Trade & Security Aren't a GoFundMe! The US Wasn't Played—We Wrote the Rules!

The thoughts of a fool's kind of careless, I'm just a fool waiting on the wrong block - Led Zeppelin

In This Letter, you won’t wanna miss!

1. My Column

2. David Shuster’s hilarious video

3. NYT Pitchbot’s outstanding pitch examples

4. Trumper Hatemail!

America Wasn’t Some Global Patsy—We Set The Price & Charged Admission

Trump, destroying our prosperity & security in one fell swoop. Impessive

Let’s clear up a little historical amnesia making the rounds on the mongo MAGA circuit and during right-wing-media-incel-mating calls: After World War II, America didn’t get suckered into some globalist group project. We built the postwar order—from scratch—like the bossy valedictorian of international diplomacy you know today. Bretton Woods? Yeah, that was our idea.

We summoned the world’s economic minds to New Hampshire and laid down the rules: the U.S. dollar would reign supreme, international trade would be stabilized, and America would sit at the head of the table eating the biggest piece of cake. This wasn’t charity—it was chess, and we were Bobby Freakin’ Fischer. We just happen to currently have a President who gets flummoxed by tic tac toe.

Then there's NATO, another thing Trump loves to screech about like someone just told him McDonald's stopped serving hamberders. We chose to pay more, not because we were suckers, Trump, you lummox, but because we wanted to lead. You don’t get to be the CEO of the Free World by splitting the bill evenly. We underwrote peace in Europe so it wouldn’t turn into a World War sequel trilogy. Another way to protect economic growth via stability for, you guessed it, US!

It gave U.S. corporations open access to global markets, allowed democracy (mostly) to flourish, and—this is key—kept the tanks out of Paris and Berlin. It was profitable to be the grown-up in the room. Now I know it’s more fun to be the mangy toddler—which has, dishearteningly, served both Elon & Trump well in the past (thanks corporate-media fluffers!). But now we’re at the big boys table, and we need to act like it.