Americans need to engage in a game of “It’s Only Stupid IF…” Hell, the whole world is allowed to play – encouraged even. “It’s Only Stupid IF…” is a game I made up intended to help rational, decent people make some sense of the USA today. No, not the newspaper, the country. It’s easy to play, too. All one does is start a sentence with “It’s only stupid IF…” and finish the sentence with what ethical and honorable people might do.

Here’s an example: on the left, it’s a great laugh line just to mention any or all of the failed businesses 47 has started and destroyed. “He’s so stupid,” they say, “he even bankrupted a casino! A-ha, ha, ha! Oh, isn’t he dumb?” But then you play the game, see? “It’s Only Stupid IF…” he intended to create going concerns in the first place.

But if his goal was to create – and destroy – “bust-outs,” then, really, Donny’s various business ventures, casino included, represent a master class. He forms a corporation and uses it to start a business on borrowed money. He builds it out on empty promises to pay craftsmen later. He hires employees (human beings) to work the business, paying them with that borrowed money, then he fleeces every cent out of that business. Every dollar that comes in flows directly into his own pocket. Eventually, inevitably, the business fails and the corporation files for bankruptcy protection.

The lender loses. The craftsmen lose. The employees lose. The municipality he ran his scam in loses. But HE, personally, pockets lots and lots of lucre! The reason ethical people have difficulty seeing that is because such a scheme is profitable to one or two people and damaging to hundreds, maybe thousands, of others. Every. Single. Time. Profitable for him, harmful to everyone else. But if one doesn’t CARE that they’re harming people… It’s easy money.

He recently started a crypto currency business. Crypto is, essentially, pseudo-money. It has nothing behind it, not even debt. It has value because people agree it has value but the moment that agreement changes, so does the value. Jumping in to such a venture seems stupid. But, “It’s Only Stupid IF…” he intends to make money from the crypto. But he doesn’t. He’s “mining the miners,” as the saying goes. HE makes money from the fees and charges that come from facilitating the hopes and dreams of people who DO intend to make money off the currency itself. 47 doesn’t CARE if his coin makes money or loses money. HE makes money either way.

Let’s think about his on again, off again tariffs. THAT game hurts millions, not just a measly few thousand. Demanding, rescinding, insisting upon, then removing tariffs SEEMS like incredibly stupid economic management, and I mean world-class stupid. He’s destabilizing the world economy, destroying the American dollar, and voluntarily surrendering American hegemony. He’s only been in office a short time, and the US has seen her credit rating downgraded as a direct result of his actions. Not Biden’s. Not Obama’s. Not even Hillary’s. HIS.

But “It’s Only Stupid IF…” he intends the US to have a strong, vibrant economy that works well for as many as possible. You know, like the one Biden left him. If your actual goal is to turn ALL OF AMERICA into one, giant “bust-out,” OMG is doing a good job. Think about it, if you wanted to devastate the financial power of a once-great nation, if that was your goal, what would you do that Donny isn’t doing? He’s covered all the bases, right?

Another round? Okay. He lies as easily as drinking water. No, that’s wrong. He sometimes has difficulty drinking water. The thing is, he’ll look right into a camera that he KNOWS is recording and promise that, say, tariffs will never raise prices on the end consumer. Sometimes as short as a day later, he’ll look into those STILL RECORDING cameras and tell the same people that of course their prices are going to go up because of his tariffs. See, to me, that seems stupid. Does he not realize that someone, somewhere, will show those two clips side by side, proving he’s lying?

But, of course, “It’s Only Stupid IF…” he expects his lies to be a problem, which, for reasons I can’t grasp, they never, ever are. MOST of the time, when he’s talking, he’s not talking to the world. He’s not even talking to Americans. He’s talking to MAGA. He’s feeding soundbites into MAGA media that the complicit broadcasters can play on a loop, all day, every day. Americans know Donny is lying. Hell, the whole world knows Donny is lying. But MAGA does NOT know Donny is lying.

During the campaign, Donny promised he would release the Epstein files so the world can finally see the details of Epstein’s human trafficking crimes. The whole world knows there are names of some very wealthy, very powerful people associated with Epstein’s crimes. We just don’t know exactly whose names we might find on such a list. So the regime is pretending they just can’t seem to get the files together. Those particular files seem to be constantly “under review.” It seems to be little more than stupid incompetence.

Once again, though, “It’s Only Stupid IF…” you DON’T know that the three most prominent names that would likely show in that record are of the very dear friends, ‘Jeffery Epstein,’ ‘Ghislaine Maxwell,’ and ‘Donald Trump.’ But Donny DOES know whose name shows up as much as Epstein and Maxwell and he doesn’t DARE release the details. Sure, he can promise, but he can NEVER follow through. He’s concerned about what MAGA might think if they thought he was knowingly having sex with underage women.

To my mind, this one gets a rare “double stupid.” See, “It’s Only Stupid IF…” MAGA might react badly to the statutory rapes, but they won’t. MAGA will overlook the criminal sex the same way they disregard any – ALL – of his other moral failings. 47 just seems too stupid to realize that. So it’s a pretended stupid, disguised and confounded by an actual stupid.

So there you go, the rules of the game. Now you can play along on your own time and it applies to everything, all the time. EVERY time you hear about some new, apparently “stupid” thing he’s done, play the game. “It’s Only Stupid IF…” then fill in what a decent, moral, honorable person would do. Donny NEVER does what a decent, moral, honorable person might do, so the game helps to clarify his true intent, even as he tells whatever lie is needed to facilitate the current grift at hand. And, sadly, “It’s Only Stupid IF…” it doesn’t work…