How'm I Doing? 😱✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️😱  

Polls and More Polls:  Trump 2.0 has reached the 100-day mark.  To mark what feels like a decade, polls were released last week by Fox, the Washington Post/ABC/IPSOS, the NY Times/Siena, and the AP/NORC to name a few of the major ones.  To different degrees they reveal that Trump’s popularity is down across the board especially among Democrats and Independents.  He’s down among Republicans too though far too many of them still and probably always will think he’s doing fine, an indication that they’re totally delusional, not paying attention, or are so down the red rabbit hole that they’d support Attila the Hun if he were their party’s leader. Notice I refrained from saying they’d support Hitler or Stalin, though I suspect quite a few of them would. In short, the majority of Americans now realize that Trump isn’t good for the country: his rash and erratic tariff policy, isn’t good for the economy; his mega donor Elon Musk’s slash and burn implementation of those eliminate government and undo all regulations policies called for in the infamous Project 2025 plan have been hugely damaging to things that matter like health and safety; that while most want undocumented criminals and terrorists deported, the reckless rounding up and deportation of hairdressers, gardeners, painters, women, US born children, at least one suffering from cancer, and students to Louisiana holding cells and gulags in El Salvador isn’t okay; that the trashing of alliances and international goodwill is also not a good thing; and the list which includes the growing number of measles cases and a threatened autism registry goes on and on. But despite the polls, Trump is still sitting in the Oval Office, when not golfing and throwing grifting parties, and at least until the midterms, assuming there are midterms, he’s likely to keep on doing what he’s doing.  Those Medicaid cuts beckon as does the debt ceiling.   

Tariffs, Tariffs, Tariffs: Trump is all over the place on tariffs though he still loves them. When the markets nosedive, he says that his tariff plans aren’t set in stone, just an opening salvo that he’s ready to walk back but when indices head up, he throws more flame on the fire, freaking investors out again, introducing a level of uncertainty that makes it near impossible for manufacturers and retailers to make plans.  Trump’s current line, repeated this weekend by Treasury Secretary Bessent, who’s a really bad liar, is that the administration is engaged in trade negotiations with 200 countries, including China, and will have major agreements to announce with almost all of them within 90 days. The problem with that assertion, is that even counting the islands with penguins, there aren’t 200 countries, China reports that they aren’t negotiating with us, and though a few agreements will likely be reached or at least announced, there won’t be enough to matter though maybe there will be one that allows Trump to declare victory and move on. To date consumers haven’t felt the impact of the tariffs, but that’s about to change and the hit on pocketbooks and the availability of goods is expected to be substantial. Trump wants us to believe that the billions or is it trillions he collects in tariffs will allow him to eliminate income taxes.  There won’t be trillions or even billions collected, income taxes aren’t going away and if they did, average Joes and Janes will still be poorer because tariffs are regressive taxes.  As to the super rich guys, they’ll still have lots of money at least that’s what Don Jr, two of envoy/Real Estate guy Steve Witkoff sons, and some of Trump’s big donors are counting on.  This weekend they launched a new very high-end Georgetown club called the “Executive Branch.”  Membership is by invitation only, initiation fee in excess of $500,000.  Reportedly there’s already a waiting list because $500k is a pittance when you consider that it buys access to the administration and this administration, more than any other is all about pay for play.

Migrant Round-ups: Though the rounding up of migrants has been getting a lot of press, and the stories, including this weekend’s concerning a breast feeding mother being taken away from her dependent child and another one about a very young stage four cancer patient, a US citizen, being deported with his undocumented mother is beyond disturbing, the reality is that the Trump’s administration is underperforming its own one million per year deportation goal and also underperforming prior presidents’ deportation numbers which explains why they are going after “low hanging fruit” like moms and babies and innocent painters in court rooms, instead of focusing all their efforts on the harder to round up gang members and seasoned criminals.  It turns out that having Stephen Miller and Thom Homan spew hate on TV while sending cosplay Barbie Kristi Noem to the El Salvador gulag is less effective than following the law and deporting people legally.  Remember when Trump told his Republican cronies in the House and Senate to vote against the funding for extra border protection and immigration judges because he feared that would benefit Biden and the Democrats in the run up to the 2024 election?  Well, it would have also made it easier for him to accomplish his deportation goals legally but then again legal isn’t something he cares about which goes far to explaining the midnight flights to El Salvador and the illegally deported and still imprisoned Juan Garcia Abrego.  Last week’s arrest of Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan is proof of that.  Her “crime:”  preventing INS from arresting a migrant house painter, who it turns out wasn’t a criminal, in her courtroom. Judges and most law enforcement officials don’t want INS in their courtrooms because to do their jobs they need people residing in immigrant communities to come forward when they are victims of or witnesses to crime. The undocumented won’t report crimes if they fear they’ll be deported as a result. Going after Judge Dugan is an intimidation tactic, one that Trump employed last time he was president and one that fits right in with his attacks on those higher court judges, the ones ruling against a lot of his actions. 

Fog: Over the weekend, Trump had a very public on camera sit down with Ukraine President Zelenskyy while the two attended Pope Francis’ funeral.  Great for the camera, but maybe mostly performative as was Trump’s “faux” outrage at Putin’s recent citizen targeted bombing. Despite his Truth Social posted “disappointment” with Putin, Trump appears to still be pushing Zelenskyy to accept all of Putin’s territorial demands and Little Marco is still threatening that the US will stop trying to implement a peace plan if the two sides don’t agree on one soon, and by agree, he means if Zelenskyy doesn’t agree to Putin’s demands. Meantime, the real estate guy’s real estate guy Steven Witkoff has been talking nukes with the Iranians, a process that probably wasn’t eased by the mysterious explosion of missile rocket fuel at a port in Iran this weekend.  But you have to give it to Witkoff, he’s way over his skis but he keeps plodding on and who knows maybe he’ll get the Iranians to agree to the deal that Obama previously negotiated?      

More:  Trump keeps teasing a third term.  He’s now selling Trump 2028 hats.  He’s probably just trolling us.  Of more immediate concern, he’s now going after ActBlue, the Democrat’s fundraising apparatus.  Maybe he plans on getting one of those complicit law firms to help the DOJ pursue them?  

#BringThemAllHome