The Conversation -- March 31, 2025
Brianna Tucker of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump on Sunday declined to rule out seeking a third presidential term — an unconstitutional act explicitly barred under the 22nd Amendment — saying that 'there are methods which you could do it.' In a phone interview with NBC News’s Kristen Welker, Trump suggested that multiple plans have begun to circulate for him to run for a third term. He pointed to unspecified polling as an indicator of his popularity and claimed he had the 'highest poll numbers of any Republican for the last 100 years.' 'A lot of people want me to do it,' Trump said. 'But we have — my thinking is, we have a long way to go. I’m focused on the current.'... 'I’m not joking,' Trump said. 'But, I’m not — it is far too early to think about it.' Pressed again by Welker on the toll of the presidency..., Trump, who would be 82 years old in 2028, said, 'Well, I like working.' Trump reiterated his sentiments about his popularity and the prospect of a third term when speaking to reporters Sunday evening aboard Air Force One. 'We have almost four years to go and that’s a long time but despite that, so many people are saying “You’ve got to run again.” They love the job we’re doing,' Trump told reporters. Despite the assertion, several recent polls have found that Americans are unhappy with many of the executive actions and the cost-cutting Trump has directed in his second term.” The NBC News story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: He's "focused on the current"? Does that mean he's finally taken an interest in climate change? Or is he merely thinking of taking up sailing? If Trump is planning a third term, he obviously has abandoned the Constitution. ~~~
~~~ Marcy Wheeler: “I think it a colossal waste of time that the punditocracy spent much of Sunday talking about Kristen Welker’s 'report' that Trump says he wants a third term. You don’t say? Rather than spending the day discussing Trump’s Executive Order presuming to dictate to states how they — with the involvement of DOGE!! — must start suppressing the vote over the next months, we talked about something that might happen in 2028. Rather than spending the day talking about how Trump is already using federal funding and immigration law to silence speech protected by the First Amendment, we discussed what gimmick Trump might use in the future to evade the 22nd Amendment. Almost no one even tried to use Trump’s comments about a third term as a way to explain the end goal of assaults on civil society, speech, and voting — to connect the actions Trump took in the last week to what he says he’ll do in 2028....” Wheeler goes on to knock Welker & NBC News AND to suggest how journalists -- instead of allowing Trump to use them, as Welker does -- use Trump's own words “for example..., as a way to raise the stakes for his daily assault on democracy.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Truth is that we already know that. I view Trump's musings about a third term -- reveries he has been indulging since his first term -- as just one more potential assault on the Constitution and our flimsy democracy in general. Wheeler's proposed lesson is an important one to deliver to low-information voters (and to deliver again and again because lo-info folks have very short attention spans -- see Krugman, linked below), but we need no convincing. In fact, the main reason I link many of the opinion pieces I do link is to say -- "look, look, here's somebody who gets it."
Cleve Wootson of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump said Sunday he was 'angry' at Russian President Vladimir Putin and added that the White House would consider more tariffs on Russian oil if he believed Putin was stalling on a peace agreement with Ukraine. 'You could say that I was very angry, pissed off, when Putin said yesterday that — you know, when Putin started getting into [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky’s credibility, because that’s not going in the right location, you understand?' Trump said during a phone interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday morning. Trump said he would consider putting secondary tariffs on Russian oil — or penalties on other countries that buy oil from Russia — if he and Putin couldn’t come to terms 'on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine' and 'if I think it was Russia’s fault.' ~~~
~~~ Marie: IF Putin is stalling??? Even the WashPo's most-right-wing, Trump-butt-kissing columnist Marc Thiessen acknowledges that Putin is stalling.
Tariff Time. Doom. Jeff Cox of CNBC: “... Goldman Sachs expects aggressive duties from the White House to raise inflation and unemployment and drag economic growth to a near-standstill. The investment bank now expects that tariff rates will jump 15 percentage points, its previous 'risk-case' scenario that now appears more likely when Trump announces reciprocal tariffs on Wednesday. However, Goldman did note that product and country exclusions eventually will pull that increase down to 9 percentage points. When the new trade moves are enacted, the Goldman economic team led by head of global investment research Jan Hatzius sees a broad, negative impact on the economy. In a note published on Sunday, the firm said 'we continue to believe the risk from April 2 tariffs is greater than many market participants have previously assumed.'”
Tariff Time. And Gloom. Paul Krugman: “... businesspeople, especially small business owners, always [seem] to believe that they will do better under Republicans, even though history shows that business does better under Democrats. Small business owners supported Trump in the last election.... And now they’re getting a rude awakening.... Under Trump..., policy ... will ... change with his perception of personal advantage, his temper tantrums, his whims and his malignant narcisissim.... MAGA will be very bad for business. Most immediately, it seems as if Trump doesn’t care that his tariffs will raise business costs in addition to raising prices for consumers. We’ll get a better sense of how much costs will rise after 'Liberation Day,' the big announcement of new tariffs planned for Wednesday.... The increase has already begun.... Thanks to tariffs already in effect the U.S. economy is already getting unscrewed.... You see, steep tariffs on steel and aluminum were the opening salvo in Trump’s trade war, and they are being applied not just to the metals themselves but to anything made from the metals, including screws, nuts and bolts. And foreign producers are not absorbing the tariffs; they are sharply raising prices.... In a world where many of the goods we import are productive inputs like screws — or auto parts — tariffs directly raise the cost of manufacturing in the United States. Yet Trump’s threats against automakers suggests that he thinks he can control inflation through intimidation.”
Damien Cave of the New York Times: “The F-35, a fifth-generation fighter, was developed in partnership with eight countries, making it a model of international cooperation. When ... [Donald] Trump introduced its successor, the F-47 [last week], he ... said the version sold to allies would be deliberately downgraded ... 'because someday, maybe they’re not our allies.' For many countries wedded to the United States, his remark confirmed a related conclusion: that America can no longer be trusted. Even nations not yet directly affected can see where things are heading, as Mr. Trump threatens allies’ economies, their defense partnerships and even their sovereignty. For now, they are negotiating to minimize the pain from blow after blow, including a broad round of tariffs expected in April. But at the same time, they are pulling back. Preparing for intimidation to be a lasting feature of U.S. relations, they are trying to go their own way.”
You know, they love me in the Netherlands. -- Donald Trump, reacting to the role of the Dutch in the global slave trade, on a visit to the National Museum of African American History in 2017
There's the key to Trump's soul. Six words, in context, tell you all you need to know. -- Marie Burns
What is written in that order sounds almost Orwellian in the way Trump thinks he can mandate a mythic conception of American history that’s almost Disney-esque with only happy endings, only heroic figures, no attention at all to the complexity of American history and the struggles to have a more perfect union.... It’s like the barbarian sack of Rome in the level of ignorance and ill-will and anti-intellectualism. -- Historian Raymond Arsenault, on Trump's order to control Smithsonian programs
It’s what the Nazis did. It’s what Spain did. It’s what Mussolini tried. This is like the Soviets: they revised the Soviet encyclopedia every year to update the official history. -- David Blight, President of the Organization of American Historians ~~~
~~~ David Smith of the Guardian: “In an executive order entitled [titled!] 'Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History', [Donald Trump] directed the removal of 'improper, divisive or anti-American ideology' from its storied [Smithsonian Institution] museums. The move was met with dismay from historians who saw it as an attempt to whitewash the past and suppress discussions of systemic racism and social justice. With Trump having also taken over the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, there are fears that, in authoritarian fashion, he is aiming to control the future by controlling the past.... [Trump's order] is in line with his administration’s efforts to do away with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes in government, universities and corporations. The Smithsonian shut its diversity office soon after the president signed a January executive order banning DEI programmes at organisations that receive federal money.”
“The Great Grovel.” John Harris & Staff of Politico: “One after another, a parade of the wealthiest and most elite institutions in American life since last November have found themselves confronted by unprecedented demands from ... Donald Trump and his team of retribution-seekers. One after another, these establishment pillars have met these demands with the same response: capitulation and compliance.... Two themes are consistent. The first is an effort — far more organized and disciplined than any precedent from Trump’s first term — to bring institutions who have earned the president’s ire to heel. The second theme is even more surprising: The swiftness with which supposedly powerful and supposedly independent institutions have responded — with something akin to the trembling acquiescence of a child surrendering his lunch money to a big kid.... Cumulatively, the cases represent an astonishing new chapter in the history of the American establishment: The Great Grovel.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: While Harris is a both-sider extraordinaire, he strikes me as being quite conservative, so I suppose it's nice that he notices that Trump has so easily overpowered the supposed masters of the universe. Perhaps Harris doesn't consider billionaire techies to be part of an institution, because he really doesn't mention the Great Tech Capitulation -- Musk, Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, Sam Altman, etc. (Harris does mention Jeff Bezos, but mostly in connection with his media ownership.)
He who saves his Country violates no Law. -- Norwegian Neo-Nazi anti-immigrant Anders Breivik, from the manifesto he published before he massacred 77 people
He who saves his Country does not violate any Law. -- Donald Trump, 2015 ~~~
~~~ Christopher Mathias in an MSNBC opinion piece: “It barely triggers a 24-hour news cycle anymore when the vice president and his boss..., Donald Trump, use the same language as fascist mass murderers. I’ve witnessed this process of normalization over the last eight years as a reporter covering the far right, seeing neo-Nazi talking points, especially around immigration, enter the mainstream discourse with horrifying, accelerating speed.... The extreme actions and rhetoric being taken by the administration are not dissimilar from those deployed in the early stages of some of the worst regimes of the 20th century.... Trump, Vance and the GOP, of course, have spent years demonizing immigrants, the rhetoric reaching a fever pitch during the 2024 election, with Trump saying immigrants were 'poisoning the blood of the country' — a phrasing that bore an unnerving resemblance to wording in Adolf Hitler’s 'Mein Kampf' — and with Vance spreading the vicious lie that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets.... The last couple of weeks have offered a preview of some of the horrors to come.”
Яacists Я Us. Zolan Kanno-Youngs & Hamed Aleaziz of the New York Times: “Almost immediately after taking office, ... [Donald] Trump began shutting down refugee resettlement programs, slashing billions of dollars in funding and making it all but impossible for people from scores of countries to seek haven in the United States. With one exception. The Trump administration has thrown open the doors to white Afrikaners from South Africa, establishing a program called 'Mission South Africa' to help them come to the United States as refugees.... The administration’s focus on white Afrikaners comes as it effectively bans the entry of other refugees — including about 20,000 people from countries like Afghanistan, Congo and Syria who were ready to travel to the United States before Mr. Trump took office.” Oh, read on. This is a gift link. Besides, maybe it's a reciprocal things; after all, as we now know, the Dutch love Trump. Especially the slaver Dutch, I reckon.
~~~~~~~~~~
France. Aurelien Breeden & Roger Cohen of the Washington Post: “Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, was found guilty of embezzlement by a criminal court in Paris on Monday and immediately barred from running for public office for five years, jeopardizing her plans to compete in France’s 2027 presidential election. The verdict was a major blow to the perennial presidential ambitions of Ms. Le Pen, an anti-immigrant, nationalist politician who has already mounted three failed bids. Looking grim and murmuring 'incredible,' she walked briskly out of the courtroom before the judges had completed reading her sentence.” MB: Ah, I'll bet this is what she said: ~~~
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Reader Comments (29)
Last week I had to have some papers notarized, so I went to my
bank. The bank manager tells me that I have way too much money
just sitting in my checking account. I should put it somewhere
that pays more interest.
I asked her if she was up on the national news. Auto prices will be
going sky high, and all of my salad fixings from Mexico will also
be lots higher. And my property taxes will be much higher next
year since the property evaluation went way up due to sale prices
in the neighborhood. A house that sold two years ago for three
hundred thousand dollars sold recently for over nine hundred thousand.
And the reason I had to see a notary: the Teamsters Pension Fund
said I have to prove I'm still alive if I want to continue receiving
payments. I must be the oldest living retiree.
@ForrestMorris: So glad to hear from you. General news reports suggested there might not be electrical power in your area.
Don't feel bad about having to prove your existence. The IRS made me do the same a couple of years ago. I had to go down to the office where they process all the criminals. I know this because I overheard the "customer" just ahead of me claim he hadn't paid his taxes because he was in jail. Fortunately, I was pretty sure he wasn't going to shoot his way out of the place, because although I had not seen that young man come into the building, another handsome young man (wearing an official-looking uniform) patted me down. So that was nice.
@Marie: Yeah, there was something fishy about that power
outage. I read somewhere it was due to an ice storm. But the
power was out in Michigan, Wisconsin and Ontario. It was a warm
day here, no ice storm.
Amazon Prime Video advised me of some new and exciting films:
Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump
Looking for Melania Trump
Elon Musk: The Real Life Iron Man.
I'm hoping someone here will watch these and fill us in. I don't
watch trash.
Is Melania really missing? I really don't care, do you?
It’s likely that Fat Hitler announced he was going for a fourth run for dictator for several reasons, one of which is he cares less about the Constitution than Elmo Musk cares about any of his 38 offspring, whose names he couldn’t be bothered to remember so he just refers to them as letters of the alphabet.
He may also have heard someone wonder who from the Party of Treasonous Moral Midgets would run for dictator after he’s gone: Bobo? MTG? Rhonda? A kumquat with a face painted on it? By saying he might could run again, he stomps out that kind of unacceptable baby talk so he can continue with his own even less acceptable baby talk.
Throwing this latest word turd against the wall provides a newer shinier object for the easily distracted to fetch. Lengthy dissertations on Constitutional law and history, FDR, various amendments, and blah, blah, blah, are not necessary. It’s ill-legal…that’s it.
Finally, he’s a fucking punk and a smirking donkey prick who loves chaos.
I hope he keeps saying it. If this tamps down the fund raising and Project 2029 scheming of whichever putrid pile of traitor entrails is planning on running, great. Keep yapping.
When DiJiT refers to "current," clearly he is evoking the fact that it is "power over force", for him it is measured in "trumperes " which are like amperes only golder, bigger, and more beautiful than anyone has ever seen. He wants the No Bell prize in bs analogies to be created and awarded to him for that. But only if the medal is at least 14 carat.
Anne Applebaum, in The Atlantic, describes our sad future if the MAGAs have their way.
MAGA conservatives love Viktor Orbán. But he’s left his country corrupt, stagnant, and impoverished.
"Flashy hotels and upmarket restaurants now dominate the center of Budapest, a city once better known for its shabby facades....But the nationalist kitsch and tourist traps hide a different reality. Once widely perceived to be the wealthiest country in Central Europe (“the happiest barrack in the socialist camp,” as it was known during the Cold War), and later the Central European country that foreign investors liked most, Hungary is now one of the poorest countries, and possibly the poorest, in the European Union. Industrial production is falling year-over-year. Productivity is close to the lowest in the region. Unemployment is creeping upward.
....
Tourists in central Budapest don’t see this decline. But neither, apparently, does the American right. For although he has no critical mineral wealth to give away and not much of an army, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, plays an outsize role in the American political debate. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Orbán held multiple meetings with Donald Trump."
Any Beatles fans here? As a break from all the disturbing political news, a story by Mark Leibovich, in The Atlantic on Ringo Starr When I’m 84
Saying it out loud.
"Indiana Rep Spartz (R): “You violated the law, you are not entitled to due process.”"
Illegal Immigrant
What could go wrong.
"FDIC rescinds guidance around banks and crypto
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said Friday that banks no longer need to get its prior approval before engaging in crypto-related activities, like holding digital currency assets or partnering with companies in the industry.
After publishing a general caution against banks participating in the industry just two years ago, the FDIC is the latest Trump administration regulator to change its tune entirely amid the president’s warm embrace of crypto."
@RAS: In 2017, Snopes found no evidence that Trump's mother violated immigration laws.
Besides, IOKIYW: "It's Okay if you're White." See also, NYT story on Afrikaner immigrants, linked above.
Faux News. Faux money. Faux facts. A faux president, a faux Cabinet, a faux Congress, and a so-far faux SCOTUS.
What's not to like?
@Marie: Thanks for the catch. I guess I didn't give her due process like a typical Republican. I thought I'd seen the accusation before, but now I think I might have just connected immigrant with illegal after reading all the horror stories out there right now and enjoying the potential hypocrisy. It is easy for little things like that to seep in if you aren't vigilant.
Hands Off April 5th Protest
Steve M. points out that despite the "toxicity" of the Democratic brand that they are winning special elections and that the Republicans are running scared in +30 R districts. But the media and a number of Democrats keep insisting that the Democratic Party is worthless. "Stop treating these Democrat-bashing Democrats as if they're uttering objective truths." Despite many not being satisfied with everything the Democratic Party and it's leadership are doing they know that they are a few trillion times better than any current day Republican traitor. The Democrats support popular policies and the Republicans don't. We need to lean into all the good they have done and all the good they could do if given the chance again. We are all now seeing the alternative.
Pep Talk
I’ve been meaning to comment on Fat Hitler’s attack on the Smithsonian but his edict is so dense (in multiple meanings of that word) that I wanted to think though things more clearly. The whole Megillah deserves a much longer and more complete dissection but, as I tend to ramble on, I’ll try to keep to the point(s) without too much wandering off topic.
Okay (big sigh), here we go.
I have long contended that there are two kinds of people, those who love museums, and those who would rather shovel shit for eight straight hours.
Does anyone here believe that Fatty is a museum guy?
Right.
An old friend from County Cork once told me of a trip he and some of his mates once made to Paris. He convinced the boys to try the Louvre, but was more than a little dismayed when they were basically running past world historical masterpieces, as they tried to get out as quickly as possible. “Jesus”, said one of the boys, “If we stop to see everything, the lads would be here all day!”
That wouldn’t be Trump however. He wouldn’t even make it through the front door. So why the hell is he so concerned about the Smithsonian?
Easy. Some Heritage hack whispered sweet poisons into his cauliflower ears that evil DEI shit was goin’ down there. AND…(here’s another giveaway that none of this was Fat Hitler’s idea)…Improper Ideology was happening!
Holy Reign of Terror, Batman! Not IMPROPER IDEOLOGY!
Which brings us to the next question. Who here thinks this blowsy blowhard knows jack shit about ideology? I will bet my kid’s entire future that if you asked him to explain ideology, he’d start talking about his golf trophies.
The concept of ideology came about when a French philosopher and aristocrat, Antoine Destutt de Tracy, waiting in a cell during the Reign of Terror for his ride in the tumbril, decided to try to isolate rational thought from the irrational insanity of the Robespierres who were screaming outside the jail. His idea was to create a science of thought (the Enlightenment was big on everything being scientific-like).
This Ideology thing caught on, to the point where Napoleon, in his emperor robes, hated the idea that some people were trying to think critically about the shit he was pulling. Dictators hate rational people (see: Hitler, Fat).
Okay. But pretty soon the dictators figured a way to jigger ideology in their favor. We’ll have to fast forward over a ton of history and political philosophy here, until we come to what Marx called Dominant Ideology. And here’s where we get to Fatty’s idea about the improper kind.
Dominant Ideology is pretty much what we have right now. If you think of ideology as the collection of ideas and concepts and generally accepted assumptions about society, history, and the economy, it behooves those in charge to pretend that there IS no ideology. It’s just the way things SHOULD BE. Can we all agree on that?
Well…no.
Here’s one of my favorite philosophers, Sally Haslanger: "The function of ideology is to stabilize and perpetuate dominance through masking or illusion."
Exactamundo, Sally.
And here’s another favorite guy, the Slovenian Philosopher (and part-time crazy man) Slavoj Žižek, who warns about falling into the trap of believing there is no dominant ideology, that things are as they should be, which leads to blind, unquestioning belief in what the leaders say, in other words, shutting off critical faculties and accepting the way things are. This is exactly like little Johnnie Roberts trying to say there is no racism anymore, so we don’t need voting rights stuff.
Trump and his Heritage whisperers are pissed that, at some point, minorities started refusing to steppinfetchit, women decided they weren’t chattel, and the dominant ideology of white supremacy and Wall St masters of the universe economics was questioned.
This is a big no-no. Thus, the distinction between Proper Ideology (the way they want the world to behave) and Improper Ideology (people standing up for their rights).
We won’t get into the role museums historically have played in the perpetuation of dominant ideological manufacturing of national mythologies (ie, the British Museum in the 19th C), but leave us acknowledge and recognize the role the Smithsonian has played in making a serious effort to expand what is considered historically and culturally important in the vastly diverse stories of the United States. Exactly what pisses off Fatty and the Heritage schemers.
One more thought (then you can go do something useful). Fat Hitler whines about the “false reconstruction of American history”. What he’s looking for is the type of Reconstruction that went on in the aftermath of the Civil War, when Jim Crow laws went into effect and the traitors who fired on US troops were reconstituted as noble and lionized states rights heroes, when slavery was written out of history books. I guess that’s the True Reconstruction.
Okay. That’s it. For now. Too many lies to handle. Too much shit to parse. We do what we can.
Well that didn’t last long.
Sorry, but one more thing…
Thinking of Slavoj Žižek, I wanted to point you guys to a video of him discussing the return of the Orange Monster and how Democrats might think of things a bit differently. He also covers science (Einstein and Bohr), religion (what Jesus really meant in the Gospels—he himself is an atheist), and, of course, the role of ideology.
I love Žižek, but if you have the slightest interest in philosophy, STAY AWAY from this guy! Seriously. Not until you’ve read a lot of other stuff first. Okay, that’s a bit harsh, but he is a wildly original thinker, a true idiosyncratic crazy man, he’ll have you rolling in the aisles one minute and pulling your hair out in the next, but he is the model for what a true public intellectual should be, endlessly interested and interesting, and challenging. Just when you think you have it (or him) down, he taps you on the shoulder and says “But how about this?”
And he’s not maddening in the way Wittgenstein could be (who, after you read through his excruciating early stuff and think you finally get what he means, says “All that early stuff? Fuggedaboutit, I changed my mind.” Arrrghhh!!). He comes at many different topics with a full armament of dense and nuanced thoughts. He’s a blast.
But Here he is in grand form. Enjoy him. He’s nuts, but in the best way.
RAS,
The pep talk is a good one, and necessary. It’s true. Trump and the right-wing grievance-revenge machine are like sharks. They have to keep moving, keep devouring whatever is in their path. The more crap and chaos they fling into the world, the less time they hope citizens will have to stop and think about things. So while Elmo and his Teenage Mutant Ninja Nazis are dismantling Social Security and prowling (illegally) through tax returns and voter rolls, Fatty sez “Hey! Over here! I’m gonna run for a third term!” Shiny objects. Sharks on the move.
I had an old boss who spent a couple of years in Vietnam who taught us that the way to get through the craziness is to “maintain an even strain”, and not to let the bastards wear you down.
Have to keep our wits about us as the witless run amok.
Marie,
The traitors are quick to attack the French, perhaps because there, when a dangerous demagogue gets convicted of something illegal there are consequences. Here, they go to the White House.
How impossibly stoopid do you have to be to announce a hugely expensive weapons system, the Fatty Jet, and say to allies—ALLIES—whose future purchases could help defray the cost of R&D and production that, by the way, we’re gonna sell you the model that only goes 100 mph, has a 10 gallon fuel tank, and shoots rubber bullets?
This is Donnie Dealmaker, the genius businessman?
A 10 year old selling kool-aid on the corner would be more successful.
The Pretender administrating staking its claim to being the most anti-Muslim, anti-transgender, anti-thought in our history.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/us/trump-administration-harvard-funding.html
Gotta be best at something.
Marie linked a WPost story yesterday about the "cuts and chaos that are paralyzing ongoing research".
Linked here is map showing the impact of the cuts by state and county (which my congressperson posted)
Impact of Federal Cuts to Science and Medical Research
@Ak: I see Lee Zeldin is closing the EPA museum that opened last year because the museum is “overly focused on environmental justice and climate change" and doesn't praise Dear Leader for all his nonexistent environmental accomplishments. I wonder how long the National Museum of African American History can stay open with them getting rid of woke ideology. The erasing and rewriting of history is crazy. It is making me think of the movie CSA: Confederate States of America, a faux Ken Burns alternate history documentary if the South had won the Civil War which is getting too close for comfort.
@Akhilleus: I do think Trump cares about history and "ideology" to the extent that he thinks American "history" should be told in the "patriotic" way he might have heard in grade school.
Lying of course about everything is Trump's No. 1 specialty, so lying about history comes naturally. I suspect in the Trump library there will be an exhibit of little Donnie cutting down the apple tree in his Queens back yard and telling Fred, "I cannot tell a lie; I did it with my little chainsaw." Everything is what Trump says it is (making everything constantly shifting). This is exactly the way he characterizes ALL of his own missteps: the "perfect" phone call, he "won by a landslide," his enemies go on "witch hunts" perpetuating "hoaxes," "nobody's ever seen anything like it."
Rewriting the horrors of slavery into Stephen Fosteresque "darkies longin' for the ole plantation" is perfectly consistent with everything else Trump "believes."
All Trump's Lies, IMO, are not just the means to whatever end each lie is the means. Lies are the only way Trump can survive. I still kick myself for mistakes I made decades ago. Trump can't kick himself for all his mistakes and failures. He'd wear his boots right down through to his bone spurs. Self-delusion is Trump's means of self-preservation.
IOKIYAR
"Republicans in Wisconsin have been silent on the Musk giveaway — but the RNC has warned a group they cannot give ice cream to college students."
"Know your parasites!"
Amber Ruffin goes bothsides.
Tariffs imposed tomorrow are designed to stimulate the U. S. economy.
April Fools...