“Why is Trump popular? Can’t people see that a lot of it is all an act and showmanship?”
-Progressives, Democrats, Liberals, RINOs, Legacy Media
This line of attack and argument has been used for a decade now to no avail against supporters of Trump. Calling him fascist, calling his supporters fascist (and Nazis, ofc), insinuating that everyone is stupid (low-information is the code phrase) to believe that he is anything but the Devil incarnate is the only approach the Left continues to take. They keep missing the one element to the enduring popularity of Trump: Many believe that he actually loves America. That’s it.
Look at the full transcript of his initial speech in 2015 when he came down the escalator to announce he was running for president. Read it in its entirety and notice something missed from the media coverage that a lot of Americans picked up on. While MSM focused in on the comments about illegal immigration on the southern border and how much of a meanie Trump was for saying out loud not everyone coming to the country will be flag-waving, apple-pie eating Americans, the important meat of the speech centered on the plight of large swathes of America where the financialization of the economy had left them in the dust. This spoke to those who remembered the mockery of phrases like, “Learn to Code” and “Bitter clingers to religion and guns.” Long memories of promises not kept by past “conservatives” extolling the false benefits of NAFTA or free trade agreements. How no one in political blinked an eye as their towns and cities were hollowed out from these policies. The GOP ‘Grifted off Patriotism” for decades, showing hardly the slightest concern for their political base.
He isn’t perfect and we all know that. Yet, just by a figure like him occupying the American political landscape he has pulled back a curtain and revealed to many how vacuous the platitudes are from Progressives and their sycophant media truly are. For this, identifying the powerful forces working against the American people, he has done the entire country a tremendous service.
Category: Trump
Fascism, Populism, Nationalism, MAGA, Trump
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” What’s in a name? Well, it’s the start of trying to define what we are talking about. And what we are talking about is the movement that Donald Trump has conjured out of thin air. He has breathed life into the Right after the establishment Republicans had managed to beat it and its proponents into the ground over the course of the last sixty-five years.
Why he did it? I wonder how many people actually have the answer to that question. Maybe even Trump doesn’t really know why. How he did it is clearer. Trump is a salesman or more accurately he’s a huckster, a flim-flam man. He sells snake oil. And because of that training he could see that the Republicans and the Democrats were conning us. And because they weren’t conning us out of our pocket money but out of our freedoms and our descendants’ well-being, he decided to expose them. And the results were tremendous. He has pole-axed every fake conservative that has faced him. Think of Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney if you need examples of his victims. These men were the most respected conservative leaders of their time. Now they’re laughing stocks and walking/talking memes for what a fake conservative looks like.
So, does Trump have a political philosophy? If he does, it’s very pragmatic. I think he looks at himself as our business agent. He’s trying to cut the best deal for the American people that he can. And I don’t think he cares whether he treats the rest of the world fairly. He’s a cutthroat dealer and screwing over the other guy is just part of that trade. But he’s also experienced. He knows that China has some very strong cards and that he has to be realistic when bargaining with powerful and savvy adversaries. He may be pro-Israel but he realizes that making a good deal with Iran is in America’s interest. He has no desire to fight anymore middle eastern wars. The same with Ukraine. Tying himself to that slaughterhouse is a mistake. Enabling some kind of deal is the smart play.
But there is some part of me that hopes he’s also doing all this because in some sense, no matter how vague the link is, he thinks of himself as one of us. Maybe not a regular guy. Maybe a prince to our paupers but still a fellow American. Someone who could sit down at a table with one of us and eat a McDonald’s Big Mac and talk about what it was like to be a New Yorker growing up in the sixties and seventies when the city was a train wreck but the working class people living there still had a popular culture that was quintessentially American; the melting pot and egalitarianism and neighborhoods where the people actually knew who their neighbors were. These were the people who built his hotels and skyscrapers and casinos. Mob-connected construction bosses, ironworkers, masons and laborers. Actual people who also happen to be Americans.
So is Trump a populist, a nationalist or a fascist? No, he’s just Trump. But he is an American and he’s doing something that no one else would. He’s giving us a last chance to get our country back. I hope he succeeds.
Meet the Pest
Jonathan Capon: Good evening I’m Jonathan Capon of the Washington Post.
David Books: And I’m David Books of the New York Times. And you’re watching the PBS News Hour. Tonight, we will be speaking to former US President Joe Bilephlegm and his wonderful wife Dr. Jill. Welcome Mr. President and First Lady.
President Bilephlegm: Thank you, Phil. It’s good to be back in Washington. Where I belong.
Jill Bilephlegm: Thank you, David. He meant David.
David Books: Yes, I’m sure he did. Mr. President, since your withdrawal from the 2024 race and the subsequent catastrophic loss of your vice president to Donald Trump many people have been waiting for you to speak candidly about what you think happened in the election and what could have been done to prevent the loss.
President Bilephlegm: I’m glad you asked Brad. The answer is simple. When I rope-a-doped Trump in the first debate many faint-hearted Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and George Clooney panicked. They thought I really had gone bananas and began shouting for me to drop out of the race. And then that bedwetter George Stepha-what’s-his-name piled on and before you know it, I’ve been kicked to the curb by these weak-kneed cowards. And that left that drunken bimbo to try and face Donald Trump on her own. It was hopeless.
Jonathan Capon: Mr. President are you seriously claiming that your performance at the debate was an act? Because at the time it was described as a shambolic disaster of the first water.
President Bilephlegm: Listen nancy boy I’ve been handling bullies like Trump since before you groveled before your first editor. I was first in my class at Harvard. I took a bullet for Nelson Mandela and I fought at Iwo Jima.
Jonathan Capon: What? You barely graduated from the University of Delaware. You never met Mandela. And you were three years old when Iwo Jima was fought. How could you possibly have been there?
President Bilephlegm: I fought at the second battle of Iwo Jima. It wasn’t as famous but the fighting was even tougher. I was wounded five times and received three Congressional medals of honor for my service. I turned the tide of the battle single-handedly and routed the Russians.
Jonathan Capon: Oh, that’s enough, I’m out of here. (leaves the stage)
Jill Bilephlegm: Come back Jonathan, you have to let him tell his story his own way. He’s a great communicator.
President Bilephlegm: Let him go. I’ll tell my story to Freddie over here. He’s a real newsman.
David Books: It’s David, Mr. President, not Freddie.
President Bilephlegm: Whatever you want to call yourself is fine with me Kemosabe. Look I’m trying to get my story out so that my 2028 campaign will get off on the right track. In 2026 I’ve got to hit the ground running if I want to get the moderate vote sewn up early.
David Books: Mr. President, are you out of your mind? You can’t run for president again. You’d be ninety years old by the end of that term.
President Bilephlegm: So? Ninety is just a number. Remember what Morning Schmoe said about me last year. He said that intellectually, analytically, I was the best Bilephlegm there ever was. And he was right!
David Books: Well, their parent company is trying to spin off his network and lay off Morning Schmoe even as we speak so I wouldn’t give that too much weight.
President Bilephlegm: Listen Brainiac, they laughed at Trump when he said he was coming back after a four-year hiatus and look at him now. Why, he bestrides the known world like a colostomy. In four years when he can’t run again, I’ll be back and I’ll win.
David Books: With all due respect Mr. President, in four years you won’t be able to say your own name.
President Bilephlegm: So what? FDR had Elanor to help him. I’ll have what’s-her-name over there to do the heavy lifting. We’re a team. And Hunter is already lining up some trade deals that should net billions for us.
David Books: Who’s “us.”
President Bilephlegm: The American people of course.
David Books: Alright, that’s enough. I’m going back to Canada. At least our crooks don’t smell this bad (leaves stage).
President Bilephlegm: (speaking in a stage whisper) So, all of you viewers out there, remember to vote for good old Joe. (yelling) Don’t let the Nazis win!
Trump Signs EO Ending Federal Funding for NPR & PBS
Sure, I know there will be a court injunction within the hour but still the schadenfreude and just general hilarity from this move makes it all worthwhile. I dream of all the muppets being laid off. Elmo, Big Bird and the other weirdos who inhabit the creepy corners of Sesame Street.
Imagine all the NPR hosts of “All Things Considered” talking in the Robert Siegel whisper until they find out they’ve been laid off and then all shrieking and cussing at the tops of their lungs. How glorious.
But my favorite subtractions will be Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks. These two pretentious blowhards have been the greatest sources of government funded misinformation on display. Not having to pay for their efforts will be an enormous relief.
Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better
I have lived through the Space Race, the Arms Race, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy Assassination, the Vietnam War, the Oil Embargo, Watergate, the Carter Presidency, the Iran Hostage Crisis, Stagflation, the Various Arab-Israeli wars, Black Monday, the First Gulf War, Bill Clinton, the Dot Com Bust, the Y2K Panic, 9/11/2001, Afghanistan, Iraq II, the 2008 Bank Crisis, Obama’s Race War Incitements, All of the lawfare against Trump, the George Floyd Color Revolution, the COVID scam, the 2020 Election Fraud, Biden’s Fake Presidency, the Ukraine Debacle, the Green Energy/COVID/USAID looting of the Treasury and the assassination attempts on Trump.
That’s a lot of dysfunction. If you look at the scope of how much mismanagement and dishonesty has been the focus of our lives for the last sixty odd years you can’t help but ask yourself if maybe the problem is that we are being “led” by terrible people. Looking at the awful things going on I believe that those running this country are either purposefully evil or incredibly stupid.
Or both.
And now look at where we are. Every attempt by Donald Trump to even partially repair the damage done by Biden’s open border policy is being stymied by partisan federal judges. It’s like every stalemate we’ve ever experienced when the Right wins an election.
All of what I’m saying is obvious. In fact, we saw the same thing in Trump’s first term. In some sense Trump must have expected all of this to happen. Maybe he has a plan to move all of this along. But what I’m trying to express is a reality that resists any real progress being made in Washington. It’s an institutional mindset that resists any attempt to untangle the strands of bureaucracy and administrative control that protect the status quo.
Probably what is needed is someone with the courage to cut the Gordian Knot. And it really will take courage. I think what it will take is for Trump to defy these federal judges. And I think I’ve figured out the ploy. What will be needed is to have a judge declare someone in contempt of court and then have Donald Trump issue a pardon for the contempt action. Of course, he’ll probably have to issue the pardons every day for the whole length of his presidency. But it should allow him to get his work done and really, really annoy those judges.
And I think I must be a genius or everyone else is an idiot if they don’t see how this will work perfectly. Remember during a campaign rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, on January 23, 2016, Trump said “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” Well now it’s literally true. He can pardon himself or anyone else he’d like from whatever crime he needs to commit to fix all of our problems. All he needs is the courage and the mental clarity needed to carry out the campaign.
So, Mr. President get to work writing the executive orders and the pardons for each of the contempt decisions by all of the various judges that are working against you. It will be wearisome and highly annoying but you will be fixing the ills that Joe Biden and his predecessors inflicted on us. And it will tick off a lot of horrible people.
Fiscal Madness and Buffalo Bill
So last week I was shoveling snow and now I read that it’s going to be 80 degrees on Saturday. That’s messed up. But this is Dunwich and we’ve never restricted ourselves to reality. Okay, I’ve been griping about the cold weather so I better shut up and enjoy it. And I will. We’re hosting Easter on Sunday and that will be pretty great. We have Princess Sack of Potatoes here tonight. Her parents are celebrating an occasion and we gladly invited her over. Tonight, she watched “Stuart Little.” I was busy but I popped in and saw a few minutes of the movie here and there. Geena Davis is one of the main characters and later on I saw Dabney Coleman playing a minor character. And that activated a very old brain cell. I recalled that a very young and pretty Geena Davis was the eye candy on a tv show that starred Dabney Coleman as the eponymous “Buffalo Bill.” He was the host of a tv talk show and she was one of the production assistants. I remember one episode where Bill explained to her that once a woman reached the age of twenty-five, she was over the hill and her face began to disintegrate. When Geena asked whether this applied to men, the much older Bill said something like, “No, as unfair as it may seem, men remain pretty much the same decade after decade maybe even getting more handsome over time.” His deadpan delivery, in your face offensiveness and outrageous non sequiturs were what made the show fun.
Tomorrow Camera Girl will continue the Princess’s training in the mysteries of holiday cooking. She will assist in the baking of a ricotta cheese cake and various other Easter dishes. The main course is roast beast and even in the midst of my endless drive to lose weight I will indulge to a greater extent than usual because, who are we kidding? That’s not something you pass up in this age of $12/dozen eggs.
I was talking to one of my sons-in-law tonight about saving money. He’s got two kids that will be in college next year and we were discussing automobiles. His two main vehicles have 200,000+ miles each and I asked him how much he wants to get out of them. He said 500,000! Now if it weren’t him, I’d have scoffed at the idea. These are American vehicles. They don’t last that long. But he’s an extremely capable mechanic. He’s worked on everything from helicopters to lawn mowers and I’ve seen him bring piles of junk back to life so I just nodded my head and said, “Yeah we’ve all got to keep what we already have on the road as long as possible.”
I was at a Dunwich committee meeting. The talk was what is going on in the state. The Democrats are all freaked out. They claim that Trump’s austerity measures will force them to declare a fiscal emergency and ignore all rules against excessively increasing taxes and other revenue sources. They’re calling Trump a fascist, a Nazi, you name it. Needless to say, the towns will be the ones taking the biggest hit. All of the state mandates will become unfunded mandates and we’ll have to pay for them on our own. At the end of the meeting, we all looked around and you could see everyone was thinking the same thing, “It is what it is.” We all shrugged our shoulders and walked out. Well, I’ll enjoy Easter and then we’ll take it day by day. Ah, New England.
Donald the First
William Shakespeare breathed life into Prince Hal and Marc Antony when he portrayed them in his plays. He took some historical accounts and turned them into…? Into what? Well, into dramatic personae. They joined Oedipus and Socrates and all the other characters that we know from the drama. And not that the characters are historically accurate; they’re not. They’re the invention of the playwright. But they’re better than accurate. They’re vivid. Alive. We know them. We know them better than we know any real personalities from history or even the news of the day. So, in a way they’re immortal. Millions and millions of human beings have watched and heard and read the words spoken by Hamlet and Falstaff and Macbeth. They’ve thought about the words, the intonation, the feelings the characters portrayed to understand what the characters were feeling and thinking. This is a level of existence that otherwise only occurs for most people within the confines of their own family. And in fact, rarely even there. Which of us is so witty or profound or emotional that the day-to-day dialog we share with our spouses or children or friends does more than just bounce off of their consciousness? It’s almost background noise in a way. It’s only in moments of crisis or discussions about important matters that we choose our words carefully and fully listen to what is being said.
Outside of drama we rarely listen with our full attention to what people around us say. Maybe during times of crisis. I remember very clearly after September 11th 2001 that Bush gave a few very carful and important speeches and I remember that I was glad that his rhetoric wasn’t too flowery. It was more about retribution and I was glad for it. But that was an exception. Most of what gets said by talking heads in the news goes in one ear and out the other and rightly so.
But it makes you think.
Who will be the next Shakespeare? When will we get another dramatic poet of his stature? And who will he write about? I was thinking, “Will someone write a play called Josef Stalin or FDR or Donald Trump?” It could happen. These were men who defined their times. If a great poet came along and breathed life into the character and made the story compelling future readers and viewers would be mesmerized by scenes where these characters mouthed the words that the author heard in his soul.
Of course, it might be a hundred years from now or even a couple of thousand. Shakespeare’s closest foray into recent history was one of his last plays, “Henry the Eighth” and it was hardly in line with his greater works. In fact, it’s doubtful he wrote most of it. If an audience a thousand years from now watches (or however entertainment is sensed at that point) about Donald Trump it’s doubtful that the real Trump will shine through at all. Only a comic genius, a futuristic Aristophanes could capture the bombast and swagger that “The Donald” provides in all of his speeches and interviews. And if he did manage to capture that spirit would the audiences (especially the critics) reject it as too over the top and exaggerated? They probably would. But I’d go see the show on the first night.
What Does Trump Reveal to Us About America?
Amid all the hullaballoo over Trump’s tariffs and other trade plays, there is a realization that has serious implications for our future as a nation. If it takes an act of God to arrange for a circumstance where any of the powerful men who run this country have the best interests of everyday Americans, then what chance have we of maintaining a healthy middle class?
I think we are more or less where the Romans were at about the time of Julius Caesar. Which is without a doubt a very bad place. But I’m not advocating for a dictator. I don’t think that a king no matter how he is selected is a solution.
But maybe what we need is a tribune. Tribune was an office that was given to the plebians or common people of Rome. The office was founded to give the common people a veto against actions by the Senate which was the legislative body of Rome and composed of the patricians or nobles. If a law was written that negatively impacted the common people, the tribune could veto it.
Well, I think we’ve reached that point. Both major parties are completely compromised by the special interests that buy their votes for laws that allow these companies to flourish while the common people are turned into paupers and serfs. It’s gone on too long. We need some kind of brake on the power of both parties.
Of course, the sticking point is how do we find the proverbial honest man? How do we prevent the office from being filled with just another crook? Well, the only absolutely fool proof method would be to appoint me tribune for life but even that is limited by my mortality.
A possible way to get the same effect as a tribunate without the actual office could be instituting a national referendum process to allow unpopular laws to be revoked, politicians recalled, and laws voted into existence when the Congress isn’t doing their job.
The threshold for triggering a referendum would have to be reasonably high but not onerously so. Let’s say ten million signatures. The point is we need a way to prevent the difficulty of getting good people elected from turning our government into the monster it has become. Everybody knows Nancy Pelosi uses her office to make hundreds of millions of dollars through insider stock trading. If she could be fired because half of American voters get outraged about this then she probably wouldn’t be such a blatant crook. Also don’t you think that a great majority of Americans would vote yes on a referendum outlawing insider trading for Congress? Common sense things like this would happen naturally and should.
Well, anyway that is something I thought about today. Direct Democracy is a dangerous thing but as we’ve already seen our system with its checks and balances has failed us pretty miserably and changes need to be made.
Maybe Trump has in mind to champion changes to the way Washington works. Or maybe he thinks from now on we’ll elect good people. I think after he leaves, the chances of electing only presidents who have our best interests in mind is pretty low. We need to strike while the iron is hot and call for a constitutional convention before the crooks get back in charge. Otherwise, we’re headed for a repeat of the Roman Empire with us as serfs.
That Crazy Trump
I was trying to imagine what will be the result if China is hit with a 50% tariff. Now China is not Vietnam. China’s labor is no longer strictly speaking third world. It’s probably “second world.” Will a two dollar “hammer” still sell if it costs three dollars? It’s a fair question. How about a fifty-dollar tool that now costs seventy-five dollars. Well, maybe you say, “Sure because the American tool costs one hundred dollars.” But what if I remind you that it’s a really awful tool that doesn’t work very well and only lasts a third of the life; like those things you buy at Harbor Freight. Well, now you have something to think about.
Maybe that’s what Trump is doing. The only thing I can’t figure out is if the correct number is 50% or 100% or 300%. I really don’t have a good feel for what the equivalence point is. And it can’t be the same for every different item out there. How exactly does he make this work.
The funny thing is I’m excited about the prospect of closing the “China valve.” I’d love to see nothing exported from China to America. I witnessed first-hand American companies building the industrial capacity in China needed to replace American jobs by the million. They gladly partnered with the Chinese government and they got their thirty pieces of silver in the process only it was probably ten pieces of silver. The Chinese were always cheap.
I listened to Pete Navarro talk about how tariffs are just a small part of the trade picture. Europe and other places have a value added tax (VAT) that they use to keep out imports. And places like Vietnam (and China) infamously steal intellectual property without any concern for consequences. They bootleg everything from clothing to toys to handbags to you name it. And nothing is done. From what I can tell we’re not trying to fix these things. We’re trying to quarantine the merchandise coming from this whole side of the world. Wow.
So, I’m all for this.
But can it be done?
I’m assuming there will be an enormous disruption to commerce. After all, these products are shipped across the Pacific on boats that take weeks to reach here. Now all of this product costs a lot more. What if the people who bought it to sell it to Americans can’t get people to buy it at the higher prices? What happens at Christmas when I can’t buy all that crappy branded merchandise associated with the latest crappy Hollywood kid movie? Mass hysteria!
And what about all those American companies that buy parts for their products from China and the rest of Asia? Will this change their pricing? Yes. But now they’ll also be competing against foreign manufacturers whose products will really get expensive. German and Japanese cars are excellent. But will they be worth a significantly higher price tag? That will have to be decided on the merits. And will that mean that Toyota and Mercedes will start making more of their cars here? I hope so. That is where we get a win/win.
Well, the stock market seemed to steady today. I’m following all of this and it’s wild stuff. That crazy Trump. He’s the greatest show on Earth.
Guest Contributor – Milo Mindbender – 06APR2025 – Trade, Tariffs and Time
Whatever the agenda is it must be cast before January 27. If it delays, it dies. After the next swearing in of Congress any progress not completed will probably be smothered in it’s afterbirth.
The usual suspects are screaming for blood, and don’t understand the way tariffs should work.
If you penalize products coming from my country to yours, I should do the same to your goods in order to keep a balance of trade. We are bit by tariffs, excise taxes, and down right bans on our exports, but are expected to forget that on their exports. Some actually make sense, like the ban on beef since we turn cattle into unwilling cannibals by reprocessing animal offal into cattle feed, some are just a protectionism by the other countries.
We need to either play reciprocally or refuse to play at all. Rumour has it mothballed cardboard plants in Maine are being looked into as a consequence of the tariffs with Canada.
European social practices have been indirectly supported by our bearing their defense burdens freeing up their Treasury for bribing the masses with healthcare, work breaks, and other bennies. Let them sort their own issues in their home since we are only uncultured upstarts according to them.
Asian economies get the same bribery, Japan was able to direct the monies that would have been used for defense into industries post WWII, and allowed them to specialize in electronics, Korea directly benefits by having our tripwire troops in place permitting them to focus on commerce instead of having to secure their borders. Post Kim rule in NK might collapse and actually allow for reunification of the two societies, but not under the one family rule it has had for 75 years.
If we did what the world is asking and tended to our own interest and business, because power hates a vacuum some entity would club to the top of the dung heap and declare themselves king of the pile.
It would be interesting to see as a thought experiment whether it would be an eastern invasion into the power vacuum, or another global jihad. Time may tell.