Trump the Pick Me
Wants the flirty texts, not the serious talks
I hate pick me girls.
“Girls are so catty and that’s why I prefer hanging out with guys.”
“I could never be into that ‘girly’ stuff like makeup and clothes. I’m just not really like other girls.”
I’ve always wondered if there could actually be a type of person in the world that throws their own kind under the bus just for attention. Like, how stupid do you have to be? We all know betrayal exists—in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, the titular character commits treason by killing Duncan to become king. But I feel like that’s somewhat justified given we are, after all, talking about becoming the king. We’re talking about absolute power. At least Macbeth was reaching for a crown, not a pat on the head.
But imagine degrading your own sex to gain the attention of men and validation. That’s what defines a pick me girl. What kind of attachment issues do you have to make that your whole personality?
Here’s the thing though, while “pick me” is typically associated with women, men can be pick mes too. And these past few months, the President of the United States has really decided to throw America under the bus (again) because he wanted attention from the world. Trump has decided that after making headlines by capturing Maduro in early January that the show must go on, with a new season and a new plot: CAPTURE GREENLAND.
I don't have to tell you how ridiculous the idea really is because Mark Carney already gave Trump a lecture in his speech delivered at the World Economic Forum. Carney's central argument cut to the bone: "you cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination."
In other words, America has spent decades selling the world on the promise of a rules-based international order—open markets, integrated supply chains, multilateral cooperation—and now it's weaponizing that very integration against its own allies. The subordination Carney is talking about isn't conquest or occupation; it's the subordination of being excluded from a system you helped build, of watching America use economic interdependence as a cudgel rather than a collaboration.
"If we're not at the table, we're on the menu," he warned, and he wasn't just speaking for Canada. He was articulating the dawning realization of every middle power from the EU to ASEAN that America's pick me president has turned the entire post-war economic architecture into a performance stage for his own validation, and they're all just props in his psychodrama.
And what’s more terrifying than a pick me girl? A pick me president who just happens to be the president of the United States. Trump has a lot of power, especially in exploiting this loophole called the tariff (that’s still under Supreme Court review, but until the court rules he’ll keep playing around with it). It’s sort of funny how he brought the memo from Silicon Valley of “move fast and break things,” and break things he does. The problem is he’s breaking the entire American economic order in the process, like a pick me girl torching her female friendships to sit at the guys’ table, except the table is the global financial system.
It all started last year with the initial rounds of tariffs on Canada and Mexico around February of 2025. For Canadians, that devastated the auto sector, so much so that Stellantis and GM moved production out of the country entirely. The American share of car imports into Canada has been in free fall, now only accounting for about 39%, down from a high of 48% just a few years ago. Who’s filling that void? Mainly cars made in Korea and Japan. Congratulations, Trump—you played yourself.
Then you have the memorable April 2nd “Liberation Day.” I certainly felt very liberated that day seeing my net worth dropping by like 10% in the span of a week. The S&P 500 had its worst day since COVID, shedding over 10% as investors realized Trump wasn’t bluffing about economic suicide. The dollar index collapsed from 108 to 99 in a matter of weeks. I almost felt like capitalism is a scam and that I should embrace the purest form of communism a lot more. I was not only liberated, but also liquidated.
Xi didn’t like that, so he slapped Trump with a rare earth export blockage—you know, those materials essential for everything from iPhones to missiles. And Trump, being the coward that he is, backed down within 72 hours. There was a term that was coined after that: TACO. Trump Always Chickens Out. Carney learned that term too it seems, maybe from Xi after his most recent visit to China to patch things up. But more than getting a pat on the back from Xi, Carney will also bring back some Chinese EVs that just make American cars look like a complete joke. Those joint venture deals he’s negotiating? That’s Canada literally reshoring away from America.
I mean, if you don’t get Trump, at least understand the pick me girls. After all, they just want to be special, and they would do anything—like anything—to get attention. Like hanging out with six different male “friends” and loudly announcing how drama-free their life is compared to other girls. Trump is no exception because if there is anything he’s most scared of, it’s being forgotten. He felt that when Biden was president, overshadowed and irrelevant, and I am sure he didn’t like it very much.
So he, like the pick me girl, has to up his antics. Liberation Day last year was a big firework—markets crashing, the dollar tanking, 10-year Treasury yields spiking to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis as foreign investors dumped American debt. And now, for the second firework! Greenland! And I just checked the news—this man decided to back down from using military force to acquire Greenland. So yes, TACO. But hey, he’s a winner because once again everyone is talking about him. Gold prices hit another all time high, because he keeps scaring everyone with global stability on the line.
But honestly, he is a winner in his own way. This guy again distracted the American public from the Epstein case that was utterly disgraceful, and I don’t know how he keeps getting away with it. Also, he is once again dominating the media, everyone talking about him, me included, so he’s happy. He loves attention, remember? That’s the whole game.
But at what cost? At the cost of the American public who will probably never see the Epstein files, which is deeply troubling—how people in positions of power can be pedophiles and just... walk away. At the cost of American reputation, because no one believes what America says anymore, not even on paper. Treaties? Worthless. Promises? Jokes. And most importantly, at the cost of American economic interests, which is so funny because it was America who was into this whole reshoring thing, but now everyone is reshoring away from America.
It's sort of like when a pick me girl finally gaslights a man into being in a relationship with her. He showers her with attention and affection, and she's on top of the world. But at what cost? Well, she's happy in the moment, sure. But that happiness comes at the cost of every friendship she torched to get there, all those girls she threw under the bus to seem special.
And here's the cruel irony: the same desperate need for attention that made her burn those friendships doesn't just disappear once she gets the guy. She still craves that external validation, still needs to feel special. So when the relationship inevitably settles into routine and he's no longer showering her with the same intensity of affection—because that's what happens in actual relationships—she can't handle it.
She needs the fireworks, the drama, the spectacle. So she creates chaos, picks fights, makes scenes, anything to feel like the center of attention again. And when it all falls apart and they break up, she's left with nothing. Her reputation is in the bin, the girls she betrayed won't take her back, and no other men want to come close to her because everyone's seen this performance before. She burned her bridges for temporary validation, and in her addiction to that validation, she destroyed the very thing she fought so hard to get.
Trump's doing the same thing on the global stage—torching America's alliances (the girls) to feel powerful and dominant at home (the relationship), but his need for bigger and bigger spectacles means he can't even maintain the domestic support he craved, because eventually people get exhausted by the constant chaos.
In the real world, that pick me girl will always find another group of men and preach how she is different from other girls, how she’s not like them, how she’s better. But on the global stage, the world is only so big. And if you mess it up not once, but twice, no one will ever trust you again. Trust takes decades to earn, but once it’s lost, it almost never comes back.
Materially, this means trade flowing away from America towards China, evident with Carney’s recent deals with China that entail potential joint ventures to build Chinese EVs in Canada. Canadian travel to the U.S. in 2025 hit a record low. Or in the case of Europe, reducing the purchase of American assets and instead investing those assets into emerging markets or even China, which somehow is now considered a more reliable trading partner according to Carney. I actually laughed out loud at that one. The pick me girl is so insufferable that it has come to this—China is now the stable option. Let that sink in.
Longer-term, this could lead to a structural rise in the U.S. yield curve, which is already an issue as national debt continues to climb past $36 trillion. And Trump’s attacks on the Fed certainly don’t help—trying to bully Jerome Powell into rate cuts while simultaneously blowing up trade relationships is peak pick me behavior, demanding attention and accommodation while sabotaging the very foundation of your credibility.
So I do hate pick mes. Because they always believe they are different, special, somehow exempt from consequences. And somehow they surprise you in showing you that they truly are different—different in that they’re able to be out there selling out America just to prove that they’re special, to get validation, to stay in the headlines. Like, come on, what daddy issues are we working with here? They say and do things with an extent and shamelessness that just wows you. Seizing Greenland through military force? And they have no remorse, no regret, just onto the next stunt, the next headline, the next hit of attention.
But like any cockroach, the room is only so big, and you certainly cannot escape your stinky reputation. Macbeth found that out when the prophecy turned on him. The pick me girl finds out when she runs out of new friend groups to infiltrate. And Trump will find out when America runs out of global credibility to burn. The difference is, when a pick me girl crashes and burns, she only takes herself down. When a pick me president does it, he takes the empire with him.
Please note that the opinions expressed in this piece are my own and do not reflect those of my employers. Thanks for reading The Americano—don’t forget to share it with a friend!