The Hasty Departure

March 2026 – The Escape

A small, dimly lit airstrip somewhere in the Midwest. The tarmac glistens with the sheen of a fresh drizzle, reflecting the cold amber glow of the airport floodlights. The jet is already running, idling like a predator ready to pounce. The aircraft bears no markings of consequence, registered to a shell corporation in Burundi, a country with no extradition treaty with the United States.

Donald J. Trump, wearing a thick overcoat, lumbers toward the plane, pulling behind him a hard-shell suitcase with reinforced edges. No Melania. No Ivanka. Not even Barron. Just him and two aides. The suitcase is one of many already loaded into the cargo hold—filled not with clothes, but with gold coins, bearer bonds, and hard drives containing untold amounts of Bitcoin and other assets.

At the bottom of the plane’s stairway, he pauses for a moment, flipping through a thick stack of passports. The topmost one is a UAE diplomatic passport. Below it, Russian, Hungarian, and Saudi documents. His hands tremble slightly as he fumbles through them, as if searching for reassurance. This is it. There is no coming back.

The aides say nothing. There’s nothing to say. They don’t even know where they’re flying. Only Trump and the pilot have been given coordinates. Once airborne, the true destination will be revealed.

How did it come to this?

BBC Analysis: The Collapse of the American Order

May 2025: The Refinancing Disaster Begins
By early 2025, the warning signs were there. The U.S. national debt had swollen to an unprecedented $37 trillion, and as always, the government needed to refinance portions of it—old debt would be repaid by issuing new bonds. It had been the foundation of American economic strategy for decades. But this time, something was different.

Foreign investors, historically the largest purchasers of U.S. debt, were no longer buying. China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, once the lifelines of American borrowing, had all but withdrawn from U.S. Treasuries. Domestic buyers hesitated, their confidence shaken by the sheer scale of the crisis. Even pension funds and major U.S. banks, institutions that had reliably supported bond auctions for decades, were now second-guessing their involvement. The numbers simply didn’t add up anymore.

At the Federal Reserve, a new chair—handpicked by Donald Trump—was hesitant to intervene. Even under Trump’s directive, outright monetization was an unpalatable step, one that risked hyperinflation and systemic collapse. As demand for bonds plummeted, the government had only one option left: raise interest rates to make the debt attractive.

And so it began.

August 2025: The Rollover Crisis—Far Worse Than Expected
By August, the bottom had fallen out of the market. The moment that economists had long feared was now unfolding in real-time: the rollover crisis. A staggering $6 trillion in U.S. debt came due all at once, and with investors demanding higher and higher interest rates, the Treasury found itself in a desperate scramble to find buyers.

Interest rates, which had already been climbing for months, skyrocketed beyond anything seen in modern history. First, 6%. Then 9%. By the end of the month, new bond issuances were priced at over 11% interest—a death sentence for a government so dependent on borrowed money.

The dollar weakened at an alarming rate. Inflation, which had been wrestled into submission the year prior, came roaring back with a vengeance. Wall Street went into full-scale panic mode, with the Dow Jones plummeting thousands of points in mere days. Capital flight accelerated, and foreign banks began aggressively dumping U.S. holdings to shield themselves from contagion.

The once-unthinkable had happened. The United States was struggling to finance its own debt.

November 2025: Interest Payments Drown the U.S. Government
With borrowing costs spiraling out of control, the unescapable truth was laid bare: the government’s debt burden was no longer sustainable. Annual interest payments had ballooned beyond $4 trillion, now exceeding both military spending and Social Security combined.

In a desperate bid to stave off default, the White House announced sweeping “emergency budget reallocations.” But the reality was impossible to mask. Social Security checks stopped arriving on time. Military bases across the country and abroad began shutting down “temporarily,” though most suspected they would never reopen. States, many of which relied on federal funding, were warned of “indefinite delays.” The economic heart of the nation was seizing up.

Donald Trump, the man at the center of the storm, did not understand why.

January 2026: Musk’s “D.O.G.E.” Plan Fails Spectacularly
By now, the crisis had reached absurd proportions. In what many now recognize as a moment of sheer desperation, Trump had previously turned to Elon Musk, appointing him head of the Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.). The goal? To slash government spending and “restore fiscal sanity.”

Musk, ever the disruptor, approached the problem with his trademark bravado. Legions of federal employees were fired overnight. An attempt was made to privatize Social Security, but the plan imploded instantly—Wall Street wanted nothing to do with it.

Then came the final, surreal moment: Musk announced that Bitcoin would replace U.S. treasuries as a reserve asset. The move sent markets into outright freefall.

Nothing worked. The United States was bleeding out faster than anyone could stop it.

March 2026: Trump’s Panic and the National Emergency
By March, Trump had become a ghost of the bombastic figure that once commanded crowds. His public statements ranged from blatant denial to outright incoherence. In a primetime interview, he declared:

“The debt? It’s fake news. We can just print more money.”
“People love our bonds. I get calls all the time. Beautiful calls. The best calls.”
“You know, maybe we just don’t pay it back? Ever think of that?”

Markets reacted accordingly. The final wave of capital flight began.

By mid-March, the country was on fire—protests erupted in every major city, Washington descended into chaos, police departments collapsed due to lack of funding, and military bases saw mass desertions. The federal government, for all practical purposes, had ceased to function.

Then, naturally Trump declared a National Emergency.

The move plunged the nation into the final stage of its collapse.

Dissenters vanished in mysterious arrests. Trump attempted to push through a “temporary constitutional suspension” with backing from Congress. Melania Trump abruptly filed for divorce while on vacation in Europe. Trump’s own cabinet began disappearing. One was believed to have been assassinated. Two others had committed suicide.

Then came the final straw. The Pentagon signaled unease. Some generals refused to obey orders. A quiet coup was already underway.

March 2026: The Final Hours Before the Flight
Trump was alone in the White House residence when the message came: “It’s happening.”

His security detail had fractured—some still loyal, others vanishing. The FBI was preparing an arrest warrant. His once-loyal inner circle was in full retreat. Ivanka Trump had vanished during a family vacation.

A plan was already in place: a secondary airfield, a jet, fueled and waiting.

By dawn, Trump was halfway across the Atlantic. His destination? Unknown.

Epilogue: The United States, Post-Trump

In the weeks that followed, the United States fractured beyond recognition. Texas moved toward independence. California entered negotiations for its own future. The military split along regional lines. The dollar collapsed. Cryptocurrencies, gold, and foreign fiat currencies filled the vacuum. Trump surfaced months later, in the United Arab Emirates. Extradition efforts began, but they were meaningless. The old U.S. government no longer existed. The world watched, stunned. A superpower had fallen. And Donald Trump, the man who once ruled it, sat in a gilded palace thousands of miles away, watching it burn on television.