Still up in the air: whether the Bankrupter-in-chief plus billionaire oligarch pals can “trump” growing, systemic reform movements?
A bankruptcy of the mind and body, especially with kids going to bed hungry, equals in suffering a disruptive economic fiasco. Here’s the summary of devastation from MAGA Trump in less than 18 months: a drought of middle-class jobs (especially for newbies), high, persistent inflation unabated, non-stop affordability crises and insatiable ICE stalks the land. Thus no surprise: over half the country’s families (57%) can’t afford basic food, gas, clothing, and housing needs. Forget extras, education or vacations. Officially, though without headlines, US bankruptcy filings nationally (business and non-business of 600K) increased 11.9 percent between March of ‘25 and March ‘26 – likely worsened from April to now.
The Guardian subhead further proves hundreds of downtrodden millions understand their quasi-bankruptcy conditions: About 57% of polled Americans also believe economy is worsening in grim portrait of cost of living crisis, according to Harris survey. In response to my Google question, “how many US children go to bed hungry?” I learned “14 million US children face hunger and live in households with food insecurity.” Translation: 1 in 5 kids lacks nourishment to live an active, healthy life. These numbers don’t cover the “1.3 million formal deportations” (equally matched by “voluntary” exits) since early 2025. ICE plans to deport 500K annually – the vast majority without criminal records and up against worse, maybe fatal conditions. ICE murders “by mistake” don’t impact totals.
Stock market surges aside (enriching the top 10% or so), multitudes already face a recession and, for the poorest, a depression. That such overall pressures never surfaced during Biden’s tenure speaks volumes about MAGA blunders in far less than two years thanks to bad tariffs, bad job training, bad trade/supply chain disruptions, bad tax cuts, bad surging deficits, bad wars, and bad attacks on key commercial partners.
A bankruptcy of the mind veteran
With six confirmed bankruptcies, and dozens more failures, this president knows how to carve up, misspend and squander whatever cash, credit or assets he commandeers. No pol produced more disruptions more quickly, and aftershock repairs could take years to regain normality. Worse still, immensely selfish billionaires are in the cock bird seat, able to stifle whatever reforms impede their “liberty” to exploit. Brace for obstacles (despite more progressive lawmakers on board) to the likes of the New Deal, progressive LBJ gains, or sane post ‘08 financial crisis regulations (even marginal Biden gains).
Long after today’s crooked Fool-on-his-private-hill joins Mitch McConnell in unconsciousness, the rest of America will have the herculean task to rebuild damage that’s amplified the longer Trump still commits whoppers. Direct body blows, like outrageous (government) distortions, executive orders, agency interference and mass firings, are more reparable than MAGA “mindset” obstacles. As the castration of federalism continues, the exposed Trump has never met a bad idea he couldn’t worsen, whether safe vaccines, erratic tariffs and trade deals, deregulated clean air, water and soil quality, financial and environmental oversight – all the while securing advisory creatures from some black lagoon.
Knifing fair and free elections in the back continues apace, both legal (corrupt, typically failed interference, deleting citizens) and emotional (intimidation by ICE, soldiers when voting, exporting/arresting legitimate voters). Election rigging alone, a MAGA lickspittle specialty, makes totally fake 2020 Trump protestations both laughable and the kickoff to anti-voting horrors. To add insult to injury, the phony, cynical, racist, unpatriotic MAGA “Americanism” (tainting D.C. events) insults history, our decency as a nation of immigrants, values, heroes, science we cannot live without, and remaining, better angels of our nature.
So national bankruptcy exceeds economic fiascos, though MAGA Trump wins all prizes for wasting tax funds that maliciously inhibit freedoms and cause pain and misery – ICE, Iran, tariffs, weaponizing the DOJ, and arresting scapegoats after indefensible blunders (Reflecting Pool, press attacks post Qatari jet switcheroo). Which comes first: demoralization (for example on voting) from fascist takeover or financial ruin – or doesn’t one lead to the other? While the USA boasts more assets than the greatest bankruptcy addict can squander, the absence of Stop signs is as destructive as bad decisions. Does not wrecking hard-won, globalleadership(evident with Iran) constitute a seventh, eighth, tenth and fiftieth Trump bankruptcy?
The real-world that reforms must take on
True reforms must confront, in consciousness and laws, the electrifying MAGA grift (myths, lies) that voters swallowed: 1) an admitted operative with inside knowledge to unearth predatory skeletons; 2) a fake, unqualified outsider to ride in as positive game-changer; and 3) a “successful businessman” able to drain the swamp, bringing efficiency and responsiveness to government, like a well-run business. Au contraire, MAGA elevated the world’s greatest con artist/liar/predator/ignoramus/ wannabe king.
Not only are Trump failures daily fare, we must destroy any linkage between Trump and American “greatness,” an infamous fantasy. Upfront must be persuasion that negates forever that one (defective) person “alone can fix everything,” all the more absurd as the Psychopath-in-chief breaks everything touched. Let us spotlight the icon of the blundering systems-breaker, chaos sock puppet, treaty-dumper and project destroyer. Mandatory high school civics, legal and history education would counter intolerable absurdity.
That MAGA marks ever imagined Trump a big-time tycoon is bad enough; worst still the delusion that even a competent capitalist would make an enlightened president, superior to pros who understand governance, history and laws, how to wrangle politics to serve people, and how to pilot the nation (if still possible) to avoid repeated, weekly shipwrecks. The whole tawdry Trump episode forces us to rewrite the history of political irony as past frames fail to accommodate the magnitude of blatantly stupid reversals, lost opportunities, counterproductive belligerence, murderous policies here and abroad, fake promises and false expectations – all in all, the rise and fall of our worst president, all fully knowable from square one with the elevator entrance. That enormous irony only increases, and dramatically, if this battered democracy does not learn from blunders before falling further as a world power. That way lies a gruesome demise beyond moral and political bankruptcy.
P.S. For all fact-checkers, the reality is that without the schlock TV series, The Apprentice, the Trump brand would have confirmed the old saw that the way to make a small fortune is to start with a much larger one. Had MAGA voters not gone hook, line and sinker for unprecedented mendacity, Trump the terrible businessman would have been retired to an unsold, over-priced, gold-veneered apartment. Added to formal bankruptcies are fiascos that inform both by number of range: Trump University (with a $25 million, court-ordered payback), Trump Steaks, Trump Mortgage, Trump Airlines, Trump Vodka, Trump: the Game, Trump Magazine, Tour de Trump (bicycle race), Trump Network, a failed football team, Trump Ice, Trump’s failed China Connections, GoTrump (luxury travel), and Trumpet (telecommunications).
P.P.S. Costs for MAGA Trump disasters begin with $86 billion annually and $5400 per household in unnamed“taxes” thanks to tariffs, inflation, and spikes in health care costs. National debt increased by $8.4 trillion (COVID, $3.6 trillion, tax cuts $2.5 trillion, new spending $2.6 trillion). A US small business coalition summarized tariffs have cost businesses and consumers upwards of $317 billion since March 2025.
Long-term public health costs include increased rates of preventable diseases, vaccine blunders, reduced healthcare employment, terminated workers, thus less access to essential services and dramatically weakened national care infrastructures. Plus, still being assessed (also big numbers): trade rejection from alienated commercial allies, lost tax dollars from immigrant expulsion (well over $100 billion taxes lost annually, a 2022 number). Every million undocumented people deported represents about $9 billion in lost annual tax revenue, money that funds the schools and hospitals and roads in places cheering on ICE.
Fatalities and spreading diseases from withdrawn health care: inevitably the future will total the deaths/misery from untreated obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and mental health disorders. Already younger generations have poorer dietary habits (more ultra-processed snacks), sedentary lifestyles, and higher stress levels (with job uncertainties a driving factor).
2025 represented the third-highest year for billion-dollar weather and “hoax” climate disasters. According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, the United States has had 426 recent disasters that resulted in over $1 billion in damages, with cumulative costs exceeding $3.1 trillion.
Costs for higher priced electricity and energy plus all the other “taxes” due from building AI data centers.
How about tens of thousands of tourists NOT coming to America because of Trump — with lost revenue in the billions.
Iran war: well over $30 billion directly and rising, with rippling overall costs pushing $140/150 billion.
From Paul Krugman: “American allies have begun pushing the gas pedal on an unprecedented experiment in de-Americanization. Authorities from France to the Netherlands are quietly removing American tech from their systems, adopting European open-source software . . . they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to try to boost Europe’s own private space firms, AI companies, and data centers, to avoid leaning on U.S. juggernauts. . . Nations whose empires once spanned the globe are now stuck trying to extricate themselves from their humbling dependency on American technology and military power, without provoking the U.S.”
Trump crypto ripoffs: One million people have lost $3.8 billion after buying $TRUMP meme coin, according to cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen. On Sunday, $TRUMP was trading at $1.69, down nearly 98% from its high of $75.35. Also co-founded with his sons is a crypto startup, World Liberty Financial, with its $WLFI coin falling off the cliff. Another ripoff, Trump Media & Technology stock (ticker DJT, owns Truth Social) is now $8.54, a 92% drop from its high above $70.
And the game got started with the ruthless, reckless DOGE scam, per Rep. Robert Garcia, “It was never about efficiency, saving money, or reform. It was always about making billionaires richer while working families foot the bill.” The Trump Administration wasted $81 million on DOGE operations with no transparency or accountability and only bad outcomes: 1) key public services (food, health, regulatory) disrupted, skilled, essential federal workers pushed out, sensitive data put at risk and billionaire insiders cashing in as services get privatized. May well go down as Trump’s greatest domestic botch.
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