Category Archives: President Trump

Caligula Reincarnated

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February 6, 2026 — Each time we think we have exhausted the question of what explains the crazy things that Donald Trump says and does, he comes out with something even crazier, which sends us back to the puzzle anew.

The first conclusion, popular during Trump’s first presidency, was that his assertions were never meant to be taken literally.  But as he has followed through on a growing number of threats, from seeking revenge against political opponents to attacking Venezuela and kidnapping its president, this explanation has lost plausibility. read more

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Do Voters Pursue Their Economic Self-Interest?

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September 29, 2025 — As US President Donald Trump goes further and further off the rails in his demolition of long-standing rules and norms, it remains puzzling why so many Americans voted for him and continue to support him.  It is especially puzzling why so many lower and middle-income Americans support him, since his policies tend to their economic disadvantage.  Cutting federal spending on Medicaid and many other government services while simultaneously extending massive tax cuts for high-income households, does not sound crowd-pleasing populism.  But perhaps this is only puzzling to economists. read more

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Did you believe Trump would not enter wars in Mideast?

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June 26, 2025 — Many people believed candidate Trump when he swore to avoid military entanglement.   In my January blog post,  at inauguration time, I wrote these two sentences, as a supposed lookback from the end of Trump’s 1st year:

“Pundits were soon chastising each other for having taken Trump’s isolationist foreign policy to imply a renunciation of military intervention abroad.  They suddenly remembered George W. Bush’s reversal, early in his presidency, of the very high bar that candidate Bush had set for military interventions, when rejecting nation-building in October 2000.” read more

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