733
Fund managers quietly fear Trump doesn’t have a tariff plan and that he ‘might be insane’
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
733 points (99.2% liked)
News
35724 readers
3265 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
He is doing it for a grift, it's pretty out in the open. You're right about the 4d chess though. That's his thing, think like a stupid mob boss that only does it for the grift. He thinks they owe him a favor now.
Link to video: https://nitter.net/MorePerfectUS/status/1910340290260463771#m
Video of Trump Bragging About Enriching His Billionaire Pals Draws Outrage
The video doesn’t show evidence of this being a planned out endeavour.
For it to be grift, those people would have had to benefitted from the dip in some way. But that’s not what this shows, it’s just billionaires having their shares go down in value because of trumps idiocy and then back up from the whiplash when he erratically reversed course.
Spraytan is trying to ingratiate himself to these rich assholes by taking credit for their gains by wilfully ignoring their losses were inflicted by him.
This is not to say that no one in the administration is using this for their own gains. It’s entirely likely that some are.
I’m just super sick of this narrative that Trump secretly has some master plan when we have 40+ years of well documented evidence about how stupid this man is.
I agree that the grift most likely came after the actions were decided. The guy in charge is absolutely a moron that acts solely on whims. It's confusing because there are at least a couple people around with the grift agenda or their own plans that are feeding him ideas. So sometimes he uses a smart idea or he mixes what would have been a smart plan with something idiotic and/or some grift.
It's why so many people are willing to kiss his ass. Because if you do it at the right time and you're lucky, you get temporary control of the US government.
Not just likely. Demonstrably true. You can see the trading increase significantly before he made each announcement/tweet.
I don't think Trump is an idiot anymore. I think he's playing a persona just like Borris Johnson. It's a cover for him. It's not his stupidity that's harming us, it's his self-centered, ego and greed driven maliciousness thats destroying our futures.
He's not a stupid person. He's an evil person.
Oh my gourd please stop
He is a failed nepo baby whose only successes in life were being a hired hand on a reality tv show and accidentally stumbling into politics via undisguised racism.
He
Is
A
Fucking
Moron
The difficulty in convincing fellow Americans of this simple and obvious fact is the truly damning bit.
We’ve all been conditioned to not accuse our political opponents of being stupid.
For one, it can cause you to underestimate your opponents — you don’t want to be caught unawares of some secret plan.
Second, there’s an aspect of pettiness to just labeling your opponents dumb. Most often people attribute “stupid” to “I don’t understand this”. For example, the idea of it being stupid for poor people in Kentucky or whatever to vote against their interests and aid billionaires and oppose their own healthcare — when it’s not stupid, it’s a misunderstanding of how important identity politics are to these groups.
Third, there’s a pushback to the “Jon Stewart effect”, where we sit back and laugh about how our opponents are dumb and we smugly know we are smarter. This is an excuse to do nothing, and it’s an ugly impulse and we must fight it.
But all this conditioning — and more — has led us to a point where we can’t actually recognize stupid when it’s staring us in the face.
Your first point still applies anyway, though.
#notallAmericans
Intelligence is more complicated than binary. He can be a moron in most ways and a successful grifter in others.
You don't need to be smart to be a grifter. It's not doctors and scientists buying most of the snake oil.
The point was "smart" isn't any one thing. I have a former friend who would be judged a moron in almost every regard. He's a conspiracy theorist, obsessed with Alex Jones, believes thousands of idiotic lies. But at the same time, out of the correct history that he knows, he could run circles around me reciting it. I have a shitty memory, he has no bullshit detector
A talking monkey could stumble on phrases that make people clap and repeat them.
It doesn't take that many smarts to respond to the pavlov effect. A dog can do it.
Great examples, dogs and monkeys are both a different type of intelligence. Calling them stupid is easy, but not entirely accurate...
Never underestimate the enemy.
Over-estimating is just as dangerous. People -- and our governments -- keep getting surprised by this pattern of behaviour because we pig-headedly refuse to admit the truth.
In order for our countries to plan economic matters, and defense and intelligence and more -- we need to expect the same patterns of stupidity and irrationality as we've seen demonstrated time and time again. This doesn't mean all the actions will be stupid -- folks like Putin other intelligent evildoers are in the mix of those who are manipulating the president. But they have shown a lack of ability to fully control the irrational behaviour from surfacing in policy whims.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me thousands of times... c'mon at some point we have to learn.
Yeah, honestly I used to view the likes of Putin as a rational chessmaster. Life is teaching me a great deal, especially that leaders are not powered by raw intellect. Rather, it is the willingness to be assertive that separates the ordinary person from a leader, be they good or foul.
Why not both? More often than not, evil favors bold stupidity over cautious thinking.