QOTD -- "Self-Medication From A Sundowning President"

 

The wonderful Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, writing in Substack, about the crazed and ignorant Malignant Fascists's trade war on Canada:

'There have been many trade conflicts in history, some of them more destructive than the US-Canada fight. But I don’t think there has ever been a dispute this stupid.

Bear in mind that this crisis is entirely gratuitous. Canada has done nothing wrong. Even if one buys into Trumpian nonsense about how every nation that sells us more than it buys is ripping us off, Canada isn’t a villain. Last year Canada did run a modest trade surplus with the United States in goods, but more than half of this imbalance was offset by a U.S. surplus in services. Overall trade between our nations was almost balanced.

So what is this about? Clearly, we’re looking at a symptom of deranged Trump syndrome. As Trump’s failures, from soaring fuel prices to plunging approval, multiply, he is doubling down on his disrespect for and attempted bullying of our northern neighbor and former ally. That is, you should think of this conflict not as something reflecting U.S. national interests, but as a form of self-medication from a sundowning president." (our emphasis)

Almost all of what animates the sick, narcissistic Malignant Fascist is his insatiable need to be praised and liked, regardless of whether the interests of the U.S. are at stake. When he's rejected, he lashes out in a fit of narcissistic wounding.  He's a national security threat, but no one in his MAGAt cult will call for his removal. 

 

QOTD -- "The Moose That Roared"

 

"... The point is not that Canada has “escalation dominance” — the ability to retaliate to every U.S. action with an even more damaging counterreaction — in a trade conflict with the United States. Rather, the point is that an all-out trade war would create a lot of pain in the U.S. in addition to inflicting severe damage to the Canadian economy. And all indications are that the Canadians will be much more willing to bear the pain of a trade war than Americans will – especially given that the great majority of Americans are already dissatisfied with Trump’s economic management.  [snip]

"The bottom line is that Trump is going to lose his trade war with Canada as thoroughly as he has lost his shooting war with Iran. But because he won’t face reality, trade with our northern neighbor will probably be disrupted until the narcissistic bully in the White House no longer controls trade policy..." -- Nobel laureate in economics Paul Krugman, writing in his Substack about "The Moose That Roared."  A good read and a good explainer on the unstable, deeply disturbed Malignant Fascist using "dominance display" as trade policy (as he does with all of his interactions) in his illegal, deeply deranged tariff war with our good neighbor and longtime ally Canada.   Krugman points out that among the "cards" Canada can play involve the millions of barrels of oil a day we get from them, the electric power they sell us, the auto parts they manufacture, as well as the aluminum and steel they produce.  But, hey, destroying a friendship and an economy to placate the MF's delicate ego and pea-sized brain makes it all worthwhile!

QOTD: Trump's Failed War On Iran

 

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman writes in Substack that the delusional and violent Malignant Fascist's war on Iran has already catastrophically failed, and that the MF is trying to extract himself while getting pushback from some war-minded allies in the U.S.  He closes his article with this:

"Can America still snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, or should it accept a deal that leaves us clearly worse off than we were before the war? The answer is that running away — if that is what Trump is doing — is now the right move. It’s better to accept a bad deal, one that leaves America much weaker than it was a few months ago, than to double down on a failed war. Time is not on our side: looming shortages of critical weapons, the imminent exhaustion of world oil inventories, and the lost support of our allies and the American public mean that this war needs to end soon."  (our emphasis)

The MF's recent backpedaling from his usual "peace is at hand" b.s. illustrates that a peace agreement -- one that will satisfy the warmongers and the Netanyahu government -- is far from completion, and that they may force him into a "bomb the hell out of them" mode.  Time will tell, but it's clear that Iran still has powerful cards yet to play that the foolhardy MF didn't count on.

(photo: The failed MF / Daybreak, Getty Images)

QOTD -- The Looting Of America

 

"...At this point Trump and his MAGA minions have stolen so much, committed so many crimes — not just theft but taking America to war illegally, abusing ICE detainees, and much more — that if and when they lose power many of them will face personal ruin at best, years of jail time at worst. This would happen even if they stopped committing more crimes.

"So there’s no incentive for them to end their criminality, or to end the attempts to bribe others to go along. Either they succeed in destroying America as we know it, or they won’t. And until that’s resolved, they may as well engage in even more corruption and criminal acts.

"Think of it this way: The gravity of what the Trumpists have already done has created a sort of black hole at the center of American political life — and the Trumpists have already crossed the event horizon, the boundary beyond which there is no escape. So they will do ever more terrible things, because they have nothing more to lose." -- Paul Krugman, concluding his Substack essay on "The Looting of America" by the Malignant Fascist and his MAGA minions.  It's been noted that the looting of America is all part of the "me first" MF / MAGA DNA.  And as the post below discusses, the Orwellian "Anti-Weaponization Fund" created to reimburse the MF's worst, most violent and un-democratic shock troops is just the latest openly corrupt outrage.  Krugman predicts (and we agree) the regime's criminality from top to bottom will continue and quite probably accelerate because there's no incentive for them to do otherwise. 

QOTD: Laughing Stock

 

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman writes in his Substack on the craven and weakened Malignant Fascist's junket to China, and how it shows his humiliation:

"One of Donald Trump’s signature claims is that Joe Biden made America a 'laughing stock', and that he has made us great again and respected around the world.

Yet this is the opposite of the truth. As a result of Trump’s petulant, self-destructive policies, much of the world now holds him and America as a whole in contempt. As the New York Times reported just before Trump’s visit to Beijing, the Chinese now talk routinely about 'American decline,' and describe Trump as 'an accelerator of American decay.'

To be clear, China has many significant problems of its own. It faces a demographic crisis: Its working age population has been shrinking for more than a decade. Its economy is deeply unbalanced, relying on unsustainable trade surpluses and unproductive investment to make up for inadequate consumer spending. Its economic growth is slowing. It suffers from high youth unemployment. Discontent is rising, held in check by autocratic, police-state measures.

But despite China’s domestic troubles, in geopolitical terms China is on the ascendant. Trump’s visit to Beijing is a field trip by a failing, flailing would-be autocrat pleading with a real strongman, who leads a much more serious country, to bail him out of the mess he’s made." (our emphasis)

Please read his entire piece for an understanding of what the MF has done to put China in the ascendancy, as we decline on his watch. 

QOTD: "Ignorance Is Strength"

 

Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman writes in his Substack column about the drastic cuts in the budgets for science programs by the moronic Malignant Fascist and his MAGA enablers. In a perceptive observation among many in his column, Dr. Krugman nails why Republicans have an issue with science. An excerpt from a good read:

"Why are there almost no Republican scientists? It’s not a mystery. GOP political orthodoxy includes positions that are at odds with the scientific consensus on multiple issues, ranging from the validity of the theory of evolution, to the reality of climate change, to the efficacy and safety of vaccines. In each case the scientific consensus is solidly grounded in evidence. But even before the rise of MAGA the U.S. right was increasingly hostile to evidence-based policymaking — especially, of course, where the evidence is unfavorable to fossil fuel interests or quack medicine, both financial mainstays of right-wing politics.

So scientists don’t support Republicans, and the feeling is mutual. Today’s Republican Party doesn’t like science or scientists. It doesn’t like having its preconceived views challenged by appeals to evidence. It knows that very few scientists are on its side electorally. In general, it sees scientific research as a threat to its grasp on political power.

Add in MAGA’s combination of rabid anti-intellectualism and allergy to any hint of criticism, and one has the makings of a drastic anti-science turn in policy. “Ignorance is strength” might was well be an official MAGA motto."  (our emphasis)

The crazed anti-intellectualism of the likes of, for example, failed politician Sarah "Winky" Palin and her later counterpart the profoundly ignorant MF have led us to the point where we're losing the competition with countries that are investing strongly in science, medicine and engineering, and who will overtake us in the near future if this course is not reversed. 

QOTD -- "The Billionaires' War"

 

"... You might think that presidential pardons for scammers, money launderers and outright crooks are unrelated to the ill-advised war on Iran. But corruption is a key feature of a billionaire-installed regime, and corruption and incompetence go hand in hand.

...[T]he vast wealth of tech billionaires has made many of them unconcerned with the little people’s lives — and deeply unpatriotic. If Americans are being brutalized and murdered by rogue ICE agents…well, that’s not their problem. If the Justice Department and the FBI are totally subverted and operate as Trump’s enforcers, they know that vindictive, unlawful tactics will never touch their lives. If Republican budget cuts decimate rural hospitals and deprive hundreds of thousands of health insurance…well, they have their own private doctors and clinics. If Trump starts an ill-conceived war that doubles the price of oil…well, they can certainly afford the higher gasoline bills for their limousines and yachts. And it won’t be their kids hunkered down in a bunker in the Middle East.

"So if you want to understand how this country has degenerated to such a state, how we can be spending nearly $2 billion a day attacking Iran without a clear endgame in sight, while children go without healthcare, nursing homes are understaffed because their workers have been deported, home electricity bills skyrocket due to data centers, consider who benefits and who isn’t hurt.

"This is a billionaire’s war, waged at everyone else’s expense." -- Nobel economist Paul Krugman, in his eponymous Substack, concluding an excellent explainer on Operation Epic Epstein Fury he titles "The Billionaires' War."  The Musks, Ellisons, Zuckerbergs, Bezos', and all the other "deeply unpatriotic" billionaires supporting the Malignant Fascist's regime for their own corrupt self-interest have much to account for, as they surely must, but only if we get the kind of Democrats we've called "junkyard dogs" in power to pursue justice.

QOTD: Trump's Continuing Tariff War

 

In his Substack column, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman discusses the ignorant Malignant Fascist's obsession with tariffs and his imagined power to levy them, despite its un-Constitutionality:

"In reality, by the time of the Supreme Court ruling, Trump’s assertion that tariffs are a magic elixir that solves all problems wasn’t convincing anyone. Independent voters disapproved of his tariff policy by a three-to-one margin. Accordingly, when the Court’s decision came down, some Democrats immediately worried that the ruling would help Trump politically, giving him an escape route from an unpopular and ineffectual policy. Here’s how G. Elliott Morris put it:

'As I see it, the Court, by striking down Trump’s tariffs, permitted him to defiantly retreat from one of his most unpopular policies; he could have simply blamed the judiciary and moved on.'

"Yet he didn’t. Why?

"It has been clear from the beginning that a primary motivation for tariffs was that they empowered Trump personally. They allowed him to punish governments he didn’t like, demand subservience from other countries as the price of lower tariffs, and offer waivers and exemptions to companies that put money in his own pocket. And maybe Trump can’t bear the thought of losing that power." (our emphasis)

The point about offering using "waivers and exemptions" to tariffs for companies so that the MF could line his and his family's pockets is the single greatest motivator for him.  Tariffs are a major tool for his extortion of companies and nations willing to pay bribes that benefit him and his corrupt family.  For that reason, and because his megalomaniacal ego won't admit defeat, the tariff war will continue.

 

QOTD: "Stupid Grifters Like Howard Lutnick"

 

Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman vents on one of the Malignant Fascist's insipid and morally bankrupt flunkies, Commerce Secretary Howard "Nutlick" Lutnick.  Read all of Krugman's takedown, "The Banality of MAGA Evil," where later he discusses Nutlick's former firm Cantor Fitzgerald's relationship with a cryptocurrency that's popular with international criminals:

"There are people in positions of great power in the U.S. government engaged in evil conspiracies against everything that is good and decent. Their conspiracies are far more extensive and damaging than almost anyone imagined. But there are no evil masterminds behind this. Only amoral, stupid grifters like Howard Lutnick.

During Trump 47’s first year, Lutnick, the Commerce secretary, was an omnipresent spokesman for Donald Trump’s policies, a constant presence on TV, especially the Sunday talk shows.

He was not impressive in that role. Unlike Scott Bessent, he lacked any hint of gravitas. He doesn’t have Pete Hegseth’s hair. Moreover, Lutnick’s Trump boosterism has been consistently and embarrassingly incompetent.

The only waves he has made are a result of his exceptional combination of stupidity and offensive tone-deafness."  (our emphasis)

Yesterday, Nutlick appeared before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee and finally admitted visiting the notorious island of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and of having a social and business relationship with him long after he had previously acknowledged.

(photo: Stupid grifter, left, and deceased child predator)

 

"Democracy Will Not Die In Darkness"

 

It's dying in the open, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman suggests in his Substack column today, picking up on the ironic and pompous Washington Post motto.

"The newspaper that broke the story of Watergate and brought down Richard Nixon has been Bezosified, its editorial independence destroyed and its newsroom increasingly eviscerated. Many other institutions, from other media organizations to some universities to law firms, have also become enablers of the regime. Big business has caved almost completely.

But it turns out that predictions of creeping authoritarianism both underestimated and overestimated MAGA. Almost everyone, myself included, underestimated how far MAGA would go in engaging in open violence and abuse of power against those it considers enemies. On the other hand, we overestimated the movement’s impulse control, its ability to mask its tyrannical goals until its power was fully consolidated. [snip]

Everything points to a blue wave in November. Yet many people in MAGA simply can’t accept losing power — among other things, their actions over the past year mean that if they lose power, many of them will go to jail.

Trump is now calling for 'nationalizing' the midterms, meaning to put voting and the counting of votes under his administration’s control. He can’t do that, but his demand is a clear sign that he will not accept the public’ s verdict in November.

So it’s just being realistic to say that MAGA will try, somehow, to prevent voters from having their say. Will ICE try to prevent blue districts from voting? If that fails, will they reject the results, in a midterm version of Jan. 6? Call me alarmist, but remember: The alarmists have been right, and the people telling us to calm down have been wrong, every step of the way."  (our emphasis)

It's not alarmist to see the un-American, anti-democracy actions of the demagogic Malignant Fascist and his minions out in broad daylight.  It's just a matter of putting two and two together.  The MF won't stand for another impeachment, a justified humiliation and attempt to bridle him in his first term.  Nor will he stand for a Dem majority in Congress to undo his growing fascistic, militarized, and crony capitalist state.  It will take everything to stop his attempts to corrupt the mid-term elections.   The fight is on and we have to win it.

(photo: Scott Olson / Getty Images)

 

QOTD -- "MAGA's Manly Manufacturing Misfire"

 

"... In the modern world nations mostly don’t sell each other completed consumer goods. Instead, the majority of trade involves sales of goods that are used to produce other goods. Last year the United States imported slightly less than $1.3 trillion worth of consumer goods plus autos, while importing more than $1.6 trillion worth of capital goods and industrial inputs. What this means in practice is that tariffs, which raise the prices of those capital goods and inputs, raise the production costs of U.S. manufacturers, in many cases making them less competitive with foreign producers.

"So Trump’s plan to create manly jobs has, predictably, been a bust — a bust as complete in its way as his failure to reduce prices. The only difference is that in the case of jobs he actually tried to do something. But what he did was counterproductive.

"No doubt Trump will continue to give speeches boasting about nonexistent success, telling voters that we have the hottest economy in world history, etc. But his attempt to gaslight the nation about jobs will go no better than his gaslighting on the cost of living." -- Nobel economist Paul Krugman, concluding his essay at his Substack, on "MAGA's Manly Manufacturing Misfire."  The Malignant Fascist's economic illiteracy, compounded by his loony economic advisors/ sycophants (think Peter Navarro, Kevin Hassett, Scott Bessant, etc.), is sabotaging the strong economy (yes) that Biden left him, contrary to the MF's laughable campaign promises on inflation, jobs (especially in "manly" sectors like manufacturing and construction), and trade.   And it's only going to get worse for the non- oligarch population.

QOTD -- "Why Trump's Viciousness Matters"

 

"... Now, Trump is purposely breaking norms and engaging in open expressions of hate and bigotry. And among a set of people, this serves as a signal that it’s now socially acceptable to do the same – look, for example, atthe extremely racist and Nazi-praising chats among young Republican activists leaked to Politico. While these young MAGA-landers were outed and chastised, it’s clear that within MAGA-world emulating Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric is considered a way of signaling that you are loyal to the movement.

"And it’s also clear that if Trumpism persists, we are facing a future in which such behavior is no longer publicly unacceptable. Because Trump’s remarks about the murder of the Reiners weren’t just his personal venting. They were a symptom and a symbol of his systematic destruction of our norms, our humanism, just as he tried to destroy the norms of American democracy on January 6, 2021. It’s a profoundly nihilistic vision for America.

"And one of these days, I predict, history will judge harshly those who stayed silent." -- Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, at his eponymous Substack, on the Malignant Fascist's "profoundly nihilistic vision for America."  If anyone had been sent by a foreign enemy to destroy the United States from within, they couldn't have picked a more suitable candidate than the MF (hmmm).

 

Quote Of The Day

 

Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman writes today in his Substack column about the deranged Malignant Fascist and his cult's hatred of democracy, and how it's affecting our allies.  An excerpt, but be sure to read his whole column:

"There was a time, not so long ago, when America was the leader of the free world. It was the first among equals within an alliance of nations bound together by shared values — above all a commitment to democracy and civil liberties. From London to Berlin to Tokyo, in the aftermath of genocide and the utter devastation of World War II, America – as Ronald Reagan put it – was the shining city on the hill. We should never forget that Americans played the pivotal roles in the Nuremberg trials, upholding the rule of law in an impartial and transparent manner in the trials of those who had committed unspeakable atrocities and acts of war. 'Ich bin ein Berliner,' declared John F. Kennedy in Berlin, as East Germany tried to trap its own people behind the Berlin Wall.

MAGA, however, doesn’t want to be part of that world. In fact, it doesn’t want a world of democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law to exist. The Trump administration has become especially hostile to Europe, precisely because the Europeans are trying to hold on to the values MAGA is trying to destroy at home.

Last week the Trump administration released its updated National Security Strategy for the United States. Much of the document is vague, meandering and self-contradictory. But it becomes clear and focused when it turns to Europe. Quite simply, Trump and those around him hate Europe. And they hate it because it still honors the ideals they’re abandoning in America."  (our emphasis)

We noted earlier today ("The Bad" and our Skeets of the Day) that with his "National Security Strategy," the Putin-obeying MF has given the Kremlin a huge gift, one which they say is "largely consistent" with their world view of spheres of influence, white nationalism and fascist imperialism. Our European allies are rightfully deeply concerned, as is Ukraine, about this isolationist, fascist manifesto.  If it wasn't absolutely clear that the MF ("Agent Krasnov") is acting as a stooge for the Kremlin, it should be by now. America should be clear too, before time on our democracy runs out.

QOTD: "Trump Seems To Be Collapsing...."

 

Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman writes on Substack about the raging and demented Malignant Fascist's decline and his "brand's" connection with the crashing cryptocurrency grift:

"Trump seems to be collapsing on multiple fronts, with the collapse on each front reinforcing the collapse on others. The Epstein affair is coming to a head even as the public loses all faith in his economic policy, and the whole structure of fear on which his regime rests appears to be evaporating.

He also seems to be unraveling personally. We always knew that President 'Piggy' despised women and admired tyrants, seeing nothing wrong with hacking up your critics with a bone saw. But even a few months ago I think he would have been self-controlled enough to be less obvious about it.

I don’t know how this ends, but all of a sudden a rapid implosion looks possible. No, I don’t know what that looks like. But the U.S. political universe looks very different than it did a few weeks ago."

One significant example of the MF's financial woes is the fall of Trump Media Stock (DJT), which has produced zero growth and has wiped out $5 billion in his family's wealth. Small wonder he's behaving like a, well, pig as he sees his money, political stock, and his "brand" spiral down.

 

Quotes Of The Day -- The Democratic Big Sweep

 

"... Both Trump and his administration are less interested in helping ordinary Americans than they are in fulfilling their idiosyncratic program of austerity, pain and deprivation. They are all stick, no carrot.

It’s against this backdrop that voters just went to the polls and cast millions of votes against the president by way of Democratic candidates, moderate and progressive, who stood for both affordability and the nation’s most cherished values, who pledged to use their time in office to protect their new constituents from the provocations and assaults coming from the government in Washington.

If these elections had gone the other way — if the Democratic Party had underperformed or even lost one of these contests — then every commentator under the sun would say, rightfully, that Democrats were in disarray; that even the president’s deep unpopularity couldn’t keep them afloat with voters.

But Tuesday was a Democratic victory. And the party didn’t just win — it won by commanding majorities on virtually every field of play. In polls, in focus groups and now at the ballot box, the public is telling us something very clearly: Trump is simply too much. If this is an opportunity for Democrats to win back lost ground — and it is — then it is also a warning to a Republican Party that has tied its entire identity to the man from Mar-a-Lago." --  Jamelle Bouie, NYT, concluding that Trump is an albatross around the neck of his rotted out party/ cult.

____________________

 

"... If you look at recent Republican campaigns and positioning, it’s striking how much energy they’re putting into issues that just don’t matter much to ordinary Americans. Republicans may be obsessed with trans athletes, but most people aren’t. Polls and yesterday’s elections suggest that rants about the menace of illegal aliens have a lot less traction with the public than G.O.P. apparatchiks imagine — and that Americans don’t like the spectacle of masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street.

"This disconnect between party priorities and what matters to ordinary people seems to me like a much bigger deal than Democratic 'wokeness,' which was always exaggerated anyway.  [snip]

"Last night’s blue wave won’t stop MAGA’s attempt to consolidate authoritarian rule in America. If anything, they’ll redouble efforts to rig the 2026 midterms, although California, by approving a major redistricting, has largely neutralized their gerrymandering plot.

"A couple of months ago I noted that previous examples of autocrats who consolidated power after winning an election, from Hitler to Viktor Orban, did so while they were still popular. I asked whether a despised autocrat could do the same. After yesterday, it’s clear that Trump really is despised. Can he still end our democracy?

"I guess we’ll find out." -- Paul Krugman, in his eponymous Substack, on last night's historic Democratic victories coast-to-coast and which party is out of touch with voters.  Voters plainly said the poor Trump economy and the rising cost/ loss of health insurance were the two biggest issues in their minds, and Democrats are more trusted than MAGAt Republicans on both. 

QOTD -- The Economic Cockroaches

 

"... Investors seem to have decided that the wonders of AI matter more than Trump’s tariff madness, so we’re seeing a stock market surge dominated by technology companies. Aside from the question of whether this is a bubble, it’s important to be aware that the top 10 percent of households own 87 percent of equities, while the bottom half own almost no stock at all and gain nothing from a rising market. [snip]

"Many economists — actually, all the economists I know — are worried about a potential downturn. The AI boom is troublingly reminiscent of the 90s tech bubble. After the sudden bankruptcies first of a subprime auto lender, then an auto parts supplier built on hidden loans, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon suggested parallels between bad lending in the private credit market and the bad subprime lending that brought on the 2008 crisis. To quote Dimon: 'I probably shouldn’t say this, but when you see one cockroach, there are probably more.'

"But I’ll try to assess these concerns another day. My point for now is that even though we haven’t had a recession yet, the frozen state of the U.S. economy has already made life much worse for many workers.” -- Nobel economist Paul Krugman, in his Substack, on one reason why "The U.S. Economy is in Worse Shape Than it Looks."  Krugman, of course, brings the receipts on other fronts such as the rate of business hiring, job postings, unemployment, and wage growth.  Nobody in their right mind is cheering for a recession, or worse, but knowing what the incompetent Malignant Fascist is leading us into is fair warning, especially to those who thought this multi- bankrupted, functionally illiterate "business genius" president was the only one who could "fix it."  He seems to be "fixing" the economy all right.

 

QOTD -- A Turning Tide?

"It’s irrefutable now: Trump is nakedly following the playbook of autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban. As his poll numbers fall, he is rushing to lock in permanent power by punishing his opponents and intimidating everyone else into submission. Craven congressional Republicans and a complicit Supreme Court have abetted Trump’s destruction of our democratic safeguards and norms.

"Yet Trump has a significant problem that neither Putin nor Orban faced. When Putin and Orban were consolidating their autocratics, they were genuinely popular. They were perceived by the public as effective and competent leaders. Just nine months into his presidency, Trump, by contrast, is deeply unpopular. He is increasingly seen as chaotic and inept. As David Frum says, this means that he is in a race against time. Can he consolidate power before he loses his aura of inevitability? Will those who run major institutions – particularly corporate CEOs – understand that we are at a crucial juncture, and that by accommodating Trump they have more to lose than by standing up to him?

"To put it bluntly, is the Jimmy Kimmel affair the harbinger of a failed Trumpian putsch?..." -- Nobel economist Paul Krugman, in his Substack, wondering if the tide is turning against the Malignant Fascist's authoritarian steamroller, especially after the Kimmel censorship affair.  The "emperor with no clothes" (from the Hans Christian Anderson tale) is how the Malignant Fascist is often portrayed by cartoonists and is a perfect analogy -- the vain, clueless emperor parading around nearly naked with the townspeople afraid to point out his nakedness until an innocent boy points out the truth and the spell is broken.  Those too afraid to point out who and what the Malignant Fascist and stand up to him don't deserve to call themselves patriotic Americans. 

QOTD: Shithole Country

In his Substack column, Nobel Prize laureate Paul Krugman looks at the outrageous ICE raid on the Hyundai battery plant in Georgia and notes that potential foreign investors are thinking twice about building plants in the U.S.  Krugman's conclusion:

"As far as we can tell, what happened in Georgia was a symptom of ICE running out of control. The agency has been told by Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration czar, to meet a quota of 3,000 arrested immigrants a day. So when its agents raided a facility full of nonwhite people, it just grabbed them, chained them, and locked them up.

The Hyundai raid hasn’t received much attention in the U.S. news media, which is arguably understandable given everything else going on. But the diplomatic and economic fallout will be immense. Trump has been saying that his policies have brought in $17 Musks trillion in foreign investment, which would be an absurd number even if America were behaving like a normal country with rule of law. But it’s even more absurd given the Hyundai incident.

I’m not a business executive, but if I were making decisions for a multinational corporation I’d be really hesitant about making large investments in a nation where foreigners never know whether they will in effect be kidnapped by masked thugs who supposedly work for the government but are clearly running amok. I don’t know about you, but I’d be strongly tempted to consider such a nation a shithole country." (our emphasis)

Krugman asks us to imagine if American workers at an American plant in Mexico had been treated identically, and how we would react: no more investments there.  That's what's going through the minds of foreign companies, even those being extorted by the Trump regime to invest here to avoid trade penalties. 

(photo: ICE detaining South Korean workers at Hyundai plant. Corey Bullard / U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement / AP)

 

QOTD -- Fossil Fool

 

"Like many U.S. institutions, the European Union has abysmally failed the Trump test. The EU is an economic superpower and could have retaliated effectively against Trump’s illegal tariffs — illegal under both U.S. and international law. Instead, Europe did nothing and even made some apparent concessions.

"But notice my wording: apparent concessions. The optics of the Trump-EU deal were humiliating, and optics matter. If you examine the substance, however, it starts to look as if Europe played Trump for a fool. Specifically, a fossil fool.

"The EU made two sort-of pledges to Trump. First, that it would invest $600 billion in the United States. Second, that it would buy $750 billion worth of U.S. energy, mainly oil and gas, over the next three years. The first promise was empty, while the second was nonsense..." -- Paul Krugman, in his Substack, on one of the many times and ways the moron Malignant Fascist got played while making one of his "deals." It's bad enough that American institutions and organizations bow to this buffoonish blob;  it's disheartening when foreign governments and institutions, who have more leverage in most cases, try to appease him. The Europeans at least found a way to make it seem like he was the "winner," playing on both his profound ignorance and narcissism.  Now, they'll simply pass the cost of the tariffs on to American consumers.  A fool's bargain made by a fool.

 

QOTD -- The Shart Of The Deal, Cont.

 

Paul Krugman on the "trade deal" made with Japan -- nothing written, not legally binding -- that is just as stupid (and damaging to America) as the Malignant Fascist himself:

You might imagine that making a deal with one of our most important trading partners must have involved a team of experienced, skilled negotiators backed by economic experts. But in reality it was clearly pure amateur hour. Look at the photo at the top of this post, from CNBC. It shows Trump with a card in front of him laying out one much-hyped though probably meaningless part of the deal, a promise by Japan to invest in America. How much? The card says $400 billion, but that number was crossed out by hand and replaced with $500 billion, which somehow became $550 billion in the final announcement.

Next thing you’re going to tell me that Trump will start modifying weather forecasts with a Sharpie. Oh, wait.

So Trump’s negotiators probably had no idea what they were doing, and didn’t realize that in their frantic rush to conclude a deal they were agreeing to tariffs that would be highly unfavorable to U.S. manufacturing.

Why were they frantic? Trump has been the subject of considerable mockery over having made big promises about his ability to negotiate trade deals, then coming up empty month after month. So he and his people were surely anxious to make some major announcements before his self-imposed deadline of Aug. 1 — anxious enough not to realize quite what they were agreeing to.

And of course they may also have hoped that a splashy trade deal would move the news cycle off Jeffrey Epstein.

Now that other countries have seen what Japan was able to get away with, I won’t be surprised if we see more deals in the near future. Will these deals be just as stupid? Probably.

The soundbite media will doubtless not take any time to present the truth about this "deal," just as it didn't with the ballyhooed UK or Vietnamese "deals."  If you read their accounts, they're treating these shams with maximum chin-stroking seriousness.  Meanwhile, the regime populated by people judged for their loyalty rather than their competence, working for a world-class moron, continues to work on ruining America, one "deal" at a time.