By Ben Meiselas
Note: You can also listen to this interview on the MeidasTouch audio podcast on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
As the White House absorbs another round of grim economic news, the response from Donald Trump and his allies has been strikingly familiar: deny, distort, and declare victory anyway. Trump has repeatedly given his own economy an “A+++++,” a grade echoed by Vice President JD Vance even as communities like Allentown, Pennsylvania, bear the brunt of tariffs, rising prices, and job insecurity. The contradiction is no accident. It is a governing strategy built on illusion and, well, lies.
That was the backdrop for my interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, the New York Times financial columnist, CNBC co-host of Squawk Box, and author of the new book 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation. Sorkin’s work is not simply a historical account, but also a warning. And in today’s Trump economy, the parallels he draws feel uncomfortably close.
Over and over, this regime has manipulated basic economic facts. Apolitical figures who release accurate data are fired. Inflation figures are massaged through selective averages. Trillions of dollars in purported foreign investment are announced with great fanfare, with zero evidence to their existence. Tariffs are declared tax cuts paid for by foreign countries, despite the fact that they are tax hikes paid for by the American people. As Sorkin put it, telling people tariffs do not cause inflation is “literally like telling somebody it’s raining right now, even though I can see that it’s sunny.” Sorkin’s book may be called 1929, but it’s clear this moment is also very 1984.
What makes this moment especially dangerous is not just the disinformation itself, but its scale and brazenness. Sorkin described the current environment as “policy by press release,” where grand announcements substitute for binding agreements and real data. Deals with China, Japan, or the European Union are proclaimed, yet no documents materialize, no terms are published, and often no confirmation comes from the other side. Investors, Sorkin explained, have learned to discount these claims, applying what he called a “haircut” to presidential statements because “smart money is actually putting a lie discount into what the guy said.”
Sorkin pointed to the administration’s repeated claims about massive soybean purchases by China as a case study in how economic fiction is manufactured and sustained. The president publicly declared that China would buy tens of millions of metric tons of U.S. soybeans by the end of the year, a figure Sorkin said collapses under even minimal scrutiny. With the year nearly over, actual sales totaled only a fraction of that amount, yet officials quietly shifted the definition of the deadline from “end of the year” to the far more elastic “growing season.” The numbers never added up, Sorkin noted, and when pressed, administration officials offered no clear answers — only moving goalposts.
This erosion of trust can be found everywhere you look. It is felt most acutely by people living paycheck to paycheck. Inflation has outpaced wages. Housing, health care, education, and transportation costs have surged. Affordability has become a form of psychological torture for working Americans, a relentless reminder that the economy is working for someone else.
This is where 1929 becomes more than a history book. Sorkin described the late 1920s as an era of breathtaking technological innovation, rampant speculation, and almost no guardrails. Insider trading was legal. Manipulation was routine. Debt piled up invisibly. Today, he sees echoes of that world in unregulated crypto markets, ballooning private credit, and opaque AI financing structures that hide leverage off corporate balance sheets. “One of the great lessons of every financial crisis,” he said, “is you have too much debt in the system.”
The danger is compounded by the Trump administration’s deliberate dismantling of oversight. Regulators who once scrutinized corporate claims have been sidelined. The SEC’s traditional enforcement culture has been weakened, creating what Sorkin described as “open season” for executives to throw around staggering numbers without fear of consequence. Our nation put all these guardrails in place following the Great Depression, and then later, the Great Recession. Yet, these are now seemingly nonexistent under the Trump regime.
Perhaps most troubling is the transformation of American capitalism itself. As Sorkin noted, under Trump, economic decision-making increasingly runs through the Oval Office. CEOs calculate strategy not based on markets alone, but on whether the president will praise, punish, or sue them. Sorkin called this a “fundamental shift,” noting that it resembles state-directed capitalism more than a free market. “We have never had a time where CEOs are making their decisions daily based on whether their strategy is going to be in line with the strategy of this president,” he said. Sorkin added, “That is something that’s more akin to places like China.”
That dynamic helps explain why so many business leaders appear, in Governor Gavin Newsom’s words, “supine” in the face of authoritarian pressure. Sorkin expressed empathy for executives who fear retaliation and rationalize compliance as protecting shareholders or employees. But he also raised the unanswered question of whether there is a red line at all, or whether it keeps moving until resistance becomes impossible.
Sorkin is careful not to predict an inevitable collapse. The Great Depression was unique in its scale and severity. But history does not need to repeat exactly to rhyme dangerously. What matters is whether we heed the warnings. As Sorkin reminded me, American optimism is not a birthright. “We have to earn that exceptionalism every day.”
That, ultimately, is the choice facing us now. A democracy cannot function when truth is optional, accountability is mocked, and economic reality is replaced by spectacle. The lessons of 1929 are not abstract. They are alive in the policies of this presidency. Ignoring them would not just be reckless. It would be a betrayal of the people who pay the price when illusions finally collapse.
Watch my interview above with Andrew Ross Sorkin and let me know what you think in the comments below. Remember to like, share, and subscribe for more.
