Biden vs Trump: Chaos vs Stability

There's a question I was asked recently while speaking to a group of medical professionals, and after days of thought, I just can't shake it. "Phil, would you rather have chaos or stability?" That wasn't just a general question. Clearly, he was referencing the current White House administration, specifically President Trump versus the prior administration. It's like in a state of shock.

The underlying issues here are unequivocally about money. Your money. The way we answer this question, it says everything about how we think this country should be run. I'm going to share my opinion. I want you to tell me if you think I'm on the right track.

First off, what do we mean when we say chaos? Is chaos a president who tweets at 3:00 a.m.? A guy who breaks convention, bulldozes bureaucrats? No intelligence whatsoever, but enough about Kamala Harris. Doesn't care who he offends as long as he gets the deal done. And stability is that calm, polished press conferences. If you answer yes, I would encourage you to review how that looked during the last administration.

Look, folks, this is well, anyway, I thought it was the most successful conference I've attended in a long time. And find me a world leader who didn't think it was.

Is stability a government running on autopilot, continuing the same policies year after year, even as debt balloons, and real solutions get kicked further down the road? Here's the uncomfortable truth. What many call stability is actually decay disguised as calm.

What about Trump's style? Let's be real. It is blunt. It's even jarring at times.

We have to save this country. Our country is dying. Our country is being destroyed by stupid people, by very stupid people.

He's also quite funny and entertaining.

You once said that using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge just could not happen. You said that when you were in the Oval Office, president. So why is it different now that you're out of office?

'Cause now I'm not president.

But he is a pragmatic operator. He cuts through the noise and he demands results. That feels like chaos to the establishment and to those who don't like hearing how ugly the baby has become. But ask yourself, is Trump actually chaotic or just different from what we're used to?

Compare that to an administration that continued the status quo, spending like there's no tomorrow, constantly screaming for higher taxes, then adding over $2 trillion of new debt every 12 months, and happily asking for more, and acting like the economy is growing and nothing can stop us now. But here's the kicker. The US now pays more than $1 trillion per year on interest payments alone. That's not a typo. We're spending more on interest than we do on our national defense budget. That is not stability. That's a financial time bomb.

So why is it that when a president steps in and addresses this monumental problem that it gets dubbed as chaos? Believe me, if you live near an active volcano, everything looks calm. Birds are chirping, the sun is shining. Do you call that stable? On the surface, maybe. Of course, it's not stable. You know what's underneath and it's only a matter of time.

And that's what our economy looks like today. Sure, unemployment remains pretty good and the stock market and the housing markets, they've enjoyed unprecedented gains, but beneath it all is a volcanic mix of debt, entitlement spending, and political trepidation, manipulation of interest rates, money printing of epic proportion. And no one's rushing in to fix this because fixing it is hard. Fixing it takes leadership that's willing to be unpopular, that's willing to be hated, that's willing to look like chaos in the short term, to avoid catastrophe in the long term.

People say they want calm, but history doesn't reward the calm. It rewards the courageous. Real leadership, it isn't about sounding good on camera. It's about doing the hard things, even when they ruffle feathers. Things like cutting spending, reforming entitlement programs, confronting runaway debt with real fiscal discipline, and downsizing the enormity of an out-of-control federal government, a bureaucracy at the highest level. That kind of leadership, it might look like chaos until you realize it's the only path back to stability.

When have you seen anyone willing to call out the weakness and recognize that action is required? Since Barack Obama took office, our national debt has grown by $24 trillion. That was back in 2008. So, our debt at that point was only $12 trillion. Today, it's almost $37 trillion.

So, here's the real question for all of us. Do you want the appearance of stability or the disruption that might fix the problem? I can tell you staying on the path that we've been on is like saying at least the violin music is nice while the Titanic keeps sinking. We don't need smooth speeches. We need a financial and political reckoning. And the longer we wait increases the risk and inevitable consequences.

Maybe the question is, will we choose short-term comfort or courage? Many of you will say comfort because you've never been taught to deal with pain. When you're shielded from threats most of your life, you fail to realize how they look, so you don't recognize them when they're upon you.

If this made you think, hit that like and subscribe button and share it with someone who still thinks everything's fine. We've got a lot of work to do. Let's don't be blinded by what seems to be calm. Let's recognize what it is. We need stability. What we have isn't