It’s (1) Election Day in Wisconsin and Florida (2) “Liberation Day” Eve (3) April Fool’s Day. Choose your adventure.
(We’ll have updates, chats, and videos throughout the day, so check back.)
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Seriously and literally
On today’s podcast, I’m joined by former Congressman David Jolly. You can listen/watch right here, or: Watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed.
We start by asking whether we ought to take Donald Trump’s musings about a third term seriously. Spoiler alert: I switch sides on this one. Normally, I would brush this off as a distraction, but we’ve seen this too often in the past to shrug it off anymore. Ideas that bubble up in the fever swamps or the fecund imagination of Steve Bannon push their way into the mainstream — and eventually become GOP orthodoxy.
Think about the Big Lie. And January 6.
Why would this be any different?
Would a third term be constitutional? Legal? Of course not, but what makes you think that would be an impediment for someone who believes that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law”?
Jonathan Chait takes note of the pattern:
[As] Trump has repeatedly demonstrated, questions of the law and the Constitution ultimately reduce to power struggles. If you hear somebody say Trump is not allowed to do something, the first question to ask is What’s the enforcement mechanism? The courts may be likely to rule against permitting him to run as either president or vice president. But such cases are unlikely to be decided until after the Republican convention has locked in the party’s choice, forcing the courts to choose between effectively canceling the presidential election and enforcing the Twenty-Second Amendment.
So, perhaps we ought not to dismiss the whole thing as a “joke”.
When Trump entertained questions on his plane about a third term, he had a faint smirk on his face, indicating that the idea hasn’t fully progressed from the joke phase into a plan of action. Trump turned the question into an opportunity to extol his alleged popularity—people are asking about another term, he says, because he is so successful and wonderful. Trump has always understood questions about his abuses of power as a kind of compliment. The prospect of smashing imagined limits on his power gives him an obvious thrill. He is probing, exploring. And when he finds softness, as he so often does when he presses against a supposed boundary, he presses on.
Some other things we ought to take seriously
Trump may actually invade Greenland. Yascha Mounk writes:
The notion that America could annex the sovereign territory of Denmark, a longstanding ally and a founding member of NATO, is so absurd that most people have so far refused to take it seriously. And it is certainly true that Trump loves to troll his political opponents, beckoning them into the trap of denouncing his half-joking pronouncement in overly moraline terms.
But over the last days and weeks, the Trump administration has signaled in every way possible that it really does mean to expand American control over the Arctic island. And while a forcible American annexation of Greenland would have disastrous consequences—both for America and for the world—the prospect of such an action is now far less remote than has widely been assumed. It is time to take seriously the possibility of an American annexation of Greenland.
**
Stephen Miller is (1) nuts, and (2) fully prepared to invoke emergency war time powers to deal with immigration. Consider this rant that he posted on X:
The fundamental error in how immigration is being discussed in the courts and media is pretending that what happened to us over the last four years is a routine civil enforcement matter.
NO.
We were invaded and occupied. Entire neighborhoods were conquered.
Entire towns were subjugated.
Our treasury was in the plundered.
Our democracy was torn apart piece by piece.
A national referendum was held on whether to surrender to the invasion or repel it.
America voted for liberation.
If every foreign trespasser gets to have their own federal trial prior to removal then there is no liberation. There is no restoration. The invasion will be made complete.
Article 4 Section 4 requires the president to halt any invasion and no district court can override that mandate. For the Constitution is the supreme law of the land.
The invading armies and foreign trespassers will be expelled.
The cartels will be smashed.
Liberation will be achieved.
Dude needs a chill pill. But we can’t forget who is listening to him right now.
Trump is prepared to tank the economy and impose trillions of dollars in new taxes, because he has a fetish for tariffs: “Trump side says tariffs will raise $6 trillion, which would be largest tax hike in US history | CNN Business”
Via CNN:
Even when adjusting for inflation, that amount would be triple the tax increase put in place in 1942 to pay the cost of fighting World War II.
Navarro, Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, insists it’s not a tax increase but a tax cut — echoing the Trump administration’s repeated belief that tariffs will be paid not by American consumers but by businesses in other countries or the countries themselves.
“The message is that tariffs are tax cuts, tariffs are jobs, tariffs are national security,” Navarro said on Fox News Sunday. “Tariffs are great for America. They will make America great again.”
But most economists say US-imposed tariffs are paid by American businesses and consumers in the form of higher prices on imported goods, not paid by foreigners.
Trump plans to announce additional tariffs on Wednesday, which he has dubbed “Liberation Day,” on all manner of imported goods as retaliation for what he sees as unfair barriers to US exports to other countries. Trump has already announced tariffs on all goods from China, Mexico and Canada, and this week a 25% tariff on all imported cars is set to take effect.
**
RFK Jr. really is going to kill us all. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial board is getting nervous.
We warned last month that Mr. Kennedy might try to fire Peter Marks, the head of the FDA biologics division who helped shepherd President Trump's Operation Warp Speed for Covid vaccines in the first term.
On Friday Mr. Marks resigned, which is especially regrettable since he pushed the FDA bureaucracy to accelerate life-saving therapies for children with rare genetic disorders. He also pushed back against those in and outside of the agency, including Biden FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, who fretted that the FDA was approving too many novel drugs with high prices.
Mr. Marks writes in his resignation letter that he was willing to work with Mr. Kennedy to address his “concerns regarding vaccine safety and transparency.” However, he adds, “it has become clear that truth and transparency are not desired by the Secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.”
Some of the highlights of our conversation
From the fringe to the mainstream…
The decline of Congress…
Oppose, propose, and prepare…
Tuesday dogs
There are wolves in the woods.
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