Actually, while the White House did have indoor plumbing in 1860, it would not have been marble. Not even close. It would likely have looked something like this:
According to historical receipts from the palace stonemasons, the 3 meter wide and 1 meter deep bath, “la vasque royale”, would have cost the modern day equivalent of $235,000. The entire bathroom, over $5 million.
Commissioned by Louis XIV in 1674, it was first installed in the storied “apartment of the baths”, a space covered in the rarest marble, outfitted with intricately carved basins, gold statues; an obscene show of wealth.
The king was crazy about the odeur de Nerolie, a floral essence produced from the blossom of the bitter orange tree, first introduced as a fashionable fragrance in the 17th century by an Italian princess, who was using it to perfume her gloves and bath. But Louis took it a step further by replacing his bath water entirely with the most delicate of fragrances. While Europe was trying to rid itself of the plague, bathing in natural water was considered a great risk. Paddling around in a pool of perfume was not only guaranteed to have him smelling like an orange blossom for his next appearance at court, but it was also just a safe bet in the dark ages of medicine.
Nearly nine months after Trump became chair of the center andmore than a month into its main season, ticket sales for the Kennedy Center’s three largest performance venues are the worst they’ve been in years, according to a Washington Post analysis of ticketing data from dozens of recent shows as well as past seasons. Tens of thousands of seats have been left empty.
Since early September, 43 percent of tickets remained unsold for the typical production. That means that, at most, 57 percent of tickets were sold for the typical production — and some tickets may have been “comps,” which are given away, often to staff members or the press. That compares with 93 percent sold or comped in fall 2024 and 80 percent in fall 2023.
President Donald Trump is worried. Besides the recent concerns he expressed about the state of his soul, he fears the Supreme Court will strip him of his tariff privileges. We know this because he had a temper tantrum upon hearing that Ontario had produced a television advertisement featuring President Ronald Reagan criticizing tariffs — a response that was revealing, both about his mindset and strategy, and about how MAGA has turned away from Reagan’s once-mythic legacy.
The commercial itself was simple and effective. Against bucolic and urban images of industry and humanity, Reagan begins in his unmistakable voice, “When someone says ‘Let’s impose tariffs on foreign imports,’ it looks like they’re doing the patriotic thing.” For a certain swath of Americans old enough to remember his optimism and storytelling — and to ignore the extensive damage he did to the country — hearing his voice doubtless carries them back to a gentler time. Excerpted from a 1987 radio address, the remarks warn against protectionism broadly. (In the full five-minute address, Reagan also condemns pending congressional trade legislation aimed at Japan.)
Trump, a master of modern media, must have immediately recognized the ad’s power. He took to Truth Social, accusing Ontario — and Canada more broadly — of “cheating” and “trying to illegally influence the United States Supreme Court in one of the most important rulings in the history of our Country.” He continued, “They fraudulently took a big buy ad saying that Ronald Reagan did not like Tariffs, when actually he LOVED TARIFFS FOR OUR COUNTRY, AND ITS NATIONAL SECURITY.” Trump was so mad that he slapped an additional 10% tariff on Canadian goods, which came on top of the 35% he had already imposed. He also declared the bilateral trade talks over.
The high court is scheduled to hear arguments in the case brought by some small businesses and other groups who claim the president exceeded his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) in imposing tariffs. In August, the administration lost the case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, but they temporarily stayed the decision pending the Supreme Court appeal, which was accepted by the justices with lightning speed.
Trump’s notion that, without Ontario’s ad, the Supreme Court justices wouldn’t know about Reagan’s free trade philosophy is unintentionally hilarious. Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, worked in the Reagan administration. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mother was an infamous member of his cabinet. All of the court’s conservatives were schooled in the Reagan Revolution philosophy of free markets. They don’t need the premier of Ontario to instruct them on the subject.
The court’s decision will have massive effects on the American — and the world — economy. So far, it’s relatively unclear if the conservative majority will follow their usual pattern of rubber stamping anything the president wants to do. Since Trump began erratically imposing tariffs, the markets have held steady, and businesses have more or less been in a holding pattern, waiting to see if his chaotic tariff regime will remain in place, or if the court will end it. (On a more cynical level, it’s likely that some of the justices’ wealthy friends and benefactors are not enamored of Trump’s policies.)
You do have to wonder if they might be persuaded that Trump should not have this unilateral power, having shuttered trade talks and imposed tariffs just because he was mad about an advertisement. Likewise, the president’s tariffs on Brazil over its own Supreme Court ruling against his buddy, former president Jair Bolsonaro, might strike some of them as a bit unseemly. It certainly appeared to hit the Senate that way; this week, the body unexpectedly voted on a bipartisan basis to block the tariffs. Both of those examples, among dozens of others, showcase Trump’s capricious use of tariffs as a tool of petty manipulation and revenge — and they make a compelling argument to the justices of the need to deny him unilateral power to reorder the world economy according to his whims.
Trump is well aware of how Reagan was long held up as something of a god among Republicans, and Trump himself went to great lengths to suck up to him when he was president, albeit to little avail. In 1987, Trump had a big idea about foreign policy and trade, and he took out full page ads stating what is now his stale, familiar refrain about other countries ripping off the United States and laughing at us. You have to wonder if Reagan might have been talking about him when he said this in his address congratulating Canadians on their election in 1988:
We should beware of the demagogues who are ready to declare a trade war against our friends — weakening our economy, our national security, and the entire free world — all while cynically waving the American flag. The expansion of the international economy is not a foreign invasion; it is an American triumph, one we worked hard to achieve, and something central to our vision of a peaceful and prosperous world of freedom.
Imagine what Trump would do if someone were to let it be known that Reagan was also a big fan of immigration and free trade agreements. As historian Rick Perlstein pointed out in his book “Reaganland,” Reagan even dreamed of open borders for people and commerce alike.
The Canadian ad seems to have come to Trump’s attention from the Reagan Foundation, which oversees the former president’s library. You would think that they, of all people, would be so protective of Reagan’s legacy and insist upon his beliefs being portrayed truthfully. Instead the foundation raised a big stink, saying they hadn’t given permission to the admakers to use excerpts of the speech — which was in the public domain, so they had no say in the matter — and insisting that it misrepresented him. In fact, the ad was true to Reagan’s views and, according to a New York Times analysis, “faithfully reproduces [his] words.”
The foundation’s reaction was startling. Either its board has gone so MAGA that they have been deluded into believing the man they purport to honor and defend was a big tariff-lover, or they are so terrified of Trump that they betrayed Reagan’s legacy in hopes of appeasing the president. Whatever the case, it now appears that most of Trump’s followers have left Ronald Reagan and what he stood for behind. They no longer have any interest in or loyalty to the conservative movement he helped create. Its remains are mere artifacts of what has come to seem like an ancient civilization.
The politicians, activists and thinkers who built that movement in the wake of World War II and the anti-communist fervor that swept the country spent many decades educating their followers in the ideology and dogma of conservative thought. They worked in the shadow of what scholars and commentators called “the liberal consensus” that was formed around the New Deal and, later, the civil rights revolution. Slowly but surely, these conservatives accumulated influence and allies, and they finally reached the zenith of their political power with Reagan’s 1980 election as president.
After he was gone, they worked to secure the movement’s enduring power by consciously turning Reagan into a mythic figure whose ideas would live on in perpetuity. They set out to name as many schools, roads, bridges, buildings and even airports after him as they could. They put up statues and encouraged every Republican politician to evoke his name at any opportunity.
Now, less than a decade after Trump was first inaugurated president in 2017, most of it is lying in rubble.
Many of the staunch Reaganites who once believed in free markets, small government, private enterprise, international institutions and the “Pax Americana” guarantor of global security are now MAGA aficionados, enthusiastically endorsing every scheme Trump comes up with, from state capitalism to trade wars. Unlike the movement Reagan represented, there’s no long term education project, no underlying ideology, no commitment to principles. One day the administration is full force America First isolationism, and the next finds it blowing up boats full of civilians in international waters, with the president proclaiming “to the victors go the spoils.”
Does that erratic philosophy sound like something that can last? If the conservative movement that endured for decades can be stripped, virtually overnight, of everything but the ugly underbelly of crude racism and revanchist anger that fueled it, what are the chances that MAGA will outlive Trump?
Seeing a movement that was as vibrant as the conservative movement toppled so quickly by a shallow demagogue should give those who love democracy and human progress hope. If Ronald Reagan couldn’t go the distance, Donald Trump certainly can’t.
“The legislative level truly holds the key to the federal level,” Edith Jorge-Tuñón, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, said in an interview.
In the Friday memo — which is being shared with GOP donors — Jorge-Tuñón repeatedly hits Democrats for gerrymandering blue states, arguing that they will continue to stretch their margins as much as possible. Republicans, too, have drawn increasingly favorable maps — and fired the first shot in this year’s battle with Texas — shrinking the number of swing House seats that ultimately determine control of the chamber.
State races are a battleground too many armchair progressives shun for higher-profile federal contests. I get it. For some who don’t live this stuff 24/7/365, local races may feel like the kiddie table. The RSLC is not so naive.
Democrats were famously caught flatfooted in state legislative races ahead of the 2010 census. Republicans’ pioneering REDMAP program helped the party flip chambers across the country, all done with the explicit goal of getting a leg up in redistricting. And while Democrats weren’t caught as unprepared this decade, a strong legislative year for Republicans in 2020 also gave the GOP an edge for the post-2020 redistricting.
The architect of REDMAP in 2010, “gerrymandering on steroids,” was from North Carolina. (So is Cleta Mitchell.) And after that, the late Thomas Hofeller suggested that Republicans rig the 2020 census.
“To have a shot at winning and maintaining a Democratic majority in the House of Representatives moving forward, Democrats must reassess our failed federal-first strategy and get serious about winning state legislatures ahead of redistricting,” wrote Heather Williams, the head of Democrats legislative campaign arm, in a July memo obtained by POLITICO.
For readers in states that elect judges, and for those who don’t, ProPublica offers a study of the nationwide shadow N.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Paul Newby (R) has cast with his maneuvering on redistricting. Newby’s early 2023 decision leveraged a newly seated Republican majority to overturn the previous court’s 2022 ruling that partisan gerrymandering violated North Carolina’s constitution. That court ordered an independent redraw of congressional districts that yielded a 7D-7R delegation after the 2022 election. Until Newby’s conservative majority overturned the precedent:
“We were like, they can’t possibly do this,” said Jeff Loperfido, the chief counsel for voting rights at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “Can they revisit their opinions when the ink is barely dry?”
Yes, they can. And yes, they did. Newby handed the U.S. House majority to Republicans, to Speaker Mike Johnson, and to Donald Trump. The N.C. delegation after the 2024 elections split 10R-4D. The GOP-dominated N.C. legislature just last week enacted a new congressional district map aimed at making that 11R-3D.
Few beyond North Carolina’s borders grasp the outsize role Newby, 70, has played in transforming the state’s top court from a relatively harmonious judicial backwater to a front-line partisan battleground since his election in 2004.
Under North Carolina’s constitution, Supreme Court justices are charged with upholding the independence and impartiality of the courts, applying laws fairly and ensuring all citizens get treated equally.
Yet for years, his critics charge, Newby has worked to erode barriers to politicization.
He pushed to make judicial elections in North Carolina — once a national leader in minimizing political influence on judges — explicitly partisan and to get rid of public financing, leaving candidates more dependent on dark money. Since Newby’s allies in the legislature shepherded through laws enacting those changes, judicial campaigns have become vicious, high-dollar gunfights that have produced an increasingly polarized court dominated by hard-right conservatives.
As chief justice, he and courts under him have consistently backed initiatives by Republican lawmakers to strip power away from North Carolina’s governor, thwarting the will of voters who have chosen Democrats to lead the state since 2016. He’s also used his extensive executive authority to transform the court system according to his political views, such as by doing away with diversity initiatives. Under his leadership, some liberal and LGBTQ+ employees have been replaced with conservatives. A devout Christian and church leader, he speaks openly about how his faith has shaped his jurisprudence and administration of the courts.
According to former justices, judges and Republicans seeking to be judicial candidates, Newby acts more like a political operator than an independent jurist. He’s packed higher and lower courts with former clerks and mentees whom he’s cultivated at his Bible study, prayer breakfasts and similar events. His political muscle is backed by his family’s: His wife is a major GOP donor, and one of his daughters, who is head of finance for the state Republican Party, has managed judicial campaigns.
Etc., etc. “Newby declined multiple interview requests from ProPublica and even had a reporter escorted out of a judicial conference to avoid questions.”
When ProPublica emailed questions to Newby’s daughter, the North Carolina Republican Party’s communications director, Matt Mercer, replied with a threat:
“I’m sure you’re aware of our connections with the Trump Administration and I’m sure they would be interested in this matter,” Mercer said in his email. “I would strongly suggest dropping this story.”
Democrats here control the governor’s mansion and several council of state positions, but the GOP legislature after the election handed control of our elections board to the GOP state auditor:
Former North Carolina Republican Party executive director Dallas Woodhouse will oversee county boards of elections in a new role with the State Auditor’s Office, Auditor Dave Boliek announced in an email to county board chairs.
Yeah, local elections matter. The smarmy Woodhouse is an old adversary. We’re bracing for impact.
Credibility has a value Trump will never understand
The Donald Trump administration does not know who it is murdering on small boats in the Caribbean, Defense officials told lawmakers in a classified House briefing on Thursday. Military lawyers were removed before the briefing. Democrats were excluded from a similar Senate briefing the day before, Politico reports:
“[The department officials] said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the strikes, they just need to prove a connection to a designated terrorist organization or affiliate,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.). “When we tried to get more information, we did not get satisfactory answers.”
GOP lawmakers did not answer reporters’ questions.
Shutting Democrats out of a national security briefing and withholding the legal justification of the Venezuelan boat strikes from half the Senate is indefensible. This White House is eroding our national security. pic.twitter.com/Z7lMs75EfV
To date, the U.S. has killed at least 61 alleged drug runners that we know of. Burned and mangled corpses missing limbs are washing ashore on Trinidad.
While White House officials have repeatedly referenced the threat posed by fentanyl being smuggled into the United States — it accounted for roughly 70 percent of overdose deaths nationwide in 2023, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse — officials at Thursday’s briefing said the boats hit so far were primarily transporting cocaine.
“They argued that cocaine is a facilitating drug of fentanyl, but that was not a satisfactory answer for most of us,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.).
Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, over the weekend accused the United States of murdering a Colombian fisherman in an attack on a boat that the American authorities claimed had been carrying drugs. President Trump responded by halting aid to Colombia and saying that Mr. Petro, a leftist, had a “fresh mouth toward America.”
“Fresh mouth” is a phrase you haven’t heard since the 1960s. But then, consider the source: President Arrested Development.
The killings have spread fear across the Caribbean. Fishermen stay close to shore and fear working at night. Legal analysts believe the strikes in Trump’s self-proclaimed “war” against drug cartels (from one specific country, mind you) violate U.S. law and international law:
“The strikes are disturbing because they’re obviously extrajudicial strikes that are not supported by any legal framework whatsoever,” former attorney general Garvin Nicholas told The Washington Post. “It should not be that the government encourages extrajudicial killings.”
Digby on Monday referenced the “golden shield” that go-ahead rulings from the Office of Legal Counsel provide for such actions. A kind of advance pardon, they “insulate executive officials from future criminal liability through legal advice.” Readers will recall the infamous torture memos from the Bush II administration that blessed prisoner torture post-Sept. 11.
Playing devil’s advocate for a moment, in an actual war the military rarely has faces and names attached to the enemies it targets. But this is not an actual war. Trump invented it out of whole cloth. Perhaps he means to prosecute a real one of regime change against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Or perhaps he needs yet another distraction from the pending release of the Epstein files or inflation or his falling poll numbers. These boat strikes are simply murders.
Digby on Thursday posted about the creepy DHS spokesman video. The Washington Post found inaccurate and deceptive editing throughout the white nationalist propaganda videos DHS churns out. Trump has operated his entire life on the theory that you can fool some of the people all of the time, enough to rip them off, line his pockets, and get away with it. If they complain, he sues them into bankruptcy.
This supposed master dealmaker places a high value on the Trump brand. What’s striking is how little value he and his entire administration of lies sets on credibility, on trustworthiness. That’s a key, ephemeral element of any brand, i.e., “the brand you trust.” Trump must have skipped class to get laid the day they discussed that at Wharton.
The Trump administration is one you can’t trust farther than you can throw it. Now, neither is the United States of America.
That said, 3 in 10 Americans approve — including a majority of Republicans. There’s an interesting age split in the YouGov data, with older Americans being more likely to express approval of the destruction, almost certainly a function of the fact that older Americans are more likely to be Republican.
We shouldn’t lose sight of the significance of that support, though. A third of Republicans strongly approve of Trump simply smashing the East Wing into rubble, something that it is extremely safe to assume they would have viewed more skeptically had it been undertaken by, say, Barack Obama. Condemnation from Democrats would likely have been more modest under such circumstances, sure … but no Democratic president would have suddenly taken a wrecking ball to the White House without notice. (Harry Truman, a Democrat, did oversee a renovation of the building, but he did so with guidance and input from appointed officials and experts.)
[…]
It is not the case that support for the destruction of the East Wing is a function of people not understanding what happened. YouGov asked Americans whether they’d seen images or video of the building being demolished. Six in 10 Americans said they had, including a majority of Republicans. In other words, at least some (but probably quite a few) Republicans saw the destruction with their own eyes and approved.
One takeaway here is that the demolition of the East Wing is unpopular. But another is that this, too, has collapsed into a partisan framework. An action that would almost certainly have met with condemnation if suggested to Trump voters in October 2024 is, in October 2025, viewed positively for little more reason than that Trump did it.
If the destruction of a substantial portion of the White House is an on-the-nose metaphor for Trump’s attack on American democracy, consider how we might extrapolate Republican support for his doing so.
Oh, it’s not hard to figure. They just love Trump and anything he does and it thrilled them to see him destroying something that other people love.
That’s just a straight up “blood and soil” Nazi-style propaganda. I literally felt sick watching it.
The Washington Post has a long story (gift link) about the hugely expensive DHS propaganda effort which is mostly slick videos circulated on social media which feature images to give the impression that America is under assault and the cities are all on fire. Unfortunately, those images are often from foreign countries, different states, previous eras — in other words, they are lies. Surprise! They get lots of views and I’m sure the dumbest people in the country believe every world of it.
That guy in the video up top, by the way, is a DHS spokesman who releases these little Orewellian PSAs regularly. He came directly out of Turning Point USA. The whole administration is now staffed by shitposters, influencers, trolls and wingnut welfare recipients. Virtually no one with any expertise in anything but licking Donald Trump’s boots need apply.
The Trump administration on Wednesday lifted sanctions against a Serbian nationalist leader who had been accused of undermining a U.S.-brokered peace agreement that ended bloody sectarian fighting in the 1990s in the Balkans.
The sanctions relief for Milorad Dodik, who had served until earlier this month as president of a small self-governing territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina called Republika Srpska, was a victory for the politician and for a pricey influence campaign mounted on his behalf by several allies of President Trump.
The removal of the sanctions could allow Mr. Dodik, who is still the leader of the ruling party in Srpska and has closely allied himself with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, to remain influential in the Serb-controlled region even without a formal role in the government.
Sanctions were also lifted against members of Mr. Dodik’s family and inner circle, as well as companies associated with them, some of which had previously been accused by the Treasury Department of being part of Mr. Dodik’s “corrupt patronage network.”
I’m sure you’re curious about how this came about:
One of the lobbyists, Marc Zell, signed a contract with the Srpska government late last year calling for his firm to be paid $1 million for one year, with an additional “success fee” for “bringing about the cancellation/termination of all sanctions.”
Mr. Zell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Also taking up Mr. Dodik’s cause were several prominent figures in Mr. Trump’s orbit. They included Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who served as the president’s personal lawyer during his first term; Michael T. Flynn, the retired lieutenant general who briefly served as national security adviser in the first Trump White House; Laura Loomer, the right wing provocateur who has the ear of the president; and Rod Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois, who was pardoned by Mr. Trump in February before signing a contract with the Srpska government the following month for an undisclosed sum.
Pardons, sanctions, wars, visas — it’s all for sale under this regime. War criminals are lining up.
We know that no matter what happened in the trade talks in Asia Trump would have strutted around declaring it the greatest negotiation in history, saying that all the foreign leaders love him and he’s brought home gazillions for the American people. With Al the triumphant ceremonies we’ve seen over this interminable 10 months of his second administration, we can count on it being hype and should discount anything he says.
In reality, the trade talks with Xi Jinping were basically a short term truce at best. The NY Times:
When Xi Jinping walked out of his meeting with President Trump on Thursday, he projected the confidence of a powerful leader who could make Washington blink.
The outcome of the talks suggested that he succeeded.
By flexing China’s near monopoly on rare earths and its purchasing power over U.S. soybeans, Mr. Xi won key concessions from Washington — a reduction in tariffs, a suspension of port fees on Chinese ships and the delay of U.S. export controls that would have barred more Chinese firms from accessing American technology. Both sides also agreed to extend a truce struck earlier this year to limit tariffs.
“What’s clear is they have become increasingly bold in exerting leverage and they are happy to pocket any and all U.S. concessions,” said Julian Gewirtz, who was a senior China policy official at the White House and the State Department in President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s administration.
Sounding almost like he was delivering a lecture, Mr. Xi said to Mr. Trump that the “recent twists and turns” of the trade war should be instructive to them both, according to a Chinese government summary of Mr. Xi’s remarks at the meeting in Busan, South Korea.
He was saying that he recent twists and turns should have taught the Orange fool a lesson. Unfortunately, he’s wrong about that. Trump can’t learn.
Krugman wrote about the bigger issues yesterday. Turns out the tacos aren’t that great:
He surveys the ways in which this tariff war has hurt the economy starting with higher prices. He explains the difference in that graph above pointing out that one of the reasons tariffs haven’t caused more inflation is only partly because businesses are “eating the tariffs” and is instead likely due to a wide range of legal tariff avoidance schemes by foreign exporters who figure out ways around Trump’s complex and ultimately stupid rules.
Other ways of avoiding tariffs may not be legal or may at any rate frustrate the tariffs’ goals. Goods from countries that are the subject of high tariffs may be laundered, transshipped via countries facing lower tariffs. Exporters may find ways to relabel what they sell, to qualify for lower rates. There’s surely some fraud involved — how could there not be, given the incentives? — but in any case the bottom line is that in practice tariffs haven’t gone up as much as you might have thought. And I don’t see any obvious reason to believe that tariff avoidance will go away. It will probably be a quasi-permanent feature of the system.
If this is the primary reason why the tariffs haven’t resulted in a huge spike in prices it’s good new because it means “the unwillingness of businesses to pass on tariffs has probably been a smaller factor in holding down prices than widely assumed” and we may not be looking at a big rise in inflation in the future.
Then there’s uncertainty and the “frozen job market”
The Trump tariffs were supposed to bring about a revival of U.S. manufacturing. That’s obviously not happening so far: Manufacturing employment is down, partly because some of Trump’s tariffs, notably on steel and aluminum, have substantially raised producers’ costs.
On the other hand, the tariffs haven’t caused large-scale layoffs, although several major employers including Amazon, UPS and Target have announced big layoff plans in the past few days.
The most striking thing about the labor market, however, isn’t large-scale job loss. It is, instead, the way the market has frozen, with very low rates of hiring. I wrote about this last week. The no-hire economy has made life very difficult for young people just entering the work force as well as for those who have, for whatever reason, lost jobs. It also greatly reduces workers’ bargaining power. A new report from the JPMorganChase Institute finds that wage gains have slowed sharply across the board, with young workers seeing the slowest wage growth since 2011. Against the background of accelerating inflation, this is a serious blow to U.S. workers.
And the uncertainty created by temper-tantrum tariff policy is probably the biggest single reason for the frozen job market.
He’s hopeful that the Asia tour has produced some stability. I’ll be surprised.
And then there’s the long lasting damage to the U.S and global world order:
Soon, I expect, Trump will be declaring victory after performing a climb-down on tariffs and touting make-believe investment numbers. He will proclaim that he won the trade war. Well, he didn’t.
The main benefit from these deals (assuming they happen and last for a while), is that the United States will stop hitting itself in the face. U.S. consumers, producers and workers have been the main victims of Trump’s tariffs. We could have achieved victory by not hitting ourselves in the face in the first place.
Furthermore, these deals cannot fix the more profound damage that six months of tariff madness has inflicted: the incalculable damage to U.S. credibility and, with it, to the global world economic order.
First, everything — everything — Trump has done on trade has, in addition to its illegality, been a violation of past U.S. agreements with other countries. So we emerge from the trade war as a nation that can no longer be trusted to honor its promises.
Second, if we look at the confrontation with China in particular, the end result looks like a demonstration of U.S. weakness and Chinese strength. China may offer some cosmetic concessions, promising to buy some soybeans or whatever. But the reality — which is obvious to everyone in the world except, possibly, some U.S. voters — is that Trump threatened extremely high tariffs on China but climbed down when China began curtailing exports of rare earths and other industrial inputs. China had the upper hand, and it played it.
In fact, I’d argue that China is now clearly winning its geopolitical conflict with the United States. America used to be able to count on support from its democratic allies. Now it has alienated them, and established a reputation for arbitrarily reneging on agreements. America used to have unmatched economic leverage. Now the world knows that China has more.
It’s similar to the way he dropped the big bunker buster bombs on Iran’s nuclear sites and proved that our biggest non-nuclear threat wasn’t really all that.
He just keeps showing the world that America is a big, stupid, giant that can’t be trusted.
Vance says it is "totally reasonable and acceptable" for people to not want to live next door to people who speak a different language than they do pic.twitter.com/Z2JBc85kau
Question: When you talk about too many immigrants here, when did you guys decide that number? Why did you sell us a dream? You made us spend our youth, our wealth in this country and gave us a dream. You don’t owe us anything. We have worked hard for it.
How can you as a vice president stand there and say that we have too many of them now and we are going to take them out to people who are here rightfully so by paying the money that you guys asked us? You gave us the path and now how can you stop it and tell us we don’t belong here anymore?
Question: When you talk about too many immigrants here, when did you guys decide that number? Why did you sell us a dream? You made us spend our youth, our wealth in this country and gave us a dream. You don't owe us anything. We have worked hard for it. How can you as a vice… pic.twitter.com/6rxqW0aWpZ
JD Vance says he’s raising his children Christian, and he hopes his agnostic wife, Usha, comes around to the Christian faith.
“Most Sundays, Usha comes with me to church.” “Do I hope eventually she is moved by the same thing I was moved by? Yes. I honestly do wish that. I believe in the Christian gospel, and I hope eventually, my wife comes to see it the same way.”
🚨 JUST IN: JD Vance says he's raising his children Christian, and he hopes his agnostic wife, Usha, comes around to the Christian faith
Vance's 8-year-old did his first Communion "about a year ago," and his two oldest kids go to a Christian school
Everyone knew. And they voted for him anyway. They either liked that agenda very much or … eggs. And they just couldn’t stomach an old man or a Black woman.
