Picture charts, indices, banks of monitors and an army of ubiquitous day-traders, driving the rise and fall of the stock market, all with the goal of delivering a profit or commission at the end of the day.
Now you get a sense of who Donald Trump is: he’s like that day-trader, seeking to walk off at the end of trading with his bank balance registering a healthy rise. It also means he’s not invested in tomorrow nor the long term.
As some Americans told StratNewGlobal, for him policy matters less than the “Trump Show”, meaning the ratings must always be high.
It extends to the people he appoints to his administration, they too must have good ratings. All are “sub-plots” of the Trump Show where the president is the ultimate “Influencer”, moving things and people in a certain direction.
“He has a good instinct for power,” said another, “he knows where he’s weak and where he’s strong and he makes choices that enhance his power. He does not see the world in moral terms but reacts to it by instinct.”
And although some may dismiss him as the “King of Chaos”, others say such chaos helps him stay on top and get things done, at least at home.
All this brings us to Trump’s second innings, which according to some political observers, is radically different from his first term.
“The core is populist MAGA (Make America Great Again) with the US no longer reflecting the values of the time when he (Trump) was growing up and immigration is at the heart of this,” argued one.
The US economy is also not working for the people who represent the MAGA movement. Institutions like the bureaucracy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are not seen as “aligned with MAGA interests and therefore the need to rework and restructure,” he said.
The mass removal of officials at all levels of the federal bureaucracy reflects the MAGA core’s distrust of government. It has also resulted in significant lack of capacity, contributing to the policy churn in the administration.
Mainstream Republicans say this is now the core of the party and they need to align with this if they wish to survive.
Trump is also preparing his constituency for the worldwide race to ensure supremacy in AI. It is a given that his constituency of blue-collar Americans will oppose AI (recall how Indian trade unions opposed the use of computers in the late 1980s). But with China forging ahead on technology, Trump knows this is a fight he cannot afford to lose.
Look closely, the AI Revolution is going to hit middle class professionals first. They will oppose AI but they have the will and the resources to fight, re-train and they will get a measure of institutional support.
This is where Trump hopes to use his MAGA base to push the case for AI. His core constituency will be his biggest backers as he seeks to forge ahead of China in AI and thereby also blunt the challenge from the middle class.
Or at least that’s what he hopes. It remains to be seen whether his “Big Beautiful Bill” which boosts spending on defence and border security while cutting Medicaid, food stamps and subsidies for electric vehicles, sails through the Senate.
Elon Musk has opposed it, warning that it would increase the US debt to $2 trillion “and burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt.”
But Trump is moving ahead, ignoring the fulminations of the man who bankrolled his presidential campaign. How this could end is anybody’s guess.
