Trump 2.0

[sptrawler]

Hey @Smurf1976 even China agrees with us, the U.S has been living beyond its means for years, as has most of the Western countries.
As we said the West has been outsourcing its manufacturing for the last 40 years and spending the money made from doing it, now they are borrowing money to sustain their standard of living and welfare.
At least it has been brought to a head, now all we need is decent politicians to turn it around, before China really trashes the West.

MSN

From the article:
China responded by hiking levies on US goods to 125 per cent last week, and while the tit-for-tat tariff increases appears to have paused, the animosity between the two nations has shown no signs of letting up amid a blistering war of words. 'The US is not getting ripped off by anybody,' an editorial in state-run media outlet China Daily read last night. 'The problem is the US has been living beyond its means for decades. It consumes more than it produces. It has outsourced its manufacturing and borrowed money in order to have a higher standard of living than it's entitled to based on its productivity. Rather than being "cheated", the US has been taking a free ride on the globalization train.'

The article concludes: 'The US should stop whining about itself being a victim in global trade and put an end to its capricious and destructive behavior. Instead, it should commit itself to working with its trading partners to establish a fair, free and WTO-centered multilateral trading system that is in line with the times.'

 

[IFocus]

 

[basilio]

This is a loooong view. But really interesting. Richard Wolff covers many political/economic topics with great thought and insight.

 

[sptrawler]

View attachment 197731

Now that is a great meme and to top it off, it is accurate.

The only thing Trump has done, is made the problem an issue, IMO if that hadn't happened the situation would have resulted with China not having to negotiate.
In 10 years time it would have been game over, even now it isn't going to be easy to get China to curb its growth, but ATM China still need the buying power of the Western consumers and the U.S still has a small but effective manufacturing base.
Well that's what I think.
Trumps a goose, but I don't think he is on anyones payroll, especially China's.

 

[DB008]

The Dems approval rating is around 20% and falling, I wonder why.....

​

 

[DB008]

 

[DB008]

 

[DB008]

WOW

White House just updated Covid Origins

Fauci should be in Gitmo

Lab Leak - The True Origins of Covid-19

THE ORIGIN​

“The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” publication — which was used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to discredit the lab leak theory — was prompted by Dr. Fauci to push the preferred narrative that COVID-19 originated naturally.

House Oversight Report

https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2024.12.04-SSCP-FINAL-REPORT-ANS.pdf




https://www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19/​

.

 

[DB008]

More JFK Official Files released today;

Records Related to the Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy​

https://www.archives.gov/research/rfk



​

This has to be the most transparent US Admin in history

• DOGE - Full transparency showing Government fraud & waste https://doge-tracker.com/
• COVID-19 - Full disclosure https://www.whitehouse.gov/lab-leak-true-origins-of-covid-19/
• JFK - 18,000+ files released this year https://www.archives.gov/research/rfk

.​

 

[mullokintyre]

Problem is, there was nothing new in all those reports.
You can afford to be transparent when there is no smoking gun.
Mick

 

[basilio]

First 100 days of Trump. What is the score card ? How "successful" has he been ? And successful" at what ... exactly ?

One analysis.

Trump is wrapping up 100 days of historic failure​

America has seen ruinous periods, but never when the president was the one knowingly causing the ruin.
Yesterday at 7:30 a.m. EDT

15 min

President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on March 28. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

By any reasonable measure, President Donald Trump’s first 100 days will be judged an epic failure.
He has been a legislative failure. He has signed only five bills into law, none of them major, making this the worst performance at the start of a new president’s term in more than a century.

He has been an economic failure. On his watch, growth has slowed, consumer and business confidence has cratered, and markets have plunged, along with Americans’ wealth. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that “growth has slowed in the first quarter of this year from last year’s solid pace” and that Trump’s tariffs will result in higher inflation and slower growth.

He has been a foreign-policy failure. He said he would end wars in Gaza and Ukraine. But fighting has resumed in Gaza after the demise of the ceasefire negotiated by his predecessor, and Russia continues to brutalize Ukraine, making a mockery of Trump’s naive overtures to Vladimir Putin.

He has been a failure in the eyes of friends, having launched a trade war against Canada, Mexico, Europe and Japan; enraged Canada with talk of annexation; threatened Greenland and Panama; and cleaved the NATO alliance.

He has been a failure in the eyes of foes, as an emboldened China menaces Taiwan, punches back hard in the trade war and spreads its global influence to fill the vacuum left by Trump’s retreat from the world.

He has been a constitutional failure. His executive actions, brazen in their disregard for the law, have been slapped down more than 80 times already by judges, including those appointed by Republicans. He is flagrantly defying a unanimous Supreme Court, and his appointees are facing contempt proceedings for their abuse of the legal system.

He has been a failure in public opinion. This week’s Economist/YouGov poll finds 42 percent approving his performance and 52 percent disapproving — a 16-point swing for the worse since the start of his term. Majorities say the country is on the wrong track and out of control.

https://archive.md/sh33h#selection-277.0-300.0

 

[DB008]

 

[sptrawler]

Trump says he will ‘substantially’ cut China tariffs as trade war bites

The US president has flagged that he will lower his unprecedented 145 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods and “won’t play hardball”.

www.smh.com.au

Washington: US President Donald Trump says he will substantially lower his unprecedented 145 per cent tariffs on Chinese goods and “won’t play hardball” in recognition the current trade war between the world’s two largest economies cannot last.

Trump’s comments came after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told a closed-door meeting with investment bankers the negotiations with China would be a “slog” but neither side considered the status quo sustainable.

“I’m not going to say, ‘Oh I’m going to play hardball with China’,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday AEST. “We’re going to be very nice, they’re going to be very nice.

“But ultimately, they have to make a deal because otherwise they’re not going to be able to deal in the United States. We want them involved. But they have to – and other countries have to – make a deal. And if they don’t make a deal, we’ll set the deal.”

Trump acknowledged the current 145 per cent tariff on imports from China was “very high” and effectively a trade embargo. Whatever number was finally set would be much lower, he said.

Loading
“It won’t be anywhere near that high,” he said. “It’ll come down substantially, but it won’t be zero. It used to be zero, we were just destroyed. China was taking us for a ride.

“It’s at 145 per cent. It will not be anywhere near that number … If we don’t make a deal, we’ll just set it. We’ll just set the number.”

 

[IFocus]

Art of the Deal

"Trump cited it as one of his proudest accomplishments and his second-favorite book after the Bible.[5][6] Schwartz called ghost-writing the book his "greatest regret in life, without question," and both he and the book's publisher, Howard Kaminsky, alleged that Trump had played no role in its writing. Trump has given conflicting accounts on the question of authorship."

 

[basilio]

Americans Starting To Get Tired of All This Winning​

Shutterstock/Aspects & Angles

Americans are not sure they can handle all of the winning that has occurred since Donald Trump became President, it has emerged.
From the moment Donald Trump became President Americans have been subjected to an unyielding stream of winning which is starting to get monotonous.

“I’ve lost my job, the economy is in freefall, I can’t afford healthcare, my friend just got deported, I have to see Elon Musk’s face on TV every day – it’s just win, win, win, win, day after day after day. It’s relentless,” one supporter said.

He said Trump had been true to his word. “Trump did say, before he became President, that if we elected him we’d get sick of all the winning. Well I’m definitely sick, but I can’t get healthcare because Trump sacked all of the workers.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love all the winning. But can we tone it down a little bit maybe? I’m not sure how much more I can take”.
Trump said America was winning more than any other country in the world right now. “There’s been a huge outbreak of winning. It really is tremendous,” he said.

Americans Starting To Get Tired of All This Winning — The Shovel

"It's just win, win, win, win, day after day after day. It’s relentless"

theshovel.com.au

 

[basilio]

The Conservative side of US politics is also very concerned about Trump riding roughshod over anyone he disagrees with and any law he wants to break. He is indeed "Lawless".

What are they saying ?

The view from the right​

Conservative condemnation of the Trump regime is almost as vehement as is progressive condemnation. Will they give cover to business leaders who have so far remained silent?​

There is an unfortunate tendency for those of us on the so-called “left” to assume that thinkers and pundits on the “right” disagree with us about Trump.

But what is occurring these days transcends left or right. It is now a matter of democracy or tyranny. More and more of those on the so-called “right” are condemning the Trump regime with almost as much vehemence as you and I condemn it.

Will this give cover to business leaders who have so far remained silent?

A recent sample of condemnation of Trump from the “right.”

Here’s the National Review’s Andrew McCarthy:

“Trump intends to illustrate that he has amassed uncheckable power. That is, having extirpated what made the Republican Party conservative and constitutionalist, and with Congress thus no obstacle (at least for the next 21 months), the president wants it known that such constitutional constraints on executive power as courts and due process are no longer operative. …

‘Constitutional crisis’ is a phrase often invoked and rarely accurate. But now, we actually have one: the evisceration of due process, the justice for all without which we can’t have the liberty in the republic to which we pledge allegiance. But as ever, it is erupting within our clown show.”

Here’s Andrew Sullivan:

“If the administration had wanted to, they could have hailed the quiet border and focussed on deporting illegal immigrants by usual means. But nah. Trump decided he wants to go after legal immigrants and even legal permanent residents who have been charged with no crimes or immigration violations — because they have criticized a foreign country, Israel. He’s deploying a McCarthyite 1952 law to target any legal noncitizen who has criticized or demonstrated against the Jewish state’s wiping of Gaza off the face of the earth, proudly gutting the First Amendment for no good reason.

Wait, there’s more. Trump has also abandoned habeas corpus and due process by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to seize mere suspects off the streets and transport them instantly to a terrifying foreign jail in El Salvador. The law has only been used twice before in wartime, and, ahem, we are not at war. Anyone with brown skin and the wrong kind of tattoo is therefore now at risk of being carted off to torture by the US government, with absolutely no safeguards that they have gotten the right people. Or do you think that an administration that confuses billions with millions, and puts classified intelligence on a Signal app, is incapable of making an error?

We therefore have no way of knowing if a makeup artist who legally sought asylum was rightly grabbed off the street to face certain rape and violence. And when Tom Homan was asked about due process in this case, he actually answered: “What due process did Laken Riley get?” Unbelievable that this thug is in charge of anything

Then the utter indecency. These wannabe fascists publicly delight and revel in their acts of domination in a manner that even despotic regimes avoid.”

Here’s The New York Times’s Bret Stephens:

“I have two large — maybe three large — objections to what is going on. Even when the administration does what I think is the right thing, it does it in the wrong way. The second thing is that some of what it is doing — I’m thinking of the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the migrant who was unlawfully deported, and whom the administration refuses to bring back in compliance with the court order — I think is unconstitutional and un-American.

And I think that there is a mean-spiritedness of vulgarity that sits outside of the spirit of the America that I love. So those three things together do a lot to obscure the increasingly dwindling number of policy decisions of which I say: OK, yeah, that’s what I might’ve done, or what I wish I would’ve seen done by another administration.”

Here’s the American Enterprise Institute’s Matthew Continetti:

“There is no policy. No plan. No logic. There is only Donald Trump.”

Here’s The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board:

“Does President Trump want to force a showdown at the Supreme Court over executive power and the judiciary? That’s the way it looks from the way the Administration is handling the case of deportee Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. …[who] was deported without due process….Mr. Trump would be wise to settle all of this by quietly asking Mr. Bukele to return Mr. Abrego Garcia, who has a family in the U.S. But the President may be bloody-minded enough that he wants to show the judiciary who’s boss.”

Here’s The Times’s David Brooks:

“Over the centuries, people built the sinews of civilization: Constitutions to restrain power, international alliances to promote peace, legal systems to peacefully settle disputes, scientific institutions to cure disease, news outlets to advance public understanding, charitable organizations to ease suffering, businesses to build wealth and spread prosperity, and universities to preserve, transmit and advance the glories of our way of life. These institutions make our lives sweet, loving and creative, rather than nasty, brutish and short.

Trumpism is threatening all of that. It is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice
So far, we have treated the various assaults of President Trump and the acolytes in his administration as a series of different attacks. In one lane they are going after law firms. In another they savaged U.S.A.I.D. In another they’re attacking our universities. On yet another front they’re undermining NATO and on another they’re upending global trade.

But that’s the wrong way to think about it. These are not separate battles. This is a single effort to undo the parts of the civilizational order that might restrain Trump’s acquisition of power. And it will take a concerted response to beat it back.
So far, each sector Trump has assaulted has responded independently — the law firms seek to protect themselves, the universities, separately, try to do the same. Yes, a group of firms banded together in support of the firm Perkins Coie, but in other cases it’s individual law firms trying to secure their separate peace with Trump. Yes, Harvard eventually drew a line in the sand, but Columbia cut a deal. This is a disastrous strategy that ensures that Trump will trample on one victim after another. He divides and conquers.

Slowly, many of us are realizing that we need to band together. But even these efforts are insular and fragmented. Several members of the Big Ten conference are working on forming an alliance to defend academic freedom. Good. But that would be 18 schools out of roughly 4,000 degree-granting American colleges and universities.

So far, the only real hint of something larger — a mass countermovement — has been the rallies led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But this, too, is an ineffective way to respond to Trump; those partisan rallies make this fight seem like a normal contest between Democrats and Republicans.
What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.”

***

I continue to disagree with much of what these people say and write and I suspect you do as well. But I also continue to be surprised by how much our views are converging when it comes to the Trump regime’s dangerous drive toward dictatorship.

We’re on the cusp of a national wave of outrage that transcends the old political labels. This hardly means that died-in-the-wool Trumpers will change their minds. But it does give America’s business leaders who have so far remained silent or even supported Trump — the CEOs of America’s biggest corporations, the captains of our largest financial institutions, the heads of media empires — enough cover to come out against this dangerous and despicable regime. Will they?

Robert Reich

 

[DB008]

​

 

[IFocus]

 

[basilio]

The flashing red lights of total xxxing administrative incompetence.

On a personal level I have a certain amount of agnosticism about the government in power of my State/Country/whatever. I know what policies I would prefer and in particular ones I believe are very important. But another essential aspect of government is sheer competence. To have confidence that PM/s, Ministers and PS administration will do at least a reasonable job and not have too many SNAFU's - or corruption. Frankly a Government I don't necessarily agree with that does a good overall job of governing is in my view preferable to a government with better policies but incompetent execution.

The overwhelming disaster of the Trump administration is it's total incompetence. On so many levels it is this incompetence that demands investigation, accountability and censure. That role is normally the province of an alert, independent media and a vigorous opposition party.

Robert Reich goes into weeds on what this incompetence looks like.

Ineptitude, incompetence, stupidity, and chaos​

Trump is fundamentally incapable of governing. That’s the theme that unites everything.​

Robert Reich
Apr 24, 2025




Friends,
Some Democrats fear they’re playing into Trump’s hands by fighting his mass deportations rather than focusing on his failures on bread-and-butter issues like the cost of living.

But it’s not either-or. The theme that unites Trump’s inept handling of deportations, his trampling on human and civil rights, his rejection of the rule of law, his dictatorial centralization of power, and his utterly inept handling of the economy is the ineptness itself.

In his first term, not only did his advisers and Cabinet officials put guardrails around his crazier tendencies, but they also provided his first administration a degree of stability and focus. Now, it’s mayhem.

A sampling from recent weeks:

1. The Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth disaster. Hegseth didn’t just mistakenly share the military’s plans with the editor of The Atlantic; we now know he shared them with a second Signal group, including his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.

He’s a walking disaster. John Ullyot, who resigned last week as Pentagon spokesman, penned an op-ed in Politico that began: “It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon.” Last Friday, Hegseth fired three of his senior staffers. His chief of staff is leaving. As Ullyot wrote, it’s “very likely” that “even bigger bombshell stories” will come soon. The Defense Department “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.”

It’s not just the Defense Department. The entire federal government is in disarray.

2. The Harvard debacle.
Trump is now claiming that the demand letter sent to Harvard University on April 11 was “unauthorized.” Hello? What does this even mean?
As Harvard pointed out, the letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised. Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government—even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach—do not question its authenticity or seriousness.”

Even though it was “unauthorized,” the Trump regime is standing by the letter, which has now prompted Harvard to sue.

3. The tariff travesty.
No sooner had Trump imposed “retaliatory” tariffs on almost all of our trading partners — based on a formula that has made no sense to anyone — than the U.S. stock and bond markets began crashing.

To stop the selloff, Trump declared a 90-day pause on the retaliatory tariffs but raised his tariffs on China to 145 percent — causing markets to plummet once again.

To stem the impending economic crisis, he declared an exemption to the China tariffs for smartphones and computer equipment. By doing so, Trump essentially admitted what he had before denied: that importers and consumers bear the cost of tariffs.

Now, Trump is saying that even his China tariffs aren’t really real. Following warnings from Walmart, Target, and Home Depot that the tariffs would spike prices, Trump termed the tariffs he imposed on China “very high” and promised they “will come down substantially. But it won’t be zero. It used to be zero.” Markets soared on the news.

4. The attack on the Fed chair fiasco.
When Trump renewed his attacks on Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve — calling him “a major loser” and demanding that the Fed cut interest rates — Trump unnerved already-anxious investors who understand the importance of the Fed’s independence and feared that a politicized Fed wouldn’t be able to credibly fight inflation.

Then, in another about-face, Trump said Wednesday he had “no intention” of firing Powell, which also helped lift markets.

Bottom line: An economy needs predictability. Investors won’t invest, consumers won’t buy, and producers won’t produce if everything continues to change. But Trump doesn’t think ahead. He responds only to immediate threats and problems.
Who’s profiting on all this tumult? Anyone with inside knowledge of what Trump is about to do: most likely, Trump and his family.

5. The Kilmar Abrego Garcia calamity.
After the Trump regime admitted an “administrative error” in sending Abrego Garcia to a brutal Salvadoran torture prison, in violation of a federal court order, Trump then virtually ignored a 9-0 Supreme Court order to facilitate his return.

To the contrary, with cameras rolling in the Oval Office, Trump embraced Nayib Bukele — who governs El Salvador in a permanent state of emergency and has himself imprisoned 83,000 people in brutal dungeons with no due process. Trump then speculated about using Bukele’s prisons for “homegrown” (i.e., American-born) criminals or dissidents.

Meanwhile, after the Trump regime deported another group of migrants to the Salvadoran prison under a rarely invoked 18th-century wartime law, the Supreme Court blocked it from deporting any more migrants.

6. ICE’s blunderbuss.
Further illustrating the chaos of the Trump regime, ICE has been arresting American citizens. One American was detained by ICE in Arizona for 10 days until his relatives produced papers proving his citizenship, because ICE didn’t believe he was American. Meanwhile, ICE handcuffed and deported a group of German teenagers vacationing in Hawaii because they turned up without a hotel pre-booked, which ICE found “suspicious.”

Bottom line: Freedom depends on the rule of law. The rule of law depends on predictability. Just like Trump’s wildly inconsistent economic policies, his policies on immigrants are threatening everyone.

7. Musk’s DOGE disaster.
Where to begin on his? Musk’s claims of government savings have been shown to be ludicrously exaggerated. Remember the claim that $50 million taxpayer dollars funded condoms in Gaza? This was supposed to be the first big “gotcha” from DOGE, but as we know now, it was a lie. The U.S. government buys condoms for about 5 cents apiece, which means $50 million would buy a billion condoms or roughly 467 for every resident of Gaza. Besides, according to a federal 2024 report, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) didn’t provide or fund any condoms in the entire Middle East in the 2021, 2022, or 2023 fiscal years.

Then there have been the frantic callbacks of fired federal workers, such as up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration who work on sensitive jobs such as reassembling warheads. Four days after DOGE fired them, the agency’s acting director rescinded the firings and asked them back. A similar callback has ensued at the Social Security Administration, after fired workers left the agency so denuded that telephone calls weren’t being answered and its website malfunctioned.

Bottom line: Trump and Musk are threatening the safety and security of Americans — for almost no real savings.

8. Measles mayhem.
As measles breaks out across the country, sickening hundreds and killing at least two children so far, Trump’s secretary for health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., continues to claim that the measles vaccine “causes deaths every year … and all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, et cetera.”

In fact, the measles vaccine is safe, and its risks are lower than the risks of complications from measles. Most people who get the measles vaccine have no serious problems from it, the CDC says. There have been no documented deaths from the vaccine in healthy, non-immunocompromised people, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Kennedy Jr. also says, “We’re always going to have measles, no matter what happens, as the [measles] vaccine wanes very quickly.” In fact, the measles vaccine is highly protective and lasts a lifetime for most people. Two doses of the vaccine are 97% effective against the virus, according to the CDC and medical experts worldwide. Before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, the U.S. saw some 3 million to 4 million cases per year. Now, it’s usually fewer than 200 in a normal year.

9. Student debt snafu.
After a five-year pause on penalizing borrowers for not making student loan payments, the Trump regime is now requiring households to resume payments. This has caused the credit scores of millions of borrowers to plunge and a record number to risk defaulting on their loans.

Many of the households required to resume paying on their student loans are also struggling with credit card debt at near-record interest rates and high-rate mortgages they thought they would be able to refinance into a lower rate but haven’t. Instead of increasing Education Department staffing to handle a work surge and clarifying the often-shifting rules of its myriad repayment programs, the Trump regime has done the opposite and cut staff.

10. Who’s in charge?
In the span of a single week, the IRS has had three different leaders. Three days after Gary Shapley was named acting commissioner, it was announced that Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender would replace Shapley. That was the same day, not incidentally, that the IRS ended DOGE access to the agency.

What happened? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent complained to Trump that Musk did an end run around him to install Shapley (who had been lauded by conservatives after publicly arguing that the Justice Department had slow-walked its investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes).

Meanwhile, the Trump regime is cutting the IRS in half — starting with 6,700 layoffs and gutting the division that audits people with excessive wealth. These are acts of sabotage against the very agency meant to keep billionaires accountable.

At the same time, trade adviser Peter Navarro has entered into a public spat with Musk, accusing him of not being a “car manufacturer” but a “car assembler” because Tesla relies on parts from around the world. This prompted Musk to call Navarro a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a post on X, later posting that he wanted to “apologize to bricks” and referring to Navarro as “Peter Retarrdo.”

The State Department has been torn apart by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s firing of Peter Marocco, the official who was dismantling USAID. Career officials charged that Marocco, a MAGA loyalist, was destroying the agency; Trump’s MAGA followers view Marocco’s firing as a sign that Rubio is part of the establishment they want to destroy.

Worse yet, Trump has fired more than a half-dozen national security officials on the advice of the far-right agitator Laura Loomer, who was granted access to the Oval Office and gave Trump a list of officials she deemed disloyal.
Bottom line: No one is in charge. Trump is holding court but has the attention span of a fruit fly. This is causing chaos across the federal government, as rival sycophants compete for his limited attention.
**
All this ineptitude in just the last few weeks reveals that the Trump regime is coming apart. Incompetence is everywhere. The regime can’t keep military secrets. It can’t maintain financial stability. It can’t protect children from measles. It cannot protect America.
While we need to continue to resist Trump’s authoritarianism, we also need to highlight his utter inability to govern America.

Ineptitude, incompetence, stupidity, and chaos

Trump is fundamentally incapable of governing. That’s the theme that unites everything.

robertreich.substack.com

 

[Knobby22]

The flashing red lights of total xxxing administrative incompetence.

On a personal level I have a certain amount of agnosticism about the government in power of my State/Country/whatever. I know what policies I would prefer and in particular ones I believe are very important. But another essential aspect of government is sheer competence. To have confidence that PM/s, Ministers and PS administration will do at least a reasonable job and not have too many SNAFU's - or corruption. Frankly a Government I don't necessarily agree with that does a good overall job of governing is in my view preferable to a government with better policies but incompetent execution.

The overwhelming disaster of the Trump administration is it's total incompetence. On so many levels it is this incompetence that demands investigation, accountability and censure. That role is normally the province of an alert, independent media and a vigorous opposition party.

Robert Reich goes into weeds on what this incompetence looks like.

Ineptitude, incompetence, stupidity, and chaos​

Trump is fundamentally incapable of governing. That’s the theme that unites everything.​

Robert Reich
Apr 24, 2025


View attachment 198119

Friends,
Some Democrats fear they’re playing into Trump’s hands by fighting his mass deportations rather than focusing on his failures on bread-and-butter issues like the cost of living.

But it’s not either-or. The theme that unites Trump’s inept handling of deportations, his trampling on human and civil rights, his rejection of the rule of law, his dictatorial centralization of power, and his utterly inept handling of the economy is the ineptness itself.

In his first term, not only did his advisers and Cabinet officials put guardrails around his crazier tendencies, but they also provided his first administration a degree of stability and focus. Now, it’s mayhem.

A sampling from recent weeks:

1. The Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth disaster. Hegseth didn’t just mistakenly share the military’s plans with the editor of The Atlantic; we now know he shared them with a second Signal group, including his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.

He’s a walking disaster. John Ullyot, who resigned last week as Pentagon spokesman, penned an op-ed in Politico that began: “It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon.” Last Friday, Hegseth fired three of his senior staffers. His chief of staff is leaving. As Ullyot wrote, it’s “very likely” that “even bigger bombshell stories” will come soon. The Defense Department “is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.”

It’s not just the Defense Department. The entire federal government is in disarray.

2. The Harvard debacle.
Trump is now claiming that the demand letter sent to Harvard University on April 11 was “unauthorized.” Hello? What does this even mean?
As Harvard pointed out, the letter “was signed by three federal officials, placed on official letterhead, was sent from the email inbox of a senior federal official and was sent on April 11 as promised. Recipients of such correspondence from the U.S. government—even when it contains sweeping demands that are astonishing in their overreach—do not question its authenticity or seriousness.”

Even though it was “unauthorized,” the Trump regime is standing by the letter, which has now prompted Harvard to sue.

3. The tariff travesty.
No sooner had Trump imposed “retaliatory” tariffs on almost all of our trading partners — based on a formula that has made no sense to anyone — than the U.S. stock and bond markets began crashing.

To stop the selloff, Trump declared a 90-day pause on the retaliatory tariffs but raised his tariffs on China to 145 percent — causing markets to plummet once again.

To stem the impending economic crisis, he declared an exemption to the China tariffs for smartphones and computer equipment. By doing so, Trump essentially admitted what he had before denied: that importers and consumers bear the cost of tariffs.

Now, Trump is saying that even his China tariffs aren’t really real. Following warnings from Walmart, Target, and Home Depot that the tariffs would spike prices, Trump termed the tariffs he imposed on China “very high” and promised they “will come down substantially. But it won’t be zero. It used to be zero.” Markets soared on the news.

4. The attack on the Fed chair fiasco.
When Trump renewed his attacks on Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve — calling him “a major loser” and demanding that the Fed cut interest rates — Trump unnerved already-anxious investors who understand the importance of the Fed’s independence and feared that a politicized Fed wouldn’t be able to credibly fight inflation.

Then, in another about-face, Trump said Wednesday he had “no intention” of firing Powell, which also helped lift markets.

Bottom line: An economy needs predictability. Investors won’t invest, consumers won’t buy, and producers won’t produce if everything continues to change. But Trump doesn’t think ahead. He responds only to immediate threats and problems.
Who’s profiting on all this tumult? Anyone with inside knowledge of what Trump is about to do: most likely, Trump and his family.

5. The Kilmar Abrego Garcia calamity.
After the Trump regime admitted an “administrative error” in sending Abrego Garcia to a brutal Salvadoran torture prison, in violation of a federal court order, Trump then virtually ignored a 9-0 Supreme Court order to facilitate his return.

To the contrary, with cameras rolling in the Oval Office, Trump embraced Nayib Bukele — who governs El Salvador in a permanent state of emergency and has himself imprisoned 83,000 people in brutal dungeons with no due process. Trump then speculated about using Bukele’s prisons for “homegrown” (i.e., American-born) criminals or dissidents.

Meanwhile, after the Trump regime deported another group of migrants to the Salvadoran prison under a rarely invoked 18th-century wartime law, the Supreme Court blocked it from deporting any more migrants.

6. ICE’s blunderbuss.
Further illustrating the chaos of the Trump regime, ICE has been arresting American citizens. One American was detained by ICE in Arizona for 10 days until his relatives produced papers proving his citizenship, because ICE didn’t believe he was American. Meanwhile, ICE handcuffed and deported a group of German teenagers vacationing in Hawaii because they turned up without a hotel pre-booked, which ICE found “suspicious.”

Bottom line: Freedom depends on the rule of law. The rule of law depends on predictability. Just like Trump’s wildly inconsistent economic policies, his policies on immigrants are threatening everyone.

7. Musk’s DOGE disaster.
Where to begin on his? Musk’s claims of government savings have been shown to be ludicrously exaggerated. Remember the claim that $50 million taxpayer dollars funded condoms in Gaza? This was supposed to be the first big “gotcha” from DOGE, but as we know now, it was a lie. The U.S. government buys condoms for about 5 cents apiece, which means $50 million would buy a billion condoms or roughly 467 for every resident of Gaza. Besides, according to a federal 2024 report, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) didn’t provide or fund any condoms in the entire Middle East in the 2021, 2022, or 2023 fiscal years.

Then there have been the frantic callbacks of fired federal workers, such as up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration who work on sensitive jobs such as reassembling warheads. Four days after DOGE fired them, the agency’s acting director rescinded the firings and asked them back. A similar callback has ensued at the Social Security Administration, after fired workers left the agency so denuded that telephone calls weren’t being answered and its website malfunctioned.

Bottom line: Trump and Musk are threatening the safety and security of Americans — for almost no real savings.

8. Measles mayhem.
As measles breaks out across the country, sickening hundreds and killing at least two children so far, Trump’s secretary for health and human services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., continues to claim that the measles vaccine “causes deaths every year … and all the illnesses that measles itself causes, encephalitis and blindness, et cetera.”

In fact, the measles vaccine is safe, and its risks are lower than the risks of complications from measles. Most people who get the measles vaccine have no serious problems from it, the CDC says. There have been no documented deaths from the vaccine in healthy, non-immunocompromised people, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

Kennedy Jr. also says, “We’re always going to have measles, no matter what happens, as the [measles] vaccine wanes very quickly.” In fact, the measles vaccine is highly protective and lasts a lifetime for most people. Two doses of the vaccine are 97% effective against the virus, according to the CDC and medical experts worldwide. Before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, the U.S. saw some 3 million to 4 million cases per year. Now, it’s usually fewer than 200 in a normal year.

9. Student debt snafu.
After a five-year pause on penalizing borrowers for not making student loan payments, the Trump regime is now requiring households to resume payments. This has caused the credit scores of millions of borrowers to plunge and a record number to risk defaulting on their loans.

Many of the households required to resume paying on their student loans are also struggling with credit card debt at near-record interest rates and high-rate mortgages they thought they would be able to refinance into a lower rate but haven’t. Instead of increasing Education Department staffing to handle a work surge and clarifying the often-shifting rules of its myriad repayment programs, the Trump regime has done the opposite and cut staff.

10. Who’s in charge?
In the span of a single week, the IRS has had three different leaders. Three days after Gary Shapley was named acting commissioner, it was announced that Deputy Treasury Secretary Michael Faulkender would replace Shapley. That was the same day, not incidentally, that the IRS ended DOGE access to the agency.

What happened? Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent complained to Trump that Musk did an end run around him to install Shapley (who had been lauded by conservatives after publicly arguing that the Justice Department had slow-walked its investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes).

Meanwhile, the Trump regime is cutting the IRS in half — starting with 6,700 layoffs and gutting the division that audits people with excessive wealth. These are acts of sabotage against the very agency meant to keep billionaires accountable.

At the same time, trade adviser Peter Navarro has entered into a public spat with Musk, accusing him of not being a “car manufacturer” but a “car assembler” because Tesla relies on parts from around the world. This prompted Musk to call Navarro a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks” in a post on X, later posting that he wanted to “apologize to bricks” and referring to Navarro as “Peter Retarrdo.”

The State Department has been torn apart by Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s firing of Peter Marocco, the official who was dismantling USAID. Career officials charged that Marocco, a MAGA loyalist, was destroying the agency; Trump’s MAGA followers view Marocco’s firing as a sign that Rubio is part of the establishment they want to destroy.

Worse yet, Trump has fired more than a half-dozen national security officials on the advice of the far-right agitator Laura Loomer, who was granted access to the Oval Office and gave Trump a list of officials she deemed disloyal.
Bottom line: No one is in charge. Trump is holding court but has the attention span of a fruit fly. This is causing chaos across the federal government, as rival sycophants compete for his limited attention.
**
All this ineptitude in just the last few weeks reveals that the Trump regime is coming apart. Incompetence is everywhere. The regime can’t keep military secrets. It can’t maintain financial stability. It can’t protect children from measles. It cannot protect America.
While we need to continue to resist Trump’s authoritarianism, we also need to highlight his utter inability to govern America.

Ineptitude, incompetence, stupidity, and chaos

Trump is fundamentally incapable of governing. That’s the theme that unites everything.

robertreich.substack.com

Excellent summary.
It's only been 4 months!

The USA will be in a total mess if this incompetence continues for another 44 months. I find it hard to imagine this being allowed.

I think there will be action at some stage from the Republicans and the billionaire oligarchs who backed him. This has already started with the tariffs.

I do think he is showing signs of dementia.