Economy

PHEW! Trump’s Billionaire Commerce Secretary is Cool If His Mom’s Social Security Doesn’t Come

Posted by on March 21, 2025 at 3:25 pm. 4 Comments :

Are you better off than you were four – or eight – weeks ago? That paraphrase of the famous question once asked by Ronald Reagan has a distinctly more ominous ring to it today as Donald Trump reprises his occupation of the White House. In the short time that he has presided over the nation he has exceeded the worst predictions of the harm that his ignorant and incompetent stewardship would provide.

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Social Security Hands

Ever since Trump’s inauguration, the prospects for the financial well being of America and the American people have declined precipitously. Most economists are predicting a recession. Prices for many common consumers goods (gas, groceries, housing, etc.) have risen. And Trump’s punitive, inflationary tariffs promise to make things even worse.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Press Secretary Visits Fox News to Contradict Her Boss’s Lies About the Cost of Tariffs

But not to worry. Trump himself is going to be just fine. He is fully engaged in a White House based grifting operation that is keeping him flush with corrupt endeavors such as his floundering media company, and his crypto coin, both of which have lost billions of dollars for most investors not tied to the immediate Trump family. However, they provide a neat vehicle to make contributions (e.g. bribes) to Trump.

What’s more, the oligarch class to which Trump has pledged fidelity is also going to be just fine. As evidence of that, Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, made an appearance on the All-In podcast, whose hosts are right-wing venture capitalists, including Trump’s AI and Crypto Czar, David Sacks.

During the discussion with this mutual adoration society, the subject of Social Security came up. Specifically, there were questions about the viability of the program in the wake of the efforts by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Elimination (DOGE) to undermine and eventually terminate it. With regard to that, Lutnick offered a little parable…

“Let’s say Social Security didn’t send out their checks this month. My mother-in-law – who’s 94 – she wouldn’t call and complain. She just wouldn’t. She’d just think something got messed up, and she’ll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise, screaming, yelling, and complaining.”

Oh Cool… This billionaire (Trump's commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick) is cool with his mother not getting her Social Security check on time.Is your mother cool with that? Are you?

— News Corpse (@newscorpse.bsky.social) 2025-03-21T18:54:25.485Z

See? No problem. Except for one small detail. Not everyone’s family is fortunate enough to have a billionaire like Lutnick in it. While his mother-in-law could comfortably skip a month or thirty, most families can’t. Missing a month to the average Social Security recipient could mean missing a rent payment, missing meals, skipping medications and doctor’s visits, forfeiting child care services, and so many more financial obligations being unmet.

And if that’s not bad enough, Lutnick mocks anyone who might have reasonable complaints about the suffering that Trump is causing, and accuses them of being “fraudsters.”

The prospect of Social Security failing to send out benefit checks on schedule has never been as imminent as it is today. That is solely due to DOGE seeking to cut staff, end telephone access, appoint hostile administrators, and require in-person servicing, while simultaneously closing offices.

It is the clear intent of the Trump regime to sabotage the program that Musk has preposterously called “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” A characterization that is utterly absurd since it is funded by the contributions of the recipients throughout their working lives. And if funding were an issue due to the fluctuations of population, it could easily be resolved by removing the arbitrary salary cap that allows wealthy earners like Trump, Musk, and Lutnick, to avoid paying into the Social Security trust fund at the same rate as working class Americans.

Lutnick’s flaming insensitivity to the financial burdens of ordinary people is typical of the ultra-elitist mindset of the Trump administration. They can’t comprehend that there are people living check-to-check because they are so wrapped up in their excess. But that selfish blindness will not go unnoticed by Americans living on Social Security, or who will be, or their children, or other family members and caregivers. And Trump and Company will pay the price for their callous “let them eat cake” indifference to the realities that most people endure.

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Trump’s Press Secretary Visits Fox News to Contradict Her Boss’s Lies About the Cost of Tariffs

Posted by on March 13, 2025 at 12:45 pm. 1 Comments :

The utterly unnecessary trade war that was started by Donald Trump continues to escalate wildly as the targets of his wrath – mainly historical allies of the U.S. – attempt to deal with his incomprehensibly reckless and childish behavior. Trump’s latest attack is on the European Union and their alcohol products, and was triggered by the E.U. having the gall to defend their markets from Trump’s inbred hostility.

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Donald Trump and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt

From the inception of this economic battle, Trump has steadfastly clung to a justification that has no basis in reality. But despite that absence of any rational foundation, Trump knows that he can rely on his Ministry of Propaganda – aka Fox News – to run cover for him.

SEE THIS: Fox News Trump-Fluffer Insists that the Coming Trump Recession Has Nothing To Do With Trump

Trump’s erstwhile Anti-Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made yet another visit to Fox News to spin her web of lies for the network’s cult viewers. She actually spends more time on Fox News than she does in the White Press Briefing room. And on this occasion she came prepared to unleash a particularly egregious falsehood concerning the Trump Tax (aka tariffs)…

“The president will continue to effectively utilize tariffs while again driving down the cost-of-living in this country. Both things can happen at the same time. Just look at president Trump’s first term as an example. When he left office inflation was a low 1.4 percent.”

There’s a lot of wrong in that brief bit of babble. Let’s begin with the fact that interests rates were low at the end of Trump’s first term because the nation was still recovering from the catastrophic effects of the deadly COVID pandemic that Trump so horribly mismanaged. That is not a scenario that any sane person wants to repeat.

More to the point, Leavitt’s claim that Trump can impose tariff’s and drive down the cost-of-living at the same time is preposterous. Trump himself “has recently acknowledged that tariffs will cause a ‘disturbance.’ [and he] declined to predict that America would avoid a recession as a result of his trade policies.” So Leavitt is straight-up contradicting her boss.

For the record, Trump’s tariff policy is grossly incoherent. On one hand he says that “tariffs” is a “beautiful word” and that they will will raise billions of dollars and greatly improve the economy. On the other hand he says that he will remove the tariffs if his bullying tactics result in our trading partners reciprocating. So he is pledging to revoke the very thing that he said will make America wealthy and boost the economy. Also, he continues to lie that other countries pay the tariffs when, in fact, they are paid by U.S. importers who generally pass the costs on to American consumers.

Even Trump’s argument that the tariffs will cause U.S. consumers to buy American is nonsense. First of all, if we buy American, we don’t get the funds that Trump lies are generated by the tariffs. What’s more, the reason so many products are imported is because they are made cheaper overseas. If we have to buy American, we will be paying more for those products. Unless American companies slash salaries and jobs in order to compete.

So with Trump’s policies we’re paying more if we buy domestic. But we’ll also pay more if we buy imported. And as a bonus he’s hurting American workers. It’s a lose-lose-lose proposition for Americans across the board, and a recipe for economic turmoil. He appears to be determined to spark either a recession or inflation. Do you think that Trump cares? (You don’t have to answer that).

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Fox News Flunky Slobbers Over Trump for Finding 100s of Billions in Fraud that He Never Found

Posted by on March 9, 2025 at 1:37 pm. 2 Comments :

Donald Trump promised the American people a lot of things during his campaign last year, including ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy, eliminating the national debt, lowering the costs of groceries, and getting revenge on his political enemies.

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Donald Trump, Fox News, Fake

Most of the promises Trump made were supposed to have been fulfilled on day one of his reoccupation of the White House. Needless to say, he has failed to deliver on any of it, with the exception of some blatantly anti-constitutional acts of vengeance against politicians and the press.

SEE THIS: MAGA GOP Reps Deny that Donald ‘I Am Your Retribution’ Trump Has an ‘Enemies List’ (He Does)

Rather than bothering to make good on his promises, Trump has devoted the biggest portion of his time to courting his omnipresent oligarch, Elon Musk, and the mythical Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that he either runs or has nothing to do with, depending on what day you ask Trump.

On Sunday morning Trump was interviewed for the umpteenth time on Fox News by their Senior Trump-Fluffer, Maria Bartiromo. The interview could not have been more obsequious if it had been conducted by Trump’s own press secretary, which is pretty much what Bartiromo functions as. As evidence, take a look at this segment wherein she compliments Trump and Musk for the “unbelievable” work they are doing…

Bartiromo: Democrats say Elon Musk and DOGE are overstepping their bounds. You’re right, what Elon Musk and DOGE have been able to uncover is unbelievable. Half of us didn’t even realize…
Trump (interrupting): Stop there. What you just said, what he’s done is unbelievable. Now, you can then add some, “Well, what about the–?” He’s found hundreds of billions of dollars worth of fake contracts. And I read ’em, just a tiny portion of them, the other night. Transgender surgery on mice. Hundreds of — I mean, the money they’re spending on all of this stuff — the whole thing’s a scam. And you’ll find, ultimately, that the money that they sent comes back to a lot of the people that made those deals, okay? You’re going to find that. What he’s also done is made people realize how many people should be cut. Because normally you go in, all right, cut 4 percent of your workforce. He said cut 50%, 60%, 70%. That’s a big thing. He’s done a great job,

Notice how Bartiromo starts off with a criticism leveled by Democrats that is unarguably true and supported by constitutional scholars. But she quickly detours to lavishly praising MAGA’s Diuretic Duo. At which point she is interrupted by Trump to home in on her accolades. He heartily agrees that he and Musk are “unbelievable.”

To be fair, anyone could agree with that. Because what Trump said is literally impossible to believe. For starters, he claims that Musk “found hundreds of billions of dollars worth of fake contracts.” However, the official website for DOGE only lays claim to having found $55 billion that it has identified as waste and/or fraud. And even that number is not to believed. As NPR reports…

“A new online tracker on the Department of Government Efficiency’s website puts a dollar amount on the estimated savings from the DOGE effort to slash federal government spending at $55 billion. But an NPR analysis finds the numbers don’t add up. […DOGE] “claimed to show more than $16 billion in savings from ending contracts. After correcting an apparent clerical error, it now shows $8.5 billion.” […]

“In all, estimated savings from the initial DOGE list of just over 500 contracts that NPR found to be cancelled runs closer to $2 billion, with roughly half coming from the gutting of the Department of Education, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the U.S. Agency for International Development. […] NPR’s analysis found that, of its verifiable work completed so far, DOGE has cut just $2 billion in spending — less than three hundredths of a percent of last fiscal year’s federal spending.”

Trump went on make several other statements that no one in their right mind would believe. Such as his assertion that funds were spent on “transgender surgery on mice.” That is just as untrue as when he said it in his speech before Congress. He mistook a report on “transgenic” research on mice, which are genetic experiments done to study human illnesses.

Trump also charged that “the whole thing’s a scam.” He didn’t define “thing” in that comment, but it seems to apply to the entirety of government. It is likely projection on his part because the businesses that he runs are scams, so he thinks that all businesses, including the business of government, are scams.

MORE HERE: OH-NO! Trump WH Aide Brags They are Running the Country Like Trump and Musk Run Their Businesses

Then Trump attempted justify Musk’s chainsaw approach to workforce reduction, saying that “normally you go in, all right, cut 4 percent of your workforce. He said cut 50%, 60%, 70%.” That, of course, would paralyze every agency’s ability to serve the people that it was created to serve. And for agencies that generate revenue, such as the IRS and national parks, it would result in losses that would exceed everything that DOGE has said it was saving.

So yeah, what they have done is indeed unbelievable. Unbelievably stupid. And they are relying on Fox News to lie to their viewers about the impact that these boneheaded operations will have. Especially on the gullible rubes in red states that are far more dependent on government services. Not that wealthy elitists like Trump and Musk – or the TV hacks on Fox – care about them. They only need them at election time. After that they are thrown out with the other white trash.

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Trump is FREAKING OUT About His Coming Recession and Is Begging Weaselly Republicans for Votes

Posted by on March 8, 2025 at 1:30 pm. 2 Comments :

Last week the economy got bad news from multiple fronts. The monthly jobs report showed that the nation added fewer jobs than economists expected in February, the first full month under Trump. Also, the stock market suffered its worst decline in six months, partly due to Trump’s incompetent machinations with tariffs.

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Donald Trump

Many of the signals from a variety of economic indicators are pointing to the likelihood of a recession triggered by Trump’s gross mismanagement of the booming economy that he inherited from President Biden. But despite the abundant evidence that Trump has horrendously botched his responsibilities as the country’s financial steward, his fluffers at Fox News have been predictably covering for his incompetence.

SEE THIS: Fox News Trump-Fluffer Insists that the Coming Trump Recession Has Nothing To Do With Trump

Those efforts by Fox News notwithstanding, Trump is feeling the heat from a nation that is growing more disturbed by the hour by Trump’s utter failure to fulfill his campaign promise to fix everything on day one of his reoccupation of the White House. His policies have only succeeded in making things worse. And his resulting flip-flops reveal how lost he is and incapable of coming up with a solution.

Consequently, Trump is resorting to what he knows best: Whining on his failing Twitter ripoff, Truth Social, and seeking to coerce his MAGA minions in Congress to supplicate themselves to his desires. He posted a message that is little more than begging for votes to pass an interim Continuing Resolution, because Republicans can’t manage to put a passable budget bill on the floor.

“The House and Senate have put together, under the circumstances, a very good funding Bill (‘CR’)! All Republicans should vote (Please!) YES next week. Great things are coming for America, and I am asking you all to give us a few months to get us through to September so we can continue to put the Country’s ‘financial house’ in order. Democrats will do anything they can to shut down our Government, and we can’t let that happen. We have to remain UNITED — NO DISSENT — Fight for another day when the timing is right. VERY IMPORTANT. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Note that Trump is now reversing course on his prior opposition to CRs. He knows that a new budget won’t get enough votes, even from his fellow Republicans. And he has lowered himself to begging for votes (“Please!”) that his party is reluctant to give him. They know that in order to achieve the goals that Trump and GOP leaders have articulated, they would have to make huge cuts to popular programs like Medicare and Social Security. And at least some of them don’t appear to be willing to do that.

So now Trump is asking for more than one day to deliver his Trumptopia. He’s asking for at least six months. However, even that may not be sufficient if forecasts of recession come to pass. And with the dismantling by DOGE of the governmental agencies that provide so many of the services that keep the economy humming, it’s difficult to see any relief from the purposeful sabotage over which Trump is presiding.

Making matters even more difficult for the Trump regime, his Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News, is starting TO waver. Greg Sargent at the New Republic published an article titled “Fox News Suddenly Starts Panicking About Trump’s Economy: ‘Weakening!’“ It begins…

“Fox News figures are willing to propagandize on President Trump’s behalf on pretty much every horror that he throws our way. Do Fox personalities back Trump when he sells out our allies in tandem with murderous tyrant Vladimir Putin? Yes, indeed. Do they support Trump when he tries to purge federal workers by the thousands to corruptly replace them with loyalists? Enthusiastically. Do they stick with Trump when he declares himself above the law, explicitly using the language of world-historical dictators to do so? Without reservations.

“But it turns out there are limits. One topic Fox personalities are not quite as willing to run interference for Trump on is the economy. And with signs mounting that Trump’s economy is hitting the skids, they are beginning to sound the alarm.”

Sargent provides some examples of the slippery slope emerging at Fox. They include…

“Maria Bartiromo practically shouted that ‘the jobs picture is weakening!'” [and]

“‘I think the boom times are over,’ Fox anchor Charles Payne declared.” [and]

“‘We are sliding towards a recession,’ Newt Gingrich fretted on Fox News.”

Sargent closed saying that…

“Trump’s overall political project is heavily dependent on an enormous network of propagandists and other pliant institutional players to sustain itself [and] to keep alive the fiction that it’s producing dramatic results.” […]

“If the public continues to sour on his economic performance, the deep cuts to government will look less about efficiency and instead appear maliciously, dangerously incompetent [and] they’ll sound like what they truly are — the rantings of a genuine wannabe dictator.”

Fox News may be unalterably worshipful of Trump, but they are also proponents of right-wing economic policies and the corporate interests that push them. So if Trump continues to lose Fox News due to his fumbling on the economy, he will have an even harder time corralling his GOP flock. And if that happens, the whole MAGA sandcastle will crumble. And it couldn’t come a moment too soon.

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Fox News Trump-Fluffer Insists that the Coming Trump Recession Has Nothing To Do With Trump

Posted by on March 7, 2025 at 12:37 pm. 1 Comments :

In just a little more than a month, Donald Trump has managed to turn around the booming economy that he inherited from President Biden, and now finds himself presiding over some of worst stats on jobs, consumer confidence, and national debt, in years.

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Donald Trump, Stock Market

So naturally, Trump is lavishing heaps of praise upon himself for what an unbelievably fantastic job he is doing that surpasses every other American president from Christopher Columbus to Hunter Biden. He is convinced that his “stable genius[ness]” is solely responsible for the unparalleled good times that Americans are enjoying. In Trump’s warped mind, he is fulfilling his promise to run the country like he has run his businesses. Which is more of a threat than a promise.

SEE THIS: OH-NO! Trump WH Aide Brags They are Running the Country Like Trump and Musk Run Their Businesses

Friday morning Fox News leapt eagerly onto the Trump Train with reports of his mastery of the nation’s economy. Never mind that it has been speeding downhill ever since he reoccupied the White House. Case in point were the comments by Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, who had a brief moment of lucidity that quickly faded into the ether. She tried to whitewash criticism that Trump’s DOGE fiasco was not really all that bad…

“Can DOGE induce a recession? No, it can’t. You’re not gonna get a recession just from DOGE. Now, there are other things that have happened in this economy which is slowed down – we could see a recession. But it’s not gonna happen just because we’re cutting waste and abuse out of this government.”

Maria Bartiromo of Fox News is right that there won't be a recession "just from DOGE."No. It will be because of DOGE and several other idiotic initiatives of the Trump regime.

— News Corpse (@newscorpse.bsky.social) 2025-03-07T18:32:31.274Z

First of all, DOGE hasn’t documented most of its announced cuts. and much of what it has announced has had to be rescinded because it was either false or destructive to the interests of the nation.

That said, Bartiromo is actually right that there we’re “not gonna get a recession just from DOGE.” No. It will be because of DOGE plus a barrage of other idiotic initiatives from the Trump regime. Her guest agreed, adding that more than 1.5 million government and social services employees “need to go.” Which would undoubtedly contribute to the recession that Bartiromo is predicting and that Trump is working so hard for.

However, as Bartiromo said in the same segment, none of this would be Trump’s fault. “It would be Biden’s recession,” she said, ignoring the fact that every proposal by Trump, and his MAGA minions in Congress, are what has steered the economy into the iceberg that Biden had so skillfully avoided. They include the work of Elon Musk’s DOGE, along with…

  • Threats of inflationary tariffs on American’s closest allies and trading partners
  • His termination of regulatory agencies that monitor corporate corruption
  • His efforts to deport millions of workers who keep the nation’s agriculture, hospitality, medical care, and construction sectors humming
  • His stubborn focus on bizarre and irrelevant matters (i.e. annexing Canada and Greenland, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, marketing cryptocurrency, etc.), rather than the real problems that plague the nation, many of which he caused.

So yeah, the impending recession would not be the result of just DOGE. Trump has had to orchestrate a plethora of problems in order to achieve his goal of sabotaging the economic health of everyone except for his oligarch bros. And despite his inbred incompetence, he’s doing a pretty good job of it.

Bartiromo, meanwhile, is fulfilling her function as a propaganda purveyor. These remarks about the recession followed her interview of Trump, that featured more of the obsequiousness that she has mastered. She has been so good at it that that Trump praised her in the Oval Office prior to their sit down…

Trump is so proud of himself for having the "courage" to be interviewed by Maria Bartiromo, the Senior Trump-Fluffer on Fox News. Which she demonstrates in this clip.

— News Corpse (@newscorpse.bsky.social) 2025-03-07T11:48:29.624Z

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Fox News Host Has Manic Meltdown Over the Trump Tax (Tariffs) that She Gets Completely Wrong

Posted by on March 4, 2025 at 2:13 pm. 1 Comments :

For many months Donald Trump has been touting his plans to impose tariffs on products from some of America’s closest allies and biggest trading partners, Canada, Mexico, and Europe. Add to that his increasing tariffs on China, and what you have is one of the biggest effective tax increases on the American people in history.

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Fox News, Maria Bartiromo, Donald Trump

The news of Trump’s latest tariff threats going into effect have had a disastrous impact on the U.S. stock market. In two days the Dow has nosedived more than 1,500 points. That is the nation’s investors registering their stark disapproval of Trump’s assault on the domestic economy. They know that he is creating an unnecessary burden on American businesses and consumers. And he isn’t helping the 401K plans of workers and retirees either. But he is promising to run the country like he does his businesses. Which is more of a threat than a promise.

SEE THIS: OH-NO! Trump WH Aide Brags They are Running the Country Like Trump and Musk Run Their Businesses

On Fox News, Maria Bartiromo (a business correspondent before switching to Senior Trump-fluffer) did a segment on Trump’s tariffs wherein a reporter interviewed the owner of a car dealership in Pennsylvania. He may not have been the guy that Fox News meant to interview. He described his experience with a customer who was prepared a buy a Dodge Ram truck before the Trump tariffs kicked in. But now the $80,000 truck would cost $100,000 and the dealer said that “He’s not gonna buy the truck. It’s gonna sit on my lot and…nobody is gonna buy the truck because it just had a $20,000 price increase.”

Whereupon, Bartiromo tried to rescue the segment by unleashing a wildly flawed rant about the inequities of of international auto markets. She raged…

“Let me ask you this: How many Dodge Rams do you see driving around Europe? How many Dodge Rams do you see driving around India? I mean, not many. I bet. Why? Because they don’t buy our cars. And that’s what President Trump is trying to change. Maybe Dodge should start building them here and selling them here.”

Fox Business interviewed the owner of a Pennsylvania auto dealership who says of Trump's tariffs, "nobody is gonna buy the truck, because it just had $20,000 price increase … this is pretty radical."The show then cut back to Maria Bartiromo, who threw a tantrum.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-03-04T19:09:48.116Z

Let’s set aside the absurdity of how she framed her question, by asking if her viewers have seen any Dodge Rams trucks driving around Europe. As if her viewers are in Europe cataloguing cars by manufacturer. More to the point, she was typically wrong about every bit of data that she uttered. First of all, according to Motor Finance Online, the streets of Europe are teeming with trucks from Dodge…

“The European Environment Agency data reveals that nearly 5,000 Dodge RAMs were imported into Europe in 2023, marking a 20% increase from 2022. This brings the total number of Dodge RAMs on European roads to at least 20,000.”

Furthermore, contrary to Bartiromo’s ill-informed assertion, Dodge Rams are indeed sold here in America in large numbers. Nearly 90,000 in the third quarter of 2024 alone. And as for where they are made, most are manufactured in two plants located in Warren, and Sterling Heights, Michigan.

It never ceases to amaze how monumentally wrong these MAGA media propagandists are. It has to be intentional, because no one could really be that relentlessly stupid, could they? And as noted above, business is actually Bartiromo’s beat.

But in Trump World, everyone must have signed onto the agreement to always exalt Trump and anything he says, no matter how obviously untrue or utterly preposterous. And by that measure, Bartiromo, Fox News, and the rest of the MAGA media are doing an incredible job. Or more accurately, an un-credible job.

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OH-NO! Trump WH Aide Brags They are Running the Country Like Trump and Musk Run Their Businesses

Posted by on February 25, 2025 at 12:42 pm. NO Comments :

Never let it be said that Donald Trump hasn’t been upfront about his intentions in governing the United States. Well, except for all the times that he promised (aka lied) to eliminate the debt, and preserve Social Security, and end every foreign war, and offer a better healthcare plan, and bring companies back to America, and rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, and, ultimately, to make America great.

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Donald Trump, Stock Market

But other than that, Trump has indeed been forthright about his aspirations for authoritarian rule, his affinity for foreign dictators, his blueprint to make himself and his wealthy pals richer, his determination to foul the environment, opposition to reproductive choice, his determination to suppress the free press that he despises, and his preference for golf, television, and the celebrity life to the hard work of governing.

FOR INSTANCE: PINO TRUMP: A President-In-Name-Only Who Spends More Time on TV and Golfing than Presidenting

Trump’s White House staff adoringly lives up to the working example that he sets for dishonesty and shallowness in his administration. And no one better exemplifies his model of slothery than his White House Counsel, and former parking lot lawyer, Alina Habba. Despite her titular role as a legal aide, Habba spends most of her time as a MAGA spokesmodel on Fox News, where she was Tuesday morning saying this…

“This is what we’re about. We’re running this county like President Trump runs the Trump Organization. Like Elon Musk running X. That’s what we’re doing. And if you want your budget balanced, if you want to not have a deficit, who better to do so than a businessman who understands how to make money, how to spend money, and how to get out of debt. And that’s what we’re gonna do.”

Alina Habba: This is what we're about. We're running this county like President Trump runs the Trump Organization. Like Elon Musk running X. That's what we're doing.

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-02-25T16:17:51.419Z

HOLY SHIH TZU! Not that. Anything but that. Habba is promising that Trump will run the country the way he and Musk run their businesses. Unfortunately, it’s well known that Trump has been an absolutely dreadful businessman. He bankrupted four casinos. He headed up a long list of consumer products failures, including steaks, air travel, vodka, magazines, board games, and more. Even his real estate ventures are flops, with many just being licensing deals for his name, which has been removed from several of them to avoid the taint of his toxic association.

It is impossible to talk about Trump’s alleged business without noting the monumental failure of his Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT). Its share price has declined 60% from its high in the past year. It declined 40% just since his inauguration a month ago. And the cryptocurrency coin he launched a couple of days before his inauguration has cratered 80%. Virtually everyone who has invested in a Trump enterprise has lost bigly. Except, of course, for Trump.

SEE THIS: Trump Wants to Run America Like his Businesses – Trump Media and Crypto – That are Crashing

As for Musk, he paid $44 billion for Twitter a little more than two years ago. Now, as a private company, it is valued at about $12.3 billion, a loss of 72%. Even his flagship Tesla has lost a bundle, dropping from $480 per share in mid December, to about $300.00, a decline of 37%. And his phony Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has proven to be drag on the economy with thousands of job losses, and even cuts to revenue generating agencies like the IRS.

What’s more, Trump’s pre-election pledges to improve the nation’s economy have all proven to be more of his trademark bluster and bullpucky. Rather than eliminating inflation, increasing manufacturing, and lowering prices for everything from eggs to gasoline, things have been going in the opposite direction. Consumer confidence is plummeting. Consumers are expecting a recession. And retail sales are falling.

TRUMP'S BIGGEST ISSUE…?"Consumer confidence plummeted in February, the biggest monthly decline in more than 4 years."?"Consumers expecting a recession over the next year jumped to a 9 month high."?"Retail sales fell 0.9%…after 2 months of healthy gains."abcnews.go.com/Business/wir…

— News Corpse (@newscorpse.bsky.social) 2025-02-25T16:59:42.132Z

So what Trump and Habba are actually promising now is more of the same disastrous mismanagement that has hobbled their personal businesses. Consequently, comments like those by Habba on Fox News sound more like threats than promises.

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FANTASYLAND: Fox News Lies That DOGE Savings (That Don’t Exist) Will Go Back to the People

Posted by on February 18, 2025 at 12:32 pm. NO Comments :

The task of serving aspiring authoritarian, Donald Trump, as his official Ministry of Propaganda is one that Fox News has eagerly undertaken and performed devotedly for nearly a decade. It’s a sweet gig because all it requires is the willingness to invent and disseminate half-baked fiction suited for kindergartners without the bothersome need to cling to pesky and unnecessary facts.

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Donald Trump, Fox News, Lies

The revolving door between Fox News and the Trump regime that currently occupies the White House spins at a rapid pace. Not only does Trump reserve the majority of media appearances for his fluffers on Fox, he has used the network as his recruiting agency for his Cabinet and other staff, plucking 19 Foxers, so far, to join his administration.

SEE THIS: Trump’s Nominees Are Largely Fox News Alum, Mar-a-Lago Patrons, and Billionaires

On Tuesday morning’s episode of “Outnumbered” on Fox News, co-host Kennedy offered her take on the work being done by Trump’s co-president, Elon Musk, for his bogus Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a wholly contrived agency whose purpose appears to be dismantling the legitimate functions of government in order for Trump to assume unchallenged levels of power, with the side benefit of allowing oligarchs like Musk to steal from the public treasury without any oversight or consequences. To that end, Kennedy rattled off this nonsense…

When you are finding all of this money, when you are taking it back, when you are cutting off future streams of funding, give that back to the American people. Then you will see the economy absolutely explode. And people will once again be able to take out new loans, start new businesses, and will the wonderful things that follow when they have more of their own money.”

That is, in a word, BULLSHIT! First of all, Kennedy’s imagination is running wild about “all of this money” she says is being found. There is, so far, no actual documentation a single penny of waste, fraud, or abuse, found by Musk’s DOGE team of StormTrumpers. Their claims include easily debunked assertions, without evidence, such as that “tens of millions” of Social Security payments have been made to people more than 150 years old. Or that $50 million worth of condoms were sent to Gaza for Hamas.

Secondly, the funds that they falsely claim are being recovered would have been spent on products and services in the performance of the duties of those agencies. That includes infrastructure construction, healthcare, housing, education, agricultural goods, citizen outreach, and more. The loss of that funding would not only harm the Americans for whom it was intended, it would actually be a drag on the economy, as those funds fail to circulate.

Finally, the Trump regime has never even suggested that any savings would go “back to the America people.” To the contrary, they have promised to give it all to the wealthy and to corporations in the form of more tax cuts for the rich that never get redistributed to benefit local economies. Anyone expecting to get a check from DOGE is terminally naïve, and would be better off buying a lottery ticket from that dude outside the corner liquor store swigging whiskey from a discarded Starbucks cup.

As an example of the alleged savings discovered by DOGE, here’s one that Trump’s Rapid Response team posted on Twitter that claimed that about $72 billion in “improper” Social Security payments were found during an audit by the agency’s Inspector General. The Trumpists were all giddy because they thought this proved there was rampant, undetected fraud going on.

However, let’s break this down, shall we? To begin with, the improper payments were discovered by the Inspector General during Biden’s term. There was no fraud associated with them. Most were overpayments to eligible recipients that were likely recovered. The total amount was only 0.84% of all Social Security payments. Which is evidence that the system is pretty darn efficient.

Most notable is the fact that the overpayments were found in the course of a routine audit, which suggests that DOGE is completely unnecessary. And they were found by an Inspector General that Trump later fired, along with 17 others who were doing their jobs admirably.

Now Trump, Musk, and their DOGEbros want to congratulate themselves for sabotaging agencies that the American people rely upon, and they pretend to find savings that they never prove were actually found. That’s par for the course with Trump. His entire existence is a like a reality TV show that is scripted by con artists for a cult base of whining toddlers. At least he knows his audience.

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PINO TRUMP: A President-In-Name-Only Who Spends More Time on TV and Golfing than Presidenting

Posted by on February 16, 2025 at 12:57 pm. 2 Comments :

During Donald Trump’s first occupation of the White House, he was not known as a workaholic. To the contrary, he spent an extraordinary amount of time on extracurricular activities that had nothing to do with the duties of the office. And more often than not, he was frolicking at his own fancy resorts at taxpayer expense.

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Trump in Bed, Eating, Sad

Not much has change this time around. In the three and half weeks since his inauguration, Trump has lounged around his Mar-a-Lago bunker, or one of his other vacation villas, nearly as much as his White House digs. And when he was at the White House, he busied himself with trivialities that did nothing to advance the interests of the American people.

SEE THIS: Trump is Busy Doing the People’s Work: Pushing for Plastic Straws and Firing Journalists?

This Sunday afternoon, Trump will be attending the Daytona 500 race in Daytona Beach, Florida, a short jaunt down I-95 from his Palm Beach hotel/home. Never mind that the nation is suffering from a variety of problems that he is aggressively avoiding. Many of which are of his own making, such as the high cost of consumer goods and housing, immigration, access to healthcare, unemployment, and recovery from natural disasters.

This avoidance of responsibility is not unusual for Trump. Thus far in his second term he has been preoccupied with petty public appearances that are more suited to his old reality TV hosting gig. He has attended the Super Bowl, the National Prayer Breakfast, and awkwardly staged executive order signings. And in the weeks prior to that he went to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the Army-Navy game, the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, and the World Series. He’s like an honorary ambassador who is dispatched to ribbon cutting ceremonies at the local Piggly-Wiggly.

Among Trump’s other pressing “presidential” duties are his frequent visits with his Ministry of Propaganda, Fox News, and other MAGA media outlets that disseminate his daily PR. And if that weren’t enough, he has also appointed himself the chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. So look for future inductees like Kid Rock, Scott Baio, Roseanne Barr, and even Ivanka.

You may be wondering how the president of the United States could have the time to engage in all of these activities while still pretending to serve as commander-in-chief. Well, Trump has the unique advantage of being able to delegate his work to Elon Musk, someone who is more vigorous and committed to the mission of undermining democracy. Which makes Trump a figurehead who has conceded his duties to the billionaire who bought him the office. Pretty soon we can expect to see Musk sending Trump to the funerals of foreign dignitaries.

In the meantime, Musk will run ram shod through the government, putting tens of thousands of civil servants out of work (exacerbating unemployment nationwide), sabotaging agencies that serve the people and save lives, endangering the public health, and even imperiling national security.

But at least Trump won’t have to bothered with the complex and stressful details of governing. Nor will he have to miss another tee time or sporting event. And if the American people suffer he will just blame it on Biden or Obama, or DEI, or the “radical left fake news.” These deflections may work for a while with his cult followers. But before too long even they will get tired of being lied to. And there will be a resistance movement that will rise up and take back their country.

The charade being played out by Trump and Musk is destined to fail. Even Fox News will cease to be able to cover for these traitors. They are already stumbling in their pathetic efforts…

https://twitter.com/NewsCorpse/status/1891170563936190481

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Trump is a Terrorist at War with the US Government, and the American People are His Hostages

Posted by on February 2, 2025 at 1:10 pm. 3 Comments :

The battle for the soul of America has commenced a mere two weeks after Donald Trump was inaugurated for his second occupation of the White House. And the attacks orchestrated by Trump and his MAGA minions are landing like cluster bombs, destroying everything in the vicinity and blowing up innocent people who are only trying to live their lives in peace.

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Donald Trump, Fox News, QAnon

The early stages of the Trump war against America have proven to be grotesquely anti-American, and severely harmful to citizens throughout the country. The broad reach of Trump’s terror campaign will adversely impact every American family. But it also takes aim more directly at the civil servants who keep the government running to serve the people who pay for it. These truths have surely contributed to Trump’s unprecedented unpopularity.

SEE THIS: Trump 2.0 Begins with Approval Ratings that Rank Below Every Other President Dating Back to 1953

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia was interviewed Sunday morning on CBS’s Face the Nation. The discussion included an assessment of the damage that Trump is intentionally inflicting on the nation that he cares nothing about, except as a source of wealth and power for himself and his oligarch backers. Warner noted that the Trump administration’s stated goal is to “traumatize” federal workers, which he is carrying out right now.

“We’ve got chaos on steroids going on. We heard from Trump’s OMB, for example, that he wanted to ‘traumatize’ federal workers. Well, that is happening. And these workers are the folks that inspect our fruit, our milk, our eggs. What happens if they all quit?”

Good question! The problem is that Trump’s atrocious agenda will also traumatize all American citizens, because he and his billionaire klan couldn’t care less and won’t be affected. The craving for trauma was explicitly articulated by the Project 2025 author, and Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Russel Vought, who said that…

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains…We want to put them in trauma.”

Imagine saying that about the people that you expect to show up for work on behalf of millions of Americans who rely on them for everything from Social Security and Medicare administration, to food inspections, to child welfare, to transportation safety, to national security.

The Trump Mafia has effectively declared war on the American government and, thus, the American people. And that war is already seeing horrendous casualties. They are evident in his recent orders to oppress the media that he regards as “the enemy of the people.” He promises to…

Not to mention Trump’s full-on onslaught against democracy and the government institutions that support it by…

And that’s just a sampling of Trump’s two week barrage against America. The latest assault is his imposition of tariffs on our allies and neighbors, Mexico and Canada, that already pose a big risk of “lifting already-high consumer prices at the grocery store, rocking the shaky stock market or killing jobs in a full-blown trade war.” That’s an incredibly stupid move that the Wall Street Journal calls “The Dumbest Trade War in History,” and even Fox News condemned as an inflationary burden on American consumers…

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