Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Everything’s a reality show to him and he’s teasing the Big Finale. Who knows what’s going to happen? Tune in to find out.

Trump’s been getting revenge on law firms that represented people he perceives as enemies and now he’s going after individuals by name. He’s making an example of these two but I’m sure they won’t be the last.

President Trump on Wednesday signed executive orders punishing two officials from his first administration and an elite law firm, continuing a campaign of retribution that he has gleefully carried out since his inauguration.

Two executive orders targeted Christopher Krebs, who as a senior cybersecurity official oversaw the securing of the 2020 presidential election, and Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security during Mr. Trump’s first term and anonymously wrote a high-profile opinion article for The New York Times in 2018. Among other measures, the orders directed Pam Bondi, the attorney general, and Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to investigate the former officials and report their findings to the White House.

Good luck to them finding a law firm to represent them:

A third order targeted the law firm Susman Godfrey with many of the same sanctions that Mr. Trump has applied to other law firms that had taken on cases or causes he did not like. In 2023, Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to resolve a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s promotion of misinformation about the 2020 election. Susman Godfrey represented Dominion, a manufacturer of voting machines that lawyers allied with Mr. Trump attacked with outlandish claims about widespread voting fraud.

We’re all logically obsessed with the tariffs these days and the shock and awe of DOGE and Vought and Bobby Jr and all the rest is overwhelming. But the destruction of the rule of law continues, openly and without restraint and it may be the most destructive activity of all. This is full-on dictator behavior. And nobody blinks an eye. It’s just another atrocity among thousands.

Flamboyantly going after Krebbs and Taylor with an executive order is designed to intimidate anyone who might speak out. I would guess that it’s going to work quite well. Putin must be so proud of his protege.

HR McMaster was surprised to pick up the phone to be told the president was on the line:

Just a day earlier, on March 2, Mr. Trump had lobbed his latest insult at McMaster, blasting him on social media as a “weak and totally ineffective loser.”  McMaster had also just appeared on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” where he voiced skepticism about Mr. Trump’s overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Putin’s willingness to end the war in Ukraine. 

Trump called him Henry and started talking at which point McMaster understood that it was Trump and that he thought he was talking to someone else. His name isn’t Henry. When he told the president that he was talking to H.R McMaster this is how he weirdly

“Why the f*** would I talk” to H.R. McMaster? Trump asked dismissively, and then Trump launched into a scathing critique of his former aide, two sources said.

Did he tell the White house operator to call “Henry McMaster” by mistake? He gets names mixed up. Remember Tim Apple? Or did the operator just hear the name wrong and call the wrong number? He might have had a total brain freeze for all we know. But his response is truly weird. He’s the one who placed the call (or asked for it to be placed.) And yet he asked, “why the fuck would I talk to H.R. McMaster (or “you” it’s unclear)? That makes no sense.

He’s under tremendous stress and he’s surrounded himself with sycophants and eager henchmen. And he’s not all there.

Are you fucking kidding me???

Trump played his cards close to his vest. He told advisers that he was willing to take “pain,” a person who spoke to him on Monday said. He privately acknowledged that his trade policy could trigger a recession but said he wanted to be sure it didn’t cause a depression, according to people familiar with the conversations. 

He could take “pain?? Really? How noble of him.

But he didn’t want them to trigger a depression which was awfully thoughtful, Long live King Donald. He cares.

It’s not hard to figure out

The Wall St Journal reported on what happened behind the scenes to make Trump blink yesterday. Apparently, he didn’t expect the markets to tank last week the way they did because he’s an idiot and has no idea what he’s doing. He was spooked enough that he started to listen to people other than Lutnick and Navarro and was finally persuaded by Bessent that he should “negotiate” rather than stubbornly insist that this plan was going to make the world bend the knee (or kiss his ass as he said at that GOP event the other night.) That’s stupid too but it bought them 90 days and I guess that’s the best they could do under the circumstances. No word on what happened to the tariffs forcing people to move their manufacturing to the US. I guess that’s off the table now? Whatever …

This is just precious:

Trump played his cards close to his vest. He told advisers that he was willing to take “pain,” a person who spoke to him on Monday said. He privately acknowledged that his trade policy could trigger a recession but said he wanted to be sure it didn’t cause a depression, according to people familiar with the conversations. 

Big of him to take the “pain” of a recession and also very thoughtful of him to draw the line at a depression. What a guy.

Banking executives—frustrated at their apparent lack of influence with administration officials—turned to Republican lawmakers in recent days to lobby Trump on the tariffs, according to people familiar with the matter. Their message was that Trump was going to tank the economy. 

Trump was also in listening mode. Over the past few days, he has been asking friends and advisers about the markets, and he indicated he was closely watching them. At the White House on Wednesday, he had lunch with financier and investor Charles Schwab and met with Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who had warned that Michigan was already feeling the impact of the tariffs throughout its automotive industry—events that came after his decision but signaled he was widely gathering input.

On Tuesday evening, Trump said that he absorbed the bad news about a plummeting bond market. “I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy,” Trump said Wednesday about the bond market. 

Trump, an avid consumer of cable news, said that he watched Dimon’s interview Wednesday morning with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business. During the interview, Dimon said a recession was a “likely outcome” of the new tariff program, but also defended the idea of some tariffs as a way to improve trade. He urged the president to give Bessent time to make deals. “I’m taking a calm view, but it could get worse,” Dimon said.

Dimon hasn’t had a substantive conversation with Trump for years, people familiar with the matter said. While his appearance on the Fox Business show had been in place for some time, Dimon knew that Trump and his inner circle often watched Fox and that his message would likely get through to them, one of the people said. 

Trump told reporters Wednesday he had been thinking about pausing tariffs “over the last few days,” adding “it probably came together early this morning, fairly early this morning.” He said he didn’t consult with lawyers for the wording of his announcement and instead relied on input from Bessent and Lutnick. “We wrote it up from our hearts,” Trump said. “We don’t want to hurt countries that don’t need to be hurt, and they all want to negotiate.”

God help us. This man is more demented by the day.

However, he’s not so demented that he didn’t give his rich buddies and family a little heads up. At 9:33 yesterday morning he posted “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT” And it surely was. Just a short time later he announced the pause and the markets surged. This was rank market manipulation but I’m quite sure nothing will come of it. There is no accountability for Trump and his buddies. The law is for losers.

Paul Krugman explains in his newsletter today that despite his acolytes hosannas over his alleged strategic brilliance, we all know that he made a massive mistake and the economy is not going to easily rebound from this:

Anyone sounding the all-clear on tariffs, or Trump economic policy in general, should be kept away from sharp objects and banned from operating heavy machinery. We’re in a hardly better place than we were before Donald Trump announced a tariff pause (in a Truth Social post, of course.) In fact, we may be in a worse place.

Let me make four points about Trump’s post-pause tariff regime.

1. Even the post-pause tariff rates represent a huge protectionist shock

2. Destructive uncertainty about future policy has increased

3. We’re still at risk of a major financial crisis

4. The world now knows that Trump is weak as well as erratic

Source: USITC and author’s estimate

He crunched the numbers and found that even with the pause, the effective tariff rate, as you can see in the chart, is almost as high as Smoot-Hawley:

But this still represents a huge jump in tariffs in a US economy that now imports three times as much as it did in 1930. Trump’s post-pause tariff regime remains the biggest trade shock in U.S., and I think world history.

You should read the whole thing but I want to specifically highlight number three because it’s not something I’ve heard much about:

Yesterday I noted that financial markets were showing the telltale signs of an incipient financial crisis. I looked mainly at the breakeven inflation rate, but many other indicators were also flashing yellow. Even yields on long-term federal bonds, normally a safe haven in troubled times, were sounding a warning.

The inimitable Nathan Tankus has a new post explaining why we were and continue to be vulnerable to a new crisis. He explains why the Rose Garden announcement may have been a new tariff-induced “Lehman moment” for the financial system. He explains a lot of stuff that I didn’t know or had grasped only vaguely — in particular, how hedge funds have become key providers of liquidity, even in the Treasury market (via the “basis trade.”) So when hedge funds’ portfolios take a hit from erratic policy, this quickly creates system-wide stress.

I’m planning to write a primer about financial crises and how they happen this weekend.

The level of financial market stress declined somewhat yesterday, but the situation remains fraught. Trump’s next stupid policy move — and there will be more stupid moves — could quite easily tip us over the edge.

Yikes.

I think the scariest thing I’ve heard in all this was Trump saying that he has relied on his instincts and will continue to do so. That’s not good.

Work the eye

Many of the Trump 2.0’s problems are self-inflicted, but public pushback has opened a metaphorical cut over its eye. YOUR pushback works. Trump himself will never admit it, of course. But his rapid retreat on his tariffs on Wednesday after investors started dumping U.S. bonds proves he’s vulnerable. The bond market was getting “a little queasy,” Trump admitted this morning. Investors predicted a Trump recession. Trump retreated.

U.S. bonds are normally a haven in rough economic seas. But not in a Trumpish storm:

But in the past few days, money has been seeping out of the bond market, which is making these bonds much cheaper, generally. That is pushing yields on bonds higher, because bond yields move inversely to their prices.

The sell-off unnerved the White House enough on Wednesday, per reports, that Trump issued a 90-day “pause” in implementing his retaliatory tariffs (above a 10 percent base) except for China.

That may not be the only data shaking Trump’s public confidence. A Quinnipiac poll reveals Americans very unsettled by Trump’s handling of the economy. (See image at top. Remember how he’d lower prices on Day 1?)

That lowering prices thing ain’t working, whatever lies he’s telling. Plus, as Rachel Maddow noted Wednesday night, nine out of the 10 largest drops in Dow Jones history happened on Trump’s watch.

The frenzy of vandalism against the Social Security and Medicare systems by Elon Musk’s DOGEes has raised hackles among seniors and Medicare recipients. “Now, after nearly a month of chaos and backlash,” DOGE plans for eliminating phone support and forcing users to use direct deposit is dead, reports The Washington Post:

According to an internal memo obtained by The Washington Post, plans to force people awarded retirement, disability and Medicare benefits to set up direct-deposit payments online or in person have been canceled after the agency concluded it could vet these transactions for fraud by phone. Those applying for benefits can also continue the process by phone without the need to go online or visit an office in person, according to the Monday memo from acting deputy commissioner Doris Diaz to acting commissioner Leland Dudek.

Pushback works. Protesting works. Pressure works.

The shift amounts to a wholesale retreat by Musk’s team and the Social Security leadership in their bid to dramatically curtail telephone access to services. The changes announced by Dudek in March and pushed by members of the DOGE team would have directed all people filing claims to first verify their identity online or in person. The new system would have removed a phone option, in place for years, which has come to be a mainstay for the 73 million Americans who rely on Social Security for retirement, survivor and disability benefits and Medicare claims.

Emails went out to Social Security employees this week instructing them not to have any correspondence with “Congressional” actors or “Advocates.” They’re circling the wagons. “An agency spokesman denied that anyone had been told not to respond to inquiries from lawmakers.” Okay.

This is an ongoing saga. But the takeaway is that a million(s?) people in the street, a national outcry, and market unrest has Musk-Trump off balance, and maybe reeling. Great.

Keep punching and work the eye.

* * * * *

Have you fought autocracy today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 19 (Details pending)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

We. Are. Many.

* * * * *

Have you fought autocracy today?

National Day of Action, Saturday, April 19 (Details pending)
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

How is this not just idolatry? pic.twitter.com/9w8xMKYLcZ

— Micah Erfan (@micah_erfan) April 9, 2025

If I were a believer in such things, this would convince me that Donald Trump is the antichrist.

I wrote about Elon’s Big Data Dream a month ago, discussing the idea that AI is a data suck and these programs are running out of it. The U.S. Government is a major depository of a whole lot of it that up until now has not been accessible to anyone who is unauthorized to have it, and was kept in small discrete chunks.

Well, it looks like Elon’s bringing it all together. The NY Times reports:

The federal government knows your mother’s maiden name and your bank account number. The student debt you hold. Your disability status. The company that employs you and the wages you earn there. And that’s just a start.

These intimate details about the personal lives of people who live in the United States are held in disconnected data systems across the federal government — some at the Treasury, some at the Social Security Administration and some at the Department of Education, among other agencies.

The Trump administration is now trying to connect the dots of that disparate information. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the “consolidation” of these segregated records, raising the prospect of creating a kind of data trove about Americans that the government has never had before, and that members of the president’s own party have historically opposed.

The effort is being driven by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and his lieutenants with the Department of Government Efficiency, who have sought access to dozens of databases as they have swept through agencies across the federal government. Along the way, they have elbowed past the objections of career staff, data security protocols, national security experts and legal privacy protections.

Musk doesn’t care about privacy or security. In fact, security is probably the last thing he wants since he wants to be able to access this information for his own purposes.

This is a major threat to our personal and national security and nobody’s doing anything to stop it. In fact, it’s probably too late already.

Meanwhile, Musk is convinced that undocumented immigrants are fraudulently ripping off the government by the trillions and wants to use this data to stop them. That’s going to create a monumental mess with a lot of people being illegally and unfairly targeted:

“The data is not fit for the purpose that you’re trying to use it for,” said Ms. Olson, the executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, which is also suing the government. “And you’ll get wrong results, and there’s consequences to those wrong results.”

People could be cut off from benefits or identified for deportation for suspicious indicators that have benign explanations. However, Mr. Musk has shown little interest in the details of those explanations. He has repeatedly misrepresented data about dead people and immigrants receiving Social Security. He has suggested something nefarious must explain a surge in tax credits that can be traced to expansions of the child tax credit and pandemic relief.

What happens if a family claiming a tax credit for the first time is flagged for fraud — and has their Medicaid cut off, too?“What will their resolution process be? Will they act first and deal with the fallout later?” said Elizabeth Laird with the Center for Democracy and Technology. “People who maybe are like, ‘Well, I got notified my data was breached 10 years ago and I’ve been fine’ — I don’t think they’ve been subjected to what we may see this used for.”

Maybe it’s not such a great idea to give a wealthy, paranoid, internet troll unfettered access to the federal government’s inner workings. Just a thought.

… and even that won’t be enough

The NY Times’ Jamelle Bouie discusses Trump’s need for domination in his column today. I’ve made the same point before, as have many others but I think Bouie’s insight that he cannot be satiated is very smart:

Trump’s desire to dominate others is the driving psychological force of his administration. His obsession with territorial conquest — seen in his effort to coerce the Canadian government into relinquishing its sovereignty as well as his calls for both the acquisition of Greenland and the Panama Canal — is an obvious product of his predatory approach to human interaction. His authoritarian attempts to cow and coerce key institutions of civil society into compliance with his agenda and obedience to his will are, likewise, a kind of dominance game. They are meant to demonstrate his mastery over his perceived enemies more than they are to achieve any policy aim. He even said as much during an event on Tuesday, where he bragged about the law firms “signing up with Trump” and said that “they give me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong.”

You could even say that this need to dominate — this overwhelming drive to show mastery — is constitutive of Trump’s self. There must be a loser or else there is no Trump. Or, as Hegel put it, “self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is only by being acknowledged or recognized.”

The upshot of this understanding of Trump’s personality is that there is no point at which he can be satisfied. He will always want more: more supplicants to obey his next command; more displays of his power and authority; and more opportunities to trample over those who don’t belong in his America…

Viewed in light of the president’s psychological need to dominate, it is almost certainly true that his flagrant abuse of the rights of migrants, asylum seekers and foreign-born students in the United States — snatching them off the streets to be imprisoned or, worse, sending them to an unaccountable foreign prison with no practical legal recourse — is just the beginning. In the same way that there was nothing that could stop Trump from imposing a tariff regime that, in his mind, humiliates America’s rivals, there is nothing that can dissuade him from using the coercive power of the state to dominate those he disfavors at home.

Trump is a winner, and he’ll show it by making all of us the loser.

I have to say that he’s doing a remarkable job of it.