~a column by Colleen O’Brien
After a two-week hiatus from the political news in America, I return to being informed in a mind-blowing way. . . almost literally, the eerie light-headedness being very close to feeling the top of my head opening up and all logical thoughts flying off.
For as lazy a president as he is said to be, Trump gets a lot done in the wee hours of the morning on X before he lumbers onto his golf cart and jiggles away to golf for three or four days out of seven.
But at least one thing that happened in the last couple of days encouraged me, an ordinary person (as are most Americans). We act decently to one another in that we are kind and helpful, and we feel safe in a country backed by rule of law but nervous and despairing when we see with our own eyes that there is disregard for all law from president on down to ill-trained Darth-Vader-like men yanking people around, stepping on them, pepper-spraying their faces, tear-gassing them, shooting them dead.
On Feb. 20, 2026, the Supreme Court in a 6 to 3 decision told Trump he had exceeded his authority (meaning he acted outside the law) in demanding tariffs from most of the world selling to U.S companies. This usually means that the U.S. companies must then increase their prices to American consumers; and also that many of these countries will retaliate and no longer buy U.S. products. The Supreme Court ruling invalidated nearly half of Trump’s tariffs, a centerpiece of his economic agenda that has been hurting agriculture, retail, non-profit, educational spending – on and on. Three of his Far Right Supremes voted against him, which activated his well-worn retaliatory, self. He blamed the “stupid fools and RINOs [Republicans In Name Only] working for the Radical Left Democrats and foreign interests.”
He then launched into the oft-repeated lie that “We won in a landslide.”
He won by a mere 1.5 percent of the votes in 2024. 1.5 percent of anything is nothing to boast about.
He then told us, “As a country, we’ve never done so well.”
Not so: Growth in the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the total monetary value of all final goods and services produced within a country’s borders in a specific time period, usually a quarter or a year, is a puny 1.4 percent, the second worst to Trump’s 2016 numbers; plus the weakest jobs growth in decades. Trump’s economic approval rating has gone from plus six to minus 12, according to Silver Bulletin pollsters Nate Silver and Eli McKown, Jan. 14, 2026.
Unable to stop himself, he added the snarky line: “It was a dead country one and a half years ago under a dead president.” The man cannot quit dissing the former president, whose name we’ve heard more in one year of Trump’s reign than during Biden’s entire leadership.
Biden’s presidency is being studied as one of the best one-term administrations in our history. He inherited Trump’s plunging economy and worked it to be considered among the best across the globe because of the 16 million new jobs (better than any single-term president), mainly in manufacturing where people needed jobs the most. The unemployment rate fell to its lowest in 50 years. Wages increased, especially in working-class jobs. A record 10 million job applications for new businesses were filed.
From a legislative standpoint, Biden signed into law a nearly $1 trillion infrastructure bill (much of the ensuing building being claimed by Trump because, in his self-glorifying of all things, the designated infrastructure is being built during his regime); and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which meant $400 billion to mitigate devastation from climate change; it is the largest such investment of any country. The IRA also helped Medicare negotiate to reduce drug prices (haven’t I heard Trump take credit for this?). Biden signed the CHIPS Act, which provided more than $50 billion in spending to boost the U.S. semiconductor industry. And, after years of school shootings and no laws enacted regarding gun ownership, Biden initiated the first gun safety legislation in decades since the ’90s.
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Estimates from various places are already suggesting the government may be forced to refund billions in illegally collected duties from the refund dollars not being grabbed from our own taxes paid, but from all the money Trump has said we’ve compounded from his tariffs . . . “Think of this,” Trump says, “more than $18 TRILLION! There’s never been anything like it!” . . . to help the taxpayers who have seen their gross yearly income as not nearly enough for the increased prices of food, energy, autos, houses and health care. What is $18 trillion divided by 348,458,325 U.S.citizens (as of Feb. 17, 2026, U.S. Census Bureau)? I don’t know if this possible refund money is waiting in the U.S. Treasury or in one of Trump’s private safes or if it’s already been spent on gold trim on every bush and tree and blade of grass in the federal district of DC; not to forget, each royal palm at Mar a Lago.
