Today in Trump

[TitoFan]

Landslide for Trump

Yes.

What a happy event that would be, right?

A landslide victory for a convicted felon who LOST the 2020 election, then tried his damnest to have it overturned, refused to participate in the transition process, and agitated his brainless Minions to storm the Capitol.

Ahh... the smell of democracy and an evolved civilization.

Will you be breaking out the champagne, Brock?

[Master]

Landslide for Trump

Landslide on Trump would be better.

[TitoFan]

Landslide for Trump

Landslide on Trump would be better.

Good one.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

No champagne here. I don't celebrate anything that's Anglo-Saxon

[NoSavingByTheBell]

No champagne here. I don't celebrate anything that's Anglo-Saxon

Case in point. Jewish American billionaire offers Donald Trump $100 million for full support of the complete annexation of Palestine to Israel including the West Bank and the Gaza strip.

I don't support any of this. They are all on the same team.

[Master]

A US federal judge has ordered Donald Trump's former strategist Steve Bannon to report to prison by 1 July to serve a four-month sentence.

The order on Thursday comes after years of legal wrangling, with an appeals court last month upholding Bannon's 2022 criminal conviction for contempt of Congress.

The right-wing podcaster was found to have illegally refused to testify before the committee investigating the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot.

Bannon, 70, has denied any criminal wrongdoing and his lawyer called the ruling a "horrible decision".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxee7gyrmnzo

[Kirkland Laing]

[Kirkland Laing]

A US federal judge has ordered Donald Trump's former strategist Steve Bannon to report to prison by 1 July to serve a four-month sentence.

The order on Thursday comes after years of legal wrangling, with an appeals court last month upholding Bannon's 2022 criminal conviction for contempt of Congress.

The right-wing podcaster was found to have illegally refused to testify before the committee investigating the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot.

Bannon, 70, has denied any criminal wrongdoing and his lawyer called the ruling a "horrible decision".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxee7gyrmnzo

He already would have served a jail sentence for stealing from people who sent him money to build a border wall but Trump pardoned him:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/polit...ump/index.html

These fuckers can literally steal money from their supporters and it doesn't seem to register with the supporters that they're being conned. Even after being convicted Trump is ahead in basically every swing state. Unless something dramatic happens he's going to get elected and things are going to get ugly:

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/run-as-f...e-and-get-you/

[Kirkland Laing]

Three charts about presidential taxing and spending

https://jabberwocking.com/three-char...-and-spending/

At least Reagan raised taxes when he realised what the cuts were doing to the federal budget, interest rates etc. He just didn't raise them on the same people who got the tac cuts.



Are illegal immigrants stealing all our jobs?


https://jabberwocking.com/are-illega...-all-our-jobs/

[Kirkland Laing]

Raw data: Inflation in the US vs. Europe



https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-i...-us-vs-europe/

[Kirkland Laing]

Summers Says Trump Tax Ideas Mean ‘Mother of All Stagflations’

• Former Treasury secretary warns of 10% mortgage rates
• Summers urges GOP-leaning economists, executives to speak up

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers blasted policy ideas floated by former President Donald Trump as immensely damaging to both the US and the global economy.

“This is a prescription for the mother of all stagflations,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin Friday, with regard to replacing a major amount of income-tax revenue with tariffs. It would also create “worldwide economic warfare,” he said.
Summers was speaking a day after Trump presented the idea of using tariff hikes as a way to pay for some income tax cuts in a meeting with House Republicans. Trump has also proposed a minimum 10% universal import levy and a punitive rate for China.
A shift to relying on tariffs for revenue would push up not just the cost of imports, but those of goods and services that compete with those imports, Summers said. Consumers would have less to spend on everything else, creating a “downward spiral” in the economy, he said.
“I don’t think there’s been a more inflationary presidential economic policy platform in my lifetime,” said Summers, a Harvard University professor and paid contributor to Bloomberg TV. “Perhaps George McGovern in 1972 in some ways would be a comparison,” he said, referring to the Democratic nominee who lost in that contest.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...?sref=fjrBr5qu

[TitoFan]

My background is not in economics, but rather engineering. Yet even a regular Joe like me can see the disaster these measures would cause. Imposing higher tariffs on goods to pay for (or replace) tax revenue? That's just another example of Trump wanting to defend the ultra rich, by screwing everybody else. It's amazing that working class Trumpeteers don't grasp these concepts. I've seen numbers on what some very modest tax percentage increases would mean to the filthy rich (multi-billionaires and such). Don't remember exact numbers offhand. But I recall they barely make a dent in these people's fortunes. And yet Trump wants to spare them any "hardship" while further shafting the working class? So not only is Trump a convict who still wants to run for President... and could easily be found guilty of insurrection and trying to overturn a democratic election. But he's also a shameless defender of the filthy rich while thumbing his nose at the working class. Yet he could very easily win the election.

[Kirkland Laing]

My background is not in economics, but rather engineering. Yet even a regular Joe like me can see the disaster these measures would cause. Imposing higher tariffs on goods to pay for (or replace) tax revenue? That's just another example of Trump wanting to defend the ultra rich, by screwing everybody else. It's amazing that working class Trumpeteers don't grasp these concepts. I've seen numbers on what some very modest tax percentage increases would mean to the filthy rich (multi-billionaires and such). Don't remember exact numbers offhand. But I recall they barely make a dent in these people's fortunes. And yet Trump wants to spare them any "hardship" while further shafting the working class? So not only is Trump a convict who still wants to run for President... and could easily be found guilty of insurrection and trying to overturn a democratic election. But he's also a shameless defender of the filthy rich while thumbing his nose at the working class. Yet he could very easily win the election.

I think he's going to win easily. Every leader that was in power during the 2021-23 inflation period is losing by twenty to thirty points. Macron, a righty, is being shellacked in France and the original right wing Republican party (former leaders were Chiraq, De Gaulle) is now a shell of its former self and is trying to form an alliance with the fascists. Just keep scrolling:

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/st...14239572328663



In Britain the Conservative party is thirty points behind the lefties and on course for their worst performance since 1906. A new right wing fascisty party has taken anything up to half the Conservative vote according to the latest polls. In Canada you've got a lefty incumbent also miles behind the righty. In NZ and Australia you've got an incumbent lefty who lost badly to a righty and a righty who lost badly to a lefty.



It's down to inflation and immigration, the two issues that play most strongly for Trump. The only reason Biden is even close is that Trump is also massively unpopular with the electorate as a whole. If the GOP had nominated Haley or somebody similar they'd be ahead even in polarised America by fifteen points and the race would be over now.



But then let's say Trump gets elected, and short of an artery clogging Cheeseburger Of Destiny it's going to happen. Then he's the dog who caught the car. You're going to add five trillion in corporate tax cuts onto the existing deficit over the next ten years? When Liz Truss tried something similar in Britain it blew sterling out of the water and had to be reversed. It will probably hold in America but the people buying bonds to fund this will demand higher interest rates which means higher interest rates for America. If Trump appoints a Fed chair/board who'll do what he wants and they banana republicly cut rates domestically when bond markets are pushing them higher it'll spark banana republic inflation.



If Trump tries to throw millions out of the country it takes their earnings out of the economy and it takes them out of the work force. The pandemic era supply shock that sparked the recent inflation was temporary. This would be a permanent (labour market) supply shock, permanent shortages of goods and services, spiralling inflation. It remains to be seen just what Trump actually does. Maybe he just creates a bit of theatre on the border and the immigrants can still get in (just shutting off immigration never mind throwing existing immigrants out would cause labour market shortages) but basically ignores the problem and takes all focus away from the border by going after a bunch of domestic culture war issues that consume his base. That's what he did last time and it worked just fine.



He's currently behind Biden in money raising and has huge legal bills and is selling himself to any billionaire out there with a cheque: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump...223504701.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/10/polit...ich/index.html

These people don't want labour market shortages, it's fair to say. You can't grow the economy by shrinking the workforce. They're not donating to have him fuck the labour market up but there's going to be huge pressure even from the Trumpy people who will be staffing a second Trump administration to do just that. This is where the rubber meets the road a year from now. Hopefully by the grace of god we all get to see how it plays out in years to come.

[Kirkland Laing]

Voters are looking at thousands of people coming over the border every day illegally and this forms their view of illegal immigration. The guys who Trump is begging for money at fundraisers every few days are looking at this graph and it forms their view of illegal immigration. Who wins in the end here, the billionaires or the people. No need for a question mark at the end of that sentence.

If I was a typical Trump voter cheering on my governor passing laws that allow for instance people to drive cars into crowds of demonstrators with impunity or a president who would send the troops after demonstrators I would maybe consider that I might want to demonstrate against the government at some point in the future if it starts doing things I don't like, like ignoring the southern border or coming up with a bullshit guest worker programme that allows the exact same pople into the country anyway or something similar.