This weekend has shown that the US about to enter into an unprecedented era of grift.
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If we have learned anything this weekend, it’s that things are going to be a bit different under Donald Trump when he takes office for a second time on Monday. And “different” does not mean “better”; it means that, with an absence of guardrails or shame, the incoming president is going to be more brazen than during his first term, which already set records when it came to self-dealing and other ethically questionable behavior.
First, Trump got into the cryptocurrency game by launching his own “meme coin.”
If you know anything about Trump and crypto, then you will realize that putting them together is like pairing up an arsonist with a flamethrower… or a napalm bomb.
The cryptocurrency industry is already pretty dubious and invites scams.
The incoming president’s $TRUMP coin is a great example. Last week, it did not exist and was therefore worth $0. That’s zero dollars! Nothing, nada, zilch.
Essentially, it works like this:
Then, within 48 hours of its launch on Friday night, it was worth more than $70 billion, and since Trump’s company only put 20 percent of the coins into circulation, he and his company “made” more than $50 billion on paper.
If that seems insane, then that’s because it is.
The only thing crazier than this “wealth” creation out of thin air is that the guy behind it will be president.
How can this possibly be legal? When something is created out of nothing, won’t some gullible saps be left holding the bag? How is crypto even regulated? And, when an incoming president makes this kind of deal that, at a minimum, seems incredibly sketchy, is Congress going to investigate?
Great questions!
Yes, somebody will end up losing their money… and it won’t be Trump.
So, who? Here is a hint: They wear red hats saying “Make America Great Again.”
As for the legality of this scheme and how crypto is regulated, surely the federal government will… wait a minute!
And herein lies the problem. If the guy doing the scam also controls the regulators, then where does that leave us? And, of course, Trump does not just control the regulators but also the lawmakers who could, in theory, look into this matter.
That’s what happens when you only put loyalists in your administration.
And then there is the TikTok farce that transpired simultaneously.
Essentially, after Trump signed an executive order in 2020 calling the popular, Chinese-owned video-sharing app a threat to the US, he has since changed his tune. As it turns out, having videos of himself shared is more important to him than national security.
However, Congress passed legislation last year requiring ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, to either sell its US-based operations to an American company by January 19 or be shut down.
And that’s what happened late Saturday night, when the social media platform “went dark.”
However, it was all a charade meant to please Trump and make him look like a savior of TikTok to the app’s 170 million American users.
When it shut the site down, ByteDance already hinted at what was to come.
“We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office,” the company stated in a message announcing the shutdown.
ByteDance didn’t even bother to wait that long.
After being down for about 12 hours, i.e., long enough to make users aware of the issue, TikTok was back online… and predictably gave Trump credit.
Welcome to the new normal!
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
