Last Night’s Speech Was the Price List

Rebuilding or Liquidating? Trump’s Speech Was the Sales Pitch for Selling Off America to the billionaire class.

Yesterday, I wrote the post “The Great American Fire Sale.” What I said to readers was that I believed that the President, backed by Musk and his “Big Balls” team of imbeciles bashing down the economy and the government, was intentionally attempting to crash the economy as a gift to the centi-millionaires and billionaires who supported the President.

So, the obvious question is this: was I right?

Let’s see.

Rarely in political science does the scholar get to make a theory, and a prediction, and then POW! Instant data! Never in all the time I was a scholar did I ever get that chance. In the last 24 hours, I got that chance. Thus, the Joint Address to Congress is an interesting counterpoint to The Great American Fire Sale. In my estimation, last night’s speech serves as the official propaganda narrative that justifies, masks, and reframes the same trends we highlighted in our article. That said, let’s walk through it all and compare what was said by the President to what I thought was happening.

I’ll leave it to you, the readers of TLM, to decide for yourselves.

Key Areas of Alignment & Divergence

1. The Sale of American Assets vs. Nationalistic Framing

   • My article outlined how U.S. assets—land, resources, infrastructure—were being offloaded to the highest bidder through private equity, foreign capital, or debt-driven liquidation.

   • The President, in contrast, presents this as a nationalist renaissance. For example, the BlackRock deal for Panama Canal ports isn't framed as another megacorporation securing control over a global chokepoint—it’s a “patriotic” move to reclaim strategic territory. To me, this is all smoke and mirrors, but I leave it to you (the readers) to decide.

   • The Gold Card scheme—$5M for a fast-track to U.S. citizenship—is pure oligarchic auctioning of American residency, yet Trump pitches it as a sophisticated improvement on the Green Card, a way to “bring in brilliant, hardworking, job-creating people.” It’s a pay-to-play system dressed up as economic revitalization.

2. Energy, Natural Resources & Economic Liquidation

   • Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” rhetoric and rapid expansion of domestic extraction mirrors our concerns about a short-term cash grab at the expense of long-term sustainability.

   • The vast pipeline projects, rapid permitting, and elimination of regulations all fit into the liquidation framework we discussed—using up every last resource for immediate economic gain rather than strategic preservation.

   • The rhetoric around tariffs on aluminum, copper, and steel is designed to sound protective, but in reality, this kind of nationalist industrial policy serves as a lever for consolidating wealth and influence among a select group of American and foreign investors.

3. The "Booming Economy" as a Cover for an Economic Fire Sale

   • The speech is filled with numbers meant to signal unprecedented investment, but as noted in The Great American Fire Sale, massive capital flows aren’t always a sign of strength—often, they reflect a last-chance asset grab.

   • The emphasis on foreign investment (Apple, SoftBank, Taiwan Semiconductor, Oracle) is particularly telling. These firms are enticed not because of U.S. strength, but because policy changes (such as tax incentives and tariffs) make it more expensive not to be here.

   • It’s a controlled demolition: wealth is being extracted under the guise of growth. It’s all a facade.