TOM on a Segue with a flamethrower

 

Apr 7, 2025 (77/1461)

Like I said, the seatbelt isn’t tight enough. If you didn’t buckle up before today’s opening bell, you were in for a rough ride. Up down up down. Slide, skid and smash. And here’s TOM opening the bottle of lighter fluid and squirting it right into the BBQ – whoooosh!

“President Donald Trump is threatening new 50% tariffs on China unless Beijing lifts its retaliatory duties on U.S. exports by tomorrow. The White House says any suggestion that Trump is considering a 90-day pause in tariffs is “fake news.”

And behind him comes the fire brigade. Remember when I said waaayyy back in the beginning that every TOM appointee or admin gets a fire extinguisher when they sign on? I wasn’t kidding. And now we know why. So leading the brigade is Bessent, Sec’y of Money who says “Maybe almost 70” countries have reached out to the White House about negotiating tariffs, Bessent told Fox, including Japan, whose Prime Minister Ishiba spoke to Trump today.” The vision in my head goes like this: TOM on a Segue with a flamethrower, rolling through the White House setting everything on fire. And the minions desperately trying to keep up and put each spark out.

There is the slightest crack in the façade that all is golden in TOM’s house. ‘It is a wrecking ball’: Former DOGE worker describes Musk-led government-slashing effort from the inside. Merici Vinton, a federal worker who recently left her job at the government information technology office weeks after it was taken over by DOGE, told CNN in an interview she witnessed a “highly secretive” effort operating by “a different set of rules.” Wait? You mean everything isn’t on the up and up? Not all is copacetic? The shock!

And maybe just maybe the billionaires are feeling the tiniest bit of “pain.” Even they are now looking askance at TOM.

Bill Ackman: The hedge fund manager is a longtime Trump supporter but has turned against the president’s tariffs, railing against Trump’s Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and how the Trump administration calculated the tariffs and calling for the White House to pause them, writing Sunday that if the tariffs do take effect, “We are heading for a self-induced, economic nuclear winter, and we should start hunkering down.”

Jamie Dimon: The JPMorganChase CEO issued his annual letter to shareholders Monday morning, which expressed concerns about Trump’s tariffs, saying that while there are some “legitimate reasons” for imposing them, they “will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession” and expressing concerns about the continued uncertainties around Trump’s tariffs and how they will “affect America’s long-term economic alliances.”

And best of all!

Elon Musk: Trump’s new right-hand-man hasn’t explicitly spoken out against the tariffs, but the Tesla CEO shared a video early Monday of economist Milton Friedman touting free trade and the benefits of importing goods. He also deleted a post from over the weekend criticizing Trump’s top trade adviser Peter Navarro for praising tariffs. Musk’s brother (and Tesla board member) Kimbal Musk also criticized the tariffs as a “permanent tax” on Americans.

“More than $10 billion. That’s how much Trump’s top 10 billionaire donors lost in the stock market on Thursday alone, as stocks plunged in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s Wednesday tariff announcement.” That is not the way to win friends and influence people, TOM.