When Walmart hinted it might raise prices in response to his new wave of tariffs, Trump went straight to social media to threaten them. “EAT THE TARIFFS,” he wrote, directing the world’s largest retailer not to touch consumer prices. “I’ll be watching, and so will your customers.”
“I’ll be watching, and so will your customers.”
This is not economic strategy—it’s coercion. He speaks to CEOs the way a boss speaks to union reps before a strike. There are no policy briefings. No diplomacy. Just pressure.
Apple’s Tim Cook was once treated as a rare ally. But that status was conditional. “You’re my friend,” Trump told him. “I treated you very good… I don’t want you in India.” The line wasn’t a request. It was a warning dressed up as familiarity.
The same tactics now extend to the legislative branch. Trump’s administration has leaned heavily on emergency powers—many of them vestigial and unchecked—to bypass Congress entirely. He uses tariff authority originally intended for national security threats to rewrite trade policy on a whim. In his first term, when he slapped steel tariffs on Canada, Rand Paul called it “one-man taxation.” That hasn’t changed.
“One person is not allowed to raise taxes. The Constitution forbids it.”
But one person did. And that person is back.
This is not about ego anymore. It’s architecture. Trump has been constructing this version of himself for decades, testing how far he can take it, how loudly he can say it, and how many people will nod along.
“Show me someone without an ego,” he wrote in The Art of the Deal, “and I’ll show you a loser.” In 2013, he posted: “Sorry losers and haters, but my IQ is one of the highest—and you all know it!” When asked about his success, he once told CNN, “I win. I win. I always win.”
Now, the scale of the performance has changed. The ambition is global. At a private fundraiser in Palm Beach this year, he said it flat out: “Before, I ran the country. Now, I run the world.”
“Now, I run the world.”
He doesn’t hide the fantasy anymore. He sells it.
In his second inaugural address, Trump said: “I was saved by God to make America great again.” He delivered the line slowly, deliberately, looking out over the crowd as if daring anyone to contradict him.
That same week, he floated a plan to transform Gaza—yes, Gaza—into “the Riviera of the Middle East.” Not a peace proposal. Not a diplomatic agreement. A beachfront real estate pitch, complete with mockups and metaphors about resorts and promenades.
The press asked what international leaders thought. Trump responded that they were already on board: “Countries calling us up, kissing my ass.”
This is not wartime mobilization. This is not Roosevelt invoking emergency powers to fight fascism. This is not Nixon navigating inflation or Reagan pushing strategic trade controls. Trump isn’t reacting to crisis—he’s staging one. The enemy is always someone new: Mexico, China, the “deep state,” even your local mayor. The solution, always, is Trump.