Trump just declared himself king
Our brains are just not trained to understand that the president of the United States wants to make us beggars. The Secretary of Health and Human Services wants to give our kids Measles. The president's corporate sponsor wants to destroy us because we respect his child.*
Our liberal-brained need to have the world make sense is one of the worst obstacles to getting what is happening to our country under the regime of Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and—what Gil Durán calls—The Nerd Reich.
So you may be baffled by Donald Trump launching an unwinnable trade war that's doomed to crash our economy and his approval rating.
Fortunately or unfortunately, a few people see through the dystopia that has become our reality. One of them is Gil Durán, who did something few journalists cared to do. He listened to the same podcasts, read the same books, and went to the same conferences as the tech oligarchs who co-opted the GOP through Peter Thiel and his apprentice JD Vance, who I called the Nerd Führer after I interviewed Gil last year.
And what does Gil think of Trump's apparently ChatGPT-generated splattering of tariffs across the world—sans Russia and North Korea?
Tech Fascists: We shall weaken the nation, destroy the economy, replace the dollar with crypto, replace people with AI, and create new Network State cities everywhere. Normie Journalists: Folks, this is total chaos and incompetence with no structure or plan.
— Gil Durán (@gilduran.com) 2025-04-03T01:42:33.598Z
Now, your logical brain may trust all the research Gil has done and believe that Thiel, Musk, and Vance want to wreck America to replace a willful electorate with a compliant workforce marginalized by technology. But why would Trump risk his presidency to do their bidding?
Because he gets to be king while Musk, Thiel, Vance, or some combination of the three or others act as "CEO."
So what does the king do with his time? He sits in his court—where he charges you a million dollars for a "membership" that allows you to watch him chew—and accepts tributes from those pleading for his beneficence.
Chris Murphy explains it about as well as you can here:
Those trying to understand the tariffs as economic policy are dangerously naive. No, the tariffs are a tool to collapse our democracy. A means to compel loyalty from every business that will need to petition Trump for relief. 1/ A 🧵 to explain his plan and how we fight back.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T03:29:38.437Z
2/ This week you will read many confused economists and political pundits who won’t understand how the tariffs make economic sense. That’s because they don’t. They aren’t designed as economic policy. The tariffs are simply a new, super dangerous political tool.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T03:29:38.438Z
3/ You see, our founders created a President with limited and checked powers. They specifically put the power of spending and taxation in the hands of the legislature. Why? Because they watched how kings and despots used spending and taxes to control their subjects.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T03:29:38.439Z
4/ British kings used taxation to reward loyalty and punish dissent. Our own revolution was spurred by the King’s use of heavy taxation of the colonies to punish our push for self governance. The King’s message was simple: stop protesting and I’ll stop taxing.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T03:29:38.440Z
5/ Trump knows that he can weaken (and maybe destroy) democracy by using spending and taxation in the same way. He is using access to government funds to bully universities, law firms and state and local governments into loyalty pledges.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T03:29:38.441Z
6/ Healthy democracies rely on an independent legal profession to maintain the rule of law, independent universities to guard objective truth and provide forums for dissent to authority, and independent state/local government to counterbalance a powerful federal government.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T03:29:38.442Z
7/ But the private sector also plays a rule to protect democracy. Independent industry has power. The tariffs are Trump’s tool to erode that independence. Now, one by one, every industry or company will need to pledge loyalty to Trump in order to get sanctions relief.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T03:29:38.443Z
8/ What could Trump demand as part of a quiet loyalty pledge? Public shows of support from executives for all his economic policy. Contributions to his political efforts. Promises to police employees’ support for his political opposition.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T03:29:38.444Z
9/ The tariffs are DESIGNED to create economic hardship. Why? So that Trump has a straight face rationale for releasing them, business by business or industry by industry. As he adjusts or grants relief, it’s a win-win: the economy improves and dissent disappears.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T03:29:38.445Z
10/ And once Trump has the lawyers, colleges and industry under his thumb, it becomes very hard for the opposition to have any viable space to maneuver. Trump didn’t invent this strategy. It’s the playbook for democratically elected leaders who want to stay in power forever.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T03:29:38.446Z
11/ The tariffs aren’t economic policy. They are political weapons. But as long as we see this clearly, we can stop him. Public mobilization is working. Today, a few Republicans joined Democrats to vote against one set of tariffs. The people still have the power.
— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) 2025-04-03T03:29:38.447Z
The bad bet in all this is that the people will take this.
Trump is relying on our brains not comprehending the depths of his betrayal of the American system and our freedom to fend for ourselves. He expects us all to be cowards, the way many of our biggest law firms and universities have lined up to prove themselves to be. Musk and The Nerd Reich cannot fully comprehend that other people who aren't tech barons have any sort of agency.
But history tells us that the people will decide—and if we can build the movement we need, we could make that decision sooner rather than later.
What does that movement look like?
If you've heard of "The '3.5% rule': How a small minority can change the world," you know the work of Erica Chenoweth. If you have the time and care about this country and its people, I beg you to watch her summarize her research in a recent talk she gave for The Resistance Lab. The talk begins a bit raggedly, around 12 minutes in.
*Certain brains certainly do understand this. Speaking firmly from my straight white (Jewish) male, middle-class privilege.
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