Embarrassed Yet? 🤮 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤮 🤡 

Crony Tariffs:  Yesterday via a letter chock full of grammatical errors and inappropriate capitalizations, Trump threatened to impose 50% tariffs on goods imported from Brazil.  His rationale for those threatened tariffs has nothing to do with fixing a trade imbalance, the US currently exports more goods to Brazil than it imports.  Instead, the purpose of the threat is to intimate Brazil’s current president, Luiz Inacio Luiz da Silva (Lula), to drop the pending attempted coup charges against former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.  Bolsonaro is a frequent Mar a Lago guest and one of Trump’s besties. Naturally, Trump considers the prosecution of Bolsonaro to be another one of those witch hunt things. Lula’s response:  “Brazil is a sovereign nation with independent institutions and will not accept any form of tutelage.” In other words, go stuff it.  The cases concerning the legality of Trump’s tariffs are currently percolating through the US courts, with an appeals court hearing scheduled to take place at the end of July, so it’s not just that Trump’s Bolsonaro threats are another example of him playing king as well as an international embarrassment, his tariff quid pro quo provides further evidence that his tariffs are being illegally imposed and have nothing to do with national security, the rationale that he and his crony Justice Department have been asserting in court.  No doubt those suing Trump over his cockamamie tariffs have just added more to their legal argument.  In the meantime, the rest of us may soon find our morning joe, not the TV program but our breakfast brew, much of which comes from Brazil,  getting more expensive.  

Retribution Trail:  The Justice Department which keeps bleeding competent lawyers because so many have been fired while many others have jumped ship, wanting nothing to do with Trump’s insanity is quite busy, not just defending his tariffs and other questionably legal policies but also pursuing his promised retribution.  According to the NY Times, Trump’s DOJ toadies have opened an investigation into former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan, looking into their actions during the 2016 investigation into Trump’s Russia ties, that thing that Trump continues to assert was the witch hunt of witch hunts. Keeping with the theme of retribution and misuse of government resources, the FBI actually had agents physically trailing Comey while also examining his digital trail over the “seashell” episode which they allege was an assassination threat, but that most normal people know was just Comey’s sharing of a humorous beach picture.  The Brazil tariff threats are nuts, the investigations into Comey and Brennan extreme overreach but, in all likelihood, little will come of either.  However, the same can’t be said about what’s going on with the now overfunded INS.  Kristi Noem’s masked agents continue to round up lots of people, targeting those with brown skin. That more and more people whose sole crime, after decades of working, paying taxes, and going to school in the US, is their immigration status, are being scooped off the streets and thrown into detention facilities or worse is, as the ACLU puts it, a dystopian nightmare.  It brings to mind the Gestapo, although even Hitler’s enforcers didn’t hide their identity behind masks.  Even more disturbing is that some of the people being put in those detention centers are citizens whose only crime, is being Hispanic and/or having brown skin and that, despite having a Real ID or another proof of citizenship, they’re still enduring time in detention centers.  Cruelty and intimidation are the points.

Adios, Ciao, Goodbye:  Linda Yaccarino, the former NBC advertising executive who Elon Musk brought into serve as X’s faux CEO has departed X. It would be nice to think that her abrupt departure was in protest of AI chatbot Grok’s weekend spewing of anti-Semitic tropes and its calling itself MechaHitler, but reports are that her departure had been in the works for a while.  Worth recalling that earlier in the year when Musk’s did his Hitler salute thing, she posted laughing emojis.  Anyway, it’s not surprising that Yaccarino is out, what is surprising is that it took so long.  Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary/Reality TV star is now serving as interim head of NASA because he’s been doing such a good job at Transportation? Trump pulled the nomination of his original candidate, who despite being supported by Elon Musk, had bipartisan support. And yesterday, Trump, who still doesn’t know who authorized the “temporary” cancellation of Ukraine’s weapons shipments, complimented Liberia’s President Joseph Boakai for his English-speaking skills, asking him where he’d learned the language.  English is the official language of Liberia. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

#BringThemAllHomeNow