Somewhere back in the early days of driver’s ed you learned that it’s an incredibly bad idea to step on the gas and the brake at the same time.  Unless you’re trying to do a burn out and then it’s OK, but you probably better not do that in your parents car because you can only do a few before your shred the tires.

But leave it to Trump to find the thing that’s incredibly stupid to do and do it. And for his base to approve of it.

He starts with ill-advised tax cuts, mostly for the 1%, with the promise that it’s adding jet fuel to the economy.  The economy is already pretty happy, but hey, let’s pour jet fuel on it. What could possibly go wrong?  And oh, uh, the trickle down thing is kinda in the same bucket as communism as being well established as An Idea That Sounds Good In Theory But Doesn’t Work At All.

Oh but now wait.  Then you step on the brake with some also ill-advised trade wars.  Throw a bunch of economic uncertainty into the mix, why not? Now I know, the idea of stepping on the brake makes us go faster. Duh. In some alternate universe that’s true. But it’s still the opposite of the gas in this universe.

To torture the metaphor a bit more, let’s say the car is already going 60 mph, pretty healthy economy, things are moving along just fine.

So now we step on the gas so we can go faster but also step on the brake.  Now we’re still going 60 mph but we’re burning a lot more gas and there’s a funny smell coming from our brakes.  And sooner rather than later we’ll need to take the car in for service.