Americans Are Paying the Price for the Myth of Trump’s Competence

Oil prices are soaring - oil has hit $110 per barrel and is rising - the stock markets around the world are falling, American consumer prices are rising as is inflation, and new job creation is abysmal.  On top of this, America is blowing through close to a $1 billion per day in Iran and munitions supplies are falling. All of this disaster is thanks to the Felon and his circle of incompetent sycophants who make up his cabinet - Pete Hegseth at the Department of Defense/War is frightening - and the bootlickers in the Republican Party.  One has to wonder if some in the MAGA base are belatedly beginning to realize that the cost of "owning the libs" and pushing white supremacy and privilege is perhaps far higher than they anticipated. As icing on the cake, report are that Russia is aiding Iran in targeting American troops and assets, something the Felon is ignoring.  Perhaps gas at or over $5.00/gallon may soon have some of the big pickup driving MAGA bubbas screaming and questioning whether killing Muslims has been worth the cost, but I will not be holding my breath..  A piece at The New Republic looks at the myth of the Felon's competence.  Here are excerpts:

At some point, early Wednesday morning, the cost of the Iran War will top $10 billion. The Center for Strategic and International Studies released a paper last week pegging the cost of this latest misadventure at $891 million a day. I’ve seen higher estimates, but CSIS is a respected nonpartisan outfit, so let’s go with their number for now. The report states that the vast majority of this money had not been previously budgeted, especially the spending on munitions. One Patriot interceptor missile costs close to $4 million, and we’re apparently burning through them. And “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth promises that we’re just getting revved up.

Donald Trump may have told British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the weekend that the war was “already won.” But also over the weekend, a pre-war intelligence report was leaked to two Washington Post reporters showing that the National Intelligence Council, a panel of independent intel experts, seems to think that dislodging the regime could take a very long time indeed—at $37 million an hour, a rate that is almost sure to rise, especially if ground troops get involved.

Meanwhile, gas prices went up about 60 cents a gallon in the war’s first week. The Dow fell 453 points Friday. (It’s well below 50,000 now, so I guess that means, per Pam Bondi, that we’re now allowed to take the Jeffrey Epstein scandal seriously.) Also on Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. In the year-and-change since Trump returned to office, the economy has added around 140,000 jobs. In a year. The St. Louis Fed estimated last spring that simply to keep pace with the growth in the number of people who age into the labor force, the economy needs to add around 150,000 jobs a month. In other words, everywhere you look, the news isn’t merely bad. It’s terrible.

We’ve seen numerous examples in these last 13 months of Trump’s mendacity and malevolence. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans will never see him that way. There are those who adore him unconditionally, but beyond these dead-enders, there are others who know he’s not a good person but aren’t all that bothered by it.

That’s hard for millions of us to accept. But I hope to God that these people are finally starting to move themselves toward the conclusion that, even if they aren’t that troubled by the mendacity and malevolence, the man is just wildly incompetent. A mountain range of mythmaking has gone into creating the Trump persona over the years; by him, by a pliant business press in his real-estate days, and, since he entered politics, by a right-wing media that would make the old Soviet press agencies blush and a party of cowardly sycophants, most of whom know very well that he shouldn’t be in charge of a high-volume McDonald’s let alone the executive branch of the federal government but would rather let the country collapse than say so. . . . . And I was staggered during the 2024 campaign at all the voters who believed him when he said he’d bring down prices on day one.

Really. Who is that—okay, I’ll supply my own word—stupid? Presidents can’t control prices. Prices—of eggs, beef, oil, refrigerators, computers, you name it—depend on dozens of factors. Xi Jinping, who runs a command economy in a country where most electronics happen to be made, probably has far more control over the prices of refrigerators and computers than any president ever will. The price of beef has more to do with decisions made in Brazil than in Texas—and certainly at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. We all learn this in school. So how did so many millions of Americans unlearn it?

Trump is going around now talking as if he has the power to appoint Iran’s next leader, as if it’s no more complicated than naming the next GOP chairman of Mississippi. As if there won’t be factions within the Iranian populace that will fight the elevation of anyone with the taint of a Trump association to the death.  Again, who can possibly believe his nonsense?

His poll numbers are bad. But they’re not nearly as bad as they ought to be. The man is, whatever his other faults, just way in over his head. Maybe Democrats should say that more often. The fact that he’s costing taxpayers a billion dollars a day on a war most of them didn’t want may be a good place to start.