These four essays are about systematic risk in the U.S. in 2026. I cover the following four risk categories:

• The U.S. Federal Debt
• Artificial intelligence
• Climate change
• Donald Trump and the MAGA movement

This fourth essay is on Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

The Fourth Horseman – Donald Trump and MAGA

Donald Trump is what arson investigators would call an accelerant. Each of the risks discussed in Parts 1-3 could be catastrophic on its own. The Trump administration enhances these systematic risks in the same way that gasoline would turn a manageable fire into a conflagration. He ensures not only an increased likelihood that each will be a catastrophe, but also that each will wreak havoc much sooner than they might otherwise occur, even under a minimally responsible U.S. President. Worse, Trump ensures that the risks will play off each other, intermingling their toxicity to create an almost unimaginably insurmountable challenge.

Trump and Artificial Intelligence

The Trump Administration has undone every existing effort enacted by the Biden Administration to ensure safety efforts in AI development. He also signed an executive order that attempts to undo any State regulation that slows the development of AI, such as state laws that would protect the work performed by safety teams at tech companies. There is a sense in the industry that the U.S. is competing with China to achieve AGI and whoever gets there first wins control over the world. Despite the fact that this is a fallacy, the tech companies themselves want to proceed at an unsafe breakneck pace to develop AGI; the pace of development cannot accommodate the safety teams which slow the release of new products. The losers in this process will be the private citizen who will need to sacrifice his privacy on up to our entire society, which will be subject to AGI’s most dangerous threat, misalignment.

Every intervention made by the White House in the AGI industry thus far has been to support faster development without regard to product safety.

Climate Change

Donald Trump rarely misses a chance to declare climate change a hoax perpetrated by woke scientists. His two Administrations have represented not just a war on governmental efforts to combat global warming, but even a war on independent technologies seeking to create clean energy sources. It is literally impossible for the coal and petroleum industries to have a presidential administration more favorable to their profitability. Companies that sell and use coal or oil no longer have any restrictions on burning fossil fuels. Furthermore, these companies no longer need to worry about clean energy competitors taking up market share. The Trump Administration is killing the oil industry’s clean energy competitors.

On February 12, 2026, Trump revoked the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘Endangerment Finding,’ a determination made by the Agency in 2009 that fossil fuels are creating climate change and endanger human health. Approximately 99% of the world’s climate scientists agree that fossil fuels cause global warming. By revoking the Finding, Trump ended the EPA’s most important function – restricting the emission of dangerous fossil fuels into the environment. While most countries on earth are at least pretending to reduce emissions, the United States is unabashed in its attempt to increase the emissions that contribute to global warming.

Consult the third essay in this series on climate change – look at the map of the U.S. after the ice caps melt. Since Trump is eliminating efforts to inhibit climate change, that map is coming at us faster than we think.

Federal Debt

The Trump Administration has shown no interest in even the appearance of controlling the runaway national debt which, as of 2026, stood at $38.5 trillion, about 1.20 times the nation’s gross domestic product. His two tax bills, the first in 2017 and the second in 2025, are projected by the bi-partisan Congressional Budget Office to add about $6.0 trillion to the debt before 2034. This is on top of the annual $1.8 billion deficit we accumulate each year. Neither of these bills were necessary. Most of the tax savings went to the wealthiest citizens, effectively causing a wealth transfer from future generations to our current multi-millionaires and billionaires.

Furthermore, prior to Trump taking office in January 2025, the IRS was losing $600 billion per year in uncollected taxes that were attributable, not to tax avoidance, which is legal, but to tax evasion, which is illegal. If he strengthened the IRS by increasing its workforce and giving them greater ability to go after tax cheats, he could have gone a long way toward addressing the debt issue. He did the opposite. The Trump Administration laid off, or encouraged the retirement of, 25,000 IRS employees, a 25% reduction of its employee base. This represented another windfall for the wealthiest Americans who’ve been granted carte blanche to evade paying taxes. Expect the $600 billion in lost tax revenue to increase. By a lot.

An informed observer might look at Trump and wonder, “Doesn’t he see what’s happening? Doesn’t he worry that he’s exposing his children and grandchildren to a dystopian nightmare? Doesn’t he worry about his legacy, that he will go down in U.S. history as the most incompetent President?

To wonder these things is to misunderstand the true nature of Trump’s mental illness. All human beings are burdened by some level of ego and vanity. That is a good thing in moderation since it drives us to do our best. We want to be admired, to be recognized for our accomplishments. We want to be loved. This is normal. However, we all know people who have a bit too much ego. Their need to be in the limelight may drive them to claim credit for things that they don’t deserve or undercut others who may deserve credit.

Trump’s illness is on another level. His is clinical. It’s a pathology that psychologists call Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), or in more common terms, malignant narcissism. Most people’s ego is moderated by other psychological traits. I’d like to let everyone know that I’m the company’s top salesman, but I also suspect that if go around telling everyone I’m the best, they’ll think I’m an asshole. Normal people have at least some ability to perceive how others will react when we behave poorly. Trump isn’t just the guy at the water cooler bragging that he’s the company’s top salesman. His illness is far worse.

In its purest form the ego cannot conceive of its own non-existence. There is the self and the self only. Everything and everyone around the self exists for the benefit of the self. Someone with NPD is far out on the spectrum beyond the water cooler guy. If I suffer from an extreme form of NPD, I see other humans as resources for me. I may need them for a day, a month, or longer to accomplishment something I need. After that need is filled, the person is disposable. People have no worth on their own separate from my needs. It is the same with virtually my entire surroundings. Plants, animals, resources – everything – all exists for only one reason. Me.

With that in mind, the NPD sufferer is free from worrying about the future. There is only the now and the resources around me that can sate my needs right now. Reputation and legacy cease to have meaning. To worry about my reputation would require me to grant agency to others’ perceptions in the future. If other people exist to fulfill my needs, then they either don’t have perceptions or their perceptions have no relevance to what I need right now. Legacy? If the world around me has only one purpose – to satisfy my needs – then that world becomes expendable once I am gone.

It is doubtful that Donald Trump spends any time dwelling on his mortality. If he does, then it probably drives him to exert more of his declining energy into satisfying more of his desires since it is that satisfaction, and only that satisfaction, that has meaning in his world. Our American society after Trump’s final departure is meaningless to him. Back in 2020, when Rudy Giuliani’s world was crashing around him, forcing him into behavior patterns that were more bizarre with each passing day, a reporter asked him if he cared about his legacy. His response was, “My legacy? Why would I care about that? I’ll be dead.”

Given his illness, it is easy to understand Trump’s inability to care about any risks that pose a long-term threat. The only risks that moderate his behavior are ones that pose a threat in the very near term. He modified his tariffs only when the stock market, in reaction to his imposition of 25% to 150% tariffs, declined by 20.0% during April and May 2025. The loss of trillions of dollars in wealth among the monied class posed a clear and present danger to his presidency. He corrected course for that reason.

When you tell Trump that his Mar-a-Lago house and his New York City apartments will be underwater by the year 2075, or when you tell him that the Federal Budget will be overwhelmed by interest payments by the year 2050, or when you tell him that 15% of the American labor force will be unemployed by the year 2030 (or even sooner), the NPD inside him can only respond with a shrug of the shoulders. Donald Trump earns a real monetary gain today by ignoring each of the threats discussed above. Sacrificing that wealth to avoid a future dystopia makes no sense. Like Rudy Giuliani, the world that will pay the debt for his inaction is a world that won’t include Donald Trump. So why care?

This is where the true venality of Trump’s character becomes clear. Most of us genuinely love at least a few people in or lives. Think of the parent or grandparent who wouldn’t hesitate for a second to sacrifice his/her life to protect his child or grandchild. That stems from a human instinct that we see all over the animal world. Try attacking a bear cub when its mother is nearby. It will be the last thing you do on earth. If you tell me that my children and grandchildren’s lives will be impoverished by the risks discussed above, I will do my best to protect them. Unfortunately, my power to alter the course of this unfolding nightmare is negligible compared to a President’s power.

Trump’s NPD anesthetizes even parental instincts. He cares about his own children to the extent he has allowed them to participate in the vast extortive schemes wherein he has monetized the Presidency. But will the Kushners’ wealth protect them from climate change? Will it protect them from AI under a mass misalignment event? Will their wealth maintain its value when the government prints trillions of dollars to pay back its debt? It won’t. Trump’s descendants are not facing unsystematic threats. They face systematic threats. Systematic threats are great equalizers. Everybody loses.

Which brings us to the Trump flaw that poses the greatest threat. Donald Trump is not intellectually gifted. Neither does he have an average intellect. He is, in fact, intellectually compromised. I don’t mean that as an insult. I mean the word compromised in its defined sense.  I know, I know. His life has been a display of shrewd, albeit immoral, perceptions whereby he’s enriched himself beyond belief. His skills as a grifter are unparalleled. As a young man he recognized the fault lines in our country’s justice system and has been gaming the courts ever since. And so on.

These are points that are well taken. But Donald Trump has never read anything. He knows little to nothing about the sciences, the arts, economics, public health, geography, and virtually every other subject you took in school. To this day he mixes up the Baltics with the Balkans. He thought the U.S. Virgin Islands was a foreign country (despite the initials “U.S.” in the title). He made statements in his first term which revealed his belief that Frederick Douglass was alive and well, pursuing civil rights.  

Trump’s NPD turns his compromised intellect into a national crisis. His ego tells him there’s no need to learn anything. Why read? Why become informed? Who needs experts in virology, epidemiology, climate science, economics, or foreign affairs? For Trump to admit that he should learn about the world, or alternatively, rely on experts to inform his decision-making – information that could save your life, my life, and our children’s lives – would be to admit he lacks expertise and depends on other people’s abilities that surpass his own. His NPD cannot allow that admission.

Trump fired Dr. Fauci, one of the world’s leading experts in epidemiology, and replaced him with Dr. Scott Atlas, a radiologist – in the middle of the COVID pandemic. Why? Because Fauci was getting credit for solving the pandemic crisis and Atlas, who clearly had no more expertise in virology than he had in astronomy, was willing to say whatever Trump wanted him to say. We see the same thing with the Trump Administration’s cabinet secretaries. U.S. Cabinet secretaries have always been a depository for political cronies and donors. Even with that historical bell curve of ineptitude, Donald Trump’s cabinet secretaries in 2026 are so bereft of ability that their appointments can only mean one thing – there is no chance that any of them could say or do anything that would outshine the President.

Think of RFK, Jr., a man whose past drug and alcohol addictions have damaged his brain to the point he can barely function. Think of Pete Hegseth. Has our military produced no one more worthy than this former National Guard Major whose alcohol-infused sexual assaults, financial mismanagement, and leaking of battle plans have made him untouchable in the nation’s government? Think of Kristi Noem, whose Barbie doll moronity enshrines her position as the head of our homeland’s security. Think of Pam Bondi, who never misses a chance to display her skills as a middle school child having a temper tantrum. Does Kash Patel know the first thing about law enforcement? Linda McMahon, the Secretary of Education, makes Betsy DeVos look like Albert Einstein. This list goes on.

Trump’s court jesters applauding at a cabinet meeting

Summary

Some experts believe the first three horsemen, as dangerous as they are, present risks that can be overcome. Industry insiders suggest the AI threat can be addressed by government regulation that ensures, at the very least, a plan for alternate employment of the masses and a nullification of the misalignment threat. The Federal debt can be addressed the same way any individual can gain control over his or her personal finances – restrict spending and/or raise income. All it would take is electing a Congress that has the wisdom and conscience to get it done. In this regard, maybe the easiest thing to do is start collecting the $600 billion per year that the IRS fails to collect due to tax evasion. Do not eviscerate the IRS. Double its size. Hopefully, the positive side of AI will help us discover technologies that can both provide sources of clean energy and diminish the warming that has already occurred.

Which brings us to Trump. There is no solution – not a single one – that can be deployed while he and his MAGA movement are in control of the United States. He knows that his position in government depends on chaos and division. Solutions to problems, by definition, are his kryptonite. When Dr. Fauci was on the verge of solving the pandemic, what did Trump do? He fired him, albeit too late to stop the vaccine. When U.S. Senator Lankford negotiated a bi-partisan immigration bill that would effectively solve the immigration crisis on the southern border – under terms that gave the GOP everything it ever wanted on immigration – what did Trump do? He told Senate Republicans to vote against it to ensure the immigration chaos continued. Both of Trump’s terms featured tax bills that gave massive tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans, at the expense of adding over $6.0 trillion to the nation’s deficit before 2034.

The United States is now in a race. Can we survive another three years, or will Trump’s madness end us? A lot of people whose opinion I respect don’t think the United States can outlast Trump. Trump has no plan to employ the 10 to 12 million people about to be displaced by AI. Trump has no incentive to raise taxes or cut spending since both would be politically inexpedient in the short term. Trump has already put an end to every government attempt to combat climate change. The window to address climate change, if not already closed, will be shut imminently.

There are only two ways out of this nightmare. The first is Trump’s impeachment and conviction. An impeachment (his third) is possible given the realistic expectation that the Democrats will gain control over the House of Representatives in November 2026. There may also be a dim hope that by then, staring into the abyss of the final two years of an untethered madman’s power, the Republicans in Congress may come to Jesus and convict him. The only other possibility is the deployment of the Constitution’s 25^th Amendment. This would require the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to say Trump is unfit to continue his duties. Assuming Trump fights it, it would then take two-thirds of both the House and the Senate to also vote him out. Needless to say, that is not a realistic expectation. 

As the saying goes, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. This is the world that Donald Trump, against all odds, has created in the United States. The four horsemen are charging us at full speed, led by horseman Trump.

• John Barton