Chris Murphy has a thread on Bluesky laying out his belief that it’s an exercise in extortion. He’ll back down business by business as each provides an acceptable incentive.
My sense going back decades is that he sought Roy Cohn out to mentor so he could learn how to manage a business like a mafia godfather without actually doing crime (except other than within the limits of the NYC realty business).
And that’s exactly how he’s operating as POTUS per Murphy.
Meanwhile, it begs the imagination how he could be reelected to office just after the last five years or so — Covid, J6 and the insane crap he’d been saying the last five years.
Am I the only one here who has been to Roy Cohn’s mausoleum in Union Field Cemetery in Querns? I didn’t go there to see Cohn’s grave, rather that of my late wife’s grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, a union man working in the clothing trade who died young and was buried in Union Field without a headstone in 1926, age 40.
For a long time now Trump has said things that are delusional. From "they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats" and on and on. This is a change. While some of the themes are the same, the brain is now not functioning as well as Trump in 2016-2020. Now here he is, Trump is always right and everyone else is wrong. The notion that he will see the damage and reverse course would require Trump to perceive reality and break from his delusions. It seems to me at this point Trump is firmly inside his delusional world and reality will not break through. Weirdly, a good many American who are not senile have been so brain washed that they too will only see their delusions. Since you can't eat you delusions, maybe they will eventually snap out of it. But that will take true depression level damage.
"the congress is virtually comatose" Correction: The Republican members of Congress are virtually comatose. They ceded all of their Article 1 powers to Trump and his South African girlfriend, Elonia Muskrat.
It’s extortion via kickbacks to his offshore accounts. His ego demands that he becomes the richest person in the history of the world. Even that might not be enough.
He always has the same goal: to be the biggest swinging dick in any room. He has a pathological drive to dominate other people. That's how got to where he is.
Let's say there were only 10 people in the world total (trade with the US is about 10% of the total in the world) and everybody started selling stuff to everybody else. And then one of them declares "This is The End Of Globalization" ( i.e. the Wall Street Journal today). And the other 9 stop and look at each other and then just keep trading amongst themselves even more.
You might be able to win an election based on defrauding voters, but things like the stock market and the global economy can't be defrauded.
2. He's long been of the mind that voters are ignorant. In fact, in 2016, he said the quiet parts out loud: "I love the uneducated" and "We're going to grab, and grab, and grab..."
3. During his first administration, he had people around him to put the brakes on the worst of his harebrained ideas. Today, it's all sycophants and morons on the inside and a preponderance of captains of industry and legislators who've bent the knee.
4. Musk bought himself a government.
I am not optimistic in the least.
--
Two pieces of mine from 2016, documenting the statements in #2.
Can he back down? The stated goal is reindustrialization if the threat is not credible in the long term who is going to build a shoe factory in the US to avoid tariffs and then find that factory worthless when tariffs are repealed. But, silly me to search for any consistency here.
"This is an own-goal kick the magnitude of which most of us have never seen. And Congress is virtually comatose, happy to completely cede control to the president."
The Republican party is now more MAGA than the grass roots. Either it is more perspicacious than us, ordinary mortals. Or it is way over its skies and headed toward the inevitable crash and broken bones.
It’s not that congress is comatose so much as republicans are unbending and democrats are afraid right now. Republicans, your time is coming. Democrats, get off your asses!
It is futile to expect Trump to back down. He is mentally ill and lives in his own alternate reality. He could not survive outside that bubble. His inherited wealth, cruelty, and lack of ethical restraints (plus a grant of immunity by the SCOTUS) have allowed him to maintain that bubble.
Don't expect anything to change now. Any challenge to his authority or his bubble can quickly be suppressed by declaration of a National Emergency and a prompt dispatch of any troubling dissenters. Cots are available in Guantanamo.
So, given it's unlikely he'll back off, if you're a US trading partner whose economy is going to be hurt badly by this, how do you retaliate? If you lead a democratic country, you have to respond to nationalistic anger, much as Trudeau and Carney have been doing, and either slap reciprocal tariffs on everything or target specific US imports or services far more punitively. If you can substitute for US imports, you target those. If you can control truly strategic materials, you stop their export to the US to bring the US economy to a screeching halt. Either Trump would have to do as you tell him or he'd be thrown out of office one way or another. China grabbing Taiwan's chip manufacturing would seem like a stunningly effective blow on these lines. Rare earths presumably easier but less dramatic? But Xi is no economist. It may take him a while to realize how damaging Trump's action is to China's economy and society?
Finally, someone has said what I think is the bottom line “The key point is that Trump isn’t really trying to accomplish economic goals. This should all be seen as a dominance display, intended to shock and awe people and make them grovel, rather than policy in the normal sense.” Trump is not stupid. His modus operandi from a real estate developer through The Apprentice to president of the United States has been to overpower through hitting his opponents hard. Eventually, everyone succumbs: his rivals in the construction industry, unions, the Republican Party, some Democrats (Schumer, Manchin, Fetterman), law firms, universities, a few judges (Cannon, Thomas, Alito) and heads of state when faced with ruinous outcomes in their own countries. Appeasement will work as well as it did when Chamberlain in Great Britain tried to reason with Hitler. Trump’s goal is to have dominance over the world and he is going about it as he always has: punch everyone hard, no matter what the cost, until they kiss his ring. WAKE UP CONGRESS AND JUDICIARY, you have the power of the two other branches of government. Please, please use it to stop this mad man.
Roy Marcus Cohn is interred in the Marcus Family mausoleum. There’s a photo: go to findagrave(dot)com and query Cohn’s name. Union Field was founded as a workers’ cemetery but it’s become quite elite. The reason for my visit is that my daughter had a matter before the Beth Din of the United Synagogue in London and I had to track my wife’s ancestry. I was startled to find Cohn’s grave in a union-sponsored cemetery. It’s right near the entrance.
Why don't you refer to the article by Reagan's trade representative (which you suggested to him to write) about how geopolitical or geostrategic objectives factor into trade agreements?
We have Captain Queeg with either the active support of his also crazy senior officials or the cowardly silence of the rest of the crew. Down goes the ship with all of us on it.
Chris Murphy has a thread on Bluesky laying out his belief that it’s an exercise in extortion. He’ll back down business by business as each provides an acceptable incentive.
My sense going back decades is that he sought Roy Cohn out to mentor so he could learn how to manage a business like a mafia godfather without actually doing crime (except other than within the limits of the NYC realty business).
And that’s exactly how he’s operating as POTUS per Murphy.
Meanwhile, it begs the imagination how he could be reelected to office just after the last five years or so — Covid, J6 and the insane crap he’d been saying the last five years.
Used car salesman have sold some cars, and other folks have sold some bridges.
Am I the only one here who has been to Roy Cohn’s mausoleum in Union Field Cemetery in Querns? I didn’t go there to see Cohn’s grave, rather that of my late wife’s grandfather, a Jewish immigrant from Russia, a union man working in the clothing trade who died young and was buried in Union Field without a headstone in 1926, age 40.
No doubt you are.
Tell me about the gravesite or do I have to google it? I’m a Queens boy and I don’t even know of Union Field!
Murphy take was the best I've seen.
For a long time now Trump has said things that are delusional. From "they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats" and on and on. This is a change. While some of the themes are the same, the brain is now not functioning as well as Trump in 2016-2020. Now here he is, Trump is always right and everyone else is wrong. The notion that he will see the damage and reverse course would require Trump to perceive reality and break from his delusions. It seems to me at this point Trump is firmly inside his delusional world and reality will not break through. Weirdly, a good many American who are not senile have been so brain washed that they too will only see their delusions. Since you can't eat you delusions, maybe they will eventually snap out of it. But that will take true depression level damage.
"the congress is virtually comatose" Correction: The Republican members of Congress are virtually comatose. They ceded all of their Article 1 powers to Trump and his South African girlfriend, Elonia Muskrat.
What's his goal here?
Is it to use tariffs to extort foreign leaders/corporates to pay HIM a "vig"
OR
Is it an attempt to improve the US terms of trade?
If the latter, his ploy will work about as poorly as Brexit has.
If the former, it will be worse.
It’s extortion via kickbacks to his offshore accounts. His ego demands that he becomes the richest person in the history of the world. Even that might not be enough.
Good point - one which is echoed in this Atlantic article I read this morning:
""The Story of the Gilded Age Wasn’t Wealth. It Was Corruption."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/history-rich-influence-government/682266/?gift=XhRUJ7N8cqLzyGLvBcR0bdHImzlF6h0yO6D4z1TGA78&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
He always has the same goal: to be the biggest swinging dick in any room. He has a pathological drive to dominate other people. That's how got to where he is.
Let's say there were only 10 people in the world total (trade with the US is about 10% of the total in the world) and everybody started selling stuff to everybody else. And then one of them declares "This is The End Of Globalization" ( i.e. the Wall Street Journal today). And the other 9 stop and look at each other and then just keep trading amongst themselves even more.
You might be able to win an election based on defrauding voters, but things like the stock market and the global economy can't be defrauded.
1. He's on a revenge power trip.
2. He's long been of the mind that voters are ignorant. In fact, in 2016, he said the quiet parts out loud: "I love the uneducated" and "We're going to grab, and grab, and grab..."
3. During his first administration, he had people around him to put the brakes on the worst of his harebrained ideas. Today, it's all sycophants and morons on the inside and a preponderance of captains of industry and legislators who've bent the knee.
4. Musk bought himself a government.
I am not optimistic in the least.
--
Two pieces of mine from 2016, documenting the statements in #2.
https://rimaregasblog42.substack.com/i/160478886/note-from-rima-i-wrote-about-this-very-topic-back-in
Can he back down? The stated goal is reindustrialization if the threat is not credible in the long term who is going to build a shoe factory in the US to avoid tariffs and then find that factory worthless when tariffs are repealed. But, silly me to search for any consistency here.
"This is an own-goal kick the magnitude of which most of us have never seen. And Congress is virtually comatose, happy to completely cede control to the president."
The Republican party is now more MAGA than the grass roots. Either it is more perspicacious than us, ordinary mortals. Or it is way over its skies and headed toward the inevitable crash and broken bones.
It’s not that congress is comatose so much as republicans are unbending and democrats are afraid right now. Republicans, your time is coming. Democrats, get off your asses!
It is futile to expect Trump to back down. He is mentally ill and lives in his own alternate reality. He could not survive outside that bubble. His inherited wealth, cruelty, and lack of ethical restraints (plus a grant of immunity by the SCOTUS) have allowed him to maintain that bubble.
Don't expect anything to change now. Any challenge to his authority or his bubble can quickly be suppressed by declaration of a National Emergency and a prompt dispatch of any troubling dissenters. Cots are available in Guantanamo.
In the 90s "It's the economy, stupid," gained widespread repetition and even fame.
In 2025, it should be "It's the STUPIDITY, stupid."
MASON: IMO, a more effective campaign would be “It’s the corruption, stupid.” That will open a lot more eyes.
So, given it's unlikely he'll back off, if you're a US trading partner whose economy is going to be hurt badly by this, how do you retaliate? If you lead a democratic country, you have to respond to nationalistic anger, much as Trudeau and Carney have been doing, and either slap reciprocal tariffs on everything or target specific US imports or services far more punitively. If you can substitute for US imports, you target those. If you can control truly strategic materials, you stop their export to the US to bring the US economy to a screeching halt. Either Trump would have to do as you tell him or he'd be thrown out of office one way or another. China grabbing Taiwan's chip manufacturing would seem like a stunningly effective blow on these lines. Rare earths presumably easier but less dramatic? But Xi is no economist. It may take him a while to realize how damaging Trump's action is to China's economy and society?
Finally, someone has said what I think is the bottom line “The key point is that Trump isn’t really trying to accomplish economic goals. This should all be seen as a dominance display, intended to shock and awe people and make them grovel, rather than policy in the normal sense.” Trump is not stupid. His modus operandi from a real estate developer through The Apprentice to president of the United States has been to overpower through hitting his opponents hard. Eventually, everyone succumbs: his rivals in the construction industry, unions, the Republican Party, some Democrats (Schumer, Manchin, Fetterman), law firms, universities, a few judges (Cannon, Thomas, Alito) and heads of state when faced with ruinous outcomes in their own countries. Appeasement will work as well as it did when Chamberlain in Great Britain tried to reason with Hitler. Trump’s goal is to have dominance over the world and he is going about it as he always has: punch everyone hard, no matter what the cost, until they kiss his ring. WAKE UP CONGRESS AND JUDICIARY, you have the power of the two other branches of government. Please, please use it to stop this mad man.
Roy Marcus Cohn is interred in the Marcus Family mausoleum. There’s a photo: go to findagrave(dot)com and query Cohn’s name. Union Field was founded as a workers’ cemetery but it’s become quite elite. The reason for my visit is that my daughter had a matter before the Beth Din of the United Synagogue in London and I had to track my wife’s ancestry. I was startled to find Cohn’s grave in a union-sponsored cemetery. It’s right near the entrance.
Why don't you refer to the article by Reagan's trade representative (which you suggested to him to write) about how geopolitical or geostrategic objectives factor into trade agreements?
We have Captain Queeg with either the active support of his also crazy senior officials or the cowardly silence of the rest of the crew. Down goes the ship with all of us on it.