Jim Grant on Trump 2.0: "He’s a man on many missions"

The flamboyant developer [who in 1986 took it upon himself to rebuild the dilapidated Wollman Rink in New York’s Central Park] is today the flamboyant president, still almost childlike in the purity of his vanity and in his devouring need for approval.  It’s the scale of his operations that has changed.  The skating rink has become the Washington ‘swamp,’ the sclerotic New York City Parks Department is today the elephantine United States government. 

He’s a man on many missions: U.S. territorial expansion, hunting down federal fraud and abuse, personal enrichment (and making no secret of it), ending lawfare, suspending the minting of pennies, threatening tariffs and lifting those threats, abolishing federal agencies, closing the southern border, sweeping away woke ideology, settling political scores, trolling Taylor Swift, appointing himself chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center, pardoning Jan. 6 prisoners and plastic straws and gunning for New York City bike lanes, all the while conducting a lucrative side business in Trump-branded merchandise and speculative tokens and – coming soon – a family of Trump-themed exchange-traded funds.

~ Jim Grant, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, February 14, 2025