It Must Be Exhausting Going Through Life Thinking That Everyone Is Trying to Fuck You Over Because You're Trying to Fuck Over Everyone Else
Donald Trump rose to national prominence as the author of The Art of the Deal. The title of Trump’s literary debut reflected how Trump wanted to be seen: as a peerless financial virtuoso whose metier was negotiation.
It was all a lie, of course. Trump did not write The Art of the Deal. There is a good chance he has not even read it. He’s not much of a reader, a thinker, or a human being. The book that elevated Trump to national and international fame and paved the way for his political ascent was ghost-written by Tony Schwartz, a Jewish man who despises the president and regrets having written the book that will be his tragic legacy.
Schwartz couldn’t have known it at the time, but he was playing a major role in the destruction of democracy. All because he wrote a book designed to make readers think, “Jesus, what a prick” that instead was seen as definitive, incontrovertible proof of Trump’s unique brilliance.
Trump wasn’t a business genius. He just played one on TV. Trump has declared bankruptcy six times. That’s not good! I’m broke as fuck, and have been for a solid decade. I’ve never declared bankruptcy.
Deal-making and business savvy were at the heart of Trump’s pitch to voters in 2016, 2020, and 2024. Trump may not know much about the government, American history, international relations, or the complexities of an ever-changing world. What Trump did know, in his estimation, at least, was business. He wanted voters to think that no one was better at deal-making.
With the assistance of NBC, which aired both The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice, key components of Trump’s lovingly wrought mythology worked overtime to create the impression that Trump is the Michael Jordan of business, the best of the best.
The twice impeached felon was going to use the deal-making genius that made him and his family so unbelievably wealthy and successful to make us unbelievably wealthy and successful. All we had to do was vote for the least qualified president in American history and give him unlimited power.
It’s not unlike how Trump permitted Elon Musk to do whatever he wanted to the government because he’d done such an amazing job at Twitter, where he fired much of the staff, ruined its reputation, and destroyed half of its value.
True to form, Musk’s goons fired over two hundred thousand people, ruined our country’s reputation and swiftly destroyed much of our value, morally, politically and otherwise.
In Trump’s mind, there are two kinds of people in the world. There are people who fuck people over, and people who get fucked.
Trump always wants to be the one fucking people over. His deals are innately selfish and one-sided. He is notorious, for example, for not paying contractors on the dubious grounds that he’s not satisfied with their work. They can attempt to sue him for the money they’re owed, but they’d probably end up spending much more than what they’re owed on legal fees alone.
That is a perfect deal for Trump. He gets free labor. The people who work for him get nothing. If they want to cry about it, boo fucking hoo. They might as well get in at the end of the very long line of people who’ve worked for Trump and never been paid.
Trump brought this greedy, avaricious sensibility to the government when he was elected president. Because he’s an asshole who is constantly trying to fuck people over, he thinks that everyone else is an asshole who is constantly trying to fuck people over. It is therefore his sacred duty to fuck everyone over on our behalf before we get fucked over.
That’s how Trump sees the world: as a bunch of assholes who are trying to fuck us over. It doesn’t matter if a country is one of our closest allies, like Canada. It doesn’t matter if we have historically had a close relationship with Canada, rooted in proximity and shared interests. All that matters to Trump is that they’re a foreign country, so they must be treating us very badly and very unfairly.
That’s the essence of Trump’s hard-on for tariffs. With the notable exception of Russia, every other country has screwed us over, and treated us very badly and very unfairly, so the only way to stop this unfair treatment is to fuck over every country in the world.
If other countries want to trade with the United States, they better pay up, baby! They better give us what we want in terms of money, resources, and cooperation, or we will use our massive economic power to destroy them.
Cheaters think everyone cheats. Liars believe that everyone lies. Unfaithful people think that everyone is unfaithful. And people who constantly try to fuck over rivals think that everyone else is trying to fuck them over. Oh, and people who use phrases like “grab em by the pussy” think that every straight man talks that way in private.
It must be exhausting going through life thinking that everyone is trying to fuck you over because you’re trying to fuck people over. It’s draining merely being a citizen of a country whose foreign policy goal has shifted from “containing communism” and “promoting democracy” to “fucking everyone else over before they have a chance to screw us.”
Canada is not our enemy. They’re not trying to fuck us over. They just want to exist with dignity and autonomy. Denmark is not fucking us over. They aren’t treating our country or Greenland badly or unfairly.
We’re the ones who are treating our allies badly and unfairly by accusing them of trying to screw us over.
We’re the problem. We’re the assholes. We’re the bullies. We’re the bad guys. As always, we’re projecting our own ugliness and cruelty onto others.
Trump thought he could instantly and magically solve the imaginary problem of every other country fucking us over by waging a wildly unpopular trade war with the rest of the world.
We’re unnecessarily antagonizing the whole goddamn world right now.
I’d like to think of our country as a leader who leads by example and uses its incredible wealth and power to make the world a better place.
Donald Trump sees our country as a mob boss shaking down less powerful countries for protection money. Trump may have complete control over a GOP terrified to invoking his wrath or the wrath of Elon Musk, but other countries have no problem telling Trump to go fuck himself.
You can pre-order The Fractured Mirror here: https://the-fractured-mirror.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders
Nathan needed expensive, life-saving dental implants, and his dental plan didn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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