Today in Trump

[TIC]

another reason for titofan to hate on king ry

[Kirkland Laing]

What emerged in two interviews with Trump, and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisers and confidants, were the outlines of an imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me, he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland.

He would let red states monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisers. He would be willing to fire a U.S. Attorney who doesn’t carry out his order to prosecute someone, breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America’s founding.

He is weighing pardons for every one of his supporters accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, more than 800 of whom have pleaded guilty or been convicted by a jury. He might not come to the aid of an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he felt that country wasn’t paying enough for its own defense. He would gut the U.S. civil service, deploy the National Guard to American cities as he sees fit, close the White House pandemic-preparedness office, and staff his Administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.



https://time.com/6972021/donald-trum...ion-interview/



This seems bad.

Just to look at the economic policies here such as they are. The reason there has been this big burst of inflation in the last few years is not down to government spending --Mexico, the economy most closely tied to America, biggest trading partner etc spent not a single peso on covid payouts, no cheques no aid to businesses or any other payouts, actually cut government spending and has had higher inflation than America who have had the lowest inflation of any global economy -- it's down to the dislocation of the supply and goods and services that happened around the world. Think hundreds of container ships waiting months to discharge, shuttered factories and so on. The technical term is a supply shock. Despite things getting back to normal quite quickly after demand picked up again after the vaccines became available there was a surge of inflation. But it was temporary as the problems with the supply chain went away and now core inflation is two percent again like in 2019.

Trump wants to deport eleven million people. This would be a supply shock to the labour market. There's only 160 million people currently employed in America. Take even a few million out of the workforce and you have a permanent ongoing snowballing supply shock. If he does try this he'll have to reverse it within months as the consequences of what he's doing become apparent. If he doesn't an ongoing permanent increasing supply shock to the labour market of even a few million labour inputs will create inflation that makes the last few years look like nothing. That's just maths and supply and demand. It can't not happen.

Add on a minimum ten percent tariff to all imported goods:

Trump is planning to intensify his protectionist agenda, telling me he’s considering a tariff of more than 10% on all imports, and perhaps even a 100% tariff on some Chinese goods. Trump says the tariffs will liberate the U.S. economy from being at the mercy of foreign manufacturing and spur an industrial renaissance in the U.S. When I point out that independent analysts estimate Trump’s first term tariffs on thousands of products, including steel and aluminum, solar panels, and washing machines, may have cost the U.S. $316 billion and more than 300,000 jobs, by one account, he dismisses these experts out of hand.

You don't need to be an expert to work this stuff out. Any brightish sixteen year old economics 101 student can tell you what will happen. Over three quarters of everything on sale in Walmartsis imported and about two thirds comes from China. About a trillion and a half dollars of imported goods are parts that go into products manufactured in America. That might just cause prices to rise.


He's also going to devalue the dollar, run bigger budget deficits, cut taxes and so on which are all massively inflationary. Not inflationary in the economic conditions we've had from the mid nineties to 2021 but in the current hot full employment elevated interest rate two trillion government deficit economy? You just watch. And the chef's kiss is he's probably going to get elected in November and the main reason he'll get elected is that people think he'll be much better at dealing with inflation than Biden.

[Kirkland Laing]

Will come back to this tomorrow. Will make a prediction too.

[Kirkland Laing]

The recent Supreme Court hearing and conservative legal theory discussed:


A few years ago my buddy Stuart Stevens wrote a book called It Was All a Lie.
His thesis was that the dogma conservatives had professed for 60 years—the love of small government and free trade; the desire for robust foreign policy; the belief that character and accountability mattered—turned out not to be values but rationalizations.
In Stuart’s view, conservatives had a bunch of groups they disfavored and then worked backwards to concoct an ideological framework to support these prejudices. No, not all conservatives. And maybe not on every single issue. But enough so that the generalization was generally fair.
When Stuart first published his book I thought it was an interesting idea. The preponderance of evidence that has emerged since 2020 has buttressed his case.
Yesterday the Supreme Court hinted that maybe conservative legal theory was always a lie, too.
Donald Trump, as always, is the great revealer.

---

In general, conservative legal theory over the last two generations has been marked by a few big ideas:

• That originalism and the text of the Constitution matters.
  
• That judges should not make policy or legislate from the bench.
  
• That courts should issue decisions as narrowly as possible, so as to leave the field open for both future legal maneuver and legislative action.
  
• That when possible, courts should defer to the will of voters.

Am I generalizing here? Yes. Are there distinctions between schools of conservative legal thought? Sure.1 Let’s grant all of those distinctions and caveats.
Even so, from the 35,000-foot level everyone understands what was meant over the last 40 years when people talked about “conservative legal theory.”

---

With its decision on the Fourteenth Amendment case attempting to disqualify Trump from the ballot in Colorado, the Supreme Court’s conservatives abandoned any pretense of adhering to the text of the Constitution. The plain text of the Constitution pointed to an outcome that the Court’s conservatives disfavored—perhaps for good reasons, perhaps for bad reasons—and so they just . . . made up a new standard.

---

With the presidential immunity case the SCOTUS was given an iron-clad ruling from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The high court did not need to hear this case at all.
If it believed that, for reasons of legitimacy, it needed to weigh in, the Court could have granted cert to this appeal on the narrow question of whether or not Donald Trump, in this particular case, could claim immunity.
Instead, the Court granted cert on the widest grounds possible, giving itself the scope to define presidential immunity for all time. Kim Wehle talked about this choice last night and it is striking how the conservatives on this Court were eager for the chance to create precedent.
“We’re writing a rule for the ages,” Justice Neil Gorsuch said during oral argument.
But no one asked Gorsuch to write a rule for the ages. The Court was given a narrow question to decide and the Court’s conservatives chose to widen the aperture as much as possible so that they could make right some cosmic wrongs they see in American law.
Which is exactly what conservatives used to complain that liberal judges did.
Share

---

Then there’s the conservative legal view of law enforcement. Conservatives have historically been broad-minded about the powers the criminal justice system ought to have.
Yesterday at oral argument the conservatives suddenly had second thoughts. As Radley Balko put it,

It’s just mind blowing to hear the same justices who continue to support absolute immunity for prosecutors and limiting federal review of state prosecutor misconduct suddenly alarmed that prosecutors might overreach when it comes to charging **the president of the United States.**

Oops.

---

Finally there is the question of voters: the will of the great and good American people. Justice Samuel Alito posed a hypothetical:

If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?

I want to be very clear about what Justice Alito is saying here:

• Donald Trump attempted a coup, and failed.
  
• The criminal justice system is attempting to hold him accountable for this clear violation of the law.
  
• But doing so might lead to some other president to attempt a coup.
  
• So if someone attempts a coup they must not be prosecuted.
  
• Because if you prosecute them, they might attempt another coup.

The Alito Theory sees a coup as merely an alternate path to power, no more or less valid than an election.2 If a coup is attempted and succeeds, the couper becomes president and faces no consequences. If a coup is attempted and fails, the couper is immune to prosecution and free to attempt another coup in the next election. And perhaps even in the election after that.
From Alito’s perspective, a coup is no different from a recount or a lawsuit attempting to disqualify ballots. It’s just another electoral Hail Mary pass.
Though, of course, sometimes those passes are caught.

---

Before we wrap up: Usually this newsletter is locked so only members of Bulwark+ can read it. Today we opened it up.
If you’re not a member yet, you should be with us. You won’t regret it. Promise.









So two final thoughts.
First, I’ve been saying for months that this Court was going to do everything possible to prevent Trump’s D.C. insurrection trial from happening before the election.
I don’t want to question anyone’s motives, but I ask you sincerely: If the Court were packed with justices who were trying to return Trump to power, what would it be doing differently?
It’s JVL’s Law: Any person or institution not explicitly anti-Trump will become useful to Trump over time.3
Finally, I’ll give the last word to Nicholas Grossman, who also senses that all of that conservative legal theory chin-tugging was just rationalization:

Conservative Justices approach “can the president legally kill Americans he doesn’t like?” from the perspective of people confident the current president would never order them killed, and the only president who would possibly abuse power like that would kill people the conservative Justices don’t like.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/conserv...philosophy-was

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Donald Trump easily wins the 2024 election

[Master]

Donald Trump's lawyer attacked Stormy Daniels' credibility during heated cross-examination at the former president's hush money trial.

"Am I correct that you hate President Trump?" asked Susan Necheles during tense questioning in New York that at points descended into a shouting match.

"Yes," said the former adult-film star.

Ms Daniels' alleged sexual encounter with Mr Trump is at the centre of the former president's first criminal trial.

Mr Trump denies falsifying accounts to cover up a $130,000 hush-money payment to Ms Daniels.

Ms Daniels detailed time she says she spent with Mr Trump - an account that led to a combative cross-examination.

Ms Necheles, one of Mr Trump's defence lawyers, worked to paint Ms Daniels as driven by hatred and a desire for money. Mr Trump has denied that the sexual encounter with her occurred.

The exchanges between the two women grew increasingly heated - they were nearly shouting - when Ms Necheles accused Ms Daniels of trying to extort Mr Trump through the hush-money deal.

"False," Ms Daniels replied. "That's what you did, right?" Ms Necheles said. "False!" Ms Daniels repeated.

Ms Daniels' claim - that she received $130,000 (£103,000) from Mr Trump's personal lawyer in 2016 in exchange for her silence about having sex with him 10 years earlier - is at the centre of the historic New York trial, the first criminal trial of a former US president.

Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal paying Ms Daniels to hide the alleged sexual encounter. He has denied all wrongdoing.

Earlier in the day, under questioning from the prosecution, Ms Daniels provided a detailed picture of her alleged encounters with Mr Trump.

But the star witness was repeatedly reprimanded by the judge for her meandering answers.

"Ms Daniels, please just keep the answers short," Justice Juan Merchan said.

Adding to the tension, lawyers for Mr Trump objected to nearly every question prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked Ms Daniel about the alleged encounter. Justice Merchan mostly sustained the objections, siding with the defence.

As the day went on, however, prosecutors objected to several of Ms Necheles' questions on cross-examination. Those also were sustained.

Ms Daniels was allowed to walk jurors through some of her alleged encounter with Mr Trump inside his Lake Tahoe hotel suite in 2006.

Mr Trump was wearing silk pyjamas, she said, and asked her several "business-like" questions about her family, her upbringing and her work in the adult film industry.

At one point, he compared Ms Daniels to his daughter Ivanka, Ms Daniels said, saying that people underestimated both women because they were beautiful.

Ms Daniels also explained how the hush-money deal came to be, saying she first became interested in selling her story once she heard someone else was planning to.

"I'd rather make the money than someone making the money off of me," she said.

By 2016, after Mr Trump had launched his campaign for president, Ms Daniels learned Mr Trump and his lawyer, Michael Cohen, wanted to buy her story. The deal would be a win-win, Ms Daniels testified, because she did not want her then-partner to find out about her alleged encounter with Mr Trump.

But Ms Daniels claimed she was not particularly motivated by the money, saying on the stand she "didn't care" about the sum she was eventually paid to her by Mr Cohen.

And Ms Daniels also laid out some of the specifics of the alleged deal, saying she would be forced to pay $1 million every time she violated the agreement and spoke out about her experience with Mr Trump.

Most of what Ms Daniels' shared on Tuesday is not new information, it's been shared by Ms Daniels in a number of interviews and in her memoir. But her story carries some added weight now, told face to face with Mr Trump as part of the unprecedented criminal charges brought against him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68972977

[Kirkland Laing]

Trump's inflation bomb: How his second-term plans could make it worse


https://www.axios.com/2024/05/08/tru...nomy-inflation



This is the first article I've seen in anything approaching mainstream media of any significance that covers the actual effects that Trump's announced economic policies might have on the economy and I've been looking for them.

And it's a shit bothsides article. It's these things could have some effect but on the other hand Republicans say things will be fine. The deregulation demanded by GOP donors is regulation that employs people eg. to clear up mining waste safely and not dump it in streams. When these regulations are removed businesses just make extra profit and there's decades of actual evidence to show that the businesses just pocket the cash.

There won't be any extra drilling for oil that companies weren't already planning. US oil production is currently at record levels. It'll increase under Trump but it's increased under Biden, Trump, Obama etc. Oil prices are set by a global market and it would be great if somebody could explain this to American voters.

If Trump wants to cut government spending to any significant level it means cuts to social security, Medicare or Medicaid. Medicaid is the easiest to cut, it's for poor people so most GOP voters think it's all going to those people but the vast majority of recipients are low income white people -- Trump voters.



This bit is accurate:

The bottom line: Trump's biggest advantage in the inflation debate is his own record: The average yearly inflation rate was under 2% for his first term, before COVID wreaked havoc on the economy.

• Nearly 9 in 10 Americans say the economy and inflation will be the most important issues determining who they support for president in November, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll.
• Right now, that's a bad sign for the White House: 44% of Americans trust Trump to handle inflation, while just 30% trust Biden.

Voters aren't blaming Trump for the economic collapse/damage due to the pandemic in his final year in office but they're blaming Biden for the inflation that happened due to the pandemic and the facts that inflation happened worldwide or that America had the lowest inflation of any major economy and the fastest economic recovery doesn't bother them. Biden is getting the blame and that's that and that looks to be the deciding issue in November.

[Kirkland Laing]

It's just inflation and economic stuff that voters are clueless about though. Other than that they're right on the fucking ball:



‘Shocking’ MSNBC Analyst Can’t Wrap Her Head Around Poll Suggesting Voters Think Biden Is Greater Threat to Democracy Than Trump


https://www.mediaite.com/politics/sh...cy-than-trump/

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Cannon postpone case indefinitely

Mwahahah

Trump wins easily

[Kirkland Laing]

The apparent frontrunner in the Trump VP stakes: "While his company was committing Medicare fraud, he pled the Fifth 75 times and wouldn't even confirm his signature" https://twitter.com/AlfredSpellman/s...89636547162256 He also paid a fine to avoid any criminal charges being brought. Admitted no wrongdoing. You know how it goes.

[Kirkland Laing]

More Trump inflation coverage:

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...on-less-sanity

Luckily almost all Americans subscribe to Bloomberg and read the editorials so the message about how inflationary a Trump second term would be should start to get through.

[NoSavingByTheBell]

Donald Trump will commit even worse of a genocide than Joe Biden is committing in Gaza

[Kirkland Laing]

After the 2020 presidential election, as some Trump supporters falsely claimed that President Biden had stolen the office, many of them displayed a startling symbol outside their homes, on their cars and in online posts: an upside-down American flag.
One of the homes flying an inverted flag during that time was the residence of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in Alexandria, Va., according to photographs and interviews with neighbors.

The upside-down flag was aloft on Jan. 17, 2021, the images showed. President Donald J. Trump’s supporters, including some brandishing the same symbol, had rioted at the Capitol a little over a week before. Mr. Biden’s inauguration was three days away. Alarmed neighbors snapped photographs, some of which were recently obtained by The New York Times. Word of the flag filtered back to the court, people who worked there said in interviews.
While the flag was up, the court was still contending with whether to hear a 2020 election case, with Justice Alito on the losing end of that decision. In coming weeks, the justices will rule on two climactic cases involving the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, including whether Mr. Trump has immunity for his actions. Their decisions will shape how accountable he can be held for trying to overturn the last presidential election and his chances for re-election in the upcoming one.
“I had no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag,” Justice Alito said in an emailed statement to The Times. “It was briefly placed by Mrs. Alito in response to a neighbor’s use of objectionable and personally insulting language on yard signs.”
Judicial experts said in interviews that the flag was a clear violation of ethics rules, which seek to avoid even the appearance of bias, and could sow doubt about Justice Alito’s impartiality in cases related to the election and the Capitol riot.
The mere impression of political opinion can be a problem, the ethics experts said. “It might be his spouse or someone else living in his home, but he shouldn’t have it in his yard as his message to the world,” said Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia.
This is “the equivalent of putting a ‘Stop the Steal’ sign in your yard, which is a problem if you’re deciding election-related cases,” she said.

https://dnyuz.com/2024/05/16/at-just...ol-on-display/






The @MiamiHerald
today on @SenRickScott
rewriting history about the massive fraud at the hospital chain he ran, baselessly claiming political persecution. Scott is lucky he's not in prison after @nytimes
got the rubber stamp used to hide records from auditors:


https://twitter.com/DavidCayJ/status...40801017159942

[Kirkland Laing]

https://twitter.com/Timodc/status/1786795147952378080

[Kirkland Laing]

Too bad the WaPo can't get access to government data. We might see our 28th consecutive month of below 4.0 percent unemployment in May, beating the sixties streak.

If we had the exact same economic numbers, Donald Trump would be saying, "GREATEST ECONOMY EVER!" Every Republican politician in the country would be repeating that line, and the media would be saying that the strong economy will make it difficult to beat Trump.


https://twitter.com/DeanBaker13/stat...51940918382755