Ladies and gentlemen, behold, some s*** the President said during the previous week:
Donald Trump promised repeatedly to release his tax returns in 2016, but now makes it sound like secrecy was a positive reason to elect him. His Treasury Secretary has even violated a federal law to keep these returns hidden. Meanwhile, as the New York Times reveals Trump spent an entire decade as the country’s worst businessman, ask yourself what’s worse: losing $1 billion in just ten years, or having that revealed and still wanting to keep the rest secret? What could be worse than losing $1 billion? Maybe the way he got it back.
Let’s just get this out of the way: none of the 1990’s were more than 30 years ago. Real estate developers really did enjoy favorable treatment in the tax code, but that doesn’t explain how Trump lost more money than nearly every other American taxpayer, year after year. After all, Trump’s own father made a ton of money in real estate during this time. If there is a defense for lighting $100 million on fire every year for a decade, the tax code isn’t it.
No no, you can’t acknowledge you showed all these losses on your taxes and claim the whole thing is also fake news. That doesn’t make any sense.
I’m not 100% down with the “Constitutional Crisis” language myself, at least not yet, but I think we can see it from where we are. The problem is that the Donald Trump White House is ignoring or fighting every lawful congressional subpoena. That is a strategy never before tried by a president, because we’ve never before had a president that’s lived half his adult life in court rooms. Running out the clock and changing the subject is what we should expect the next two years.
Have you ever noticed the “I’m rubber and you’re glue” tendency of this President? He was just outed as having lost a ton of money during the exact time someone else wrote The Art of the Deal for him, so he accuses someone else of a giant scam. He claimed to have private investigators combing Hawaii finding signs Obama’s birth certificate was fake, so he accuses others of a hoax. He won’t comply with any subpoenas, so he accuses others of a constitutional crisis. It’s like Trump code.
Good! This is a really effective use of Twitter and a legitimate fact: even with unemployment this low, inflation hasn’t ticked up like you might expect. I don’t believe President Trump’s policies are responsible for this, but it’s a totally normal thing for a politician to brag about.
Ah, here’s the problem. As he alluded to in the previous tweet, the U.S. is already at full employment, meaning nearly all employable Americans are already hard at work. We’re producing as much as we are capable of producing. The reason America runs trade deficits with so many countries is because we were already rich and winning! We’re so rich, we can’t even produce all the products we demand when we’re at full employment – so we look outside our borders. This is why nearly every economist outside the White House knows these tariffs will fail.
China doesn’t pay the tariffs. U.S. companies pay them as a tax on Chinese imports, then pass those costs to the consumer. Tariffs are a tax hike on Americans. You know who agrees with this assessment? Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser. You can’t make this up.
With the dollars from this tax hike (aren’t Republicans supposed to believe cutting taxes is what raises revenue?), President Trump plans to…drum roll please…feed the hungry all over the world? Is this like when Steve Harvey read the wrong winner at Miss Universe? Mr. “S***hole Countries” is turning over a new leaf?! GREAT!
“[W]e will always protect patients with preexisting conditions, very importantly. The Republican Party will always protect patients with preexisting conditions.” 5/9/2019 at the White House.
Right now, over 20 Republican state attorneys general are joined in a lawsuit against the ACA that would repeal its protections for preexisting conditions. My kid loves worms so much he occasionally carries them around until they die, but he doesn’t kill them on purpose.
That’s our report for this week. Be sure to check out the links for more info on any particular topic and, as always, thanks for reading.
Idiotville 