Category: Fuck The Orange Felon

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Some Stupid To Start Your Day

From Mock Paper Scissors:

The animal magnetism of Stephan "Pee-Wee Himmler" Miller is undeniable.

With a screech only bats and certain dogs can hear, Field Commander PeeWee Himmler declares that Hair Füror will make America the manufacturing capitol of the world…

an angry, twitching Stephen Miller yells on Fox News that Trump will "make American the manufacturing capital of the world"

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-04-08T19:26:16.656Z

Watch his eyes. You don't have to be a Truthsayer of the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood to know that liars usually blink rapidly and in excess.

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This Guy?

From Greg Fallis:

Okay, first off, I admit I'm confused. I mean, I understand that Donald Trump, with the assistance of a cadre of feral Christo-fascist authoritarians and the support of a cartoonist collection of buffoons, is conducting an aggressive frontal assault on the US Constitution. And so far it's been mostly effective.

Unlike a LOT of folks, I'm inclined to think Trump has a plan. It's a very simple, very very stupid, and very selfish plan, to be sure. It's the sort of plan you'd expect from a cartoon villain. But it's still a plan. As I see it, Donald Trump's plan is as follows:

Make everybody dependent on the whims and wishes of Donald Trump.

It's ridiculous, isn't it. What Trump really wants, of course, is loyalty and respect. Two things he'll never get. He'll never get the respect he wants (and thinks he deserves), and I suspect he knows that. Nor will he ever get real loyalty, because loyalty is reciprocal; you earn loyalty by being loyal to others. Trump is loyal to nothing and nobody. Who's going to respect of be loyal to this guy?

Since he can't/won't get the respect and loyalty he truly wants, Trump has to settle for a shabby substitute–unquestioned obedience. The problem for Trump, even as POTUS, is that there are HUGE intentional limits to presidential obedience in a representative democracy.

The president's actual job is to preside over the government, not to rule it. 'Preside' literally means "to sit in front of." The president is basically like an orchestra leader. In order for Trump to command unquestioned obedience, he has to first weaken or destroy the Constitutional constraints on presidential power.

That's exactly what he's doing. In his first term, Trump converted the entire Republican Party to so-called MAGA loyalists (I say 'so-called' because many/most of the GOP are just sycophantic cowards or craven opportunists, not actual loyalists). He also stacked the Supreme court with 'loyalists'. The only check on his authority came from the professionals who occupied the Cabinet posts and the various governmental agencies. Now, in his second term, he's replaced the Cabinet secretaries and the heads of every government agency with more so-called loyalists. He's basically removed or degraded almost every federal administrative constraint on his authority (there are still some federal judges who remain independent, though they're under attack now).

This guy? Powerful politicians and institutions are afraid of this guy? This fucking guy?
There are a few other social constraints that can challenge the president: independent law firms, universities, business interests, and independent news sources. Trump is making every effort to hobble or undermine them, threatening retaliation either in the form of investigations or by removing federal financial aid and federal contracts. In order to avoid this sort of persecution, these social institutions are being required to appeal to Trump personally. To humiliate themselves by publicly kissing his ring. You want to avoid tariffs on products you need? Humbly ask Trump to remove them for YOUR company. You want federal financial aid for teaching or research? Humbly ask Trump to restore the funding he denied. You want to practice law or receive federal contracts? Humbly ask Trump to overlook any earlier opposition and publicly promise to support him. You want access to the Trump administration as a news source? Humbly agree to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. What kind of person or institution would humble themselves before this guy?

But hey, it's working. Some large law firms and some universities have already compromised themselves; many news agencies have modified their coverage of Trump and are parroting his bullshit; a lot of businesses threatened by Trump's trade practices are considering personal appeals to Trump and praising his harmful policies. Intimidation works. But c'mon, how could anybody be intimidated by this guy?

I find truly astonishing that so many people and institutions are afraid of this guy. He's a cartoonish nitwit; he's more a malignant Elmer Fudd than an evil genius. The sheer mass of his ignorance could bend light. He's ten pounds of racist bullshit in a five pound bag. He's a coward and a liar. People are afraid of taking on this guy?

This guy?

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An apt description of Traitor 47 that came to me as I was falling asleep the other night…

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The Economist On Felon47's Mindless Tariffs

The Economist:

On economics Mr Trump's assertions are flat-out nonsense. The president says tariffs are needed to close America's trade deficit, which he sees as a transfer of wealth to foreigners. Yet as any of the president's economists could have told him, this overall deficit arises because Americans choose to save less than their country invests — and, crucially, this long-running reality has not stopped its economy from outpacing the rest of the g7 for over three decades. There is no reason why his extra tariffs should eliminate the deficit. Insisting on balanced trade with every trading partner individually is bonkers — like suggesting that Texas would be richer if it insisted on balanced trade with each of the other 49 states, or asking a company to ensure that each of its suppliers is also a customer.

And Mr Trump's grasp of the technicalities was pathetic. He suggested that the new tariffs were based on an assessment of a country's tariffs against America, plus currency manipulation and other supposed distortions, such as value-added tax. But it looks as if officials set the tariffs using a formula that takes America's bilateral trade deficit as a share of goods imported from each country and halves it — which is almost as random as taxing you on the number of vowels in your name.

There is no way to report on these tariffs in a way that is honest and accurate without describing them as bonkers and nonsensical. News publications that are trying to present them as rational, or describing them as "reciprocal" just because that's the word the White House is using, are beclowning themselves.

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Felon47 Declares A Trade War On Uninhabited Islands, US Military, And Economic Logic

From Daring Fireball:

Mike Masnick has a great piece at TechDirt running down just how stupid everything about Trump's tariff trade war is:

Whoever on the Council of Economic Advisers used this formula should turn in their econ degree, because this is not how anything works. Even if they then go on to publish another version of the formula that looks all sophisticated and shit.

Brendan Duke, on X, shows that the fancier version of their formula — which is fancy in the way that Vertu phones are "fancy" — is even stupider, because the two Greek letters they chose to glam it up just cancel each other out.

Back to Masnick:

This is what happens when you ask ChatGPT to "make my wrong econ math look more scientific." The document even admits that they couldn't figure out the actual tariff rates, so they "proxied" them with this formula instead. That's a bit like saying you couldn't find your house keys, so you proxied them with a banana.

The fundamental problem here isn't just that the tariff numbers are wrong — though they absolutely are. It's that the entire premise rests on treating trade deficits as if they were tariffs. They're not the same thing. At all.

Let's back up for a moment and talk about trade deficits, because Trump has been getting this wrong for longer than some of his supporters have been alive. His logic appears to be:

        1. "Deficit" sounds bad.
        2. Therefore, trade deficits must be bad.
        3. Therefore, countries with whom we have trade deficits must be cheating us.
        4. Therefore, we should punish them with tariffs to "level the playing field."

This sounds like it must be an exaggeration for comic effect, but it's not. That's how Trump's mind works. This is what Trump has been saying about trade deficits for decades. It's like how he understands "asylum" to mean "insane asylum" and so when he talks about political asylum he starts talking about "the late great Hannibal Lecter".

We're not living in the Bad Place. We're living in the Stupid Place.

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What A Fucking Asshole Enemy Of The People

He's going to destroy the U.S. economy. I'm not even sure this is the full list yet.

So basically almost every single country is going to have at least a 10% tariff tax on their imports. I haven't even heard of some of these countries.

He's calling it "reciprocal" because these countries will be imposing tariffs on us in return. Which is the opposite of what "reciprocal" means, but his fanbase won't understand that. And it's obvious HE still doesn't understand how tariffs work. ASSHOLE.

What's weird is that Canada and Mexico seems to be absent so far.

Of course Russia is also absent, but anybody who's paying attention already knew that it would be.