very week…even every day…he seems more crazy. More disconnected from reality. Reactions to his self-generated chaos commonly include charges that he’s “stupid,” a “con man,” a “fraud,” a “monster,” an “asset for the Kremlin”. And with a little nuance, each of these definitions is not far from the truth.

The standard defense to this doesn’t stand up for me: “well, you just don’t understand. Wait and see--everything he says will come true.” I’m waiting.

Trump may certainly seem deluded, but I believe that he does have a master plan. And the depth and depravity of that plan shows me that he is not stupid. After all, he’s the guy who bankrupted six different companies…yet still convinced the majority of voters that he, alone, could run the largest national economy in history.

So…who’s really stupid?

The key to understanding his plan is accepting that it has NOTHING to do with the country or the people; it has EVERYTHING to do with him.

et’s begin with what I’m convinced are his five distinct goals. And to repeat—you’ll note they are all about him.

HIS GOALS

Become the world’s most famous man.
Become the world’s most powerful man.
Become the world’s richest man.
Become recognized as the world’s smartest man.
Become the world’s most beloved man.

These may seem preposterous. But let’s face it--the first two are already accomplished. Great start! The last two can only be realized with the passage of time. So right now, ALL his focus is on number three—making more and more money. It’s the goal that hides behind all the chaos. Distracting from this is his purpose. More on this in a bit.

HIS DEMANDS

Any quest requires weapons, and here, he makes no secret of his mandates:

Absolute allegiance
Absolute vengeance

HIS BATTLE PLAN

To move beyond simple wishes and dreams, Trump’s goals and demands require some underlying strategy. Some think he’s too irrational to have a strategy. Nonsense. The tactics below are central to this strategy:

Use Weapons of Mass Distraction. He distracts—as naturally as we breathe. This is hardly a novel observation. These are all expressions of his unmitigated power—over migrants, Harvard, government workers. He must prove that he can hurt whomever he wants. He enjoys this—but as I’ll explain, this is all a sideshow.
Assure absolute immunity for anything he does. He has already been granted full immunity by a terminally corrupted Supreme Court. In addition, with Trump’s unlimited pardon powers, all those around him are equally guaranteed to avoid punishment for any crimes they might commit.
Exert dominance over the other two branches of federal government:

Judicial: at this writing, dozens of federal judges have overturned or issued restraining orders on Trump policies. In response, all have been attacked and/or ignored by his lawyers. His head of Homeland Security, in response to one ruling from the federal bench, said, “I don’t care what judges think. I don’t care.”
Legislative: His GOP minions in Congress represent the weakest group of cowards in American history. If their own grandchildren were drowning, those shills wouldn’t do a thing to help them if Trump ordered them not to get their feet wet. They know he’s wrong, but they will never defy him. Trump could not destroy America without their complicity.

Democrats hold out hope that “taking over” at least one chamber of Congress will create a firewall. What this does not consider is that MAGA surrogates run elections in many states; there is no assurance their reported vote totals will match reality.

And even if control of the House does swing back to the Democrats, Trump’s Treasury Department will still control the spigots of federal spending. They can decide where money goes—and where it does not. If Trump can defy judges, he can certainly ignore Congress.

Finally, find new enemies.

Here, things get a little sticky for him. His reviled “radical left” has no power. Biden and Harris have left the building. He will certainly claim to have stopped illegal immigrants, so he can’t blame them. Likewise, eventually he will need to claim eradication of the “deep stete” and “government waste”. .
Yet, the economy will struggle, inflation will rise, and his masterful “deals” in Ukraine and Gaza will continue to flounder. Fentanyl will continue to kill people. So, who will he blame?

In the end, only the media and enfeebled Democrats will remain. But they don’t control anything—he does. He’s going to need to find new bad guys.

n the Wizard of Oz, after Toto pulls back the drapes to expose the wizard, the wizard yells into his microphone, “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” Right now, we are not yet at that point. Toto hasn’t yet located the curtain. But we know who’s behind it.

Have you noticed the uncharacteristic disappearance of the demon spawn, DJ and Eric…along with slithery brother-in-law Jared Kushner? The first time around, they would leap in front of any friendly media camera. This time, nothing.

They’re not doing nothing. These are the three now entrusted to work uietly at one job—to balloon the family’s wealth. The goal is to actually supersede that of Nazi idolator, Elon Musk.

I know—this seems impossible. And with the evil three stooges at the wheel, it may never happen. But it won’t be for lack of trying.

Specifically, consider the paths to unprecedented grift. They payoff is almost limitless:

Cryptocurrency

Until someone can convince me otherwise, I’m just going to call cryptocurrency a global Ponzi scheme. And Trump wants in.

Two days before inauguration, Trump and the boys announced creation of “Trump coins”, a close cousin of cryptocurrency. Like all such “assets”, they have no intrinsic value. Nevertheless, on that first day, the value of Trump coins soared to more than $10 billion. At this writing, it closed the day at $1.6 billion—off 84%.
The companion Melania Trump meme coin, launched on the same day, has now lost 95% of its supposed value.
Does that prove the Trumps are all dunces? Not necessarily. The Trump coin did scrape off $100 million right off the top, in fees charged to the investors just for taking their orders.
The darling sons also put together something called World Liberty Financial, with the aim of scoring big in the crypto market. At the start of this year, one of their big stakes was in the Ethereum crypto platform. They recently started unloading they after they lost 55% of their investment. That set Trump Inc. back an estimated $125 million.
But that’s not stopping them. Joe Biden cracked down on a corrupt moneylaundering site called Binance. They were washing cash for Iran and various terrorist groups.The founder went to jail for four months…they were banned from the U.
S. market…they were fined over $4 billion…and also saddled with fulltime watchdogs to monitor everything the business did.
But under Trump, it looks like a new day. Binance is asking Trump to let them back in the U.S. market…and call off the watchdogs. And, oh yeah, how about a pardon?
I’m pretty sure it is sheer coincidence they are also proposing to launch a “stable coin” under the auspices of World Liberty Financial. The Wall Street Journal says that could earn the Trump family billions of dollars. And the boys are also considering buying a stake in Binance itself.
A second crypto sleazeball has already purchased a pardon from Trump—which was accompanieed by a $75 million “investment” in World Liberty Financial..
Does this sound bad to you? It’s only one of Trump’s oh-so-profitable potential larcenies.

Once in office, to clear the decks, he abolished the division of federal government charged with investigating crypto fraud.

Trump also formally announced formation of a “U.S. Digital Stockpile”, aiming to make America the “global leader” in Bitcoin reserves. He did not explain why.

The announcement assured citizens that no tax dollars would be required to buy the necessary crypto to fill the reserve. That would simply be accomplished by transferring cryptocurrency seized by the government in previous civil judgments against crypto raudsters. OK, that sounds fine.
However, what that announcement did not mention is that all those seized assets were recovered under the watch of Joe Biden--using the same government investigators in the unit that Trump just sent packing.
The depth of the crypto schemes is pretty much revealed in the people Trump has working as his key financial “brains”.
He named David Sacks his czar of Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency. Sacks is a very rich man with his own venture capital firm…including holdings in crypto. He supposedly divested himself upon taking over as “czar”. Noteworthy: he is also a longtime friend and former business associate of Elon Musk—also a strong crypto fan. What could possibly go wrong?
Similarly, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik is the former chairman of the global financial powerhouse Cantor-Fitzgerald (yes, the same one that lost so many employees on 9/11). Last summer, Lutnik’s company announced a $2 billion investment in a crypto venture. But again, no worries. Upon taking the Commerce job, Lutnik turned over the leadership of Cantor-Fitzgerald to independent hands—his younger brother, and his two sons. Shame for even thinking he would still discuss investment matters with his family! (Especially on things he and the President are planning on doing.)
Former SEC chairman Gary Gensler was despised by the Silicon Valley crypto crowd because he believed in “regulation by enforcement.” And he enforced.
Trump’s choice to replace him, Paul Atkins, has a family fortune of more than $325 million, including millions in crypto. In the least shocking news ever, Atkins is a strong supporter of de-regulation. Let markets—including the crypto one—do what they will.

Insider Trading

This is where the distraction element of Trump’s plan comes into play. He makes a tariff move, and the media and financial analysts shout, “he overreacted!”, “he blinked!”, he made “another move that makes no sense!”

Trump and his advisors are well aware of how their economic announces will affect the financial markets. Knowing those moves in advance means any investor can make a killing. Trump—and his buddies—would be foolish and acting fully out of character not to take full advantage of this illegal ploy. Even in an era of digital records, it’s unlikely that we’ll know the truth about until Trump is out of office—by which time he will have pardoned himself.
The tariff follies are for show—and for Trump, making dough.

The “Bank of Musk”

Elon Musk contributed more than $250m to Trump’s election campaign. The return on that investment seems likely (to me) to partially explain Trump’s singular, super-sized tariffs on China. In effect, the current 145% tariff blocks China’s huge electric car maker, BYD, from selling its vehicles in America. This is vital to Musk, as his Tesla sales are dropping sharply in the U.S., and are absolutely tanking across Europe. Elon needs protection.
Of course, Elon-type “donations” can easily come from other corporate supplicants. Trump strong-armed the nation’s richest kleptocrats to pony up a measly $1 million apiece to underwrite his inauguration. This may have seemed like a one-time deal to them…but there’s nothing preventing Trump from turning these “gifts” into a subscription model—at any rate he chooses.
Does Jeff Bezos want to stop selling his web services to the government? Does Tim Cook want to be called out as America’s number one corporate tax cheat? Does Jeff Zukerberg want suspension of the federal law that makes him immune from charges of pushing content on his platforms that convince teen girls to kill themselves?
They will all gladly pay up.

The “Swiss Bank Play”

Popular business and tech podcaster Scott Galloway suggests a side-scam to all this. By setting up a Swiss bank account, Trump can coerce anyone to pay him—without detection—for anything he wants. Maybe Putin would like to chip in, say, $100 billion to make sure the flow of weapons from the U.S. to Ukraine never turns on again?

ut all this together, and Trump is well on his way to achieving goal #3--becoming the world’s richest man.

And the beauty in all this, in Trump’s mind, is that he’s already beaten any future rap. He’s already fired all of the government inspectors general. He’s neutered both the SEC, and any crypto enforcement. And the Justice Department is nothing more than his private spy ring and law firm.

Oversight is gone.

emocrats may win back the House next year and then heatedly demand hearings to get to the bottom of all this.

But no one will show up to testify. Why would they? The Democrats could vote absent Trumpies in contempt of Congress. But any subsequent investigation and enforcement would be directed right back to Trump’s Justice Department. (In theory, the New York AG’s office could also get involved…but what are the chances an eventual appeal to the Supreme Court would ever side with Democrats over Trump?)

Anyone subpoenaed could simply reply with the standard message of Trump, the Bully in Chief: “who’s gonna make me?”

ll of this scheme becomes plausable, and even undeniable, if you remember the essential fact of Donald Trump’s entire life: he does not care about you…he does not care about America—he only cares about himself. He is the very epitome of self-serving.

And everything he’s ever done in his life proves that.

Issue 30

Trump's Master Plan