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ChrisWeigant

(1,012 posts) Fri Apr 18, 2025, 08:27 PM Apr 2025

Friday Talking Points -- Epic Failure Everywhere You Look

This weekend will mark the end of the third month of Donald Trump's second term in office. Only 45 more fun-filled months to go!

Sorry if that's a bit disheartening, but at this point it's hard to find much in the way of optimism in the political world. And we're certainly not alone in this view.

Let's start with the economy. Trump continued his "red light, green light" tariff game this week, first announcing that smart phones and other electronics were exempt from his insanely-high tariffs on China. Green light! But within a day or so, the administration was contradicting itself -- tariffs would be slapped on electronics, but they're still mulling over a number to choose. Red light!

Countries attempting to cut deals with the Trump administration have no earthly idea what Trump is even looking for, leading to utter chaos in the negotiations. China is (so far) not interested in cutting a deal on their own, preferring to wait and see if political/economic pressures force Trump to backtrack some more. Manufacturers in this country are getting slammed by all their foreign orders drying up -- since right now the "Made in America" brand is pretty toxic worldwide.

The chair of the Federal Reserve indicated that inflation is pretty likely with all the tariff chaos, and Trump immediately threatened to fire him (which he cannot legally do). For what could be the first time in Trump's second term, he got some major pushback on this notion from the Treasury secretary, who (quite rightly) pointed out that the markets would crash in a spectacular and epic way if Jerome Powell were to be fired for no reason.

All of this is taking a big toll on American consumers:

As consumers and businesses face widespread uncertainty around the Trump administration's whipsawing trade policies, a widely followed survey from the University of Michigan found that consumers' expectations for the next year's inflation jumped to 6.7 percent, the highest reading since 1981. It's the fourth consecutive month that consumer sentiment has worsened, as people across demographics say they believe unemployment and inflation will get substantially worse.

"The Trump trade war is terrifying consumers who cannot make up their mind between what is more likely, a recession or an inflation outbreak," Chris Rupkey, chief economist at the research firm Fwdbonds, wrote in a note to clients. "The economic outlook looks increasingly grim."

This is reflected in Trump's own sagging poll numbers as well. Depending on which poll-of-polls average you look at, Trump's job approval numbers are underwater (more people disapproving than approve) by anywhere from 4.2 to 6.7 points. There's only one president in modern history with a record that is worse, and that is Donald Trump, in his first term. His polling on the economy and inflation is now underwater by double digits -- even though a big reason he was elected was to fix the economy and tame inflation.

If you look deeper into the numbers, things only get worse for Trump:

A CBS/YouGov poll shared earlier this week found that a majority of Americans believe the economy is backsliding in the early days of Trump 2.0. 53% of respondents told pollsters that they believe the economy is getting worse under Donald Trump and a majority of Americans expected the economy to slow or enter a recession in the next year.

56% of respondents said they disapproved of Trump's handling of the economy, up from 49% in March. Nearly 60% of those polled said they opposed new tariffs on U.S. imports. 65% of Americans said they expect the tariffs to make things worse in the short term and 42% expected the duties to have a negative impact in the long term. Compare that to just 8% of respondents who said tariffs would improve the economy immediately and 34% who thought they would have a positive effect given time.

CNN data analyst Harry Enten called the results "the worst set of polling data that Donald Trump has had in his entire second term as president."

"The majority of Americans think that the economy is getting worse," Enten said. "It's an 11-point jump from November to now, and of course Donald Trump won the 2024 election because he promised to fix the economy."

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post got a jump on everyone (us included) who will soon be writing to mark Trump's first 100 days in office, with his first-out-of-the-gate article titled: "Trump Is Wrapping Up 100 Days Of Historic Failure." His list is a pretty comprehensive condemnation of Trump's performance to date:

By any reasonable measure, President Donald Trump's first 100 days will be judged an epic failure.

He has been a legislative failure....

He has been an economic failure....

He has been a foreign-policy failure....

He has been a failure in the eyes of friends, having launched a trade war against Canada, Mexico, Europe and Japan; enraged Canada with talk of annexation; threatened Greenland and Panama; and cleaved the NATO alliance.

He has been a failure in the eyes of foes, as an emboldened China menaces Taiwan, punches back hard in the trade war and spreads its global influence to fill the vacuum left by Trump's retreat from the world.

He has been a constitutional failure....

He has been a failure in public opinion.

One of Trump's grandiose campaign promises was that he would -- in the blink of an eye! -- end Russia's war of aggression and conquest against Ukraine. Now it appears he is just going to give up on this effort and "move on" from it. Here is Secretary of State Marco Rubio explaining Trump's new stance: "I think the president's probably at a point where he's going to say, 'Well, we're done.' We're not going to continue with this endeavor for weeks and months on end." So much for being able to get a ceasefire within 24 hours of being sworn in (which is what Trump explicitly promised on the campaign trail). Trump found out this wasn't true, and he is bored with the whole thing now, so he's just going to walk away. Talk about an epic foreign policy failure!

Trump's "constitutional failure" is currently front and center in the eyes of the country, as Department of Justice lawyers argue in court that Trump should be allowed to snatch anybody he wants (even, according to Trump, "homegrown" citizens) off the streets, not bother charging them with any crime in a U.S. court of law, and then send them to the worst foreign prison he can find where they will be held for an indeterminate period. The U.S. is paying millions of dollars for this service, but Trump is also arguing that he simply cannot do a thing to get anyone back, even if the administration admits in court that that person was sent due to "an administrative error."

Whenever Republicans (including even Trump) used to demagogue against immigrants, they'd always be careful to qualify their scapegoating by saying: "Of course, we support legal immigration," but that no longer applies. Marco Rubio can cancel anyone's visa he feels like, even if his own State Department finds there were not sufficient grounds to do so. Having a green card doesn't help either, because Rubio and Trump simply don't care. A U.S. citizen just spent more than 24 hours in jail in Florida, for the apparent crime of "being Hispanic." Government emails are being sent to U.S. citizens which begin with the ominous line: "It is time for you to leave the United States," giving people seven days to "self-deport." Students are having their visas revoked for exercising their constitutional right to free speech -- because Marco Rubio and Donald Trump don't agree with what they say. Judicial orders to the administration are either being outright ignored or mocked by the president and his administration. Judges are being demonized by Trump himself, as he gets bolder and bolder in his defiance.

This could all be about to get a whole lot worse, too. In two days, on Easter Sunday, Trump is due to get a report from the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security, on the situation at the southern border. In a little-noticed move, the administration has put U.S. soldiers in charge of a thin strip of the entire border in all border states except Texas, which could be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. But Trump's got an answer for that too:

On that date [April 20], the president will receive a report from the secretary of defense and the secretary of homeland security "about the conditions at the southern border of the United States and any recommendations regarding additional actions that may be necessary to obtain complete operational control of the southern border, including whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807." That act gives the president broad authority to use the military on American soil. As the Brennan Center explains, "The statute... is the primary exception to the Posse Comitatus Act, under which federal military forces are generally barred from participating in civilian law enforcement activities."

The president can do so "when requested by a state's legislature, or governor, if the legislature cannot be convened, to address an insurrection against that state... to address an insurrection, in any state, which makes it impracticable to enforce the law, or to address an insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy, in any state, which results in the deprivation of constitutionally secured rights, and where the state is unable, fails, or refuses to protect, said rights."

. . .

The president alone gets to decide what constitutes an "insurrection," "rebellion," or "domestic violence." And once troops are deployed, it will not be easy to get them off the streets in any place that the president thinks is threatened by "radical left lunatics."

. . .

If Americans take to the streets to protest the president's invocation of the Insurrection Act, the president might use those protests as an excuse to extend the deployment of troops. The prospect of using the military against Americans is a nightmare and would mark a further descent into authoritarianism.

The Washington Post ran a sobering article this week, where they went out and talked to people in America who had come here to escape tyranny. They had some chilling things to say about what they see happening to America:

The Washington Post spoke with 12 people from six authoritarian countries -- some who fled left-wing regimes and others right-wing ones. They described an unsettling feeling of déjà vu in the initial months of the Trump administration: the attacks on courts and the press; the threats to universities and law firms; the hollowing out of agencies; the scapegoating and mass deportation of immigrants; the marginalization of transgender people.

. . .

"It honestly feels like I just switched rooms on the Titanic," said Miguel Mendoza, a former political prisoner in Nicaragua who lives in Orlando.

. . .

Mendoza fears the United States could be on a similar path as his native country. The Trump administration's targeting of immigrants, and the way it has disappeared and deported some without any court hearing, remind him of how [former Nicaraguan leader Daniel] Ortega flouted due process laws. The detention of noncitizen students for social media posts hits close to home.

"That's exactly how they came for me in Nicaragua," he said.

This is where we are, as a country. People who fled tyrannical dictators are seeing exactly what took place where they came from. Except it's happening right here in America this time. This is an outrage. Resistance to much of this is growing, which is a good sign because it means most Americans agree that this should not be who we are as a nation. For the time being, we still have the constitutional right to protest such abuses of power. Because staying silent is no longer an option.

Democratic resistance to Trump appears to be growing. We have to give both Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Honorable Mention awards this week, for continuing to pull in overflowing audiences to their "Fight Oligarchy!" political rallies. One such event pulled in a crowd of 36,000 -- the largest crowd Bernie Sanders has ever raised (which, knowing Bernie rallies, is pretty impressive). But they're also pulling in huge crowds in places like Idaho and Montana as well -- it's not just blue states or even blue cities. Bernie even made a surprise appearance at the Coachella music festival, and A.O.C. was named the most likely Democratic nominee for president in 2028 by Nate Silver.

But this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week goes to Senator Chris Van Hollen, from Maryland. Van Hollen, using the political weight of being a United States senator, went down to El Salvador and essentially shamed their government into allowing him to meet with one of the prisoners being held in perhaps the worst prison in the Western Hemisphere.

Kilmar Abrego García is at the heart of the unfolding constitutional battle between the judiciary and Donald Trump. His name might eventually become as famous as Brown (v. Board of Education) or Dred Scott, since it seems certain that a monumental Supreme Court decision is needed, at this point.

Neither Donald Trump nor the leader of El Salvador (who calls himself "the world's coolest dictator" ) had even given proof that García was still alive -- because they don't really care if he is or not. So Van Hollen flew down to El Salvador and browbeat their government into allowing him to visit with García. This included attempting to drive to the prison only to be halted by a military checkpoint set up to prevent him from getting there. Eventually, the political pressure worked and Van Hollen was allowed to meet with García.

This was a highly symbolic victory, but it hasn't changed the facts -- García is still being held in the prison and Trump is fighting tooth and nail to keep him there. Van Hollen explained the reason for his visit very simply: "We need to make sure that the court system works and due process works, because if you take it away for any individual it's a very short road to taking it away for every American."

Either we live in a country where the rule of law is supreme and every person gets to have their day in court if they are accused of wrongdoing, or we live in a country where the leader can disappear anyone he feels like, without any consequences whatsoever for doing so (even in error). One is democracy. One is a dictatorship.

We can't have both, and the time is coming when the Supreme Court weighs in on which one America is going to be, moving forward.

Chris Van Hollen didn't just issue a strongly-worded statement. He didn't just do the minimum. He didn't just sit back to see what would happen. Instead, he took it upon himself to shine a spotlight on the abuse of American justice in a very personal way. He did not give up when his efforts were first thwarted by the Salvadorian government. He persisted.

For doing so, Senator Chris Van Hollen is easily our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week this week.

[Congratulate Senator Chris Van Hollen on his Senate contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

This is somewhat of a repeat award, or more of a followup award from last week. Last week we provided all the reasons why Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's appearance at the White House was so problematic.

But we didn't mention the photo.

The year isn't even one-third over, but we have to say this is a good candidate for our annual "Worst Photo Op" of the year award.

The photo shows Whitmer, in the gaudily remade Oval Office (you can just hear Trump ordering: "More fake gold! Make everything gold!" just by looking at the photo), being so embarrassed to be lending her political support to two truly odious executive orders Trump was signing that she actually covered her face in shame when photographers tried to take her photo.

So it's not really a new award, but we did want to point out that the whole thing was so awful that Whitmer tried to block even being photographed at it. We don't know if it'll eventually win this December, but it's easily the Worst Photo Op of the year so far....

[Contact Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on her official contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.]

Volume 792 (4/18/25)

We find it necessary once again to present our talking points in the form of a rant this week. We simply couldn't contain it all in separate talking points.

Stand up for America

The rest of the world used to look up to America. Now they don't even want to vacation here. We used to lead the world. Now the world looks on in horror at what we have become. We used to collectively stand for: "Truth, justice, and the American way." Now we get a firehose of lies from our president, justice is whatever he feels like at the moment, and even the courts are being ignored by him.

Investors are fleeing government bonds and the U.S. dollar. The stock market seems to head downward every day. Nobody has a clue what's going to come from the White House next, since Trump quite obviously has no idea what he's doing. If the economy looks so grim three months into his term, what's it going to look like in six months, or next year? Even people who voted for Trump because they thought he could do good things for the economy are getting pretty disillusioned with all the chaos. And that's before all the farmers take a big hit on the world's markets with this year's crops -- meaning Trump will probably have to bail them out again with taxpayer dollars, just like he had to do last time.

But the worst part is watching Trump trample on the rule of law. He has weaponized the Department of Justice to the point where all they care about is persecuting Trump's enemies. They do not respect the rule of law, they defy it.

According to Trump, anyone he says is evil deserves anything Trump wants to do to them. According to the Republicans, we should all just go along with all of this. They join in demonizing this person or that, while these people sit in jail, despite having done nothing wrong. But they're missing the point. It's not the individual people involved -- it is the core principle that people should not rot in prison on the say-so of one man. Accusations of wrongdoing require presenting evidence of that wrongdoing in a court of law. If the evidence is convincing, then punishments are appropriate. But if there is no evidence -- if it is all supposition or insinuation or just lies made up out of whole cloth -- then no punishment can rightly be applied.

It's not about one person jailed for writing an op-ed in the school newspaper. It's not about one person mistakenly sent to a foreign prison for no reason at all. It's about the fact that this is all so wrong and un-American. It's about freedom, and justice, and basic legal rights guaranteed to all by the U.S. Constitution.

More than that, it is about who we are as a country. Are we a country where people wearing masks and no uniforms can snatch you off the street, even if you are in this country legally and have broken no law, or are we a country who condemns such tyranny? Are we a country where anyone can be jailed just because of their ethnicity, even if they are a U.S. citizen? Or are we a country where people still have rights?

Are we a country where the president dictates what universities can and cannot study, or discuss, or protest? Or are we a country where the freedom to do so is guaranteed to all by our founding document? Are we a country that erases the parts of our own history that the president doesn't like to hear about, or are we a country that cherishes the truth above all else, even when it is an uncomfortable truth?

Are we a country where the Supreme Court has the final say on what is constitutional or not, or are we a country where such decisions can be flat-out ignored?

America is now flirting with authoritarianism. Donald Trump wants to rule as a dictator. He doesn't want judges ruling against him, instead he wants kingly powers to do as he pleases.

We should speak out against all this -- all of us. "We the people" rule in this country, after all. And now is the time to speak up. There's a very famous poem written by a German pastor right after World War II which warns of what can happen if we don't:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -- Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out -- Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -- Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me -- and there was no one left to speak for me.

Trump is coming for immigrants, legal or not. Trump is coming for universities and law firms and students who protest and media organizations and museums and too many others to even list. Who knows who he'll be coming for next? Who knows how long it'll be before he gets around coming for you?

Don't wait. Speak out. Trampling on anyone's constitutional rights is trampling on all our constitutional rights. It's not about any one person. It's about freedom and justice and truth and the American way.

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com