Abundance This, TACO Trump...Shut the Fuck Up.

Is Establishment Idiocy a Mask for Complicity?

Name identification for Substack writer and antifascist historian

John Ganz

has grown significantly over the last year, as is often the case when an author successfully launches a hotly anticipated book.

When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s is a compelling, incisive read—but Ganz’s Unpopular Front Substack offers a more informal, more guttural view inside his head:

This note is pure poetry. I don’t know exactly what is meant, nor do I need to know. But if brevity is the soul of wit, I have yet to encounter a Substack note sharper than this vicious dismissal of an absurd narrative vibe. In the spirit of this exemplary display of disgust, let me say: Abundance this, TACO Trump…shut the fuck up.

At this point, I am completely over the abundance discourse, the anti-abundance commentary, and the anti-anti-abundance critique. Whether we’re for it or against it, for the love of god let’s free

Ezra Klein

from the prison of having to endlessly defend this crap, and move on.

And to be clear, I’m mostly sick of the pro-abundance coverage because this whole thing has been thoroughly exposed as a right-wing oligarchic scam. And you get it. You sensed something amiss with all this abundance talk. While it may validate your gut instinct, you don’t need to listen to a masters-level dismantling of this astroturfed “movement” to understand there is something crooked about it (but here is one, just in case you’re curious).

This recent proliferation of TACO talk, on the other hand? Teasing out the malevolence of this emergent meme is a little less intuitive. It took me a minute to put my finger on it, but the ettingermentum subscriber chat brain trust helped connect the dots and now I can’t unsee the constellation of establishment complicity.

Let me explain.

Last month President Trump’s pattern of first announcing drastic tariffs, then backing down with predictable consistency, led Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong to coin the acronym TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out. Last week CNBC reporter Megan Cassella catapulted the term into the mainstream by asking Trump about it, prompting a long, defensive, unintelligible response. Democrats and media figures seized on this newly identified One Weird Trick to Own Donald J. Trump and quickly formed an impromptu chorus of competitively clever TACO taunts.

The geniuses at the DNC really outdid themselves this time.

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There is only one problem with these antics: they trade in rage-bait and celebrity grievance while reinforcing support for the very policies Democrats and journalists should fight against.

If we don’t want Trump to tank the economy and throw us into a global depression, why are we goading him into following through on backbreaking tariffs? If we oppose the tyranny of suspended habeas corpus and illegal deportations, why are we double dog daring Trump into doing more of it? If nobody wants a war with Iran, why is Chuck Schumer demanding Trump start one?

This organic, spontaneous activation of TACO messaging reveals a deep-seated instinct and begs a question of the liberal establishment: Do they want the GOP to pursue policies that endanger us all because they think there will be a political price to pay? Is the strategy to bully Trump into starving people so the disillusioned and destitute will vote for the Democrats?

Or do these people actually desire an eviscerated economy so they can push through more austerity and further consolidate power to the oligarchy? Does Hakeem Jeffries want our troops to fight in another destabilizing Middle Eastern war because he thinks that catastrophe can be pinned on Marco Rubio, or because he doesn’t actually care whether you live or die?

Elon Musk may have pivoted his focus from Washington, but I remain baffled as to why the pundit class and leading Democrats routinely criticize DOGE for its failure to live up to Musk’s promise to fully slash the government. Would cutting more essential programs and functions would be a good thing?

Even if you do believe in the ideal of a more efficient, less wasteful federal bureaucracy, DOGE was never even about that in the first place: it’s a smokescreen for a gang of white power oligarchs to destroy the separation of powers, eliminate crucial agencies, weaken the U.S., steal your information, and sell it to the highest bidder (who will weaponize it against you).

Eli Valley does not miss.

DOGE isn’t just un-American, it’s anti-American—yet serious professionals charged with both serving and commenting on Capitol Hill continue to peddle the lie that this criminal gang is acting in good faith. Why? Why do swing state governors like Gretchen Whitmer validate Trump’s insane tariff obsession when she could just lambast him for its guarantee of harm to the working class?

Tim Miller

of

The Bulwark

has it right: Trump is corrupt and detrimental to your bottom line, and all of our memes should advance those ideas. He’s not a president who is bad at his job, he’s a president that is just plain bad. That’s the focal point. TACO taunts, pro-tariff talk, and complaints that suggest DOGE is anything other than nazis trying to steal your social security only reinforce the narrative that GOP actions are popular and desirable.

When we mock someone, let’s do it for the right reason: Chuck Schumer has long trotted out his imaginary Reagan Democrat constituents, the Baileys, when justifying support for unpopular positions. Now this is someone who deserves to be mocked. The Baileys of the world aren’t even an endangered species anymore, the winnable “moderate,” “centrist,” or “independent” swing voter has gone fully extinct.

Since Trump descended the escalator in 2015 and subsequently nurtured the GOP into its final fascist form across three presidential elections, whatever swing voters that once existed have self-sorted into either the MAGA camp or the broad anti-MAGA coalition. No amount of anti-trans virtue-signaling, extremist zionism, or draconian anti-immigrant policy will yield electoral gains for the Democrats. Quite the opposite.

So let’s do away with the baseless tactical arguments for a hard-right Democratic turn, and let’s stop playing games with the wellbeing of the American people. Hold Trump accountable for the damage he’s done, not for his failure to inflict more. To continue doing so is political malpractice, and it’s fundamentally anti-American.

Abundance, TACO Trump…just shut the fuck up.

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