I. Election Results
In a national referendum on their wayward president, GOP representatives, senators, and governors suffered a resounding defeat in the U.S. midterm elections. To say that Tuesday’s results were a thorough repudiation of Trump is one of the great understatements of 2026. Polymarket, in the final few days before election day, accurately predicted that not only would Texas unthinkably turn blue with James Talarico (D) beating Ken Paxton (R), but so would Kansas with Adam Hamilton (D) beating Roger Marshall (R), and Iowa with Josh Turek (D) beating Ashley Hinson (R). This was a stunning development for such traditional Republican areas. Less surprising was the sinking of Susan Collins (R) in Maine to Troy Jackson (D). Collins for many years has been a red anomaly in a blue state.
The hoot of the night was Fox News and its Trump-bubble-dwelling multimillionaire personalities and anchors who blamed the debacle on “poor messaging” because they have absolutely no clue about the financial struggles of ordinary Americans.
Unfortunately, Trump’s lapdogs in the GOP were replaced by Democrats, the party who wants to endlessly fund the Russia-Ukraine war, greatly increase the size of the already massive entitlement state, and replace a state-and-federal-government-protected health care cartel, already delivering poor access and affordability, with a government monopoly offering much worse access coupled with only the illusion of affordability risibly known as “Medicare for All.”
To the people who complain that the Democrats are worse, two bad choices are never an argument for one of the bad choices. They’re an argument for one or more better choices, i.e., an end to the two-party duopoly that caters to wealthy special interests while ignoring average citizens.
II. The Trump Economic Record: Worse Than You Imagined
To no one’s surprise, with a lousy economy, economic issues took top billing in the elections. Contrary to what Trump’s MAGA movement (or what’s left of it) would have us believe, gas prices never substantially fell the instant Trump took office and only rose after the war on Iran. The national average price per gallon started at $3.22 in March 2025 and rose to $3.30 by April. From there it had only dropped a whopping penny ($3.29) by September 2025. January 2026 was Trump’s all-time low at $2.94, nowhere near the under-$2.00 price Trump promised during his 2024 presidential campaign. Today, mainly because of the war on Iran, gasoline per gallon now sits at $4.45 (October 2026) for a 38.2-percent increase. Truckers and farmers know well the diesel and fertilizer disasters: In March of 2025, the national average price per gallon of No. 2 diesel fuel was $3.59. Today it sits at $6.25 (October 2026) for a 74.1-percent increase. Around the time of Trump’s inauguration (January 2025), U.S. Anhydrous Ammonia fertilizer was priced at around $590 per ton. Today (October 2026) it sits around $790 to $810 per ton for a minimum 33.9-percent increase.
The Biden presidency was a thorough disaster in terms of CPI-measured inflation. The peak worse month was the infamous one of June 2022 at 9.1 percent. Biden’s lowest reading since the peak was 2.4 percent (September 2024). Very interestingly, Trump’s lowest reading since the peak was 2.3 percent (April 2025), only one tenth of a percentage point lower than Biden’s lowest. For September 2026, Trump’s reading was 3.7 percent.
Still, Trump’s biggest problem is not the direction of prices per se in particular markets or economy-wide. What the GOP, Fox News, and Trump’s army of paid influencers fail to consistently grasp is that from September 2025 to September 2026, average hourly earnings rose by 3 to 3.6 percent while CPI-measured inflation clocked in at 3.7 percent. In other words, real hourly earnings declined by 0.5 to 0.7 percent. A distinctly rotten performance from Trump, the man who outrageously promised on the 2024 campaign trail that he would not only eliminate inflation, but bring about deflation (falling prices).
Negative real earnings, though, is the nasty surprise for people who are even working, which brings us to Trump’s crazy job numbers. In March 2025, 115,000 jobs were created. By February 2026, 156,000 were eliminated as high interest rates and winter retail pullbacks took hold. No doubt some of the weak 2025 numbers are indicative of cutbacks in federal employment. However, there’s few good reasons for weak numbers such as July (-10,000) and September 2026 (+29,000). One difference between the Trump and Biden eras is that in 2022, when inflation was in the high single digits, workers could more easily change jobs to increase their incomes because the labor market was more competitive with 11 million job openings. In late 2026, with openings around 35 percent lower and a glacial rate of hiring, workers are stuck getting hit with the full weight of surging fuel prices and inflation with no relief in sight.
As prospective homebuyers know all-too well and as hard as it is to believe, Trump actually promised to push mortgage rates down to the 3-percent range. However, under him, they have gone nowhere but up. The average 15-year fixed mortgage rate has gone from 6.05 percent in March 2025 to 6.73 percent in October 2026 while the average 30-Year fixed mortgage rate has gone from 6.84 percent in March 2025 to 7.51 percent in October 2026.
Despite wild predictions of 5-percent golden-age growth early on during the administration, quarterly annualized real GDP rates have been thoroughly unimpressive. Throughout 2025, the growth rate of real GDP steadily fell from Q1 3.2 percent to Q4 1.8 percent. In 2026, even after increasing to 2.1 percent in Q1, in Q2 the growth rate fell to a dismal -0.6 percent. While Fox News spent late last week bragging about a 3.4-percent advance rate for Q3 2026, this figure is a complete mirage skewed by an immense backup of unsold warehouse inventories, obscuring the fact that real consumer spending flatlined at 0 percent by September.
All of the preceding comparisons are just a glimpse of the deep and lasting uncertainty and damage that can be inflicted on an economy from expensive endless wars and schizophrenic trade policy.
III. Trump Insanity Leads to Epic Disasters
According to a recent story in Popular Mechanics, in September of 2017, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) conducted its most powerful nuclear test at its Punggye-ri site under Mount Mantap. The massive explosion ended up being recorded as a magnitude 6.3 seismic event by the U.S. Geological Survey with satellite imaging confirming that not only had Mount Mantap sunk by two feet but that it had also moved horizontally by twelve feet. The explosion was also followed by normal seismic rumblings in the coming days and weeks that geologists expected to end. Not only did the rumblings not end, they actually got worse according to a new study published in the journal Science. This is all the more remarkable for North Hamgyong Province, North Korea, known for its long and stable geologic history.
This recent story and study underscore the absolute absurdity of Trump’s crazed fixation on Iran and his persistent attempt to perpetuate the laughable hoax that it has a nuclear weapons program. Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard testified in March 2025 in front of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies “assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”
Not only did Khamenei, who the U.S. and Israel assassinated in airstrikes last February 28, suspend Iran’s nuclear weapons program 23 years ago, he had issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons at around the same time. Writing to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in August 2005, Khamenei stated, “We consider the use of these weapons to be haram (forbidden), and the effort to protect mankind from this great disaster is everyone’s duty.” Even more stunning: the day before the midterms Iran announced that, in the wake of Khamenei’s death, it is considering abandoning the Khamenei Doctrine on nukes.
Of course Trump’s steady unravelling hardly began with murdering Iran’s more moderate older leaders so that its younger hard liners could seize the Strait of Hormuz and widen the war through the Houthis now attacking Saudi Arabia. From the day he stepped foot over the threshold of the Oval Office early last year, Mr. Everyman of the 2024 presidential election, who once campaigned from a McDonald’s drive-through window, instantly turned into Mr. Globalism on steroids. He started a fentanyl war on Canada, threatened to invade Panama to retake the Panama Canal, threatened to invade Greenland, levied his very damaging and arbitrary rollercoaster tariffs on his Orwellian “Liberation Day,” held military parades, planned a massive 250-foot-tall triumphal arch paying homage to something (likely himself), and still ran disgustingly disingenuous television ads right up to the midterms promising to send Americans $5,000 checks if they kept Democrats from taking control of Congress.
Such is the real “golden age” we’ve gotten from Trump: the most gaudily decorated Oval Office in U.S. history and $800 million poured into the Trump family’s coffers from crypto sales made during the first six months of his corrupt and self-dealing presidency.
Murray N. Rothbard, maybe after being initially amused by Trump in the early days, would, at 100 years after his birth, not at all be surprised at such an inglorious end. One of Rothbard’s most important lessons will always be that the state and its entourage are first and foremost a self-serving gang who rarely suffer much the consequences of the disastrous policies they inflict on the rest of us. Why average people keep trusting them and putting them in positions of power is the bigger mystery. It’s also insanity: doing the same thing over and over, yet expecting different results.
