The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Donald Trump, Commander-in-Chief and father of the year, told reporters he’ll "try" to attend Don Jr.’s Bahamas wedding but that it’s "not good timing" because he has "a thing called Iran and other things." When you’ve started an Iran war so ill-conceived you describe it like a calendar reminder you forgot to snooze, family events do get tricky.

Trump explained that if he goes to the wedding, "I get killed," and if he doesn’t go, "I get killed, by the fake news, of course" — bravely framing his son’s nuptials as yet another heroic battle in his eternal war against accountability. The marriage itself is being spun as a "big win" for Don Jr., which is how this clan describes both elections and engagements, presumably because in Trumpworld every human relationship is just another branding opportunity.

Adding to the farce, Don Jr.’s ex-fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle is safely parked as U.S. ambassador to Greece, a prestigious diplomatic post that in a functioning democracy would not double as the "sorry we broke up" severance package. But here we are: war with Iran in the background, a destination wedding in the Bahamas, and ambassadorships being handed out like parting gifts on a game show. American foreign policy as a messy blended-family drama is certainly one way to run a superpower.

Donald Trump, Commander-in-Chief of Photo Ops, signed an executive order a year ago to build housing for 6,000 homeless veterans in Los Angeles. Advocates looked at the new budget to see how many of those vets would actually get housing and found the answer was a mathematically elegant zero. Not 5,000, not 600, not even 6 symbolic units of "we pretended to care" — just a clean, empty spreadsheet where funding should be.

This is the Trump governance formula in its purest form: announce big, do nothing, blame someone else. Veterans were good enough to stand behind him at rallies and in campaign ads, but when it comes time to convert executive-order theater into actual shelter, the administration suddenly discovers fiscal restraint. The message from the self-proclaimed champion of the troops is clear: thank you for your service, please enjoy continuing to sleep on the streets of the richest country on earth.

Trump announced that his lovingly self-branded prescription drug site, TrumpRx, is adding “over 600 affordable generics” so Americans can enjoy the convenience of navigating a presidential shopping portal to maybe pay more than they would with their own insurance or existing discount programs. According to Trump, this will give people “one source” for the “lowest possible cost” on drugs, which is a bold promise for a site that experts keep pointing out is… not actually the lowest anything.

Airbnb co-founder and now Trump’s chief design officer Joe Gebbia proudly showed off new features like “Presidential Deals” on brand-name drugs and a price-comparison tool, pitching medicine shopping like you’re booking a weekend in Cleveland: compare pills like you compare hotels, Airbnbs, or baseball tickets. Health economists, meanwhile, keep gently screaming into the void that most patients can already get cheaper versions through insurance, pharmacies, or services like Cost Plus Drugs — and that TrumpRx mostly adds confusion to an already byzantine system.

So instead of tackling the pharma lobby, patent games, or PBM abuse, the administration slapped Trump’s name on a website, bolted on a price-comparison widget, and called it reform. The U.S. drug market remains a rigged casino, but now there’s a new table where the house is branded in gold letters and the big innovation is a tab labeled “Presidential Deals”. Truly, American healthcare has never been more on brand.

Marty Davis, the self-styled plain-spoken Midwestern farmboy who just happens to run a $500 million quartz-countertop empire and belong to a billionaire dynasty, has discovered the magic of Trump-era industrial policy: why compete in a market when you can have the government kneecap your rivals for you? As CEO of Cambria and a Trump donor, Davis has been repeatedly and successfully lobbying the U.S. government to slap tariffs on imported quartz, all while wrapping himself in the language of "Main Street," "free and fair trade," and protecting the "healthy middle class." Translation: he gets protection, everyone else gets the bill.

Cambria's competitors – many of them smaller businesses that actually look like the "Main Street" Davis keeps cosplaying – say his tariff crusade is blowing up their costs, forcing layoffs, and hiking prices for homeowners who just wanted a countertop, not a lesson in oligarchic trade policy. They rely more on imported materials, so when Davis convinces the government to tax those imports, their margins evaporate while his made-in-Minnesota quartz gets a nice little artificial advantage. The result: fewer jobs at rival firms, higher prices for consumers, and one very happy Trump donor who can boast that his political investments are paying excellent returns.

All of this is, of course, draped in the usual Trump-world rhetoric about saving American manufacturing and standing up to unfair trade. The people actually getting hammered by the tariffs – small fabricators, installers, and middle-class homeowners – are just collateral damage in the latest episode of "regulatory capture, but make it patriotic." Free market capitalism, Trump edition: you too can weaponize federal power against your competitors, as long as your campaign checks clear.