It started with a tweet.
“China has been sending deadly fentanyl into our country! We’re stopping it with TARIFFS! Billions of dollars coming in! America wins again!”
The usual sycophants applauded, the media scrambled, and the experts sighed. But behind the bluster, a far more sinister operation was in motion. Because this wasn’t about protecting Americans—it was about saving one man’s crumbling empire.
Donald J. Trump was in trouble. His businesses, long propped up by shady loans, creative accounting, and the occasional foreign investment, were bleeding money. The banks were getting nervous. The lawsuits were piling up. The golden facade of Trump Tower was, quite literally, starting to crack.
Then came the idea—why not use the U.S. Treasury as a personal slush fund? After all, he’d been siphoning taxpayer money into his properties for years. But this time, he needed a bigger scheme. Something so ridiculous, so absurd, that no one would even think to question it.
Enter the Fentanyl Tariff Hustle.
The plan was simple. Announce sweeping tariffs on Chinese-made fentanyl, claiming it would cripple the cartels and save American lives. Never mind that most fentanyl came through illicit channels, not legally imported shipments. Never mind that this would do nothing to stop the crisis. What mattered was that billions of dollars in tariffs would start rolling in.
And Trump already had a plan for that money.
Every Friday night, in a Walmart parking lot just outside of D.C., Trump and a Secretary of the Treasury—an ex-banker with the moral compass of a shark—would meet to divvy up the loot. The setup was classic Trump: flashy, lowbrow, and needlessly theatrical.
Trump, always one for appearances, insisted on arriving in a convoy of black SUVs, windows tinted to the legal limit. A Secretary, a man who once foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman for missing a payment, showed up in a nondescript rental car. The trunk was already open, revealing metal briefcases stacked with cash.
“Beautiful, beautiful money,” Trump would say, running his hands over the fresh bills. “They said tariffs don’t work! Look at this! Billions! Billions!”
The Secretary would nod. “Yes, Mr. President. The money’s all here. Just like we agreed.”
Trump, ever paranoid, always insisted on counting it himself. “You know, the fake news—they say I don’t understand numbers. But look at me. Counting like a genius. Nobody counts money like me. They all say it.”
Once the cash was split, Trump would stuff his share into a monogrammed duffel bag—one of the last surviving pieces of unsold Trump merchandise. He would then call up Eric and Don Jr. to arrange an emergency wire transfer to whichever golf course was at risk of foreclosure that week.
Meanwhile, the fentanyl crisis raged on, unaffected by the tariffs. Prices rose, black markets flourished, and the people who actually needed help—addicts, doctors, law enforcement—were left with nothing.
But for Trump, it didn’t matter. The grift was the point. The lie was the product. The only thing that ever mattered was the next con, the next payday, the next pile of money to throw into the bottomless pit of his collapsing empire.
And as he stuffed the last of the bills into his jacket, he grinned.
“They’re gonna love this on Truth Social.”
