So, This Happened Yesterday

 

Trump who gets invited to the BEST FUNERALS, showed kids at the White House Easter Egg Hunt his post-assassination attempt collector's card while the stock market was tanking.

That's it. That's the picture. That sentence is the whole blog post. I've been doing this a minute and how do you even add to that? 

"Hey kids, do you know who ELSE was almost killed and rose again? Your favorite president, who got so many eggs you can't even find them all." 

The Future's So Dark, I Gotta Wear Shades

 

Look, I have to retire some time, eventually, and I'm in my 50's, so I'm not grave-dancing over here about what tomorrow is going to bring. The whole election, despite what people were saying about Trump being a felon and a sex-pest and a danger to democracy had also an undercurrent of "This is a whole damn pudding-brained sociopath who will set the country on fire for giggles," but you what? Bygones. Let's just say some people out there chalked all of that up to Trump Derangement Syndrome and didn't want to believe the motherfucker was crazy.

But here's the SOB now:

Trump: "I spoke to a lot of leaders -- European, Asian, from all over the world. They are dying to make a deal, but I said 'we're not gonna have deficits with your country' ... to me a deficit is a loss. We're gonna have surpluses or at worst we're gonna be breaking even." pic.twitter.com/xnW7jb0u3R

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 6, 2025

Is everyone starting to get it? 

The financial deficits he's talking about is just a trade deficit.  We have a trade deficit with Madagascar. They sell basically vanilla. We have bakeries and ice cream factories and whatnot. They have people who are too poor to buy US goods. That's a trade deficit. Botswana sells diamonds. Same deal--we have jewelers and people buy engagement rings and so forth. They don't have the kind of incomes to be buying a lot of US goods. 

It just is what it is. Not everyone is going to be giving us a trade surplus--to think it can be so is just crazy and what you get when you don't know geography, or how anything but particularly trade works--you trade for shit you can't make or get easily. If I'm a pumpkin farmer, I don't want someone else's pumpkins--I want something I don't have. How is this hard to get? 

TWGB: He Does What He Wants

 

People can point to things like Trump bailing on the dignified transfer of four deceased troops for a weekend of golfing as sign that Trump doesn't care, but I think that would be missing the point with Trump's admirers: if Trump doesn't care, they don't. The screencap above is from Fox News, where Jesse Watters is extolling who Trump is." He doesn't give a fuck."

Trump, with respects to tariffs, is described as being at the "peak of not giving a fuck."  That's actually coming from the White House. Also from the White House, this self-congratulation:

It was a good thing you did, Donny, wishing the economy into a cornfield. 

But is not giving a fuck what you actually want from the leader of your country? Like, if old Darcy down at the diner stops giving a fuck and pours coffee in someone's lap, she's liable to get fired. If Sean at the SuperMart goes off and rams a row of carts into someone's 4X4, he's out. And here's Donny, hero of the guys who always wanted to say "Take this job and shove it!" who ends a busy week fucking with the world economy with doing whatever he feels like. 

We're Sticking it to Those Penguins, Though

 

The funny/not funny thing about Trump's "reciprocal tariffs" is the way the White House apparently just willy-nilly came up with a plan to suit the ill-informed whims of a mentally ill man who doesn't know what he's doing.  The places being tariffed are internet domains, the alleged tariffs the location have on us is somewhat fictitious, and the formula for levying a "reciprocal" tariff is a bit of slap-dash treating a trade deficit like a tariff and, hoo boy. 

This is "nuking the hurricane" territory.  His sycophants are arguing, "Well, we have to trust him! He's Mr. Art of the Deal, right?"

(Um. No, he isn't. He's a glorified failure who cheats.)

Anyway, at least we are sticking it to those very duplicitous thieving Heard Island penguins, whose exports include, per their trades minister, Binky: "bit of extra fish", "shiny pebble" and "piles of poo for some reason, you weirdos." 

Isn't that a kind of grim satisfaction in the teeth of losing a healthy economy?

A Transformative Arc of Potential Energy

 

Several Tesla vehicles were set on fire in Las Vegas early Tuesday morning, according to police.

This is wrong—violence and vandalism are never the answer.
pic.twitter.com/01l75YXARH

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) March 18, 2025

I have a deep and intractable vein of cynicism that runs through the entirety of my being--are all the Tesla fires politically demonstrative, or  is it possible that arson and cutting short the life of a piece of technology is not symbolic of a rage against the machine-manufacturer, but a smoke signal that the brand's issues are more immediate? I have wondered what the resale value of a Tesla is and whether that picture is likely to improve. Also, what flat sales mean for Tesla dealerships. And also, whether insurance payouts might be a motivator in some instances.

I'm not accusing people of a widespread conspiracy of bad faith. It's just if there WERE opportunists in the mix, I would totally not be surprised. 

As for me, I dislike criminality as a form of immediate protest. It gets one in more trouble personally than its effectiveness generally warrants and threatens to negatively color the message instead of raising the right kind of consciousness. I like protest movements to follow the rules of drama--start small and build to a place of pity and fear. I am very on the side of Swasticar Art and so on. Damaging other people's property, however, is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE THING--which can also be done in entertaining ways and might be instructive, but by all means, I do protest it! How Awful! My stars and garters!

Maybe I Have This Twisted

 

Last night, I had the stupidity to forget how kiss-up, punch-down hierarchies work because I have never actually lived in a fully corrupted banana republic before. My dumb ass posted: 

And DOGE undermining the social safety net and intimating that Medicare and Social Security need big cuts is actually very bad? 

Because of course that is--but his antipathy to democracy at all is also really bad. 

I think it gets worse from here for Musk.. And I think I like it that way. As he starts to sink and stink, Trump will cut ties, because that's how he rolls. 

Except that was dumb, because if Trump truly believes he is post-"elections matter", well, he no longer has to care about whether people hate Elon. He just has to protect the guy who can easily dump $100M into his PAC (slush fund). 

Joe Six-Pack with the retirement fund and a MAGA hat isn't his main concern. Elon SuperPAC donor is.

Ergo, he turned the front of the White House into a sales lot for Tesla and cut a promo. They are cutting the Board of Education, Veteran's medical access, Social Security functionality as a whole thing, IRS (the revenue-finders!) and so on, but the White House had to help rescue one stock today.

The DOW lost many points. Tesla had a little unreality rally. Also, too, Trump declared folks vandalizing Tesla dealerships were "domestic terrorists."  

Let me get this straight. Pardon the idjits who attacked the Capitol with great violence on 1/6/2021 but the people protesting Tesla are the real villains against the US? 

Things Are Going to Slide

 

Giggleheaded Goofus, Elon Musk, has not had a brilliant day. His Tesla stock did a really big slide. His Twitter acquisition, which he wants us to call "X", was shut down a lot because of an apparent DDOS attack. Musk wanted to allege that the IP addresses of the attack were from the "Ukraine area" and this is when, not for the first time, I understood Musk is a dumbass. Because really? Are the haxxors using their IP address and not masking with a VPN or whatever? And wouldn't it be wild if the haxxors were from the exact place kind of depending on Starlink to work, and are kind of mad at Elon, but not suicide-mad yet?

And how isn't the Ukraine area also possibly Russian invaders? Since Russia has competent cyberwarfare capabilities, not that our Department of Justice under Pam Bondi is fixing to bother with it. 

Would it just be a stitch if Russia decided to attack TrumpWorld just when they decided for the worst of all possible reasons it was time to make nicey-nice? 

Anyway, Teslas and their dealerships are being protested and vandalized. 

Almost as if that brand was the clearest signifier of Musk himself, and attacking it was the clearest way to attack him. And it could and probably is organic--even if Elon wants to insist on the idea of astroturfing. ActBlue--blah blah blah. George Soros, more blah blah blah. Musk isn't funny or original. 

Ask Not for Whom the MAGA Bell Tolls

 

When Catturd et als on the Twitter are planning for Speaker Moses to step down or get stepped on, I guess I'm going to be pretty basic to the Asics about it--THE GURLS ARE FIIIIIIYYYIIYIIYITINGGGGG!!!! I am so glad I did my nails for this. Park me in the front row, let me see! I got my fan in my bag because this church is heated. God is GOAT and prayers are heeded. 

But no, actually this is really bad. Somehow, we have stupid little children at the wheel of the shortbus that is GOP-led Congress, because there is no adult running the show or at the wheel. Musk encouraging maximum returns to wealthy shareholders and fucking up plans for actually doing good things for people like funding cancer research and all that IS this administration's actual ethos. Trump the King, and his Regent, Elon, chose this kind of legislative ain;t shitness. Musk lies and tries to manipulate the process because he is a dumbass. This is real work that shouldn't be SPUN.

And they think somehow, some way, Democrats are supposed to get in line and save their pretend-mandate asses to preserve the economy, so Trump gets into office under ideal conditions that he absolutely did not create?

Huh!

Have you seen what happened to the stock market since Trump rang his little bell:

A Reckless TrumpWorld Round-Up

 

I'm trying to take a moment of Christmas clarity to see the good in the world around me, and while I've never been a Suzy Silverlinings, I did notice the SEC seems to have decided to pay attention to some of Elon Musk's financial shenanigans regarding the purchase of Twitter. Basically, everyone who was wide awake in 2016 saw that social media was a powerful tool in shaping world events, and Elon bought in. Comms for his worldview is an expense in general, but he gets back what he's lost financially in DOGE and influence. 

It's a neat thing, using money to buy influence to get more influence to get more money. Here's a David Bowie song:

Devin Nunes is Just Asking Questions

 

Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes says he has hundreds of thousands of smaller MAGA investors in Trump Media, and they are calling him asking why the stock is tanking, so he filed a complaint with the SEC and says Biden is conspiring with Wall Street bankers to screw him. pic.twitter.com/ZxTEmxeN0J

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) April 20, 2024

Something about Truth Social puts me in one of those "can't place where all the emotion is coming from" moods, somewhat akin to when Trump gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Art Laffer. I guess it's my strong feeling that shitty economics threatens livelihoods and personal savings--it isn't a game. Supply-side economics does not work in practice. It's an upwards transfer of wealth that has led to increased income inequality and which holds back growth because there is no incentivization for long-term investment or worker protections. 

Something about Trump, the man, the myth, the legend, is trapped in a 1980s elephantine "greed is good" vision of worshipping sacred golden calves. He's wealthy, so he is supposed to be a job-creator--look at how he created a job for Devin Nunes, a man so intelligent he sued an internet cow for defamation for linking to true stories like a thin-skinned goober who never heard of the "Streisand effect".  

Trump is like an icon of a different time. "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and all that. That time sucked and the people sucked.  Even Trump's rivals kind of sucked. (Everything was the worst.) 

Anyway, Nunes is looking beyond the Trump Media fundamentals, to blaming the "naked short sellers" for the devaluation of the stock he had to answer for when frankly, the business hadn't done anything yet. (And they will do something--they will be a streaming service for stuff you just won't get anywhere else on the internet, which I promise you is not a thing.)

TWGB: Been Caught Sleeping?

 

Maybe other things happened at Trump's first day of his first criminal trial, but the apparently most notable thing was that he appeared to nod off a few times. This prompted the ever-loving internet to change his nickname from Don Poorleone to Don Snoreleone (The Nodfather!), some wags to ponder if Trump wasn't loaded up with Xanax to keep from going ape, and Trump to give the stankeye to Maggie Haberman, who was the one who caught him whispering to his chest hairs. It's a pretty bad look for Trump, who once murdered Jeb Bush with the term "low-energy" and whose worst nickname for President Biden was, of all things, "Sleepy Joe".

The idea of a "sedated Trump" really doesn't seem too out of the realm of possibility to me--he's already skating on thin ice with multiple violations of his gag order and was apprised today that a courtroom outburst could result in a contempt arrest. His contempt hearing for the gag order violation is next week (between the $175 million bond hearing and the SCOTUS immunity argument). Trump's usual combativeness will NOT be an asset, here. (Buying popcorn for the Sandoval bit, tho'. As I understand it, that's where the court determines the kinds of Trump's shitty behavior that he can and can't be hit with in cross during the trial. I'm probably super-over-simplifying because IANAL.) 

I'm sure the Trump faithful will insist that, like Daniel in the lion's den. he was relying on the power of prayer. Or something. They are pretty good at making myths to deal with the paradoxes of TrumpWorld. 

Trump's Revealing Post

 

This morning, Trump made a post to his Truth Social that was almost certainly ill-advised. Probably because he consulted only the legal brain trust of Ego, Superego, and Id, LTD. After his lawyers took pains to try to get a stay of the judgment day for his fraud civil trial settlement by claiming the impossibility of putting up a bond, Trump is now telling everyone he has it in the form of cash. Which is just fine--I am sure no one would like to hear that more than Letitia James. It does make me ask some questions though:

1) Why did thirty companies refuse to give him a bond, including Chubb, the source of his defamation civil trial bond? 

2) If you just have the cash, why have one's lawyers pretend you don't just for a stay?

3) And per the post on Truth Social, since when does he spend his own money on his political campaigns? And how would Engoron know he was planning on this stunning change of heart regarding using his own money for anything, when even his legal fees are being picked up by OPM? 

There's a good chance, if I understand how Trump uses social media by now, that this was a reaction to comments like those from Anthony Scaramucci regarding his Big Bad Brokeness. But here's the thing, it's like this post happens in a separate universe from the one where the Truth Social merger with DWAC is supposed to make him $3 billion richer. It happened, and the IPO goes public in a very weirdly timed way--like if this was a soap opera, we'd be complaining about the writers just pulling this convergence of events together as being contrived.

And yet--it doesn't fix his little red MAGA wagon and send him on his way, does it?