MAGA: Trump is a “Genius”. Sure thing.
MAGA loves to tell us that Donald Trump is a “genius businessman” playing “5D chess.” It’s the go-to defense whenever his catastrophic incompetence is on full display — because apparently, what looks like stupidity to the rest of the world is actually the unfathomable brilliance of a man too advanced for us to understand.
Reality, as usual, has a different take.
Let’s start with the “master negotiator” claim. Based on what, exactly? Because from where I’m standing, his entire negotiating strategy consists of bullying people with whatever power he currently holds and hoping they flinch first. That’s not negotiation. That’s what toddlers do when they want the remote control.
Ukraine
Trump promised he would end the war in Ukraine “very easily… within 24 hours.” That was over a year ago. The war is worse today than when he took office — and the only meaningful impact he’s had on it is echoing Russian propaganda, undermining our ally Ukraine at every opportunity, and rolling out a red carpet for Vladimir Putin while treating him like a dignitary instead of a war criminal. He has issued half-hearted “threats” toward Russia that he has never once attempted to enforce. Putin continues to blow him off completely. The war rages on.
This is the master negotiator. A man Vladimir Putin openly ignores.
The Trade War
Then there’s the global trade war he started for no coherent reason, paired with his bold promise of “90 deals in 90 days.” We’re approaching a year since he made that claim, and he has tentatively agreed to a handful — most of which are frameworks of deals, not comprehensive, lasting trade agreements between nations. Outlines. Sketches. Suggestions.
Ninety deals in 90 days has become roughly five frameworks in 365 days. Someone run those numbers.
Iran
Trump spent his entire first term promising a “better deal with Iran” than the one Barack Obama negotiated — the one he tore up in 2018 for reasons that were never entirely clear. Years later, rather than producing a better deal, he started a war with no plan, no strategy, and no clear objective. He has absolutely no idea what to do about Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz — other than to absurdly claim, apparently with a straight face, that the United States is actually the one blocking it now.
That’s not negotiating. That’s not even coherent.
And every signal we’re seeing suggests that whatever deal eventually emerges from this disaster — if one emerges at all — will be substantially worse than the agreement we already had before he blew it up. We traded a working nuclear deal for a war, thousands of casualties, tens of billions of dollars, historically high oil prices, and a global credibility crisis.
But two more weeks. It’s always two more weeks.
Health Care
We’ve been waiting two weeks — plus over a decade — for the “amazing health care plan” Trump has been promising since he first rode down that escalator. It does not exist. It has never existed. It will never exist. And TrumpRX, his supposed masterstroke of negotiating lower drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, is essentially a worse version of GoodRx — something that already existed before he took credit for inventing the concept. He did manage to work out a deal to lower the costs of some GLP-1 weight loss drugs, but Americans are still paying dramatically more for them than people in other developed nations, most insurance companies won’t cover them, and they remain completely out of reach for the vast majority of Americans who need them.
Groundbreaking.
And then there’s the Epstein situation — where this legendary dealmaker couldn’t even negotiate enough loyalty within his own party to get several of his own Republican members to participate in blocking the release of the files. He couldn’t close that deal. With members of his own caucus. In a Congress his own party controls.
Master. Negotiator.
So MAGA, please — make the case. Show the evidence. Point to the deals. Identify the wins that justify the mythology. And don’t point to his net worth, because most of that is the direct result of abusing the presidency to enrich himself — something anyone could do if they were willing to completely abandon their ethics, their dignity, and their obligation to the people they were elected to serve, while a cowardly Congress looks the other way.
The “genius businessman” narrative is, like virtually everything else surrounding this man, a carefully constructed fiction. What Trump actually is, and has always been, is a con artist born into wealth who learned early that if you’re willing to treat people badly enough, lie without shame, and use whatever power you have as a weapon — you’ll win more than you lose in a world that still rewards those things.
That’s not genius. That’s not negotiation. That’s the oldest hustle in the book — dressed up in a red hat and sold to millions of people who deserved someone in that office who actually gave a damn about them.
He never did. He never will.
