It appears the guy who assasinated the health insurance CEO has been apprehended. (Note to self: If I ever have to assasinate somebody, leave the country right away when it’s done.)
Here’s a transript of Trump’s Meet the Press interview. I haven’t gotten through it all yet. I got stuck in the tariff section. This is Trump:
I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow. But I can say that if you look at my — just pre-Covid, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country. And I had a lot of tariffs on a lot of different countries, but in particular China. We took in hundreds of billions of dollars and we had no inflation. In fact, when I handed it over, they didn’t have inflation for a year and a half. They went almost two years just based on what I had created. And then they created inflation with energy and with spending too much. So I think we will — I’m a big believer in tariffs. I think tariffs are the most beautiful word. I think they’re beautiful. It’s going to make us rich. We’re subsidizing Canada to the tune over $100 billion a year. We’re subsidizing Mexico for almost $300 billion. We shouldn’t be — why are we subsidizing these countries? If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state. We’re subsidizing Mexico and we’re subsidizing Canada and we’re subsidizing many countries all over the world. And all I want to do is I want to have a level, fast, but fair playing field.
Now, that makes no sense at all. I’m not sure what he’s calling “subsidies.” Trade deficits, maybe? And “It’s going to make us rich?” I think he genuinely believes this.
So then Kristen Welker said, “Sir, your previous tariffs during your first administration cost Americans some $80 billion, and now you have major companies from Walmart, Black & Decker, AutoZone, saying that any tariffs are going to force them to drive up prices for their consumers. How do you make sure that these CEOs, that these companies don’t, in fact, pass on the cost of tariffs to their consumers?” And Trump said,
They cost Americans nothing. They made a great economy for us. They also solve another problem. If we were going to have problems having to do with wars and having to do with other things, tariffs — I have stopped wars with tariffs by saying, “You guys want to fight, it’s great. But both of you are going to pay tariffs to the United States at 100%.” And — they have many purposes, tariffs, if properly used. I don’t say you use them like a madman. I say properly used. But it didn’t cost this country anything. It made this country money. And we never really got the chance to go all out because we had to fight Covid in the last part, and we did it very successfully. And when I handed it over to Biden, the stock market was higher than what it was just previous to Covid coming in. It was actually higher. Tariffs are a — properly used, are a very powerful tool, not only economically, but also for getting other things outside of economics.
He stopped wars with tariffs? WTF? Does anyone want to guess where in his mis-wired brain he thinks he stopped a war with tariffs?
An even bigger worry is foreign policy. We got lucky in Trump’s first term. See Michael Tomasky, The World Is on Fire. And Trump’s About to Be President. Feel Better? at The New Republic.
The main question here for Americans concerns the fact that in six weeks, Donald Trump is going to be the president of the United States. The surprising events in Syria serve as a harrowing reminder that there’s a big, complicated world out there and, pretty soon, Trump is going to be the single most powerful person in it—the “horse in a hospital” that comedian John Mulaney likened him to, though horses are far less corrupt. And the weird, and worrying, thing is that even though Trump was president before, we don’t really know all that much about his foreign policy instincts because he was never really tested on foreign policy in his first term.
Think about it. There were no major crises during Trump’s term. There were no 9/11 attacks, obviously, but even beyond that, there weren’t any major wars; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came after he lost reelection. There was no big uprising like the 2014 Maidan Revolution, or the Tahrir Square and Arab Spring revolts of 2011. The Middle East was comparatively quiet, especially to those of us who recall the fraught part of 2006 or the past year’s conflagration that followed in the wake of Hamas’s attacks in Israel. Assad’s butchery was an ongoing affair, but that’s not the same as a new broad regional conflict kicking off, which forces an American president to decide what moral face the United States is going to present to the world. Compared to Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Trump had it pretty easy—it even fell to Biden to keep the commitments to wind down the war in Afghanistan and honor the hideous commitments Trump made to the Taliban, much to Biden’s detriment in public opinion polling.
Trump may honestly believe that the world behaved itself during his first term just because he was President. But the world isn’t afraid of him. The world thinks he’s a malleable buffoon. And Trump won’t have anyone around him with more sense than he does, as he did during his first term.
This is going to be a damn mess.
In another part of the interview, Trump said he was going to end birthright citizenship “on day one” with an executive action. Which, of course, he doesn’t have the authority to do because it’s written into the Constitution. Welker drilled him on this, and he wouldn’t back down. I don’t believe he understands the amending the Constitution thing.
I’ve pointed out repeatedly that Donald Trump cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order. It’s right there in the plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment and that clear meaning has been confirmed and buttressed by 150 years of case law and attestations by the United States government. It’s very important to state these realities confidently and right in his face. The guy is constantly operating within the territory of his boasts and trash talk and it’s his opponents who end up letting him.
This doesn’t mean he won’t try to do this or that he won’t find judges who will back him up.
Yes, it needs to be said to his face. But there’s no one in his orbit now who will do that. Naturally, some guy on Fox News is calling birthright citizenship a “loophole.”
Did I mention this is going to be a mess? I believe I did.
Well… if ICE could force hospitals to delete all birth records of a newborn, and if the newborn was deported, sans fingerprinting/DNA, that would effectively end birthright citizenship. No one treated as such could prove they were a citizen.
It's not lawful, but there may be no criminal law with penalties for violating the law, and even if there was, that's what pardon power is for, amirite?
One "good" thing about Trump is, it proved that any law that demands behavior must have enforcement power with real teeth. The Presidential Records Act will have to have criminal penalties, or every Republican will swipe the crown jewels each time they leave office.
There are federal HIPAA laws, and also most if not all states have all kinds of laws about medical records and why they are not messed with or shared with anyone without the patient's permission. The hospitals would be liable and would tell ICE to get lost. ICE would need a court order, at least, which would be public record. The rule of law would have to break down a whole lot more than it has already for the MAGAts to get away with this.
I agree with all you say. I was thinking to myself "how could you make birthright citizenship a 'loophole', if you were overtly evil, and wanted to do so, and would break any (federal) law?"
So, with speculation, I invented the scenario above. I'm not saying "it will happen," just "if someone wanted to make a *loophole*, this is the only thing *I* can imagine they'd be thinking of." No birth records = no birthright.
Now, would this work? No, for the reasons you mentioned.
But fascism requires conflicts of exactly that sort – they want to arrest records clerks, and people who protect them, and so forth. That shows they need more power to root out the enemy within. So would it be something they might attempt? Maybe, is all I can say. In any event, yes, I was engaging in pure speculation about what evil people might think of, and do.
that's insane. WTF.
hello, recent history. the russians were in ukraine the entire length of dingus con's first presidency. they annexed crimea and some of the eastern territory in 2014.
scooby coup was impeached because he was extorting ukraine over weapons they needed to fight the russian invasion.
Yes, but since that happened before he became POTUS, in Trump's mind it wasn't a problem. In fact, in 2016 while he was running for President Trump said flat out that Putin would not invade Ukraine even though he already had. And since Russian aggression in Ukraine was hardly ever in the news here, it wasn't a political issue much here until the big invasion in 2022. So even though Trump's foreign policy was incoherent, he got away with it. That's less likely to be true in Term 2.
I suppose that if they destroy evidence that you are a citizen that gives you an out if you go against America. See The Meaning Of Treason and The New Meaning Of Treason by Rebecca West for more on this. A traitor assumes that he is a citizen because he was born in a consulate. A consulate is not the land of your country in the way that an embassy is. So, he was not a traitor.
On executive orders that violate the Constitution, Trump wants to test how much the USSC will allow him to get away with. Birthright citizenship is in the Constitution. If Trump tries it, the rulings at the lower courts don't matter. It will go all the way to the top. I think Trump plans to send a steady stream of Constitutional issues to the USSC but The USSC can decide not to take an appeal, which makes the lower court ruling the final say.
Trump sees the ruling on presidential immunity as a signal that the USSC will install Trump as a tyrant with the power to ignore Congress and rule by executive orders. I can't make confident predictions about the USSC anymore but destroying the system of checks and balances threatens the entire system designed by the founders. If the nation disintegrates, there's no reason for the USSC to think they will not also be consumed.
Yes, they wanted Trump to win but how much did they want to extend the gift of partial presidential immunity? Trump will ask for EVERYTHING, especially the power to use the military as his police force. It's frightening to think any POTUS would ask. Will the USSC grant it? (If they do, how much of the military will go along?)
There's a historical failure that Trump is probably prone to repeat. When Hitler was blocked by the British Air Force, his plans to invade England had to be set aside. That's when Hitler decided to strike Russia. (And Russia also resisted, leaving Hitler with his forced divided and pinned down on two fronts neither of which he'd ever win.) Trump is going to overreach in multiple areas and get bogged down in the courts, I suspect. Trump is a child. When he can't have A…. and he can't have B… he will resort to something else, something poorly thought out. Like Hitler, Trump has surrounded himself with loyalists who will not tell Trump when he's making a mistake. (Unlike the first Trump term.)
Yes, it will be ugly. People will die – of that I am certain. But there's no discipline in the Trump camp and too many factions with (potentially) conflicting agendas. If Trump was being played as Bush was played by Dick Cheney, we'd be in a far more dangerous place.
We know that Trump will not take the blame for anything. We know that Trump will lie. We know that Trump will attack. All credit (real or imaginary) will need to go to Trump. Trump will demand the limelight and not be upstaged.
Trump has many levers he wants to pull, and no idea of the potential unintended consequences. Leading in many ways is like flying an airplane. At times you must do what seems wrong to your instincts. Always minor adjustments are the only adjustments you need to be making. Both of these apply to politics also. Trump does not know this.
Yes, it will be ugly and a huge mess. Expect to need to avoid collateral damage. Trump is on an imaginary mandate to be the Uber-Trump.
The media empire of Reupert Murdoch got handed a defeat by the courts. Reupert was attempting to give special power to one heir, who he thought would continue his ideological bent. His truth distortion and tabloid garbage dissemination put him high on the list of those in disservice to the United States. Let us hope the influence of his other three heirs will temper and moderate this empire of bottom feeders. Reupert prospered in the promotion of the elite of the worst.
Krugman wrote his last column for the NYT today. The comments were filled with praise. In tribute his last paragraph:
My assumption (heh) is that the orange guy likes tariffs because he is gonna go for all of the brass rings of the John Birch society and get rid of the income tax. Before the income tax that began in like 1917, the government was funded by tariffs, duties and fees. Watch for the next step in this scheme, there will be mass pain, but this is just a cost of doing business to them and they think their money and propaganda game is able to smooth over the aufulness.
Then, my impression is that the orange man-loving people want to go back to not only to the Gilded age, but rescind the Enlightenment. So, the left now blames the GenXers for the election loss because the Democrats were not Bernie bros enough and did not panic correctly about culture issues. We are screwed because the orange man will be able to implement any "policy" they want because they are willing to ignore and break the law and nobody seems to be able to stand up to them. All the branches of government are compromised by the neo-Confederate anti-Copernicans and all I hear from the"left" is their cowardice of allowing the right-wingers to force them to alienate 51%+ of the voting population with culture issues. Realpolitk is quaint because they are starry-eyed about thinking that red-state working class folks are gonna listen to logic instead of morons rambling about gay frogs.
The question is, then, what are they gonna do? It is the corruption!!! I know that the "left" or the opposition or whatever will not have a clue what to do about it because they will be lured into sacrificing the center for culture issues.
The Willie Horton of this election was the They/Them ads. The left owns that issue and we will pay for it with mass corruption and they sure did alienate me by their post-mortems with a FU to all who were not starry-eyed, so I will be motivated to be fine in trumpworld.
Maybe some in positions to frustrate Trump are digging in,
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/11/politics/democratic-governors-counter-trump/index.html
Reading quotes from _ _ _ _ _ is so mind numbing. Even his sentences are internally inconsistent. Perhaps that is the strategy: just spray it out and fog everyone's brain.