By Rob C.
TL;DR: I’m sure we’re all feeling a bit of a pinch at the pump these days. Everyday Americans are getting squeezed by sky-high prices for gas, and it’s about to get worse. But the Trump Tax isn’t restricted to the pump. Groceries, healthcare, rent — it doesn’t stop. I’m old enough to remember when this guy campaigned on lowering prices on day one and staying out of foreign wars, because I wasn’t born yesterday. He’s bombing Iran, getting booed at his own World Cup, and spending your tax dollars on an upgrade to his new jumbo jet while the DOJ hunts down the reporters who noticed. Let’s talk about who’s actually paying for all of this.
Good morning. Grab your coffee — and maybe wince a little less if you already filled up your tank this week, because I’ve got some numbers for you that aren’t going to help.
The Pinch at the Pump (And Everywhere Else)
I don’t know about you, but every time I pull into a gas station these days, I feel a sudden, violent impulse to check my bank account balance before unhooking the nozzle.
Choking Your Wallet - I’ve written before about the Strait of Hormuz and how a war with Iran was never going to stay contained to headlines about missiles — it was always going to show up in your bank account, too. Well, here’s the sequel nobody asked for. As of this week, Yemen’s Houthis are preparing to disrupt shipping through the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait if the U.S. hits Iranian civilian infrastructure again. What could be described as a pincer move: Tehran squeezing Hormuz on one side and the Houthis threatening the Red Sea on the other, putting a second global chokepoint for oil and shipping directly in play at the same time. The Houthis have already fired missiles at an airport in Saudi Arabia this month, breaking a truce that had held since 2022.
For those keeping score at home, that means two of the most important oil transit corridors on the planet are now simultaneously under threat, from the same conflict, that the Trump administration escalated. Oil traders are already pricing in the risk. That’s going to make your next trip to the gas station so much more fun.
It’s Not Just Gas
Here’s the thing about the Trump Tax, though — it doesn’t stop at the pump, does it? Take a walk down the grocery aisle, open your monthly health insurance statement, or look at your rent renewal notice. Inflation isn’t just “sticky”—it’s kind of everywhere-all-at-once, pounding working-class families into the dust while political talking heads debate abstract macroeconomic metrics on television.
I’m old enough—and retain enough functional brain cells—to remember when DJT spent two years on the campaign trail promising us that he would “cut prices in half on day one” and guarantee “no new foreign wars.” Because it was Donald, I knew it was snake oil at the time. But watching the “Trump Tax” materialize in real-time across every single aspect of American consumer life is still a marvel to behold.
If a contractor promised you a renovation on time and under budget and then blew both by a mile while charging you extra for the privilege, you’d call Bullshit! This is the same thing, just with a Victory Arch instead of a kitchen.
World Cup Wandering and War Room Failures
“Donny Draft Dodger” has officially managed to get us into a deep, catastrophic pickle with his military posture toward Iran, and he has absolutely zero idea how to get us out.
It’s almost poetic watching him navigate international crises, because his strategic competence looks remarkably similar to his recent appearance at the World Cup final at MetLife Stadium to hand out the trophy after Spain beat Argentina. There he was, wandering around the pitch alongside FIFA officials, attempting to crash the victory podium while tens of thousands of fans in the stadium loudly drowned him out with a wall of boos and whistles. Boos when he appeared on the Jumbotron during the anthem. Boos when he walked out with Infantino. Boos loud enough that one pool report clocked the stadium noise jumping from 78 to 84 decibels. He stood there looking completely bewildered, expecting a grand trophy for simply showing up, only to be politely ushered out of the team photo while the crowd jeered.
This is a man who has spent his entire public life obsessed with crowd size and adoration, standing in a stadium full of people who couldn’t wait to tell him, in the most universal language available, exactly what they thought of him.
Unfortunately for the American public, he’s not getting any trophies for this war in the Middle East, either—just a massive, runaway receipt that you and I are forced to foot. He is inherently, structurally terrible at the whole “commander-in-chief” thing. That’s probably why “Testosterone Pete” the Secretary of Defense — sorry, Secretary of War, isn’t bothering to tell his boss just how badly the regional situation is deteriorating. When your entire leadership strategy relies on chest-pounding ego and hormone screenings, real-world military strategy usually takes a backseat to public relations damage control.
The Flying Palace and Public Corruption
While Donald Trump might be an absolute disaster at managing national defense or stabilization, let’s give credit where credit is due: the man is an undisputed world-class genius at public corruption. He possesses a natural, instinctual talent for converting government power into personal net worth, and he isn’t even pretending to hide it anymore.
While you and I are digging under the couch cushions for spare change to cover gas money, our president has been on an absolute spending spree with our tax dollars. Case in point: his brand-new, second-hand Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet “gifted” to him by Qatar. Turning that secondhand Boeing 747 into a secure Air Force One is now estimated to cost taxpayers up to $1 billion once you account for the classified security retrofit — and reporting has traced hundreds of millions of that funding to money shifted out of the Pentagon’s Sentinel nuclear missile modernization program. Read that twice. We’re pulling funds earmarked for nuclear missile modernization to gold-plate a “free” plane. Because a $400 million luxury jet wasn’t quite lavish enough for his tastes, the administration is spending $100s of millions of public tax dollars to retrofit the aircraft, probably with gold-trimmed seatbelts, and a built -in McDonald’s.
And when the New York Times reported that the Secret Service actually pulled Trump off that very jet mid-trip during a NATO summit because it wasn’t secure enough — missing defensive countermeasures the older Air Force One had — his administration’s response wasn’t to explain. It was to send federal agents to the homes of four Times reporters with grand jury subpoenas, then go further and seek the phone records of the journalists and even some of their relatives, trying to unmask their sources. This is not a government confident in its own conduct. This is a government trying to make sure nobody else finds out what it’s already doing.
This is a man who treats the highest office in the land like a personal venture capital fund. From memecoin crypto promotions and insider trading tips to selling presidential pardons to wealthy felons and accepting literal gold bars disguised as diplomatic “gifts,” it turns out being president is a phenomenal gig—if you have zero ethical boundaries and a compliant Republican Congress.
What He’s Actually Good At: Corruption
Since day one, this administration has systematically defanged the very machinery that used to police exactly this kind of behavior. In February of last year, Trump signed an executive order pausing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — the law that makes it illegal for American individuals and companies to bribe foreign officials for business advantages — citing, and I am not making this up, the idea that anti-bribery enforcement was bad for American competitiveness. When the pause officially lifted months later, the new guidance from the DOJ narrowed enforcement so significantly that roughly half the active investigative docket was simply terminated. The law technically still exists. Nobody’s especially worried about it landing on them anymore.
Down here on Earth, the rest of us actually have to work for a living. We don’t get “gifted” airplanes or medals from adoring dignitaries. And neither should a sitting president — except in Trump World, where the agencies that used to investigate exactly this kind of self-dealing have been dismantled from the inside, one executive order at a time.
Our “Fascist Finagler” is wandering through the U.S. government treating our constitutional institutions like the free sample trays at a Costco—taking whatever he wants, stuffing his pockets, and leaving the working class to clean up the trash. Every dollar stolen, every tariff slapped on consumer goods, and every spike in energy prices caused by unnecessary military adventurism is just another part of: The Trump Tax.
It’s time to stop treating this administration’s economic policies like a series of unfortunate accidents. It is a feature, not a bug. They are extracting wealth from the bottom of society to shield the top from consequences. If we want our country back, we need to stop paying the bill, start organizing our communities, and make sure these corporate cowards realize that democracy isn’t for sale.
For a detailed look into this lawless scam – Get my book.
F*CK ICE. RELEASE ALL THE FILES!
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Robert Cain is the author of “Democracy for Sale: How Corporate Greed Is Corrupting Democracy and Endangering the Planet.” Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and independent booksellers everywhere.