The curious mind of a popular Trumper

Writing on Substack, with tens of thousands of subscribers, is a retired newspaper man by the name of Don Surber. He is to Donald Trump what Martin Bormann was to Adolf Hitler: unremittlingly loyal, cringingly toadyish and, fortunate for him, wholly unburdened by acts of thinking.

If you've ever wanted to momentarily crawl into the nonfunctioning mind of a Trumper's Trumper, I suggest you visit his. I do so from time to time because it's critical to know one's enemy. I also want it known that I write this assessment of a Surber post not to ridicule; that would be too easy. I write it to demonstrate just how much Trumpers can't see the contradictions in what they profess, the shallowness of their beliefs, how much of the real world they close their minds to, and what should be their distasteful deference to an autocratic imbecile.

In Surber's recent post, "TDS [Trump Derangement Syndrome] is so tedious," he plunges right in with a determined salute to his leader's chaos: "A few things are predictable, such as the overreaction to tariffs by Wall Street and DC."

First, global markets melting down transcends whatever reactions — i.e., mere words — to tariffs Wall Street and DC might have. The Dow, S&P 500, Asian and European indexes bottoming out are real things, although it's true they're not entirely independent of words spoken in anticipation of markets crashing, since Trump's tariffs were instantly predictable in their catastrophic consequences.

Second, what Wall Street and DC were saying was what tariff specialists were saying: "It’s totally silly. There's no other way to say it, it makes no sense” —Dani Rodrik, an economist who studies globalization, which, naturally, Mr Surber also detests because Mr. Trump detests it. Also, the economist is at Harvard, an evil in TrumpWorld, plus the economist was quoted by The New York Times, which is just as evil in its radical leftist bias. And so both can be swiftly dismissed by Trumpers; their faith lies in economic crackpots like Larry Kudlow, often quoted by giants of journalistic objectivity, like Breitbart.

Surber wrote "TDS is so tedious" on Tuesday, just before Trump veered nearly 180 degrees on Wednesday by "abruptly announc[ing] he would back down on his 'reciprocal tariffs' for 90 days." (That, also from the leftist Times.). On the gung-ho-tariffs day of Surber's writing, he amused himself by noting that "in DC, the RINOs and the Democrats proposed eliminating Trump’s power to tariff.... The old hens—Collins, Murkowski and McConnell—will back the Democrats," he contined, "but there’s this dude called Elon Musk who will primary those who will vote against Trump."

Thus, as Surber so clearly presented the situation, Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell and "the old hens," the RINOs, would see their proposal go down in defeat because at-large Republicans aren't "about to risk becoming the Liz Cheney" of next year's elections. Call it job-protection or sheer cowardice, your choice.

But wait, in the very next paragraph Surber changes gears by asserting instead that "Republicans back the tariffs because they want America to succeed" (italics mine). So, turns out, the looming threat of that dude called Elon Musk holding a primarying knife to the throats of uncooperative Republican pols would have nothing to do with their continuing support of Trump's insane, "silly" tariffs.

Once you read two or three of Surber's posts you realize that his face-slapping contradictions also have nothing to do with Scott Fiztgerald's dictum about the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind while retaining "the ability to function" is not always "the test of a first-rate intelligence." More commonly, that particular mind simply doesn't stop to think things through.

Neither does Surber have much of a grip on history and empirical facts. In one passing segment of his post he casts blame on "President Bush 43" for leading "DC [to take] the lid off the national debt, which tripled since 2008" by throwing TARP [the Troubled Asset Relief Program} "over the [financial] mess" of that year. In doing so Surber excuses the actual cause of America's enormous deficits that have led to the nation's monstrous debt. George W. is in part to blame, but the blame extends far beyound TARP.

Noted in 2023 by Bobby Kogan, the Center for American Progress' director of federal budget policy, "Tax cuts initially enacted during Republican trifectas in the past 25 years slashed taxes disproportionately for the wealthy and profitable corporations, severely reducing federal revenues.... [They] are responsible for 57 percent of the increase in the debt ratio since 2001.... Eventually, the tax cuts" — Bush's and Trump's — "are projected to grow to more than 100 percent of the increase." Now Trump and Republicans are proposing new tax cuts, the "full array" of which, according to the conservative Peter G. Peterson Foundation, "could increase deficits by $9.1 trillion" over the next 10 years.

Surber also calls on a New York Post columnist — always an optimal choice for economic insights — to explain the stable genius behind tariffs' vicissitudes: "Part of Trump’s negotiating style," writes Charles Gasparino, "is to instill fear in his opponents through opacity; he really doesn’t want to tell the other side his objective because, he fears, it weakens his hand." Knowledgeable economists see something else in Team Trump's negotiating style: They have no "idea what they’re doing, or why."

On Monday, Surber wrote that "America needs jobs. Tariffs will help bring them home." His post's subhead: "The Donald is saving us from imports and the federal government." His post's title: "Stay the course on Tarifffs."

That Trump did not will, I'm sure, present no problem for Mr. Surber. He'll gymnastically flip in avidly supporting Trump's sudden flip on tariffs — it was brilliant — just as all good communists were obligated in 1939 to suddenly flip from the decade's Popular Front anti-fascism to supporting peaceful relations with Nazi Germany, since Stalin and Hitler had opted for slicing up Eastern Europe in a non-aggression pact.

Good grief, I would think that Don Surber's Trump Degradation Syndrome would be so tedious.