TACO Trump

Trump has been fighting with Elon, Putin, Chairman Kim, The Courts and an acronym that could take down his presidency.

Donald Trump has had a very bad stretch. A three-judge panel at the Court of International Trade shot down his tariffs. Trump loves to attack judges as “woke radical Marxists.” One judge was appointed by Obama, one by Reagan, and one by Trump himself. Two of them could have overruled the Obama appointee if Trump’s strategy of dictating tariff policy by pushing all the buttons in the elevator had any legs. Today, an appellate court put a stay on the Court of International Trade’s ruling.

Basically, the crux of the issue is the amount of authority the executive branch has to unilaterally declare tariffs without congressional approval. Parts of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 clearly limit the President’s authority to declare tariffs at will. Trump, of course, hates reading. He probably hasn’t read the thirty-page bill because it isn’t about himself.

Former “First Buddy” Elon Musk condemned Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” that Republicans are trying to pass through budget reconciliation. Musk fell quite short of the trillions of dollars in savings he promised through DOGE. Now back at his private companies, one could argue that he’s trying to do some damage control by acknowledging the basic reality that Republicans don’t actually care about reducing the deficit.

Trump is also very angry about a certain nickname that Wall Street has bestowed upon his policies. Certain people have figured out how to game Trump’s tariff tactics, which closely resemble Lucy with the football. The term floating around Wall Street is TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out). A reporter asked Trump for his thoughts on his TACO tariffs.

Trump called the question “nasty” and urged the reporter to, “don’t ever say what you said,” treating the acronym like it’s the worst thing in the world. It’s a little rich for the greatest insulter in presidential history.

Trump loves nicknames. You could make a strong case that nicknames got him elected president, maybe more so than anything else. Trump ruined Jeb! Bush’s $100 million war chest with two words: Low Energy.

“Crooked Hillary” similarly planted this nefarious image of Secretary Clinton as someone who pillages the federal government for her own benefit, kind of like the sort of individual who would have his sons sign billions of dollars in deals with the Gulf States or raise billions in cryptocurrency while in office. Trump’s rallies were stand-up comedy for him to mock and demean his opponents, many of whom went to serve in his Cabinet, including Little Marco and Dr. Ben Carson, who he once called pathological and compared him to a child molester.

Trump doesn’t want to be misgendered as a TACO.

There’s one important thing to remember about Trump’s nicknames. He’s been pretty bad at them for almost ten years now. Sleepy Joe never had much of an impact. He derided former 2024 candidate Nikki Haley as “birdbrain,” while mocking her Indian name.

His names for Kamala Harris were also terrible. Comrade, Crazy, Laffin’, Lyin, and Kamabla. None of it stuck. It took an unprecedented late-July dropout by the incumbent president to propel Trump to a narrow victory over a far superior candidate, kind of like how the Comey letter served as an 11^th hour guardian angel to his first campaign.

TACO is the kind of deadly nickname that Democrats spent all last summer in search of. Tim Walz made headlines labeling Trump and Vance as weird. It was a pretty good dig. TACO is weird on steroids. Most of the public don’t watch cable news. They don’t read the wonkish musings of a transsexual internet comedian.

The average person can understand TACO. Trump Always Chickens Out. Between his bone spurs, his endless flip-flopping, and the way he stiffs anyone he owes out of the bill, he always pulls the football away from Charlie Brown. This wasn’t a secret either of the past two times he ran for office. Much of America takes the wrong message from his victory. Everyone knows exactly who he is.

Many comedians lose their edge as they get older. Some, like Dave Chappelle and Trump himself, turn to culture issues like transgender rights as they get older. Remember Trump in 2016 regarding where Caitlyn Jenner can take a leak in Trump Tower?

Trump can’t take the TACO heat because the world has finally caught up to his nickname game. He’s losing his ability to pull off his beloved tariffs straight out of the 1980s. Senate Republicans are balking at the House’s Faustian bargains to get the reconciliation bill passed through the lower chamber. There’s nothing “conservative” about the nonsense in that bill, and everybody knows it.

Dating back to his ghostwritten bestseller, The Art of the Deal, Trump has really only shown one negotiating tactic. If strongarming doesn’t work, he takes his ball and goes home. He hates people who don’t respond to his threats. The courts don’t have to.

When I wrote the long piece about Elon Musk and DOGE, I outlined the way that the piecemeal house of cards he built seemed destined to fall down. One of the people outlined in that article, Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller, has reportedly left the government to work for Musk. Katie Miller has been a MAGA loyalist for almost as long as her husband, whom she married in a Trump hotel. It’s pretty telling that she’s not sticking around for DOGE after Elon’s 130 days as a special government employee were up.

You may be wondering what’s been going on with Elon’s favorite 19 year old, Edward Coristine, often known as Big Balls. There are conflicting reports as to what he’s been doing. A recent Fox News appearance placed him at the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Technology. Earlier reports had him employed at the Department of Homeland Security. Plenty of media reports claim that his high school tech company DiamondCDN advised cybercrime rings.

Big Balls is a very fancy dresser.

Does it really matter where Big Balls works? Kind of. Musk is leaving behind very little infrastructure to enact his agenda. I’d find it pretty hard to believe that Big Balls has a security clearance if there’s any truth to his cybercrime connections. Many top DOGE officials also work at Musk-owned companies like SpaceX and Tesla. If DOGE got little done when Elon was wandering around with his chainsaw and his cheesehead, what are they going to do now?

If Trump knows anything about the way politics works, he knows he’s starting to run low on time to make an impact with his second administration. We talked about that in my column on The First 100 Days. Before we know it, the midterms will soon be upon us. Barring a colossal mess, the Democrats will likely seize control of the House.

Executive Power is mighty. Trump has convinced media outlets, law firms, the broligarchs, and the entire Republican Party, to bend to his will. He’s even strong-armed California into throwing transgender student athletes under the bus for competing in women’s track and field. It’s worth noting that the athlete in question does not lead any of her categories and is not close to breaking any records. Her presence alone is causing this complete meltdown.

Trump has recently turned on Vladimir Putin for the very first time. Like TACO, Vlad is making him look weak. Vlad clearly doesn’t want peace with Ukraine. Vlad knows Trump hates Zelenskyy more than his usual ire for America’s allies.

Trump is trying to do all he can to save face. Surprisingly, he hasn’t gone after Musk for criticizing the obvious glaring hypocrisy of his “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Musk is rare amongst former Trump officials. He’s been critical of the president without drawing his ire like many, such as Bill Barr, James Mattis, John Bolton, etc., serious people with actual credentials beyond his usual gang of sycophants.

The difference between Musk and everyone else? Trump has inflated his wealth for decades. Even with all the damage Musk has done to his brands, he’s still many times richer than Donald’s wildest dreams. Republicans have no chance of keeping the House without Muskrat Love.

TACO is looking more accurate by the day. Trump once promised fire and fury on North Korea. After a brief love-letter filled romance with Chairman Kim, the North Korean dictator doesn’t even like him anymore, either, criticizing his new “golden dome” defense system (everything has to be gold).

Now he’s forced to be meek and submissive to Vlad, Elon, and the Courts, among many others. Wall Street openly mocks him. For a man who once claimed to have the greatest taco bowls, he’s certainly afraid of the association. Maybe for good reason. If covfefe was the word that ruled Trump 1.0, TACO might be the defining legacy of this crappy sequel.

Somebody has not aged well.