Trump: We have had some great interviews with Tucker Carlson but you cannot tell them who to interview. If he wants to interview Nick Fuentes—I do not know much about him
President Trump backed Tucker Carlson on Sunday after the ex-Fox News host’s interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes triggered contentious MAGA-world infighting.
Trump’s defense of Carlson interviewing a man labeled a white supremacist by the Justice Department puts him at odds with Republicans like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz who have condemned Carlson. More broadly, it underscores MAGA’s divided approach toward tolerating racism, sexism and antisemitism on the far right.
Trump on Sunday finally waded into the Republican warfare after weeks of critics blasting Carlson for hosting the Holocaust denier on his podcast. The president didn’t address Fuentes’ comments but said “you can’t tell him [Carlson] who to interview.” He said he found Carlson “to be good,” adding he “said good things about me.”
Trump continued, “if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out. Let him, you know, people have to decide.”
I know what you’re thinking. This vacuous, demented fool can’t hear himself. He’s constantly saying that various critics should be silenced, banned, arrested etc. But because Tucker has said something good about him, he’s now a crusader for free speech. (In reality, he’s just fine with the Nazis — always has been.)
When asked if the president condemned Fuentes’ racist and antisemitic rhetoric, the White House pointed Axios to the president’s remarks. Trump said he didn’t “know much about him” but did not criticize Fuentes Sunday.
Fuentes and rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. The president has been adamant that Ye brought Fuentes, whom he said he knew nothing about.
He reiterated that Sunday when a reporter mentioned the dinner, saying, “I didn’t know he was coming.” Trump added, “Kanye asked if he could have dinner, and he brought Nick. I didn’t know Nick at the time, and he did.”
This has become a major rift and it isn’t getting any better. Carlson, Fuentes, Ted Cruz, The Heritage Foundation, Ben Shapiro and thousands of other influencers are all at each others’ throats. It’s awesome. And here comes Trump, trying to say he knows nothing about the Nazi MAGA’s but they do say nice things about it so…
It’s undoubtedly enjoyable to watch them fight amongst themselves, but we should be aware that the mainstreaming of fascist monsters like Fuentes is not a good development under any circumstances. According to people who know, the federal government is full of his little army of young “groypers.” Not good.
You need to watch that if you can. First, it’s good news that 60 Minutes is still allowed to do a story like this. I am surprised. Second, it is a scathing indictment of Trump and his massively corrupt regime.
In the 2024 campaign, Donald Trump offered full-throated support for the crypto industry. And, online, he, his family and partners announced they were opening a crypto firm of their own.
Trump World Liberty Financial promo: We’re embracing the future with crypto and leaving the slow and outdated big banks behind that’s what we wanna do. Go to World Liberty Financial dot com.
World Liberty Financial would be like a bank offering financial services in digital currencies. Its pitch to investors usually called a “white paper” was gilded as a “gold paper.”
Scott Pelley: When World Liberty Financial launched before the election, was it a big success?
Austin Campbell: It was largely unknown. They had had a fundraising round that had only been partially filled. They had a team that I think only had one, or maybe a handful of engineers at best, and honestly not much was going on there.
Austin Campbell is a former banker who’s briefed Congress on crypto. He was a crypto executive and now teaches at New York University.
Scott Pelley: If you’re starting a crypto company from scratch, what are the technical hurdles?
Austin Campbell: You need to hire engineers, you need to deploy all of the infrastructure that you’ll need, essentially, to run a tech company.
Enter Changpeng Zhao, last fall, fresh out of prison. Sources tell us Zhao’s company, Binance, donated software to World Liberty to help the Trump family venture launch a cryptocurrency. A source familiar with events told us, without Zhao, quote, “the technology doesn’t exist.”
The next month, Changpeng Zhao applied for a presidential pardon. And shortly after the application, he was at the center of a blockbuster deal that put World Liberty on the map. Zhao is a citizen of the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf and in May, an Emirati fund put $2 billion in Zhao’s Binance. Of all the currencies in the world, the deal was done in World Liberty crypto.
Austin Campbell: So it took World Liberty from being a small project that maybe was on the road map after the election, purely for the name, to being one of the largest stablecoins in the world in a single transaction. So, it vaulted them from small time to the big leagues.
The Emirates entrusted two billion to a currency that had been on the market five weeks. One source told us, “it wasn’t strange. It was nuts.”
Lawrence Lessig: The only reason it makes sense is to ingratiate with the president.
Lawrence Lessig has spent nearly 20 years on ethics in politics. He teaches law at Harvard and has campaigned with the left and the right against the corrupting influence of money.
Scott Pelley: Are you saying that the president is compromised by this transaction?
Lawrence Lessig: “Compromised” is exactly the description because we can’t know what’s the actual reason for the decisions that the administration is making. Are the reasons helping America, or are the reasons helping America and also helping them privately?
Trump believes that what’s good for Trump is good for the USA so that’s not a question for him. The rest of us should be appalled. But are we? Is this kleptocracy our new normal?
I’m not sure exactly how we get around this. Trump can just assert that any dealing he has with a foreign country which automatically makes it an “official duty” and who’s going to argue? Presidential “immunity” covers a lot of ground.
The precedent exists now and I just wonder if America has completely lost its moral muscle memory that would lead it to reject any leader who follows in his footsteps.
These days, the Justice Department is so busy pursuing revenge against President Donald Trump’s enemies it’s a wonder they have time to do anything else. In fact, nearly half of all FBI agents in the major field offices have been reassigned to assist the Department of Homeland Security in rounding up undocumented day laborers and daycare workers, illustrating Trump’s priorities. But it’s a mistake to think the administration is solely focused on vengeance. The president is also liberally using his authority to reward his friends.
Trump likes to say he can do anything he wants because he “has an Article II.” Until now, at least, that has been an exaggeration. He has a great deal of power, to be sure, but it has not been unlimited. The Constitution explicitly grants power to the legislative and judicial branches too, which we all learned in elementary school is called the balance of power. This president is pushing the limits beyond all previous understanding, and his actions have provoked numerous legal challenges that are likely to be decided by the Supreme Court.
However, there is one area in which the president does have absolute plenary authority: The power of the pardon. And Donald Trump is using it liberally.
As ProPublica reported, by skipping over the Justice Department’s usual standards and requirements and pretty much running an ad hoc system right out of the White House, he is not following any of the usual rules that have governed presidents in the past. The result? Thousands of people requesting pardons and clemency are waiting in line, while Trump’s buddies, and those who have the money or access to get to him directly, are successful in their quest.
The biggest story of the week was the House Oversight Committee’s release of over 20,000 pages of documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including emails and texts, and the success of the discharge petition, which requires a vote by the full House on releasing all the files held by the Justice Department.
Amidst all the hoopla, more under the radar was the story of Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s very special treatment in the cushy low-security prison to which she was transferred after giving Deputy Attorney General — and former Trump personal attorney — Todd Blanche a friendly interview. According to reports, she is working on a commutation application.
Near the end of Trump’s interview on the Nov. 2 episode of “60 Minutes,” CBS News correspondent Norah O’Donnell asked the president about his recent pardon of crypto-billionaire Changpeng Zhao (known as CZ) who has extensive business dealings with World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company co-founded by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump that has garnered them billions of dollars in profits since their father returned to the White House. The mere appearance of such a thing is staggeringly corrupt, and Trump’s long, rambling explanation did nothing to dispel that impression.
“Okay, are you ready?” he asked O’Donnell, before launching into a remarkable answer. “I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.” But Trump soon digressed, dancing as fast as he could, admitting that his sons are very involved in crypto but saying he doesn’t know much about it — except that China is going to be doing it if America doesn’t. He admitted the connection “might look bad” if that had been his motivation, but he knew nothing about it because he was too busy doing other things. He went on and on like this until O’Donnell finally asked, “So, not concerned about the appearance of corruption with this?” Trump replied, “I can’t say, because — I can’t say — I’m not concerned. I don’t — I’d rather not have you ask the question…”
Let’s pause to consider this: Trump said he didn’t know the man who had made his family billions of dollars. He also claims that former president Joe Biden’s pardons are null and void because he used an autopen, which is perfectly legal. He said, “In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!” His Justice Department has launched a formal investigation into the matter. Meanwhile, there’s no word on whether Trump personally signed each clemency document of the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 insurrectionists he pardoned on his first day in office, or the second pardon he issued a few days ago to a defendant convicted of a gun crime.
It’s impossible to imagine any other president in American history getting away with such shameless hypocrisy, but Trump’s rampant misuse of the pardon power is so commonplace that it’s barely a blip on the media’s radar.
In a recent column, the New York Times’ David French discussed some of Trump’s pardon recipients who have gone on to commit more crimes, some of them violent, which would normally be a scandal in itself. But French proceeded to note that the possibility of a president abusing this power was one of the founders’ great worries.
Anti-federalists such as George Mason wrote that the president “ought not to have the power of pardoning, because he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself” and that “it may happen, at some future day that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic.” Another warned that the pardon power could be used “to the purposes of gratifying their own interest and ambition, and it is scarcely possible, in a very large republic, to call them to account for their misconduct, or to prevent their abuse of power.” These words couldn’t be more relevant to our current situation.
As French pointed out, the Federalists replied that there was no reason to worry because the Congress would impeach any president who dared to do such things. Right. How’s that worked out for us so far?
Trump’s flagrant abuse of the pardon power to help his friends and make money for his family is yet another of his grotesque assaults on the presidency. But the threat to the Constitution and our democratic system is even greater. The immunity for “official acts” conferred on him — and future presidents — by the Supreme Court’s July 2024 decision in Trump v. United States, along with the pardon power, amounts to a get-out-of-jail-free card for himself and anyone who carries out his wishes. And he has shown that he will have no compunction about doing just that.
Just last week, Trump preemptively pardoned dozens of his associates who attempted to overturn the 2020 election, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former chief of staff Mark Meadows, and attorneys Sidney Powell and John Eastman. Next time, everyone involved will know they have nothing to fear from the law if they try it again — including Trump himself.
Two and a half percent, the Chicago Tribune reported over the weekend:
The Trump administration on Friday released the names of 614 people whose Chicago-area immigration arrests may have violated a 2022 consent decree, and only 16 of them have criminal histories that present a “high public safety risk.”
The list was produced as part of an ongoing lawsuit alleging immigration agents have repeatedly violated the terms of the in-court settlement, mostly during “Operation Midway Blitz,” that puts a high bar on making so-called warrantless arrests without a prior warrant or probable cause.
The Department of Homeland Security has claimed since the outset of the operation that they were going after the “worst of the worst,” including convicted murderers, rapists and other violent offenders who were allegedly taking advantage of Illinois’ sanctuary policies to terrorize the citizenry.
Customs and Border Patrol celebrated “a minimum of 50 people taken into custody” in its snarkily named “Charlotte’s Web” operation in Charlotte over the weekend (The Guardian):
Some businesses in Charlotte chose to stay closed at the weekend and many areas that would often be bustling on a Saturday afternoon were quiet as people stayed home in fear of anti-immigration raids and sweeps.
Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents on a similar operation in Chicago, took to social media to document some of the arrests, a total that he said now stands at 81. He added that many of those taken into custody had “significant criminal and immigration history” and that the mass arrests were accomplished in “about 5 hours”.
Given his history in Chicago, it is not surpriging that Bovino is not more specific about how many of the 81 have criminal histories. He was quick to display photos of eight alleged criminal detainees. Except several with “significant criminal” histories had DUI records (not to minimize that), one had a standing removal order, a couple had felony larceny and assault charges, one had a hit-and-run compounding DUI, and there was one Honduran with “multiple simple assaults, shoplifting, and an aggravated felony assault that put him behind bars for 4 years.” Q: Why was the man incarcerated for 4 years not deported upon his release? What about the other 73 alleged worst-of-the-worst?
Greg Sargent offers a rundown ahead of his Monday podcast:
Anxiety is rising among President Trump’s staunchest allies that he’s politically lost his way. The New York Timesreports that his advisers fear he’s alienating key voters in his own coalition. And CNN reports that some Republicans are openly warning the White House that the GOP is in trouble in the midterm elections. Meanwhile, Trump just erupted in a furious new tirade about the Jeffrey Epstein fiasco. In it, he ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein’s ties to Democrats. Bondi immediately did his bidding. That Trump has now formally turned the Justice Department loose in this way shows his anger over Epstein has hit new highs. Some Republicans say all these things are related: Trump is so consumed with Epstein that he’s letting everything else go to hell.
Trump on Sunday suddenly reversed himself on the coming Epstein files vote in the House:
Mr. Trump said on social media that House Republicans should vote to release files related to the sex offender “because we have nothing to hide.” It was a striking shift in his stance as he faced the possibility that dozens of G.O.P. lawmakers could support the measure in a floor vote expected this week.
“It’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown,’” he wrote.
Trump added, “the House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE! All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT,” meaning the economy where “where we are winning BIG!” He hasn’t forgotten to manifest his preferred version of reality by repeating his “Trump always wins” mantras. So, there’s still something of the old real estate huckster in there.
But Trump sees he is set to lose and lose big in the upcoming House vote on releasing the Epstein files. He might as well join the winning side beforehand and avoid crowning himself a lame duck. He still has a chance to arm-twist remaining allies in the Senate into killing the measure. That would avoid him having to veto the bill when it gets to his desk and give him someone else to blame for it. But there are 20 GOP senators up for reelection in 2026 and only a handful are retiring or running for higher office.
After the White House’s failure last week to put the thumbscrews to Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado — in the Situation Room, no less — or to persuade Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina to take their names of the House discharge petition, Trump’s confidence that he can stop the bill in the Senate has to be flagging. Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is lost to him. (She is now “Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Greene.”) But Trump’s Senate fight is for another day. His Senate whip count won’t mean much until the measure passes the House.
Again, given all the White House pardon activity and the concierge treatment for Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell at her new Club Fed digs, I still suspect Trump is working up a “the dog ate my homework” explanation for not releasing the files. Unless he believes his attempts to link Democrats to Epstein will somehow dampen the blowback from their release. If Trump’s name appears over 1,600 times in the emails released last week from the Epstein estate, he has to know there will be far more mentions in the DOJ’s trove. And that’s whether or not anything of him and sex-trafficking surfaces. (It is still possible that evidence Trump laundered money for Russian oligarchs could turn up in there.)
So pressure on Trump is building. This new PSA from Epstein survivors will turn it up another notch. And the dial hasn’t reached 11 yet.
NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen.
Blanche on Swalwell referral: The difference between this DOJ and the DOJ of the past four years is we're investigating and enforcing the law in a fair way. Lawfare is gone. It’s not part of this DOJ. pic.twitter.com/z9ERkYAxM9
It’s true. They are hell on mortgage fraud which coincidentally seems to be something of a Democratic crime spree. (There are evidently no Republicans who have homes in their districts and homes in DC. I guess they all live in their offices.) They do keep having problems finding prosecutors who are willing to argue the cases because they are so obviously ridiculous and clearly vindictive prosecutions against Trump’s enemies but they can always dredge up a beauty queen insurance lawyer or two to sign the indictments so it’s perfectly fine.
You won’t find them prosecuting anyone for staging a coup or storming the capital during a joint session of Congress to try to kill the Vice President though, no sirree. That would be lawfare. And any of Trump’s pals should feel free to commit as many crimes as they want because there will be no prosecutions and, at worst, they’d be pardoned anyway.
How about this fatuous garbage?
Blanche: The DOJ is completely committed to enforcing… the voting rights laws that every single American should want. And that's what we're doing, and the way that California has done it in our view does not work. And so we're going to fight it and we expect that we'll win in… pic.twitter.com/8F9l31GbNE
Blanche on Epstein: We're going to find out if there's anybody that hasn't been held accountable and if they're out there, we'll find them. pic.twitter.com/KbFBwfi0jv
Not 4 months ago the DOJ released a report saying this:
As part of our commitment to transparency, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted an exhaustive review of investigative holdings relating to Jeffrey Epstein. To ensure that the review was thorough, the FBI conducted digital searches of its databases, hard drives, and network drives as well as physical searches of squad areas, locked cabinets, desks, closets, and other areas where responsive material may have been stored. These uncovered a significant amount of material, including more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence.
The files relating to Epstein include a large volume of images of Epstein, images and videos of victims who are either minors or appear to be minors, and over ten thousand downloaded videos and images of illegal child sex abuse material and other pornography. Teams of agents, analysts, attorneys, and privacy and civil liberties experts combed through the digital and documentary evidence with the aim of providing as much information as possible to the public while simultaneously protecting victims. Much of the material is subject to court-ordered sealing. Only fraction of this material would have been aired publicly had Epstein gone to trial, as the seal served only to protect victims and did not expose any additional third-parties to allegations of illegal wrongdoing. Through this review, we found no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials and will not permit the release of child pornography. This systematic review revealed no incriminating “client list.”
There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties.
Blanche was a prosecutor in the SDNY for many years and apparently highly respected. I just don’t know what to do with that.
BASH: We have seen these attacks from the president at other people. It's not new. And I haven't heard you speak out about it until it was directed at you.
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: I think that's fair criticism. And I would like to say, humbly, I'm sorry for taking part in the… pic.twitter.com/uY4LuZnvul
BASH: We have seen these attacks from the president at other people. It’s not new. And I haven’t heard you speak out about it until it was directed at you.
MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: I think that’s fair criticism. And I would like to say, humbly, I’m sorry for taking part in the toxic politics.
Yes, she’s getting a taste of her own medicine. Trump hurt her feelings when he called her a traitor. And yet…
So Marjorie Taylor Green wants CNN to platform Nick Fuentes, an admitted antisemite who has expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, praised Nazi ideology, and denied the Holocaust because that’s “free speech?” https://t.co/u4VMmXIQep
I don’t know what she’s doing. Maybe she doesn’t either. But I can’t help remembering that she spoke at a Fuentes event a year or so ago saying the the future was with that crowd. Is she putting all her cards on a Tucker-Fuentes future and leaving MAGA behind?
BREAKING: Marjorie Taylor Greene announced as surprise speaker at white nationalist Nick Fuentes' America First Political Action Conference tonight in Orlando, FL. MTG has now joined Paul Gosar in embracing Fuentes. Fuentes claims alt-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos made it happen pic.twitter.com/PoqNp8UcAp
There’s a lot of dissension in MAGA right now, what with Marge and Trump feuding, Tucker and the Nazis vs Ben Shapiro and Ted Cruz, the Heritage Foundation imploding, the manosphere edging away. But this is new and it clearly means that the base is unhappy with Dear Leader — but they just can’t say it:
Donald Trump’s longtime supporters are coming for White House gatekeeper Susie Wiles, blaming the president’s so-called “Ice Maiden” for his missteps on everything from the Jeffrey Epstein files to his America First agenda.
After a turbulent week marked by criticism of the president’s comments on “affordability,” skilled worker visas, Chinese students, and his halting response to the newly released Epstein emails, MAGA loyalists have openly accused his chief of staff of steering the president off-course.
Wiles, long viewed as one of the architects behind Trump’s 2024 campaign revival and now a central force inside the West Wing, has spent years cultivating a reputation as a disciplined, discreet operative—someone who not just advises Trump, but tries to keep him focused and filters out the noise for h
But for some hardline conservatives and MAGA loyalists, her gatekeeping is now the problem.
“Susie Wiles needs to be gone yesterday,” a MAGA acolyte wrote on X. “I have a feel (sic) a lot of the domestic crap is from her side of the party and it’s drowning out Stephen Miller.”
“I am publicly calling for Trump to fire Susie Wiles. She is doing unspeakable damage to MAHA and MAGA, in my opinion,” wrote another.
“Psssssst … hey Susie Wiles, you may wanna pivot now. The MAGA ship is sailing and several of you missed the boat,” far-right commentator Ann Vandersteel wrote on X this week. “Oh, and friendly reminder, we the people are YOUR boss. President Trump is too. And WE are his boss.”
I’m pretty sure Trump does NOT believe he works for you honey. He is the King. You best bow down.
MAGA’s rage intensified on Tuesday when the president dismissed concerns from his base that Chinese students were taking up college places that Americans wanted.
By the next day, however, that rage turned white hot when the “America First” president suggested that there were no talented workers in the U.S. after being cornered for allowing high-skilled foreign workers into the country.
This is interesting because it’s about the one thing Trump cares about as much as getting revenge: his money. But sure guys, this is all about Susie Wiles. You keep believing that.
There has been talk that Kevin Hassett is Trump’s choice:
KARL: The president claims that Thanksgiving costs are down 25%. Does he know that's not true?
HASSETT: Well if you look at Walmart–
KARL: Wait a minute. I've gotta stop you. The Walmart package this year contains much less than the one last year. That's why the price is less.… pic.twitter.com/wOycGah79S
KARL: The president claims that Thanksgiving costs are down 25%. Does he know that’s not true?
HASSETT: Well if you look at Walmart–
KARL: Wait a minute. I’ve gotta stop you. The Walmart package this year contains much less than the one last year. That’s why the price is less.
HASSETT: I don’t understand where you’re going
Then he starts babbling about Joe Biden, Joe Biden, Joe Biden and says that inflation is half of what it was in December.
That is a lie. We don’t have the official inflation rate for October because of the shutdown but the annual inflation rate in the US rose to 3% in September 2025, the highest since January.
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in September, after rising 0.4 percent in August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 3.0 percent before seasonal adjustment. Note that September CPI data collection was completed before the lapse in appropriations.
The index for gasoline rose 4.1 percent in September and was the largest factor in the all items monthly increase, as the index for energy rose 1.5 percent over the month. The food index increased 0.2 percent over the month as the food at home index rose 0.3 percent and the food away from home index increased 0.1 percent.
The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.2 percent in September, after rising 0.3 percent in each of the 2 preceding months. Indexes that increased over the month include shelter, airline fares, recreation, household furnishings and operations, and apparel. The indexes for motor vehicle insurance, used cars and trucks, and communication were among the few major indexes that decreased in September.
The all items index rose 3.0 percent for the 12 months ending September, after rising 2.9 percent over the 12 months ending August. The all items less food and energy index also rose 3.0 percent over the last 12 months. The energy indexincreased 2.8 percent for the 12 months ending September. The food index increased 3.1 percent over the last year.
December 2024: The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.4 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in December, after rising 0.3 percent in November, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.9 percent before seasonal adjustment.
They love to say that Trump inherited an economic crisis. The way they describe it it was worse than the great Depression. But that’s projection as usual. Biden was the one who inherited the pandemic economic crisis and successfully engineered a soft landing. Trump inherited a growing economy and then started deporting a bunch of workers and started a trade war for no reason and sent it reeling.
The shocks to food and energy prices contributed substantially to the sharp rise in inflation during the COVID-19 period. Energy price shocks were the primary cause of the high inflation rates from late 2021 to the middle of 2022. Lower energy prices in the second half of 2022 contributed to the inflation decline during that period.
2. The combined effects of increased demand for durables and shortages caused by supply-chain disruptions were the main source of inflation in the second quarter of 2021. Both the direct and indirect effects of those supply-chain problems remained substantial through the end of 2022.
3. Tight labor-market conditions, one of the main concerns of the early critics of U.S fiscal and monetary policy, contributed only slightly to inflation. In fact, the tight labor market affected the economy negatively in 2020 and early 2021. Since then, however, the traditional Phillips-curve effect has begun to reemerge, with the high vacancy-to-unemployment ratio becoming an increasingly important factor in the high inflation rates.
Bernanke and Blanchard argue that the critics’ concerns of higher inflation were correct. But the sources of the high inflation differed from those the critics had anticipated. The authors conclude that price shocks in product markets were the leading cause of the initial rise in inflation. However, as labor markets began to overheat in 2022, with unsustainable employment increases, a high ratio of job openings to unemployed workers, and low levels of quits, labor market tightness increasingly became the main cause of the persistently high inflation rates.
The Fed and the Biden administration managed to engineer a soft landing from that crisis. Trump came in inflicted a bunch of ridiculous policies and cut it off at the pass.
Now he’s going to lower the tariffs he put on some goods and take credit for lowering prices. I’ll be very curious to see if the American people really are as stupid as he thinks they are. (Not holding my breath.)
I’ve been wondering if we would see some actual believing Christians who are Republicans start to defect. The fact that there have been so few up to now said a whole lot about the faith of some of these people. I mean, he’s selling Bibles and signing them!
He grew up on a farm in Indiana, the son of a factory worker and eldest of five children. He studied at Liberty, a Christian university founded by the conservative pastor and televangelist Jerry Falwell, and recalls wearing a T-shirt expressing opposition to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Two decades later, Justin Douglas is running for the US Congress – as a Democrat.
He is among around 30 Christian white clergy – pastors, seminary students and other faith leaders – known to be potential Democratic candidates in next year’s midterm elections, including a dozen who are already in the race. While stressing the separation of church and state, many say that on a personal level their faith is calling them into the political arena.
[…]
Douglas, 41, based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is among a new generation of the Christian left aiming to change that narrative by ensuring that the Democratic brand is not associated with only college-educated urbanites, but can also connect with white working-class churchgoers.
“We’ve seen Democrats time and time again sell out working-class people and we’ve seen Democrats time and time again look like liberal elitists who are looking down on people who think going to church on Sunday is a core part of their life,” said Douglas, who has been in ministry for more than 20 years. “Some people might feel judged for that.
“But I also think the stereotypes of Republicans being pro-faith are bullshit too. We’re seeing a current administration bastardise faith almost every day. They used the Lord’s Prayer in a propaganda video for what they’re now calling the Department of War. That should have had every single evangelical’s bells and whistles and alarms going off in their head: this is sacrilegious.
“But unfortunately, sometimes, when you’re in it, you can’t see it and it takes somebody who has an ability to communicate to that audience, to help show that you’re being manipulated.”
He’s not wrong. People from inside the evangelical faith will need to step up to challenge this.
I wish he didn’t feel he had to pull the “liberal elite”stuff but it seems to be a requirement among those running in swing districts to shit all over liberals so what can you do? At least he didn’t use the word “woke.” But the populist message seems to be resonant and I think the critique of the right is absolutely correct. They should be calling out the sacrilege and the corruption and cruelty are excellent messages with religious overtones as well.
I’ll be interested to see how this goes. Any evangelical who believes that Republicans are being Christian need to have a little chat with Jesus GpT.
In video recorded on Friday (Nov. 14) outside the embattled U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Broadview, Illinois, the Rev. Michael Woolf stands alongside fellow protesters, fiddling awkwardly with his backpack as faith leaders and other protesters chant slogans at a line of police officers. A moment later, one officer can be seen walking forward, grabbing Woolf by the wrist and yanking.
Demonstrators attempted to hold on to Woolf, who was wearing a clerical collar, but four officers wrenched him from the crowd and tossed him to the ground. After turning him onto his stomach, officers proceeded to arrest Woolf, and removed him to the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in Maywood, Illinois.
“I’ve got bruises all over my body,” Woolf, an American Baptist minister who is pastor of Lake Street Church of Evanston, Illinois, told Religion News Service. He was speaking in his first interview since being released Friday afternoon after about seven hours in custody.
Woolf said when he asked the arresting officers to loosen the plastic handcuffs that were causing his hands to go numb, an officer replied: “Nobody wants to talk to you — shut the f–k up.”
“It’s part of the dehumanizing nature of it, and it gives me a lot of clarity around what’s happening here,” said Woolf, who has been active in protests against ICE. “It’s really a spiritual emergency.”
