Paul Krugman: Living in the Trump Zone

“Don’t pretend that this is normal”:

Living in the Trump Zone, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Fans of old TV series may remember a classic “Twilight Zone” episode titled “It’s a Good Life.” It featured a small town terrorized by a 6-year-old who for some reason had monstrous superpowers, coupled with complete emotional immaturity. Everyone lived in constant fear, made worse by the need to pretend that everything was fine. After all, any hint of discontent could bring terrible retribution.

And now you know what it must be like working in the Trump administration. …

What set me off on this chain of association? The answer may surprise you; it was the tax “plan” the administration released on Wednesday…, the single-page document … bore no resemblance to what people normally mean when they talk about a tax plan. …

So why would the White House release such an embarrassing document? Why would the Treasury Department go along with this clown show?…

Every report from inside the White House conveys the impression that Trump is like a temperamental child, bored by details and easily frustrated when things don’t go his way… If he says he wants something, no matter how ridiculous, you say, “Yes, Mr. President!”; at most, you try to minimize the damage.

Right now, by all accounts, the child-man in chief is in a snit over the prospect of news stories that review his first 100 days and conclude that he hasn’t achieved much if anything (because he hasn’t). So last week he announced the imminent release of something he could call a tax plan. … But nobody dared tell him it couldn’t be done. Instead, they released … something, with nobody sure what it means.

And the absence of a real tax plan isn’t the only thing the inner circle apparently doesn’t dare tell him. …

…I’d like to make a plea to my colleagues in the news media: Don’t pretend that this is normal. Let’s not act as if that thing released on Wednesday, whatever it was, was something like, say, the 2001 Bush tax cut; I strongly disapproved of that cut, but at least it was comprehensible. Let’s not pretend that we’re having a real discussion of, say, the growth effects of changes in business tax rates.

No, what we’re looking at here isn’t policy; it’s pieces of paper whose goal is to soothe the big man’s temper tantrums. Unfortunately, we may all pay the price of his therapy.