By Ben Meiselas
As I watched the news unfold this morning, it became impossible to ignore the accelerating deterioration of both the American economy and the conduct of the man currently occupying the Oval Office. New data shows layoffs surging past 1.17 million for the year, the highest since the 2008 crash and the early months of the Covid crisis. Yet Donald Trump, instead of confronting this reality, spent his morning shouting into social media about the “poisoning of America” and promoting his golf course in Scotland.
Let’s dive in.
The 71,000 job cuts reported in November alone bring the total for 2025 to nearly 1.2 million, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. It is a staggering figure, and one made worse by the fact that much of the underlying economic data is now coming from private sources because the Trump administration has stopped publishing key federal indicators. Even conservative financial commentators have been forced to acknowledge parallels to past recession years. One analyst on Bloomberg noted that job cuts above 70,000 in a single month have happened only twice since the financial crisis. Meanwhile, Fox “News” has begun floating the idea that this wave of layoffs is somehow “good news” for Trump, defining economic suffering as politically useful rather than sounding the alarm for millions of households being pushed into crisis.
The consequences of Trump’s policies reach beyond the labor market. Major companies, including Constellation Brands, Wingstop, Colgate-Palmolive, and PepsiCo, report significant sales declines in heavily Latino neighborhoods, where fear caused by Trump’s mass deportation agenda has driven consumers out of stores, bars, and restaurants. Latino customers make up a substantial portion of these companies’ revenue. When a government terrorizes communities, business collapses. This is not theoretical. It is happening today.
Health care costs are soaring as well, devastating families already struggling to stay afloat. A report on the front page of the Boston Globe documented families facing annual premiums nearing or surpassing ten thousand dollars, with increases of four to five thousand more on the horizon. For households earning $60,000, $80,000, even $160,000 a year, these numbers are unsustainable. Trump ran on the claim that he would make health care more affordable, that a new plan was always just two weeks away. Years later, the country is still waiting.
Pressed on these crises, Speaker Mike Johnson responded that Americans simply need to “relax.” He assured reporters that relief will come “next year” when what he calls the “Beautiful Bill” fully kicks in. But Johnson’s assurances ring hollow for families already crushed by the affordability crisis, workers losing their livelihoods, and businesses seeing revenues collapse. Telling Americans to relax while the bottom falls out of the economy is not a policy. It is contempt.
But as dire as the economic picture is, the moral and legal crises emanating from this White House may be even more alarming. Members of Congress were recently shown unedited video of a September 2 operation off the coast of Venezuela that resulted in the killing of two survivors stranded on a destroyed fishing boat. Representative Jim Himes, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the footage “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service,” describing individuals in “clear distress” who “were killed by the United States.” These comments came after weeks of shifting explanations from Trump officials, many of whom have alternated between claiming the killings were justified and insisting similar operations occurred under past presidents.
I invited Rep. Himes to join me on the MeidasTouch Podcast today to discuss what he saw. Stay tuned and keep a lookout for my interview with him.
The minimization of such actions among Trump’s allies is jarring. Some lawmakers attempted to compare the operation to unrelated policies under President Obama. Others dismissed concerns entirely, offering rhetoric that dehumanized the victims rather than reckoning with the profound legal and ethical questions raised by the footage. Even basic inquiries into the intelligence behind the operation have been met with evasions from senior Republicans, raising further concerns about oversight and truthfulness.
At the same time, Trump has escalated his hateful rhetoric inside the Oval Office, referring to Somali immigrants as “garbage” and prompting nothing more than nervous laughter and silence from the aides and officials around him. Their refusal to confront this behavior is not incidental. It reflects a broader complicity that has enabled the administration’s pattern of cruelty, corruption, and institutional degradation. The normalization of hate, the disregard for life, the dismantling of economic safeguards, and the abandonment of transparency form a single, devastating pattern.
What is unfolding is not a series of isolated missteps. It is a systematic unraveling of democratic norms and economic stability under a president increasingly unable or unwilling to carry out his basic responsibilities. Americans deserve better than to be told to “relax” while their jobs disappear, their health costs skyrocket, their communities are terrorized, and their government becomes a vehicle for cruelty.
This moment demands accountability, honesty, and urgency.
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