Trump Might Not be Able to Finish his Second Presidential Term

By now, everyone and their dog must have heard about how the DOJ has decided to pretend that the Epstein client list never existed. While this turn of events might have been surprising to some, it was obvious to those who had known that Epstein was an operative for Israeli and probably American intelligence agencies. As we have seen repeatedly in past few months, the Trump administration will endure any level of public humiliation and degradation to help Israel and its American supporters save face. While some in the MAGA movement are trying to distance themselves from this PR nightmare, most will crawl back to him after a couple of weeks- unless it starts to hurt the prospects of their party in upcoming elections. However, this brouhaha over Epstein’s list is just a small, if loud, distraction from a far more serious set of problems which will almost certainly derail Trump’s second presidential term- if he can even finish it. As you will soon see, the issues caused by the Epstein list saga are small fry compared to the multiple elephants in the room.

To understand what I am getting at, let me ask a simple question- who really owns the USA and controls its government? Is it the mass of ordinary voters, sinecured senior bureaucrats, elected politicians, public intellectuals or someone else? To spare both of us some time, let us cut to the chase- USA is owned and controlled by corporations and a few hundred incredibly wealthy people. The rest (voters, bureaucrats, politicians etc) are mostly window dressing and have minimal influence on how things actually work in this country. With that in mind, let me ask you a follow up question or two- What do large corporations and extremely wealthy people want? Related to that, what are they always trying to avoid? The answer to first comes down to making sure that the puppet government will ensure continuation of conditions where corporations and the very rich can keep making money as usual or, preferably, make even more money than before. In other words, they want continuation of the status quo with perhaps some minor changes to improve their ability to loot the rest.

Moving on second part of that question- what do they not want and actively dislike? Once again, it comes down to anything which will disrupt the current status quo and their continued ability to keep looting the rest. While some might interpret this as major change to laws, rules, regulations etc- an even bigger factor is an increase in the amount of general uncertainty. Large corporations and very wealthy love certainty because it provides them an extra degree of assurance that their income streams will not be negatively affected in the future. To put this another way, large corporations and the very rich do not care about who runs the government and bureaucracy as long as they provide a stable environment to make money as usual. But what does any of this have to do with Trump and why the real owners of USA might want him gone before his second term expires? Well.. it comes down to a simple question- are Trump and his actions good for their financial interests. To reiterate, corporations and the very rich do not care about whether the government of USA is headed by a corrupt southern governor, some village idiot from Texas, a black man born in Hawaii , reality show clown or a guy with dementia- as long as they can reliably keep making every increasing amounts of money and profit.

Let us now talk about the various hare-brained schemes by Trump to supposedly “jump start” the American economy- starting with Tariffs. You see.. unlike the dumb losers working for Trump, senior corporate executives and the very rich can do math and understand that any real trade wars (or even significant import tariffs) will hurt the heavily financialized American economy and their main source of livelihood- perhaps irreversibly. They also understand that USA has lost the capacity and ability to reindustrialize- because they oversaw that process for over four decades. To put it bluntly, they understand that any worthwhile change to the current status quo where Asia and rest of world manufactures stuff that is sold for for huge margins in USA is the only one where they can keep making money- at least as long as the wider system does not implode. They also understand that the real economy of China is about 2-3x that of USA and the only real growth for next couple of decades will come from countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. To make another long story short, they do not want any serious change or threat to this unfortunate status quo.

They also understand that the American consumer is a shadow of what he/she used to be- even two decades ago. Discount Chinese outlets such as Temu, Shein etc have become popular in USA precisely because an increasing number of people in this country find American online stores such as Amazon too expensive. They are also not oblivious to the loss of foreign markets for their products and services in the event of a real trade war. In other words, any continued support for Trump is conditional on his actions not having a negative effect on their fortunes. Then there is the issue of him being controllable. Corporations and the very rich loved previous presidents and their administrations because they did as they were told. Clinton, Obama and Biden were as willing to take orders from the real owners of USA as Bush and to some extent 1st term Trump. The real owners of USA prefer well-spoken and pliant puppets to head the supposedly democratically elected government of this country. To make doubly sure that these puppets do their job properly, each administration is staffed by known corporate stooges and insiders- and that is the way USA has always functioned.

All of this provides some background to what corporations and the very rich might want to do if their profits are negatively affected. To be very blunt, if Trump is seen as a negative drag on their profits, the true owners of USA might decide that it is time to remove him from his post and put somebody more reliable and pliant (such as his VP) in his position. To achieve that end, they have numerous options- some perfectly legal while others less so. Let us start with the very obvious legal option, liberally funding Democrats while partially withholding funds from the Republicans to ensure the later lose their slim majority in the House and potentially Senate in 2026. Given the almost certain negative economic effects of Trump’s current policies on the median voter- this would be pretty easy to pull off. They have to flip less than a dozen house seats to make sure that the rest of Trump’s second term is an unmitigated disaster. The next option available to them is also quite easy and perfectly legal- making sure that the negative effects of Trump’s policies are felt especially hard by the median voter- since the hardcore MAGA coalition is not enough to win any national election.

The real owners of USA also know a lot about the many personal failings and hidden scandals of those in the executive branch of every government. Don’t be surprised if a lot of previously hidden evidence for embarrassing and illegal behavior by people in Trump administration starts coming out and gets amplified on both legacy and social media. They will also make offers that are hard to refuse to the more pliant members of his administration- including his VP. They have tons of ways to make Trump and his people look like incompetent bumbling and dangerous idiots- something which is incredibly easy given the already low caliber of most people in this administration. Trump is soon going to find out that the real owners of USA are far more competent and ruthless than the Democratic party could ever dream. Thy also have a number of other less legal options to remove Trump from office before his second term is over- if they choose to go down that path. To summarize, as things stand now, there is a real chance that Trump might not be able to finish his second presidential term- because he is starting to piss off the real owners of this country.

What do you think? Comments?