You may have noticed that Donald Trump often seems to change his mind. His record of abruptly backing off dangerous courses of action to which he had previously committed himself — from tariffs to civilizational annihilation — inspired the slogan “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out). For a while, TACO was a reassuring thought. It conjured up an image of a weak, flailing president who was playing with empty threats but had a baseline tendency to avert worst-case scenarios. It also conformed to liberals’ preferred fantasy about their opponents, which is that they are not merely evil but stupid: driven by a combination of ideological and psychological derangement, this theory goes, Trump and his allies concoct plans they realize too late cannot work in the real world, whose operations they are too ignorant to understand properly. 

By this point, it is clear that Trump does not always chicken out. Sometimes, he charges forth down the reckless and violent path that he has earlier suggested, or even sworn, he would seek to avoid. Last summer, the man who had once pledged to end the “forever wars” sent his secretary of state to tell various European allies that the administration’s “preferred” resolution to mounting conflict with Iran over its nuclear program would be diplomatic in nature; immediately afterward, the U.S. bombed three Iranian nuclear sites. During all three of his presidential campaigns, Trump criticized American interventionism, often reiterating his 2016 vow to “abandon the policy of reckless regime change.” As late as November, he said he would “probably talk to” Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro instead of defaulting to military force; in early January, U.S. forces entered Caracas and kidnapped Maduro. So emboldened by what a state department official called the new “decapitate and delegate” strategy, Trump decided to try it out on Iran, tumbling head first into what soon became an all-out war. 

Some liberals still insist that the administration is acting impulsively, with no concrete strategy, let alone sense of the stakes. In March, The Guardian blamed the war with Iran on the administration’s “ignorance, misunderstanding, and obfuscation.” American Prospect co-editor Robert Kuttner argued that Trump’s decision-making “conveys the sense of a boy playing soldier, in this case with real weapons, real troops, and real risks.” In contrast to the president, making incomprehensible choices from behind a shroud of delusion, we experts — so such sentiments imply — understand what is really going on.

Trump and his supporters will tell you that what appears to be chaotic flip-flopping is actually just The Art of the Deal, a master negotiator’s ploy to convince his bargaining partners that he is capable of anything and therefore must be appeased. This may very well be what Trump understands himself to be doing, which doesn’t mean that he’s as talented a dealmaker as he would like to imagine. The kind of nihilistic bluffing that rightly appalls political observers is less out of the ordinary in the world of corporate real estate. What looks from one vantage point like erratic incompetence is from another perspective just the kind of game the ultrarich feel they can afford to play with their assets — gambling, as those insulated from the risk of penury always are, with house money. And Trump and his cronies understand that even when countless civilian lives are at stake in the White House’s military machinations, they still stand to make more than one type of killing. 

Both when Trump’s reversals take us away from the brink and when they move us closer to it, some people tend to make enormous amounts of money on predictions. Three hours before announcing the tariff pause, Trump used his Truth Social account to inform investors that it was a “GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!”, and a surge of trade activity ensued. Trump’s surprise attacks on Venezuela and Iran each followed on the heels of suspicious bets on prediction markets. In late March, Paul Krugman and other economic analysts drew attention to a sharp uptick in volume on both the stock and oil futures markets coming just fifteen minutes before Trump said he would delay attacks on Iranian power plants. In other words, at 6:50 a.m. someone made a big bet that the stock market would go up and oil prices would go down, and at 7:05 a.m., the president made a statement that had exactly that effect. We still don’t know — and may never know — who, precisely, benefited from these fortuitously timed transactions. But whether or not Trump chickens out, the house always does seem to win.

Another theory of Trump’s sudden about-face on Iran is that the president engineered a war to distract from the relentless media coverage of his connection to Jeffrey Epstein: the pedophile at the center of an elite circle that took pains to protect its own. The trove of files released early this year only adds fuel to the narrative that the malign and frequently bizarre behavior of our ruling class is best explained by reference to various secret, even occult purposes. Such conspiracism must be understood not as a simple consequence of ignorance or deception or media illiteracy, but rather as a natural response to the fact there is indeed much that we don’t know about why major world events transpire and plenty of reason to think that the official accounts are incomplete or fraudulent. That certain shadowy insiders profit whenever Trump U-turns makes it not merely inevitable but reasonable for many to conclude that what happens on the world stage is a mere charade, that ordinary citizens can’t possibly know what’s going on behind closed doors, that democratic discourse lacks any power to shape government action. 

In putting together this issue, we thought about conspiracies, falsehoods, and hoaxes — and what they mean for civic participation. We convened a panel with Brace Belden, Alexandra Brodsky, Daniel Boguslaw, and Anand Giridharadas to discuss Jeffrey Epstein and what his emails tell us about the elite and the media. In our Dispatches section, we asked contributors to weigh in on the state of the “public sphere” in a moment when it seems increasingly difficult to locate. In our essays section, Maia Silber reveals how the American welfare system has come to depend on a degree of rulebreaking by recipients. Francis Northwood exposes the way employee ownership plans offload unprofitable assets to the working class. Stephen Milder deflates the mythology that conceals a deeply flawed green energy transition in Germany. Mitch Therieau analyzes the disturbing political fantasies displayed, sometimes accidentally, by the Trump administration’s propaganda. Some of our essays consider myths in the cultural sphere. Emma Adler explores musical theater’s popular distortions of history, and Max Norman grapples with Karl Ove Knausgaard’s turn to the fantastical. 

Reading fiction by Julia Kornberg, Kion You, Caroline Porter, Gracie Newman, and Hannah Kingsley-Ma, you will find a complicated living situation, a tense graduation visit, an ever-growing menu of V.R. porn, a dental office, and a retirement home with good hot dogs. In an expansive poetry section, Melanie Jennings, Abou Farman, Lily Gabaree, Carmen Gallo, Andy Butter, and Adam Judah Krasnoff imagine everything from a jellyfish submitting job applications to dust on a butterfly wing. Mentions briefly review the so-called fastest game in the world, the world’s least charismatic carnival barker, and a stealth history of the entire world. 

You’ll have to take our word that we don’t have any hidden agenda at The Drift. But producing a literary magazine in 2026 is its own kind of gamble: reading this issue may not make you rich, but we’re betting that you’ll still find all our behind-the-scenes work rewarding.