Borderline Collapse: Trump’s Global Chaos and America’s Domestic Wreckage

From Canada’s revolt to Epstein deals, health care sabotage, crypto scams, and Musk’s unraveling, the kleptocrats are cashing out while the country burns.

Good morning! It’s official: Donald Trump has managed to do the impossible, turn Canada into an economic and political fist ready to clock America in the jaw. Fresh off his latest tantrum, Trump and his hand-picked ambassador Pete Hoekstra have reignited a full-scale diplomatic brawl with our northern neighbors by labeling Canada “nasty,” threatening a 35% tariff, and, for good measure, declaring they should become the 51st state. Colonization is now a “term of endearment.”

Canadians aren’t having it. From Huntsville, Ontario, the provincial premiers gathered for a unity summit that looked like a masterclass in grown-up leadership compared to the circus unfolding south of the border. With the exception of Alberta’s Danielle Smith, Canada’s Marjorie Taylor Greene cosplay, premiers across the political spectrum closed ranks, telling Trump’s America to go pound sand. Prime Minister Mark Carney, meanwhile, doubled down on his ambition to make Canada an energy and economic superpower, forging new alliances with Europe, Middle Eastern partners like Jordan, and anyone else who isn’t busy threatening to annex them.

British Columbia’s David Eby said it best: Trump’s United States has no clue how offensive it’s being, threatening sovereignty, spreading fentanyl lies, and weaponizing trade tariffs like a two-bit mob boss. Even Ontario’s Conservative Premier Doug Ford sounded radical by Canadian standards, urging citizens to “buy Canadian everything” and declaring, “we don’t have to take a backseat to anyone.” Meanwhile, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski looked stranded on a diplomatic charm offensive, left stammering about “complicated trade relationships” while Trump openly fantasized about annexation and plundering Gaza for Trump-branded golf resorts.

The contrast couldn’t be sharper. While Carney met with Jordan’s King Abdullah to call for humanitarian aid and respect for Palestinian sovereignty, Trump’s idea of Middle East diplomacy was gleefully ranting about “owning Gaza” like a foreclosure property.

Back in Canada, opposition leader Charlie Angus summed it up: you don’t negotiate with gangsters. Trump’s record is crystal clear, kneecap Canada’s economy, menace its sovereignty, and provoke enough instability that Canadians are now openly debating military preparedness against an increasingly unhinged United States. Cross-border tourism is collapsing, boycotts of U.S. products are spreading, and Vegas casinos are reportedly already feeling the chill as Canadian visitors stay home.

The verdict from up north is simple: until Trump is gone, America can keep its poisoned chalice of trade deals. Canada is busy building a future that doesn’t include us, and who could blame them?

In the latest episode of “America’s Rotten Institutions on Parade,” Trump’s Department of Justice is sending Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, a man fresh off Trump’s legal payroll, to visit Ghislaine Maxwell in prison. Nothing screams “independent justice” like a convicted child trafficker becoming a star witness in a politically charged cover-up.

Blanche announced he’ll be meeting Maxwell on orders from Trump’s favorite Florida fixer, Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose own political survival now hinges on navigating the Epstein fallout. After days of denying any Epstein list existed, the administration is suddenly embracing “total transparency”, or at least whatever version of “transparency” involves cutting deals with one of Epstein’s chief enablers while continuing to suppress grand jury records that mention Trump’s name.

Maxwell’s lawyer is already lavishing praise on Trump’s “commitment to the truth” while petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn her conviction. Republicans are in open revolt, Democrats are seizing the moment, and the DOJ looks more like a criminal defense firm for Mar-a-Lago than an actual law enforcement agency. If you listen closely, you can hear the Epstein files being whitewashed in real-time.

As that mess unfolds, America’s health care system is collapsing in plain view. With Trump’s dystopian budget bill barely signed, new studies confirm what anyone with a hospital bill already knows: costs are skyrocketing, coverage is shrinking, and millions more Americans are about to be kicked off their insurance. Whether you get coverage through Medicaid, the ACA, or your employer, next year means higher premiums, higher deductibles, and fewer options—by design.

Twelve million Americans, including nearly two million in rural areas, are on track to lose coverage. ACA premiums will explode by 75% by 2026. Employer health plans are shifting more costs onto workers, deductibles are soaring, and the myth of “good insurance” has officially died. This is a deliberate demolition job. Republicans are stripping Medicaid with cruel “work requirements,” gutting subsidies, and lighting the entire insurance market on fire to enrich corporate donors.

Max from UNFTR calls it what it is: a manufactured crisis. Kicking millions off Medicaid destabilizes the entire market, premiums skyrocket, healthier people drop out, and costs spiral even faster. The GOP’s health care blueprint is simple, make Americans pay more, get less, and enrich private insurers in the process.

This isn’t new. Nixon commercialized care, Reagan deregulated it, Clinton botched reform, and Obama tried to patch the mess without touching the profit system itself. Trump is just accelerating the collapse, replacing insurance with junk policies and rationed care while Wall Street pops champagne.

And yet, the solution is staring us in the face. Americans overwhelmingly support Medicare for All, despite corporate Democrats and media elites pretending otherwise. Every other developed nation treats health care as a right. Only America turns it into a bankruptcy machine.

The choice is simple: let Trump burn the system down for profit, or fight for the only fix that actually works. Trump’s plan is clear, collapse the system and sell the rubble. Democrats need to decide if they stand with the public or with the lobbyists.

As if that weren’t enough, Wall Street is now setting the stage for the next financial crash, this time built on pixelated monopoly money. JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank, is exploring loans backed by crypto assets, a stunning flip-flop after years of denouncing Bitcoin as a scam. Trump, who once called crypto a “fraud,” now has his media empire loaded with crypto holdings while JPMorgan prepares to monetize the madness.

The scam is straightforward: lend real dollars against unstable crypto assets that can evaporate overnight. If you default on a car loan, the bank gets a car. If you default on a crypto loan, the bank gets… a pile of worthless tokens no one wants to buy. Chris Norlund puts it bluntly: banks aren’t just creating credit risk, they’re playing hot potato with digital confetti, hoping there’s a bigger fool left holding the bag.

Trump’s grift is embedded in every layer of this mess. His media company holds billions in crypto while he personally hawks low-rent digital garbage, from Trump NFTs to his own line of vanity coins, all while pretending to disdain cryptocurrency in public. It’s the classic Trump routine: trash it onstage, cash in backstage. Now JPMorgan and other lenders are helping prop up the illusion, setting the stage for a market collapse that’s shaping up to be 2008 in a MAGA hat, only this time, it’s Trump coins instead of subprime mortgages.

When the bubble bursts, Wall Street will get the bailouts, Trump will get richer, and Main Street will get austerity lectures from the same crowd that sold the scam. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are steering clear, but JPMorgan’s internal panic is leaking for a reason.

For those who enjoy a bit of schadenfreude with their coffee, Elon Musk is having his own international meltdown, racking up legal threats from California to France to Mexico. Tesla is under fire for false advertising on its so-called self-driving technology, risking a sales ban in California. France is investigating corporate fraud at X (formerly Twitter), and Mexico’s labor authorities are circling SpaceX over labor rights violations. Even as Musk pivots to AI grifts and fantasy Mars colonies, the walls are closing in on every side. The supposed genius billionaire is watching regulators, foreign governments, and former allies line up to drag his empire through the courts—and for once, there are no taxpayer-funded bailouts waiting in the wings.

Yesterday, I mistakenly referred to Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani as native-born. In fact, Mamdani was born in Kampala, Uganda, before immigrating to the United States. Thanks to those who flagged it, accuracy matters, even when our political system doesn’t.