Donald Trump sat down for an hour-long “interview” at the Economic Club of Chicago Tuesday, and while he managed not to repeat Monday’s bizarre Donnie’s Dance Party, he also didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. Moderator John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of Bloomberg News, was largely unable to get the squirmy toddler to stick to any one topic, let alone answer any of Micklethwait’s questions.
Here’s the video; watch it if you dare.
The stream-of-batshit Trump monologue started with a few minutes where Trump, excited to straighten out a bigtime mainstream economics guy, almost stuck to one topic, which was the beauty of tariffs, which are apparently magic. Remember, in real life, tariffs impose a tax on imported goods, which is passed on to consumers. But in Trump’s imagination, the tax is magically paid by the country the goods come from, even though this is not true and people have tried to explain it to him forever.
“To me,” Trump said, almost rapturous, “the most beautiful word in the dictionary is tariff. It’s my favorite word. It needs a public relations firm.” Mickelthwaite tried to explain that no, tariffs are paid for by US consumers, but nobody was going to mess with the beautiful fantasy Trump inhabits.
Micklethwait tried to explain that adding a 10 percent tax on all imports would be a massive tax burden for Americans: “Three-trillion worth of imports and you will add tariffs to every single one of them, and push up the cost for all of these people to buy foreign goods. That is just simple mathematics.”
Trump shot back, “No, it's not. Yeah it is, but not the way you figured. I was always very good at mathematics!” As for consumers paying for the tariffs, Trump insisted, “Nope, nope, the countries are gonna pay them,” Trump said, because that’s just how it is in his lizard brain and it can never change.
Trump also claimed that the higher tariffs are set, the more likely foreign companies are to simply relent and build factories in the US.
“That would take many, many years,” Micklethwait pointed out.
“No, no, it’ll go quickly!” Trump insisted, because how hard can it be to design and build a new manufacturing plant from scratch, get the necessary permits, hire workers, and establish a supply chain? You just press a button, probably.
“In fact, there’s another theory,” Trump said, before presenting exactly the same claim he just made: “The tariff, you make it so high, so horrible, so obnoxious that they’ll come right away.”
In one of many insults aimed at Micklethwait, Trump bragged, “It must be hard for you to, you know, spend 25 years talking about tariffs as being negative and then have somebody explain to you that you're totally wrong.” It got even uglier as the interview went on.
Again and again, Trump bragged about his brilliance, deflected questions, and erupted in insults, falling back at one point on emphasizing the middle name of “Barack HUSSEIN Obama” for no particular reason, and generally not sounding especially hinged.
Here’s a shining example: Micklethwait asks a question about whether the Justice Department should break up Google for being a monopoly, and Trump “answers” by saying how angry he is about the DOJ suing Virginia for (flatly illegally!) dropping people from its voter rolls within 90 days of an election. Trump, we suppose, was triggered by the words “Justice Department” and had to complain about that. Also he doesn’t like Google because its search results are bad and unfair to him, and Google is rigged, just like the government:
(Remember to turn your volume back down so you’re not blasted by whatever you listen to next.)
Trump also ranted in lurid terms about how immigrants are murderers, even pointing at a woman in the audience and explaining, “These killers are among the most evil killers. They will look at you down there — [points] beautiful woman there — they’ll look at you and they will kill you.”
Oh yes, and when Micklethwait asked if Trump would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses, Trump dodged the question. But he agreed with JD Vance that after January 6, 2001, there was a “peaceful transfer of power,” wink-wink. Micklethwait joked in reply that perhaps it was peaceful compared to Venezuela, so Trump ranted about how unfair Micklethwait was, calling him “a man that has not been a big Trump fan over the years.”
When Micklethwait brought up a recent Wall Street Journal analysis that estimated Trump’s trade plans and tax cuts would add more than $7 trillion to the national debt, Trump crossed his arms and pouted, “What does The Wall Street Journal know? They’ve been wrong about everything, and so have you by the way, you’ve been wrong.” And then he added, “You’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff,” and that means he won. Look at that literal defensive crouch!
How embarrassing was it? So embarrassing that to buoy his spirits, Trump had to go on his fake Twitter and “re-Truth” all the big compliments people wrote about how great he did, how completely he put those snotty elitists in their place. Head Sycophant Stephen Miller led the way with his declaration that the Emperor has the finest new clothes ever seen, period:
Trump’s Bloomberg interview at the Economic Club of Chicago was the greatest live interview any political leader or politician has done on the economy in our lifetimes. Period.
Charlie Kirk was on cloud nine, retweeting the “You’ve been wrong all your life” clip and exulting, “This is legendary. Trump calls the Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait fake news right to his face at the Economic Club of Chicago event.”
JD Vance piled on and retweeted Kirk, in a veritable human centipede of sycophancy:
This entire interview is incredible. President Trump walking into the lion's den and reminding the people who've screwed up the country that they're not as smart as they think.
Also, it was really brave of Donald Trump to tell that mean economy journalist how stupid he and all the other economy people are, so there’s little doubt that Donald Trump is still supported by the same idiots who believe all his other lies.
[AP / Mother Jones / Rolling Stone]
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Not surprisingly, Sean Hannity went on Fox last night and said "In one of his all time greatest moments on the campaign trail, Trump absolutely schooled Bloomberg’s editor.. Trump frankly masterfully navigated the situation, laid out what was a clear vision for American prosperity."
And then he said that only very smart people could see Trump's beautiful new clothes.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1846366161589752153
He wasn't gonna dance again -- guilty feet have got no rhythm.
Still sick of his careless whispers, though.