Don't Worry, Farmers, Trump's Got A Bailout ... For Argentina!
Tricked again!
Farmers have been begging Trump for a bailout with tears in their eyes because his tariffs have wrecked agricultural markets, but no bailout yet! The government is shut down, and civil servants and the military aren’t getting paid because Senate Republicans are insisting that the government can afford nothing less than having a 60-year-old couple making $85k a year paying $22,000 more a year for health insurance.
So why is the administration bailing out Argentina for $20 BILLION dollars in a currency swap? Wasn’t Trump ‘sposed to put America First? LOL!
And why does Argentina even need help, hasn’t President Javier Milei been going all over the world touting Argentina as a “global example of fiscal responsibility”? Didn’t he already save his country by taking a pimped-out chainsaw to the cancer of wokeness? And didn’t China just buy their farmers’ soybeans instead of ours?
Guess all of that didn’t work out. Just like Trump, Milei claimed he was going to do shock therapy chainsawing the government budget to the bone, and promised that after some temporary pain the economy would be better than ever. But the first thing happened, and the second thing did not, and growing unemployment, slowing economic activity, and a weak peso put Argentina on the brink of defaulting on its debt. Sure hope that never happens to US!
Here is one clue to perhaps why Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is so eager to bail Argentina out: He’s got rich cronies who are set to gain bigly! Including two of his besties Stanley Druckenmiller and Robert Citrone, whom he worked under when he was an investor for George Soros, and also funds at investment firms including BlackRock, Fidelity, and Pimco. Does it not bother MAGA conspiracy theorists that Bessent worked for George Soros? Don’t be silly, by the time you reach the end of this sentence they have already done the mental gymnastics and stuck the landing explaining why that is totally fine.
Anyway, who are these buddies of his? Druckenmiller’s investment firm, called the Duquesne Family Office, is the second largest investor in Argentina’s principal exchange-traded fund.
And Robert Citrone, another personal Bessent friend, is co-founder of Discovery Capital. Citrone invested a large part of his business in Argentine company stocks and sovereign bonds, betting that Milei could make chicken salad out of Argentina’s chickenshit economy. And he bet wrong. But not any more, now the US Treasury will be propping up his and his friends’ investments, yay! Imagine if Joe Biden etc.
And Milei is coming to the White House Tuesday to thank Trump personally. It’s a well-timed bailout, too, right before Argentina’s legislative elections on October 26. Argentina sure has been getting a lot of attention: RFK Jr. and Kristi Noem recently paid calls down there also. More positive attention than the US has given any of our actual allies!
And Sam Altman’s OpenAI is building some kind of data center down there as well, maybe another clue as to why Argentina is being made Great Again instead of the country Trump is president of. It is rich in those rare earth minerals, the ones Trump fucked American companies out of with his ridiculous tariff temper meltdown at China. And whoops, even though Scott Bessent has been touting the concepts of a framework of a deal for months and months, the US and China STILL don’t have one. Friday Trump ranted on his shitty web site in an epic screed (click at your own risk) that the Chinese are still “withholding” minerals from the US, so he’s going to tariff them even more now, because it worked so well the first dozen times. And American companies need those minerals to make all kinds of high-tech parts, including for AI chips, airplanes, and cars. At least one Ford plant has been closed since June for want of them. But maybe Argentina will help a fellow tousle-haired rabble rouser out!
That’s our Trump! For his friends of the moment, everything! Everybody else, meh.
Here, enjoy Milei’s musical stylings. For the front row it’s like a Gallagher show, but with dandruff instead of fruit.
[New York Times gift link / PERFIL]
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The older I get, the more tempting it is to believe that there are definite 'types' of people that will never, ever understand each other. I see people like Milei, Bolsonaro, Trump, Orban, and I am immediately struck by a *huge* negative reaction, without even needing to know their policies. They are *obvious* arrogant, macho assholes who think they know everything and display dismissive contempt toward huge swaths of people.
But some people see these disgusting motherf*ckers and... like what they see! Feel inspired! Want to show them their loyalty!
I don't get it, I will never get it. Those people, those voters, might as well be space aliens.
Don't Soy For Me Argentina