August 25, 2019

Something rotten? Trumps state over Denmark at heart of a madcap week
As the president rants about buying Greenland and battling China, some say the TV presidency has finally jumped the sharkDonald Trump talks to reporters at the White House, earlier this month. Photograph: Leah Millis/Reuters“I am but mad north-north-west,” declares Hamlet. “When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.”The prince of Denmark’s pronouncements raise questions over his fitness for the throne. But they might seem a little less unhinged when compared to the ramblings of another blond this week.Donald Trump took umbrage when the Danish government dismissed his notion of buying Greenland as “absurd”, retorting that its prime minister’s reaction was “nasty”. Outlandish as it seemed, this was just one example in an epic session of delirious, dizzying verbal jazz that left some sincerely questioning the president’s mental state.On MSNBC, the host John Heilemann summed up for viewers of Deadline White House: “A full 24-hours after a sustained presidential performance that even by Donald Trump’s standards qualified as unusually madcap, manic, unhinged and unnerving, the world is reeling and offering a collective judgment of ‘OMG and WTF’…”Hamlet’s madness can be sourced to the murder of his father by his uncle. Trump’s was reportedly attributable to warnings of American economic demise. The businessman who made promises of growth, stability and “jobs jobs jobs!” the raison d’être of his political candidacy is said to have been rattled by portents of a recession that would cloud his bid for re-election in November next year.> He is in a new phase of his behaviour and it’s not one that lends a lot of confidence that Donald Trump is a well man> > Rick WilsonTrump was forced to confront the prospect that his fatal flaw – the obsessive waging of a trade war with China – could bring about his own downfall.Such was the air of desperation at the White House on Friday that Trump launched a Twitter rant against Beijing, issuing a Soviet-style command beyond his writ that send markets plunging: “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing … your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.”He also renewed his attacks on Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, who indicated unwillingness to cut interest rates to bolster economic growth. “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?” Trump demanded, going on to announce fresh retaliatory tariffs.The outburst capped a wild week even by the standards of a president about whom everything has been said before – which in turn has also been said before. It consisted of claims of escalating wackiness combined with reassurances about the health of the economy that appeared so strained they brought to mind a line spoken by Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother: “The lady doth protest too much.”On Wednesday, for example, talking to reporters before departing on the Marine One helicopter from a sweltering White House south lawn, Trump began: “So, the economy is doing very, very well … Our economy is the strongest in the world, by far. Nothing even close.”In the ensuing 35 minutes, Trump parroted gun lobby talking points on background checks, reversed his position on a payroll tax cut, called for Russia to rejoin the G7, derided the former vice-president Joe Biden as “Sleepy Joe”, blamed the media for trying to bring on a recession and falsely claimed about immigration policy: “President Obama and others brought the families apart, but I’m the one that kept the families together.”There was more. Trump repeated his use of an antisemitic trope – “In my opinion, you vote for a Democrat, you’re being very disloyal to Jewish people and you’re being very disloyal to Israel” – and suggested divine providence had chosen him for an escalating trade war with China, insisting with a skywards glance: “I am the chosen one.” The president later said that was sarcastic but he had also recently quoted a radio host declaring that Israeli Jews love him as if he were the “King of Israel” and “the second coming of God”.He also renewed his attack on Denmark, a key Nato ally. Although he is not the first president to float the idea of buying Greenland – Harry Truman considered it in 1946 – and thereby expanding the size of the US by more than a fifth, Trump’s decision to abruptly cancel a state visit to Denmark out of spite, then insult the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen – “You don’t talk to the United States that way, at least under me” – left diplomats slack-jawed. ‘Very much a different character’All told, it was perhaps the week in which The Trump Show, now in its third season, finally “jumped the shark” – a reference to the 1970s sitcom Happy Days, in which the character Fonzie jumps over a shark while on water-skis, seen as a gimmick by script writers desperately short of ideas. Former Trump administration officials told the New York Times they are increasingly worried about the president’s behaviour, especially as there are now few seasoned advisers to constrain him.Rick Wilson, a Republican political strategist, told the Guardian: “I think it is demonstrable that he is getting worse. I think that the continuous verbal aphasias, the lack of coherence, the obvious anger, the sort of inability to conform his affects to the times and places he is appearing have led a lot of people who have been observing him for a while now to note that he is in a very new phase of his behaviour and it’s not one that lends a lot of confidence that Donald Trump is a well man.”He added: “A meaningful fraction of Americans at first viewed it as sort of amusing or as just a funny affectation and as part of his super clever negotiating skills but more and more people are looking at it as, there’s something wrong with this man, there’s something very off now about him. Even if you look at video of two years ago, he is very much a different character then he was in this in the ’16 campaign.”Trump is known to brazen out every crisis, perpetually brash and self-confident. But the economy is arguably his Achilles’ heel.> The economy is at least one, maybe two, maybe even three legs of the Trump table> > Bill WhalenThe Washington Post reported: “Through the week, White House officials became increasingly agitated that the public sentiment about the economy seemed to be tipping. Trump, aides said, is obsessed with media coverage of the economy, and thinks Americans will believe negative news and stop spending money. This exasperation began several months earlier.”Wilson, the author of Everything Trump Touches Dies and a Daily Beast article headlined “This Isn’t the Madman Theory. This Is a Madman President”, agrees that recession talk might be a causal factor in Trump’s downward spiral.“He plays a strong man on television,” he said. “The character he played on The Apprentice is what most Americans voted for and they thought of him as a strong negotiator and a bright person and a person with integrity and mental discipline and strength. But that was a TV character, that’s not the real Donald Trump.“The real Donald Trump is a narcissistic person and a weak person and a person who lacks personal discipline on almost every axis and so what’s happening, as he feels the mighty pressures of the presidency, is ugly. He doesn’t have the cognitive ability or the bottom to handle the pressures he’s under and so it’s gotten to be this extraordinarily ugly picture of a man who’s very much out of control.”Trump will be all too aware that after more than 10 years of growth, the economy seems to be showing vulnerability. Factory output has fallen and consumer confidence has thinned while markets have been volatile, although unemployment stands at just 3.7%.Since the civil war, only one president has won re-election with a recession in the final two years of his first term. For voters willing to stomach Trump’s personality and policies as long as the economy is humming, it could be a deal breaker.Rick Tyler, a political analyst, said: “What else do you have? Do you have peace in the Middle East? Do you have a denuclearised Korean peninsula? Do you have peace and harmony among the races?”Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution thinktank at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, said: “The economy is at least one, maybe two, maybe even three legs of the Trump table.”Not even the president’s career-long expertise in deflection and distraction can necessarily save him this time. Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, said: “How about building a wall? But it never happened. How about buying an island and adding a new state? That would be pretty cool.“He’s dancing as fast as he can. Gravity will trump Trump. It is inevitable. Will it be before November 2020? That is the question.”
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'Trump tax': MSNBC host Chris Hayes shows how Trump winning would increase costs
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How much would former President Donald Trump's proposed 10 percent tariff plan actually cost the average American household?The wave of tariffs Trump enacted when he was last president caused chaos, but there are many complexities that muddy this somewhat. However, MSNBC's Chris Hayes took an educated and simple guess at just how badly the country would be hit in the pocketbook under Trump's second-term plans."We don't know exactly how much everything would cost," said Hayes, but "just add 10 percent on the back of the napkin. Here's the cost of living under the Trump Tax."ALSO READ: ‘Don't have enough’: Wealthy Trump allies balk at helping Donald pay legal bills"Start with groceries," he said. "A dozen eggs cost about $3. Once you apply the Trump Tax, that is up to $3.30, with the U.S. importing over 4 million eggs a year, but cost consumers over $1.2 million. If you like oranges, they currently go for about $1.53 per pound. With the Trump Tax, that would be $1.68 per pound, which would cost American consumers almost $71 million for the nearly half a billion pounds of the import. Bananas. We don't really grow them in the U.S., do we? They average about $.63 per pound and going up to $.69 per pound with the Trump Tax, thanks to the U.S. importing more than 10 million pounds per year, that could cost Americans at $609 million and that's a $609 million tax on American consumers. Then there's tomatoes. They go for about $2.13 per pound. Apply the 10 percent Trump Tax. They would be $2.34 per pound, potentially costing Americans $3.5 million thanks to the 6.8 million pounds we import per year. If you are spending $1,200 on groceries, add another $120 to the bill. That's more than the peak of inflation in 2022, which topped off at 9 percent. This is 10 percent."Groceries are just the start, he continued."How about the refrigerator?" said Hayes. "You need to keep the groceries fresh. The average cost of a new fridge is about $1,300. With the Trump Tax, that could go up to $1,430, costing Americans $1.95 billion for the 15 million refrigerators that we import. Again, $1.95 billion of new taxes. What about the car that you need to drive to the grocery store? On average, a new car costs about $48,808 today. With Trump Tax, it costs $53,684, with Americans potentially taking a $66.3 billion hit across the board on the 13 million cars we import. That's not including the 50 percent tariff which would make it another $25,000. Even the smartphone in your pocket cost on average about $940 right now. With Trump Tax, it can go up to $1,034, with Americans potentially paying an extra $13.2 billion for the nearly 141 million smartphones that we import per year.""Everyone hates when you have to pay more for things," he added. "Inflation is one of the biggest liabilities for a sitting president. Yet here is Donald Trump, in the Year of our Lord 2024, running against President Biden, promising to make things more expensive for every American."Watch the video below or click here. Chris Hayes breaks down "Trump Tax" www.youtube.com
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'Some prosecutor should be looking into' Trump's latest legal defense scam: expert
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Former President Donald Trump's sprawling network of ostensibly independent political groups raising money for him, much of it in service of paying legal expenses, seems to walk right up to the line of breaking the law, former prosecutor Kristy Greenberg told MSNBC's Alex Wagner — and may in fact cross it."Kristy, how is this legal?" asked Wagner. "How can he keep saying this one thing and doing another?""Well, I think the big question here will be looking behind all of this as to who is coordinating it," said Greenberg. "If Donald Trump is coordinating between his campaign and these PACs that are supposed to be third parties and independent — the Save America PAC is independent, even though he directs it, independent third-party — if there is sufficient coordination, you could prove that, then maybe you would have something to say these expenditures are not purely personal, these are really campaign contributions. And therefore they should be subject to the limits of $5,000 that campaign contributions are subject to."ALSO READ: ‘Don't have enough’: Wealthy Trump allies balk at helping Donald pay legal billsWhat it looks like, Greenberg went on, is that Trump and his allies are "just trying to do an end-run around these various regulations, and it seems so transparent.""[Special counsel] Jack Smith ... had served some subpoenas in connection with that nonexistent, as it turns out, election defense fund," Greenberg said. "He served some subpoenas and then he withdrew them and it was unclear why, because that seemed like such a clear-cut fraud. I questioned why that happened. Perhaps it was optics. Perhaps he thought like he had such strong cases, the January 6 case and the national security case, that he didn't want to seem as though he was trying to drain Trump of the ability to legally defend against those cases. Hard to say. But I questioned it at that time because that seemed like such a clear wire fraud case that it seemed like it should be looked into, but maybe they just had limited resources and didn't like the optics of it.""But I agree with you, this raises a lot of questions," she added. "Someone, somewhere, even if not the special counsel's office, because they are pretty busy — some prosecutors should be looking into this."Watch the video below or at the link. Kristy Greenberg on the legality of Trump's PACs www.youtube.com
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