Welcome back to The Daily Absurdity. I’m Buck Valor, the only man in Washington who still drinks his coffee black and his politics without the corn syrup. Today, we turn our jaded eyes toward Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who apparently decided that 'Meet the Press' was the perfect venue to debut his new career as a Zen koan master.

When asked to justify the administration’s plan to slap tariffs on eight European nations under the guise of a 'national emergency,' Bessent offered this absolute gem of a sentence: 'The national emergency is avoiding a national emergency.' Take a second to let that sink in. It’s the kind of logic usually reserved for people trying to explain why they burned down their house to prevent a potential future termite infestation. It is a masterpiece of linguistic gymnastics designed to turn a legal loophole into a strategic virtue.

In the grand theater of D.C., words don’t have definitions; they have utility. Usually, a 'national emergency' involves something tangible—a pandemic, a war, or perhaps a sudden, catastrophic shortage of lobbyists. But for this administration, an 'emergency' is simply the legal crowbar required to bypass that pesky, slow-moving organ known as Congress. If you want to mess with global trade without having to explain it to a committee, you just declare an emergency. And if there isn’t one? Well, you’re just being 'proactive.'

Bessent calls these tariffs 'strategic.' In any other neighborhood, we’d call it a protection racket. We are leaning on our allies—nations we theoretically rely on for global stability—to ensure they stay in line with whatever trade whim is currently trending in the Oval Office. The 'emergency' isn't some looming economic collapse; the real emergency, in Bessent’s eyes, is the terrifying prospect of a world where we actually have to follow established international trade laws.

The beauty of this defense is its circularity. It’s bulletproof because it’s nonsense. If the tariffs work, they avoided the emergency. If they fail and the economy tanks, well, imagine how much worse the 'emergency' would have been without them! It’s the 'Minority Report' of economics, but instead of Tom Cruise stopping murders, we have a hedge fund veteran in a bespoke suit stopping the 'tragedy' of affordable European imports.

We’ve reached the stage of the simulation where the government isn’t even trying to lie convincingly anymore. They’re just saying the quiet part loud: we’re doing this because we can, and we’re calling it an emergency so you can’t stop us. Stay cynical, folks. It’s the only thing the government hasn't figured out how to tax yet.