‘Paradise’ Lost

The hellscape of Trump 2.0

Donald Trump’s most unctuous and depraved courtier, Stephen Miller, last week insisted, “The American people understand the hell that we inherited and the extraordinary paradise that President Trump is building.” To paraphrase Mary McCarthy (not Dorothy Parker, to whom the quote is frequently misattributed), every word he speaks is a lie, including “and” and “the.”

“The American people” overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump’s performance because they know they are not getting “paradise,” let alone “extraordinary paradise.” (Is there such a thing as mediocre paradise?) Trump’s overall approval has dropped in many polls to the mid-30’s. On inflation, Trump’s polling is the worst of any president ever. Trump’s results are truly “extraordinary” because he has managed to create broad consensus in a sharply divided country that his performance, especially on the economy, is horrible.

Trump’s dismal poll numbers, if they follow the deteriorating economic environment, may get even worse. “A measure of inflation closely watched by the Federal Reserve accelerated in April to a three-year high, reinforcing the central bank’s budding support to consider raising interest rates if price pressures do not ease,” the New York Times reported last week. “The Personal Consumption Expenditures index rose 3.8 percent from the same time last year. It was the fastest annual pace since May 2023, when the Fed was in the midst of raising rates to tame a burst of inflation that had emerged in the wake of the pandemic.” With numbers like that, not even Trump “sock puppet” Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh is going to push through rate cuts anytime soon.

Trump says the economy is “hot.” Maybe a hot mess. “The U.S. economy grew more slowly during the first three months of the year,” the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. “Gross domestic product, a broad measure of the goods and services produced across the U.S., rose at a 1.6% seasonally and inflation-adjusted annual rate in January through March, the Commerce Department said Thursday.”

Americans accurately perceive that they are falling behind. Simply put, inflation is outpacing wages. “From April 2025 to April 2026, real average hourly earnings decreased 0.3 percent, seasonally adjusted,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last month. This amounts to genuine hardship for many American families, as a new Brookings Institution study just reported. Since many families cannot readily control significant parts of their budget (e.g., housing, childcare), “closing that gap between essentials and income has meant skipped meals, increased debt and delayed medical care.”

Two data points illustrate Americans’ struggle to make ends meet.

First, with wages lagging inflation, Americans are increasingly relying on credit card debt. “In the first quarter of this year, the percentage of credit-card balances that were at least 90 days delinquent rose to 13.12%, according to data released in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “That’s the highest level in 15 years, and the most since the period following the 2008 financial crisis.” With families stretched to the breaking point, future household purchases will need to decline to manage families’ debt load.

Second, the University of Michigan’s survey of consumer sentiment plunged to the lowest level since 1978. As Market Watch explained:

Sentiment was worse in May than at any point during the 2020-21 coronavirus pandemic. It was also worse than at any point during the financial crisis of 2008-09. And it was even worse than at any point during the tumultuous period of 1980-82, when the U.S. suffered two recessions, 11% inflation and 18% mortgage rates.

Moreover, economic pain is not felt evenly. The New York Fed reports that inflation has hit lower- and middle-class families — who spend a greater share on essentials like food and housing — hardest. As a result, food insecurity, aggravated by cuts to SNAP, has increased. “Households have struggled with the expiration of pandemic-era [food] aid … [R]ecently, President Donald Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ tightened the work requirements for SNAP benefits.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently found that in 12 states, 700,000 fewer children are receiving SNAP food; “nearly half of the 1.6-million-person decline among people of all ages in those states.” The MAGA agenda’s war on families has taken its toll:

The new law’s cost shift has led states to take steps that are making it harder for eligible people to receive SNAP, including families with children. Losing SNAP also makes it harder for low-income children to qualify for other food assistance, such as WIC and free school meals — jeopardizing the short- and long-term health, education, and economic benefits of nutrition programs for our children and society.

All this may seem like “paradise” to Stephen Miller and Trump’s other lickspittles, but Americans who are falling behind, burning through savings, relying on credit card debt, and deciding whether to skip meals or a doctor’s visit likely perceive this as amounting to economic hell.

Some people certainly do think Trump has delivered “paradise.” The Jan. 6 violent insurrections, already pardoned, are thrilled about Trump’s $1.8B taxpayer-financed slush fund (although two federal judges have stepped in to block the outrageous scheme). Vulcan Elements, in which Donald Trump Jr. invested, got a sweetheart $620M loan after intervention by Peter Navarro. (This would make Hunter Biden blush.) And Trump has been a godsend for private prisons that make a fortune exploiting ICE detainees and for no-bid contractors who get to work on Trump’s vanity projects.

In addition, Trump’s reign must seem like paradise to the additional 10,000 White South African “refugees” who benefit from the immigration cap raised exclusively for them. (Since October, the Trump regime has allowed in thousands of Afrikaners but only 3 nonwhite Afghan refugees — a minuscule share of those who risked their lives to aid U.S. troops.)

Trump regime certainly has delivered paradise for the hodgepodge of donors, supporters, and hangers-on ranging from crypto kings to convicted fraudsters to Middle East sheiks to Big Oil. Collectively, they have reaped rewards including: “Cabinet and executive branch positions, ambassadorships, pardons and commutations, dropped investigations or enforcement actions, corporate-friendly policies and perks, and even foreign policy actions.”

Finally, the MAGA era has been heaven on earth for sundry sexual abusers: men identified in the Epstein files who remain shielded from accountability, hordes of accused harassers, and sex predator Adam Dean Hoffman, who got out of jail with a slap on the wrist, thanks to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

In short, the “American people” who think Trump is delivering paradise are the super-rich (who have gotten richer with more tax cuts); pardoned (and rewarded!) felons; white supremacists (who welcomed thousands of Afrikaners, received affirmed action for mediocrities and incompetents, and gained power from MAGA justices’ rollback of voting rights); presidential relatives and cronies; decrepit autocrats; and incompetent media lackeys.

Meanwhile, ordinary Americans are worse off under Trump’s corrupt authoritarian rule. Fortunately, they will have the chance in November to let Trump and Republicans know this is not their idea of paradise.