The President was playing his favorite song, the wildly overrated Macho Man when
President Trump told Americans Monday to be “Strong,
Courageous, and Patient” with his sweeping tariff regime — as markets continued
their freefall.
“The United States has a chance to do something that should
have been done DECADES AGO. Don’t be Weak! Don’t be Stupid! Don’t be a PANICAN
(A new party based on Weak and Stupid people!),” the president wrote on Truth
Social half an hour before Wall Street opened for trading.
“Be Strong, Courageous, and Patient, and GREATNESS will be
the result!”
It took fewer than forty-eight hours for a near-reversal to occur, when as noted by Politico
After a week of market turmoil that spread from stocks to,
crucially, government bonds, Trump finally flinched after days of insisting
that there would be no delays and that the world should hunker down for a long,
nasty global trade war.
“I know what the hell I’m doing,” Trump told a gathering of
House Republicans Tuesday night, bragging that countries have been “kissing my
ass” to try to make trade deals.
After the fact, Trump’s courtiers called it all part of a
well-articulated plan. “This was his strategy all along,” as Treasury Secretary
Scott Bessent put it, citing outreach from some 75 countries begging Trump to
negotiate for some sort of tariff reprieve.
Yet this is a case to take Trump both seriously and
literally: By Trump’s own admission, he was spooked about the sharp selloff of
Treasuries — admitting, as is well known but rarely acknowledged by him
personally, that he very much cares about what other people think.
“The bond market is tricky,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.
“I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy … jumping a little
bit.”
This guy seems to agree:
It turns out that "people" always has meant "people I control" As Ezra Klein put it last autumn, "one of Trump's verbal tics is to say 'Many people are saying.' But it's the opposite. He's saying what many people want somebody to be saying. He's saying what people are saying in private but often are not saying in public." Trump reversed or sharply reduced most of his tariffs because he himself was getting a little queasy:
And, no, it wasn’t just other people who were queasy. A
person I spoke to close to the White House confirmed: Internal worry about
panic spreading to government bonds, usually a safe haven during economic
volatility, are precisely what made Trump do a 180.
The President didn't rescind or cut the most important tariffs, those against mainland China, which exports far more goods to the USA than dies any other country. However, pulling back on the other tariffs must have been difficult to do for a zero-sum guy, who believes he is benefited only by imposing pain upon others. And we don't know what the 90-days of the pause will bring.
Yet, on one day, for whatever reason(s), President Trump did the right thing. And he became the nation's leading Panican.
In November of 2013, conservative Mark Steyn of the conservative National Review wrote contemptuously
Still, as historian Michael Beschloss pronouned the day after his election, he's "probably the smartest guy ever to become president." Naturally, Obama shares this assessment. As he assured us five years ago, "I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors."
In March, 2016 house conservative Niall Ferguson wrote in The Atlantic
It is a criticism I have heard from more than one person who has worked with President Obama that he regards himself as the smartest person in the room- any room. Jeffrey Goldberg's fascinating article reveals that this is a considerable understatement. The president seems to think he is the smartest person in the world, perhaps ever.
It always was a go-to criticism of Barack Obama by Republicans that the President believed he was "the smartest guy in the room." It was a more diplomatic way of slamming a black man than to accuse him of being "arrogant," which appeared to be their real, unspoken criticism of him. From the right-wing Free Beacon(which, perhaps ironically, initially funded what became known as the Steele dossier):
Another incident critics cite is when Obama was still a
Senator from Illinois and traveled to Iraq in 2007. General David Petraeus,
then commanding U.S. forces for the war effort, gave Obama his assessment of
the fight against al Qaeda and how to prosecute it. Obama disagreed with the
general's analysis, arguing that Petraeus had it wrong.
the nerve to question a general? I think the word the Free Beacon was searching for was arrogant.
Funny thing is that Obama may have been the smartest guy in the room, though certainly not overly imbued with fearlessness. Last week, we learned
Former Vice President Kamala Harris was "very
annoyed" with former President Barack Obama as she sought his endorsement
to take former President Joe Biden's spot on the 2024 Democratic ticket, a new
book claims.
"As the hours rolled by, and it became clear that she
was well on her way to seizing the nomination by storm, Obama's opposition to
her grew more confounding," authors Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes
reported. "Harris was ‘very annoyed’ with him, according to a confidant.
They had plenty of donors and political allies in common. The rest of the party
threw in with her. Where was Obama?"
The book, published earlier this month, is titled
"Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House" and details
how Harris secured the support of key Democrats after Biden dropped out of the
race. The authors revealed that Obama did not want Harris to run in Biden's
place, because he felt she couldn't beat Trump.
In the discussion with MSNBC, Allen stated "President Obama absolutely did not think that Joe Biden should continue, according to our sources close to President Obama."
The former President was correct on both counts. The incumbent President should not have run for re-election. It had been obvious for many months that Biden had lost something off his fastball and that voters would not forgive him as they would forgive opponent Donald Trump, who either physically or mentally (let alone ethically) not right.
And Obama was right that Harris couldn't beat Trump. The then- Vice President wisely ran a campaign emphasizing her strengths and de-emphasizing her weaknesses. Nevertheless, she still didn't win because, ultimately, she was Kamala Harris.
Yet, if Barack Obama had been cast in The Wizard of Oz (fictionally set in the birthplace of his mother), he easily could have played the cowardly lion, albeit without the self-awareness. True to character:
However, Obama spoke with Harris over the next couple of
days, according to the book, and he found he was in a position where "his
actions against Biden and Harris could diminish him in the eyes of Democratic
elites."
Well, that wasn't very bold.
Still Obama, who as Senator dared to question the corrupt David Petraeus, was encouraging a challenge to a candidate who herself thought the nomination was her divine right His counsel- similar to that of James Carville- should have been embraced.
Instead, the Party fell in line with James Clyburn, who quickly endorsed Harris after Biden's exit in order to stave off any momentum for an open primary. The four-year old Win With Black Women leveraged its influence.
The prescience and wisdom the courage. In an interview last week at Hamilton College in New York State, the former President stated
Imagine if I had pulled Fox News’ credentials from the White
House press corps. You’re laughing, but this is what’s happening. Imagine if I
had said to law firms that were representing parties that were upset with
policies my administration had initiated, that you will not be allowed into
government buildings.
We will punish you economically for dissenting from the
Affordable Care Act or the Iran deal. We will ferret out students who protest
against my policies. It’s unimaginable that the same parties that are silent
now would have tolerated behavior like that from me, or a whole bunch of my
predecessors.
I say this not on a partisan basis.
Of course, he didn't say it on a partisan basis. The name "Trump" never crossed his lips. He completely avoided the words "Trump" or "Donald Trump" or "President Trump." It was very Obama-esque.
It's a feat worth admiring. So, too, is Barack Obama's sense that betting on Kamala Harris was a lousy gamble. It's unfortunate that he wasn't bold enough to let more than a few people know at the time.
As can be seen in the video (at 1:53) below, Jim Cramer tells CNN's Erin Burnett, once a colleague of Cramer at CNBC
What bothered me, Erin, was they really did- over and over again- the Presidentsaid- listen, it's going to be reciprocal. If you do it, we do it. And that was going to be so good.. And I really believed in it. And I feel like a sucker becausse I am not a free trader and I do not believe in free trade and I was just as tough, if not tougher, than his people but they screwed it up and they really did- they made it a totally ill-advised way and I was very let down as someone who truly believes that free trade is awful for the American working person. This is what they came up with?
Tariffs today, no tariffs tomorrow, modified tariffs tomorrow; slamming allies and letting Russia off the hook; motivation seemingly borne out of vindictiveness. As Cramer argues, tariffs imposed properly can help balance the god of "free trade" and its half-century+ of hollowing out America's industrial base. The holy grail of free trade was characterized by the story of American steel manufacturing, in which, as Joshua Zeitz explains in Politico
The example of American steel manufacturing is telling.
American steel firms, such as those in Youngstown, had once been an engine of
national economic power. But they had been slow to invest and modernize, and
foreign competitors adopted new technologies that made their steel production
faster and more efficient. Compounding the problem, federal policy
inadvertently strengthened foreign steel production. Following World War II,
American assistance helped rebuild efficient steel facilities in Europe and Japan
while allowing these countries to impose high tariffs on U.S. steel. At the
same time, American companies invested in modern plants abroad rather than
upgrading their domestic operations, resulting in increased import penetration
in the U.S. market. Furthermore, conglomerate ownership of steel companies like
Youngstown Sheet & Tube led to profits being siphoned off to finance
non-steel ventures, further weakening the industry’s competitive position. The
result was a wave of plant closures and job losses, as seen in once-prosperous
Youngstown, where over 50,000 steel jobs vanished within half a decade.
"All of this," Zeitz recalls, "led to the anomaly known as stagflation," a combination of high inflation and slow growth, which contributed considerably to the downfall of the Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter presidencies. This begs the question which the reporter (emphasis his) asks: Why would anyone elect to do this?"
Zeitz notes "Trump maintains that, contrary to what most economists believe, it will reinvigorate American industry in his nationalist vision."
Trump's argument- not the only one he has made to justify his tariff regime- comports with the overall vision of Cramer and myself. But this may not be the President's primary motivation. While Trump was plotting his comeback to the presidency:
Donald Trump was not saying that the system was rigged or that Joe Biden was corrupt. He was saying that the USA was at that time rigged and corrupt- and evil. Admittedly, he was contending this when he was out of office. Not so when at a Cabinet meeting on February 26, 2025, President Trump would declare "this country has gotten bloated and fat and disgusting." He also called Joe Biden "the worst President in the history of our country" and "a disgrace." This was on- wait for it-
It's too easy to snicker that this President wants to outdo Joe Biden. Yet, when a man calls his own country "evil" and "disgusting," that may be exactly what he's trying to do.
The President's punitive trade policies reflect contempt for nearly all nations, and he has exhibited a special disdain for Canada, Greenland, and Denmark. His disregard for human life in Gaza is startling, though no more so than for individuals in the undeveloped world who will be ravaged unto death from starvation or disease because he has ended the US Agency for International Development.
Nonetheless, much of the contempt has been saved for Americans ourselves. We've all heard about the Administration summarily disabling the departments of Treasury, Education, and Health and Human Services and the Federal Election Commission; attacking the C.I.A. and the F.B.I.; shaking down major law firms; harming transsexuals and other beneficiaries of diversity, equity, and inclusion; gutting the Social Security Administration; and so much more.
The depth and breadth of Donald Trump's attacks on virtually anything which helps Americans should prompt us to consider the possibility that the President is assaulting more than the specific individuals, institutions, or groups which he believes have victimized him. He may harbor a special hostility toward foreigners. However, he also may be targeting Americans, as in all Americans regardless of circumstances.
The latest example of unparalleled scorn- at least as of this writing- came on Thursday. Over the last several years, Trump has called deceased American servicemen "losers"- on another occasion "suckers"- and because of rain skipped a ceremony at Alsne-Marne American Cemetery to honor American servicemen killed in France during World War I. Now he has missed
the dignified transfer for four U.S. soldiers who were
killed in Lithuania during a training accident as the president, who was forced
to abort his helicopter after a wheel malfunction that same day, was seen
playing golf at his Trump National Doral Miami golf course for a LIV Golf
event.
Lithuania's president held a ceremony honoring the fallen
soldiers who fatally 'drowned' after their tank disappeared on a training
mission about a week ago. Lithuanian, Polish and U.S. soldiers and rescue teams
searched through forests and swamps at the Gen. Silvestras Žukauskas training
ground in Pabradė, which is about 6 miles west of the country's border with
Belarus.
And yet we are to believe that the guy who believes that the United States of America is "evil" and "disgusting" is only trying to do right, as he sees it, by his country. This may be Donald J. Trump's biggest con ever.
Geraldo Rivera: "The family did visit Japan... we did not see a single American car on the road in Tokyo — not a Caddy, not a Buick, not a Ford, not a Chevy... I have an innate sense that there's something unfair going on... if they are screwing us, we got to tax them." pic.twitter.com/awkaHEQaVS
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) April 3, 2025
The positive comes in the form of Rivera's qualification with "if." He argues "if these numbers are correct, so if some fraction of them, you know, if the trend is, if there is not an essential lie being told here, and if we are getting screwed by these foreign producers, then.... "
What are the odds that a chart blessed by Donald Trump will have an underlying accuracy? Donald Trump? Really? As with most of the President's assertions, the dishonesty should be treated with something well beyond skepticism. Journalist and The Guardian financial editor Nils Pratley explains
.... analysts noted the simplistic- or plain perverse- formula behind the administration's tariff arithmetic. It seems to have taken a country's trade deficit in goods with US, divided it by its exports to the US and called the resulting number a trade barrier that deserves a "reciprocal" US tariff. The underlying logic, it would appear, is that every country should always have a perfect trade balance with the US- never mind the impossibility of achieving that outcome, and never mind that the tariffs don't affect trade in services.
Also, Geraldo Rivera: not an economist. "If they are screwing us, we got to tax them." However, tariffs are federal taxes,, set by Congress, as aa "percentage of the price a buyer pays a foreign seller." They are "applied to goods at the border" and are collected by customs and Border Protection agents at the 328 ports of entry across the USA. We are not taxing them; the US government is taxing domestic buyers, which are then inclined to pass most of the additional cost on to consumers.
"Screwing us?" Yes, someone is screwing us. But the screwing is being done by the guy who at a Cabinet meeting said the country is "bloated, fat, and disgusting" and is taking his revenge upon that country and the people, immigrants or otherwise, within it. The call is not coming from foreign countries. The call is coming from inside the house.
Republicans, even the one who steps away from Donald Trump, can be very slick.
Ingraham: Why did the Republicans lose that judicial race in Wisconsin?
Miller: You got to remember, candidates do matter. In this case, we did not have a particularly good one. Democrats also have a ton of out-of-state money that came in pic.twitter.com/mczSlQwOQN
Democrats did raise a lot of money from out-of-state. However
With ideological control of the court again at stake, the
race shattered the record set just two years ago. Through today, WisPolitics
had tracked $107 million in overall spending through independent expenditure
filings with the state, data from AdImpact, information from media buyers and
sources with knowledge of the efforts. That includes $58.2 million by Schimel
and those supporting him and $48.8 million by Crawford and those backing her.
The spending was dominated by big donors. George Soros
donated $2 million to the state Dem Party, while Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker
chipped in $1.5 million. The party then poured $11.4 million into Crawford’s
campaign.
On the GOP side, Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks has
given $3.6 million to the state Republican Party since Jan. 1, while Illinois
businesswoman Liz Uihlein kicked in $2.2 million, and her husband Dick Uihlein
gave the party another $1.7 million. It transferred $9.5 million to Schimel’s
campaign.
Still, no donor was more influential than Musk, who appeared
in Green Bay over the weekend.
The billionaire business owner and top aide to Trump plus
two aligned PACs put in more than $24
million, according to the WisPolitics tally. That includes $12.6 million by
America PAC and another nearly $8.7 million by Building America’s Future PAC.
Musk personally gave the state GOP $3 million. And the $24.3 million doesn't include what America PAC handed out to registered voters who signed a petition opposing "activist judges." Those who did that- and provided personal information the PAC could use for GOTV efforts- received $100 per person.. The PAC offered other incentives as part of its turn out the vote efforts, including three $1 million awards to people who signed the online petition.
In the land of Trump- with which Jason Miller no longer is directly involved- Miller is nowhere near the most vial nor most dishonest. He's not even the most vial Trump acolyte named Miller because that honor clearly goes to Stephen. But complaining about spending by Democrats when Elon Musk is on the other side is a little rich.
President Donald Trump did not rule out the possibility of
seeking a third term in the White House, which is prohibited by the
Constitution under the 22nd Amendment, saying in an exclusive interview with
NBC News that there were methods for doing so and clarifying that he was “not
joking.”
“A lot of people want me to do it,” Trump said in a
Sunday-morning phone call with NBC News, referring to his allies. “But, I mean,
I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in
the administration.”
“I’m focused on the current,” Trump added, in some of his
most extensive comments to date about serving a third term.
Coyly
When asked whether he wanted another term, the president
responded, “I like working.”
“I’m not joking,” Trump said, when asked to clarify. “But
I’m not — it is far too early to think about it.”
When asked whether he has been presented with plans to allow
him to seek a third term, Trump said, “There are methods which you could do
it.”
NBC News asked about a possible scenario in which Vice
President JD Vance would run for office and then pass the role to Trump. Trump
responded that “that’s one” method.
“But there are others, too,” Trump added.
Asked to share another method, Trump simply responded “no.”
Not joking and not diverting attention from anything else. This is floating an idea to see if it flies. There are at least four ways Trump can possibly occupy the Oval Office sometime beyond January 20, 2022. While more sanguine than I am of keeping King Trump from doing so, Chris Cillizza (video below) explains
There is clearly a will for it. He wants this to happen. He is making very clear that he wants it to happen. He talked about this in his first term. He's talked about it now in his second term. It's moved from "oh, I'm joking" to "I am not joking" and, you know, this is a step in that direction.
This is a step in that direction. If Trump waited, till, say, December of 2027 to declare his intention to hang on to the presidency or return to it, it might come as a shock to the public and the mainstream media. Therefore, he has decided to normalize the possibility. At this point, it sounds preposterous to many people but as he consolidates power and periodically raises the possibility of a third term, the notion will become more mainstream, hence more acceptable.
There won't be a constitutional amendment erasing the limit of the number of times an individual can be elected to the presidency. A Vance-Trump ticket is an option. Alternatively, martial law may be declared or Trump will cling to power by initiating a war or claiming one is under way. National emergency. If he has no other choice, he will refuse to leave office or force a confrontation with the U.S. Supreme Court. If he loses there, his rallying cry will be: you and whose army?
The Overton Window will continue, perhaps subtly, to shift. Whatever route he eventually takes, the President, Bannon, and others will periodically float the idea that Trump will serve one or more additional terms.. Donald J. Trump may not survive the remainder of this term, but will not give up power willingly otherwise.
With proper credit given to the source of the report, The Guardian on Saturday noted
The wife of the US defense secretary Pete Hegseth attended
two meetings with foreign defense officials during which sensitive information
was discussed, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal’s report on Hegseth arrived late on Friday as he
faced scrutiny for detailing plans of a military strike in a group chat on
Signal, made public by a journalist at the Atlantic who had been added to the
chat. Multiple Democrats have called for his resignation while a bipartisan
group of senators sent a letter to the defense department calling for an
inquiry into the group chat.
Hegseth’s wife, Jennifer Hegseth, has been present at two
meetings where sensitive information was discussed, according to the Journal,
citing multiple people who were present at the meetings or have knowledge of
her presence at them.
The first meeting reportedly was a high-level discussion at
the Pentagon with top UK military officials, including the UK secretary of
defense, John Healey, that took place in early March, a day after the US
announced it would stop sharing military intelligence with Ukraine.
The second reportedly took place in Brussels in mid-February
at Nato headquarters during a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a
forum of about 50 nations meant to help coordinate military support for Ukraine
as it tries to fight off the invasion Russia launched in 2022.
A defense secretary has the discretion to invite anyone to
meetings with foreign counterparts, but officials cited by the Journal said
that those attending these types of meetings usually have high-level security
clearances. While the spouses of defense officials sometimes receive low-level
security clearances, it is unclear whether Hegseth’s wife has any clearance.
Advice to Hegseth: stay on your wife's good side. She now has plenty to blackmail you- and the country- with. If she gets angry with you or decides to brag to a friend about the information she has, it might get to Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin faster than you can say "Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein- Perfect Together." Also, Mrs. Hegseth's mere presence makes our nation out to be a laughingstock among our allies..... even more than President Trump has already done.
Earlier in the week, we learned of the national security breach in which Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently included in a Signal group text chat of timing and weapons details for an impending American attack upon Houthis in Yemen. Fox News' Laura Ingraham interviewed the National Security Advisor, central to the scandal, and asked (at 1:19 of the 5/26 Comedy Channel video below) how someone unknown could have gotten into the conversation.
Mike Waltz replied "I mean, I'm sure everybody out there has had a contact where you- it said one person and then a different phone number." Daily Show host Ronny Chieng comments "no one's ever had- no one's ever had that, all right? People don't have a contact with a phone number for, like, a different person- unless they're having an affair."
An affair? Well, that's intriguing, especially because now there comes an interesting, prurient, though unreliable report from something called "WIOZ." Wikipedia says World Is One News
is an Indian-English language news channel headquartered in Noida, India. As of March 2025, Media Bias Fact Check rated WION "Mixed" for factual reporting due to a lack of sourcing "in most articles and the promotion of misinformation regarding Covid-19." It has faced scrutiny from multiple foreign countries over its coverage and in 2022 was blocked from YouTube before being reinstated.
On X, Dan Cohen, the founder of Uncaptured News, claimed
that Waltz follows what he describes as a "gay pornographic account".
Posting a series of screenshots, Cohen alleged that Waltz
"married to @JuliaNesheiwat since 2021 – follows a gay pornography
account."
Also read | Who is Jeffrey Goldberg? The journalist
accidentally sent classified Yemen war plan
The screenshots show Mike Waltz's official X account
@michaelgwaltz among the followers of account 'Big D**k Bottom'.
Cohen in his post stated that while "Waltz and
Nusheiwat’s personal lives are their own," it is "well-known that
secret sexual improprieties can be used to compromise political figures, and
Waltz is in one of the most powerful and sensitive positions in the US
government."
"The question must be asked: Does Waltz’s apparent
secret lust for black male make him susceptible to blackmail?," he added.
It very much would, if true. Perhaps it is a hoax.
Apparently, in the meeting there were nineteen individuals, including the J.G., Goldberg. Yet, for some bizarre reason, no one (as far as I can tell) in politics or the media writ large has inquired as to why no one of the 18 (all except Goldberg himself) asked who this unknown "J.G." was.
Perhaps everyone was intimidated, finding it awkward to ask about the identity of the mystery man or woman, believing they were expected to know, and were loathe to reveal their ignorance. Or (less likely) there was a widespread suspicion that Waltz knew who it was, whether it was a professional or personal contact of his.
After the news broke, Fox News' Laura Ingraham can be seen asking Waltz at 1:20 of the 5/26 Comedy Channel video below how someone unknown could have gotten onto the group chat. Waltz replied "I mean, I'm sure everybody out there has had a contact where you- it said one person and then a different phone number." In response, Daily Show host Ronny Chieng commented "no one's ever had- no one's ever had that, all right? People don't have a contact with a phone number for, like, a different person- unless they're having an affair."
An affair? Well, that's interesting. A little funny, and possibly not a joke. No one evinced any curiosity about this unknown individual and Waltz certainly did not know that it was a journalist. Conceivably, though, Waltz feared it may have been someone he personally knew, in which case he would not want to say who it was and would be understandably confident that the individual wouldn't reveal anything publicly.
If it is for real, we probably won't find out about it. The media is unlikely to touch it unless one of the two political parties brings it up. The Republican Party won't mention it, for obvious reasons. The Democratic Party won't bring it up because it wouldn't want to be seen casting aspersions on something gay and black.
In the unlikely event that Mike Waltz knew who it was, it presented a national security risk. If he (and everyone else) did not know who it was, it presented a national security risk. In either case, the National Security Advisor screwed up.
So did the Defense Secretary, he who welcomes his wife in on national security secrets, and who should have not presented plans without being certain the venue was completely secure. Also participating was President Trump's untouchable Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, who has overall responsibility for staff operations. Somewhere, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and who knows who else are having a good laugh at our expense.
