Mr. Baron is an attorney who has represented many institutions involved in the international markets and advised various parts of the federal government on economic issues.
This is not political BS. Trump’s decisions are unrelated to America’s needs. They are triggered by random anger. No one, including MAGAs, want him anywhere near the nuclear button! He had to be stopped from using it by the military in his last presidency.
President Trump told Republican donors the US should put the Chinese flag on military planes and “bomb the sh-t” out of Russia and blame China.
He suggested using nuclear weapons against North Korea and blaming someone else. His Chief of Staff, John Kelly had to bring in the military’s top leaders to explain the disastrous consequences, including millions of deaths.
Trump didn’t care. It took the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, to prevent him from misusing the country’s nuclear arsenal during the last month of his presidency, likely out of anger at losing the 2020 election and to manufacture a crises that would keep him in office.
Milley received intelligence that China thought the U.S. was going to attack. He called the head of China’s military to assure him there was no such plan and prevented the crises. There will be no Milley there to stop Trump next time. And the consequences will not discriminate among Democrats, Republicans, MAGAs or Independents.
Another Trump-created crisis will reach all party affiliations. His promised 10 to 100% tariffs will lead to a recession. They will pressure US profit margins, lead to job loss, weaken wage growth, and lower consumer spending – all classic causes of a recession.
Worse, Trump is likely mismanage it into another depression, and all party affiliations, including MAGAs. Will suffer. We came close during the Great Recession of 2008, but Presidents George W. Bush’s and Barak Obama’s cabinets had qualified and experienced advisers who saved us . Both Presidents tapped Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson (previously Goldman Sach CEO), Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, and NY Fed President Tim Geithner to convince an unwilling Congress to pass a $700 billion bank bailout and an economic stimulus package. All of them had extensive experience in the US and international monetary policy.
They coordinated the major central banks to announce that they’d lower interest rates and followed by cutting them by 50 basis points. Even China was persuaded to join in. Then the Fed and five other central banks announced cross-border dollar liquidity through currency swaps.
Who will advise Trump in another recession? We know he’ll pick loyalists and sycophants who won’t dare push back on his majesty’s decisions. His VP, JD Vance, who admitted lying that Springfield legal Haitian immigrants eat peoples pets and that childless “cat ladies are “sociopathic” is emblematic of his choices.
It doesn’t matter whom else Trump says he’ll choose; he’ll do whatever he wants. We can, however, speculate whom he’ll employ (at least for a while (only six of the 24 cabinet members lasted through his term.) Before Vance, he considered Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene as running mates, and Stephen Miller, who isn’t a lawyer, as Attorney General. They are informative of a Trump cabinet: Carlson to misinform, Greene to spin conspiracy theories, and Miller to attack Trump’s opponents and critics.
Then there’s Ukraine … and the existence of democracy in in Europe. Trump refuses to say he wants Ukraine to win, and says he’d encourage Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to any NATO member country that doesn’t meet spending guidelines. Given Trump’s adoration of and financial reliance on Putin, he will claim that certain NATO members have fallen behind and give Putin a green light. There’s little doubt that NATO members Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia would be easy targets for Putin. Like Ukraine, they were formerly part of the Soviet Union and are home to many ethnic Russians. All three fear an invasion.
Although 60 percent of Americans generally support sending troops to defend NATO members, their support varies depending on which member is attacked. Only 35 percent support using military force to defend Latvia and Croatia. Less than half support a direct military confrontation in all other NATO members except the Germany, France and Great Britain.
As former Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned, “to avoid confrontation with Russia in the future is to help Ukraine push back the invader now … If this lesson is ignored and Ukraine is defeated, Russia will almost certainly … attack NATO member countries.” What will our President do then?
All voters, including MAGAs, need to compare Harris’s answer with Trump’s. And ask themselves, if Trump were elected, how would we stand in the winds that would blow then?
MAGA voters, this is not political rhetoric. It is a dismal reality backed by Trump’s own words and the words of his enslaved Republicans in Congress. If there ever were a time for MAGAs to keep an open mind, it is now.
