Donald Trump hit two milestones this past week: his first 100 days in office, and his first quarter of negative G.D.P. growth. True to form, he celebrated the first of these with a rally, while blaming the second on Joe Biden. He even tried to front-load any bad economic news in the second quarter as Biden's fault too. Oh, and for good measure, Trump expressed a desire to become the next pope. Which would probably be fine with plenty of Americans -- as long as he quits his current job in order to do so.

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Which brings us to Trump's strongest point, albeit one where his polling is also falling fast. On the subject of the southern border, the public does approve of what Trump has been doing. But on the larger subject of immigration, Trump is underwater in most polls, after starting out his term with those numbers in the positive ranges.

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As the Trump Trade War lurches onward, with another heaping amount of uncertainty added over the weekend, China just made a move that could have drastic worldwide consequences. They haven't fully committed to playing hardball, but they are certainly signalling that it might be their next step. And (to mix game-playing metaphors), in this particular game, China holds all the cards. They've got a royal flush, and we don't even have a pair of twos to work with.

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James Carville's famous political maxim ("It's the economy, stupid") needs updating. As we all ride out the Trump Slump in various ways, what we've got now is: "It's the stupid economy." The people running things are stupid. They are making stupid decisions. They have no clue whatsoever what they are doing, and it shows. Stupid is as stupid does. Welcome to The Stupid Economy, folks.

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Senator Ted Cruz is attempting to tackle a problem, but I for one don't expect to see the problem solved any time soon. That "any time" was a joke, actually, because the intractable problem is none other than time itself. The Senate Commerce Committee (which Cruz chairs) just held a hearing on whether they should (as they're now calling it) "lock the clock" and finally be done with the twice-yearly hour shift in the clock to either start or end Daylight Saving Time.

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As is now the new normal, there were so many things happening in the political world this week it is hard to keep track of them all. But what is currently in the center ring is the vote happening in the Senate on the continuing resolution to fund the government for the rest of this fiscal year.

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Program Note: Today is the final day I was too preoccupied with real-life stuff to write a new column (new columns will resume tomorrow), so I conclude my little look back at the COVID pandemic with a much later article than the last two. I wrote this before we were all completely out of the woods (pandemic-wise), mostly because I was exasperated with the silliness of the baby boomers dictating to all following generations: "You shall be known by a single letter" (which wasn't true at the time, for most of us), and also with the silliness of merely drawing an arbitrary line on a calendar and declaring "This generation will end at this year, and the next generation shall begin here!" To me, a "generation" implies a shared event or a shared perspective that is outwardly defined (such as the post-World War II baby boom), and not by an arbitrary division of years.

In any case, the term still hasn't caught on (at least, that I am aware of), so maybe I'm still just trying to (pun intended) make it "go viral." So here is my rare foray into sociology (or whatever you want to call it), just in the hopes that people start using it one day.

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The administration of President Donald Trump is showing us all, in real time, how not to tackle a widespread medical crisis. Because things are moving so quickly, though, it's tough to tell how much of their woefully inadequate response has been the fault of Donald Trump himself, Trump's scorn for experts of any type who know more things than he does (a category which includes many people, for obvious reasons), or Trump's advisors and aides who have been put in charge of a massive problem but whose main worry seems to be not ever contradicting Trump in public (no matter how wrong Trump gets things). It all adds up to making a bad situation much worse, which is precisely where we find ourselves now. Decisions are made for political reasons, or -- worse -- to avoid making Trump himself look bad in any way. This has shattered the confidence of the stock market, as evidenced by today's record-busting 3,000-point drop. The more time goes by, the more Trump's inadequacies are becoming impossible to ignore, even by his staunchest supporters. Donald Trump, quite obviously, does not have a clue what to do next, is instead out there blatantly lying about the situation on a daily basis, and we're all going to suffer as a direct result. No wonder the market's tanking.

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Roman Emperor Nero didn't actually fiddle while Rome burned. It's a myth. Violins (or "fiddles") wouldn't exist for another 1,500 years or so, making the very concept impossible. That's not to say Nero might not have blatantly ignored a flaming crisis, of course, it's just quibbling about the literal meaning of the maxim. Now, American Emperor-With-No-Clothes Donald Trump didn't fiddle while the country was hit by a pandemic, either. Instead, he played golf. Twice. That's right -- in the midst of a huge crisis, Trump spent the entire weekend playing golf.

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While the biggest political spectacle of the week was the president's big speech to Congress, the biggest political news of the week was actually the American economy reacting to Donald Trump's on-again-off-again, now-you-see-them-now-you-don't tariffs. The whiplash began at the start of the week and hasn't fully subsided yet. Taken together with all of Trump's other disruptive wrecking balls, economists are now starting to talk about the possibility of an upcoming "Trump recession."

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