The Daily Reid: Burning down the house

Donald Trump and his friends are collapsing the economy, while he goes golfing.

I was an odd kid.

I didn’t really like “girl” things like hair and makeup and dolls. I preferred sports, the New York Times Sunday crossword, comics, and all kinds of books (everything from Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou to Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe and The Brothers Karamazov. I also really loved music videos, especially in the early 1980s. There was New York Hot Tracks, which played all of the early hip-hop and R&B videos at a time when MTV, which launched two years earlier in 1981, was still segregated, before essentially being forced to play Michael Jackson — something the late, great icon David Bowie called out live on their air with a delicious lack of mercy. And on one of our local stations in Denver, there was this show called Teletunes that played mainly London based white pop videos (including Bowie, which is how I discovered him) — which absolutely makes his point.

That said, one of the weirdest — and I mean that in a good way — videos that I recall from Teletunes was by The Talking Heads. The title: Burning Down the House.

David Byrne, the leader of that quirky, perfectly English pop group, is only six years younger than Donald Trump. He was born in 1952, versus Trump in 1946. But he might as well be from a completely different generation (and not just another country but another planet.) Here is what he said most recently about the former and current U.S. president:

I wonder if he’d ever imagined seeing the world, but most of all America, brought so low in the past five years. “To be honest, no,” Byrne replies. “We’ve all had our dystopian fantasies of what could go wrong, and there’s plenty of books and TV shows that represent that. But then to see this happen… Trump was not a surprise. He is what he is. What is surprising is how many people still support him [even after the election]. When you see the coronavirus exploding across the United States, and how many dead there are, and how many people just don’t care about that or think it’s a conspiracy, you just go, ‘Wow, the country I’m living in isn’t the country I thought it was.’”

That was in 2020. Five years later, Byrne’s lyrics about a dystopian house on fire could rightly be applied to what Trump is doing to the U.S. economy. No matter what your measure of the economy is, it’s is inarguable that Trump has fucked it up.

Love the stock market? It’s lost $9.6 trillion in value since Inauguration Day. That’s TRILLION with a “T.”

And it’s not even his first go-round tanking the markets…

His “liberation day” tariffs are also tanking tech stocks and plunging the NASDAQ into the red.

Even resilient Apple is down.

The Trump tariffs are already squeezing consumers, who are rushing out to stockpile imported goods like TVs, workout gear and even soy sauce.

Prices are spiking, consumer confidence is plummeting, and the chances we’ll hit a recession are now six in ten.

Cramer is Cramering about a potential crash.

Even accused sexist, accused racist, uber podcast bro Dave Portnoy, the founder of Barstool Sports, is complaining.

Filed under “things that didn’t age well…

But not to worry! Jeanine Pirro says “to hell with my retirement! I’ve got Trump, and he is all I need!”

It's totally a cult. Enjoy this cartoon courtesy of The Tennessee Holler:

While Trump is focused on golf.

And we now have to start asking ourselves … are Trump and the Paypal mafia TRYING to crash our economy? Could it be that they want us bankrupt, so they can scoop up the resources of the mighty United States for pennies on the dollar? After all, isn’t that what the robber barons would have done?

I mean… it’s clear that the Project 2025ers are determined to essentially end the federal income tax and replace it with 19th century tariffs, so that ordinary people pick up the tab for whatever is left of a minimalist, neo Gilded Age government — which would no longer be in the Jesus business of caring for the poor, the sick and the aged, but would instead be distilled down to the size where you could drown it in a bathtub, where it stops regulating business altogether and solely serves to conduct military invasions to grab foreign colonies, and use its police powers to arrest the dissenters and maybe even sell them to foreign autocrats to put in their slave labor camps. That’s the ideal “government” for people who don’t believe in democracy, but rather in unlimited wealth, plutocracy, kleptocracy and monarchial feudalism. That’s the kind of people a third of all eligible U.S. voters chose to allow to rule us, while another third shrugged their shoulders and lay down on the couch. Well done.

But to get to where the Project 2025ers want to take us, you need to destroy the things that produced the more egalitarian 20th century economy. You need to crush the remaining unions, disempower workers who have become used to at least keeping up with inflation most of the time and whose middle class consumption has come to drive the economy, and tame the Federal Reserve by forcing them to drop interest rates even if they don’t think it’s a good idea. And you know what would help them do that? Tanking the U.S. economy.

You also need to tame the political parties. Well… one of the two is already sold. And since members are allowed to openly speculate in the now-declining market as a way to effectively bribe them with the promise of future riches if they put the market before their constituents, all that’s needed to keep the Republicans in line is the bribe carrot, combined with the stick of an Elon-funded, maga cult base-fueled primary. The other party, meanwhile, is weak, disunited, rudderless and leaderless. Great times if you don’t believe in democracy and want to loot the United States, buy up its distressed assets and sell off the remainder for parts. Here’s Peter Thiel, the real boss of JD Vance:

Peter Thiel is a lot of things—a Republican megadonor, an avowed fan of monopolies, and the guy responsible for this website’s former parent company, Gawker Media, going bankrupt some years ago. And if his latest public appearance is any indicator, he’s ready for war.

Specifically, war against the powerful old people at establishment financial institutions. At Miami’s Bitcoin 2022 conference on Thursday, Thiel, age 54, kicked off his keynote speech—which you can watch for yourself here—with a clip of himself in 1999 ruminating about the future of cellphones, banks, and digital infrastructure. Then, the real Thiel took the stage and said he’d start his talk the same way he’d start investor pitches in PayPal’s early days: ripping up several hundred dollars and negging onlookers for their naively shocked reactions at the guy who just ripped up several hundred dollars.

“Would the gentleman in the front row like to have the money?” He asked, crumpling the bills and tossing the wad to the front row. “I thought you guys were supposed to be Bitcoin maximalists!”

That was in 2022, when Joe Biden, who actually respected the independence of the Federal Reserve was president. Well … now the presidents are Donald the Golfer and X-Man Elon. And the Paypal Mafia have no time to waste, getting to trillionaire status. So if you want Bitcoin to rise … the dollar must fall. Your witness, Axios:

Economics 101 dictates that higher tariffs strengthen the value of a country's currency, but Trump's tariff announcement sent the value of the U.S. dollar plunging.

Why it matters: It's a sign that investors are worried about a recession, particularly in the U.S. — on top of concern that U.S. policies are making America a longer-term risky bet.

By the numbers: An index that tracks the value of the dollar against six major currencies was at 102.1 on Thursday, from around 104 before reciprocal tariffs were unveiled. (A lower number means a weaker dollar).

Catch up quick: The dollar strengthened after the election. Investors were optimistic about deregulation and tax cuts and anticipated economic growth. Since inauguration day it's fallen back.

Just some thoughts on this Saturday Eve. Oh and here’s the current front cover of Drudge…

And here’s the link to the article about the Trump family’s crypto play…

So far it doesn’t appear to be working out for Portnoy … but then again, he’s not in the family. None of the magas are. They’re just the grist the Project 2025ers used to get angry boys and maga girls to pull the lever, only to find that they’re stuck on the Titanic, too, while the Trumps and the Paypal mafia boys jump into the lifeboats and row away, champagne bottles in hand. Here’s a clip from my live with Michael Cohen this week (you can watch the whole thing here.)

And one more thing: we cannot and should not ever forget these disappearings. It’s among the most vile thing this regime is doing.

Another clip from me and Michael:

Nor should we ever allow the regime to get out from under the moral outrage of this, which just like what our troops did at Abu Ghraib, or what Israeli troops have done in Gaza, should be considered a violation of international law subject to adjudication at the Hague.

Prisoners stand looking out from their cell as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks while touring the Terrorist Confinement Center, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Just sayin…