Behind the Curtain: Trump's dark opening to Golden Age
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President Trump talks to reporters aboard Air Force One during a flight from Palm Beach International Airport to Joint Base Andrews, Md., yesterday. Photo: Kent Nishimura/Reuters
With markets nosediving across the globe, President Trump played golf, raised money for MAGA and dug in deep on his tariff plans, after warning Americans to buckle up.
- "THIS IS AN ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, AND WE WILL WIN," he said on Truth Social on Saturday. "HANG TOUGH, it won't be easy, but the end result will be historic."
Why it matters: For one of the first times in his career, Trump seems more bent on making a point than making a deal. He's confident nations will bend to his will, just as universities and law firms have.
- "We don't have a playbook for fully committed Trump," a longtime adviser tells us. "He's always been the ultimate pragmatist — everything was on the table at all times: 'Give me a win and I'll consider anything.'"
CNBC "Squawk Box" on Monday morning: "GLOBAL MARKET MELTDOWN INTENSIFIES."
- Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday: "I don't want anything to go down. But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something."
Behind the scenes: Trump officials say 50+ countries have approached the administration to make tariff deals. But people involved in the process say there's frustratingly little structure or coordination around the negotiations.
- A White House official tells us: "The phone lines are open and nations are free to make their pitch on how they will correct for decades of taking advantage of the American consumer. But for businesses looking for certainty, the message is clear: Don't wait, come build in America."
Reality check: There were safe, easy and still fast ways to do all the things Trump is doing, many Republican insiders tell us.
- Trump could have laid out specific tariff threats for each country, given them a short period to comply with a proposed compromise on great U.S. terms, and explained his thinking before spooking the markets.
- Trump could have spent an extra month targeting spending cuts with precision — so he didn't have to cut and then rehire people deemed more vital than first thought.
- And he could have set up a more thorough vetting program for deportation — so his broadly popular action didn't get undermined by locking up or sending off people who are not clear-cut violent criminals.
Between the lines: We talked to a bunch of leaders of businesses of all sizes this weekend. All are scrambling — even panicked — after all their planning was upended. But Trump and his Cabinet showed a real disconnection from the economic chaos unfolding coast to coast.
- On Friday, Trump headlined a $1 million-a-plate dinner fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago for MAGA Inc., the top pro-Trump super PAC.
- Then Trump golfed near Mar-a-Lago on Saturday and Sunday — and posted a video of himself teeing off.
- The White House issued a statement Saturday saying: "The President won his second round matchup of the Senior Club Championship today in Jupiter, FL, and advances to the Championship Round."
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on CBS' "Face the Nation": "The army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in ... little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America."
- "It's going to be automated," Lutnick continued. "And great Americans, the tradecraft of America, is going to fix them, is going to work on them. They're going to be mechanics. There's going to be HVAC specialists. There's going to be electricians."
- That's amid warnings that Trump's tariffs could raise the cost of an iPhone by 30% to 40%. As Reuters put it: "A $2,300 Apple iPhone? Trump tariffs could make that happen."
"Economic nuclear winter": Bill Ackman, an investor who has been among the most powerful pro-Trump voices on X, pleaded yesterday in a post with 9 million views: "May cooler heads prevail." Otherwise, he said, "we are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down."
- Ackman wants Trump to call a 90-day timeout, "negotiate and resolve unfair asymmetric tariff deals, and induce trillions of dollars of new investment in our country."
"The country is 100% behind the president on fixing a global system of tariffs that has disadvantaged the country," Ackman wrote. "But, business is a confidence game and confidence depends on trust."
- "[B]y placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once," Ackman continued, "we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital."
The bottom line: Cracks in the Trump coalition are showing, however slightly. Even Elon Musk slammed protectionist Trump adviser Peter Navarro, and tweeted cryptic but clearly pro-free-trade clips.
