Comment by khriss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by khriss | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

What makes this appalling is that the current situation is entirely the result of deliberate choice by the president.

I know there will be a lot of commenters rushing in to breathlessly claim 'Inflation was worse under Biden!'. However, there is a difference between inflation being the result of a literal 'once a 100 year' global pandemic and Trump deciding to attack Iran because he needed to remove attention from his involvement in the Epstein files.

As a summary

* Jan 2025 - Inflation when Trump took office was 2.9%

* Jan 2026 - Inflation at 2.4%

* 30th Jan 2026 - DOJ releases the first major batch (3 million files) of Epstein files. Numerous mention of Donald Trump in the files are immediately highlighted. Trump rants and rails, calling it a 'witch hunt'

* Feb 2026 - New York times releases a bombshell report documenting that Trump appeared in the files 5300 times. [1]

* Mid Feb 2026 - Trump starts ratcheting up the rhetoric against Iran

* 28th Feb 2026 - US attacks Iran

* June 2026 - Avg gas prices over $4, US CPI at 4.2% and rising rapidly. The PPI numbers in the article referenced by OP show that this is only going to get worse.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/us/trump-epstein-files.ht...

> the current situation is entirely the result of deliberate choice by the president.

A choice that was given to at least 5 presidents before him, and they all recognized how stupid it would be. This president, though, is so infatuated with people he thinks are powerful, that he'll do anything they say, hoping they'll consider him to be one of them.

And this doesn't even include tariffs...

* Jan 8 2026 Iran begins the longest internet blackout in universal world history due to massive protests over economic issues.

The fact that he could kidnap Maduro probably gave him false confidence that waltzing into Iran might work out. Alas, for us.

It was clear the “plan” was take control of Venezuelan oil, Iranian oil, and make Cuba a resort paradise for the rich American upper class, like God intended.

From what I understand, there's a very good chance that Venezuelan forces of some kind collaborated on that—possibly to the point of delivering Maduro gift-wrapped.

A literal toddler for president. Swings his dick around and manages to fuck up global supply chains. Now he is back online talking about invading Iran and taking all of its oil infrastructure.

No. A figurative toddler.

A literal toddler would be one to two years old.

I have five figures of karma with which to fight this battle.

A literal toddler is one who can read.

I'm reminded of a Simpson's episode where Arnold Shwarzenegger is elected as President, given 5 stacks of papers with briefs of options, and he picks one at random without reading it saying "I was elected to lead, not to read!"

To get excessively pedantic, he walks very poorly. Toddles around. So his gait makes him a literal toddler. All 1 & 2 year olds toddle, but not all who toddle are 1 or 2 years old.

And IIRC tons of FBI employees combed over the files in 2025 likely to remove Trump or Trump and allies at the cost of millions of dollars. And even after that he's still all over them so imagine what was in there originally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com