Trump’s ‘Raw Deal’: How Greed, Grift, and Hate Are Breaking America

I’ve been quiet lately, watching the chaos from the sidelines and trying to insulate my family and myself from the damage Trump is doing. So far, I haven’t been successful. On April 2nd, Trump set the United States on a course toward a Depression with his stupid tariffs.

Not a painful recession — a devastating Depression that could rival the Great Depression of 1929. What could’ve been a smaller economic contraction was exacerbated back then by Congress passing the Smoot–Hawley Act — a set of tariffs intended to pull the U.S. out of chaos, but which instead plunged the country into a global economic collapse.

The Smoot–Hawley Act triggered a contraction in economic activity around the world, leading to 25% unemployment in the United States. It was devastating. But nearly everyone alive today doesn’t remember how bad things were.

My guess is that the GOP — and the lunatics who voted them into power — don’t believe it was that bad, because it happened nearly 100 years ago. Smart people realize that history tends to rhyme every century or so. Why? Because the people who lived through a catastrophe stay vigilant to prevent it from happening again. But eventually, they die — and we forget.

How did we get out of the Great Depression? President Roosevelt’s woke New Deal — massive public works and social programs. Yes, the New Deal is what gave us Social Security and countless public benefits for average Americans — the very same social insurance that Elon Musk and Trump are trying to dismantle.

The question is: Why? Why create a Hamberders Depression 2.0?

Simple: because Trump needs to grift — at the expense of everyone else.

Just look at his record: He’s grifted wives, money, businesses, and now the presidency — all to enrich himself and paint the illusion of being a titan of business. But he’s not. He’s so bad at “The Art of the Deal” that he bankrupted a casino.

(How the fuck do you bankrupt a casino? I wish I had a casino. Those things are money machines — maybe not ethical, but damn lucrative.)

Trump is desperately trying to offset his $5 trillion tax cut, all under the guise of “cutting fraud, waste, and abuse” — gutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, research, climate funding, renewable energy, and more.

He’s trying to cut everything he can so he can claim that his tax cuts won’t raise taxes on the middle class, giving the GOP plausible deniability when they rubber-stamp it.

This is the real impetus for the tariffs: He’s trying to show “income” for the federal government to offset the cuts. It’s also why he wanted to audit the U.S. gold reserves — so he could revalue gold from $42/oz to $3,000/oz. While gold revaluation would bring in hundreds of billions, combined with the cuts, it would pave the way to passing his tax cuts.

When that happens — likely later this year — the tariff stunt will have already pushed us into a recession, and the destruction of our safety nets will create a brutal feedback loop: layoffs, foreclosures, untreated illnesses, unnecessary deaths. Add in a possible bird flu epidemic, and you have a full-scale national disaster — all under Trump’s “Raw Deal.”

All I can say is this: I gave Trump voters the benefit of the doubt in 2016. After that shit show, I thought they’d never vote for him again. I was wrong.

I underestimated their hatred — hatred for voters who don’t look like them, love like them, or pray like them. Calling them “deplorables” doesn’t even scratch the surface.

If the Democrats win the House and Senate in 2026 — and that’s a big “if” — they need to clean house. Impeach Trump. Impeach Vance. Uproot the MAGA cancer completely — root and stem — before it’s too late, before America collapses into a cautionary footnote in a future history book.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.” — H.L. Mencken