The economic illiteracy of the Very Stable Genius - today's edition

The first exhibit has already become an Internet and cable-news snicker. I'm sure cartoon depictions of Tariff Man are already starting to crop up:

....I am a Tariff Man. When people or countries come in to raid the great wealth of our Nation, I want them to pay for the privilege of doing so. It will always be the best way to max out our economic power. We are right now taking in $billions in Tariffs. MAKE AMERICA RICH AGAIN

The all-caps extolling of being rich as his perception of one of the country's primary virtues is a nice touch. But this tweet-length blurt is also rich with other glimpses of the VSG worldview: the notion that open trade is a "raiding" of America's economic abundance, the provocative "I-want-them-to-pay" phrasing, implicit in which is that he can later sit down with leaders of countries to which it is aimed and expect them to shrug it off as "just business," with no ruffled feathers.

And, of course, his ignorance of the obvious point about tariffs: They are taxes. Consumers of end products and, in fact, entities up and down the supply chain pay for this needless increase in prices.

Exhibit Two:

Since the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump’s aides and advisers have tried to convince him of the importance of tackling the national debt.

Sources close to the president say he has repeatedly shrugged it off, implying that he doesn’t have to worry about the money owed to America’s creditors—currently about $21 trillion—because he won’t be around to shoulder the blame when it becomes even more untenable.

The friction came to a head in early 2017 when senior officials offered Trump charts and graphics laying out the numbers and showing a “hockey stick” spike in the national debt in the not-too-distant future. In response, Trump noted that the data suggested the debt would reach a critical mass only after his possible second term in office. 

“Yeah, but I won’t be here,” the president bluntly said, according to a source who was in the room when Trump made this comment during discussions on the debt.
The episode illustrates the extent of the president’s ambivalence toward tackling an issue that has previously animated the Republican Party from the days of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of Barack Obama.

But for those who have worked with Trump, it was par for the course. Several people close to the president, both within and outside his administration, confirmed that the national debt has never bothered him in a truly meaningful way, despite his public lip service. “I never once heard him talk about the debt,” one former senior White House official attested.

Marc Short, who until recently worked for Trump as his legislative affairs director, said he believed the president recognized “the threat that debt poses” and he pointed to Trump’s concern “about rising interest rates” as evidence of his concern for the matter. 

“But there’s no doubt this administration and this Congress need to address spending because we have out-of-control entitlement programs,” Short said, adding, “it’s fair to say that... the president would be skeptical of anyone who claims that they would know exactly when a [debt] crisis really comes home to roost.”

Again, along with his economic illiteracy, other traits of his come through in this report. Really let "I won't be here" sink in. This is beyond narcissism; it's solipsism. And he's such a bonehead he has no qualms about putting it on full display. So much for the deep love of country his shills always tell us about.

Why is he so unwilling to look squarely at the cause of the problem (entitlements)? Because it doesn't make him look like a winner. He wants to be seen as the take-care-of-everybody president. He's not about to convey hard truths to the American people.

No, he bought into the grow-our-way-out-of-it school, and apparently so has Stephen Moore. What a guy with a sound mind like Moore is doing swallowing that Kool-Aid is mystifying. Well, maybe not. He's held the VSG in an unwarranted degree of regard since the VSG entered the presidential fray.

Stephen Moore, a conservative economist at the Heritage Foundation and an economic adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, recalled making visual presentations to Trump in mid-2016 that showed him the severity of the debt problem. But Moore told The Daily Beast that he personally assured candidate Trump that it could be dealt with by focusing on economic growth.

“That was why, when he was confronted with these nightmare scenarios on the debt, I think he rejected them, because if you grow the economy… you don’t have a debt problem,” Moore continued. “I know a few times when people would bring up the enormous debt, he would say, ‘We’re gonna grow our way out of it.’”

Moore has since championed this approach to tackling the debt as a key part of “Trumponomics,” and has co-authored a book supporting it.

As Moore recalled, a belief that robust economic growth would solve all problems was the way Trump—starting in 2016—justified the cost of his ambitious proposals to slash taxes, pursue big infrastructure projects, and simply avoid massive cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Since then, the president has continued to show indifference over the national debt, to the consternation of more traditionally conservative associates.

This person nails it:

“He understands the messaging of it,” the former senior White House official told The Daily Beast. “But he isn’t a doctrinaire conservative who deeply cares about the national debt, especially not on his watch… It’s not actually a top priority for him… He understands the political nature of the debt but it’s clearly not, frankly, something he sees as crucial to his legacy.”

And that legacy, not the long-term stability of the nation he presides over, is what matters to him.

This doesn't go over well with anybody beyond the VSG's base. Either somebody has to really go upside his head and say, "Get a clue, Mr. President," or the GOP has to part ways with him. Otherwise, we're faced with the third scenario, and Wayne Allen Root and Sean Hannity ain't gonna like that one at all.