Susan Zakin
I was talking to a well-known journalist recently - not on the record so I won’t use his name. He’d written extensively about Donald Trump so I asked a question that was both sincere and a bit of a set-up: “How does a guy who’s ostensibly all about America First end up in bed with the Russians?”
After a moment’s hesitation, he dropped his professional mien and burst out: “Because he’s a greedy motherfucker.”
Sometimes it’s that simple. It’s getting harder and harder not to see the pattern on Trump and Russia. On Friday, in Trump’s “Let’s fuck up the world” tariff announcement one large country was conspicuous by its absence.
Russia, of course. Ostensibly because Russia is already facing sanctions. That’s the line from Karoline Leavitt but really, is anyone listening to her? The rest of the numbers were insane. Cambodia: 49 percent. Vietnam: 46 percent. Sri Lanka: 44 percent. Bangladesh: 37 percent (like they don’t have enough problems.) China, fuhgeddaboudit. That’s 54 percent for you, buddy. Japan fared badly, too.
You can get the basic news coverage anywhere, including the truly impressive stock market drop. (How’s your 401k looking now, MAGA heads?)
As Anthony Scaramucci pointed out on the podcast The Rest is Politics US, the chances of these tariffs leading to manufacturing investment in the U.S. is remote.
“…hey, it takes you five to ten years to get a factory up and running, in which time you've had midterm elections, a presidential election, potentially another midterm election, potentially another presidential election, and America has shown it has the capacity to see-saw….” said the Mooch. “So even if you wanted to make your long-term strategic investment planning based on what happened yesterday, you'd be foolish to do so because these tariffs could go.”
Trump was so intent on keeping the stock market up in his first term. What happened? Why the wrecking ball now? Is it dementia? Has Peter Navarro become Trump’s Rasputin? (Wasn’t that supposed to be Stephen Miller?)
There might be an answer. Has anyone here seen The Apprentice? Or did you grow up in New York?
We’re talking Mafia. You coudnt’t operate as a developer in New York without coming to terms with the Mafia, and Roy Cohn, the fixer of all fixers, was in tight with the Mob. From there, it was a smooth segue to dealing with the Russian Mafia, which had become an enforcement arm of the Russian government in all but name.
It’s often been said that Trump acts like a sleazier Don Corleone, prizing loyalty more than anything else. (As we’ve learned, competence, honesty, even sanity, are all pretty much non-starters. Frankly, real Mafia dons probably expect more from their lieutenants.)
What Trump is doing with tariffs is setting up what could very well be the biggest extortion scheme in history. The smart people are all over it.
Chris Murphy, the Democratic Senator from Connecticut, said this:
“Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive,” he told MSNBC. “No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief.”
What does “petition Trump for relief” mean? Gee, I don’t know. Favorable business deals? Campaign contributions? More biopics of Melania?
There is money and there is power. The hackneyed term synergy comes to mind. Veteran Washington DC reporter Katty Kay, Scaramucci’s co-host on The Rest is Politics US, mentioned that she’d received a text from former Democratic congresswoman Stephanie Murphy. Murphy, who is a centrist, made these comparisons:
“When the communists took Vietnam, they eliminated the intelligentsia. They engage in overt corruption. They wrecked the economy and they got more power because of it.
Look at Hungary. Look at Turkey. A weak economy suffering electorate is by design, not a bug of authoritarianism.”
It’s worth listening to The Rest is Politics US (and its progenitor, The Rest is Politics) along with following Chris Murphy on BlueSky, where he described his take on Trump’s strategy on a detailed thread.
“The tariffs are DESIGNED to create economic hardship,” Murphy wrote. “Why? So that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry.”
“As he adjusts or grants relief, it’s a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears. And once Trump has the lawyers, colleges and industry under his thumb, it becomes very hard for the opposition to have any viable space to maneuver.
Murphy noted that Trump is already using access to government funds to bully universities, law firms, and state and local governments into doing his bidding. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom just agreed to provide $100 million worth of legal work on Trump policy. So did Milbank, the law firm where Trump critic Neal Katyal works. A third, Wilkie Farr & Gallagher, also committed $100 million.
The wag in me thought: Well, that should be a step up from his usual dimwit lawyers.
Immediately afterwards, I found myself clinging to the hope that the attorneys would find a way to sabotage Trump’s efforts to destroy both the constitution and the country. Yet I couldn’t help being grudgingly impressed by the sheer breadth of what Trump and his people had effected in a little over three months.
We all know that Trump couldn’t have come up with it all by his lonesome. While lawyer and journalist Dahlia Lithwick agonizes over whether this is a constitutional crisis, historians Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Heather Cox Richardson are saying it straight up: it’s a coup. Trump and his people are clearly trying to infect, and control, every power center in the United States. In the process, Trump and his family will get even richer. Maybe someday Trump will be as rich as Vladimir Putin, although one can’t quite imagine this given his penchant for financial disaster.
Then again, if he lives long enough, he’ll have a shot, assuming it all works out for him.
“Trump didn’t invent this strategy,” Murphy noted. “It’s the playbook for democratically elected leaders who want to stay in power forever.”
Anthony Scaramucci. Remember him? He’s actually a hedge fund guy so he knows from tariffs.
“So here are three things I'd like people to consider. Number one, the legendary investor, Warren Buffett, in his mid-90s now liquidated his portfolio about six months ago.
I saw that.
He raised, and again, not the entire portfolio, but he raised over $350 billion of cash. And he said that if we are going to impose these tariffs, that this would be a declaration of war. And so I just want to give people a little bit of history here.
The last time the United States did something this stupid was in the 1930s, Herbert Hoover, Smoot Harley. We raised tariffs like this. We crippled the entire world's trading system.
And we had a deep recession turned into a global depression. And it led to the systemic rise of fascism.”
From The Rest Is Politics: US: Trump’s Act of War: Tariff Liberation Day, Apr 3, 2025
Susan Zakin is the Journal's editor. This article originally appeared at the Journal's Substack, where you will find more political coverage, videos, and podcasts.