‘He played y’all’: Man laughs at the absurdity of life and Trump voters who don’t even know what tariffs are or who pays for them

Following the Brexit referendum, web searches for “What is the EU?” in the United Kingdom saw a massive spike. In the wake of the 2024 election results, the United States experienced a similar phenomenon but this time the question people were asking was regarding Donald Trump’s tariff plan.

According to The Nightly: “Google searches for the term “tariff” have spiked after the election, as have queries about “Trump’s tariff plan” — spiking more than 1650 percent since the election. Searches for “who pays tariffs” have risen 350 percent since the election.” This seems to fall in line with the human tendency of reconsidering bad decisions only after you’ve made them.

You might not know whether to laugh or cry upon learning people voted in favor of something they did not even begin to grasp. But, this content creator, who goes by DoMo Draper on TikTok and other social media platforms, could not help but guffaw at the sheer absurdity of this timeline we are living in. He simultaneously pokes fun at clueless Trump voters who, without a second thought, trusted that the Republican candidate’s tariff strategy would vastly improve the U.S. economy, despite what most economists – you know, professionals who studied the matter – had to say on the issue.

Uh-oh, who’s going to tell them?

Donald Trump stated that the most beautiful word in the dictionary for him is “tariff.” It seems he likes it so much that he’s seemingly willing to go into and escalate a (trade) war for it. At the end of the day, his idea for the return of the American Dream based on economic nationalism will probably backfire spectacularly and increase costs for U.S. consumers.

At least, some people, like DoMo, are still able to laugh in the face of insurmountable and ultimately harmful ignorance. The level of cluelessness some have come to expect from blindly loyal Trump supporters.

It is appropriate that the song accompanying DoMo’s TikTok is “Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5,” also known as “Fate Symphony.” It will probably be the song playing in Trump voters’ heads once they start seeing their hopes for a thriving economy under the billionaire felon fall flat on their face. Because it’s not foreign companies who will be paying the tariffs, but domestic companies who seek to import foreign goods.

For those who remain puzzled, DoMo translates Trump’s tariff propaganda by laying out in clear and simple terms the septuagenarian’s already unsophisticated speech: “The man stood in your face and said ‘I’m about to charge you more, still vote for me, though.’” Which is, sadly, pretty much the truth in a nutshell.

As The Wall Street Journal explained, “Tariffs hurt consumers while protecting very specific industries.” Most often, they are used as a punitive measure to compel countries to change their behavior – for instance, in the event of war.

In 2018, when Trump put tariffs on washing machines, not only did imported washing machines cost more, but so did domestically manufactured ones even though the latter weren’t part of the tariff plan. So, if you’ve paid an increased price for that appliance since 2018, you have the 45^th President to thank for it, as Joe Biden chose not to revert these tariff policies when he took office.

Who could have foreseen that a simplistic plan for a complex problem would be a bad choice? Well, that’s precisely the reason why DoMo has to laugh, because it was foreseeable and in an ideal world half a country wouldn’t be playing a real-life game of Simon Says, and instead, would seek to be the most informed citizens possible to make informed decisions. Perhaps that may have been too much to hope for.