September 25, 2024 | Reading Time: 3 minutes
The weirdest thing about Trump? His understanding of money
He throws around the word “tariffs” like he throws around $100 bills.
Donald Trump still doesn’t like being called weird, but that doesn’t stop him from acting that way. During a rally on Monday, the GOP nominee had this to say to women voters: “I am your protector. I want to be your protector … you will no longer be abandoned, lonely or scared. You will no longer be in danger … You will no longer be thinking about abortion.”
So the man most responsible for the fall of Roe and the disempowerment of American women is now promising to protect them? Yeah, that’s weird – and gaslight-y, too. He’s the villain who wants his victims to believe he’s their hero. That kind of lie forms the basis of many abusive relationships.
But I think we are missing what’s truly weird.
It’s his understanding of money.
Donald Trump was born a multimillionaire. He never learned what it’s like to earn a living with his labor. He never learned what it’s like to pay for things with those earnings. And because he never had those experiences, and because he has no interest in other people’s lives, he has no idea what the meaning of money is to people who were not born multimillionaires.
To normal people, money is something we trade for our labor, which is usually our only asset. So when we pay for things, like groceries, it isn’t merely a transaction. It’s an emotional experience. We know what it feels like to pay for things because we know what it takes to earn that money.
To someone like Trump, a dollar isn’t a dollar in the ordinary sense of the word. There’s no feeling behind it, because no labor went into earning it. So prices are irrelevant. A $100 grocery bill could be $10,000 or it could be $100,000 – it makes no difference to him. $100 is just a number. It’s just an abstraction. It’s as abstract to Trump as being rich is to a normal person.
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There’s always a sense of unreality whenever Donald Trump talks about America’s economic policy. He says that he’s going to slash your “energy bill” by 50 percent. He says that the price of gasoline is “5, 6, 7, 8 dollars” a gallon. He says that he will decrease the price of food by decreasing the food supply. He has “concepts of a plan” for health care.
None of this makes sense, because making sense is beside the point to a man who does not have a normal person’s understanding of money.
To a multimillionaire like him, prices are not real. Costs are not real. Money isn’t money. It’s power. It’s a tool for getting lesser mortals to do what he wants. Normal people just don’t think that way, because they work for their money. Not so for Trump. He was born a multimillionaire.
To me, that’s what makes him profoundly weird.
And that’s what you should think about as you watch this clip.
In it, Trump visits a supermarket in suburban Pennsylvania. As he’s leaving, he reaches into his coat pocket and takes out money. He tells the cashier that it’s a tip. Then he takes one of the bills, which is a $100, and hands it to a woman who’s being checked out. “It just went down a hundred bucks,” he says. “We’ll do that for you at the White House.”
Most of the commentary on this clip is focused on the fact that Trump appears to be bribing shoppers into voting for him. That’s as it should be. But I think this clip is representative of something much larger, which is Trump’s understanding of money. You haven’t seen weird until you’ve seen a very obscenely rich man throw around $100 bills like it’s nothing to him.
Weirder still?
Many Americans seem to believe that a candidate for whom prices are irrelevant is worth listening to when it comes to economic policy.
To me, Trump’s money-weirdness explains his fetish for tariffs.
As you know, tariffs are a tax on imported goods. Trump keeps talking about them, however, as if they were a tax on foreign nations, like China. He keeps talking about them as if this tax were going to generate “trillions and trillions” in revenue, so much money, in fact, that you won’t have to worry about the cost of child care anymore. (Yes, he really said that.)
Some say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Others say he’s just lying. But his weird understanding of money suggests both are wrong.
Donald Trump was born a multimillionaire. To him, money isn’t money. $100 isn’t $100. It’s just a number, a meaningless abstraction. Its only meaning is whether it can get people to do what he wants. It doesn’t matter if he makes no sense. It doesn’t matter if tariffs make everything more expensive, and they would. All that matters is if you vote for him.
He throws around the word “tariffs” like he throws around Benjamins.
It makes no difference to him.
That should be seen as profoundly weird.
John Stoehr is the editor of the Editorial Board. He writes the daily edition. Find him @johnastoehr.
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