I don’t know enough about economics to understand whether the markets can be manipulated by Donald Trump. Can a system that is supposed to work like maths and only has one set of outcomes be turned on its head to show the world, in the words of MAGA, “alternative facts”. Can a failing economy be shown to be a success? Or, if not a success can Trump’s disdain for norms confuse and pervert the true picture of America’s economic health? I’m assuming not, but I’ve assumed quite a lot about Trump and have been found to be wanting. Sure, there are assumptions and there are real facts, the real facts being Trump is one of the most dangerous presidents in living memory, which, based on the (real) fact that there have been a fair few unfit for any job (Reagan, Bush and Nixon for instance) let alone the “most important job in the free world”, is a scary thing to admit. How can you trust an American president who is as strange as Putin, as murderous as Putin and as narcissistic as Putin? A leader than cannot handle the truth. The truth that the U.S. economy is tanking under the chaotic introduction of tariffs and a lack of a consistent economic message. The markets, however, seem to be giving him more leeway than they did many others and I’m assuming this is because the U.S. is one of the economic powerhouses of the world and can afford, for a while, to have a deranged seventy-nine-year-old throwing his toys out of the pram every time something doesn’t quite go according to plan. Eventually though, what happens if the U.S. stumbles into a recession and Trump starts to defy his own economists and business leaders? As normally happens in a recession will he let interest rates fall? Will he be truthful about job losses as businesses fail? How will he react to banks being less motivated to lend? And can his alternative truths trump (pun intended) the real truths of recession? His base seems remarkably immune to bad news and to evidence that he has no idea what he’s doing, but will that survive job losses and growing poverty? Who knows, maybe talk of recession is way wide of the mark, but my point is this: can a president manipulate the markets? Manipulate economics for his own ends? Continue to sack leaders of the banking and financial sectors because their truth doesn’t match Trump’s truth? And if he can get away with it, why couldn’t Truss? Why couldn’t Major? Why couldn’t Labour chancellors in general or any tyro left-wing government in waiting? And if he can get away with it, does it not prove that the whole thing has always been rigged for the benefit of the rich and powerful? Hold the front page! Not because the system is rigged but because Snapper should have known this a long, long time ago.