OPINION
“I’m sick of stupid.”
With four blunt words, North Carolina’s Republican Senator Thom Tillis said on the floor of the U.S. Senate what the country has been thinking for months.
This wasn’t a policy disagreement. It was an eruption—an alarm bell—from inside the president’s own party, calling out an administration that has confused recklessness for strength and impulse for strategy.
The trigger was absurd on its face: a senior White House advisor floating the idea that the United States should somehow acquire Greenland.
But the fury it provoked was not about geography or real estate. It was about contempt—for allies, for history, and for basic competence.
So, the Nobel Prize for Stupidity should go to Stephen Miller, Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff, and Homeland Security advisor, for encouraging Trump on his Greenland odyssey.
The senator’s language was unmistakable: “amateurish,” “insane,” — beneath the dignity of the United States. He demanded accountability. Immediately.
When a member of the President’s own party publicly brands his administration’s conduct as “stupid,” the problem is no longer partisan spin—it is solid proof of institutional decay.
“Stupid is as stupid does”
Leave it to the fictional character Forrest Gump to sum up Trump’s latest idea to slap high tariffs on European products.
Trump’s latest episode is not an outlier. It is a pattern. From impulsive foreign policy stunts to self-inflicted chaos at home, the administration lurches from one ill-considered move to the next, mistaking spectacle for leadership and aggression for strategy.
Allies are alienated. Credibility is squandered. Serious governance is replaced with unserious ideas floated as trial balloons, only to be laughed off—at America’s expense.
And all because Trump didn’t get the Nobel Peace Prize!
Trump’s Tariffs Target Texas!
Texas depends on trade and good relations with the European Union. The European Union (EU) — based on 2024/2025 state and federal data — is a top tier trading partner for Texas.
In 2024, Texas exported over $81.5 billion in goods to the EU, which also is a top source of foreign direct investment in Texas — $300 billion in investments (combined trade + investments) supporting approximately 300,000 jobs for Texans.
If the USA slaps tariffs on the European Union – Texas is going to take a heavy blow. This will be especially true on energy products: oil, gas, and chemicals.
Tom Green is not as directly export-exposed as the Permian energy production counties or the South Plains cotton belt. Its risk is more ‘second tier’. That is, when a tariff shock weakens global demand, energy investment and regional purchasing power tend to soften, and that flows into service hubs. The most plausible local effects for the San Angelo area are:
- Oil-and-gas-linked services and suppliers: San Angelo is often described as a headquarters/service city for Permian activity; downturns reduce contractor utilization, trucking demand, and related business-to-business spending.
- Housing and local services sensitivity: Regional planning documents note that oil-and-gas upturns have strained housing availability in counties including Tom Green, illustrating how energy cycles transmit into rent, construction, and retail.
- Countywide income and sales-tax effects: Reduced overtime/shift work and slower business turnover can show up quickly in local retail and hospitality even when the initial tariff target is elsewhere (e.g., beef or cotton).
The bottom line: Tom Green’s exposure is real but is typically mediated through the Permian investment cycle and regional demand rather than direct EU-facing export volumes.
In the energy business, counties getting hit hard will be Midland, Lubbock, Martin, Hale, Reeves, Andrews, Howard, Loving, Ward, and Glasscock. Potter County’s beef processing industry will take a heavy blow, while the cotton producing counties of Floyd, and Hockley will get blistered by Trump’s tariffs. Randall, Ector and El Paso counties will not escape the “hurt” of the tariffs because of their trade related linkages to the EU via other Texas commercial outlets.
In West Texas, trade wars are not cable?news theater—they are layoffs, foreclosures, and closed gates.
When tariffs hit, the damage shows up fast: cotton gins around Lubbock idle shifts; feedyards outside Amarillo thin inventories; machine shops in Midland cancel overtime; hotels go empty; and families in San Angelo tighten budgets as service contracts evaporate.
A single round of EU retaliatory tariffs that knocks even five percent off export-linked prices can drain tens of millions of dollars from the regional economy in one season. That is real money ripped out of West Texas—long before anyone in Washington feels a thing.
This is why the idea of imposing tariffs on the European Union—out of spite over a failed attempt to bully allies into selling Greenland—is not merely reckless. It is economic vandalism aimed squarely at American communities that produce the nation’s food, fiber, and energy. When policymakers play fantasy geopolitics, West Texas pays the bill.
Kiss The Almighty Dollar – Goodbye!
The real insanity of this tariff fantasy, however, lies beyond agriculture and manufacturing. Europe and its allies are major holders of U.S. Treasury securities.
Those holdings are a vote of confidence in the stability and seriousness of American governance. When U.S. trade policy starts to resemble a tantrum—driven by wounded pride, diplomatic embarrassment, or personal grievance—that confidence erodes.
If the EU and other U.S. Treasury holders choose retaliation, they will not need tanks, missiles, or soldiers.
They will open a laptop, press “sell,” and the United States will begin to lose—immediately. Interest rates will spike, the dollar will crater, and the cost of financing America’s debt will explode.
Markets will panic. Capital will flee. This is financial warfare, and it is the one battlefield where America is grotesquely exposed.
A mass liquidation of U.S. Treasuries would gut the dollar’s reserve status, turn deficits into poison, and collapse confidence faster than any bomb ever could.
The war would be silent, instantaneous, and decisive—and the United States would lose it without a single shot fired, brought to its knees by keystrokes while its leaders congratulated themselves on tariffs and tantrums.
To risk this outcome over retaliatory tariffs tied to personal slights—or the bruised ego of a leader who mistakes accolades for legitimacy—is not leadership.
Trade policy as revenge — whether for diplomatic humiliation or the failure to collect trophies like a Nobel Prize — reduces the world’s largest economy to the emotional maturity of a pissant.
Markets do not care about wounded pride. Allies do not remain allies when treated as enemies. And West Texas should not be sacrificed to satisfy a fantasy of dominance.
Continue down this path, and global finance will teach a brutal lesson: a superpower can be reduced to a financial ruble without firing a single shot.
Truth Teller Tillis
What made Republican Senator Tillis’ comments, so jarring was not the criticism itself, but its source. When the warning comes from inside the tent, it signals something deeper than dissent. It signals that the wheels are wobbling—and that even loyalists are running out of patience with an administration that too often governs as if consequences are optional.
“I’m sick of stupid” was not just a line. It was a verdict. It’s time for the Republican leadership to invoke the 25th Amendment of the Constitution and send Trump away where he can do no harm!
