Good Morning From America's Freefall!
Good Morning from America’s Freefall! Sometime between his second breakfast and fourth victory lap, Donald Trump signed a stack of tariffs so economically catastrophic that global markets responded the only way they could: by hemorrhaging value like a burst artery. With the stroke of a Sharpie, Trump vaporized an estimated $2.5 trillion in market value, the worst since the 2020 coronavirus crash. Trump now has the dubious distinction of being the only U.S. president to preside over two of the largest market crashes in modern history. Welcome to Trump Math, where costs are imaginary, China always blinks first, and the Dow is apparently a witch.
Overnight, the Dow Jones cratered over 1,200 points in futures, tech giants like Apple and Nvidia nosedived, and even Tesla, Elon Musk’s floundering vanity project, slid another 6%, as if gravity and karma finally agreed to team up. Meanwhile, crude oil prices plunged by 8%, dragging the energy sector down with them. But don’t worry, Trump’s got this. According to The Economist, yesterday was “the day of the ruin.” Other analysts were less poetic, simply muttering phrases like “unmitigated disaster” and “who gave this man a pen?”
Of course, the administration insists it’s all going splendidly. DOGE, Musk’s side hustle as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (or Department of Gaslighting Everything), announced it had canceled 47 so-called wasteful contracts, boasting $87.5 million in value and $30.2 million in “savings.” No details, no congressional oversight, just a shiny gold badge and a social media post that looked more like a crypto scam than a federal update. We can now assume DOGE operates with the same rigor as Musk’s Mars timeline.
Which brings us to JD Vance, who has apparently taken up the mantle of U.S. Ambassador to International Alienation. After bombing at Munich and lurching around Greenland like a geopolitical bulldozer, Vance has effectively fractured U.S.–European trust, triggering what German analysts are now calling a “Zeitenwende”— a change of era. The message from Europe is simple: The alliance is dead. Long live the transactional empire. Somewhere, Macron is chain-smoking through a single tear.
Not to be outdone, Musk is having his own meltdown. This week, he claimed DOGE has already saved taxpayers $140 billion, despite earlier stating the agency’s goal was $1 trillion. (We checked. It’s not even close.) Let's call this what it is: Musk Math, a cousin of Trump Math, but with more emojis and fewer receipts. Naturally, markets rejoiced at rumors that Musk might be stepping away from DOGE altogether, Tesla shares even bounced 6% on the mere possibility of his exit. Musk, true to form, called those reports “fake news” and blamed his poor stock performance on “being in government,” because of course nothing is ever his fault.
To add one final grenade to the discourse, Musk reposted a claim that Democrats are responsible for a terrorist attack on a Tesla, because apparently progressive criticism now causes explosions. The original post labeled the suspect a terrorist and blamed “Democrat incitement,” with Musk nodding along via the universally unhinged
emoji. No verification, no evidence—just vibes and defamation. The man who champions free speech has discovered a new genre: libel as performance art.
If that weren’t enough unhinged billionaire behavior for one morning, Representative Adam Schiff dropped a bombshell this week: Elon Musk, he says, is actively participating in a campaign of intimidation against Judge James Boasberg, including the use of his massive platform to circulate personally identifying information about the judge’s family. That’s right, the world’s richest man is allegedly helping harass a federal judge over a deportation case gone horribly wrong. The same Musk who styles himself a free-speech absolutist is now playing enforcer for authoritarian power, weaponizing his audience to doxx a judge and his loved ones. We’re well past “slippery slope” territory. We’re in "dictator cosplay meets tech bro vengeance fantasy."
And if you’re wondering how the rest of the world handles authoritarians who declare martial law and try to storm their own congress, South Korea just provided a master class. This week, the country impeached President Yoon, who attempted his own January 6 cosplay, declaring martial law, ordering arrests, and deploying tanks against elected officials. The people pushed back, the courts moved swiftly, and the final ruling was unanimous: illegal, indefensible, gone. Yoon has now lost presidential immunity and may soon face criminal charges. One Korean lawmaker summed it up beautifully:
“Governments are short-lived. The people are eternal.”
If only American institutions had the same clarity, or courage.
Have a strong cup of coffee. It’s not just a bad day on the markets. It’s a clarifying moment in history. The empire is unwell, its clowns are in control, and its billionaires are tweeting threats at judges. But somewhere in the fog, resistance is rising. The people, eternal, are waking up.
In time, history may remember those who dared to fight back against the machine not as vandals, but as visionaries, and they may become the heroes of graphic novels, like Guy Fawkes.
Just for fun...
Ballad of the Battery Breakers
(for the future’s future folk)
They came not with bombs, but with bricks in their fists,
To the temples of lithium, greenwashed and slick.
Where algorithms watched from the glass of the wall,
And a priesthood of venture would profit from all.
They called them terrorists, vandals, and worse,
For scratching the paint of the billionaire’s hearse.
But the songs tell a tale that the victors won’t teach
Of the night steel was scorched in the name of free speech.
One spark in the dark and the showroom ignites,
A flicker of justice, a flash of new rites.
Not hate, but defiance, not chaos, but code
A message: “This far, and no further this road.”
So the Teslas may gleam in the archives of law,
But the rebels live on in the lines that we draw.
Not for wreckage or wrath, but the power to say:
We are not machines, and we won’t be obeyed.