It is amazing and amusing to witness all the Republican politicians "hitching their wagons" to Trump. They parrot Trump's words and entirely endorse his "negotiating." One might think they would be a bit cautious and circumspect, but in fact, those left in the Republican Party have long since sacrificed all honor, intelligence, and shame. It would be comical, were it not so serious for the country. In my state of Iowa they are Reynolds, Ernst, Grassley, and in my district a man named Feenstra. What incredibly fatuous fools.
In a rational world, they would take one look at what tRump said he wanted to do with the economy and run screaming in the other direction. But, nooooooo... they hitch their wagons to a man who bankrupted casinos (pleural) in Atlantic City... an Orange idiot who teetered on the edge of insolvency for many years until he finally stuck his money siphon into the US presidency. We are simply f****d!
Yes, and he is very clearly doing their bidding. One aim is to destroy as much of the economies of US and allies as he possibly can, while profiting from it (his own perogative). It is the only way any of this makes sense. Expect more mayhem. Where it ends no one can tell. I suspect there will be violence this summer. This is America, after all.
Seeing as there's a Bipartisan Senate committee report confirming Russian interference in favor of Trump readily available, its true madness to deny this reality. Try googling and reading it.
The January 6th attempted insurrection wasn’t as bad as a bipartisan senate committee providing detailed publicly available evidence about Russia’s involvement in getting Trump elected?
This is why it’s a cult. Like Twain says, no amount of evidence will convince an Idiot. You’ve been dismissed. Seek help.
This is not a conspiracy theory. Russians “turned” Trump in the 1980s when they were recruiting young rich Americans looking to achieve greater wealth and power. There is plenty of evidence of this.
doh - what can i say. Has the whole western media suddenly become so pro-Trump that they won't report on a story like this? Maybe they are all bought. That would explain it. Bought by Trump or the Russians.
Maybe that explains why they have been so consistently kind to Trump and er....
If it walks like a Russian asset, and it talks like a Russian asset, what the hell do you think it is, a duck? You are putting two and two together and getting a zebra. He has been a Russian asset since at least 87. He and his kids have all admitted taking money from the Russians. But, hey, keep telling yourself fairy tales. Sure, they must be true if state media tells you so. Lol.
The GOP's a cult that's gotten to where they are partly by always sticking together and never falling apart. No matter how fucked up things get, largely due to their own efforts, they figure, nothing REALLY bad will ever happen to any of them, because they're all part of the same power elite. And the more bridges they burn, the more tightly bound together they are.
Right now, Trump is the president of that club, and that means they do whatever he says.
I disagree. The GOP fell apart when the magas finally realized that the Republicans were a bunch of rich guys who sold them social issues and gave them policies that didn't bring the social changes they sought. After Iraq and 2008 they realized the GOP had screwed them royally and there was a grassroots takeover headed by the right wing talk show folks on radio and FOX.
Again the magas are getting screwed, but they're poorly educated ( there's become a strong anti-college bias among them) and are being taken for a ride by the talk show people, tech bros and Christian Nationalists.
At least in the rural PA region where I grew up, the anti-education, anti-college resentment was already well-entrenched by the early- to mid-1970s. Professor Hofstadter's, "Anti-intellectualism in American Life" was published in 1963. I subsequently found evidence of this in a descriptive history of the region published circa 1914.
Yes. And Trumpism is a religion. Suffering doesn’t diminish faith. Suffering strengthens faith. So people who think the MAGA base will abandon the felon because of hardships probably have overly optimistic expectations.
This. Hence, "cult." It will be interesting, and probably hair-raising, to see whom MAGA blames as Trump's/Musk's policies leave them poorer, sicker, and without gov't. services from SSA, FEMA, etc. A lot of them--probably millions--will be psychologically incapable of recognizing how they've been conned and betrayed.
In a few months it will be clear who were simply tricked and who are so far gone they cannot be brought back to reality. I estimate at least 40 million of his supporters will require cult deprogramming.
Astonishing how people close to Trump who still have power to resist keep capitulating, no they are abdicating, taking leave of their senses. We went ahead and gave Trump extraordinary destructive power, the MOST we have to give, power that has been building in the executive. We did, this democracy. We went ahead and let Trump run and win and get inaugurated instead of convicting him, slithery conman, criminal, madman, unstable, cruel, irresponsible. And now we, all of us, reap the results go round and round like caught mice. He says he could not care less ( about the people, about the Constitution, about the law) He could not care less, he said. "Fatuous fools" does not cover it.
Actually best point in the thread... it falls on the voters, and now it falls on us. We knew full well who we were electing.... like how many times did Trump say 'tariff' was the most beautiful word in the dictionary? So what are people protesting? .... that we got what we voted for?
IMO, Potter's point is that many voters actually *didn't* kmow what they were voting tor, which is why some MAGA voters have joined the protests.
Yes, Trump voters, and those Americans who sat out this election or threw their vote away by voting for a write-in or third party candiate absolutely *should* have known what they were going to get if Trump won, but many didn't.
Like Trump, MAGA voters are largely profoundly incurious. The fact over the past 35-40 years Republicans have created their own media echo chamer reinforces that lack of curiosity. They only need to turn on the TV to get "information" that supports their beliefs. If they've read any books lately they were all probably the "Killing of..." books by Bill O'Reilly. If Limbaugh were still inflicting himself on humanity, he'd probably be the only best selling right wing author who publishes "infotainment" books related to politics and government in any way.
That incuriousness (of which many MAGA voters are quite proud) leads to the IMO inescapable conclusion many of them don't want to know because they might accidentally learn something that forces them to question what they've believe, and why.
This is hardly unique to MAGA or even American voters, though. After UK voters passed Brexit, the next day there was a rather amazing spike in Google searches using variations of the question "What is Brexit?". After the 2024 US election, it seems reality may have somehow partially pierced the MAGA information bubble there was a spike in searches using terms like "Project 2025." Not sure if there was a specific search spike for "tariff" in November or late January or not.
Laatly, some of what we're seeing now is because until now, some voters were "Members of the Leopard Eating Faces Party." As a federal employee I'm thinking specifically of voters like that guy in Philadelphia who was absolutely stunned to learn Trump and Eoon's "deep state" and anti-federal employee nonsense applied to him too.
good explanation. i am angry tho. angry at people who fell for his con. and here we are.... him gambling with our savings (our = each person across the globe) .... nobody signed up for that.
Mcconnell has been on an anti trump apology tour ever since Trump won. Think it finally sunk in that his lifes legacy will be the destruction of the entire nation. You did this Mitch. You could have stopped him and chose not to.
It’s a mistake to blame one person. It’s astonishing how many let this happen. People were weak. Trump knew and took advantage. And he still does. People are weak fearful selfish and greedy. Not just MM, Who gave him power over and over for so long.?? The power seekers took over, took advantage. Trump had the magic.
I think what people like Andy are getting at is larger than just McConnell, it's the question, "You supported the far right fringe, which has led us to Trump and Tsar Elon. Exactly what did that get you?" Except for the 1%, the answer is either "Not much!" or "Nothing!"
IMO, this question is going to occupy the time of political scientists and historians for many years. Republican Senators like McConnell have been unwittingly been participating in their own demise for nearly 20 years. They not only let the far right fringe "out of the attic" where both major parties have traditionally kept their "lunatic" fringes, but embraced them to try to defeat, and then thwart the agenda of President Barack Obama in 2008.
The "easy" conclusion is that McConnell and Republican politicians made some of the same kind of calculations and mistakes interwar German politicians made in terms of their ability to control the Nazis. I'm not sure if that's the case, or if Republican politicians simply don't care, as long as they're able to remain figureheads and keep their jobs.
It's about power in this partisan-run country. The United States has never been united ( except maybe during the world wars). The interests and ideas that brought the Civil War are still basically in operation. The GOP appealed to fears of the "lower class". Class is an issue here, supremacy of the rich and powerful, and being the "superior race" wanting to rule over the others. In the last decades trickle down economics was sold and bought even when it was demonstrably not working. The inequality grew. The blame game grew: it's immigrants, our open society, open borders, open trade. The GOP elite dug their heels in with trickle down and loved the ignorant that they worked on in so many ways. As they did this they blamed the "elites" on the other side..including the educated. Now they are MAGAs and are big time at it, against trade, education, social programs... not the government of all, but one where THEY should control ( and privatize)everything, destroying the government of the people, The rich get richer. Elon Musk is exhibit B, Trump exhibit A ( or vice versa) about how they believe businessmen must run the country, socialism and taxation is the enemy.
On the contrary McConnell joined this program and did well for himself.. unbelievably even when the people who put and kept him in position from GOP moderate to obstructionist as being a "conservative" changed and became a religion along with partisanship irregardless of what that advocated. How hard he worked to stay in power and to help bring us to (this moment). But it is much larger than McConnell who lost his principles if he had any or any worthy ones, along the way... the general story. Now it's a huge battle.. very huge... to get rid of this disease that is eating us, if we can. If you compare this to Nazi Germany then a war would be next. or what?
But no wonder the word "fascism" is now being used more easily now.
The problem is we are just awakening. The more they assault our system and lie to us more will get what is happening, the more will realize the seriousness of this and that it won’t just go away. Our system can’t take care of this while we go about our business. In fact we will be less able to ignore this and go about our business. The regime like cancer will grow. So now is the time for pushback before that cements and complacency sets in and people can only think about saving themselves from a sinking ship. There are a lot of people to get on board to believe this danger is upon us and happening. That’s the most important work now as I see it. We need the masses and to show that this is not partisan; something profound is happening.
I'm not suggesting a revolution -- I am thinking of one of the authoritarian academic experts who studied how the Poles were able to build a coalition to push out their advancingly authoritarian administration. This expert said that it was important that the regime be shown to be smaller and less powerful than what they project.
I'm just an average citizen trying to participate in the much needed collective action to halt authoritarian creep or full blown takeover. Please suggest a better name or phrase that most will understand and can effectively define the current regime or attitude towards the constituency.
Americans are soft now. If we somehow killed the internet for a month though and people no longer had their mental pacifiers, there would be a revolution.
Before the internet there was TV but you could not carry it with you. There was radio and years of talk radio…Limbaugh et al. People don’t want to think deeply they are into quick emotional reactions and responses and being part of a group of people of similar ills. We have become oppositional and it seems vulnerable because of lack of education resentments greed … we lost our way., a good portion of us. Not everyone. This is the battle.
Right now they're the First Felon's tariffs but if the GOP Congress doesn't end them in a week, they'll be the Republican Tariffs. The GOP caucus could end the tariff madness by law and with the certain help of the Democratic caucus they would override a veto. At the same time they could stop and reverse injurious cuts to cancer, dementia and infectious disease research. The longer the GOP caucus delays taking action the more all of they will own the madness.
Jim Jacob’s in my opinion is not that the GOP is delaying taking action, what is, is that the republican congress is content and purposely approving of everything and anything trump does. Like another post stated, trump is the leader of the GOP club. And these republicans in Congress bow and follow orders. Care nothing about the American People. They serve and work for their club leader and they are eager to be part of the dismantling of our country, they want power and enrichment. And could care less if it means stepping over each American.
One would assume that every GOP MOC will get a hell of a bad time at the country club this weekend? Time is running out fast; better course correct no later than Monday and Tuesday!
Yes, but there might be a silver lining. I am very hopeful that Trump's policies have been so insane and destructive that Representatives from the few competitive districts will start to abandon him. Once a few move, things in Washington could change so fast it will make your head spin.
Yes that's the things have to get really bad first. Perhaps the silver lining is that this is not happening like the slow boiling of the frog, that people are aroused and stay aroused.
Something I don't see people talking much about is how Trump's history with people—including or especially his allies—will affect the course of things when the winds turn against him.
My mind keeps returning to Armando Iannucci's "Death of Stalin" and its depiction of the fate of Beria.
Thanks for the reference to "Death of Stalin" (the greatest movie of the century so far.) I think that what is going on in Washington today is a replay. Obsequious, incompetent toadies pandering to a lunatic. The question is, who will be our Zhukov?
I heard Rubio spouting nonsense this morning on NPR. He's in Brussells at a NATO FM meeting talking about how great the tariffs are. Even he knows how much of a lie it is but he has sold his soul to the Devil...forgetting what happened to Faust.
Never in a million years would I think I’d agree with Rand Paul, but he’s one of few Senate Republicans who spoke out against tariffs on Canada. It was a performative speech on the Senate floor and something Trump said he’d never sign, but it showed some Republicans are starting to shift.
Rep Ben Cline VA 6th district is my local fool. Most of what he posts on Facebook is outright lies. For Ben and his ilk, the oath they took to protect the constitution means less than nothing to them.
A theocratic state with a thin veneer of fake democracy would be just fine with these America haters.
Government by destruction, what's not to like? And the GOPers remain convinced that the Great Unwashed firmly believe in all this self-inflicted carnage, and that to even timidly oppose tRump policies as a matter of simple sanity risks being "primaried", so keep the faith, nodding one's head like a bobblehead doll.
How much is too much? We're finding out real fast, right?
Not amusing, but the only source of hope at the moment, namely that we may be saved from malevolence by incompetence once again. There was seemingly nothing standing in the way of their slowly continuing to impose a police state, but economic mismanagement just might prevent a full autocratic consolidation, if enough people get angry.
And to think there was a time, back when I was a union organizer in Iowa, when we had Senators like John Culver, Dick Clark and, later on, Tom Harkin. “In January of 1975, Iowa Democratic Party activists and office holders could not have been happier. In the previous November's mid-term elections, Iowans had elected or reelected five of the six Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, including newcomers Michael Blouin, Berkley Bedell, and Tom Harkin. In addition, Democrats now controlled both branches of the state legislature. About the only thing for the state's Democrats to be unhappy about was the situation in the Iowa Executive Council, where the GOP controlled all seven offices (including that of governor). Even so, what probably excited loyal Democrats more than anything else was the election of former Second District Congressman John C. Culver to the United States Senate. The Culver election, coupled with the election two years earlier of Culver's legislative assistant Dick Clark over then-incumbent Sen. Jack Miller, marked only the second time in the state's history that two Democrats had been elected in the same decade to the highest legislative body in the nation. Iowa had finally become a competitive two-party state.”
Anyone else concluding that this is the "Let them eat cake" administration of clowns?
Stuff like this is why all of my work colleagues in Argentina had US $$ "under their mattresses" and bank accounts in countries like Switzerland. They didn't want their liquid assets to be subject to the whims and incompetence of their governing regimes.
I needed cash to pay the entry visa when flying from Argentina to Chile and my Argentine colleague came in the next day and handed me several hundred USD for the visa! I don't carry that kind of cash even at home in the U.S.! This same colleague also showed me a framed 1,000,000 Argentine note from one of the country's bouts of severe inflation and currency devaluation -- he laughed and said he wanted to remind his kids that they used to be 'multi-millionaires'. Here WE are now.
They’re not “hitching their wagons” to Trump, they’re being dragged by the shackles on their ankles. Trump has threatened primary challengers to any Republican who defies him. So there’s nothing amazing about their behavior.
If we didn’t have winner-take-all elections, an alternative conservative party would be able to challenge the Republicans.
Personally, I no longer excuse or have sympathy for their situations. They 'signed up' for the role. They also swore an oath to the Constitution (not to their party or their seat) so it is time for them to put on their 'big-boy pants' and DO THEIR JOBS to defend the Constitution, the country, and those who live here.
We must hold our GOP electeds to account and push them to honor their oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Silence by any will be taken as consent.
I agree completely. My point was simply that the "hitching their wagons" is a misleading metaphor. Hitching is a voluntary action. If we're going to figure out how to deal with this mess, we need to be very clear about player's motives. Trump is ruling by fear, and for now it's the elected Republicans who most afraid of him.
You may be right, but they may in fact agree with Trump. The polls how that an astounding number of Republican voters still agree with Trump on this one. You are correct in their oath, as a number of the GOP Congress know that Trump is disregarding it.
Chaos -is the inconceivable yet apparent objective leading to step by step autocratic power grab by the first kakistocracy in US history - totally contrary to the foundational principles embedded in the Constitution of the United States and the interest of its citizens.
While the economy is a significant global concern, I believe there is a more pressing, existential issue: the control and oversight of U.S. nuclear weapons.
I am concerned about several questions: Does the "Club" still exist? Is the U.S. still a member? Who has the authority to make decisions regarding nuclear weapons? What strategies are in place when potentially dangerous entities, such as North Korea, become capable? Will the policy become a fragmented, "every man for himself" approach?
These ill-considered tariffs could literally have deadly consequences. It is imperative that all NC members remain united to counter donald the dictator.
I urge you to listen to the Arms Control Wonk podcast featuring Aaron Stein and Jeffery Lewis for more insights
Also, now that Trump ended the world order, Poland, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and likely Mexico and Canada will get nuclear weapons. How do we deal with the worst crisis of nuclear proliferation imaginable?
Poland, South Korea, and Japan, yes. The others will probably be okay. (If Poland has nuclear weapons Germany won't need them because Poland is between Germany and Russia.)
You left off Australia. It's highly likely that there's already an Australian/Japanese/Korea nuke program going, probably backed by U.K. expertise. Trump's attack on NATO and allies will lead to an incredibly dangerous situation where all first world countries have their own strategic nuclear forces.
When you allow gerrymandering congressional districts, representatives no longer are beholding to their constituents. They don’t even need to attend their constituents’ town halls. And flush, there goes your democracy.
History will ask how could so many smart people make such disastrous choice so effortlessly? The low information voter is not hard to understand but Wall Street and the CEO club obviously were willing to put everything at risk for a tax cut. That speaks to the degradation of our values over the last 50 years. When people stop considering how their choices might impact others its not going to end well.
In a well functioning Democracy Trump wouldn’t have been taken seriously as a candidate. He would have been convicted of tax fraud 20 years ago.
SCOTUS never dealt with it. I’m not sure what Justice Kennedy said about it, but it was like, “It’s too hard to figure out.” So, balls and strikes. Right. Nobody would go to a baseball game where they made up the ‘rules’ as they go.
I’m a law and order guy. The torturers should have been locked up. The NYC finance guys should have been arrested. If NYC and NYS had done their job, Trump would have been a couple decades into a prison sentence. Democracy has rules and there have to be consequences for violating them.
Last, umpires are not just behind the plate. They are all over the field assuring the play is fair to all participants. You think that is our SCOTUS?
Given how for you MAGAts every accusation is a confession and QAnon is basically an admission you are all Matt Gaetz-like creeps, I assume you spend a lot of time trying to figure out how people in middle school talk. Can’t wait to see your appearance on “To Catch A Predator”!
“Personally, I’m feeling very confident. That is, I have high confidence in predicting that we’re heading for multiple policy trade wrecks, inflicting damage like you’ve never seen before.”
Agreed, completely self inflicted wounds by a bunch of clowns with a chainsaw. And a clown with a chain saw, is still a clown with a chainsaw! Let that sink in!
Additionally, I truly feel bad for the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee. They definitely have their work cut out for them, and I’m not sure they even have any tools in their tool shed to deal with the gross level of incompetence displayed by this administration.
And congratulations to the “Confederacy of Dunces,” you’ve completely outdone yourselves this time around. I guess, nothing changes minds, until your pocket book gets mugged! And to the Murdock Family; you finally unleashed the FoxenStein monster, so glad you finally got it under control. IMHO!…:)
What’s fascinating (in a morbid way) is to watch the WSJ editorial page handle the idiotic “policy.” Everything was all good when they figured Trump would “just” unshackle anti corporate policies like supposedly restrictive “woke” ideas — you know, preventing poison from polluting the air and our food. Wall Street, stupid as ever, thought Trump would unleash the economy. They blindly believed, again, that they had an “in” on what he would do to make them rich. Now, twice in two months, they’ve been blindsided that the entire con was about Trump. It has ALWAYS been about Trump. If you want to know how the man ticks, just ask if he believes it will benefit him and hurt everyone else. He’s a bomb. He only hurts others. He thinks that’s what makes him powerful. The more pain, the better. And his clownish minions will enshrine him, possibly on the way to total ruin, because eventually, when they’ve voted to rescind their own constitutional power, no such power will soon exist. So when they’re broke, their families are broke, and in fact when they finally wake up and vote against him, their vote will be empty—just like their heads have always been. If there’s any mystery in all of this, it’s about the bottomlessness of Wall St., Murdock, and Congress’s collective stupidity. Trump was NEVER their man. And DOGE? The entire idea isn’t to deregulate. It’s to make the state have to contract with Elon, and to make anyone else who serves, serve only one man and one goal: to enrich the Clown and his Court Jester. This isn’t a government. It’s a protection racket. If you don’t kiss the ring you get nothing. Only even that isn’t going to work. In the very short term most of what makes the country functional will erode, and without trust around the world we will find ourselves in great danger of total isolation. Ask Russians how their economy is doing. That’s about the worst model you could choose. And, yes, it’s far worse than the Chinese one, which FUNDS education, FUNDS infrastructure, and FUNDS innovation. DOGE just made sure we’ll do none of the above, we’ll lose the tech race, the transformative race caused by infrastructure funding, and all of the power that funding education causes that you cannot foresee. In two months this man has managed to destroy America, all because of a congress so drunk with perceived power, they were willing to to vote against the will of every single man, woman, and child they represent and destroy each constituent’s future. If there are economists in the future (probably living abroad), they sure have a lot of material to work with.
Agreed, and well said. They all thought Trump was down for the count. Two legitimate court cases and indictments that would’ve left Trump in shackles. He leveraged his pain and legal woes, with promises of writing their own checks, if they give him their support, to get him back in the Oval.
They didn’t realize they made a pact with the devil, and once he regained power, he would use it as a cudgel and spare no one; including his clueless and morally bankrupt financial backers.
RE: "If you want to know how the man ticks, just ask if he believes it will benefit him and hurt everyone else. He’s a bomb. He only hurts others. He thinks that’s what makes him powerful. The more pain, the better. "
I came to the same conclusion on January 6th!
What you have described in the quoted sentences above is a PSYCHOPATH... I guess you recognize that.
In the end, though, tRump always shoots himself in the foot. He plunges into businesses and activities of which he has no understanding whatsoever. Look at his lengthy list of shuttered and bankrupted businesses... and scams.
"This isn’t a government. It’s a protection racket. If you don’t kiss the ring you get nothing." This has been the strategy of some Members of Congress for years. Pay for performance. Trump has taken our established "protection racket" to new heights. He owns a cryptocurrency. SCOTUS Justice Thomas should have his own too.
My daughter had a boyfriend who voted for Trump in 2020. He worked in finance in NY and they all thought he was a joke. No one listened to what Trump said because he'd say anything. They wanted him to make their taxes lower. The ex-boyfriend was shocked at Jan. 6th. We live in MAGA land and knew it wasn't a joke.
Toole's estate should profit in some fashion. Just who is being congratulated? If Republican politicians and constituents are the target of derision, we ought to make clear our meaning. COD, it fits and rolls off the tongue. GOP, while more evocative in a visual sense has little to do with today's republican party. Who put the CON in conservative?
It’s interesting that there was another “contributor” by a different name infesting this comment section last week. It was doing the same thing - dropping snotty, pointless “zingers”. I suspect an AI bot of some kind.
Great essay. I am so glad you left the NYT. They never would have let you write this excellent analysis of our current economic mess. The problem is....now what?
I have a cynical idea about the Trump tariffs when they are implemented. A mid- to small-size country calls or visits Trump to get a reduced tariff for their country. Yes, they have to kiss the ring and say some nice things and praise Trump for being a financial genius but that isn’t enough. They will have to buy the Trump cryptocurrency or invest in some other Trump asset. If they don’t follow through on this commitment, the tariffs will return. I doubt that Trump can pull this off in the same way with any large EU country.
I think that you hit the nail on the head. Trump is a classic mobster and this is a protection racket:
"Nice business/industry/economy you have there. It would be too bad is some extreme and unjustified tariffs should happen to it. But only I am able to protect you from those tariffs -- I just need a favor in return: a small investment in Trump cryptocurrency or Truth Social stock."
Technical note: those are both intangible items with little or no intrinsic value but are trading on public markets for orders of magnitude more than they are worth. Trump has billions of dollars worth of them, but cannot sell without the price collapsing ... unless there is a buyer somewhere who is also buying around the time that Trump is selling.
In other words, perfect vehicles for laundering money to Trump.
The EU acts as a block. They are going to give Trump a chance to negotiate during next 14 days. If he doesn't cooperate, the EU will do certain tariffs.
But there are a lot of countries out there that would like to trade with the US that are not protected as part of the EU. Trump will take his personal payoffs from anyone who offers.
China already has partnered with Japan and South Korea, or rather they have partnered with China to coordinate reciprocal tariffs, etc. Can smaller Asian countries be far behind? China is already investing in Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia. An all-Asia Chinese economic empire will diminish America’s, for good or ill.
If he’s just talking his pocket then the little guys will be more than enough. May I suggest you are thinking too hard, or rather too long. Limit yourself to, say, ten words, then figure out what he’s doing. Call it “keeping with the realm of the possible.” If he’s successful in his wants, a longer discussion will not dissuade him.
Oh, without a doubt. This is a big grift, a ploy to line the pockets of the orange one while grabbing resources he thinks he can get get at cut rate prices...cash for citizenship, rare earth minerals for 'protection' from the Russians at your door. Canada, give us your timber ... and yes we'll grab the grill from the mouths of penguins to feed the masses at home whose livelihoods he's destroyed ... Soyulent Green meet SuperKrill2025.
You brought up a good word that will haunt America going forward: stupid. We’ve had the period of the ugly American, and the fat American, but we are deeply entrenched in the era of the stupid American. And unlike changing clothes or loosing weight, there’s no pill for stupid.
I expect that, as with everything else with this administration, the end result will be a system of extortion: if the 50% tariff on critical components for your industry is going to turn you unprofitable, just come to the White House to see if some accommodation can be arranged.
Paranoia is often a sign of dementia. People with dementia often think friends and even relatives are ripping them off or trying to steal their money. We have a demented megalomaniac in the White House. He thinks all the countries in the world are ripping off the US, including islands with just penguins.
Absolutely Winston! EVIL and WORSE -> STUPID. Trump is the upper left peak on the Dunning-Kruger curve. 👇 When evil people are this stupid they are extremely dangerous because they can't be taught, but are easily manipulated by people like Putin...
I just read an interview with the president of Finland where he had had a good meeting with Trump & he seemed certain that Trump would be imposing harsher sanctions on Russia…I had a bit of hope but the one consistent thing with Trump is his love of Russia.
What business can’t deal with is a regime under which trade policy reflects the Whims Of A Mad King, where nobody knows what tariffs will be next week, let alone over the next five years. Are these tariffs going to be permanent? Are they a negotiating ploy? The administration can’t even get its talking points straight, with top officials saying that tariffs aren’t up for negotiation only to be undercut by Trump a few hours later.
I think the deepest irony of all this is how Chinese this policy feels. Fire the central debt bazooka to fund intervention, run a massive deficit for two years, and regrow when you take your medicine.
Is that good? Probably not when your technocrats consist of the three stooges and seven dwarves
More and more I follow American politics, the more and more I like the Chinese government. The Chinese seem to be more efficient and better at what the West is doing. Everything, really.
Incarcerating people, check; gaslighting and spreading fake news, check; suppressing real economic news, on the way - check; taking away human rights, check; trying to control the economy for the whims and fancy of a single person, check (the Chinese policies seem to at least favor them at all instances); and the list goes on...
Disagree, but it’s like a race to the bottom so only halfheartedly. My little brother is graduating college and I’m very glad he’s seeking a white collar job here and not China.
They don’t even publish youth unemployment anymore! That’s what you get when the real estate industry hires over half(!!!) of college graduates at its peak, then folds.
China itself can seemingly only fire the bazooka a couple more times. And its central debt looks a lot more appealing to collect than America’s
Trump and Musk learn from China, but what they did is worse than China. I have talked about that with my Chinese friend for a few months. It’s ridiculous and heartbroken.
Not Chinese per se, Mao-ish. He was a good revolutionary but a terrible administrator who was sure he knew everything. He killed millions of his own people with stupidity and arrogance.
I wouldn't want to live under Xi's rule, but he's a lot smarter than Trump. But no matter how you cut it, an absolute monarch isn't as good as a group of intelligent experts in many fields.
We don't talk enough about the underlying thinking - I guess there is a little thinking going on -behind the tariffs, is that Trump and his friends want to replace income taxes with tariffs, replacing the internal revenue service with the external revenue service. What a gift that would be for the billionaires!
Earlier this week Musk announced that the DOGE boys will be replacing ALL of the SS systems within the next 4 months. As a programmer, analyst, architect and project leader, I have to say that this is even dumber than the tariffs. (And that's saying a lot).
There are white papers from the GAO to the Senate Finance Committee laying out the basic architecture and components of the SSA database and applications. The GAO gives high praise to the SSA for their systems but points out the need for changes.
Musk is an idiot who has no fucking clue what he is doing. Sure, a large portion of the SS recipients can survive a month or so without a check, but who is going to feed, house and clothe the millions that can't?
We all know it's not going to be Musk/Trump or the Republicans.
I have worked under a tech "leader" reliving his glory days of hacking out a system in a weekend, who came into an established company and tried to rewrite the core software in a weekend too. At the end of the weekend he had a solution that was a squared Pareto - 64% (80% of 80%) of the functionality. The problem was, the real business value was somewhere in the missing 36%, but he had no idea where because he hadn't spent any time actually understanding the business.
Musk wants to replicate his similar "success" at Twitter, with the entire country. And he seems to think the entire Social Security Administration boils down to the tiny fraction (much less than 64%) that is central database of recipients.
It generally takes months to write the design documents for a large system, and even then, there is a good chance you miss some of the business rules. "Managers" and "Leaders" think all of this is easy. They are people who move their lips when they read. And think they are geniuses with high IQ.
Luigi, considering healthcare's role in our economy - bigly. As the professor has indicated we are in for a very difficult period. A graph Healthcare/GDP or better Healthcare/Industrial production would be informative. Adjusted for time and nation such a graph might offer substantial insights.
Trump has no clue about the geopolitical climate. He has no clue about anything. Everything he does is knee-jerk. Not the best way to run a country or at all. Yesterday was brutal, and today is warming up for another repeat. When are they gonna invoke the 25th?
The answer to your question is never, unless Dems retake both houses of Congress in the midterms with sufficient majorities to either invoke the 25th and make it stick, or impeach him and make it stick this time. Hopefully the utter wreckage of government institutions we rely on, plus much higher prices, a tanked economy and a recession, will wake voters up, but I'm not holding my breath.
Sadly the entire Republican Congress and administration would have to be impeached as well - the next in lines would be just as bad and controlled by the shadow of Trump!
you are correct. He is whatever a figurehead is supposed to be. All he’s required to do is sign stupid executive orders, which amount to nothing, eat cheeseburgers, and play golf and cheat, of course
It is amazing and amusing to witness all the Republican politicians "hitching their wagons" to Trump. They parrot Trump's words and entirely endorse his "negotiating." One might think they would be a bit cautious and circumspect, but in fact, those left in the Republican Party have long since sacrificed all honor, intelligence, and shame. It would be comical, were it not so serious for the country. In my state of Iowa they are Reynolds, Ernst, Grassley, and in my district a man named Feenstra. What incredibly fatuous fools.
In a rational world, they would take one look at what tRump said he wanted to do with the economy and run screaming in the other direction. But, nooooooo... they hitch their wagons to a man who bankrupted casinos (pleural) in Atlantic City... an Orange idiot who teetered on the edge of insolvency for many years until he finally stuck his money siphon into the US presidency. We are simply f****d!
The records show the Russians saved his finances since 1987 when he was recruited.
Yes, and he is very clearly doing their bidding. One aim is to destroy as much of the economies of US and allies as he possibly can, while profiting from it (his own perogative). It is the only way any of this makes sense. Expect more mayhem. Where it ends no one can tell. I suspect there will be violence this summer. This is America, after all.
Seeing as there's a Bipartisan Senate committee report confirming Russian interference in favor of Trump readily available, its true madness to deny this reality. Try googling and reading it.
The January 6th attempted insurrection wasn’t as bad as a bipartisan senate committee providing detailed publicly available evidence about Russia’s involvement in getting Trump elected?
This is why it’s a cult. Like Twain says, no amount of evidence will convince an Idiot. You’ve been dismissed. Seek help.
HRC just won the popular vote and not the Electoral College, that's all.
The KGB had notes on him going back to 1971.
This is not a conspiracy theory. Russians “turned” Trump in the 1980s when they were recruiting young rich Americans looking to achieve greater wealth and power. There is plenty of evidence of this.
doh - what can i say. Has the whole western media suddenly become so pro-Trump that they won't report on a story like this? Maybe they are all bought. That would explain it. Bought by Trump or the Russians.
Maybe that explains why they have been so consistently kind to Trump and er....
well maybe not
Oh, it was reported.
Are you still only reading junk "legacy media"?
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/who-is-alnur-mussayev-the-former-ussr-kgb-officer-at-the-center-of-explosive-donald-trump-russian-spy-allegations/articleshow/118489046.cms
But how else can it be explained in a rational way?
Willful ignorant shitposting is no way to go through life. But it's not "ignorance" if you're getting paid to say it I suppose.
If it walks like a Russian asset, and it talks like a Russian asset, what the hell do you think it is, a duck? You are putting two and two together and getting a zebra. He has been a Russian asset since at least 87. He and his kids have all admitted taking money from the Russians. But, hey, keep telling yourself fairy tales. Sure, they must be true if state media tells you so. Lol.
Explaining Trump's presidencies is simple: stupidity, misogyny, and racism, not necessarily in that order.
The GOP's a cult that's gotten to where they are partly by always sticking together and never falling apart. No matter how fucked up things get, largely due to their own efforts, they figure, nothing REALLY bad will ever happen to any of them, because they're all part of the same power elite. And the more bridges they burn, the more tightly bound together they are.
Right now, Trump is the president of that club, and that means they do whatever he says.
I disagree. The GOP fell apart when the magas finally realized that the Republicans were a bunch of rich guys who sold them social issues and gave them policies that didn't bring the social changes they sought. After Iraq and 2008 they realized the GOP had screwed them royally and there was a grassroots takeover headed by the right wing talk show folks on radio and FOX.
Again the magas are getting screwed, but they're poorly educated ( there's become a strong anti-college bias among them) and are being taken for a ride by the talk show people, tech bros and Christian Nationalists.
Out of the pot and into the frying pan.
At least in the rural PA region where I grew up, the anti-education, anti-college resentment was already well-entrenched by the early- to mid-1970s. Professor Hofstadter's, "Anti-intellectualism in American Life" was published in 1963. I subsequently found evidence of this in a descriptive history of the region published circa 1914.
They have always been here, the Knownothings.
Yes. And Trumpism is a religion. Suffering doesn’t diminish faith. Suffering strengthens faith. So people who think the MAGA base will abandon the felon because of hardships probably have overly optimistic expectations.
This. Hence, "cult." It will be interesting, and probably hair-raising, to see whom MAGA blames as Trump's/Musk's policies leave them poorer, sicker, and without gov't. services from SSA, FEMA, etc. A lot of them--probably millions--will be psychologically incapable of recognizing how they've been conned and betrayed.
In a few months it will be clear who were simply tricked and who are so far gone they cannot be brought back to reality. I estimate at least 40 million of his supporters will require cult deprogramming.
We are but we don’t have to be.
Astonishing how people close to Trump who still have power to resist keep capitulating, no they are abdicating, taking leave of their senses. We went ahead and gave Trump extraordinary destructive power, the MOST we have to give, power that has been building in the executive. We did, this democracy. We went ahead and let Trump run and win and get inaugurated instead of convicting him, slithery conman, criminal, madman, unstable, cruel, irresponsible. And now we, all of us, reap the results go round and round like caught mice. He says he could not care less ( about the people, about the Constitution, about the law) He could not care less, he said. "Fatuous fools" does not cover it.
There are number of people who are responsible for this shit show. Mitch McConnell, John Robert’s, Merrit Garland come to mind.
Yes and voters...
Actually best point in the thread... it falls on the voters, and now it falls on us. We knew full well who we were electing.... like how many times did Trump say 'tariff' was the most beautiful word in the dictionary? So what are people protesting? .... that we got what we voted for?
IMO, Potter's point is that many voters actually *didn't* kmow what they were voting tor, which is why some MAGA voters have joined the protests.
Yes, Trump voters, and those Americans who sat out this election or threw their vote away by voting for a write-in or third party candiate absolutely *should* have known what they were going to get if Trump won, but many didn't.
Like Trump, MAGA voters are largely profoundly incurious. The fact over the past 35-40 years Republicans have created their own media echo chamer reinforces that lack of curiosity. They only need to turn on the TV to get "information" that supports their beliefs. If they've read any books lately they were all probably the "Killing of..." books by Bill O'Reilly. If Limbaugh were still inflicting himself on humanity, he'd probably be the only best selling right wing author who publishes "infotainment" books related to politics and government in any way.
That incuriousness (of which many MAGA voters are quite proud) leads to the IMO inescapable conclusion many of them don't want to know because they might accidentally learn something that forces them to question what they've believe, and why.
This is hardly unique to MAGA or even American voters, though. After UK voters passed Brexit, the next day there was a rather amazing spike in Google searches using variations of the question "What is Brexit?". After the 2024 US election, it seems reality may have somehow partially pierced the MAGA information bubble there was a spike in searches using terms like "Project 2025." Not sure if there was a specific search spike for "tariff" in November or late January or not.
Laatly, some of what we're seeing now is because until now, some voters were "Members of the Leopard Eating Faces Party." As a federal employee I'm thinking specifically of voters like that guy in Philadelphia who was absolutely stunned to learn Trump and Eoon's "deep state" and anti-federal employee nonsense applied to him too.
good explanation. i am angry tho. angry at people who fell for his con. and here we are.... him gambling with our savings (our = each person across the globe) .... nobody signed up for that.
Mcconnell has been on an anti trump apology tour ever since Trump won. Think it finally sunk in that his lifes legacy will be the destruction of the entire nation. You did this Mitch. You could have stopped him and chose not to.
It’s a mistake to blame one person. It’s astonishing how many let this happen. People were weak. Trump knew and took advantage. And he still does. People are weak fearful selfish and greedy. Not just MM, Who gave him power over and over for so long.?? The power seekers took over, took advantage. Trump had the magic.
I think what people like Andy are getting at is larger than just McConnell, it's the question, "You supported the far right fringe, which has led us to Trump and Tsar Elon. Exactly what did that get you?" Except for the 1%, the answer is either "Not much!" or "Nothing!"
IMO, this question is going to occupy the time of political scientists and historians for many years. Republican Senators like McConnell have been unwittingly been participating in their own demise for nearly 20 years. They not only let the far right fringe "out of the attic" where both major parties have traditionally kept their "lunatic" fringes, but embraced them to try to defeat, and then thwart the agenda of President Barack Obama in 2008.
The "easy" conclusion is that McConnell and Republican politicians made some of the same kind of calculations and mistakes interwar German politicians made in terms of their ability to control the Nazis. I'm not sure if that's the case, or if Republican politicians simply don't care, as long as they're able to remain figureheads and keep their jobs.
It's about power in this partisan-run country. The United States has never been united ( except maybe during the world wars). The interests and ideas that brought the Civil War are still basically in operation. The GOP appealed to fears of the "lower class". Class is an issue here, supremacy of the rich and powerful, and being the "superior race" wanting to rule over the others. In the last decades trickle down economics was sold and bought even when it was demonstrably not working. The inequality grew. The blame game grew: it's immigrants, our open society, open borders, open trade. The GOP elite dug their heels in with trickle down and loved the ignorant that they worked on in so many ways. As they did this they blamed the "elites" on the other side..including the educated. Now they are MAGAs and are big time at it, against trade, education, social programs... not the government of all, but one where THEY should control ( and privatize)everything, destroying the government of the people, The rich get richer. Elon Musk is exhibit B, Trump exhibit A ( or vice versa) about how they believe businessmen must run the country, socialism and taxation is the enemy.
On the contrary McConnell joined this program and did well for himself.. unbelievably even when the people who put and kept him in position from GOP moderate to obstructionist as being a "conservative" changed and became a religion along with partisanship irregardless of what that advocated. How hard he worked to stay in power and to help bring us to (this moment). But it is much larger than McConnell who lost his principles if he had any or any worthy ones, along the way... the general story. Now it's a huge battle.. very huge... to get rid of this disease that is eating us, if we can. If you compare this to Nazi Germany then a war would be next. or what?
But no wonder the word "fascism" is now being used more easily now.
"Let them eat cake" administration
The problem is we are just awakening. The more they assault our system and lie to us more will get what is happening, the more will realize the seriousness of this and that it won’t just go away. Our system can’t take care of this while we go about our business. In fact we will be less able to ignore this and go about our business. The regime like cancer will grow. So now is the time for pushback before that cements and complacency sets in and people can only think about saving themselves from a sinking ship. There are a lot of people to get on board to believe this danger is upon us and happening. That’s the most important work now as I see it. We need the masses and to show that this is not partisan; something profound is happening.
That means revolution… or it did.
I'm not suggesting a revolution -- I am thinking of one of the authoritarian academic experts who studied how the Poles were able to build a coalition to push out their advancingly authoritarian administration. This expert said that it was important that the regime be shown to be smaller and less powerful than what they project.
I'm just an average citizen trying to participate in the much needed collective action to halt authoritarian creep or full blown takeover. Please suggest a better name or phrase that most will understand and can effectively define the current regime or attitude towards the constituency.
Americans are soft now. If we somehow killed the internet for a month though and people no longer had their mental pacifiers, there would be a revolution.
Before the internet there was TV but you could not carry it with you. There was radio and years of talk radio…Limbaugh et al. People don’t want to think deeply they are into quick emotional reactions and responses and being part of a group of people of similar ills. We have become oppositional and it seems vulnerable because of lack of education resentments greed … we lost our way., a good portion of us. Not everyone. This is the battle.
The standard MAGA line is that any troubles are just a “correction” from the Biden “disaster.” This way they can continue to blame Biden.
To your east in Pennsylvania we have “Fighting” John Fetterman, a Democrat who should be declared Missing In Action… or drowning in inaction!
Depression has a variety of manifestations.
Its not his fault brain damage turned him into a republican.
Right now they're the First Felon's tariffs but if the GOP Congress doesn't end them in a week, they'll be the Republican Tariffs. The GOP caucus could end the tariff madness by law and with the certain help of the Democratic caucus they would override a veto. At the same time they could stop and reverse injurious cuts to cancer, dementia and infectious disease research. The longer the GOP caucus delays taking action the more all of they will own the madness.
Jim Jacob’s in my opinion is not that the GOP is delaying taking action, what is, is that the republican congress is content and purposely approving of everything and anything trump does. Like another post stated, trump is the leader of the GOP club. And these republicans in Congress bow and follow orders. Care nothing about the American People. They serve and work for their club leader and they are eager to be part of the dismantling of our country, they want power and enrichment. And could care less if it means stepping over each American.
One would assume that every GOP MOC will get a hell of a bad time at the country club this weekend? Time is running out fast; better course correct no later than Monday and Tuesday!
Yes, but there might be a silver lining. I am very hopeful that Trump's policies have been so insane and destructive that Representatives from the few competitive districts will start to abandon him. Once a few move, things in Washington could change so fast it will make your head spin.
Yes that's the things have to get really bad first. Perhaps the silver lining is that this is not happening like the slow boiling of the frog, that people are aroused and stay aroused.
Something I don't see people talking much about is how Trump's history with people—including or especially his allies—will affect the course of things when the winds turn against him.
My mind keeps returning to Armando Iannucci's "Death of Stalin" and its depiction of the fate of Beria.
Thanks for the reference to "Death of Stalin" (the greatest movie of the century so far.) I think that what is going on in Washington today is a replay. Obsequious, incompetent toadies pandering to a lunatic. The question is, who will be our Zhukov?
I heard Rubio spouting nonsense this morning on NPR. He's in Brussells at a NATO FM meeting talking about how great the tariffs are. Even he knows how much of a lie it is but he has sold his soul to the Devil...forgetting what happened to Faust.
So true. You know he's lying because he said Trump is "absolutely right."
It was another diplomat, Talleyrand, who said, "All that is exagerrated is insignificant." Boy did he have Rubio's number.
Rubio has no soul left to sell to the devil. Perhaps he's on to auctioning off his children or something now?
Never in a million years would I think I’d agree with Rand Paul, but he’s one of few Senate Republicans who spoke out against tariffs on Canada. It was a performative speech on the Senate floor and something Trump said he’d never sign, but it showed some Republicans are starting to shift.
Rep Ben Cline VA 6th district is my local fool. Most of what he posts on Facebook is outright lies. For Ben and his ilk, the oath they took to protect the constitution means less than nothing to them.
A theocratic state with a thin veneer of fake democracy would be just fine with these America haters.
Love the alliteration - fatuous fools!
Government by destruction, what's not to like? And the GOPers remain convinced that the Great Unwashed firmly believe in all this self-inflicted carnage, and that to even timidly oppose tRump policies as a matter of simple sanity risks being "primaried", so keep the faith, nodding one's head like a bobblehead doll.
How much is too much? We're finding out real fast, right?
I agree that it is amazing. I do not agree that it is amusing. Frightening? Yes. Depressing? Yes. But, not amusing.
Not amusing, but the only source of hope at the moment, namely that we may be saved from malevolence by incompetence once again. There was seemingly nothing standing in the way of their slowly continuing to impose a police state, but economic mismanagement just might prevent a full autocratic consolidation, if enough people get angry.
Hope springs eternal, Jim, but there an awful lot of people who won't give up. Just look at the recent Florida elections
And to think there was a time, back when I was a union organizer in Iowa, when we had Senators like John Culver, Dick Clark and, later on, Tom Harkin. “In January of 1975, Iowa Democratic Party activists and office holders could not have been happier. In the previous November's mid-term elections, Iowans had elected or reelected five of the six Democratic candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, including newcomers Michael Blouin, Berkley Bedell, and Tom Harkin. In addition, Democrats now controlled both branches of the state legislature. About the only thing for the state's Democrats to be unhappy about was the situation in the Iowa Executive Council, where the GOP controlled all seven offices (including that of governor). Even so, what probably excited loyal Democrats more than anything else was the election of former Second District Congressman John C. Culver to the United States Senate. The Culver election, coupled with the election two years earlier of Culver's legislative assistant Dick Clark over then-incumbent Sen. Jack Miller, marked only the second time in the state's history that two Democrats had been elected in the same decade to the highest legislative body in the nation. Iowa had finally become a competitive two-party state.”
Anyone else concluding that this is the "Let them eat cake" administration of clowns?
Stuff like this is why all of my work colleagues in Argentina had US $$ "under their mattresses" and bank accounts in countries like Switzerland. They didn't want their liquid assets to be subject to the whims and incompetence of their governing regimes.
I needed cash to pay the entry visa when flying from Argentina to Chile and my Argentine colleague came in the next day and handed me several hundred USD for the visa! I don't carry that kind of cash even at home in the U.S.! This same colleague also showed me a framed 1,000,000 Argentine note from one of the country's bouts of severe inflation and currency devaluation -- he laughed and said he wanted to remind his kids that they used to be 'multi-millionaires'. Here WE are now.
They’re not “hitching their wagons” to Trump, they’re being dragged by the shackles on their ankles. Trump has threatened primary challengers to any Republican who defies him. So there’s nothing amazing about their behavior.
If we didn’t have winner-take-all elections, an alternative conservative party would be able to challenge the Republicans.
Personally, I no longer excuse or have sympathy for their situations. They 'signed up' for the role. They also swore an oath to the Constitution (not to their party or their seat) so it is time for them to put on their 'big-boy pants' and DO THEIR JOBS to defend the Constitution, the country, and those who live here.
We must hold our GOP electeds to account and push them to honor their oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Silence by any will be taken as consent.
I agree completely. My point was simply that the "hitching their wagons" is a misleading metaphor. Hitching is a voluntary action. If we're going to figure out how to deal with this mess, we need to be very clear about player's motives. Trump is ruling by fear, and for now it's the elected Republicans who most afraid of him.
You may be right, but they may in fact agree with Trump. The polls how that an astounding number of Republican voters still agree with Trump on this one. You are correct in their oath, as a number of the GOP Congress know that Trump is disregarding it.
Some of them obviously agree with Mr T. MTG comes to mind.
I just can't resist. Is your district guy going to be "de-Feenstra-ted"???
Spineless sycophants, all of them.
Chaos -is the inconceivable yet apparent objective leading to step by step autocratic power grab by the first kakistocracy in US history - totally contrary to the foundational principles embedded in the Constitution of the United States and the interest of its citizens.
While the economy is a significant global concern, I believe there is a more pressing, existential issue: the control and oversight of U.S. nuclear weapons.
I am concerned about several questions: Does the "Club" still exist? Is the U.S. still a member? Who has the authority to make decisions regarding nuclear weapons? What strategies are in place when potentially dangerous entities, such as North Korea, become capable? Will the policy become a fragmented, "every man for himself" approach?
These ill-considered tariffs could literally have deadly consequences. It is imperative that all NC members remain united to counter donald the dictator.
I urge you to listen to the Arms Control Wonk podcast featuring Aaron Stein and Jeffery Lewis for more insights
Also, now that Trump ended the world order, Poland, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and likely Mexico and Canada will get nuclear weapons. How do we deal with the worst crisis of nuclear proliferation imaginable?
I say these countries should move forth quickly as possible. They may be the only thing that will prevent nuclear holocaust.
Poland, South Korea, and Japan, yes. The others will probably be okay. (If Poland has nuclear weapons Germany won't need them because Poland is between Germany and Russia.)
You left off Australia. It's highly likely that there's already an Australian/Japanese/Korea nuke program going, probably backed by U.K. expertise. Trump's attack on NATO and allies will lead to an incredibly dangerous situation where all first world countries have their own strategic nuclear forces.
Thats the fun part. We don't!
I'm too scared to look in that direction.
Great musical coda!
When you allow gerrymandering congressional districts, representatives no longer are beholding to their constituents. They don’t even need to attend their constituents’ town halls. And flush, there goes your democracy.
History will ask how could so many smart people make such disastrous choice so effortlessly? The low information voter is not hard to understand but Wall Street and the CEO club obviously were willing to put everything at risk for a tax cut. That speaks to the degradation of our values over the last 50 years. When people stop considering how their choices might impact others its not going to end well.
In a well functioning Democracy Trump wouldn’t have been taken seriously as a candidate. He would have been convicted of tax fraud 20 years ago.
How's that MAGA hat lookin today? Find another group to annoy with your worthless comments
Reported "hayduke" as a troll.
How is Scott’s comment maga?
SCOTUS never dealt with it. I’m not sure what Justice Kennedy said about it, but it was like, “It’s too hard to figure out.” So, balls and strikes. Right. Nobody would go to a baseball game where they made up the ‘rules’ as they go.
I’m a law and order guy. The torturers should have been locked up. The NYC finance guys should have been arrested. If NYC and NYS had done their job, Trump would have been a couple decades into a prison sentence. Democracy has rules and there have to be consequences for violating them.
Last, umpires are not just behind the plate. They are all over the field assuring the play is fair to all participants. You think that is our SCOTUS?
That’s rude. The writer is hardly a troll. And you may see clichés, I don’t.
Have you been rappelling your Jeep?
Given how for you MAGAts every accusation is a confession and QAnon is basically an admission you are all Matt Gaetz-like creeps, I assume you spend a lot of time trying to figure out how people in middle school talk. Can’t wait to see your appearance on “To Catch A Predator”!
Thats what I figured, Hayduke. What grade are you in?
Same jerk as before, just different name. Go away. You're silly and boring.
Hey hayduke: more comments from an 8th grade incel
Hey hayduke: try something more than snark
Hey hayduke: it’s than not then
“Personally, I’m feeling very confident. That is, I have high confidence in predicting that we’re heading for multiple policy trade wrecks, inflicting damage like you’ve never seen before.”
Agreed, completely self inflicted wounds by a bunch of clowns with a chainsaw. And a clown with a chain saw, is still a clown with a chainsaw! Let that sink in!
Additionally, I truly feel bad for the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee. They definitely have their work cut out for them, and I’m not sure they even have any tools in their tool shed to deal with the gross level of incompetence displayed by this administration.
And congratulations to the “Confederacy of Dunces,” you’ve completely outdone yourselves this time around. I guess, nothing changes minds, until your pocket book gets mugged! And to the Murdock Family; you finally unleashed the FoxenStein monster, so glad you finally got it under control. IMHO!…:)
What’s fascinating (in a morbid way) is to watch the WSJ editorial page handle the idiotic “policy.” Everything was all good when they figured Trump would “just” unshackle anti corporate policies like supposedly restrictive “woke” ideas — you know, preventing poison from polluting the air and our food. Wall Street, stupid as ever, thought Trump would unleash the economy. They blindly believed, again, that they had an “in” on what he would do to make them rich. Now, twice in two months, they’ve been blindsided that the entire con was about Trump. It has ALWAYS been about Trump. If you want to know how the man ticks, just ask if he believes it will benefit him and hurt everyone else. He’s a bomb. He only hurts others. He thinks that’s what makes him powerful. The more pain, the better. And his clownish minions will enshrine him, possibly on the way to total ruin, because eventually, when they’ve voted to rescind their own constitutional power, no such power will soon exist. So when they’re broke, their families are broke, and in fact when they finally wake up and vote against him, their vote will be empty—just like their heads have always been. If there’s any mystery in all of this, it’s about the bottomlessness of Wall St., Murdock, and Congress’s collective stupidity. Trump was NEVER their man. And DOGE? The entire idea isn’t to deregulate. It’s to make the state have to contract with Elon, and to make anyone else who serves, serve only one man and one goal: to enrich the Clown and his Court Jester. This isn’t a government. It’s a protection racket. If you don’t kiss the ring you get nothing. Only even that isn’t going to work. In the very short term most of what makes the country functional will erode, and without trust around the world we will find ourselves in great danger of total isolation. Ask Russians how their economy is doing. That’s about the worst model you could choose. And, yes, it’s far worse than the Chinese one, which FUNDS education, FUNDS infrastructure, and FUNDS innovation. DOGE just made sure we’ll do none of the above, we’ll lose the tech race, the transformative race caused by infrastructure funding, and all of the power that funding education causes that you cannot foresee. In two months this man has managed to destroy America, all because of a congress so drunk with perceived power, they were willing to to vote against the will of every single man, woman, and child they represent and destroy each constituent’s future. If there are economists in the future (probably living abroad), they sure have a lot of material to work with.
Agreed, and well said. They all thought Trump was down for the count. Two legitimate court cases and indictments that would’ve left Trump in shackles. He leveraged his pain and legal woes, with promises of writing their own checks, if they give him their support, to get him back in the Oval.
They didn’t realize they made a pact with the devil, and once he regained power, he would use it as a cudgel and spare no one; including his clueless and morally bankrupt financial backers.
Oh the irony!…:)
RE: "If you want to know how the man ticks, just ask if he believes it will benefit him and hurt everyone else. He’s a bomb. He only hurts others. He thinks that’s what makes him powerful. The more pain, the better. "
I came to the same conclusion on January 6th!
What you have described in the quoted sentences above is a PSYCHOPATH... I guess you recognize that.
In the end, though, tRump always shoots himself in the foot. He plunges into businesses and activities of which he has no understanding whatsoever. Look at his lengthy list of shuttered and bankrupted businesses... and scams.
Yeah but between his gun and his foot stand my children
I don’t think he needs to understand what he is doing, sowing chaos with a sleight of hand to gut taxpayer money is the plan.
Sounds like a Clint Eastwood movie. Just hide a stove door under your poncho and shoot everybody.
"DUMB" is the word that explains everything about this "administration"
"This isn’t a government. It’s a protection racket. If you don’t kiss the ring you get nothing." This has been the strategy of some Members of Congress for years. Pay for performance. Trump has taken our established "protection racket" to new heights. He owns a cryptocurrency. SCOTUS Justice Thomas should have his own too.
My daughter had a boyfriend who voted for Trump in 2020. He worked in finance in NY and they all thought he was a joke. No one listened to what Trump said because he'd say anything. They wanted him to make their taxes lower. The ex-boyfriend was shocked at Jan. 6th. We live in MAGA land and knew it wasn't a joke.
Well put. This is ALL about extortion.
Toole's estate should profit in some fashion. Just who is being congratulated? If Republican politicians and constituents are the target of derision, we ought to make clear our meaning. COD, it fits and rolls off the tongue. GOP, while more evocative in a visual sense has little to do with today's republican party. Who put the CON in conservative?
Agreed, and well said…:)
Thanks for your input. Critiquing my comment with a rant, accomplishes nothing!…:)
It’s interesting that there was another “contributor” by a different name infesting this comment section last week. It was doing the same thing - dropping snotty, pointless “zingers”. I suspect an AI bot of some kind.
I've reported this today, also suspecting bot.
I’m not sure it’s a bot, since there are definitely a lot of trolls in the comment section. It’s all good though…:)
It's akin to burning a roadside billboard while hiding behind an alias.
Hey hayduke: snarking does nothing
Hey hayduke: snarky replies do nothing
Hey hayduke: making snarky comments does nothing
What does something? That’s where I struggle.
Oh, suck it up!
Great essay. I am so glad you left the NYT. They never would have let you write this excellent analysis of our current economic mess. The problem is....now what?
A tad slow on the uptake, no?
De rien
Hey hayduke: your comments are nonsense
Or you are. More likely you.
I have a cynical idea about the Trump tariffs when they are implemented. A mid- to small-size country calls or visits Trump to get a reduced tariff for their country. Yes, they have to kiss the ring and say some nice things and praise Trump for being a financial genius but that isn’t enough. They will have to buy the Trump cryptocurrency or invest in some other Trump asset. If they don’t follow through on this commitment, the tariffs will return. I doubt that Trump can pull this off in the same way with any large EU country.
I think that you hit the nail on the head. Trump is a classic mobster and this is a protection racket:
"Nice business/industry/economy you have there. It would be too bad is some extreme and unjustified tariffs should happen to it. But only I am able to protect you from those tariffs -- I just need a favor in return: a small investment in Trump cryptocurrency or Truth Social stock."
Technical note: those are both intangible items with little or no intrinsic value but are trading on public markets for orders of magnitude more than they are worth. Trump has billions of dollars worth of them, but cannot sell without the price collapsing ... unless there is a buyer somewhere who is also buying around the time that Trump is selling.
In other words, perfect vehicles for laundering money to Trump.
Your technical note really hits the nail right on the head. Thank you.
The EU acts as a block. They are going to give Trump a chance to negotiate during next 14 days. If he doesn't cooperate, the EU will do certain tariffs.
But there are a lot of countries out there that would like to trade with the US that are not protected as part of the EU. Trump will take his personal payoffs from anyone who offers.
There are hundreds of nations targeted by the tariffs. Does Trump want to negotiate with them all? He probably doesn't know most of them
China already has partnered with Japan and South Korea, or rather they have partnered with China to coordinate reciprocal tariffs, etc. Can smaller Asian countries be far behind? China is already investing in Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia. An all-Asia Chinese economic empire will diminish America’s, for good or ill.
We conceded that half of the planet to China last week.
I like the Robert Reich suggestion that Canada and Japan join the EU in their tariff action.
I hope no country comes to kiss the ring of a con man. Stand up World.
If he’s just talking his pocket then the little guys will be more than enough. May I suggest you are thinking too hard, or rather too long. Limit yourself to, say, ten words, then figure out what he’s doing. Call it “keeping with the realm of the possible.” If he’s successful in his wants, a longer discussion will not dissuade him.
Its both a grift and a way to punish his enemies. Has nothing to do with economics.
Oh, without a doubt. This is a big grift, a ploy to line the pockets of the orange one while grabbing resources he thinks he can get get at cut rate prices...cash for citizenship, rare earth minerals for 'protection' from the Russians at your door. Canada, give us your timber ... and yes we'll grab the grill from the mouths of penguins to feed the masses at home whose livelihoods he's destroyed ... Soyulent Green meet SuperKrill2025.
The USA became a big Tesla metaphor: you just can’t sell your products when everyone despises you.
You brought up a good word that will haunt America going forward: stupid. We’ve had the period of the ugly American, and the fat American, but we are deeply entrenched in the era of the stupid American. And unlike changing clothes or loosing weight, there’s no pill for stupid.
Don't wanna be an American idiot
Don't want a nation under the new media
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mindfuck America
🎯❤️Love Green Day. And that video.
I expect that, as with everything else with this administration, the end result will be a system of extortion: if the 50% tariff on critical components for your industry is going to turn you unprofitable, just come to the White House to see if some accommodation can be arranged.
Bring your checkbook.
Eric Trump basically said just that: don't be the last country to ask for special treatment...
... and he misspelled "company."
How do you misspell *company*, for the love of everything?!
He’s killed a lot of brain cells with his massive cocaine problem.
I wonder if Central America could avoid tariffs by threatening to stop exporting blow to the US. It would cripple this administration!
No sorry, no checks, no cash, it's a $trumpet bucks only window.
Paranoia is often a sign of dementia. People with dementia often think friends and even relatives are ripping them off or trying to steal their money. We have a demented megalomaniac in the White House. He thinks all the countries in the world are ripping off the US, including islands with just penguins.
This does not pass the smell test. The policies are not demented enough to include Russia.
Good point. Trump wants to have a special relationship
with Russia, probably in the hope that he can build Trump hotels there.
Actually, he already has a special relationship with Russia. Ever since getting the codename "Krasnov" back in the '70's.
Yes! Trump is a Russian asset whether he knows it or not.
If Trump KNOWS he is a Russian asset, that's EVIL.
If Trump DOESN'T KNOW he is a Russian asset, that's WORSE!
I maintain he's evil either way.
Absolutely Winston! EVIL and WORSE -> STUPID. Trump is the upper left peak on the Dunning-Kruger curve. 👇 When evil people are this stupid they are extremely dangerous because they can't be taught, but are easily manipulated by people like Putin...
https://bsky.app/profile/justinsg.bsky.social/post/3lgyra2gsl22b
Russia is sanctioned up the wazoo, so no trade, no tariffs.
Trade with Russia: Nearly zero
Trade with uninhabited islands: Actually zero
Oh not for long... Trump is working hard to remove those sanctions on Russia.
I just read an interview with the president of Finland where he had had a good meeting with Trump & he seemed certain that Trump would be imposing harsher sanctions on Russia…I had a bit of hope but the one consistent thing with Trump is his love of Russia.
Malignant stupidity.....Paul you do have a way with words.
Hopefully the malignancy is self limiting ...
Well, it can be difficult to discern precisely where malignancy ends and stupidity begins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
Nails it:
What business can’t deal with is a regime under which trade policy reflects the Whims Of A Mad King, where nobody knows what tariffs will be next week, let alone over the next five years. Are these tariffs going to be permanent? Are they a negotiating ploy? The administration can’t even get its talking points straight, with top officials saying that tariffs aren’t up for negotiation only to be undercut by Trump a few hours later.
2020: Recession begins due to global catastrophe. Trump unable to competently respond.
2025: Recession begins due to global catastrophe. Trump IS the catastrophe.
I think the deepest irony of all this is how Chinese this policy feels. Fire the central debt bazooka to fund intervention, run a massive deficit for two years, and regrow when you take your medicine.
Is that good? Probably not when your technocrats consist of the three stooges and seven dwarves
More and more I follow American politics, the more and more I like the Chinese government. The Chinese seem to be more efficient and better at what the West is doing. Everything, really.
Incarcerating people, check; gaslighting and spreading fake news, check; suppressing real economic news, on the way - check; taking away human rights, check; trying to control the economy for the whims and fancy of a single person, check (the Chinese policies seem to at least favor them at all instances); and the list goes on...
Disagree, but it’s like a race to the bottom so only halfheartedly. My little brother is graduating college and I’m very glad he’s seeking a white collar job here and not China.
They don’t even publish youth unemployment anymore! That’s what you get when the real estate industry hires over half(!!!) of college graduates at its peak, then folds.
China itself can seemingly only fire the bazooka a couple more times. And its central debt looks a lot more appealing to collect than America’s
I was being sarcastic, but I like your optimism - this s##t is better than the other.
Trump and Musk learn from China, but what they did is worse than China. I have talked about that with my Chinese friend for a few months. It’s ridiculous and heartbroken.
Agree. They all learn from each other.
Reading a book about that now- Autocracy Inc. Scary stuff.
Not Chinese per se, Mao-ish. He was a good revolutionary but a terrible administrator who was sure he knew everything. He killed millions of his own people with stupidity and arrogance.
I wouldn't want to live under Xi's rule, but he's a lot smarter than Trump. But no matter how you cut it, an absolute monarch isn't as good as a group of intelligent experts in many fields.
Hayduke: you’re gibbering again
Perfect song choice!
We don't talk enough about the underlying thinking - I guess there is a little thinking going on -behind the tariffs, is that Trump and his friends want to replace income taxes with tariffs, replacing the internal revenue service with the external revenue service. What a gift that would be for the billionaires!
YES! The largest transfer of wealth from workers to billionaires EVER!
"LIBERATION DAY" is the day Kleptocracts celebrate liberating us from OUR money!
WAKE UP AMERICA!
"Call me and we'll come to an arrangement."
This is the greatest grift of all time, isn't it?
"You're face. To face. With the man who scammed the world."
If so, that is a big tax raise for most Americans.
Really absurd! Just 3 months!!!
I am still asking myself what the “idea of a plan” on healthcare will be!
Earlier this week Musk announced that the DOGE boys will be replacing ALL of the SS systems within the next 4 months. As a programmer, analyst, architect and project leader, I have to say that this is even dumber than the tariffs. (And that's saying a lot).
There are white papers from the GAO to the Senate Finance Committee laying out the basic architecture and components of the SSA database and applications. The GAO gives high praise to the SSA for their systems but points out the need for changes.
Musk is an idiot who has no fucking clue what he is doing. Sure, a large portion of the SS recipients can survive a month or so without a check, but who is going to feed, house and clothe the millions that can't?
We all know it's not going to be Musk/Trump or the Republicans.
I have worked under a tech "leader" reliving his glory days of hacking out a system in a weekend, who came into an established company and tried to rewrite the core software in a weekend too. At the end of the weekend he had a solution that was a squared Pareto - 64% (80% of 80%) of the functionality. The problem was, the real business value was somewhere in the missing 36%, but he had no idea where because he hadn't spent any time actually understanding the business.
Musk wants to replicate his similar "success" at Twitter, with the entire country. And he seems to think the entire Social Security Administration boils down to the tiny fraction (much less than 64%) that is central database of recipients.
It generally takes months to write the design documents for a large system, and even then, there is a good chance you miss some of the business rules. "Managers" and "Leaders" think all of this is easy. They are people who move their lips when they read. And think they are geniuses with high IQ.
That SS system will be like the StarShip system: *boom* 8 minutes after launch! 😳
As the song says "On that you can rely".
Pain and death - except for the wealthiest.
Edit: Oh yes, and cod liver oil.
It was "concept of a plan" and he didn't have one of those either. We keep giving him credit for brains he doesn't have.
Luigi, considering healthcare's role in our economy - bigly. As the professor has indicated we are in for a very difficult period. A graph Healthcare/GDP or better Healthcare/Industrial production would be informative. Adjusted for time and nation such a graph might offer substantial insights.
Yes, thanks
Trump has no clue about the geopolitical climate. He has no clue about anything. Everything he does is knee-jerk. Not the best way to run a country or at all. Yesterday was brutal, and today is warming up for another repeat. When are they gonna invoke the 25th?
The answer to your question is never, unless Dems retake both houses of Congress in the midterms with sufficient majorities to either invoke the 25th and make it stick, or impeach him and make it stick this time. Hopefully the utter wreckage of government institutions we rely on, plus much higher prices, a tanked economy and a recession, will wake voters up, but I'm not holding my breath.
Sadly the entire Republican Congress and administration would have to be impeached as well - the next in lines would be just as bad and controlled by the shadow of Trump!
I disagree. I think he is implementing what Putin and oligarchs want. He will be discarded once they are satisfied.
you are correct. He is whatever a figurehead is supposed to be. All he’s required to do is sign stupid executive orders, which amount to nothing, eat cheeseburgers, and play golf and cheat, of course