This started out to be a simple critique using a number of Trump's posts on Truth Social, but it turned into so much more.
Donald Trump has lost his grip on reality so much that we need to tell him. The problem is, over and over again, he hasn't listened. The other problem is that his sycophants refuse to tell him the truth because it'll get him angry. Then again, some of them are living in their own world, too. It's tough to tell anymore.
If there was a way to tell Donald something that didn't get filtered by his staff, that would be great. We know that he watches MSNBC all the time, and yet he doesn't understand anything they say.
Let's start with how Donald sees our economic relations with other countries.
It's always that we're being treated unfairly and money being stolen from us. Ironic for the greatest thief of all to make that statement.
Once again, where things are going poorly for him, he has to blame incompetent U.S. leadership, meaning Joe Biden. But we can steal both the money and the companies back. There's always an excuse for Trump. When it's good he's responsible for it, when it's bad it's Joe Biden's fault.
He doesn't need to watch Fox News, because he's got people on his staff to watch for him and make him clips.
Unfortunately, it's only ones that reinforce his dream world.
People who have massaged his ego before, continue to do it. Here with Hassett saying jobs are growing and saying his policies are working, when Trump is throwing the US economy down the toilet.
Then you've got Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce, saying that tariffs are just great.
"COME BACK TO AMERICA" and "BUILT IN AMERICA" are great slogans, but that's all they are, slogans. There are things that will never be built in America, because it's just not practical. That's why we have trade with other countries. We make the things that work best here, because it makes sense. We buy products from other countries because it makes sense to do so. You can't make everything in America. You can't be an economic isolationist. It just doesn't work.
People are seeing the effects of these insane tariffs already. That's what a trade war does. He'll just go back and forth and back and forth until no one can afford anything. Because the price will no longer be determined by its manufacturing and distribution costs, but by the huge sales tax that tariffs are.
Being stroked by the Secretary of Energy serves no purpose. Every single sentence is a lie, but it makes Trump feel like he's doing the right thing when he's throwing the economy into a tailspin.
"President Trump is a businessman." He is, but he's also very unsuccessful. No points scored on that one. We'll just skip over the thank God part.
"... a master negotiator practicing his craft." How can you expect Trump to ever change his mind when he's got people like this telling him he looks good when the emperor has no clothes?
Then Trump puts out public relations fluff like Wednesday's article on whitehouse.gov called: President Trump is a Remaking America into a Manufacturing Superpower. President Trump is driving companies away, like he kept accusing New York of losing, when they were prosecuting him for his 34 felonies and ready to take his $500 million in fines.
Trump is ruining business and the economy due to his instability. One day tariffs are on, the next they're off, then they're on again, then they're off, but they are restored in a different way on different products. No business or businessman can live in a environment like that.
Another article he put out was: Manufacturing is Roaring Back Under President Donald J. Trump. Guess what? It says exactly what Kevin parroted in the Fox news clip above. Exactly.
Then there's We'll Never Tire of Winning Under President Donald Trump. So much winning that people will say, "Oh, please Mr. President, we can't take all this winning." He's actually said that several times in rally speeches. He loves to congratulate himself using the third person.
I decided to watch MSNBC to get their evening take on current events.
Chris Hayes led with a clip of Trump saying that the European Union was put together in order to take advantage of the United States. Nobody has ever made that up before. The European Union was set up in order to stop trade wars, to loosen restrictions on products going over borders. It also created their own currency. While the Euro and the Chinese yuan are competing with the dollar as the primary reserve currency, the dollar is still the most used. Trump could change that and the BRICS countries could create their own currency, taking advantage of the unreliability of the dollar. What happens when other countries don't want to buy our debt anymore? Economists are asking that question.
This morning, Trump decided that the Euopean Union had become a threat to our national security and planned tariffs to retaliate.
I hadn't seen this coming immediately after what had seemed an offhand remark yesterday. But we've got to listen to every word now because he leads with an accusation, then follows through with an action because his lie has become truth to him.
He repeats yesterday's conclusion that the European Union was put together to take advantage of the United States. The EU is putting a 50% tariff on U.S. spirits in response to the U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, which went into effect Wednesday.
A 200% tariff on all alcoholic beverage from the EU will effectively cripple the import of same. This will spur still another trade war with an economic and military partner, as almost all in the EU are also in NATO. It doesn't get any more insane than this. I will just make one snide remark that we do not make Champagnes. That name is reserved for the sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France. Everybody else just makes sparkling wines. According to Trump, he doesn't drink any alcohol. Why did this become so important? Because the EU tariff goes into effect on April 1 along with a 99 page list of products that will go into effect in mid-April. Trump started this tariff war, not the EU.
Even the Wall Street Journal said that the Trump policies were the dumbest trade war in history. And that was way back on January 31st. They updated that with a new title line on February 2nd. On March 3rd their headline was Trump takes the dumbest tariff plunge.
Chris Hayes had Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota on, trying to figure out why Canada is suddenly an enemy when they've worked together so well in the past. Fortunately, Ontario dropped Minnesota's price for electricity going up 25%, for the time being.
Congress is facing a deadline on Friday for funding the government. The house passed the continuing resolution to keep the government funded until September, but they did it without any Democratic input at all. Senator Chuck Schumer is not happy about the lack of input and says that the Republicans won't have the votes to force cloture and vote on the Senate floor.
Government funding bills are always a matter of give and take, but this time the Republicans have taken without giving anything. Everything points to a billionaire and corporation tax cut at the expense of everyone else.
Both options available are bad. Passing the budget bill is bad and going to hurt a lot of people. Letting the government shut down is also bad. It's not as bad as not raising the debt ceiling, but it's still bad. All government employees won't get paid, including the military. So starting with them, you've got two and a half million people who won't be happy. Government functions as simple as the national parks will be closed. The United States Postal Service will still run, but not much else.
The Republicans want the funding to go through the end of the fiscal year in September, the Democrats would be for a one month funding bill to give time to actually negotiate properly.
The problem is, if the Democrats give in to Republicans controlling everything, it sets a precedent at the Republicans can create funding measures without any Democratic input at all.
Senate Republicans are, of course, going to blame the Democrats if the bill isn't passed.
Senate Democrats are trying to decide which is the better of the two options. It's not fair that they're faced with this. It's truly the lesser of two evils. The voters asked for this. They put the Republicans in power with the presidency and both houses of Congress.
For the first time, I'm saying that a government shutdown is the only option if amendments are not allowed to be made to the bill to make the government functional. As it stands, it's a poison pill.
So we've got this drama going on, and at the same time, you've got cabinet secretaries and Republican Representatives and Senators all saying that there will be some pain. The pain is caused by a "transition" from Biden's excellent economy to Trump's shrunken economy.
The economy is now going to go into a recession. It can't be stopped by any action now. We can blame the Republicans in the House and Senate, but the real criminal in this story is Donald Trump.
The voters put an unstable individual into power, and now we're all going to pay the price.
All because Donald Trump lives in a dreamworld all by himself. The rest of us are of no consequence to him.
On Rachel Maddow's show, there was a long segment with 76 year-old Representative John Larson of Connecticut screaming at the top of his lungs, and turning red, going over what Musk was planning to do with Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. Screaming that Musk should be sitting in front of the committee telling them if they've got all these savings that they're making, prove it.
It gets better. Republican Representative's constituents are holding their own Town Halls without the Representatives. In one case they're holding the Town Hall in a parking lot right outside the Representative's office.
Republican leaders are telling their Representatives and Senators to not hold town halls in person, and if they do them at all, do them over the phone.
Congressman Derek Van Orden decided to hold a televideo Town Hall in the middle of the day, when nobody would be around to participate.
Congressman Kevin Riley was forced into doing an online Town Hall when the protest group Indivisible was going to run one for him without him.
Mike Levin of California will hold a town hall, but you have to be vetted by the US Capitol Police first.
Democrat Ro Khanna of California is going to hold three town halls in one day, each in a GOP Representative's District.
70% of Americans believe tariffs will push prices higher. Not only that, but they say that Trump is doing it deliberately.
The 52nd day of a brain damaged President was how Lawrence O'Donnell started on Wednesday.
Donald Trump said Chuck Schumer was no longer Jewish. Lawrence noted that the last leader who decided who was Jewish or not was Adolph Hitler. If Joe Biden had said that, the only decision was how many inches high the headline would be at The New York Times. Not one reporter followed up with the Schumer comment.
"Trump has a broken brain that is leaking more every day."
Lawrence said that the tariff song and dance is a distraction to the fact that Trump is failing to follow through on his biggest campaign promise: the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. Trump is discovering that carrying out deportations costs a lot of money.
The effort to send migrants to Guantanamo Bay got only 40 of them there, and now they've been returned stateside at a cost of $16 million. It was all about optics. The facility can only hold 258 people.
Donald Trump is starting up trade wars unnecessarily just to massage his belief that other countries aren't treating us fairly. He is pausing the Foreign Corruption Practices Act so we can bribe other businesses, diplomats and other countries so we can do what others do. Just because it's done doesn't make it right.
He still thinks that other NATO countries aren't paying their "dues," when there is no such thing. But he thought of it, so it must be right.
It's all about money and business and being on an even playing field to Trump. The fact that he is the one creating an uneven playing field just doesn't occur to his "leaking brain."
We're being subjected to "the dumbest trade war in history" because Donald Trump thinks he's a successful businessman. The illusion of The Apprentice became real to him. He doesn't have the foggiest idea of economics. He doesn't understand generally accepted accounting principles.
What was seen as a slow freight train collision to the economy has become a bullet train. How do we stop Donald Trump so we can get off?
