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Coffee Break: Trump’s TACO Designed to Manipulate Markets

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Trump’s TACO today employed one of the key elements of U.S. strategy in the Ramadan War on Iran: using deception to influence financial markets.

Trump Says Jump, Markets Say ‘How High?’

Trump’s TACO today postponed his threat of Saturday, March 31 to “hit and obliterate (Iran’s) various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST” early this morning. just in time to reassure the markets, but after Yves’ daily Iran War update.

Here’s what Trump posted on Truth Social:

I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

The markets responded as expected:

The Kobeissi letter detailed Trump’s TACO and the market’s response:

And the by now inevitable accusations of Trump insiders manipulating prediction markets for personal profit are already flying:

The Age of Lies Can’t Last Forever

I wrote last year about what I’ve called The Interregnum of Unreality which depends on a shared pretense that the western financial markets are robust and the American military is undefeatable.

I’ve also posted about what Hakan Illatikdi calls “The Spodocene.”

As a refresher, let me quote Illatikdi again:

Nothing seems to have changed, and yet everything is about to change.

Our era is exactly there.

The Spodocene is not yet the next state. It is the antechamber. The system continues to function, but it does so erratically, inefficiently and increasingly violently against itself. The energy that circulates no longer produces order, but friction. The mechanisms that once guaranteed stability — markets, institutions, narratives of progress — continue to operate, but have lost their ability to structure the whole. The result is not immediate collapse, but prolonged instability: a social, political and subjective warming that heralds an inevitable transition.

Others are noticing something is off here as well.

Market Manipulation as Military Strategy

Matt Stoller’s Big Newsletter yesterday focused on what he called “a weird part of Trump’s Iran war strategy.”

Here’s how Matt breaks it down:

…the Trump administration has focused on manipulating markets as part of their war strategy. The most important scorecard for the White House is the value of stocks, so they cannot let them fall. That’s true for a number of reasons. The administration is composed of rich men, and they do not want to lose money. Also, the GOP establishment is run by Wall Street, so Trump’s hold on the Republicans falls apart if equities truly fall. We’ll see how loyal his MAGA base is with the Dow in a 1970s style downdraft; already there are signs they are getting frustrated, with his approval on gas prices at just 27%, vs 66% disapprove. That’s eating into his core.

More importantly, the American-led hegemonic order really is centered on the U.S. stock market and dollar denominated assets. 18% of our equities are owned by foreigners, and Trump’s domestic economic framework is organized around pulling foreign investment into America to build data centers. So if the market craters, that agenda falls apart, Arab allies lose their financial stake in the system, and Iran will sense weakness. But of course, manipulation can’t be the endgame. In the short-term, you can spin, but to actually persuade the markets you are winning in the long run you have to actually win on the ground.

Stoller then proceeds to document how the Trump regime has manipulated markets during each of the first four weeks of the war.

First by timing the attacks for early on a Saturday morning to avoid shocking the markets. In the second and third weeks Trump issued statements to calm and then lift the markets. In week four, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant claimed that the Strait of Hormuz was increasingly open to oil flows.

Stoller’s piece dropped yesterday, after Trump’s Saturday threats but before Trump’s TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) this morning, but he did note one important thing:

It’s a very odd situation, to have military threats and timing dictated in part by what will worry speculators. But the half-life of these kinds of comments is shortening; I suspect the market will continue its slow slide. Market participants, and political opponents, are giving less credence to Bessent and Trump, because it’s clear they aren’t in control of the situation.
…
It surprised me that it’s taken this long for investors to catch on to the market manipulation. For the most part, Wall Street has gone along with the Trump administration’s spin. I don’t generally think speculators are gullible. But in this case, they have been. Iran, to them, has no credibility in the markets. On CNBC, Jim Cramer veers between confidence the war is over, and disbelief that this war is not under Trump’s control. Unlike his usual schtick of calling CEOs or billionaires and asking them what big money is going to do, he has no sources in Iran he can call.

But not everyone is as easily fooled by Trump’s TACO as Jim Cramer.

What If I Told You No Talks Are Happening?

Sky News by contrast has sources to call in Israel, and even they are doubting Trump:

Even administration mouthpiece Axios had to report Iran’s denial that any such negotiations are being held with the Trump administration, despite Trump’s TACO and their own (seemingly false) report of the 16th:

Iran denied any such talks had taken place and claimed Trump was just trying to calm the energy markets.

An Israeli official told Axios that U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner had been in touch with the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

Trump did not name the Iranian interlocutor, saying he did not want to get him killed, but claimed the U.S. and Iran were aligned on many of the key issues. “We are dealing with a man that I believe is the most respected, not the supreme leader, we have not heard from him,” Trump said.

Despite Trump’s claims of growing consensus, a source with knowledge of the discussions said there did not appear to have been any direct talks yet between Ghalibaf and Trump’s team,

Ghalibaf himself denied that any “negotiations” had taken place and called the U.S. claims an effort to manipulate markets and “escape the quagmire in which the U.S. and Israel are trapped.”

The source said Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey passed messages between the U.S. and Iran on Sunday and were attempting to set up a call on Monday between Ghalibaf and Trump’s team.

Drop Site News has more on the Iranian denials (via AliceX):

Iran immediately dismissed his claims. “Fake news is intended to manipulate financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire in which America and Israel are trapped,” wrote Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the Speaker of Iran’s parliament, in a post on X.

A senior Iranian official confirmed to Drop Site that “no new developments have occurred” between Washington and Tehran. The official was not authorized to make public statements and spoke on condition of anonymity. The U.S. has continued to send messages through third countries, he said, but Iran has only reiterated its position and has not engaged in any back and forth.

“There aren’t any negotiations taking place. The Iranian side has simply communicated its conditions to them and even that has been done indirectly,” the official said. He added that Iranian officials had previously expressed their position on ending the war in general terms to regional countries acting as intermediaries, but that they “firmly deny” claims that any talks had taken place between Iranian and American officials.

According to the official, Iran’s conditions for an end to the war include a simultaneous ceasefire in Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq. Iran has consistently said that it will not accept a ceasefire similar to the one requested by Israel and the U.S. that ended the “12-Day War” in June 2025.

Deception is the Trump regime’s go-to tactic, but it is also a deeply rooted Western strategy.

The West’s Most Dangerous Weapon and Iran’s Counter

Anti-Zionist Israeli Alon Mizrahi addressed the deep strategies at play with Trump’s TACO and Iran’s response:

What is the West’s most lethal most dangerous weapon?

It is not even something we think about as a weapon. It is not a missile. It is not a ship. It is not an airplane.

The West’s strategic and most danger dangerous weapon is the lie.
…
This is the centerpiece of western identity. The lie, the lie of freedom, the lie of democracy, the lie of prosperity, the lie of equality, the lie of seeking peace, the lie of diplomacy, the lie of feminism, the lie of green energy and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on. It is endless.

We live in a world made completely of lies. No part of the world that we see in the west and anywhere that’s influenced by the west is true. No part

As observers of the Ukraine War and the Iran-Israel missile exchanges have long suspected, tactical lying is a known part of U.S. military doctrine:

But let’s go back to Mizrahi for his explanation of Iran’s fiendish counter-strategy:

Iran’s weapon in this war is the truth.

And what Iran has been doing is cutting through the fake fabricated engineered existence that the west and westerns powers have assumed is going to go on forever unchallenged, unbroken and I’m going to give you some examples.

The idea that Iran’s Arab neighbors, the western puppets, can create this fake reality, this American made, …fake bubble, this fake world where money from oil flows endlessly and they can buy the whole world and every sports team and media outlet and skyscraper and piece of infrastructure that they want anywhere in the world while oppressing their people and being really slave regimes, slave systems while relying on the US to sustain this fake false structure is now collapsing.

Iran has made this lie null and void. It’s gone. It’s dead. Iran introduced truth to the Persian Gulf. Now, all the illusions and the lies and the stories that the West tried to tell about the Persian Gulf, about Dubai, they are gone. They are gone.

And Iran managed to do this by using its power strategically, thoughtfully, not in a wild and savage way, in a very strategic manner.

This is one lie that Iran killed and the West is now weakened for it. Because every time you remove a a layer of lies, the west shrinks and is revealed in its true monstrous identity or character.

The other lie that Iran exposed and is now gone out the window is the idea that the US is this unstoppable military that no one can contend with, no one can withstand, no one. They just crush. They just crush.

Exposed as a lie. The US can do nothing to open the Strait of Hormuz. They can do nothing. They can do nothing. That the two aircraft carriers that the US sent to destroy Iran now ran away.

Israeli dissidents are not the only ones noticing.

The New York Times Calls Out Trump’s TACO & Lies

The editorial board of the U.S. paper of record called out Trump’s lies this weekend:

From his first announcement of the attack on Iran on Feb. 28, President Trump has issued a stream of falsehoods about the war. He has said Iran wants to engage in negotiations, though its government shows no sign of it. He has claimed that the United States “destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military capability” when Tehran continues to inflict damage throughout the region. He has said the war is almost complete even as he calls in reinforcements from around the globe.

…

Yet lying about war is uniquely corrosive. When a president signals that the truth does not matter in wartime, he encourages his cabinet and his generals to mislead the country and one another about how the war is going. He creates a culture in which deadly mistakes and even war crimes can become more common. He makes it harder to win by hiding the realities of conflict and by making allies wary of joining the fight. Ultimately, he undermines American values and interests.

Of course the NYT would love to support Trump’s war on Iran, they just don’t like how he’s selling it:

There is a reasonable debate to have about the wisdom of this war. Iran’s murderous government does indeed present a threat — to its own people, to its region and to global stability. Mr. Trump could make a fact-based argument for confronting the regime now, especially to prevent it from menacing its neighbors and, above all, from developing a nuclear weapon. We are skeptical, but we acknowledge that there is a case to be made.

Mark Ames calls out the NYT for their family blogging:

In a separate tweet, Ames also points out that while Judith Miller has been cancelled for her 2003-era pro-war lies published by the NYT, her male co-writer Max “Aluminum Tubes” Gordon is still at it, now for the WSJ.

Max still has his screwball:

While power plants are generally considered to be civilian infrastructure, current and former U.S. military officials say that an adversary’s electrical infrastructure can sometimes qualify as a legitimate military target.

Under the Law of Armed Conflict, if striking power infrastructure makes a concrete contribution to a military operation and the potential harm to civilians is minimized, it can be permissible, they say.

“Expected civilian harm–including second order effects from loss of electricity–cannot be excessive relative to the anticipated military advantage,” said David Deptula, a retired Air Force Lieutenant General who helped direct attacks during the 1991 Desert Storm campaign to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait. “The choice between temporary disruption and permanent destruction can influence this analysis.”

Wait, What About the GCC and More Importantly, Their Investment Funds?

It’s too easy to point out the lies of the MSM, so let’s end with a look at how The Financial Times is gingerly beginning to grapple with one of the lies that Alon Mizrahi says the Ramadan War has exposed, namely the supposed endless wealth of the Gulf monarchies. The column is by Mohamed El-Erian, the Rene M Kern professor of practice at Wharton School, chief economic adviser at Allianz and chair of Gramercy Funds Management:

…among the many other questions investors and policymakers should consider is a financial one: how will the relationship of the Gulf countries with international capital markets change in the short term?

The six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — have collectively grown over decades into one of the most consequential forces in global finance, investing across the world.

But there is a risk that increased domestic need for funds in the wake of the war may have a temporary impact on those flows even if the long-term position of the countries is not in question. This would have implications for global interest rates and the distribution of funding, as the world has come to rely on GCC capital more deeply than many realise.
…
The GCC countries have generated a current account surplus of more than $800bn in the past four years. They have deployed their ample resources with sophistication, managing their wealth for current and future generations.
…
Any change in global capital flows would come at an already challenging time for markets. Large budget deficits in advanced economies and the need to refinance maturing debt are driving up global bond issuance. At the same time, the AI revolution has huge financing needs and a wall of corporate refinancing looms elsewhere.

The net result? “Higher-for-longer” borrowing costs that have a disruptive impact on virtually every country, corporation and household, which compounds the longer the war lasts. It’s an environment that also risks aggravating existing financial fragilities — such as those associated with the AI bubble, certain segments of private credit and some sovereign debt concerns — while potentially exposing new ones.

The GCC nations will restore their oil exports and the region will retain its status as a transport and tourist hub. I have no doubt about that.

Somehow Professor El-Erian’s lack of doubt doesn’t convince me of much, how about you, dear readers?

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46 comments

  2. But What Do I Know?

    My default when I read a Mohammed El-Erian pronouncement is to assume it is wrong. Why people keep republishing, discussing, or in general paying attention to anything he writes is beyond me. His track record is pretty bad, so much so that I used to believe that Pimco fund managers bet against him when he worked there.

    1. Yves Smith

      Oh, he better than a lot of Big Names Who Deign to Give the Great Unwashed the Benefit of Their Wisdom…but he does tend to sell leading edge conventional wisdom.

      1. chuck roast

        Yes, IMO he rode Gross’s coat tails for years, and they both sat on the decades long bond rally. They didn’t have to be geniuses. Anyway, his Overton Window is narrow enough not to discomfort the golfers. And speaking of tails, it would be nice to hear Nassim Talib weigh in on the current fattening of tails.

    2. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      I was attempting to convey that he’s full of it in a subtle way, guess I was too subtle.

      1. But What Do I Know?

        No, your subtlety was spot on–perhaps it was that my comment came across as disagreeing with you when I meant to affirm your judgment.

        1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

          ah, no worries. I mentioned his role at Wharton to discredit him, he he.

    3. mrsyk

      Thank you Nat. My takeaway here is that El-Erian is trying to push the PG rated narrative regarding the already in-the-pipeline destruction to the US economy. That last line, The GCC nations will restore their oil exports and the region will retain its status as a transport and tourist hub. I have no doubt about that. I am certainly having my doubts. It’s like Iran is no longer in the room. Does he know something I don’t?

      1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

        doubtful. They don’t learn things at Wharton, they meet people and learn what to unlearn.

        1. Giovanni Barca

          Did anyone take Ed Hermann’s classes? I know he was a prof of finance at Wharton and I never breathed a whiff of his day job but from his writings on media he seemed like someone allergic to bs. Not that he was infallible in his critiques but sternly opposed to NYT-Wapo group think. And by “did anyone take his classes” I am not asking the commentariat so much as wondering how he got tenure and wasn’t driven out.

    4. johnherbiehancock

      This part is so obviously tacked on & out of sync with the rest of his statement:

      The GCC nations will restore their oil exports and the region will retain its status as a transport and tourist hub. I have no doubt about that.

      LOL. Did he willingly add it or did his editor threaten him?

  3. ChrisFromGA

    Well, if Martin Armstrong is to be believed, and I tend to like him, the Gulf countries are heavily in debt with borrowed money contingent on future oil revenues. I haven’t verified his claim, so take it with a grain of salt. It seems plausible, as they have to fund a lot of infrastructure including AI data centers, a few of which have smoking holes in them.

    And I am not so sure about tourism making a swift comeback. Images like Dubai hotels getting droned tend to imprint on peoples minds, usually in the amygdala. You know, that reptilian part of us that doesn’t like being eaten by a larger predator, or seeing brains splattered on the walls of a Dubai hotel room.

    If 9-11 and COVID are any example, it may take years, not months or weeks for tourism to normalize.

    1. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

      everyone is leveraged, why would the GCCs be an exception? I don’t think tourism will return until the monarchies are swept away, if then.

      1. mrsyk

        Wonder how they are feeling about the Warner Bros deal now? Dare I enjoy some schadenfreude?
        Lol, dare I spell it, nope. That’s a copy ‘n paste word.

        1. Pat

          Might be wishful thinking on my part, but I am really wondering if that deal actually goes through. Unless the Ellisons have that money in an escrow account it may not be available when they expect.

            1. mrsyk

              I would think that the national security risk poised by China’s Tencent’s investment would sink the deal, given the current “China bad” climate.

          2. Lost in OR

            I keep reading that Oracle is rated BBB, a short stumble from junk. The timing couldn’t be better. I’m hoping the deal goes through.

  4. David in Friday Harbor

    Terrific post. Grifters gonna grift.

    TACO is just another Big Lie that facilitates their endless insider trading. When “Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste” is your business model, what a boon it must be to be able to create crisis after crisis.

  5. Curious

    I wonder how much is human psychology. For example, I’ve read that children that are abused will blame themselves and think they are bad, and their parents are fundamentally good. This is more sustainable for their psyche than thinking they are good and they are surrounded by evil they have no control over. The markets (in my opinion) are showing similar defensive mechanisms. No way we could be at the whims by a shameless liar who is in over his head and failing for the exits.

    1. Mikel

      Take away the new wars, the casinos, and the LLM hallucinations and what else is being hyped that isn’t at least 20 years old already?

  6. Zuluf4

    On Trump and his tweets (or “truths” if you will), there is always the danger that the Iranians will one day take something he says at face value, and respond proactively rather than wait to see if it’s really true. And as is slowly dawning on everyone, Iran can, and will, quickly go up the escalatory ladder with disastrous consequences.

  7. KD

    The GCC nations will restore their oil exports and the region will retain its status as a transport and tourist hub. I have no doubt about that.

    Somehow Professor El-Erian’s lack of doubt doesn’t convince me of much, how about you, dear readers?

    Don’t worry, President Trump is behind them all 1000% percent.

  8. karma fubar

    Yves has mentioned in the war coverage, and I am paraphrasing a bit here, that financial time moves faster than military time, which in turn moves faster than political time. However, due largely to the ubiquity of the internet and the financialization of everything, there appears to be something new now moving even faster than finacial time – gambling time. However, a lot of the major plays look like they are made with insider information, so it may actually be better described as crime time.

  9. Sunlight Disinfects

    Manipulate Markets … and Profit?

    In the previous thread, a commenter wrote about suspicious trades.

  10. Sunlight Disinfects

    The psychological manipulation is also important.

    After all, he hasn’t fully TACO-ed. He’s only paused.

    =

    Trump is attempting to continue the pretense that:

    ● Trump is desirous of peace (riff-ing on his “peacemaker” baloney);

    ● Iran is weak and thus seeks talks.

    This seems designed to:

    ● Improve troop moral;

    ● Shift blame to Iran when the pretended ‘peace talks’ fail.

    Trump repeats propaganda narratives, yet people fail to notice or to connect this to an explicit strategy:

    ● They could’ve made a deal!

    ● They want to talk

    ● I care about the Iranian people

    and more.

    1. St Jacques

      Yep, but like you suggested earlier, and I concur, TACO is a wonderful way to manipulate markets.

    2. ChrisRUEcon

      #Concur … that this is what he is trying to do.

      However:
      • I don’t think this moves the needle on the widening #MAGASchism. GOP MSM is carrying water for Trump, but on the interwebs, where very online people get more of their information from podcasts, the likes of Tucker and Candace are winning against the establishment.
      • Same with troop morale. Does Trump think that there’s no internet access on carriers? I can imagine that many of the deployed have seen/heard of, and are far more sympathetic to retired Marine Brian McGinnis’ “No One Wants To Fight For Israel” dissension battle cry than Trump’s disingenuous, erratic good-cop/bad-cop Truth Social kayfabe. #notFoolingAnyone

  11. Louis Fyne

    for the record, the trades hit the tape at 6:49 ET—15 min. not 5. (they stick out like a sore thumb on the charts). $1.5 billion is the notional value. You need a minimum of about $120 million in your Whitewater cattle futures account to open those contracts.

    I’ll vote for anyone party who opens a congressional inquiry, not holding my breath—-cuz I bet the actor donates to both parties, lmao.

  12. St Jacques

    I vote for Lindsey Graham and other political warmongers and their slimey thunk tank and lobbyist associates to lead any ground attack in Iran – in person.

  13. ChrisRUEcon

    Ohhhh NAT … so much to dive into here, and thanks as always.

    Firstly:

    One of Trump’s greatest gifts as a political entity has been, and continues to be, the “lifting of the veil” …

    From his first term where he exposed Dem fecklessness by parlaying far less of a mandate than say, the legendary 111th Congress, into raw power to do most of what he wanted to. I keep this QuoteTweet bookmarked to remind people of this unmasking.

    Market manipulation via newswire can now join executive orders on the trophy shelf. As always, establishment media will focus on Trump, but what about the absolute chicanery of HFT algo’s?! This is what determines commodity value? Hyman Minsky and Abba Lerner are high-fiving from the beyond as they watch casino capitalism and seller’s inflation do their thing on command as if by marionette strings.

    #whatATimeToBeAlive

  14. The Rev Kev

    Regarding the Age of Lies. It was only a coupla years ago that Putin referred to the West as an Empire of Lies so likely he really did understand the West. As for Trump and his pals manipulating the markets through the use of his office as President, he has been doing this right from the get go. But to my mind that does not make him a business man but rather a huckster. The difference? A business person values stability and predictability so that they can make decisions on plans and know that they can be carried out over the course of several years without some war bumping their shoulder. Trump values chaos, subterfuge, lies and manipulation. How are real business people suppose to cope with all that. They set up supply chains and then Trump announces general tariffs. Oil was coming out the Gulf like clockwork but then Trump starts a war reducing that flow to a trickle. But at the heart of this is what Michael Hudson talks about. How it is the financial economy running the economy rather than the industrial economy where things are actually made. And Trump is a creature of the former.

  16. Carolinian

    Very good piece. Thank you.

    Of course our dilemma is that someone like Trump should never have become president and the Democrats did more to make that happen than prevent it.

    TINA is a thing it seems.

    1. Carolinian

      Playing with my Christmas gift radio I catch the promo:”tomorrow morning on NPR–will Trump peace negotiations continue?”

      [Beats desk with head]

      Perhaps the reason Trump lies so brazenly is that he knows the MSM will believe even him over the hated (by them) Iranians. It’s not just our president who can’t handle the truth.

    2. Giovanni Barca

      TINA is a brown thing. And lumpy. (C.f. Zappa’s speech to the American Society of University Composers: “Composers like to eat. Most of what they eat is brown and lumpy,’ also alluding to the title of his solo album debut Lumpy Gravy.) Time we stopped doing the Ezekiel.

    3. Nat Wilson Turner

      Trump was always manifestly disqualified from being POTUS by his stupidity, immorality, criminality, etc etc but at the same time he spoke so many forbidden truths (Bush didn’t protect America, invading Iraq was stupid) and opposed a trinity of absolutely terrible corporate warmongering Dems so many were drawn to him.
      Unfortunately, it seems every halfway true or smartish thing he said was just the product of a human Large Language Model that throws out random phrases in front of crowds and if they get a good reponse, they get repeated.

      1. skippy

        Per your last paragraph … today I saw a clip on Janta Ka Reporter, I believe, where Trumpo was asked by a reporter about Iran saying zero anything is happening between them. After Trumpo stated they were have productive[tm] talks and the 5 day pause on bombing infrastructure.

        Trumpo answered that Iran needed a better PR team/consultant thingy ….

        That summarizes everything these days out of the Westren elites gobs …. just marketing ….

  17. Skeptical Scott

    I really wish people wouldn’t focus so much on the constant charade coming from of the Cheeto Jesus Regime. This war has been on the books since the 1970’s (probably longer). The Modus Operandi of the MIC is Energy Dominance. To that end they want global control over All of the Oil. Destabilization is a big money maker. $200B would just be for starters.

    “Medhurst argues that the United States, far from stumbling into another disastrous West Asian quagmire, is executing a calculated seizure of the planet’s energy supply — and that the wars on Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, and now Iran are not separate blunders but sequential steps toward a single goal: total energy dominance.

    You’re not watching a war. You’re watching America lock every nation on earth into energy servitude — An analysis of Richard Medhurst’s “Petro-Gas Dollar” thesis — and “the way out” he missed.”

    https://bettbeat.substack.com/p/america-is-becoming-the-master-of

  18. Nat Wilson Turner Post author

    Trump was always manifestly disqualified from being POTUS by his stupidity, immorality, criminality, etc etc but at the same time he spoke so many forbidden truths (Bush didn’t protect America, invading Iraq was stupid) and opposed a trinity of absolutely terrible corporate warmongering Dems so many were drawn to him.
    Unfortunately, it seems every halfway true or smartish thing he said was just the product of a human Large Language Model that throws out random phrases in front of crowds and if they get a good reponse, they get repeated.

    1. Sunlight Disinfects

      Those “forbidden truths” were strategic.

      Trump was building street-cred as a populist truth-teller when he bashed Bush and McCain (“I like war heros who don’t get captured”).

      The ease with which he won the Republican primary – cutting-thru 18 seasoned politicians – to face his ‘family-friend’ Hillary Clinton should’ve been a tell.

      Like Obama before him, he was “fresh and clean” (Biden’s words) and captured everyone’s attention.

      But his big lies had already started. He promised to be “self-funded” because if you take their money they OWN you, he told us. Then he quietly took the money.

    2. dingusansich

      Reagan: facts are stupid things. (He misquoted John Adams’s “Facts are stubborn things,” then corrected himself.)

      Trump: lies are smart things. If you want to believe anything about what Trump “really” thinks, believe that.

      Trump can speak the unspeakable (for the MSM and Washington Consensus) because it titillates listeners. It implies no commitment whatsoever to truth and implies nothing whatsoever about what he will do. His LLM, as you nicely put it, is simply noise that elicits reactions. That’s how he can zig and zag as effortlessly as he does. A void where a conscience would ordinarily be also helps.

      For the surrealists and Bill Griffith fans, it may be diagnostic to consider him a kind of Ubu.

  19. Ben Panga

    Unfortunately for Trump’s longer term prospects, Shaheds and Khorramshahrs are immune to bullshit.

    Kinda related to this post was something I saw on Twitter earlier:

    Seattle Extremist
    @SeattleIndepen1
    Mar 19
    The strange disappearance or deaths of various scientists and tech figures reminds me of the case of University of Chicago professor Ioan Culianu, who was found dead in the men’s room of the U Chicago divinity school, shot in the back of the head from a small caliber handgun.

    Culianu was an esteemed scholar of religion, western esoteric thought, and renaissance magic. Longtime readers know I often refer to our form of government as a “theater state”, which is a concept I came to from reading Culianu. He used the term “the Magician State” to describe a society controlled not by traditional police state but by illusions, word magic, and spells cast over the public, focused on an appeal to unconscious sexual drives. Culianu contended that advertising, entertainment, and the field of public relations had replaced the roles previously held by court magicians, shamans, and the clergy.

    Not all technology deals with material engineering and weaponry. The most dangerous and powerful technology works invisibly, without people even imagining it is there or working on them.

    Anyhow, it seems someone didn’t like what the good professor was calling attention to. Either that or the men’s room at the divinity school is a place where robberies often go wrong.

    Rest in peace, professor.

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