MAGAs ought to be wearing black hats
So much chaos. You’ll get tired of chaos.
That was not exactly the twice-impeached, convicted felon’s sales pitch to voters in 2024. But it’s what the increasingly addled, 79-year-old Donald Trump has delivered. Buyer’s remorse will soon be as much an epidemic as measles and spiking gas prices.
But if you filled your tanks over the weekend ahead of Trump’s threatened attacks on Iranian power plants (potential war crimes under the Law of Armed Conflict), your timing may have been off. Trump now says they may be postponed (The Wall Street Journal):
Oil prices dropped Monday and stock futures soared after President Trump said the U.S. will postpone further strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure for five days, citing productive talks between the two countries.
Brent crude futures were down 7% to around $104 a barrel after initially dipping below $100 for the first time in days after the announcement.
Etc., etc.
In other chaos news, Trump is still eyeing overturning the Cuban government before he’s finished with Iran. (It was like that with Afghanistan and Iraq under Bush II, wasn’t it?) He’s eyeing erecting hotels on foreign versions of Boardwalk and Park Place (The Atlantic):
The Trump administration is squeezing Cuba to a breaking point—and is seemingly willing to engage in a high-seas stand-off that has pronounced Cold War echoes. Donald Trump’s goal appears to be to install more amenable leadership in Havana. Last week, he told reporters at the White House that he believes he’ll have the “honor of taking Cuba,” adding: “Whether I free it, take it—I think I can do anything I want with it.”
Trump is already talking to wealthy Republican donors with Cuban heritage about stepping in to monetize Cuba for him:
“Regime change is lined up,” one administration official told us. But Trump-style regime change is unlikely to be the democratic uprising that many Cuban exiles have longed for. Venezuela again is expected to be the model. The administration found that its short-term goals of ousting a repressive dictator and opening opportunities for U.S. companies was best met by empowering Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, who proved more willing to engage with Washington. Much of the Caracas regime remains in place.
One person familiar with the planning (they plan?) tells The Atlantic, “We want these hostile regimes out of our hemisphere, and we’re going to set up the business community, because we don’t believe in diplomacy.”
So another hostile takeover at gunpoint it is. The only things Trump’s desperados are missing are horses and MAGA cowboy hats in black.
But why stop there? More chaos: The Trump administration is planning to send ICE to “assist” TSA agents at American airports this morning.
“I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, ‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!” Trump said on Saturday.
President Donald Trump’s decision to order federal immigration agents to U.S. airports to help with security during a budget impasse is drawing concerns that their presence may escalate tensions among air travelers frustrated over hourslong waits and screeners angry about missed paychecks.
Trump made clear on Sunday that he was going ahead with the plan to have immigration enforcement officers assist the Transportation Security Administration by guarding exit lanes or checking passenger IDs unless Democrats agreed to fund the Department of Homeland Security. Democrats are demanding major changes to federal immigration operations and showing no sign of backing down.
Hundreds of thousands of homeland security workers, including from the TSA, U.S. Secret Service and Coast Guard, have worked without pay since Congress failed to renew DHS funding last month.
As Digby observed last week, “Let Americans from all over the country see what it’s like to live in Trump’s Golden Age. They’re gonna love it.”
Finally from The American Prospect, as if it’s not enough that diesel prices exceeding $5 per gallon will drive up (no pun intended) the price of goods across the country:
“… the Trump administration banned roughly 200,000 truck-driving-certified immigrants from any further truck driving. The new rule from the Department of Transportation forbids refugees, asylum seekers, or recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses, and forbids those who currently hold such licenses from renewing them.”
Harold Meyerson writes:
You may think that taking certified truck drivers, who’ve all been granted federal work permits, off the roads—in an industry that has 94 percent yearly turnover—may not serve the common good particularly well. You may also think that it is a gratuitous crime to harm the fortunes of those drivers and their families, not to mention an act of malignant folly to jack up the prices of the goods that will come late or go undelivered without immigrant drivers to take them to their destinations. If so, you’d be right.
If that’s too much chaos for one Monday morning, climb back into bed and pull the sheets over your head if you have that flexibility.
Americans used to think of ourselves as the good guys in the white hats. We (at least in theory) valued decency and respected the rule of law. But like sacrificing your life for a higher purpose than profit, under the Trump regime that’s for suckers and losers.