America has become a laughingstock

It's a well-known phenomenon that a human will come to accept as "normal" anything that happens constantly. That's what is happening to America today.

We're being overwhelmed by headlines about cruelty and stupidity every day, several times every day... It's useful to step back once in a while to recap this madness...

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Back in 2022 , the United States was showing surprising signs of strength , after a lot of people (myself included) had lamented its seeming decline. Seemingly against all odds, the Russian invasion of Ukraine had been partially halted and rolled back, with U.S. military aid providing a crucial and timely lifeline (U.S. intelligence also managed to correctly predict the invasion well in advance). The U.S. had come out of the pandemic looking a lot more competent than people had initially thought, with a generous and effective financial relief program and a world-beating vaccine development effort that the Chinese were unable to match. Inflation was high, but the U.S. labor market recovered quickly from the pandemic (and the following year, inflation began to fall as well). ISIS was a memory, defeated at low cost by U.S. intervention. Meanwhile, the transatlantic alliance was stronger than ever, and China’s economy was in the dumps after a real estate bust.

Once again, America seemed to have beaten the odds and resisted decline. Then two years later, in a spasm of anger over immigration and inflation and woke culture, Americans ignored this amazing run of success, threw out the Democrats, and brought back Donald J. Trump.

As of 2025, I’m feeling distinctly less optimistic than I was in 2022.

First, the good news. President Donald J. Trump has put a 90-day pause on most of his tariffs on China . Although targeted tariffs on China would have been helpful in securing America’s strategic industries, blanket tariffs just hurt U.S. manufacturing while threatening to cause a recession . So compared to the alternative, the pause is a good thing. Stock markets are certainly taking the news well:

A lot of investors seem to have been convinced — rightly or wrongly — that Trump’s tariffs are almost all talk and bluster, and that when push comes to shove he’ll back down before real harm occurs.

And Trump’s approval rating, while still a lot lower than when he took office, has rebounded a bit from its nadir:

OK, now for the bad news. Trump’s latest tariff pause is only a partial and temporary remedy for an economic problem he himself created out of thin air . It’s temporary because in 90 days we’ll be right back where we were before, and Trump will have to choose between pressing ahead with tariffs or doing another walkback. It’s partial because even after this walkback, U.S. tariffs are still higher than they’ve been in living memory:

But in fact there’s more bad news. Trump’s seemingly never-ending series of rapid-fire tariff policy changes — by one recent count, there have been over 50 now — is still creating uncertainty. Trade policy uncertainty has gone up and down, but is still far higher than at normal times:

But beyond simple uncertainty, Trump’s willingness to announce big tariffs and then concede on them without major concessions from trading partners makes both him and the United States as a whole seem deeply unserious — an object of international ridicule. Here’s the WSJ on China’s reaction :

On Chinese social media, opinion leaders portrayed the tariff truce as a resounding victory for Xi…“China fought a very beautiful ‘counterattack in self-defense,’” said Ren Yi, a commentator who goes by the pen name “Chairman Rabbit,” in an online post. Beijing showed the world that Trump is irrational and America is a paper tiger, while China offers stability and certainty, he wrote…Xi has made a show of defying U.S. pressure and leaned into his self-styled image as a staunch steward of Chinese sovereignty.

Here in the U.S., Trump’s faithful react with adulation and praise to every daily reversal and walkback. But internationally, Trump just looks erratic and weak. Obviously, it was better for Trump to back down than to stay the course. But the fact that he made threats he couldn’t back up in the first place leaves America looking like a deeply unserious country; Trump’s move is being widely mocked throughout China .

And in fact, this is far from the only arena in which America is looking less like a colossus and more like a clown show these days. Other examples include:

• America’s continued military and industrial weakness

• Trump’s $400 million gift from Qatar and other likely cases of corruption

• The U.S. government’s turn against vaccines

• Chaos at the FAA

• The pointless destruction of U.S. scientific and technical capacity

• The pointless degradation of the transatlantic alliance

• Incompetence at the Defense Department

Unfortunately, this meme pretty much sums up how U.S. tariff policy looks to the rest of the world:

The campaign against the Houthis made America’s military a laughingstock

In Trump’s first term, he ordered the U.S. Military to defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria. This was accomplished with a bare minimum of losses. Perhaps this easy victory gave Trump the idea that the military was an invincible force that could accomplish anything he commanded.

But that turned out not to be the case. When Trump ordered the military to defeat the Yemeni Houthi militia that has been attacking international shipping in the Red Sea, he boasted that they would be “completely annihilated”:

“Tremendous damage has been inflicted upon the Houthi barbarians, and watch how it will get progressively worse — It’s not even a fair fight, and never will be,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “They will be completely annihilated!”

But they were not completely annihilated . Instead, the Houthis simply hid underground, coming out to shoot down American drones and take potshots at U.S. ships and planes, until Trump called off the attacks and ran away:

The Houthis shot down several American MQ-9 Reaper drones and continued to fire at naval ships in the Red Sea, including an American aircraft carrier. And the U.S. strikes burned through weapons and munitions at a rate of about $1 billion in the first month alone…U.S. Central Command officials received a sudden order from the White House on May 5 to “pause” offensive operations.

Announcing the cessation of hostilities, the president sounded almost admiring about the militant Islamist group…“We hit them very hard and they had a great ability to withstand punishment,” Mr. Trump said. “You could say there was a lot of bravery there.”…

[S]ome members of the president’s national security team…misjudged their boss’s tolerance for military conflict in the region…By May 5, Mr. Trump was ready to move on.

Once more, Trump’s bluster ended up looking like empty threats. Once more, Trump appeared to show that if you just stand up and punch him in the nose, he’ll back down and go looking for someone else to bully.

But more importantly, the failed campaign against the Houthis ended up showcasing the U.S.’ key military vulnerability — an inability to manufacture enough munitions to sustain a long campaign:

So many precision munitions were being used, especially advanced long-range ones, that some Pentagon contingency planners were growing increasingly concerned about overall stocks and the implications for any situation in which the United States might have to ward off an attempted invasion of Taiwan by China.

This is much more frightening than one U.S. President’s overconfidence or lack of resolve. In any major conflict with China, both countries will exhaust their stockpiles of missiles within a matter of days. After that the U.S. would be unable to build more, while China would be able to build lots more, meaning that the U.S. would lose the war. Here’s a story from the Washington Times from last year:

American defense industries lack the capacity to supply the missiles and other weapons needed for a war with China , and U.S. forces would lose the conflict as a result, members of Congress and private defense experts warned Thursday.
The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party recently held a simulated conflict with Beijing that revealed the U.S. military would quickly run out of bombs, missiles and other weapons within days of a war.

This is not simply the judgement of one alarmist source. Everyone agrees that America’s defense-industrial base has withered since the Cold War, and would be utterly unable to sustain production in a war with China. Here’s the left-leaning Washington Monthly , from 2024:

[F]or two years, the U.S. Army has been gravely concerned about the depletion of the ammunition stockpile, and with good reason. Current annual production of the 155 [mm artillery] round is about 12 percent of the amount that has been transferred to Ukraine. Manufacture takes place at a single complex, more than a century old, in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania…
Replenishment time is much the same with many other munitions sent to Ukraine…]E]xpended units of the Javelin antitank missile will require five and a half to eight years to replenish; the HIMARS guided rocket, two and a half to three; the Stinger antiaircraft missile, six and a half to an incredible eighteen . The verdict is damning; for all the money thrown at the Pentagon, the Department of Defense cannot supply weapons for a conventional land war of moderate size and intermittently high intensity for much longer than a year without drawing down munition stocks to dangerously low levels. How, then, can it hope to deter an adversarial power of the first rank like China, which could potentially conduct a major, very high-intensity war on multiple fronts? War games demonstrate that the United States would deplete essential munitions within just eight days of engaging in a high-intensity conflict with China concerning Taiwan.

And here is the right-leaning Heritage Foundation , also from 2024:

[The U.S. Navy is] getting low on munitions—yet the Pentagon is refusing to ask for sufficient supplies to replace them…Expending munitions against the Houthis would be less damaging if the U.S. was backfilling those munitions in a timely manner. But we’re not…
Unfortunately, the Pentagon is not asking for a significant change in munition procurement relative to prior years, and Congress is not only failing to increase munitions orders significantly, it is actually discussing procuring less munitions while denying the use of multi-year contracting authority. That is despite wargames showing that the U.S., in a war with China, would run out of key munitions in about a week .

Here is a long Atlantic article explaining how the U.S. allowed its defense industrial base to collapse. And here is a detailed analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies , showing just how much China outmatches the U.S., and just how inadequate our defense production is. Trump, of course, has done nothing of note to boost munitions production; he doesn’t even seem to be aware of the dire situation.

In the aftermath of the failed Houthi campaign, much was made of the fact that the Houthis almost managed to shoot down an American F-35 — one of the most advanced fighters in the U.S. arsenal. But the truth is that even a fancy stealth fighter can be shot down by rudimentary infrared-targeted weapons if it gets too close. In war, even the most advanced weapons systems will take losses. The fact that the U.S. defense-industrial base can’t produce new weapons has forced us to demand that our few existing weapons be totally invincible — but this will always be impossible.

So not only did Trump’s campaign against the Houthis fail to defeat the enemy and make America’s leadership look cowardly and weak, but it exposed how easily and quickly the U.S. would be defeated in a war with China. America’s military power has been made a laughingstock.

At this point, it seems extremely likely that if China attacked Taiwan, Trump would stand down U.S. forces, allow the island to be conquered, and declare that he had made a “deal” with China’s leadership.

Trump’s apparent corruption makes it look like the U.S. can be bought for cheap

Article I of the U.S. Constitution states:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

With that in mind, consider the $400 million plane that Qatar just gave to Donald Trump to serve as Air Force One:

President Trump’s planned acceptance of a $400 million jet from the Qatari government raises a series of ethical and national security concerns…[The Qatari gift would…likely [come] at the expense of security guidelines…Trump has said he plans to keep the plane once he leaves office through his presidential library, which adds to the ethical questions…The Constitution makes clear that accepting a gift from an overseas power requires the blessing of Congress — a provision Trump violated in his first term through numerous foreign entanglements.

Though many Republicans are trying to dodge the issue at all costs, a few are speaking up :

Republican lawmakers are signaling growing concern over President Trump's openness to accepting a $400 million plane from Qatar to serve as the new Air Force One, an unprecedented move fraught with ethical and legal issues that is testing even his biggest loyalists…On Wednesday, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas…[said he] believed…a luxury Boeing 747 jet may go too far…Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley…argued the president's plane should not come from a foreign nation…Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky…say the effort presents security and legal challenges.

“Security challenges” is a euphemism for the likelihood that Qatar will probably bug the new Air Force One so it can listen to whatever the President is doing.

Even some MAGA activists are balking at what seems like a blatant, epic display of corruption:

"I think the technical term is 'skeezy'," deadpanned conservative Daily Wire commentator Ben Shapiro…Laura Loomer, the conspiracy-spreading social media influencer who agitates for sackings of top White House officials deemed insufficiently loyal , interrupted her steady stream of pro-Trump messaging to criticise the move…Although she said she still supports the president, she called the plane deal "a stain" and posted a cartoon of the Trojan Horse, redrawn as a plane and filled with armed Islamist militants.

But in fact, the jet is only one of the Trump administration’s dubious ties to Qatar .

Of course, the Qatari jet is only the most flamboyant and ridiculous example of Trump’s apparent corruption. His administration is riddled with untold conflicts of interests , any one of which might cause a years-long scandal for any other administration. Here are just a few examples , courtesy of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

Trump’s relationship with the Saudi government-backed LIV golf is poised to create conflicts…LIV has held six events at various Trump Golf Clubs, and in April it will have its first event of the Trump presidency at Trump National Doral in Miami…LIV spent $796,000 on one tournament alone at Trump’s…golf club in 2022…

Trump properties will continue to attract business from influence seekers, including special interests and foreign governments. There are a handful of foreign governments that rent or own space at Trump properties, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia . Research by CREW shows that foreign governments are expected to pay a total of nearly $2 million in monthly fees for units in New York’s Trump World Tower…

Since 2021, the Trump Organization has signed several new agreements with an international developer for Trump-branded developments in Oman, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. These deals open multiple doors for the Trump Organization to partner with foreign-government- owned partners .

This is just the tip of the iceberg, of course.

Meanwhile, tariffs create yet another huge opportunity for corruption. Because Trump can exempt specific products from tariffs, it gives companies an incentive to do what Trump says, or to give him money, or to support him politically. ProPublica has reported on some of the companies getting tariff exemptions, often by working with a lobbying firm that has close ties to Trump.

And on top of all that, there’s the memecoins. Back when Trump launched a pair of cryptocurrencies called TRUMP and MELANIA back in January, I wrote a post explaining how memecoins could be used to facilitate corruption without breaking any laws: Your memecoin is your slush fund

Here’s what I wrote back then:

Suppose you wanted to buy a favor from Donald Trump, and he wanted to let you buy a favor from him. How could you do it? You can’t just pay him a giant bribe — that’s illegal. Maybe you could pledge him a bunch of cash for his presidential campaign. But there are campaign finance laws that will get in your way, and even if you succeed, he can only use the money for his campaign, not to buy yachts or whatever else he might like to use the money for…Instead, what you can do is to buy a bunch of TRUMP or MELANIA. When you buy one of those memecoins, you increase the demand for the memecoin. Its price then goes up. This makes Donald Trump richer, without any money actually having to change hands…In other words, by spending [some amount of money], you were able to make [an even larger amount of money] appear in Donald Trump’s crypto wallet. And it’s all perfectly legal, too — you didn’t actually transfer a single dime to Trump’s bank account or his crypto wallet or anything. All you did was buy something that he owns and drive up the price . And Trump will know you bought it, too, so maybe he’s inclined to do you a favor in return.

Well, I hate to say “I told you so,” but…I told you so. Trump recently had dinner with people who bought his memecoin; they spent $140 million, but thanks to price appreciation, the monetary benefit to Trump was probably significantly larger. And foreign companies are now buying significant amounts of the TRUMP coin to try to buy influence in the administration:

GD Culture Group, a publicly traded firm with a Chinese subsidiary, has only eight employees…and recorded zero revenue last year from an e-commerce business it operates on TikTok…But on Monday, GD Culture Group…said it would spend $300 million on a stockpile of Bitcoin and $TRUMP…The purchase would create clear ethical conflicts, enriching Mr. Trump’s family at the same time that the president tries to reach a deal that would allow TikTok to keep operating in the United States rather than face a congressionally approved ban…
Under federal law, foreign investors are barred from donating to a political campaign or a president’s inaugural fund. But Mr. Trump’s crypto ventures have offered a new avenue for these overseas buyers to support him financially…In April, a Mexico-based shipping firm, Fr8Tech, announced that it would spend $20 million on Mr. Trump’s memecoin as a way to “advocate for fair, balanced and free trade between Mexico and the U.S.”

Sometimes I hate being right.

Anyway, Trump appears to be corrupt on a scale that dwarfs anything any other President or American leader of any kind has ever dared. Because of his cultlike status that keeps the rest of the GOP in line, he’s unlikely to suffer any direct consequences.

But the effect on America’s international standing will be real. The U.S. will appear to be a country that can be bought and sold very cheaply, simply by throwing the President a few hundreds of millions of dollars. Whether or not that’s the reality, the result is that the world will hold America in contempt, treating it less like a superpower and more like a dysfunctional small developing country. That will not be conducive to America’s national interests, no matter how lucrative it is for the Trump family.

Just one stupid thing after another

The tariff madness, the Houthi debacle, and the Qatari jet are only the three biggest examples of how a nation that was recently held in awe now looks like a clown show. Here are a few others:

• RFK Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services refuses to recommend the measles vaccine , despite a widening nationwide measles outbreak .

• Trump tried nominating a TV show host to be the Surgeon General, but then quickly withdrew the nomination and picked a wellness influencer with ties to RFK Jr.

• Trump’s reconciliation deal will basically kill the advanced nuclear power industry . (So much for the idea that the GOP is pro-nuclear!)

• Newark Airport has been almost shut down because of problems with air traffic controller staffing.

• Trump is trying to weaken federal flood relief , and is denying disaster aid to states like Arkansas and West Virginia.

• Trump has forced the National Science Foundation to halt all science funding while he completes an ideological purge of the agency. The agency looks likely to be seriously weakened in the long term .

• Trump’s budget is set to add several trillion dollars to the national debt.

• Trump’s Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, just won’t stop using group chats to text America’s war plans .

• NATO countries, worried that the U.S. government has been compromised by the Russians, are reconsidering the practice of sharing intelligence with the U.S.

This isn’t anything like a full list of all the ridiculous things Trump and his administration have done, or tried to do, in the past month.

And through it all, Trump’s supporters simply praise each and everything he does. When Trump announces huge tariffs, they declare that this will create jobs and restore American manufacturing. When he pauses the tariffs a few days later after markets suffer, the supporters praise Trump for the “art of the deal”. A week or two later this cycle repeats itself, never missing a beat or showing the slightest bit of shame. Anyone who dares to point out the ridiculousness of Trump’s wild policy gyrations will, of course, be accused of “TDS”.

There is no excuse for running a superpower like a comedy show. America’s political reality has surpassed our best political satires . Trump’s popularity has eroded, but it hasn’t yet crashed; a lot of Republicans realize how crazy things are, but for now they’re putting their heads down, suffering through the chaos, and hoping it’s all worth it for the long-term gains of winning cultural victories over DEI and the trans movement and whatever.

Meanwhile, it’s worth mentioning that the Democrats are putting on a little bit of a clown show themselves. Recently, the DNC voided the election of the leftist activist David Hogg to its vice chair position, using the excuse that the election unfairly disadvantaged female candidates. (In an upcoming post, I’ll have a lot more to say about the Democrats’ failure to present a credible opposition.)

To what degree this rolling, rollicking farce permanently ends America’s superpower status, or to what extent we’re able to pull off yet another miraculous recovery after it all blows over, remains to be seen. But for now, all I can really do — and all the rest of the world can really do — is just gape in pity and confusion. We had a good thing going in the years after the pandemic, and we just threw it away for…whatever this is.