National leaders who make big promises usually can't keep them. Their favorite dodge is to pretend that after weeks of intense study they now realize the opposition left them a far worse mess than they had imagined. So, you know, we probably need to lower expectations.
Donald Trump doesn't really have that option. The US government's books are pretty voluminous and transparent, and anyway, Trump has been lying for so long about how terrible things are that he can hardly claim they're even worse than that.
But that's not stopping him. On Sunday he told NBC's Kristen Welker he "couldn't guarantee" that his tariffs wouldn't raise prices. That's certainly not anything he's said before.
Then today he told Time that maybe he wouldn't be able to bring down the price of groceries after all. "It's hard to bring things down once they're up." he said, accurately. "You know, it's very hard." This, of course, was widely known all along. In fact, it would probably be disastrous if prices fell.
I expect these are just the first of many walkbacks. He can't do most of the ridiculous shit he promised over and over, and the stuff he can accomplish will mostly be because Biden already accomplished it for him. But he'll figure out a way to take credit for it anyway.
We know all this, we're just waiting for what he WILL do.
Yeah, as far as I can tell, very few of those who voted for him even knew what he was supposedly promising, so they won't miss out on anything they were supposedly expecting. They mostly voted for him just because they like him, not because of a bunch of stuff they didn't know he was advocating.
And of those who actually have begun to find out what he promised, many don't like his policies anyway.
Just the usual 'rule of ignorance', isn't it ?
Sure, recessions are bad, but wouldn't it be ironic if he triggered the worst possible economic outcome, stagflation?
Constrain labor supply while pushing tariffs = very bad outcome.
Let him fuck around and find out!
He's a con man. If he really didn't know tarrifs raise the price of things then he's a stupid con man. There's a better chance of Satan having a snowball fight than Trump making good on any of his promises to the working class. Are the working class people who voted for Trump gullible or just stupid?
He is surrounded by people who know exactly this. Most of them have been saying all along that the transition will be "painful" for a while as companies build new factories and recalibrate. Trump has studiously avoided telling this truth because Bidenflation was one of the big reasons he got elected.
He'll still do tariffs, they will be massively unpopular and destabilize the economy. Eventually Trump will neuter Vance, fire Musk and a few others to assign the blame elsewhere. His desire to be popular will overshadow his desire for tariffs to save America.
That's assuming they build the factories here and not in a country not hit by tarrifs. Trump doesn't care about the effectiveness of tarrifs, just the appearance of being tough.
Oh I hope he dumps Musk. The sooner the better. If anyone deserves to be screwed over by Trump it's that guy.
"Oh I hope he dumps Musk"
Sadly, I think that Musk will be just fine, no matter what happens. If being a billionaire means never having to say you're sorry, being a billionaire 300 times over means that the only thing that can hurt you is mortality itself.
Bezos and Zuckerberg do not appear to agree. They act genuinely afraid of Trump and his next administration.
Bozo and Suckupberg.
History is very instructive, eventually Trump throws everyone under the bus. Musk's day is coming, especially now that his cash is in the bag and the election is over.
Elon is destined to be disillusioned with the Democrats and cannon fodder for the Republicans.
I expect the same people who are well aware of the probable effect of Trump's economic policies are also aware that any factory not already well into the planning stages will not open for business during Trump's time in office. It takes TIME to build a factory, and a big part of that time is taken in the budgeting, planning and permitting process before the first shovel of dirt is moved.
Of course, that's where Vance and his dreams of autarky kick in.
And we know exactly how MAGAs and apologists are going to treat all this-- "just like we told you, all that stuff during the campaign was just BS and everybody knew not to take it seriously except you, and now he's settling down to be the normal president and smart guy that everybody except you knows he is."
How many "serious" op-eds and "thought leaders" will be saying the same thing?
A roundabout way of concurring with paine. He'll do some really bad stuff and they'll make excuses for him.
No problem. He’ll just claim credit for things that don’t get done, and the MAGAts will believe it. They don’t have any trouble holding contradictory thoughts. The cult believes he built hundreds of miles of impenetrable border wall, which successfully kept those people out, yet mysteriously disappeared when Biden took office. He negotiated the best trade deal ever, USMCA, which mysteriously deteriorated under Biden, so now we need to break the agreement by imposing tariffs.
From what I remember they were poorly made. Is falling apart the same thing as disappearing?
That big, beautiful wall that Mexico paid for? Say it ain’t so!
+10. Republican folks are still giving the Felon credit for stuff he said he'd do back in the first term, that either has never been done or was done by Joe Biden. They aren't part of the reality-based community, because of its "librul bias."
If Trump were to break all his promises -- and he may come close -- no one will be more pissed than the fine people at Heritage who went through all that trouble putting together Project 2025 so that the idiot-in-chief could have a paint-by-numbers presidency. They would rather have Vance in charge anyway. Maybe at some point they decide to do something about it. Trump may need to watch his back.
The crime and corruption benefits Trump but his hard-core backers want shit to get done. We'll see how that works out.
Misc. observations:
1. Nate Cohn does the inevitable post-election poll postmortem. "There’s a decent case that the polls were the best they’ve ever been in 2024." JFC. Well, of course.
2. I've heard and read stories (NPR, NYT) about the alleged crimes of "Sean Combs" and "Shawn Carter." That's how they are referred to. Would it be too much trouble to mention that the people involved are best known as P. Diddy and Jay-Z? Sure, a lot of people know that already, but most people never call them by their birth names. NPR would be happy to report on the great Jay-Z or Diddy album but it's Shawn Carter and Sean Combs who were accused of raping at 13-year-old. It's weird.
For item two, by all means post some example links. They are allowed in the comments on this site. Just cannot be the opening text.
W are in the midst of a democratically sanctioned coup. Institutions are being destroyed. Men and women who have sworn to destroy the institutions are being put in charge of them. There is, of course, grift going on. But the damage produced by the grift is small compared to that of dismantling of the system. I don't see how this doesn't turn out to be a watershed moment.
+1
If Trump dies within few months, the worst effects wil be off, and the constitutional order will survive. Otherwise, it is going to be "interesting times". "
The logical consequence of this is that those who care about things like rule of law, and one-person-one-vote need to be acting politically.
That is to say, advocating for these things, and gathering support. Creating a big tent. And so on.
Don't take me as pointing a finger at you for some deficiency. I'm just saying that I think when Trumpism is done, and it will be done one way or the other, there will be opportunity.
MAGA is not corporate friendly. It's handlers have redirected people to things like inflation and trans children. But still, it's clear that MAGA is not corporate friendly.
Think of the distrust of Big Pharma. Look how much hatred for health insurers has showed itself lately.
There will be opportunity ahead.
There's no such thing as a "democratically sanctioned coup".
There could be a "democratically sanctioned dismantling of the state apparatus" or a "democratically sanctioned gutting of democratic process and institutions" or ...
.... but a coup can never be democratically sanctioned. That just isn't a coup, in any useful sense of that term.
Exactly. It's not a coup if you voted for it.
In reading about Trump voters and talking to a couple of them this week, I’m developing a new theory about the election. It seems, a lot of people care and vote on issues that don’t matter, for example, the concern about the drones in New Jersey is through the roof in the rightwingblogosphere, and it is Joe Biden’s fault- the reality is that we don’t know much about them and it is probably rather insignificant, but that’s the point, right wingers with an assist from the media, amplify these ridiculous stories, and in dribs and drabs, it reaches the least informed voter, and somehow, a bare plurality of voters think things are wrong. Also, if they are not, they don’t care. It is all signaling and posture, not governance. To be sure, many of these morons will vote for the Dem. Party the next election when things go wrong. Basically, elections are a national joke for entertainment, and that is exactly what Trump gives them, and they will continue to support him as long as they are entertained irrespective of flip flops or whatever. Tuberville’s comment that he will support Trump on anything and everything that he says is part of this disease, no need to look, think and analyze the issues. It’s all guttural and reactive.
The drones are regular aircraft, some commercial some general aviation. It's all a mass hysteria. UGH.
And the cult will accept whatever he says and move on, and the non-cult won't notice until things get so bad that the media actually has to report on them.
Why bother walking anything back? Trump will just tell people that he accomplished whatever it was and if they disagree, attack them. For anything bad, blame the other geezer. There is no bar for Trump, so things will have to teeter on or fall into catastrophe for people to wake up, which I do expect to happen. The Dems are well setup to win if we have another Presidential election.