own State Department warns is too dangerous for Americans to travel. This week, Trump broke his own general silence about the Israeli ban on humanitarian aid trucks, which Israel lifted a bit for the first time in three months.

Meanwhile, Trump made direct contact with Hamas for release of an American hostage and summarily called off seven weeks of intense, if questionably effective bombing of Houthi rebels in Yemen without consulting with Netanyahu or fully stopping Houthi threats. Trump is offering simultaneous threats and settlement talks with Iran about nuclear weapons development, again without apparent partnership with Netanyahu.

Trump's trip to the Gulf nations where his own family is doing business deals did not include a stop in Israel to meet with the ally Trump has identified over and over as his closest. Indeed, the biggest story from the region was about the "gift" of a $400 million, luxurious, Qatari royal 747 jet for Trump's use now as Air Force One and later as a personal toy -- and even that, The New York Times tells us, came about because Trump inquired about its availability.

In the crazy everything-is-politics mode, it turns out that Trump's runaway campaign conflating anti-Zionist land expansion with anti-Semitism, is playing out a Heritage Foundation plan to use the Israel issue as a weapon against domestic liberals. Even peace in the Middle East is dependent on Trump politics.

And in the world of politics, Trump showed again yesterday, his word alone was insufficient to bring together even arguing factions within the House Republicans who were still working over how much to cut from federal spending after an overnight Rules Committee session. Trump, who may a strong urge to bully, lacks a persuasion gene to overcome new Congressional Budget Office reports that his proposals would boost U.S. debt substantially.

The takeaway: Trump is so concerned about Trump's centrality to any ceasefire efforts and his insistence on immediacy that he seems to be ignoring the idea that the conflict is continuing -- and worsening.

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First came the across-the-board tariffs, then the increases for specific targets, including China. Then we started hearing about White House-ordered exemptions, including for semiconductors for the tech industry, though there were hints they might be revisited over time. It took no time for people to notice that the same Big Tech folks who were paying into Donald Trump’s inauguration and standing with him were benefiting.

It turns out that a thousand products have been exempted from the extra taxes. The exemptions cross different industries, affect different countries, and defy easy categorization.

What they share is that they well may be represented by loyal political friends of Donald Trump and that they were decided singularly by him — in secret, according to reporting by ProPublica. Many businesses are reaching out to a particular lobbying group that has White House ties even to get in the door to make a pitch for exemptions.

ProPublica, an independent journalist group, says that the lack of transparency about the process has created concerns among trade experts that politically connected firms might be winning carve-outs behind closed doors.

Apart from the wide concerns about the chaotic effect that tariffs have had over global financial markets, trade arrangements and business planning about jobs, prices and sales, routing all tariff traffic directing through a single many in the White House sets up a situation rife with opportunity for undue influence and abuse.

What’s Exempted?

ProPublica offered some examples from a list of exemptions from the White House that illustrate the concern because there are no official explanations.

One exemption is for PET resin, polyethylene terephthalate, used in making plastic bottles. An immediate beneficiary is Reyes Holdings, a Coca-Cola bottler, owned by brothers Chris and Jude Reyes, who have donated millions of dollars to Republicans, and who, records show, recently hired a lobbying firm with close ties to the Trump White House to make its case.

In the executive order formalizing Trump’s new tariffs exemptions were broadly defined as products in the pharmaceutical, semiconductor, lumber, copper, critical minerals and energy sectors. PET resin does not seem to fit and other petroleum-dependent products were not included. The resin could prove important to bottling companies seeking an alternative to aluminum, which does face tariffs.

Last year, records showed that Reyes Holdings hired Ballard Partners as a lobbyist on tariffs. ProPublica said Ballard, which once lobbied for The Trump Organization, has become a destination for companies seeking exemptions; its founder, Brian Ballard, is a noted fund-raiser for Trump.

The exclusions also include most types of asbestos, hardly a critical mineral, but it had been a target of Biden administration policies and perhaps won exemption just to thumb a nose at Biden. Other exemptions with no explanation include coral, shells and cuttlebone, used as a dietary supplement for pets, and sucralose, the artificial sweetener perhaps used in diet sodas that Trump favors. There also are exemptions for pesticide and fertilizer ingredients, including potash, an exemption sought by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

Is This Corruption?

Politico notes that with no formal process in place to submit exemption requests — as there was in Trump 1.0 — or to explain why they were granted or not after the fact, the issues involving exemptions are problematic.

Trade experts say openly that politically connected firms might be winning carve-outs behind closed doors, but that no one knows. It could be corruption, incompetence, random Trump generosity or reflective of some reasonable business logic.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called “the opacity of the process” for getting an exemption “the Beltway Swamp’s dream.”

Trump has set himself up as the sole arbiter of tariff policy, muscling the power away from Congress, which has the legal responsibility to set such import taxes. He is resistant to the many lawsuits being filed about tariffs, including one this week from 12 state attorneys general from Democratic states, which argue that he lacks the Constitutional authority to wrest sole control of tariff-setting.

This same Trump, of course, insists on total control of much of his powers inside and outside of government, an attitude that draws consistent criticism from ethicists, inspectors general (until most were fired), oversight committees in Congress and the public. Just this week, Trump was offering what amounted to private meetings with buyers of his $TRUMP meme coins for the 220 highest bidders in what can only generously can be called an ethical problem. It comes awfully close to selling access to the president and his family.

It would not be difficult to conclude that secret avenues for loyalist business owners to seek special dispensation under a constantly changing tariffs program that no one seems to fully understand might just be creating opportunity for corruption.

But that concern has yet to fully blossom since there is no access to why the exemptions are being granted at all.

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