It appears the guy who assasinated the health insurance CEO has been apprehended. (Note to self: If I ever have to assasinate somebody, leave the country right away when it’s done.)
Here’s a transript of Trump’s Meet the Press interview. I haven’t gotten through it all yet. I got stuck in the tariff section. This is Trump:
I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow. But I can say that if you look at my — just pre-Covid, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country. And I had a lot of tariffs on a lot of different countries, but in particular China. We took in hundreds of billions of dollars and we had no inflation. In fact, when I handed it over, they didn’t have inflation for a year and a half. They went almost two years just based on what I had created. And then they created inflation with energy and with spending too much. So I think we will — I’m a big believer in tariffs. I think tariffs are the most beautiful word. I think they’re beautiful. It’s going to make us rich. We’re subsidizing Canada to the tune over $100 billion a year. We’re subsidizing Mexico for almost $300 billion. We shouldn’t be — why are we subsidizing these countries? If we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state. We’re subsidizing Mexico and we’re subsidizing Canada and we’re subsidizing many countries all over the world. And all I want to do is I want to have a level, fast, but fair playing field.
Now, that makes no sense at all. I’m not sure what he’s calling “subsidies.” Trade deficits, maybe? And “It’s going to make us rich?” I think he genuinely believes this.
So then Kristen Welker said, “Sir, your previous tariffs during your first administration cost Americans some $80 billion, and now you have major companies from Walmart, Black & Decker, AutoZone, saying that any tariffs are going to force them to drive up prices for their consumers. How do you make sure that these CEOs, that these companies don’t, in fact, pass on the cost of tariffs to their consumers?” And Trump said,
They cost Americans nothing. They made a great economy for us. They also solve another problem. If we were going to have problems having to do with wars and having to do with other things, tariffs — I have stopped wars with tariffs by saying, “You guys want to fight, it’s great. But both of you are going to pay tariffs to the United States at 100%.” And — they have many purposes, tariffs, if properly used. I don’t say you use them like a madman. I say properly used. But it didn’t cost this country anything. It made this country money. And we never really got the chance to go all out because we had to fight Covid in the last part, and we did it very successfully. And when I handed it over to Biden, the stock market was higher than what it was just previous to Covid coming in. It was actually higher. Tariffs are a — properly used, are a very powerful tool, not only economically, but also for getting other things outside of economics.
He stopped wars with tariffs? WTF? Does anyone want to guess where in his mis-wired brain he thinks he stopped a war with tariffs?
An even bigger worry is foreign policy. We got lucky in Trump’s first term. See Michael Tomasky, The World Is on Fire. And Trump’s About to Be President. Feel Better? at The New Republic.
The main question here for Americans concerns the fact that in six weeks, Donald Trump is going to be the president of the United States. The surprising events in Syria serve as a harrowing reminder that there’s a big, complicated world out there and, pretty soon, Trump is going to be the single most powerful person in it—the “horse in a hospital” that comedian John Mulaney likened him to, though horses are far less corrupt. And the weird, and worrying, thing is that even though Trump was president before, we don’t really know all that much about his foreign policy instincts because he was never really tested on foreign policy in his first term.
Think about it. There were no major crises during Trump’s term. There were no 9/11 attacks, obviously, but even beyond that, there weren’t any major wars; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came after he lost reelection. There was no big uprising like the 2014 Maidan Revolution, or the Tahrir Square and Arab Spring revolts of 2011. The Middle East was comparatively quiet, especially to those of us who recall the fraught part of 2006 or the past year’s conflagration that followed in the wake of Hamas’s attacks in Israel. Assad’s butchery was an ongoing affair, but that’s not the same as a new broad regional conflict kicking off, which forces an American president to decide what moral face the United States is going to present to the world. Compared to Barack Obama and Joe Biden, Trump had it pretty easy—it even fell to Biden to keep the commitments to wind down the war in Afghanistan and honor the hideous commitments Trump made to the Taliban, much to Biden’s detriment in public opinion polling.
Trump may honestly believe that the world behaved itself during his first term just because he was President. But the world isn’t afraid of him. The world thinks he’s a malleable buffoon. And Trump won’t have anyone around him with more sense than he does, as he did during his first term.
This is going to be a damn mess.
In another part of the interview, Trump said he was going to end birthright citizenship “on day one” with an executive action. Which, of course, he doesn’t have the authority to do because it’s written into the Constitution. Welker drilled him on this, and he wouldn’t back down. I don’t believe he understands the amending the Constitution thing.
Josh Marshall commented,
I’ve pointed out repeatedly that Donald Trump cannot end birthright citizenship with an executive order. It’s right there in the plain text of the Fourteenth Amendment and that clear meaning has been confirmed and buttressed by 150 years of case law and attestations by the United States government. It’s very important to state these realities confidently and right in his face. The guy is constantly operating within the territory of his boasts and trash talk and it’s his opponents who end up letting him.
This doesn’t mean he won’t try to do this or that he won’t find judges who will back him up.
Yes, it needs to be said to his face. But there’s no one in his orbit now who will do that. Naturally, some guy on Fox News is calling birthright citizenship a “loophole.”
Did I mention this is going to be a mess? I believe I did.