Donald Trump still vowing to make the U.S. follow in his deadbeat footsteps

You’d think “king of debt” would be an insult, but for Donald Trump, it’s a title to proudly claim. As he has done again and again. And again.

“I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me,” Trump told Norah O’Donnell in an interview that aired on “CBS This Morning.” “I’ve made a fortune by using debt, and if things don’t work out I renegotiate the debt. I mean, that’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing.”

“How do you renegotiate the debt?” O’Donnell followed up.

“You go back and you say, hey guess what, the economy crashed,” Trump replied. “I’m going to give you back half.”

What Trump is describing here is not so much a negotiation as an ultimatum. It’s a type of ultimatum that he’s used constantly in stiffing workers and contractors on his businesses, but he might find that it doesn’t work as well when dealing with the United States of America’s debts to other nations. In fact, it might not work as well as he thinks on his own projects, since he’s been involved with 3,500 lawsuits and his businesses are not doing as well as he likes to pretend. But it really, really wouldn’t work at the federal level. Like, really. It would be Very Bad. 

Who knows? Maybe Trump wants to introduce economic chaos on a historic scale—a “Trump Crash” or “Great Trump Depression” would ensure that his name wasn’t forgotten, anyway. But option B—that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about—seems slightly more likely.