In a new book, two New York Times writers describe an interview in which Trump had an aide bring out a two-page list of the most powerful leaders in history — Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, Hitler — and argued he’s more powerful than any of them. The most powerful man, he told them, ever to walk the face of the earth.
Doug’s reaction: “Perversely, he’s probably right. You can be a batshit crazy megalomaniac and be completely right.”
The Dementia Caucus
Kay Granger, Republican of Texas, died a few days ago at 83, having spent her final six months in assisted care, with dementia, while still holding her seat and a major committee chair.
She’s not an isolated case: McConnell, Feinstein before her, allegations now about Maxine Waters — and people say it about Biden and Trump too. Before the Soviet Union collapsed, Doug noted, turnover in Congress was lower than in the Supreme Soviet, where elections were openly rigged.
“It used to be that the Senate and the Assemblies of the People were important,” Doug said, “but after a while, all the power devolved to the emperor, and they were just showpieces.” Trump’s polls are at record lows for a second-term president, yet per Axios he’s indifferent to losing the midterms — he intends to govern by executive action and pardon rather than legislation. Everything built that way can be undone with a signature. And whoever comes after him will keep running the same direction — Athens under Pericles, France at Versailles: power pools until it collapses.
No One Dares Contradict Him
Jeanine Pirro — one of Trump’s most loyal boosters — investigated why the reflecting pool lining turned into a disaster. Her conclusion: not sabotage, not vandalism, not domestic terrorism. Shoddy workmanship, on a contract that went to one of Trump’s friends. For delivering that finding, she’s been excommunicated.
Meanwhile Scott Bessent — a Wall Street master-of-the-universe who ran money for Soros — talks about Trump in committee hearings like a courtier addressing the Sun King. That’s how you survive in that circle.
And the man they dare not correct sends out middle-of-the-night posts of world importance confusing “parameters” with “perimeters,” whole words capitalized, disjointed. Doug: “You can’t be the most powerful man in the world — and he’s right about that, for sure — and confuse the words that you’re using.”
The $250,000 Migrant
Camp East Montana, the new detention facility in Texas, cost $1.3 billion and holds 5,000 people. That’s about $250,000 per detainee — three or four times the average American’s annual income — before anyone is fed, guarded, or deported. Nobody in the press asks how long people stay, or how many of these facilities we now have.
Doug used to joke in speeches: “America’s never gonna have concentration camps. We’ll just call them something else.”
What interests me more: Trump bought stock in the company that built the camp shortly before it won a no-bid contract from the DoD — and sold the same month the award was announced. The tariff story rhymes: when the original tariffs were ruled unconstitutional, Apple collected a $2.2 billion refund — consumers who paid the higher prices got nothing — and Howard Lutnick’s Cantor Fitzgerald had set up a fund to buy the rights to tariff refunds. It paid out.
The trade war escalates regardless. Trump banned Chinese robots; China cut off the drone components American drone startups depend on. Argentina tried import bans to force domestic industry into existence and collapsed both the economy and the industries. “The more the government plans, the more it becomes impossible for the average person to plan.”
Real or Memorex
The story that unsettled me most: an Israeli firm co-founded by former prime minister Ehud Barak sells hacking tools — to governments and special agencies only — that can find, access, and manipulate footage from security and smart cameras. Not just erase footage. Insert it. With license-plate cameras on every corner, the video that “proves” your car drove past a shooting can be manufactured for a specific camera at a specific location.
Doug’s take: “You can say, ‘I didn’t do it,’ and they’ll show you the tape that shows yes, you did.”
The perverse conclusion: it now pays to surveil yourself. If I still lived in the US I’d run a dash cam recording every street interaction. Everybody gets to rat themselves out in addition to ratting out everyone else.
Same theme, lighter version: rapper-influencer Jerry Falad won a $2 million advance in a publisher bidding war for a crime novel. The manuscript comes in; the publisher says it’s AI-written; his agent drops him; he swears it isn’t. Doug’s advice: take 50 grand of the two million and pay an English professor to smooth it out.
“Is it real or is it Memorex?” Doug asked, resurrecting the old tape ads. Distrusting the press is healthy — as Greg Gutfeld put it, “It’s impossible to hate the mass media enough.” But a society that can’t trust even video evidence is a nihilist one. Low trust and short time horizons are the marks of the Third World, and we’re acquiring both.
Envy Rules the World
Missouri voters had the chance to abolish their state income tax. 88% voted to keep it.
Americans have no monopoly here. Uruguay, a country we both know well, voted in a national plebiscite to give itself an income tax. The driver in both cases is envy: the average voter assumes the tax lands only on the rich. Doug reached for Einstein: after hydrogen, stupidity is the most common thing in the universe.
Also filed under stupidity: the Pentagon is drafting a nuclear strategy built around tactical nukes for regional wars with Russia or China. “Tactical” sounds small until you remember Hiroshima was 15 kilotons — the same class of weapon. Doug thinks nukes are passé anyway: as Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on the Moroccan coast, just demonstrated, masses of young men on foot take territory more effectively than bombs. And unlike the barbarians who entered Rome wanting to become Roman, the new arrivals don’t seem interested in joining what they find.
The Bright Side
Doug likes to end on one, and today the market provided it. Gold was up about $100 as we recorded — 3 or 4 percent — and may have finally bottomed. The little gold stocks we specialize in have been beaten down since January and look like they’re coming back to life. Oil is at $75, which Doug considers a phony reading. He’s big on both.
What he’s not big on: SpaceX. The stock sits below its offering price, and tomorrow a major lock-up expires — 911 million shares held by employees and early investors become eligible to trade, more than doubling the shares in the market. Peter Diamandis says don’t bet against Musk and predicts a $10 trillion market cap. Maybe. But running with the mob into AI stocks while the gold juniors sit at bargain prices is exactly backwards.
“In order to insulate yourself from all this stupidity, it helps to have assets,” Doug said. “It’s not gonna solve the problems of the world, because we’re just little people. We can’t solve them, but we can insulate ourselves from them.”
We’re back Friday with questions from viewers. If you’ve got one for Doug, go to crisisinvesting.com, click “Ask Doug” at the top, and submit it there.
