Trump’s “Blow Up a Boat, Save 25,000 Lives” Doctrine

The White House unveils its bold new plan to replace due process with vibes, body counts, and creative accounting.

Good morning! Trump convened his cabinet this week for what can only be described as a live-action infomercial in which every secretary took turns praising Trump’s unmatched genius while he ad-libbed numbers like a man auditioning for “Whose Line Is It Anyway: Fiscal Policy Edition.” The star of the show was his new moral math: apparently blowing up a Venezuelan speedboat now “saves” 25,000 to 45,000 American lives, depending on how big a number he feels like saying in the moment. Forget epidemiology, we’re doing governance by vibes and multiplication tables scrawled on a Waffle House napkin.

And then comes the part Trump never quite says aloud: if this is the standard now, if suspected contributions to American deaths are enough to justify executing people on the spot, no trial necessary, then congratulations, we’ve just created the most expansive permission structure for extrajudicial killing in modern American history. Using his logic, any alleged killer could claim moral justification. Luigi Mangione, accused of murdering a UnitedHealthCare executive, could try to argue that the CEO “caused deaths” through corporate policies and thus met Trump’s new threshold for state-sanctioned lethality. This is not a defense of violence; it’s a demonstration of the catastrophic legal and ethical sinkhole Trump is digging. Once you declare that death statistics override due process, you don’t get rule of law, you get a menu of pretexts.

I’m working on a deeper look at this concept.

Trump announced that illegal border crossings are now “zero,” inflation is “fixed,” and prescription drug prices have fallen by “800%,” a number that, if true, suggests pharmaceutical companies are now paying you to take Ozempic. Gas, he insists, is at $1.99 “in many places,” a claim offered with the confidence of a man who hasn’t pumped gas since the Carter administration. Everything good is because of him; everything bad was inherited; everything impossible has been done; and everything he wants to brag about saving, he has personally resurrected with the healing power of his mind.

Then came the cabinet testimonials, a parade of secretaries endorsing the gospel according to Trump. The Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, strutted in like a man auditioning for the role of “Secretary of Call of Duty,” bragging about sinking boats and “putting narco-terrorists at the bottom of the ocean,” which is apparently the new foreign policy doctrine. When reporters asked about the now-infamous second strike, Hegseth snarled that people who “sit in your air-conditioned offices and nitpick” could never understand “dark and difficult things in the dead of night,” which would be more convincing if Trump hadn’t just claimed every blown-up skiff saves more American lives than climate policy, OSHA, and clean water combined. The agriculture secretary announced that 800,000 people have been kicked off food stamps and presented this as a triumph of compassion. The EPA boasted about saving billions by simply… not doing environmental regulation. And the health secretary proudly declared victory over menopause by removing an FDA warning label. Somewhere, an actual public health expert screamed into a pillow.

The high point, for sheer whiplash, came when Trump celebrated “ending the Green New Scam,” which is his term for undoing any climate, clean air, or environmental protection that might prevent Americans from dying. This is particularly rich coming in the same breath as his claim that sinking one drug boat saves more American lives than air pollution, poverty, heat waves, ultra-processed food, or insurance-denied medical care combined. By his logic, each cartel skiff is basically a floating Chernobyl, while coal plants and chemical refineries are just misunderstood friends.

He wrapped the whole spectacle with a torrent of insults aimed at immigrants, Democrats, and any governor not currently kneeling at his altar. Then he assured the press, who he says wouldn’t survive his cognitive test, that he’s sharper today than 45 years ago, which is a remarkable thing to say when you’ve just confused policy, fantasy, and the plot of a Jason Bourne movie for two straight hours.

Costco, the nation’s undisputed temple of bulk everything, has now taken the extraordinary step of suing the Trump administration over his “reciprocal” and “fentanyl” tariffs, the same tariffs Trump imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, a statute that doesn’t even mention tariffs but which he treats like an all-purpose wand for economic punishment. Costco’s problem is simple: those tariffs are hammering a business model built on stable prices and razor-thin margins, especially on items like fruit, vegetables, and consumer imports from China, Mexico, and Canada. Worse, a looming December 15 liquidation deadline means a massive chunk of their tariff payments will become final and potentially non-refundable even if the Supreme Court, which sounded openly skeptical during oral arguments, rules the tariffs illegal. So Costco has marched into the U.S. Court of International Trade asking for two things: stop the government from finalizing more duties, and guarantee that if the tariffs fall, Costco actually gets its money back. Trump’s White House insists the tariffs are “lawful” and warns of “enormous” consequences if they’re overturned, but Costco’s suit makes clear what the business world has felt for months: Trump’s improvisational trade war is now colliding with constitutional limits, economic reality, and companies that no longer feel safe just silently absorbing the damage.

In a warning signal for Republicans, the GOP barely held a reliably red House seat in Tennessee’s 7th district, and only after flooding it with money, manpower, and full-blown presidential theatrics. Matt Van Epps, the Trump-endorsed candidate, squeaked by with roughly a nine-point margin, despite the district going for Trump by around 22 points last year.

A double-digit swing toward the Democrats in a heartland red district matters. It shows that even in places where Trump is still popular, voters are beginning to respond to affordability, cost-of-living, and economic squeeze messages rather than identity politics or culture-war appeals. The Democratic challenger, Aftyn Behn, made her pitch around lowering everyday costs for working-class families, groceries, housing, kids, not ideological flash.

What happened in Tennessee suggests Democrats may not need to rely solely on anti-Trump sentiment to compete next year, just a message that speaks to real financial pain. If that pattern holds, 2026 could be a wild midterm for a GOP majority already built on shaky ground.

As Trump’s cabinet cheers him on like a studio audience watching a man saw a woman in half onstage, the rest of the country is quietly living in the consequences, rising costs, rising uncertainty, and a government increasingly governed by whatever number Trump blurts out next. The Tennessee results may be the first hint that voters are no longer buying the magic show. And if the spell is finally breaking, the next year might belong not to whoever shouts the loudest, but to whoever actually shows up with genuine answers for people trying to survive the chaos.