Make America Patient Again
The markets are crashing, and Donald Trump is trying to do something few politicians dare: play the long game. PLUS: Some sports stuff!
Welcome to a rare weekend edition of the newsletter. Don’t worry, it’s just a l’il one.
It begins with something that I wrote for the Toronto Star, a day after the calamity of Donald Trump’s insane tariff scheme was launched.
Watching some of the coverage, I was struck by the fact that Trump and his allies are now telling Americans that they need to just chill out about the fact that their retirement savings are being pummelled. Wait for the Big Orange Genius’ ever-so-brilliant plan to come to pass, they argue.
Leaving aside the absurdity of the plan to begin with, it is wild that Trump, the guy who has built an entire political career on promising quick painless fixes to everything, is now actually hoping that he can ride out many months of bad news without voters, and more importantly, the Republican party, losing their damn minds.
I am, to say the least, skeptical that he (and they) will be able to wait this out.
The full column can be read here.
The more things change…
On the same day that Trump was blowing up the international system of trade, the National Hockey League and Rogers officially announced that they were extending their 12-year Canadian broadcast-rights partnership by yet another 12 years.
The news, which had first leaked a couple of days earlier, was more than a little surprising. I wrote a feature about the next NHL deal last spring for The Logic, and the general thought from industry types was that Gary Bettman and friends would try to package off smaller parts of the package to various outlets. This would bring in more money overall and also spread the NHL around more places where people watch content.
Instead, they went the other way. My column on What It All Means, for theScore, is here.
Victim watch
With Alex Ovechkin on the verge on breaking Wayne Gretzky’s goal-scoring record, one of my editors at theScore asked another if he remembered who was in goal when Gretzky broke Gordie Howe’s record. He did not. (It was Kirk McLean.) That led to a thought exercise about moments we remember and those we don’t, and it’s why guys like Wade Flaherty and Charley Hodge can share a sentence with McLean. The column that resulted from that orginal question can be found here.
That’s it. You may now return to your weekend.
You're right that Trump promised that on day one he would bring down in flation. The awful thing is no one really asked: How do you do that? The answer: you can't. But Trump is used to telling fibs. And frankly he never really cared about the common people and his indifference to the impact to his tariff "plan" shows that. Yesterday he was playing golf while Rome burned. That alone should piss off his supporters. But the few people I know who like Trump never, ever criticize him. Even God gets criticized.