The president said recently that he had “no intention of firing” Fed Chair Jerome Powell. He later said that he might consider dialing back tariffs on Chinese imports. Both statements sparked market rallies. Then the Treasury secretary spoke and spoiled the whole thing.

Economist Justin Wolfers made a chart to illustrate.

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It was just another example of the ruinous mismanagement of what had been Joe Biden’s booming economy. Inflation is up. Employment is down. The price of a dozen eggs keeps rising. A recession is on the horizon. And thanks to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the government may be too anemic to blunt its impact.

Every bad thing that’s happening is coming directly from the White House. Markets are not “correcting.” They are reacting to thoughtless and careless policies. And here’s what I can’t help thinking as I watch all this unfold: No one would tolerate it coming from a Democrat. 

Just imagine that Kamala Harris is the president right now. What would the reaction be among the respectable white people who constitute most of the Washington press and pundit corps if she had:

• slapped a 145 percent tariff on all imports from China; 
• talked of restoring tariffs as the main source of federal revenue, as they were until the second decade of the last century; 
• promised that America is going to get rich off the levies; 
• then walked them back (from 145 percent to 65 percent, which is still huge but whatevs), because they were decimating 401Ks, though doing so would undermine the promise she had made?

The reaction from neutral observers would hardly be neutral. Every story about markets tanking and economies shrinking would feature profound levels of condescension and contempt. There would be no benefit of the doubt. Every fact would be interpreted on the side of ignorance, arrogance, incompetence but most of all weakness. The press corps already holds Democrats to standards it never holds the GOP to. Now imagine a President Harris who’s not trying to be perfect. 

You can’t actually imagine a Black female president who’s not trying to be perfect, however, because she would understand deep in her bones that everything her administration did would be magnified beyond reason and never seen on its own terms. Instead, every act would be seen in terms controlled by respectable white people whom she would constantly be explaining and proving herself to, as if her presidency were not the product of the people’s will but a “DEI program.”

In other words, you can’t actually imagine a Black female president just winging it the way Donald Trump wings it, because the structures and conditions that are in place in this country would never allow her to do so without paying a dear price. If, under Harris’ watch, $10 trillion in market value had gone poof, as it has under Trump’s, her own party would have brought her up on impeachment charges by now. She might have been tried, convicted and removed from office already.

Given it’s impossible to imagine Harris doing what Trump has done, we have to ask ourselves why, and the reasonable explanation is that he’s the exception somehow to all levels of job performance and standards of excellence. There is virtually nothing he can do that would trigger the same reaction Harris would if she had done the same thing. This is so baked in that even when Trump is directly responsible, people go out of their way to find some other reason why he’s really not.

Consider this piece by a former Pentagon spokesman. In Politico, John Ullyot said that he expects Trump to fire Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has compromised security and brought “total chaos” to the military. Why? Because Trump “is not a go-along, get-along creature of the Beltway like many of his recent predecessors, but rather a shrewd businessman who expects results and holds his team accountable for serious mistakes that occur on their watch.” 

As evidence, John Ullyot then said: “Cabinet Secretaries Jim Mattis, Mark Esper, Rex Tillerson, David Shulkin, Tom Price and Ryan Zinke. They, like Hegseth, are all good men and patriots whom Trump dismissed in his first term when he found their performance wanting.”

“Their performance wanting” is doing heavy lifting here. Almost to a man, each did something that Trump cannot abide: he stood up to him. It’s for that very reason that Pete Hegseth is safe. He will do whatever Trump wants him to, as long as he looks good on TV while doing it. This is so obvious that it’s hard to imagine anyone not seeing it, but here we are, one of Trump’s toadies hoping against hope, along with everyone else, that he will live up to a reputation that he has never earned. 

That he has never earned a reputation as “a shrewd businessman who expects results and holds his team accountable” but nevertheless benefits from it is why I’m skeptical in the face of new polling. The latest round is so no good very bad that it’s tempting to attribute the falling numbers to the idea that the American people have figured out the difference between rhetoric (“I alone can fix it”) and reality. 

But they supposedly figured out the difference the first time around, in 2017, when the president’s numbers were nearly as abysmal as they are now. Yet despite that, they put him back in the White House. That should tell us that voters didn’t figure anything out and almost certainly won’t the second time, not when there are people around like Jeff Bezos who see some kind of advantage in giving their own real reputations as burnt offerings to uphold Trump’s phony one. 

Amazon had planned to tell consumers that their stuff is more expensive because of the tariffs. Then Trump called Bezos directly to complain and put the kibosh on that. If Kamala Harris had done that, the entire business universe would roar altogether with allegations of communism. But since it’s Trump, it’s OK. He’s a genius once again.

Hard as it is to accept, many voters want to believe Trump is “a shrewd businessman who expects results and holds his team accountable.” If conditions were right, they would almost certainly forgive him for winging it and destroying things in ways they never would a Democratic counterpart, especially a Black female counterpart, who isn’t nearly as deserving of the same endless benefit of the doubt.

Kamala Harris had a plan. She was confident and determined and careful, knowing good intentions can sometimes lead to bad outcomes. Meanwhile, Trump had a concept of a plan. He didn’t care about the consequences, because why care about consequences when the structures and conditions in place in this country mean his mediocrity will be seen as tough and shrewd if said with enough arrogance?

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