The Mafioso Tariff Doctrine: Trump’s Free-Money Fantasy and the Epstein Anchor

Delusions of grandeur, drawings of women, and six imaginary wars: Trump’s Turnberry meltdown wasn’t just embarrassing it was economically deranged

Donald Trump wrapped up his tartan-swathed press conference at Turnberry with a dizzying barrage of golf club grandiosity, hostage negotiation fan fiction, and nuclear nostalgia, but it was his fantasy economics that sent international analysts into fits of bewilderment. If there were any lingering doubts about Trump’s grasp of economic reality, or, frankly, his grip on reality at all, they were well and truly obliterated by the double feature that unfolded across the Atlantic this weekend: Trump’s incoherent press conference with the UK Prime Minister, and the scathing, forensic teardown by Times Radio’s Scott Lucas on The Trump Report.

Let’s begin with the delusion now enshrined as Trump’s “historic” trade deal with the EU, a deal so loaded with inconsistencies, half-baked numbers, and bald-faced lies that even the EU negotiators appear to be holding their noses while calling it “the best we could get in bad circumstances.” Trump crowed that it was the “biggest deal ever made,” which is odd considering it’s still just a framework and not a finalized agreement. The key feature? A 15% tariff on EU imports, down from the 30% he threatened weeks ago, but still a massive tax hike, especially for a man who thinks tariffs are “free money.”

As Scott Lucas explained on Times Radio, Trump appears genuinely incapable of understanding that tariffs are not a magical source of government revenue. They’re taxes, paid by American companies and passed on to American consumers. The very people who voted for Trump in his Rust Belt revival fantasy will now be paying more for EU products, or watching their employers eat the losses until they can’t anymore. Already, U.S. automakers like GM and Stellantis are reporting billion-dollar hits in quarterly losses, unable to absorb the new costs without raising prices. Inflation, once on a steady post-pandemic decline, is now expected to climb again, alongside interest rates the Federal Reserve can no longer afford to cut. And yet Trump touts this as economic genius.

Why? Because, as Lucas put it, Trump still sees tariffs the way a third-rate mob boss sees “protection money.” To him, the U.S. government is his racket. Tariffs are tribute. And when people question the logic, he retreats into Mafioso metaphor, complete with threats of 30% punishment tariffs, demands for “respect,” and promises that the world will pay him “trillions.” We are in full extortion cosplay.

This absurdity would be laughable, if it weren’t also camouflaging Trump’s deeper desperation. The timing of the EU announcement wasn’t just about trade. It was an attempted sleight of hand, a frantic effort to bury the avalanche of bad press from the Epstein scandal that refuses to dissipate. But as Lucas noted, you can’t bury an earthquake with a press release, especially when the tremors are coming from within your own base. Trump’s loyalist circles are not buying the “hoax” narrative anymore. They want answers about the birthday sketch, about the drawing, about the White House briefings. And about why Trump suddenly remembers throwing Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago but forgets whether he was briefed by his own DOJ.

Trump’s Turnberry remarks, meanwhile, were a 90-minute collision of self-congratulation and neurological red flags. He ping-ponged from topic to topic, at one point praising the UK’s “Rolls-Royce nuclear plants” as “a great brand” while boasting, “We opened up nuclear about two months ago and it’s now safe and very inexpensive”, a claim that would alarm both physicists and regulators. Then came his Gaza proposal: “We’re going to set up food centers… and we’re going to do it in conjunction with some very good people… no boundaries… we’re not going to have fences.” A minute later, he drifted into energy delirium: “You can take a thousand times more energy out of a hole in the ground this big. This big. It’s called oil and gas.” Wind energy, he insisted, is “a disaster,” an “ugly monster” that “kills all your birds” and “wipes out hundreds of bald eagles.” And just to clear up any confusion: “If you shoot a bald eagle in the United States, they put you in jail for five years. And yet windmills knock out hundreds of them. They don’t do anything. You explain that.”

On Epstein, Trump resurrected his favorite exculpatory fable: “For years I wouldn’t talk to Jeffrey Epstein… he stole people that worked for me… I threw him out of the place. Persona.” He then dismissed mounting evidence, including a sketch allegedly drawn for Epstein, with a baffling denial: “I don’t do drawings. Sometimes people say, ‘Would you draw a building?’ And I’ll draw four lines and a little roof, you know, for a charity… But I don’t do drawings of women. That I can tell you.”

His statements on the Israeli hostages suggested both a lack of understanding and a deeply disturbing flirtation with mass-casualty logic. “When they give [the hostages] up, they no longer have a shield… Some people would say, ‘Well, that’s the price you pay.’ But we don’t like to say that… You could also say speed might be better for the hostages… You go through, you know, with speed, you may have a better chance.” A sentence later, he reversed course again and praised Netanyahu’s caution, claiming, “Israel has a lot of responsibility… they’re hampered by the fact that you still have 20 hostages.”

His foray into Scottish independence was no more coherent. “I predicted what was going to happen the last time… and I made a correct prediction… There was a little bit of a restriction like 50 or 75 years before you could take another vote… I don’t know the first minister but I’ve heard great things about him… I’m meeting him today. So maybe I’ll have a better opinion then.”

And just when you thought the incoherence had peaked, Trump pulled a claim out of the geopolitical ether: “We’ve stopped six wars in the last, I’m averaging about a war a month. Congo was just, and Rwanda was just done… I said, I don’t want to trade with anybody that’s killing each other.” He credited his trade leverage for brokering peace in a region that’s been mired in conflict for decades, finishing with, “We settled it through trade… I’m going to call the two prime ministers… and congratulate them.”

In short, it was the kind of performance that would get an intern fired and a world leader sectioned, but for Trump, it was just another afternoon at his ghost-haunted golf course, with the Prime Minister nodding politely as the wheels came off in real time.

And throughout it all, the central theme remains the same: Trump cannot separate delusion from governance. He’s not negotiating with allies; he’s threatening them into submission. He’s not calming inflation; he’s pouring gasoline on it. He’s not clearing his name in the Epstein saga; he’s flailing in its quicksand, hoping that one more lie will make it go away. But lies don’t vanish under pressure, they implode. And Trump’s magical thinking is nearing gravitational collapse.

The EU, for its part, seems to understand this. Their 15% concession isn’t an endorsement of Trump’s methods, it’s a geopolitical time-buying exercise. The bloc is securing U.S. energy and weapons to shore up defenses, especially as Trump and his entourage continue undermining NATO and threatening Ukraine aid. European leaders are gambling that if they can ride out the storm and get what they need now, they might survive the madness long enough to negotiate with someone, anyone, sane in the future.

But Trump? He’s already lost the plot. As Lucas summarized, the man who once courted QAnon now finds himself targeted by its suspicions. The Epstein revelations, long waved away as conspiracy, now encircle him like vultures. He can’t release the files without implicating himself. He can’t silence his followers without alienating them. And he can’t escape the truth with another round of golfing press conferences and imaginary peace deals.

There are moments when the world needs a leader, and then there are moments when the world has to endure a delusional ex-reality host who thinks tax hikes are blessings and that drawing stick figures counts as diplomacy. We are clearly in the latter.