Last month, Donald Trump’s administration assured the US Supreme Court that the president’s massive tariffs were intended to address an “unusual and extraordinary threat” and were “essential to the country’s future.” This weekend, Trump announced that he was jacking up tariffs on Canadian goods by another 10 percent—because he was angry about a television ad that ran during the World Series.
Ten days ago, Ontario—Canada’s most populous province—released a TV spot featuring former President Ronald Reagan explaining at length why tariffs are generally bad. The ad edits the Gipper’s speech and omits a bit of nuance about his support for a narrower set of temporary tariffs imposed in 1987 on Japanese electronics. But overall, it provides a pretty accurate picture of the GOP icon’s free-market economic views.
Men can be astonishingly emotional and irrational, too.
And Trump? Trump doesn’t have a microgram of rationality or logic or respect for science and facts in his mind. He never did.
I worked with someone who generally had this view, considered himself a constitutionalist. When we were talking about stuff like socialized healthcare, he would get agitated and combative, and if we said something like no need to get angry/emotional were just having a discussion he’d loudly say he wasn’t angry/emotional, he was being logical. They redefined their emotions and feelings as logic so they could always be right.