Forrest Trump? Wade. Nike.

Forrest Trump? Wade. Nike.

More evidence that the president is trying to convince us he’s lost it

Exhibit one: the president now says he wants New Mexico to change its name to “New America.” I kid you not — here’s what he posted on Truth Social, without further comment.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham couldn’t resist needling the president back, saying, “While the White House wastes time coloring on maps, Nuevo México is busy doing the work.”

I’m honestly surprised he didn’t threaten to cut off trade with New Mexico unless it changed its name.

Speaking of names: Google Maps and Apple Maps now show “Lake America” for U.S. customers only, while MapQuest still uses “Lake Ontario” and the “Gulf of Mexico.” Meanwhile, only 14 percent of Americans approve of the name changes — which will likely be reversed by the next democrat president.

Exhibit two: last week’s hiring numbers came out surprisingly strong. Keep in mind these figures are almost always revised downward later, sometimes significantly. Still, the president jumped at the chance to push for lower rates, tweeting, “Great jobs number just announced, breaking all estimates (except mine!) by double and triple.” Then: “LOWER THE RATE OR I’LL STOP TRADING WITH COUNTRIES WITH WHICH WE HAVE A DEFICIT.”

Wait — when job numbers were weak, the president demanded the Fed lower rates. Now that job numbers are strong, he still wants a cut, only this time with a new threat attached: cut rates or he’ll cut off trade. That’s a strange new chapter in Trump-o-nomics: tying trade policy to monetary policy. He also posted, “Lower the interest rates because the U.S.A. is a much stronger credit than it was just a short time ago! A STRONG COUNTRY MEANS A LOWER INTEREST RATE — IT’S A BETTER CREDIT… Very simple!”

And he majored in economics at Penn.

No doubt his supporters will offer some translation to make sense of all this (Bessent, where are you?). But with all the tariff rants, naming rants and interest rate rants, to the rest of us, he’s sounding more and more like Forrest Trump.

In Response to Wade

It’s football time in Tennessee, and I could not care less — I’d rather watch baseball. I hate the new league configurations and miss the old regional conferences. Is Tennessee really now in the old Big 12 with Oklahoma, Texas, Texas A&M, Missouri, and Arkansas? This new pod system means Tennessee rarely plays Georgia anymore, when the two used to meet every year. That may be good for Tennessee, but is it good for football?

The Big “10” for some reason, added Rutgers — an embarrassment, mostly there to grab eyeballs in the New York–New Jersey market. The league should expel Rutgers, especially after its loss to UMass, arguably the worst team in college football. And isn’t Tennessee thrilled it didn’t hire Greg Schiano as head coach? Speaking of coaches, Josh Heupel should get on a GLP-1 plan — it’s hard to believe he was a Heisman finalist at Oklahoma. He is morphing into the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Back to regional matchups: I’m sure the sports world is salivating over Maryland playing USC in basketball, but I don’t care. Yet I would not have missed Maryland vs. UNC. Chasing the big bucks has robbed sports of any meaning. UCLA vs. Northwestern — only as a preseason game, not a Big “10” conference game. The conferences should go back to being regional instead of national. Stanford, Cal, and SMU have no business in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Rutgers, Maryland, USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington in the Big Ten? Ridiculous — except for the money.

S&P 100 Drops Nike

Nike has fallen out of favor with consumers, the market, and now the S&P 100. Its stock has lost over $230 billion in market capitalization over the past 12 years and now trades around $38 a share. It is being delisted along Honeywell Aerospace, Simon Property Group (shopping malls), and Colgate-Palmolive. Replacing them: Dell Technologies, Palo Alto Networks, Arista Networks, and Sandisk.

So what caused Nike to lose so much value? Back when the company stood by Colin Kaepernick, I told a friend Nike would suffer for it. He said I was wrong — that it would grow instead. We bet a dollar. He was right. I was wrong. Nike’s sales surged. The Kaepernick ad, part of the “Just Do It” campaign, ultimately proved to be a win for the company — its marketing leaned into an edgy, anti-establishment, counterculture image. Nike released a controversial shoe featuring the Betsy Ross flag and pulled it after Kaepernick said it was offensive. That year, Nike’s sales rose 7% to more than $39 billion, and its stock climbed 12%. Then-CEO Mark Parker said the Kaepernick campaign drove “record engagement with the brand” — a key goal as the company built out its direct-to-consumer business.

So what changed? Is it that Nike’s stars, Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, are no longer relevant? Has Kaepernick simply become boring and passe? Nike, once the leader in running shoes, was slow to innovate and fell behind Hoka and On — even Asics, Puma, and Adidas moved faster falling out of favor in $7.4 billion U.S. running shoe market. But I think the biggest factor was complacency — the same trap that catches industry leaders who get too comfortable and fail to adapt to shifting tastes. Kodak and IBM come to mind.

By the way, Tennessee switched from Nike to Adidas.

I wonder if it’s too late to get my dollar back.