MIKEY SMITH: 5 unhinged things Donald Trump and his team did while the US economy kept tanking

Emperor Nero, like Donald Trump, was a great lover of . He launched music competitions and held festivals - some say even performing at them himself.

So deep was his love of music that, legend has it, when a devastating fire engulfed Rome in 64 AD, he was on his private state, either singing or playing the lyre - a stringed instrument - depending on which reports you read.

The legend gave rise to the popular phrase "fiddling while Rome burned."

Perhaps in 2,000 odd years, whatever's left of humanity will be talking about people "watching the while the economy tanked".

Just like yesterday, when US stock markets suffered their worst slump since the pandemic, the has no public events scheduled today.

He's in Florida, where a Saudi-backed golf tournament is taking place at one of his resorts, making him a little bit richer while the rest of the country gets a little poorer, and the gets a lot more uncertain.

Here's more on that - and some more unhinged things he and his team got up to yesterday

1. He screwed up Nintendo Switch 2 pre-orders

Beyond the stock market tanking, which can be a little bit etherial for the majority of people who don't own any stocks, it seemed likely that it would take some time for the US public to see the consequences of Trump's tariffs.

Nobody really expected a concrete example quite so quickly.

Yesterday, before the tariffs even kicked in, made them suddenly very real for a lot of Americans - by delaying US pre-orders of their new Switch 2 console.

To put this in perspective, the original Switch has sold nearly 50 million units in the US alone. In 2023, Nintendo sold nearly 5 million Switches in the US last year - and that's for a seven-year-old console.

That means nearly one in three households in the US has one. The Switch is a big deal, especially with voting-age young people.

Nintendo released demographic data for Switch owners in 2021, which indicated that by far the age group that owns the most Switches is aged 20-25 - and the vast majority of consoles are that age and above.

Last Sunday Trump boasted to reporters: "I won the young vote by 36 points. Republicans generally don't do very well with the young vote."

He didn't win the youth vote by anything like 36 points, as we've covered before, but even if he did...let's see how he does with the youth after this.

2. His team are all like 'this was broken when I got here'

Of all the toadies insulating the second coming of from reality, Stephen Miller may well be the toadies.

Miller, the Deputy Chief of Staff, is responsible for encouraging many of Trump's worst impulses - particularly when it comes to immigration.

But he's also very much the Renfield to Trump's Count Dracula, willing to walk into any fire - or in front of any TV camera - to defend the indefensible.

And yesterday was no exception. All of Trump's 'surrogates' were dispatched to the broadcasters to tell the world everything was fine, and make out it was all somehow Joe Biden's fault.

But Miller's appearance on Fox News last night - complete with a big red ticker in the corner of the screen showing the Dow plunging even as he spoke - was something special.

Give it a watch. You can almost see him eating the bugs.

3. He sacked senior national security officials because a far-right activist told him to

This happened on Thursday, but details only came out overnight.

We knew Trump had had a meeting with Laura Loomer, a bonkers far-right activist, on Wednesday - and that she'd advised the President to fire some National Security officials because they were "never Trumpers" who couldn't be trusted.

But we didn't know until last night exactly how senior they were - and it turns out, pretty much as senior as it gets.

General Timothy Haugh, the Director of the National Security Agency - who also heads the US Cyber Command - was canned, alongside his civilian deputy, Wendy Noble.

Loomer tweeted early yesterday: "NSA Director Tim Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble have been disloyal to President Trump. That is why they have been fired."

No official reason for the firings has been announced.

4. And if you were hoping Republicans in congress were going to start standing up to him...

...allow me to disappoint you.

The Senate approved Trump's budget blueprint in the early hours of this morning, after what the New York Times described as - an "all night vote-a-thon".

Democrats forced the late-night session to protest the Republicans' push for what Trump calls "one big beautiful bill" of spending and tax cuts.

The bill includes $2 trillion of spending cuts, but $4.8 trillion of tax cuts and spending increases - increasing the deficit by $2.8 trillion.

The bill passed by 51 votes to 48, mostly along party lines.

The only Senators to rebel were Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine.

Meanwhile, all Democrats could do was put up a raft of proposed amendments on contentious points Trump's agenda - the trade war, Elon Musk's DOGE, cuts to Medicaid and the Signalgate scandal - to force Republicans to have a vote for them on their record.

It goes to the House next, but given the lack of Republican opposition in the Senate it's unlikely to see much trouble there either.

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5. He banned books from the US Naval academy

Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host turned Secretary of Defence, continued his life-long streak of being the absolute worst.

The latest? He ordered 381 books banned from the US Naval academy's library. According to the New York Times they include: "How to be anti racist" by Ibram X. Kendi. Also listed are "The Making of Black Lives Matter," by Christopher J. Lebron; "How Racism Takes Place," by George Lipsitz; "The Fire This Time," edited by Jesmyn Ward; "The Myth of Equality," by Ken Wytsma; studies of the Ku Klux Klan, and the history of lynching in America.

As well as whitewashing America's troubling history of race relations, it also included books on gender and sexuality.

The books had already been banned from schools - but banning them from the Naval academy is notable because it's a college. For adults.