Immediately after the Supreme Court’s ruling at the beginning of July last year, this page said,
“But now, this Court has bestowed immunity on the one potential president most likely to commit illegal acts.”
Sure enough, Donald Trump has gone on to break so many laws it has become difficult to count. That this citizen, no law degree, writing the above from way west in North Carolina, foresaw what would obviously happen and the chief justice did not, makes him a fool. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion and engineered the 6-3 decision and now will reap what he has sown when Trump commits the ultimate crime of refusing to abide by a Court decision. The Court has tied its own hands by giving Trump the immunity to do so.
And Trump is grateful. After the joint session of Congress last month, he stepped off the stage to shake Roberts’s hand saying, “Thank you , thank you, I won’t forget it.” (He later claimed that he was thanking Roberts for swearing him in on Inauguration Day. Sure. We’re that dimwitted, he thinks).
It may be that it is dawning on the justices, who surely follow the lawless conduct of the new administration, that “they’re not any safer from the chainsaw than the rest of us”, as Heather Digby Parton writes at Salon.
challenging the court
D.C. District Court James Boasberg’s requirement that the plane carrying members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and of MS-13 be returned to the U.S. and the Justice Department’s refusal to cooperate is like to be the first case for the Supreme Court to deal with. The desirability of expelling immigrant gang members is undisputed, but our country prefers constitutional due process that at least determines that they are actual members of those gangs and not just people plucked off the street, identified only by tattoos. Donald Trump, who habitually creates a reality that suits his preconceptions, doesn’t require proof. They are “criminals, killers, murderers, horrible, the worst people gang members, gang leaders”, he concluded with no evidence apparent in an interview by Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. “These were bad people That was a bad group of, as I say, hombres” he said aboard Air Force One, exhibiting his fluent command of Spanish.
Trump avers that the deportations are justified under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 that allows the president to detain and deport citizens of “an enemy nation” without a hearing of any sort in wartime. But we are not at war. The Act was last used in 1942 when Japanese residents in the United States were herded into internment camps in the belief that some could be spies. History records that as a disgraceful action, but Trump is content to repeat it.
But then we were actually at war. The law requires war to be formally declared by Congress – think of Franklin Roosevelt going before Congress to make that request after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. “That’s an invasion, they invaded our country”, Trump said to Ingraham. “In that sense, this is war”. A new definition of war to suit his actions.
Judge Boasberg had questions. Trump administration lawyers refused to answer them. That’s new. Lawyers know to go before federal judges well prepared to answer likely questions else earn their disfavor, but Trump lawyers are showing a propensity to disregard any court interference. Our new attorney general, Pam Bondi, has novel interpretations of the law. She issued a statement saying, “The Government maintains that there is no justification to order the provision of additional information, and that doing so would be inappropriate”. On Fox News she said,
“This judge has no right to ask those questions. The judge had no business, no power to do what he did. This judge had no right to do that.”
A federal judge has no right to ask questions. That’s worse than nonsense, but she dug herself deeper.
“The Government should not be required to disclose sensitive information bearing on national security and foreign relations.”
There was nothing classified about where the deportation flights went, who was on them, or why. Sadists at Fox News gleefully and repeatedly showed video of the prisoners, bent into stress positions, heads being shaved, herded into El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison, its Terrorism Confinement Center. The world saw that footage of the new United States. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele sassed the U.S. judiciary posting on X, “Oopsie…Too late”. Our distinguished Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, even promoted the tweet. Bondi on Fox again:
“This is an out-of-control judge. A federal judge trying to control our entire foreign policy and he can  :not do it”
Foreign policy? Trump now tweeting that Boasberg should be disbarred. In a manic tantrum, Trump tweeted:
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”
That prompted a reaction from Chief Justice John Roberts:
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
The media made fuss over how unusual it was for a justice to speak out other than at court, and described in words such as “stern rebuke” and “sharp reprimand”. In fact, it was timid. He could have reminded Trump how often he and his lawyers had availed themselves of the appellate process.
the fuller story
Media writers are paid to write and tend to insert their own words in place of longer quotes uttered by their subjects. As example, the short “IMPEACHED!!!” quote above. In the case of Trump, that practice shields from public view the disordered mind of the 47th president that the full text of his rampant diatribes, seen here, makes clear.
The judge is a “radical left lunatic”, a “troublemaker and agitator” for calling a halt for review of a snatch-and-run operation conducted on a Friday night and weekend in the hopes of escaping notice. His delusional mind, at least in this constitutional republic, believes that for not having been elected, for not winning “ALL SEVEN SWING STATES” — and “by a lot!” — should deprive Judge Boasberg of any right — or clearly anyone else, for that matter — to question his actions. To feed a narcissism beyond what this writer ever thought humanly possible, everything must be supersized. His winning the popular vote by 1.5% becomes “AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE”. His troubled mind needs to scream in all caps.
This has been going on for ten years. No one highlights his crazed ravings any more when we should be scared out of our wits that this man is once again president, given that he holds the nuclear power to end civilization. Ten years ago we already knew how sick he is. This publication and others reported then on psychiatrists who diagnosed his dangerous malignant narcissism, yet Americans elected him twice. The question is, Who is more insane?
the uninvited guest
Ten days ago Trump went to the Justice Department to be sure to break yet another norm, making the heavy-handed point that Justice is no longer hands-off for this president, no longer free to operate independently. Picture this: He’s standing in the Great Hall of their headquarters to tell them how corrupt they had been, but according to his upside-down version of reality. Quick review: Led by Special Counsel Jack Smith, the department had done what it would have been corruptly derelict not to do: prosecute one Donald Trump who had tried to overthrow the government to keep himself in the presidency after losing the 2020 election, and then refusing to return hundreds of government documents, including some top secret, repeatedly claiming In his inverted reality world that the documents belonged to him according to the Presidential Records Act — exactly the opposite of the law enacted when President Richard Nixon sought to destroy records relating to his presidency.
This is what Justice Department lawyers and staffers were told about themselves — in a long quote that we complain the media abbreviates such that the public is left unaware:
“We’re turning the page on four long years of corruption, weaponization and surrender to violent criminals. We’re restoring fair, equal, and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law… So proud of the people in this room, but first, we must be honest about the lies and abuses that have occurred within these walls. Unfortunately in recent years a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and goodwill built up over generations…They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff, and supporters, raided my home, Mar-a-Lago, and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States.”
These are people that are bad people, really bad people.
”They tried to turn America into a corrupt communist and third world country. But in the end the thugs failed, and the truth won, freedom won, justice won, democracy won.”
Which is to say, Trump won. He beat every criminal rap.
”There could be no more heinous betrayal of American values than to use the law to terrorize the innocent and reward the wicked, and that’s what they were doing at a level that’s never been seen before.”
Does that sound like the America of Joe Biden’s years when even the Supreme Court protected Trump? He called himself “the chief law enforcement officer in our country” — step aside, Ms.Bondi — who “will insist upon and demand full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred” in the Justice Department.
He tells the very people who had performed the Herculean job of identifying and prosecuting some 1,500 of the mob who had staged the insurrection at the Capitol that “I pardoned hundreds of political prisoners who had been grossly mistreated.”
Strangest of all, decrying the media’s “horrible treatment” of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, who had slowed his documents case to a crawl to insure it would never go to trial, were his lamentations that…
“It’s sad what they do to other judges, but they do it all the time with judges. They’re in a position, they can’t really fight back really very well… a lot of the judges that I had, if you look at them, they take tremendous abuse in The New York Times and The Washington Post, all of the different networks… These networks and these newspapers are really no different than a highly paid political operative. And it has to stop. It has to be illegal. It’s influencing judges and it’s really changing law and it just cannot be legal. I don’t believe it’s legal and they do it in total coordination with each other.“
To this Heather Digby Parton, doubtless agape, wrote:
”By this time you are probably screaming to yourself, ‘Is he kidding?’ The man who so gravely insulted, threatened and degraded nearly every judge he came in front of they had to throw gag orders on him to keep their families and courthouse staff safe from his rabid followers is saying it should be illegal to criticize judges?”
For the rest of his speech, he went off script and it became a shambles difficult to follow even with benefit of a transcript. Running through his talk was a long, irrelevant, peculiar diversion about basketball coach Bobby Knight which must have had his audience thinking Trmp is possessed of a more serious mental problem than Joe Biden ever exhibited. It was a return to the incoherent ramblings of his campaign rallies and an unnerving reminder that that we at grave risk of his chaotic mind. And when you thought it was going to stop, it just went on and on some more.
Mar 25 2025 | Posted in
Law |
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< governing|316||>
On February 20th, termination letters were sent to 7,000 probationary employees at the IRS just as over 200 million tax returns were about to descend on the agency. In an e-mail sent this Wednesday, Acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause reinstated them. Why? ProPublica uncovered that a top IRS lawyer warned the administration the letter, which fired the employees for poor performance, was “a false statement” that amounted to a phony predicate the Trump administration would claim in court, “an anticipatory fraud on tribunals of jurisdiction over these employment actions” in attorney Joseph Rillotta’s words.
The performance of those dismissed had never been considered. To the contrary, many had received laudatory reviews. 
Krause had to back down. The cohort would continue to be paid but were not to return to work, never mind tax season.
President Trump may have instructed Elon Musk to start using a scalpel rather than a chainsaw, to keep good people and eliminate the “bad ones”, but the 7,000 remain unchanged as an arbitrarily chosen group with no attention given to individual merit.
larceny
On top of that, the “continuing resolution” passed by Congress a week ago — a Republican plan with deep cuts in social programs grudgingly acceded to by a few Democrats to avoid a government shutdown — contained a little noticed line item that docked the IRS $20 billion in funding. And it’s not the first time.
Nothing so clearly illuminates the Republicans’ fiscal irresponsibility than their repeated actions to hobble the IRS. Nothing makes it more obvious that Republican policy is to convert the U.S. into an oligarchy, to create a billionaire class that rules the country, than their repeated actions to stymie the pursuit of tax cheats and tax collection in general.
resuscitation
It was salvation far too long in coming when the Democratically-controlled Congress passed in 2022 President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which included $80 billion across 10 years to revive the IRS. It provided a stable flow of funding that would enable the agency to increase its seriously depleted headcount; eliminate interminable waits for phone support; upgrade ancient computer systems; and go after the wealthiest in pursuit of tax evaders. It’s the last of these goals that Republicans always want most to prevent with the threat to their mega-dollar election campaign donors uppermost in mind.
And so, no sooner had Republicans regained legislative control in the 2022 midterms than they resumed their decades-long practice of beggaring the IRS. In a continuing resolution (CR) in the fall of 2023, they grabbed the first $20 billion of the $80 billion. Why? To give $14.3 billion of it to Israel for them to buy munitions to flatten Gaza and begin the slaughter of its civilian population.
In another CR this past fall – the substitute for Congress repeatedly failing to do its job of passing the dozen departmental appropriations bills — Republican lawmakers took a second $20 billion, just as no-longer IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel had used the new funding to finally reach a needed 100,000 threshold in personnel. It is not clear whether the CR just passed carries forward the fall’s $20 billion or is yet another theft, which would mean $60 billion of the $80 billion — gone.
on deaf ears
In February, five previous IRS commissioners — including the just-departed Werfel — joined to write an opinion piece in The New York Times titled “Trump Just Fired 6,700 I.R.S. Workers in the Middle of Tax Season. That’s a Huge Mistake”. As the commissioners pointed out, most of the 7,000 (the count adjusted as it became known) “are directly involved in collecting unpaid taxes”. We can be cefrtain of that because it assures the American oligarchy that the agency will lack the expertise to seek out tax cheats.
Their argument should be viewed as incontrovertible, but there has been no indication that Trump and Musk will yield to those with actual knowledge. Far from it. The 7,000 are just the beginning. We will see billionaires Trump and Musk drive the IRS to the brink using budget cuts as their weapon to drive further layoffs and guarantee that only the ordinary taxpayers with their simple accounts will be audited.
You can see that strategy by tracing rightwing policy over the years. The chart shows the severity of staffing cuts, a drop of 38% 
between the peak hires of 1992 and the record low count of – no surprise — Trump’s four years, assuring that audits would be cut to a minimum. As if 38% fewer employees were not bad enough, the taxpaying U.S. population rose by 29% during that timespan, cutting the ratio of IRS staff to population by well more than half.
The fewer the personnel count, the fewer the audits, but it is not proportional. Audits of the wealthy drop far more because their complex returns require more agent hours than staff shortages can afford. Here’s a snapshot: Audit rates of individuals making over $10 million a year dropped from 21.5% in Obama’s 2010 administration to 5.8% in 2017 when Trump took over, and fell to 2% by when he left office. Then came the 10-year $80 billion infusion of Biden’s IRA and the increased staffing brought the rate back up to 8.7% by May of 2022.
dumping ground
Congress with no aforethought burdens the IRS with work extraneous to collecting taxes (and then finds fault with the agency’s inability to do its basic job). With the pandemic raging, the IRS was called upon to mail checks to just about everyone in America — and three times over, twice under Trump and once under Biden — a colossal job accomplished despite a staff reduced still further by the virus’s ravages. That was compounded by Congress passing in 2020 the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) and the similar Payroll Protection Plan (PPP) that gave businesses funds to keep paying their employees during the months the pandemic had driven away customers. Here again, the job was given to the IRS to process the deluge of applications and issue the money. Compelled to do so at speed, the agency could not investigate the validity of millions of applications. American businesses, having no interest in the ethics called for in a national health crisis, responded with staggering fraud. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that the federal government made $528 billion in improper payments in 2021 and 2022.
And, of course, it’s been left to the IRS and other agencies to deal with a mess of Brobdingnagian proportions to clean up, to investigate who was truly eligible and who was cheating. This is slow going, “one of the most complex tax administration provisions we’ve ever had,” said Commissioner Werfel. But DOGE thinks efficiency lies in firing the people needed to track down fraud and recover billions in taxpayer money.
profit center
The IRS collects virtually all the receipts of the U.S. government. It is the only agency or department that makes money; all others cost. For Musk and his DOGE cadets to trim the agencies’ ability to bring in money exposes the fraud of Musk’s claim of eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Indeed, Musk and members of Trump’s staff have spoken of doing away with the IRS altogether. Their definition of efficiency.
There is an enormous gap every year between the amount taken in and the estimated amount owed. The number had grown to be an astonishing $600 billion annually the last time we looked and it’s $700 billion every year now, say the five commissioners. To close the gap, the IRS needs thousands of accountants to go up against the highly paid tax lawyers and accountants hired by the richest Americans and corporations to turn their tax returns into inscrutable thickets. The IRS must in turn attract accountants sophisticated in the intricacies of global tax havens, interlocking partnerships, and intricate loopholes in a disastrous tax code that invites evasion. Agents can take weeks, months, longer to prove and collect tax liabilities.
But it is worth it. The agency calculates that every $1 spent on enforcement brings in $6. That is what Trump and Musk don’t want to happen.
With the national debt racing beyond $36 trillion, 
in a time when the IRS should be staffed to the fullest to go after all malefactors of fraud and tax dodges, to collect as much as possible of what is owed, we instead see Republicans in Congress making off with the $80 billion funding of the IRS, robbing $20 billion at a clip, while at the same time proposing a financial plan to please Donald Trump that will send the U.S. reeling.
As we detailed a few weeks ago here, the House will move to raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, retain the 2017 tax cuts set otherwise to expire next year at a cost of $4 trillion over 10 years, and allow for a flurry of new tax cuts that will come to another $4.5 trillion over the coming decade – staggering additions to the debt all while minimizing tax enforcement.
Timid words like “irresponsible” do not suffice. Trump and henchman Musk and their frightened, tremulous sycophants in Congress are treasonously out to drive the country into bankruptcy and in turn eliminate its standing as the world’s leading nation. It should be clear that disaster lies ahead.
< the presidency|399||>
Donald Trump is incessantly irate at Democrats and liberal media for probing his ties and flattering deference to Vladimir Putin, calling it a “Russia, Russia, Russia” obsession and a hoax. In office a little over a month, let’s see what transpired:
Vice President JD Vance went to the Munich Security Conference to tell European governments that their greatest threat was not Russia but “from within” – their migrant problem and curtailment of free speech that shuts out extremist rightwing parties such as AfD.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Brussels meeting of almost 50 of 
Rob Dobi, Washington Post.
Ukraine’s Western backers that a return to Ukraine’s pre-war borders was “unrealistic,” that NATO membership for Kyiv was off the table, and that…
“We’re also here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.”
It was a thunderclap, a reversal of 80 years of American policy in a single stroke.
Hegseth further announced the halt of offensive cyberoperations against Russia by U.S. Cyber Command, notwithstanding Russia’s continuing cyber activity against the U.S.
Trump called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “a dictator” and said it was Ukraine that started the war.
The U.S. delegation to the United Nations followed up by voting against a resolution condemning Russia for its aggression against Ukraine. America thus took Russia’s side and joined North Korea, Belarus, Israel (yes, Israel), fourteen other countries in Russia’s orbit, and of course Russia.
In an Oval Office meeting that played like the ambush it surely was, Trump and Vance attacked Zelenskyy, accusing him of not being sufficiently grateful for U.S. support.
For Zelenskyy’s not being respectful enough, Trump “paused” any further shipments of weapons to Ukraine, creating an opening for Russia to gain more ground.
In a deadly betrayal, Trump then denied the intel we’ve always provided to help Ukraine down incoming Russian missiles, resulting in Putin going all out to kill the civilian population.
So it’s finally out in the open. In actions he has directed, Trump has confirmed that it really was and continues to be Russia, Russia, Russia. On his own, without any referendum or “mandate” from the American people, he has switched sides, aligning with Russia, all but abandoning our European allies, and dragging all of a stunned America with him.
Putin probably cannot believe his good fortune. On Russian state television, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of Trump’s actions,
“The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely aligns with our vision.”
In his speech before a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, Trump said,
“We’ve had serious discussions with Russia and have received strong signals that they are ready for peace.”
He’s being played. Given this new lease, why would Putin settle for only the territory he has gained so far? Just as when Trump withdrew our troops from Syria, Trump has left Russia in the best possible position, clearing the way for Putin to keep going. And not just to overwhelm Ukraine. Moldova, up against Ukraine, would be next and the worry is that, in his dream of rebuilding the Soviet empire, Putin will move on the Baltic states: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia.
lying to Congress
That was the stage Mr. Trump had set in the whirlwind opening days as president before he spoke to Congress where, in his opening sentences, he prejudged his presidency to be “the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country”. He told the assembled lawmakers that he “accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four or eight years.” Whereupon he would repeat to the 535 members one of his persistent lies, that “we’ve spent perhaps $350 billion” in support of Ukraine whereas, referring to the European Union countries, “they’ve spent $100 billion. What a difference it is”.
In fact the difference is small and the opposite. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a research group based in Germany that keeps track, says that the U.S. has approved roughly $185 billion, but much of that unallocated, billions expended on replenishing U.S. ordnance stocks, still more of it assistance to other countries affected by the war. The amount given directly to Ukraine, and most of it weapons, is $119 billion. And Europe? The equivalent – direct support to Ukraine by E.U. nations is higher than the U.S. — $138 billion.
In the days preceding his talk at the Capitol, he compounded that lie. Unlike U.S. support of outright gifts of weapons and money, Trump said European Union contributions to Ukraine are loans. They will be paid back somehow. So in return for its no-strings magnanimity, it’s only fair for the U.S. to recoup some of its costs by Ukraine signing the minerals deal, squeezing a beleaguered nation that, if ever there is peace, will desperately need the full value of its own resources to reconstruct its shattered country.
Sitting beside him in the Oval Office to hear that lie was French President Emmanuel Macron, who reached across to grasp Trump’s arm to put a stop to this new fabrication, but that didn’t stop Trump. He would say the same the next day, this time with Britain’s Prime Minister Kier Starmer sitting alongside. The press has grown sheepish and no longer challenges this or other lies and exaggerations. He will go on saying it.
the dictionary’s most beautiful word
Trump would lie to Congress often that night, but none tops his standard lie about tariffs. When he first floated his tariff lie, it seemed like he might not actually know how they work. But it proved to be deliberate, and he began repeating it whenever tariffs were the subject. He said foreign countries exporting their products to the U.S. would pay into the Treasury “hundreds of billions” of dollars. “We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars” he told the Economic Club of New York last September. The claim grew still larger by the time he stood in front of Congress:
“We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we’ve never seen before.”
The bravado invariably brought Republican members seated on the right side of the chamber to their feet, clapping, and whooping as they did all night through Trump’s hour-and-forty-minute address as if Trump’s saying it had already made it so. In contrast, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers concluded that,
”I have never seen as irrational a consequential policy put in place by an American administration.”
Trump warned the world,
“If you don’t make your product in America…under the Trump administration, you will pay a tariff, and in some cases, a rather large one.”
No you won’t. In fact and of course, foreign exporters don’t pay U.S. tariffs. American importers do, and the tariff costs are passed along on every step of the supply chain until they are ultimately paid by the U.S. consumer in the form of higher prices. Tariffs have the same effect as a sales tax.
To that New York audience, Trump had also said, “I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time”. It reveals he is counting on tariffs to offset the huge deficits arising from the further tax cuts he wants, shortly to be proposed by Congress, and in addition to retaining the expiring 2017 tax cuts act.
This is a cruel subterfuge that shows Trump gives not a damn about the voters who elected him. Those of lower income tend to spend all their earnings on life’s necessities and that’s where the tariffs wind up, whereas the wealthy have vast surplus income beyond what they spend unaffected by tariffs. His voters will pay for the tax cuts through the higher costs of living brought about by tariffs, tax cuts that, if like his of 2017, vastly favor the wealthiest 10% far more than the token amounts given to the bottom 90% to distract them from realizing they’ve been fleeced. It is a cynical betrayal of his supporters. Will they ever wake up?
common sense? Lunacy.
That’s the new phrase Republicans are repeating — that this will be the common sense administration. And yet the president in his address said,
“And in the near future I want to do what has not been done in 24 years: balance the federal budget. We’re going to balance it.”
This preposterousness was met with delirious applause. Our previous article — ”House’s ‘Big Beautiful’ Bill for Trump Will Take U.S. Over the Cliff“ — laid out the trillions that would be added to the nation’s debt by retaining the 2017 tax cuts, passing still more tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, and a slew of new giveaways that Trump wants:
“I’m calling for no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security benefits for our great seniors. And I also want to make interest payments on car loans tax deductible — but only if the car is made in America.”
Nevertheless, with a tax program that promises ever less money to pay for them, Trump told lawmakers of his big plans:
“As commander in chief, my focus is on building the most powerful military of the future. As a first step, I am asking Congress to fund a state-of-the-art golden dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland — all made in the U.S.A.”
“We are going to protect our citizens like never before. To boost our defense industrial base we are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding.”
That last is a vital necessity which should cause him to forget tax cuts and let the 2017 cuts expire in order to make that happen. We’ve been on this subject since as far back as 2018, most recently this excerpt from a year ago March:
”China can build ships at quintuple the rate of America. As with many U.S. industries, shipbuilding began moving offshore to lower-cost nations such as South Korea decades ago. The downsizing of the Navy after the end of the Cold War eviscerated the industry.”
But we’ve heard this from Trump before. While campaigning in 2016, he vowed to bring the U.S. Navy up to 355 warships, a level that the Navy had been urging for years; four years later he had done nothing.
Mr. Trump also plans a quick war with Panama: “To enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal and we’ve already started doing it…The Panama Canal was built for Americans, not for others….We gave it to Panama and we’re taking it back.”
And we’ll take Greenland from our once ally Denmark: “I think we’re gonna get it. One way or the other we’re gonna get it.”
And to diminish our national security, he asked Congress to repeal the bipartisan CHIPS Act, which brings the manufacture of the most sophisticated semiconductors to this country, calling it “a horrible, horrible thing” for its being a Biden administration accomplishment.
god’s will
As he drew toward a close, his messianic notions sprouted once again:
” I believe that my life was saved that day in Butler for a very good reason. I was saved by God to Make America Great Again — I believe that. I do.”
Mar 10 2025 | Posted in
Policy |
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