Yesterday Sen. Murkowski said the quiet part out loud - politicians are afraid. They aren't so much afraid of getting primaried, they are afraid of, e.g. arson, or a hammer wielding lunatic.
The years long campaign of stochastic terrorism remains in operation.
"Terminated" was the word used.
How many death threats will Mr. Powell get from yesterday through the weekend?
One of the underreported results of the Gabby Giffords shooting all the way back in 2012 was a certain number of moderate Republicans deciding to resign or not run again.
The extent to which right-wing rule through terror was a thing even before Trump is understated.
The implication is that Rump's actions increase the probability that violence (committed randomly by true-believers, the weak minded, and the insane) will occur without him directly inciting violence. It's a hands off, remote-control sort of terrorism.
The word "stochastic" refers to the "increasing probability" part, but I study and work in a field where I should know that "stochastic" just means "probabilistic" but I STILL have to look it up every time. You HAVE to use words people understand:
Seeded violence (Words are the seeds)
Puppet violence (someone else is pulling the strings)
Remote-Control Terrorism (Terrorism directed at a distance in a "hands off" way)
Terrorism by proxy
There are a hundred better ways to communicate the idea. Stochastic Terrorism is great for academic circles and not much beyond.
If anti-Trump politicians are "afraid", what does that tell the public? That Trump is powerful. That their elected representatives are possibly just chickenshit and unable to protect themselves, much less their constituents.
Stop showing spinelessness. Get hard and speak up, not to project fear, but to project loathing and condemnation at the ruin of democracy. As a politician, one can only lose one's election, which will anyway be lost by bleating like a bunch of sheeple.
And read Robert Byrd's book "Losing America" for a primer on how we got here. He was one of the last Democrats. Biden was the last. The torch has to be passed, but maybe there's no one left to pass it even if there were lions in the wings waiting.
I think the randomness is partly a bug: his thinking is unhinged, and partly a feature: terrorising people, institutions etc on a whim keeps people off balance to the extent they will do almost anything to avoid your attention. See: all the people who gave into him in the legal and educational arena before Harvard told him to take a hike. This is a pattern with bullies. The only random part of it is the first part of it so that's the only genuine stochastic element.
With the greatest respect I find the words “Trump” and “systematically” unlikely bedfellows. I think he has a list of people/things he hates and he lashes out at them as they float to the top of his imagined grievances. These are added to every time someone or something annoys him and occasionally one of his acolytes/exploiters uses him to clear a grievance of their own. This is what's terrifying about such people. If they were predictable you could employ a strategy to limit their impact. Except for the fact he hates anyone who shows the slightest sign of decency, it's hard to figure out what his magpie consciousness will alight on next.
I get that you think whatever you wish to call this facet of the current admin's approach to politics is something you don't want.
I agree with you there.
This is Italy under Mussolini, or, even more chilling China during the Cultural Revolution with the substantial difference of social media instant communication to millions.
So what is your goal responding in such a way to me and others?
The problem with the "opposition" is it complicates everything. It turns off 95% of the people. You don't have to play stupid but you have to talk real.
OMG this is so reminescent of the squabbles of the Trotskyites, Maoists etc then the further splintering of the leftists of the seventies and eighties when the left had very little influence in the west due to increased prosperity of the industrial unionised working class.
The intellectual left seem to tend to splinter as a result of the luxury of being intellectual and the right just ride through all those gaps of factionalism. Assuming the reason people are on the left is a deep desire for justice and knowledge of fascism the most important thing is to work together. The purity of a movement leads to Pol Pot (year zero), Stalin russia, etc. My 2 cents worth from the otherside of the world, but it does affect us because if this threat to USA democracy (albeit flawed) with the enormous Nuclear armoury is allowed to progress then the existential threat reverts back to Nuclear armageddon. So the ball is in your court Yankees. Seriously.
A single event does not produce a normal distribution curve. A group of defined events produce results according to a normal distribution curve, so there is predictability as events mount and take their place under the bell shaped curve, however narrow, broad, or skewed it is.
We've got a lot of data now, a lot of events. We could actually be experiencing a form of AI-directed terrorism. It certainly has produced a deer-in-the-headlights response from most Democrats, particularly Schumer. Public confusion almost at a mathematical maximum.
Really good stuff for the grade-B made-for-TV script being acted out in America, directed by the maestro, if you're into entertainment value.
We probably know enough now to conclude what is going on and predict what's on the horizon. The curve is there. Finding out who is on the take at the peak would be interesting. Also, who are the folks in the next demographic to get hit? The Whack-a-Mole strategy. Kind of like a planetary Squid Game.
That somehow the limited "shutdown" of the government would legalize anything is debatable. We still have our laws and the judicial system still functions. Trump could declare a national emergency etc etc, but not funding the government brings on the crisis we are headed towards anyway in this slo-mo nightmare. We are going to have to slog through it anyway sooner or later. Giving them time is only allowing them to unroll their plans slowly and systematically, covering themselves as they go and sowing chaos among people here and abroad.
Maybe this is actually a made-for-TV movie and Trump and his Barbies and the rest of the cockeyed crew are actually an incredibly successful Russian asset cell. Now that would explain everything! But hey, just kidding.
Schumer doesn't get how he looks to way too many people, including Democrats. Say what you will, he projects abject weakness and even absurdity with those prop half-glasses he wears seemingly on his upper lip.
From a commanding majority in both Houses in '08, Democratic representation in Congress has steadily gone downhill to the point where Democrats have no practical involvement in the federal government. You can point to all of them - Pelosi, Reid, Lieberman, Manchin, etc - and say good things about them, just like Schumer. Except the Party has become a failed enterprise in the most practical sense of the word, with folks like Chuck in charge. Get a grip.
Garland was a titanic blunder. Appointed to scoff the Republicans who refused to confirm him to the Supreme Court during Obama's last year. Bad reason. Maybe a distinguished jurist, but a pathetically weak AG.
I was very encouraged by the look in Powell's eye as he answered a reporter who asked him if he would step aside if Trump fired him..."No." His voice was firm and resolute. He looks like a man who's ready for a fight he doesn't want but won't back away from.
You are wrong that the President has power over tariffs. Trump is using the IEEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. He must get the authority from Congress. Trump took the authority for Tariffs and to declare war. Please correct your misinformation. Neither the Constitution nor Congress gave Trump the power.
You may be correct, but it sure looks like everyone is going along with him. This is the problem that we saw in the UK during the mercifully short reign of Boris Johnson ("Britain Trump" as an overseas student once called him to me). The "rules" are assumed to be in place and the safeguards. But that only works if people front the bully, and in our culture of cowardice most people don't. Boris broke rules you'd expect people to follow out of simple decency and manners. Trump will continue to do what he wants until events or force stop him. How this is a surprise in a man who separated kids from their parents and put them in cages I don't know. American freedom and exceptionalism as concepts are done.
Ms Maloney seems to be responding to Prof. Krugman, who wrote: "Trump has been able to pursue these destructive policies because U.S. law gives the president enormous discretionary power over tariffs."
I personally find the Substack format very confusing if I want to find the original statement to which a commenter is replying. Sometimes the faint grey lines have to be traced back a very long way.
Trump did. And until that error gets corrected he will hold that power. Saying it's wrong is one thing. Getting those with the power to change the situation to act is another.
The path to any resolution of this admin's excessive control of the economy will NOT be pleasant.
Please, will you consider my request for a point of clarification ...have you been able to read the text of the IEEPA? I'm asking because I thought I heard Lawrence O'Donnell state that unilaterally imposing tariffs is not a power granted in the IEEPA (I'm paraphrasing from memory, so please take this into account).
Would be great if someone can post the actual relevant section from the IEEPA.
JP needs to stand up for the FED’s independence. I haven’t always been a big fan of his - but if he can survive t-Rump’s rampage- he will
go down as an honorable chairman.
My take on the Fed’s success in lowering interest rates to stimulate the economy in 1982 ( pushing on a string worked - but it doesn’t always work) is that we had sky high interest rates under Volker and by drastically lowering the rates and all the pent up demand that existed because borrowing rates made durable goods purchases- something people could postpone-
and then they did spend when the rates dropped.
We also used to have a strong middle class back then - but 40 years of trickle down economics has
led to the secular stagnation of the middle class . So basically, I’m not so sure a rate reduction now would revive the economy very much .
Pushing on a string now - I think is pointless. I would like to hear what you think on this subject?
It’s been an obvious setup all along, Trump setting the Fed up as fall guy. Either they get blamed for the inflation or the recession, and Trump won’t hesitate to blame them for both if both happen. How many voters (I don’t mean MAGA) will even realize that it’s logically inconsistent to say the Fed caused both? Clearly relatively few if they believed the President could bring down grocery prices.
In the pandemic, that he utterly mismanaged, it was the absolutely dedicated and expert Fauci he turned on. Now, in yet another moment of his mind-boggling incompetence, he blames the financial expert Powell, who has done a great job steering our economy through this self-inflicted crisis. Dems need to slap this back into his face.
At this stage I don't believe a majority of voters buy into anything the Liar in Chief has to say. Even the non-MAGAnuts who (unfathomably) voted for him are experiencing serious regrets.
Yes, there are. But there are also many who have been spitting out the Kool-Aid - and there will be many more to come.
I'm not talking about the hardcore MAGAnuts here. They're completely lost to the cult. I'm talking about the soybean farmer I just read about who's getting killed by the tariffs. I'm talking about all the Latino >citizens< who (inexplicably) voted for King MAGA, and are now terrified of being caught up in the ICE dragnet, and many more who are beginning to realize they've been hoodwinked by the Evil Clown in Chief.
Well maybe but the fact is that his approval rating is still WAY higher than Biden’s was in Biden’s last couple of years. Clearly the vast majority of nonMAGA that voted for Trump don’t regret it and believe he’s doing a decent job. They likely even credit him for the fact that egg prices are in fact lower.
As much as it pains me to say it, I think we may be learning first hand why the founding fathers explicitly did NOT write a universal franchise into the constitution, from what I understand they were worried a lot about elected dictators, perhaps correctly so.
Yes. He’ll of course always find some to blame. Or possibly even multiple someones, like e.g. the Fed, the Democrats, AND Europe.
My claim was not that he’d be incapable of telling lies and blaming people. Rather, I don’t think that he’d plan ahead, in the sense of choosing to take particular actions with a plan of thereafter blaming the Fed.
I mean. How many voters even know what the Fed is?
The one "reassuring" thing to me is that voters, or at least the swing voters that control the outcome of elections, have pretty much internalized the idea that the President is literally God, and any unpleasant outcome in their lives is his fault. So Trump's attempts to distance himself from the crisis probably won't work; the swing voters will just shrug and say "doesn't President outrank Chairman Of The Fed, whatever that is?" and blame him anyway.
Of course, given how badly he's going to fuck with elections, whether their blame will be allowed to have consequences is another issue.
Yes. Most people don't know what the Fed is. The "unelected" FED part will resonate with many people as the economy collapses.
However, I think Trump will have a hard time getting out from under the "Tariffs are the most beautiful word." They may choose to blame the FED for not fixing the problem but I think most people will still blame Trump for the tariffs.
A lot of people will understand Uncertainty. That's a point that could be pounded on.
American business needs to COLLECTIVELY start speaking out about how bad Trumps economics are for them. You can't strike a deal with a person like Trump, he'll see you as weak and come back for more.
Everyone needs to start speaking with a COLLECTIVE voice.
I'm not a trained economist, but would love for any here to comment.
In addition to all of the other fall out of the regime's tariffs and trade war, we also are seeing the USD crash against other currencies such as the Euro. Doesn't the now very weak dollar also result in yet higher prices for imported products (i.e. our dollar buys an increasingly smaller amount of goods from countries with now stronger currencies)?
Well, for all that, significantly lowering rates will fire up the bulls on "the Street", and tRump will get his rising stock market "the likes of which nobody has ever seen"...MAGA!
That doesn’t look like a safe prediction to me. Sure, under normal circumstances, low interest rates result in an expectation of increased profits of corporations. The mechanism being that when interest rates are low, it’s cheap to borrow capital, so that if that capital can be invested productively, profit will be good.
But in times of Trumpist chaos, it’s not so clear that capital can be invested productively.
"It’s been an obvious setup all along, Trump setting the Fed up as fall guy."
That's not how Trump works. He doesn't plan these things ahead of time, he just figures out which fall guy to blame when the need arises. After all, the Dear Leader had no idea his brilliant policies would backfire so spectacularly.
I have an image of America which has been built up over the past sixty odd years:
Capitalist, leader of the free world, brilliant universities, belief in science, huge range of opinions which reflect belief in free speech, rather racist in places, weird belief in guns, don’t much like government, huge faith in their Constitution, a tad brutal toward their poor.
Altogether a decent place with touches of brilliance.
It’s difficult to dislodge that…but that once admirable country knowingly elected someone to represent what they are and who in their name:
Grossly insults the leader of your closest neighbour and ally.
Threatens to invade non-threatening and close allies.
Makes visiting your country a terrifying prospect because one might have something negative on your phone about him.
Supports a horrific warmonger for no advantage to your country.
Finds excuses to attack and diminish academic institutions.
Numerous efforts to undermine the rule of law.
Zero dignity in office; sounds lame but this is the most powerful country on earth. It matters.
Deputy talks about ignoring the Supreme Court and government is now testing if it can.
Implements tariffs which are going to make you 0.6% poorer every year. The implementation itself is about as clumsy and stupid as it gets.
Cruelty toward anyone who stands against him (and toward humanity, the Constitution, science, law): security clearance withdrawn for Fauci and Milley, firing prosecutors and investigators who looked into his affairs.
Randomly firing people whose only fault was working for the government. At least when Reagan tried he hired professionals to look into it first (they found nothing).
Insulting smaller countries by saying ‘no one has heard of’ them; thus praising rather than being ashamed of ignorance.
Happy for health policy to ignore science in favour of voodoo.
Yet you knew he was like. He is behaving as you knew he would and doing the things you voted for.
Even after all this (and more) forty five per cent of you still approve of him.
Yet you see yourselves as the greatest country on earth; the peak of civilisation. You look down on other countries with arrogant contempt.
You elected someone who is malignant, revengeful, greedy, a liar, an adulterer (at best), a narcissist and if anything else nothing good.
Yet a large number of votes were garnered from ‘Christians’: well, if you admire those qualities perhaps you should figure out it’s the Devil you worship rather than Christ.
Even now the great leaders of industry, the fourth estate, the GOP, many in professions are silent or making smoothing noises.
Is the above describing the country which is in my memory? When commentators talk about America is that now a bygone myth?
You have that mostly right, but with a few notions a bit inaccurate.
First, "You elected someone who is malignant, revengeful, greedy, a liar, an adulterer (at best), a narcissist and if anything else nothing good." He was elected by a little over 25% of us. Half stayed home - failing to heed the warnings. About half of that 25% were non-MAGAnuts who failed to heed the warnings. The remainder are lost to the cult.
Second, "Yet you see yourselves as the greatest country on earth; the peak of civilisation. You look down on other countries with arrogant contempt." Only some of us have that mentality, not by any means all of us look at it that way.
Third, "Even after all this (and more) forty five per cent of you still approve of him." Actually it's quite a bit less, and he has by far the lowest approval rating of any president in American history at this point in a presidency - and it's continuously dropping at an increasing rate.
I don't know if you've noticed, but a significant percentage of us are trying to fight this Orange Scourge. We're out there protesting (5,000,000 of us on April 5, hopefully many more tomorrow). We need support from both inside and out. We need support from around the world. It doesn't help us when someone from outside the United States keeps referring to us collectively as "You" as if we're somehow monolithic. Most of us are in fact vehemently opposed to Trumpkopf and everything he stands for. He is >not< >us<.
I live in an area where a lot of the 44% live and they are both clueless and racist. I will admit a couple are seeing the light but it is a whole lot of too late IMO.
I think you're addressing a second problem. One that's even more difficult to solve than "just" Trump.
There is a percentage of Americans who will *never* support (or vote for) a Democrat, and will *always* support a Republican. I haven't seen numbers for the 2024 election, but in 2016 Trump's populism, and completely inexplicable "personality," attracted a significant number of first time or irregular voters. It's far from clear whether Vance or another potential nominee will sustain that. A certain percentage of MAGA voters may simply "disappear" without Trump.
The problem is there's a "hardcore" percentage of Republican voters, concentrated in certain states, and that may be enough to continue to make the Electoral College close and divide control of Congress. That hardcore support isn't lost because of Trump. They were Tea Partiers before he arrived, and they'll be "members" of whatever becomes of the GOP after Trump's gone.
The support for Congressional Republicans like Johnson and others is largely from the "standard" pro-birth/anti-choice, bigoted anti-LGBTQ, racist Christian Nationalist Republican voters. Those Republican voters support Trump because he's a Republican and he's extraordinarily willing to enact policies they support. None of this support is necessarily exclusive to Trump. For those voters, "the cruelty is the point." Trump's just the guy who's more than willing to break the law to enact that cruelty. If Vance were doing this, Johnson's voters would love him too. To use a historical example, it was a Republican President (Eisenhower) who instituted Operation Wetback. So part of what Trump's doing has existed in Republican circles since the 50s. Other parts of his "agenda" has existed in Republican circles since FDR. (Trump's utter obsession with McKinley is rather unique IMO.)
Trump's unique in his "ability" to take everything personally and to (at best) not care if his supporters engage in violence. But IMO, his use of primary threats to keep people like Johnson and others in Congress in line is just an extension of the presidential bully pulpit. If we had a President Vance instead of Trump, I think we'd see the same refusal to allow the Senate bill on presidential tariff authority to come to the floor for a vote. Same with any other legislation that attempts to restrain a Republican president.
Frustratingly, those voters are not lost in the MAGA cult, they joined the MAGA cult after previously "belonging" to the Tea Party cult, and they'll join whatever form of the Republican party emerges when Trump's finally gone too.
You're describing the hardcore MAGAnuts. They are lost for sure. Don't discount those couple that are seeing the light - they are important assets to the resistance! And they are the ones best positioned to bring a few of the others out of the cult. You know, a single proton can make the difference between a dud and a chain reaction. Think about it.
Now get out there tomorrow with sign in hand and Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊
Yes, it is, unfortunately. However, it is still an all time low for any president by this time, and I maintain that it continues to drop steadily at an increasing rate.
I for one am not prepared to give up. In fact, I will never give up. I will go to my grave standing up against this scourge. I'll be out there tomorrow with millions of others standing up for democracy.
Sorry - 83 and housebound. Too deaf to make phone calls but I can still write. I won’t live to see the end of this but maybe someone will know I was here. What does your protest sign say? I’ll look for you in videos and photos.
That’s false according to Grok. “President Trump’s approval rating in April 2025 (41–48%) is not lower than any other U.S. president in history at this point in their presidency” and it goes into specific detail.
Yes, I understand how gut-wrenchingly awful it is for you and how the roots that bound you to your land are being poisoned. I really, really hope that you can wrest back decency and civilisation. It’s very bleak seeing a country specifically designed to avoid autocracy, very wealthy and huge amounts spent on education lurching down this road…….dragging so many kind, thoughtful and generous people who hate this along with it.
In my view, what matters most is how businesses leaders, politicians, law firms and universities roll over and are unwilling to fight the destruction that is taking place. Rather disappointing for a country that defeated the most powerful colonial ruler and invested heavily in developing democratic structures to involve the citizenship.
The law firms that capitulated are already seeing the consequences in that their pro bono work will be used to further the administrations intimidation.
The Trumpers should remember that unwilling soldiers don't make good fighters. The coerced lawyers could undermine from within. Besides, if Trump can change the terms at will, so can the law firms.
Let's see lawyers in the street protesting in their business suits.
Sure, but the point I am trying to make is this burning desire to be free and rule yourself. Which is being replaced by this unamerican capitulation by lack of an ideal (other than making money).
Capitulation of businesses, politicians, law firms and universities is indeed important and a grave disappointment. However, it's not what matters most. What matters most is the rest of us standing up resisting. We will be doing that by the millions across the country tomorrow. Be there or be square! Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊
I respectfully disagree. Structures collapsing so easily means a serious structural issue. Resistance is in order, but work on the foundation is a long term project.
I don't believe we're in disagreement here at all. Of course we need to repair the foundation, and yes, that's going to take decades - but first we have to put a stop to the corrosion.
That's the first order of business. It's up to all of us to do everything each of us is ready, willing and able to do in order to accomplish this most challenging task.
Yep, I would agree with all but your third point which, at least to my way of thinking, continues to remain disturbingly high. This is a rough calculation, but figure a solid 40% will vote Democratic, 35% are hopelessly irretrievably MAGAT, leaving 25% to go either way depending on who’s running. He still has support in the low 40’s, from what I’ve seen so far. That’s too many of the 25% who haven’t yet seen the light, which I find inexplicable. Not that he gives a flying fig about his poll numbers, but it would make me feel better to see him down at or close to 30%. Then I could have some hope that the mid-terms will significantly change the balance of power in Congress. Assuming of course he doesn’t hijack 2026 elections.
That's true. His rating is still shockingly high, however the margin of error is quite large, and I maintain that his approval is the lowest in history and dropping at a steady, increasing, rate.
I do believe we will sweep the midterms. Just the fact that GOP Reps and Senators are avoiding town halls of their >Republican< voters is most telling.
The explanation is that most people have completely turned off paying attention to politics. However, they will soon be slapped in the face with an economic reality check.
The April 19th protests aren't as organized. I'm not sure how you organize peaceful protests when the government is clear about its willingness to "disappear" people. We need collective groups - labor unions, business organizations, scientific organizations, retired military and police, health care organization etc.
Yeah, they don't seem to be as organized. I'm not sure what happened with "Hands Off", it was a smashing success. I tried contacting Indivisible but haven't heard anything back. In any case, 50501's event page has 42 pages of actions taking place across the country, including what I expect to be another large gathering right here in NYC.
I don't think Indivisible has anything planned this weekend. April 5th was good. I was especially pleased there was a presence in MAGA cities. Preaching to the choir isn't as effective.
Actually, I'm looking through the 50501 event calendar, and found numerous events that include Indivisible and Hands Off. If I recall correctly, I wasn't expecting April 5 to be anywhere near as big as it turned out to be. I was expecting maybe 100,000 people - which I thought would be for NYC. We ended up with around a million. So did Boston, Chicago, etc. And there were rallies in some of the least expected places.
The image you had of America resembles the educated , urban areas of the country more than the lower-density heartland. But until recently, this disparity in political attitudes was hidden due to the fact that the Democratic party was able to attract a
mix of cosmopolitan intellectuals and less educated voters. Over the past 50 years socially conservative voters have fled the Democratic tent, producing two starkly different Americas, divided geographically by population density and politically along a traditionalism-progressivism spectrum.
Practically every city in America with a population over 100,000 voted against Trump, and the most sparsely populated regions voted overwhelming for Trump. This same urban-countryside split is responsible for the turn to the right we’re seeing in Europe and other parts of the world.
At best 30% of the country knew they were voting for an anti-democratic strongman. I’m optimistic that the significant minority of Trump voters who thought they were getting a non-autocratic pro-market advocate who would increase their standard of living are in the process of discovering that they made a huge mistake.
I too am a great believer in myths. They make the world a better place. Imagining the future works with the past as well. The Nazis started bombing London in September of 1940. Fifteen months later we decided to go all in after Hitler declared war on the USA. The lesson for me is not that the US was craven rather it takes time to turn a great ship. Now is the time to grab the wheel and right the course as we see right to be.
America is not without it's faults but there are efforts to improve these issues. Democracy is a messy project as freedom of speech gives many diverse voices an opportunity to express themselves. Progress is slow and erratic. We are a large country and the marketplace of ideas is chaotic. We can see now how different it is to have a pharaoh in power.
As an American, I agree with you. We sane Americans are even more horrified than you. Our allies in countries like yours may very well be our salvation—your ability to impose real consequences for trump’s batshit craziness may be one of the only things that will stop him.
Markets will 'crash' if Trump can fire Fed's Powell, Elizabeth Warren warns
"But understand this: If Chairman Powell can be fired by the president of the United States, it will crash markets in the United States," she said.
If key economic levers are "subject to a president who just wants to wave his magic wand," then the U.S. will be indistinguishable "from any other two-bit dictatorship around the world," she said.
Trump is convinced that he can raise trillions of dollars through tariffs. He has stated many times that he expects to eliminate the federal income tax and replace those lost revenues with money from tariffs. That's not mathematically possible without sparking runaway inflation or completely telescoping the world economy.
Being led by a vindictive ill-tempered simpleton is no way for a superpower to be.
I doubt he's truly convinced he can raise trillions through tariffs. I don't doubt that he's convinced he can make a killing for himself and his cronies though. Just witness Marjorie Taylor Greene's haul from insider trading.
As for being led by a vindictive ill-tempered simpleton, we won't be a superpower for much longer the way he's going - if we even still are. Except we'll still own enough nukes to wipe out all life on Earth for the next half a million years.
More like he’s a useful fool — until he’s no longer useful. There are powers that be in the background who’ve unassumingly led this rebellion to destroy your democracy. And I have no doubt he’ll be disposed of when push comes to shove. So keep up the good fight, WSLO. We are rooting for you from all corners of the earth. Elbows Up!!! 🇨🇦💪🇨🇦
That too is true, but we know who those powers are, and when we take to the streets tomorrow, we won't forget them. And when we take our democracy back, we will make damn sure they finally understand the forces they were messing with.
And thank you for the support, we need as much of it as we can get.
It's not mathematically possible at all. The more the tariffs go up, the less people buy. The less people buy, the less money the tariffs bring in. I don't know where the point of diminishing returns is, but it's there.
My god, how could Wall Street have gotten in bed with this buffoon? We have to give credit to Trump for one thing; when he ran for president, he said he would do to America, what he did to his businesses: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Never before have we seen a one man wrecking ball like Trump. He bankrupted his businesses, and now he’s doing the same to America. All the while, Trump has gotten rich over the years, by borrowing money from Russian Oligarchs, who unlike the major banks, were not only happy to lend him money, they were willing to buy his underperforming properties, for double what he paid for them (during recessions, nonetheless).
And now we have Trump’s minions meeting with Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. What the hell is going on? Just asking for a friend!
Seriously though, he is destroying our place as the reserve currency of the world. When he completes this horror show, we willing be paying triple, just to service our debt, while our tax revenue drys up, because he’s destroyed the IRS’s ability to tax the rich, and is losing hundreds of billions in tax revenue from tourism, and undocumented immigrants, who aren’t citizens, but work and pay taxes. Good times!…:)
They got in bed with Trump because he promised them lower taxes and less regulation than Biden. They also voted for him because Kamala is a woman. Misogynists. Never mind that R's always screw the economy, D's rescue it. Even the Fed chair (Volker) who brought interest rates under control and then eased them afterwards was appointed by a D (Carter). Reagan took credit for something he had little to do with.
Lowering those interest rates in 1982 may have worked then -
but that came after sky high inflation
for most of a decade before - and consumers had pent up demand for durable goods . We also had a strong middle class back then that responded to the lower rates with gusto. The secular stagnation of the middle class after 40 years of being tied to Reaganomics - says to me that lowering interest rates now won’t have nearly the effect it had then .
"My god, how could Wall Street have gotten in bed with this buffoon?"
How could they not? He's everything they want to be, a rich asshole who does whatever he wants with zero care for the law or the consequences. The rich have been waiting decades for such a pure uncut messiah figure.
After the election I contacted my financial adviser to try to "Trump proof" my nest egg, as we are nearing retirement. Being an FA with a major, well-known financial institution, she was rather dismissive of my concerns. I told her that Trump would tank the economy, just like last time. I told her he would cause the global markets to fall. She didn't take me seriously. And I said he would try to take over the Fed. She was especially dismissive of this prediction, noting "We're still a nation of laws, a president still must go through Congress." But with Congress fully in the hands of the GOP, I knew this was a lie. And here we are. How a housewife and teacher from Tennessee knows more than a financial adviser at a major institution is baffling to me. I'm no genius, I have no expertise, but if **I** can see it, why can't anyone else?
I had a very similar experience when a noted large firm advisor in my region was trying to induce me to move my portfolio and said “We have a once in a lifetime opportunity and we need to invest to take advantage of the new administration’s leadership and policies.” Needless to say, I knew at that point he was an idiot and stayed where I was at. At 65% corporate bonds and 35% cash, national and international high grade equities I’m still over exposed but have only lost about 5%.
Nearly all FA's are permabulls because they are not old enough to remember a true bear market like 1966-82 or they discount foreign bears such as Japan 1990-present. Going by total return and adjusting for inflation, the go-go market of 2000 did not show a gain until 2013 (using S&P 500, NASDAQ took longer). If you dumped when Bush stole the presidency and went all in at the inauguration of Obama, you cleaned up.
I'm a long retired EE, whose mother and father were both accountants. She managed her own investments, and taught me. I studied extensively, devouring more than a dozen books, and have managed mine for 30 years.
My philosophy has always been to be fully invested, initially in individual stocks, but for the last 20 years in actively managed funds, with goals that fit what I believe the market and the economy will benefit. My overall goal is to beat the S&P500, which I've managed to do over the years. I've long subscribed to a newsletter which follows the funds of the firm where I invest, and use their data and advice to choose where to allocate my savings.
When Trump was elected, I moved more than half of my stock portfolio to a mix of a money market fund and bonds. But like you, I found my advisors -- the editors of that newsletter -- to be totally blind to the disaster that was about to unfold. And they remain so to this day! Since Trump's election, I've relied on them for nothing but data.
All I get from my institution is "Stay the course." That would be fine advice if I were thirty years younger. I just took my entire RMD for this year out of stocks and into a bank at 4%. At least I got it out, even if the rest of my IRA evaporates. I lost all faith in the "experts" at my institution when they kept calling Treasury bonds "the gold standard" while those bonds lost 5% year after year. I finally got out of those last year.
The "experts" are locked into what they were taught and learned from past experience. Most won't adjust rapidly, if at all.
I will say this: after the stock market tanked, and she sent out the obligatory "market update" email that the New York office had crafted, I replied with a simple "I told you so" in the subject line. Sorry/Not sorry.
Every day a s#@t show. I was on the zoom call with Indivisible yesterday and Ezra made a good point, namely, wantabe dictators want us to believe that they have already "won". So what would follow is an overwhelming sense of already being defeated. We ARE NOT DEFEATED. We have a democracy and it is our job to defend it like Chris Van Hollen, AOC, Bernie an all the smaller acts of resistance.
Don't let this bully make you believe he and his cruel crew have already won. THEY HAVE NOT. Get to a protest,call your congressional reps and insist they act to uphold the constitution.
Tomorrow, April 19 is the big day. Let's make it bigger and better than April 5. We need 3.5% of the population, approximately 12,000,000 of us to get out there with our signs and make some noise.
Being the global reserve currency brings immense advantages: lower borrowing costs, persistent demand for sovereign debt, and unparalleled financial influence. But reserve status is not a birthright. It comes with stringent, often overlooked requirements. In a world where the safety-liquidity-return hierarchy governs global capital flows, breaching the “safety” pillar would be the most dangerous move of all.
As a 20 year former Fed employee I saw the data driven approach to the work. It was apolitical. Jay is doing a great job and inflation is still the thing dominating grocery store buyers. Wish we could still laugh about eating the dogs and eating the cats… this is deadly serious.
We only need to look at Trump's performance as a businessman and know that the financial skills he used to bring six businesses into bankruptcy court should be brought in the managing of the Fed. The Fed does have a series of tools and experience that should never be replaced by political whim. Unless Trump is stopped the damage is going to bring the US to has been position.
Thank you for stating the facts, outlining historical case studies and their outcomes, and building a logical case that the Fed should remain independent. Besides Chairman Powell, how are the other regional directors nominated and to what extent are their positions legally insulated from Trump's attacks?
I said a few weeks ago that I thought this was his gambit. Increase tariffs to raise money for tax cuts then seize the Fed and drop rates to near zero. He doesn't want to negotiate tariffs until after they lie about tariff revenue to justify the cuts.
The economy will boom and inflation will rise, but it will be short lived and cause an economic disaster.
It's tantalizing to sell everything, but cash means inflation eats your money up. It's hard to decide what to do here.
Batshit crazy doesn't begin to describe this mess. The enablers are amplifying the insanity and the sane washing media is smoothing the behaviors from extreme to nearly normal.
Thanks for clarifying what happened under Reagan, again, and that it was largely the Fed.
I know you also pointed this out some years ago.
Reagan also passed what could be considered a stimulus, in a way, as well.
I remember some college friends, who were engineering majors, were able to get cushy jobs with high pay at local defense contractors who had too much money to burn and not enough places to put it. They were paid good money to largely twiddle their thumbs, but then is money that was going into the economy.
Yet, the GOP like to pretend it was mostly the tax cuts and "trickle down" and have spent years trying to fit their square pegs of ideology into the round holes of reality and nothing fits, even creating an entire news network to try to keep the myths alive.
Bush and Trump tried to replicate the tax cut growth myth and got only average GDP growth even with massive deficit increases.
You would think one would then FINALLY conclude that it was not the tax cuts at the top that drove most of the growth under Reagan.
When you consider the post WWII war prosperity when taxes were some of the highest this is particularly clear and GDP growth was also far better under Bill Clinton than Bush or Trump.
Bush took us from a roughly 176 billion "projected surplus" under Clinton to a 1.186 trillion deficit before he left office and even before the collapse of the economy under his watch he had taken us abt 631 billion towards the red per yr (176 + 455).
Trump took office with a 559 billion projected deficit which Obama had cut in half from the 1.186 billion above, and Trump nearly doubled this to 1.015 trillion before the pandemic hit our shores, Jan 2020 CBO report.
Stay strong Jay Powell!!👍👍
Yesterday Sen. Murkowski said the quiet part out loud - politicians are afraid. They aren't so much afraid of getting primaried, they are afraid of, e.g. arson, or a hammer wielding lunatic.
The years long campaign of stochastic terrorism remains in operation.
"Terminated" was the word used.
How many death threats will Mr. Powell get from yesterday through the weekend?
One of the underreported results of the Gabby Giffords shooting all the way back in 2012 was a certain number of moderate Republicans deciding to resign or not run again.
The extent to which right-wing rule through terror was a thing even before Trump is understated.
"Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest."
and it worked...would be quite a sight to see Trump doing penance as Henry II did
but I wouldn't bet on it
I had to look up the meaning of “stochastic”. But it was a really great comment.
I had to look it up as well!
I looked it up and still can't figure out exactly what it is.
The implication is that Rump's actions increase the probability that violence (committed randomly by true-believers, the weak minded, and the insane) will occur without him directly inciting violence. It's a hands off, remote-control sort of terrorism.
The word "stochastic" refers to the "increasing probability" part, but I study and work in a field where I should know that "stochastic" just means "probabilistic" but I STILL have to look it up every time. You HAVE to use words people understand:
Seeded violence (Words are the seeds)
Puppet violence (someone else is pulling the strings)
Remote-Control Terrorism (Terrorism directed at a distance in a "hands off" way)
Terrorism by proxy
There are a hundred better ways to communicate the idea. Stochastic Terrorism is great for academic circles and not much beyond.
Oh, like stoichiometry or enantiomer, words that foster bumper stickers such as "Eschew Obfuscation"?
Random!
Yeah, figuring out what random shit is going to happen next is a real gedanken experiment.
Yup: terror is just a tactic and Trump is using it willfully.
We're very close to citizen disappearances.
And her statement was in The NY Times . I wasn’t shocked but I was surprised by her public statement.
you write of death threats. Why?
If anti-Trump politicians are "afraid", what does that tell the public? That Trump is powerful. That their elected representatives are possibly just chickenshit and unable to protect themselves, much less their constituents.
Stop showing spinelessness. Get hard and speak up, not to project fear, but to project loathing and condemnation at the ruin of democracy. As a politician, one can only lose one's election, which will anyway be lost by bleating like a bunch of sheeple.
And read Robert Byrd's book "Losing America" for a primer on how we got here. He was one of the last Democrats. Biden was the last. The torch has to be passed, but maybe there's no one left to pass it even if there were lions in the wings waiting.
trump created this ! and supports the Jan 6th solutions to not getting his way - repulsive
I think the randomness is partly a bug: his thinking is unhinged, and partly a feature: terrorising people, institutions etc on a whim keeps people off balance to the extent they will do almost anything to avoid your attention. See: all the people who gave into him in the legal and educational arena before Harvard told him to take a hike. This is a pattern with bullies. The only random part of it is the first part of it so that's the only genuine stochastic element.
With the greatest respect I find the words “Trump” and “systematically” unlikely bedfellows. I think he has a list of people/things he hates and he lashes out at them as they float to the top of his imagined grievances. These are added to every time someone or something annoys him and occasionally one of his acolytes/exploiters uses him to clear a grievance of their own. This is what's terrifying about such people. If they were predictable you could employ a strategy to limit their impact. Except for the fact he hates anyone who shows the slightest sign of decency, it's hard to figure out what his magpie consciousness will alight on next.
You're missing the plot: Putin wants to destroy the power of Europe and the US. Who else benefits from all this stuff.
https://thesabot.substack.com/p/veritas
He didn't game this out; he's following a billionaire-developed script (Project 2025).
Yes, targets are not random, but otherwise. And I'm not just referring to actual violence, but the fear thereof. Death threats work.
Heck, I even used those words.
https://csl.mpg.de/en/projects/philosophical-and-public-security-law-implications-of-stochastic-terrorism
I'm curious.
I get that you think whatever you wish to call this facet of the current admin's approach to politics is something you don't want.
I agree with you there.
This is Italy under Mussolini, or, even more chilling China during the Cultural Revolution with the substantial difference of social media instant communication to millions.
So what is your goal responding in such a way to me and others?
The problem with the "opposition" is it complicates everything. It turns off 95% of the people. You don't have to play stupid but you have to talk real.
Stochastics
Everything the Trumpistas do is stochastic?
Alt coda
https://youtu.be/y7ZEVA5dy-Y
OMG this is so reminescent of the squabbles of the Trotskyites, Maoists etc then the further splintering of the leftists of the seventies and eighties when the left had very little influence in the west due to increased prosperity of the industrial unionised working class.
The intellectual left seem to tend to splinter as a result of the luxury of being intellectual and the right just ride through all those gaps of factionalism. Assuming the reason people are on the left is a deep desire for justice and knowledge of fascism the most important thing is to work together. The purity of a movement leads to Pol Pot (year zero), Stalin russia, etc. My 2 cents worth from the otherside of the world, but it does affect us because if this threat to USA democracy (albeit flawed) with the enormous Nuclear armoury is allowed to progress then the existential threat reverts back to Nuclear armageddon. So the ball is in your court Yankees. Seriously.
A simple and true statement.
But why would "stochastic" be a descriptor?
A single event does not produce a normal distribution curve. A group of defined events produce results according to a normal distribution curve, so there is predictability as events mount and take their place under the bell shaped curve, however narrow, broad, or skewed it is.
We've got a lot of data now, a lot of events. We could actually be experiencing a form of AI-directed terrorism. It certainly has produced a deer-in-the-headlights response from most Democrats, particularly Schumer. Public confusion almost at a mathematical maximum.
Really good stuff for the grade-B made-for-TV script being acted out in America, directed by the maestro, if you're into entertainment value.
We probably know enough now to conclude what is going on and predict what's on the horizon. The curve is there. Finding out who is on the take at the peak would be interesting. Also, who are the folks in the next demographic to get hit? The Whack-a-Mole strategy. Kind of like a planetary Squid Game.
Maybe stochastic works.
There are two words I hate--as former professional write and current grad student in data science:
Stochastic
Epistemology
Why?
I can never remember WTF they mean. And I work with probability every day in my area of study.
You HAVE to use words people understand without having to think about the definition every time:
Seeded violence (Words are the seeds)
Puppet violence (someone else is pulling the strings)
Remote-Control Terrorism (Terrorism directed at a distance in a "hands off" way)
Terrorism by proxy
There are a hundred possible terms that people would understand.
That somehow the limited "shutdown" of the government would legalize anything is debatable. We still have our laws and the judicial system still functions. Trump could declare a national emergency etc etc, but not funding the government brings on the crisis we are headed towards anyway in this slo-mo nightmare. We are going to have to slog through it anyway sooner or later. Giving them time is only allowing them to unroll their plans slowly and systematically, covering themselves as they go and sowing chaos among people here and abroad.
Maybe this is actually a made-for-TV movie and Trump and his Barbies and the rest of the cockeyed crew are actually an incredibly successful Russian asset cell. Now that would explain everything! But hey, just kidding.
Schumer doesn't get how he looks to way too many people, including Democrats. Say what you will, he projects abject weakness and even absurdity with those prop half-glasses he wears seemingly on his upper lip.
From a commanding majority in both Houses in '08, Democratic representation in Congress has steadily gone downhill to the point where Democrats have no practical involvement in the federal government. You can point to all of them - Pelosi, Reid, Lieberman, Manchin, etc - and say good things about them, just like Schumer. Except the Party has become a failed enterprise in the most practical sense of the word, with folks like Chuck in charge. Get a grip.
Biden and Garland screwed up horribly by leaving Trump free.
Garland was a titanic blunder. Appointed to scoff the Republicans who refused to confirm him to the Supreme Court during Obama's last year. Bad reason. Maybe a distinguished jurist, but a pathetically weak AG.
I was very encouraged by the look in Powell's eye as he answered a reporter who asked him if he would step aside if Trump fired him..."No." His voice was firm and resolute. He looks like a man who's ready for a fight he doesn't want but won't back away from.
You are wrong that the President has power over tariffs. Trump is using the IEEPA, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. He must get the authority from Congress. Trump took the authority for Tariffs and to declare war. Please correct your misinformation. Neither the Constitution nor Congress gave Trump the power.
You may be correct, but it sure looks like everyone is going along with him. This is the problem that we saw in the UK during the mercifully short reign of Boris Johnson ("Britain Trump" as an overseas student once called him to me). The "rules" are assumed to be in place and the safeguards. But that only works if people front the bully, and in our culture of cowardice most people don't. Boris broke rules you'd expect people to follow out of simple decency and manners. Trump will continue to do what he wants until events or force stop him. How this is a surprise in a man who separated kids from their parents and put them in cages I don't know. American freedom and exceptionalism as concepts are done.
not sure to whom your comment is directed
She's right. Congress needs to take back the power that belongs to it.
Serious question: Who said the constitution and/or congress gave Trump the power?
Ms Maloney seems to be responding to Prof. Krugman, who wrote: "Trump has been able to pursue these destructive policies because U.S. law gives the president enormous discretionary power over tariffs."
I personally find the Substack format very confusing if I want to find the original statement to which a commenter is replying. Sometimes the faint grey lines have to be traced back a very long way.
Aah. Now you've hit on it. As that question spins off into irrelevance the diem will be carpe'd.
Trump did. And until that error gets corrected he will hold that power. Saying it's wrong is one thing. Getting those with the power to change the situation to act is another.
The path to any resolution of this admin's excessive control of the economy will NOT be pleasant.
Please, will you consider my request for a point of clarification ...have you been able to read the text of the IEEPA? I'm asking because I thought I heard Lawrence O'Donnell state that unilaterally imposing tariffs is not a power granted in the IEEPA (I'm paraphrasing from memory, so please take this into account).
Would be great if someone can post the actual relevant section from the IEEPA.
Thank you.
JP needs to stand up for the FED’s independence. I haven’t always been a big fan of his - but if he can survive t-Rump’s rampage- he will
go down as an honorable chairman.
My take on the Fed’s success in lowering interest rates to stimulate the economy in 1982 ( pushing on a string worked - but it doesn’t always work) is that we had sky high interest rates under Volker and by drastically lowering the rates and all the pent up demand that existed because borrowing rates made durable goods purchases- something people could postpone-
and then they did spend when the rates dropped.
We also used to have a strong middle class back then - but 40 years of trickle down economics has
led to the secular stagnation of the middle class . So basically, I’m not so sure a rate reduction now would revive the economy very much .
Pushing on a string now - I think is pointless. I would like to hear what you think on this subject?
Thanks for the BS, shill.
Powell was trump’s biggest mistake?!? Don’t you think that’s kinda rich? I mean really?
You have not seen the prices at Amazon.
They are doubling.
It’s been an obvious setup all along, Trump setting the Fed up as fall guy. Either they get blamed for the inflation or the recession, and Trump won’t hesitate to blame them for both if both happen. How many voters (I don’t mean MAGA) will even realize that it’s logically inconsistent to say the Fed caused both? Clearly relatively few if they believed the President could bring down grocery prices.
In the pandemic, that he utterly mismanaged, it was the absolutely dedicated and expert Fauci he turned on. Now, in yet another moment of his mind-boggling incompetence, he blames the financial expert Powell, who has done a great job steering our economy through this self-inflicted crisis. Dems need to slap this back into his face.
At this stage I don't believe a majority of voters buy into anything the Liar in Chief has to say. Even the non-MAGAnuts who (unfathomably) voted for him are experiencing serious regrets.
Don't kid yourself. There are still plenty who are drunk on the Kool Aid.
Yes, there are. But there are also many who have been spitting out the Kool-Aid - and there will be many more to come.
I'm not talking about the hardcore MAGAnuts here. They're completely lost to the cult. I'm talking about the soybean farmer I just read about who's getting killed by the tariffs. I'm talking about all the Latino >citizens< who (inexplicably) voted for King MAGA, and are now terrified of being caught up in the ICE dragnet, and many more who are beginning to realize they've been hoodwinked by the Evil Clown in Chief.
Well maybe but the fact is that his approval rating is still WAY higher than Biden’s was in Biden’s last couple of years. Clearly the vast majority of nonMAGA that voted for Trump don’t regret it and believe he’s doing a decent job. They likely even credit him for the fact that egg prices are in fact lower.
As much as it pains me to say it, I think we may be learning first hand why the founding fathers explicitly did NOT write a universal franchise into the constitution, from what I understand they were worried a lot about elected dictators, perhaps correctly so.
I don't do business with trolls. Hasta la vista.
It's about time we just called it "Fool Aid"....
Not THAT is a construction that should take over the world.
Voters who thought Rump would only hurt other people--not them--were just drinking the Fool Aide.
"There are still plenty who are drunk on the Kool Aid."
So much depends on what are Trump's most reliable media hacks (Fox News, NewsMax, people who repeat that spin, etc.) telling them?
I think that you’re overestimating the Trumpist government’s ability to plan and execute such a slightly nonstraightforward strategem.
Straightforward bullying is all that they can do as far as I am able to tell.
It’s totally straightforward lying to blame the Fed for both inflation and recession. Well within trump’s wheelhouse—he’s that stupid.
Yes. He’ll of course always find some to blame. Or possibly even multiple someones, like e.g. the Fed, the Democrats, AND Europe.
My claim was not that he’d be incapable of telling lies and blaming people. Rather, I don’t think that he’d plan ahead, in the sense of choosing to take particular actions with a plan of thereafter blaming the Fed.
He’s already blaming the Fed, just like elections were fraudulent before they occurred. He’s 100% transparent—same playbook every time.
See Occam.
He’s just added a new tax on Chinese ships.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-shipping-tax-china-jamieson-greer-ustr-ec393447
I mean. How many voters even know what the Fed is?
The one "reassuring" thing to me is that voters, or at least the swing voters that control the outcome of elections, have pretty much internalized the idea that the President is literally God, and any unpleasant outcome in their lives is his fault. So Trump's attempts to distance himself from the crisis probably won't work; the swing voters will just shrug and say "doesn't President outrank Chairman Of The Fed, whatever that is?" and blame him anyway.
Of course, given how badly he's going to fuck with elections, whether their blame will be allowed to have consequences is another issue.
They may be shy on the details but know what fed up means.
Yes. Most people don't know what the Fed is. The "unelected" FED part will resonate with many people as the economy collapses.
However, I think Trump will have a hard time getting out from under the "Tariffs are the most beautiful word." They may choose to blame the FED for not fixing the problem but I think most people will still blame Trump for the tariffs.
A lot of people will understand Uncertainty. That's a point that could be pounded on.
American business needs to COLLECTIVELY start speaking out about how bad Trumps economics are for them. You can't strike a deal with a person like Trump, he'll see you as weak and come back for more.
Everyone needs to start speaking with a COLLECTIVE voice.
I'm not a trained economist, but would love for any here to comment.
In addition to all of the other fall out of the regime's tariffs and trade war, we also are seeing the USD crash against other currencies such as the Euro. Doesn't the now very weak dollar also result in yet higher prices for imported products (i.e. our dollar buys an increasingly smaller amount of goods from countries with now stronger currencies)?
Well, for all that, significantly lowering rates will fire up the bulls on "the Street", and tRump will get his rising stock market "the likes of which nobody has ever seen"...MAGA!
That doesn’t look like a safe prediction to me. Sure, under normal circumstances, low interest rates result in an expectation of increased profits of corporations. The mechanism being that when interest rates are low, it’s cheap to borrow capital, so that if that capital can be invested productively, profit will be good.
But in times of Trumpist chaos, it’s not so clear that capital can be invested productively.
"It’s been an obvious setup all along, Trump setting the Fed up as fall guy."
That's not how Trump works. He doesn't plan these things ahead of time, he just figures out which fall guy to blame when the need arises. After all, the Dear Leader had no idea his brilliant policies would backfire so spectacularly.
I have an image of America which has been built up over the past sixty odd years:
Capitalist, leader of the free world, brilliant universities, belief in science, huge range of opinions which reflect belief in free speech, rather racist in places, weird belief in guns, don’t much like government, huge faith in their Constitution, a tad brutal toward their poor.
Altogether a decent place with touches of brilliance.
It’s difficult to dislodge that…but that once admirable country knowingly elected someone to represent what they are and who in their name:
Grossly insults the leader of your closest neighbour and ally.
Threatens to invade non-threatening and close allies.
Makes visiting your country a terrifying prospect because one might have something negative on your phone about him.
Supports a horrific warmonger for no advantage to your country.
Finds excuses to attack and diminish academic institutions.
Numerous efforts to undermine the rule of law.
Zero dignity in office; sounds lame but this is the most powerful country on earth. It matters.
Deputy talks about ignoring the Supreme Court and government is now testing if it can.
Implements tariffs which are going to make you 0.6% poorer every year. The implementation itself is about as clumsy and stupid as it gets.
Cruelty toward anyone who stands against him (and toward humanity, the Constitution, science, law): security clearance withdrawn for Fauci and Milley, firing prosecutors and investigators who looked into his affairs.
Randomly firing people whose only fault was working for the government. At least when Reagan tried he hired professionals to look into it first (they found nothing).
Insulting smaller countries by saying ‘no one has heard of’ them; thus praising rather than being ashamed of ignorance.
Happy for health policy to ignore science in favour of voodoo.
Yet you knew he was like. He is behaving as you knew he would and doing the things you voted for.
Even after all this (and more) forty five per cent of you still approve of him.
Yet you see yourselves as the greatest country on earth; the peak of civilisation. You look down on other countries with arrogant contempt.
You elected someone who is malignant, revengeful, greedy, a liar, an adulterer (at best), a narcissist and if anything else nothing good.
Yet a large number of votes were garnered from ‘Christians’: well, if you admire those qualities perhaps you should figure out it’s the Devil you worship rather than Christ.
Even now the great leaders of industry, the fourth estate, the GOP, many in professions are silent or making smoothing noises.
Is the above describing the country which is in my memory? When commentators talk about America is that now a bygone myth?
You have that mostly right, but with a few notions a bit inaccurate.
First, "You elected someone who is malignant, revengeful, greedy, a liar, an adulterer (at best), a narcissist and if anything else nothing good." He was elected by a little over 25% of us. Half stayed home - failing to heed the warnings. About half of that 25% were non-MAGAnuts who failed to heed the warnings. The remainder are lost to the cult.
Second, "Yet you see yourselves as the greatest country on earth; the peak of civilisation. You look down on other countries with arrogant contempt." Only some of us have that mentality, not by any means all of us look at it that way.
Third, "Even after all this (and more) forty five per cent of you still approve of him." Actually it's quite a bit less, and he has by far the lowest approval rating of any president in American history at this point in a presidency - and it's continuously dropping at an increasing rate.
I don't know if you've noticed, but a significant percentage of us are trying to fight this Orange Scourge. We're out there protesting (5,000,000 of us on April 5, hopefully many more tomorrow). We need support from both inside and out. We need support from around the world. It doesn't help us when someone from outside the United States keeps referring to us collectively as "You" as if we're somehow monolithic. Most of us are in fact vehemently opposed to Trumpkopf and everything he stands for. He is >not< >us<.
Current approval rating is 44%. That is an awful lot of clueless and/or racist people.
I live in an area where a lot of the 44% live and they are both clueless and racist. I will admit a couple are seeing the light but it is a whole lot of too late IMO.
I think you're addressing a second problem. One that's even more difficult to solve than "just" Trump.
There is a percentage of Americans who will *never* support (or vote for) a Democrat, and will *always* support a Republican. I haven't seen numbers for the 2024 election, but in 2016 Trump's populism, and completely inexplicable "personality," attracted a significant number of first time or irregular voters. It's far from clear whether Vance or another potential nominee will sustain that. A certain percentage of MAGA voters may simply "disappear" without Trump.
The problem is there's a "hardcore" percentage of Republican voters, concentrated in certain states, and that may be enough to continue to make the Electoral College close and divide control of Congress. That hardcore support isn't lost because of Trump. They were Tea Partiers before he arrived, and they'll be "members" of whatever becomes of the GOP after Trump's gone.
The support for Congressional Republicans like Johnson and others is largely from the "standard" pro-birth/anti-choice, bigoted anti-LGBTQ, racist Christian Nationalist Republican voters. Those Republican voters support Trump because he's a Republican and he's extraordinarily willing to enact policies they support. None of this support is necessarily exclusive to Trump. For those voters, "the cruelty is the point." Trump's just the guy who's more than willing to break the law to enact that cruelty. If Vance were doing this, Johnson's voters would love him too. To use a historical example, it was a Republican President (Eisenhower) who instituted Operation Wetback. So part of what Trump's doing has existed in Republican circles since the 50s. Other parts of his "agenda" has existed in Republican circles since FDR. (Trump's utter obsession with McKinley is rather unique IMO.)
Trump's unique in his "ability" to take everything personally and to (at best) not care if his supporters engage in violence. But IMO, his use of primary threats to keep people like Johnson and others in Congress in line is just an extension of the presidential bully pulpit. If we had a President Vance instead of Trump, I think we'd see the same refusal to allow the Senate bill on presidential tariff authority to come to the floor for a vote. Same with any other legislation that attempts to restrain a Republican president.
Frustratingly, those voters are not lost in the MAGA cult, they joined the MAGA cult after previously "belonging" to the Tea Party cult, and they'll join whatever form of the Republican party emerges when Trump's finally gone too.
They are "the tribe".
You're describing the hardcore MAGAnuts. They are lost for sure. Don't discount those couple that are seeing the light - they are important assets to the resistance! And they are the ones best positioned to bring a few of the others out of the cult. You know, a single proton can make the difference between a dud and a chain reaction. Think about it.
Now get out there tomorrow with sign in hand and Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊
Did someone say, "sign?"
https://thesabot.substack.com/p/stop-the-mother-killers-poster
Good one!
Yes, it is, unfortunately. However, it is still an all time low for any president by this time, and I maintain that it continues to drop steadily at an increasing rate.
Not fast enough, not low enough, not in time to save us. We have met our destruction and he is us.
I for one am not prepared to give up. In fact, I will never give up. I will go to my grave standing up against this scourge. I'll be out there tomorrow with millions of others standing up for democracy.
Get out on the streets.
Sorry - 83 and housebound. Too deaf to make phone calls but I can still write. I won’t live to see the end of this but maybe someone will know I was here. What does your protest sign say? I’ll look for you in videos and photos.
That’s false according to Grok. “President Trump’s approval rating in April 2025 (41–48%) is not lower than any other U.S. president in history at this point in their presidency” and it goes into specific detail.
Oh, well that's a real credible source.
Grok isn’t the source. It sources the main polling companies. But you know that.
I saw that yesterday. After all that has happened thus far. Astonished does not even come close…
Yes, I understand how gut-wrenchingly awful it is for you and how the roots that bound you to your land are being poisoned. I really, really hope that you can wrest back decency and civilisation. It’s very bleak seeing a country specifically designed to avoid autocracy, very wealthy and huge amounts spent on education lurching down this road…….dragging so many kind, thoughtful and generous people who hate this along with it.
Thank you. We're fighting this scourge tooth and nail, and we're not going to give up. Ever.
Elbows up!
💯🎯
In my view, what matters most is how businesses leaders, politicians, law firms and universities roll over and are unwilling to fight the destruction that is taking place. Rather disappointing for a country that defeated the most powerful colonial ruler and invested heavily in developing democratic structures to involve the citizenship.
The law firms that capitulated are already seeing the consequences in that their pro bono work will be used to further the administrations intimidation.
The Trumpers should remember that unwilling soldiers don't make good fighters. The coerced lawyers could undermine from within. Besides, if Trump can change the terms at will, so can the law firms.
Let's see lawyers in the street protesting in their business suits.
They did get some assistance from the French against the British.
Sure, but the point I am trying to make is this burning desire to be free and rule yourself. Which is being replaced by this unamerican capitulation by lack of an ideal (other than making money).
Capitulation of businesses, politicians, law firms and universities is indeed important and a grave disappointment. However, it's not what matters most. What matters most is the rest of us standing up resisting. We will be doing that by the millions across the country tomorrow. Be there or be square! Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊
I respectfully disagree. Structures collapsing so easily means a serious structural issue. Resistance is in order, but work on the foundation is a long term project.
I don't believe we're in disagreement here at all. Of course we need to repair the foundation, and yes, that's going to take decades - but first we have to put a stop to the corrosion.
That's the first order of business. It's up to all of us to do everything each of us is ready, willing and able to do in order to accomplish this most challenging task.
I respectfully agree to agree.
Amen!
Yep, I would agree with all but your third point which, at least to my way of thinking, continues to remain disturbingly high. This is a rough calculation, but figure a solid 40% will vote Democratic, 35% are hopelessly irretrievably MAGAT, leaving 25% to go either way depending on who’s running. He still has support in the low 40’s, from what I’ve seen so far. That’s too many of the 25% who haven’t yet seen the light, which I find inexplicable. Not that he gives a flying fig about his poll numbers, but it would make me feel better to see him down at or close to 30%. Then I could have some hope that the mid-terms will significantly change the balance of power in Congress. Assuming of course he doesn’t hijack 2026 elections.
That's true. His rating is still shockingly high, however the margin of error is quite large, and I maintain that his approval is the lowest in history and dropping at a steady, increasing, rate.
I do believe we will sweep the midterms. Just the fact that GOP Reps and Senators are avoiding town halls of their >Republican< voters is most telling.
I hope you’re right.
Three of us.
That makes two of us! 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻
Assuming that there are 2026 elections.
The explanation is that most people have completely turned off paying attention to politics. However, they will soon be slapped in the face with an economic reality check.
The April 19th protests aren't as organized. I'm not sure how you organize peaceful protests when the government is clear about its willingness to "disappear" people. We need collective groups - labor unions, business organizations, scientific organizations, retired military and police, health care organization etc.
Yeah, they don't seem to be as organized. I'm not sure what happened with "Hands Off", it was a smashing success. I tried contacting Indivisible but haven't heard anything back. In any case, 50501's event page has 42 pages of actions taking place across the country, including what I expect to be another large gathering right here in NYC.
https://events.pol-rev.com/search?contentType=EVENTS&when=april19&eventPage=1
I don't think Indivisible has anything planned this weekend. April 5th was good. I was especially pleased there was a presence in MAGA cities. Preaching to the choir isn't as effective.
Actually, I'm looking through the 50501 event calendar, and found numerous events that include Indivisible and Hands Off. If I recall correctly, I wasn't expecting April 5 to be anywhere near as big as it turned out to be. I was expecting maybe 100,000 people - which I thought would be for NYC. We ended up with around a million. So did Boston, Chicago, etc. And there were rallies in some of the least expected places.
So don't underestimate it.
The image you had of America resembles the educated , urban areas of the country more than the lower-density heartland. But until recently, this disparity in political attitudes was hidden due to the fact that the Democratic party was able to attract a
mix of cosmopolitan intellectuals and less educated voters. Over the past 50 years socially conservative voters have fled the Democratic tent, producing two starkly different Americas, divided geographically by population density and politically along a traditionalism-progressivism spectrum.
Practically every city in America with a population over 100,000 voted against Trump, and the most sparsely populated regions voted overwhelming for Trump. This same urban-countryside split is responsible for the turn to the right we’re seeing in Europe and other parts of the world.
At best 30% of the country knew they were voting for an anti-democratic strongman. I’m optimistic that the significant minority of Trump voters who thought they were getting a non-autocratic pro-market advocate who would increase their standard of living are in the process of discovering that they made a huge mistake.
I too am a great believer in myths. They make the world a better place. Imagining the future works with the past as well. The Nazis started bombing London in September of 1940. Fifteen months later we decided to go all in after Hitler declared war on the USA. The lesson for me is not that the US was craven rather it takes time to turn a great ship. Now is the time to grab the wheel and right the course as we see right to be.
...aaaand there was still plenty of isolationist and pro-Nazi sentiment in the US, even after Japan attacked us.
America is not without it's faults but there are efforts to improve these issues. Democracy is a messy project as freedom of speech gives many diverse voices an opportunity to express themselves. Progress is slow and erratic. We are a large country and the marketplace of ideas is chaotic. We can see now how different it is to have a pharaoh in power.
As an American, I agree with you. We sane Americans are even more horrified than you. Our allies in countries like yours may very well be our salvation—your ability to impose real consequences for trump’s batshit craziness may be one of the only things that will stop him.
If you think the markets were yippy before
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/markets-will-crash-if-trump-can-fire-fed-s-powell-elizabeth-warren-warns/ar-AA1D7dVI?ocid=BingNewsSerp
Markets will 'crash' if Trump can fire Fed's Powell, Elizabeth Warren warns
"But understand this: If Chairman Powell can be fired by the president of the United States, it will crash markets in the United States," she said.
If key economic levers are "subject to a president who just wants to wave his magic wand," then the U.S. will be indistinguishable "from any other two-bit dictatorship around the world," she said.
Trump is convinced that he can raise trillions of dollars through tariffs. He has stated many times that he expects to eliminate the federal income tax and replace those lost revenues with money from tariffs. That's not mathematically possible without sparking runaway inflation or completely telescoping the world economy.
Being led by a vindictive ill-tempered simpleton is no way for a superpower to be.
I doubt he's truly convinced he can raise trillions through tariffs. I don't doubt that he's convinced he can make a killing for himself and his cronies though. Just witness Marjorie Taylor Greene's haul from insider trading.
As for being led by a vindictive ill-tempered simpleton, we won't be a superpower for much longer the way he's going - if we even still are. Except we'll still own enough nukes to wipe out all life on Earth for the next half a million years.
More like he’s a useful fool — until he’s no longer useful. There are powers that be in the background who’ve unassumingly led this rebellion to destroy your democracy. And I have no doubt he’ll be disposed of when push comes to shove. So keep up the good fight, WSLO. We are rooting for you from all corners of the earth. Elbows Up!!! 🇨🇦💪🇨🇦
That too is true, but we know who those powers are, and when we take to the streets tomorrow, we won't forget them. And when we take our democracy back, we will make damn sure they finally understand the forces they were messing with.
And thank you for the support, we need as much of it as we can get.
Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊🇨🇦🇺🇸
It's not mathematically possible at all. The more the tariffs go up, the less people buy. The less people buy, the less money the tariffs bring in. I don't know where the point of diminishing returns is, but it's there.
My god, how could Wall Street have gotten in bed with this buffoon? We have to give credit to Trump for one thing; when he ran for president, he said he would do to America, what he did to his businesses: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Never before have we seen a one man wrecking ball like Trump. He bankrupted his businesses, and now he’s doing the same to America. All the while, Trump has gotten rich over the years, by borrowing money from Russian Oligarchs, who unlike the major banks, were not only happy to lend him money, they were willing to buy his underperforming properties, for double what he paid for them (during recessions, nonetheless).
And now we have Trump’s minions meeting with Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. What the hell is going on? Just asking for a friend!
Seriously though, he is destroying our place as the reserve currency of the world. When he completes this horror show, we willing be paying triple, just to service our debt, while our tax revenue drys up, because he’s destroyed the IRS’s ability to tax the rich, and is losing hundreds of billions in tax revenue from tourism, and undocumented immigrants, who aren’t citizens, but work and pay taxes. Good times!…:)
They got in bed with Trump because he promised them lower taxes and less regulation than Biden. They also voted for him because Kamala is a woman. Misogynists. Never mind that R's always screw the economy, D's rescue it. Even the Fed chair (Volker) who brought interest rates under control and then eased them afterwards was appointed by a D (Carter). Reagan took credit for something he had little to do with.
Lowering those interest rates in 1982 may have worked then -
but that came after sky high inflation
for most of a decade before - and consumers had pent up demand for durable goods . We also had a strong middle class back then that responded to the lower rates with gusto. The secular stagnation of the middle class after 40 years of being tied to Reaganomics - says to me that lowering interest rates now won’t have nearly the effect it had then .
Agreed, and now the bill comes due!…:)
"My god, how could Wall Street have gotten in bed with this buffoon?"
How could they not? He's everything they want to be, a rich asshole who does whatever he wants with zero care for the law or the consequences. The rich have been waiting decades for such a pure uncut messiah figure.
Touché!…:)
After the election I contacted my financial adviser to try to "Trump proof" my nest egg, as we are nearing retirement. Being an FA with a major, well-known financial institution, she was rather dismissive of my concerns. I told her that Trump would tank the economy, just like last time. I told her he would cause the global markets to fall. She didn't take me seriously. And I said he would try to take over the Fed. She was especially dismissive of this prediction, noting "We're still a nation of laws, a president still must go through Congress." But with Congress fully in the hands of the GOP, I knew this was a lie. And here we are. How a housewife and teacher from Tennessee knows more than a financial adviser at a major institution is baffling to me. I'm no genius, I have no expertise, but if **I** can see it, why can't anyone else?
I had a very similar experience when a noted large firm advisor in my region was trying to induce me to move my portfolio and said “We have a once in a lifetime opportunity and we need to invest to take advantage of the new administration’s leadership and policies.” Needless to say, I knew at that point he was an idiot and stayed where I was at. At 65% corporate bonds and 35% cash, national and international high grade equities I’m still over exposed but have only lost about 5%.
Because you and I are in Red States, I think a lot of these "experts" assume we've drunk the same Kool-aid.
For me it was a choice between Topps baseball cards and ammo -
I chose baseball cards because I don’t own a gun . Best wishes for
the strength of your portfolio.
Nearly all FA's are permabulls because they are not old enough to remember a true bear market like 1966-82 or they discount foreign bears such as Japan 1990-present. Going by total return and adjusting for inflation, the go-go market of 2000 did not show a gain until 2013 (using S&P 500, NASDAQ took longer). If you dumped when Bush stole the presidency and went all in at the inauguration of Obama, you cleaned up.
I'm a long retired EE, whose mother and father were both accountants. She managed her own investments, and taught me. I studied extensively, devouring more than a dozen books, and have managed mine for 30 years.
My philosophy has always been to be fully invested, initially in individual stocks, but for the last 20 years in actively managed funds, with goals that fit what I believe the market and the economy will benefit. My overall goal is to beat the S&P500, which I've managed to do over the years. I've long subscribed to a newsletter which follows the funds of the firm where I invest, and use their data and advice to choose where to allocate my savings.
When Trump was elected, I moved more than half of my stock portfolio to a mix of a money market fund and bonds. But like you, I found my advisors -- the editors of that newsletter -- to be totally blind to the disaster that was about to unfold. And they remain so to this day! Since Trump's election, I've relied on them for nothing but data.
All I get from my institution is "Stay the course." That would be fine advice if I were thirty years younger. I just took my entire RMD for this year out of stocks and into a bank at 4%. At least I got it out, even if the rest of my IRA evaporates. I lost all faith in the "experts" at my institution when they kept calling Treasury bonds "the gold standard" while those bonds lost 5% year after year. I finally got out of those last year.
The "experts" are locked into what they were taught and learned from past experience. Most won't adjust rapidly, if at all.
I will say this: after the stock market tanked, and she sent out the obligatory "market update" email that the New York office had crafted, I replied with a simple "I told you so" in the subject line. Sorry/Not sorry.
Gee, I wonder if they're compensated on that basis.
Seems too crazy to be true, doesn't it?
Every day a s#@t show. I was on the zoom call with Indivisible yesterday and Ezra made a good point, namely, wantabe dictators want us to believe that they have already "won". So what would follow is an overwhelming sense of already being defeated. We ARE NOT DEFEATED. We have a democracy and it is our job to defend it like Chris Van Hollen, AOC, Bernie an all the smaller acts of resistance.
Don't let this bully make you believe he and his cruel crew have already won. THEY HAVE NOT. Get to a protest,call your congressional reps and insist they act to uphold the constitution.
We have the power,don't let them take it from us.
Yes! Be there or be square! Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊
Tomorrow, April 19 is the big day. Let's make it bigger and better than April 5. We need 3.5% of the population, approximately 12,000,000 of us to get out there with our signs and make some noise.
https://generalstrikeus.com/strikecard
https://www.fiftyfifty.one/
https://indivisible.org/
https://handsoff2025.com/
https://www.teslatakedown.com/
https://www.riseandresist.org/
https://thirdact.org
Being the global reserve currency brings immense advantages: lower borrowing costs, persistent demand for sovereign debt, and unparalleled financial influence. But reserve status is not a birthright. It comes with stringent, often overlooked requirements. In a world where the safety-liquidity-return hierarchy governs global capital flows, breaching the “safety” pillar would be the most dangerous move of all.
https://open.substack.com/pub/marketszoon/p/dollar-privilege?r=58uzcq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
As a 20 year former Fed employee I saw the data driven approach to the work. It was apolitical. Jay is doing a great job and inflation is still the thing dominating grocery store buyers. Wish we could still laugh about eating the dogs and eating the cats… this is deadly serious.
We only need to look at Trump's performance as a businessman and know that the financial skills he used to bring six businesses into bankruptcy court should be brought in the managing of the Fed. The Fed does have a series of tools and experience that should never be replaced by political whim. Unless Trump is stopped the damage is going to bring the US to has been position.
I think/hope you meant to say "shouldn't be..."?
You are right. I should have proofread what I wrote.
Typos happen. No biggie.
Thank you for stating the facts, outlining historical case studies and their outcomes, and building a logical case that the Fed should remain independent. Besides Chairman Powell, how are the other regional directors nominated and to what extent are their positions legally insulated from Trump's attacks?
The answer to your closing question can be found here:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/fedexplained/who-we-are.htm
Thank you for sharing this link, which does indeed provide details on the mechanics of the Fed.
I said a few weeks ago that I thought this was his gambit. Increase tariffs to raise money for tax cuts then seize the Fed and drop rates to near zero. He doesn't want to negotiate tariffs until after they lie about tariff revenue to justify the cuts.
The economy will boom and inflation will rise, but it will be short lived and cause an economic disaster.
It's tantalizing to sell everything, but cash means inflation eats your money up. It's hard to decide what to do here.
There is only one thing to do, be there or be square:
Rise! Resist! ✊✊✊
Get those signs ready and get out tomorrow to participate in the nearest nationwide rally,
//
Don't let up folks, it's working:
Boycott TE卐LA! Boycott Swastikar!
Short TE卐LA! Short Swastikar!
Boycott 卐tarlink!
Boycott 卐/Twitter!
Curb your DOGE!
https://generalstrikeus.com/strikecard
https://www.fiftyfifty.one/
https://indivisible.org/
https://handsoff2025.com/
https://www.teslatakedown.com/
https://www.riseandresist.org/
https://thirdact.org
Batshit crazy doesn't begin to describe this mess. The enablers are amplifying the insanity and the sane washing media is smoothing the behaviors from extreme to nearly normal.
To me calling for “termination” sounds like a death threat.
I think you have to add "... with extreme prejudice" for it to be official.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjB8z0Bvi14
Bonus Harrison Ford sighting.
I appreciate watching the clip. And the whole idea is that it isn’t official and like the deniability in the movie, it was never intended that way.
Thanks for clarifying what happened under Reagan, again, and that it was largely the Fed.
I know you also pointed this out some years ago.
Reagan also passed what could be considered a stimulus, in a way, as well.
I remember some college friends, who were engineering majors, were able to get cushy jobs with high pay at local defense contractors who had too much money to burn and not enough places to put it. They were paid good money to largely twiddle their thumbs, but then is money that was going into the economy.
Yet, the GOP like to pretend it was mostly the tax cuts and "trickle down" and have spent years trying to fit their square pegs of ideology into the round holes of reality and nothing fits, even creating an entire news network to try to keep the myths alive.
Bush and Trump tried to replicate the tax cut growth myth and got only average GDP growth even with massive deficit increases.
You would think one would then FINALLY conclude that it was not the tax cuts at the top that drove most of the growth under Reagan.
When you consider the post WWII war prosperity when taxes were some of the highest this is particularly clear and GDP growth was also far better under Bill Clinton than Bush or Trump.
Bush took us from a roughly 176 billion "projected surplus" under Clinton to a 1.186 trillion deficit before he left office and even before the collapse of the economy under his watch he had taken us abt 631 billion towards the red per yr (176 + 455).
Compare:
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/111th-congress-2009-2010/reports/01-07-outlook.pdf
with
https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/106th-congress-1999-2000/reports/eb0100.pdf
Trump took office with a 559 billion projected deficit which Obama had cut in half from the 1.186 billion above, and Trump nearly doubled this to 1.015 trillion before the pandemic hit our shores, Jan 2020 CBO report.
Compare:
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-01/56020-CBO-Outlook.pdf
with
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files?file=2019-04/52370-outlook_1.pdf
Trump's average GDP growth pre-pandemic was about 2.8% barely average-ish and not "the greatest" as he likes to claim.
Nice hook with the graph at the top BTW.