Trump's "temper tariffs" and the looming GOP civil war
Get the Point!
Let the record reflect that when internal conflict within the Trump era Republican Party finally began, it wasn't because the president exercised executive fiat to roll back Black civil rights, a woman's right to body autonomy, mass firings of career federal workers, or the rounding up of legal residents for summary deportations.
No, the line in the sand, the "wait one damned minute" moment if you will, came down to Trump's "temper tariffs"—some as high as the 104 percent levy against China—that have caused high inflation to rise even higher, and stocks and 401k dossiers to dip even lower, all the while threatening to throw a relatively thriving global economy (before Trump took office) into a full on recession!
Indeed, many of the same billionaire oligarchs who were all in for Trump, like Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, have been highly critical of Trump's tariffs since they were announced last week! Many of the same Republican political leaders who stood idly by as Trump seized more control through executive orders and his Department of Government Efficiency that has been toying with destroying Social Security, sycophants like Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, all of a sudden have rediscovered their scrotum sacks and the part of the Constitution which holds that Congress is a separate and co-equal branch and singularly endowed with the right to levy taxes and tariffs during non-emergency times!
Last, some of the same right wing media that have egged on Trump's worst impulses and applauded his efforts to screw over racial minorities, women, transgender people, and immigrants, have begun pushing back against Trumpism not because of its immoral gutting of human rights, but because of tariffs; I guess waking up and going online to see that your stock portfolios are gutted has an effect on active/passive bigots and "government is the problem" conservatives, alike.
Yesterday, the editors of National Review, the dean of right wing media which posts articles with vocabulary words too difficult for the average MAGA to read or comprehend, but is THE go to authority for the MAGA thinkers who brought us Project 2025 and whatnot, called out Trump's foolish tariffs while extolling Congress to flex its constitutionally mandated muscle.
National Review’s editorial avers that it is "preposterous that (Trump) could enjoy this much power over the global economy,” adding, “What has happened since last Thursday is hard to fathom...Based on an ever-shifting series of rationales, characterized by an embarrassing methodology, and punctuated with an extraordinary arrogance toward the country’s constitutional order, the Trump administration has alienated our global allies, discombobulated our domestic businesses, decimated our capital markets, and increased the likelihood of serious recession.” The editors concluded with the same dig that many of us on the center-left have been launching for two months: “No free man wants to be at the mercy of a king."
Indeed...
But the problem with a Frankenstein's monster, and if we are being frank, Congressional Republicans, conservative judges, and billionaire oligarchs seeking to get richer off of Trump's policies are ALL responsible for allowing a morally corrupt, empathy averse, intellectually stunted monster back into the Oval Office, is that “Trumpenstein” now believes that he is THE absolute monarch, of sorts, and holds powers that he is not going to easily give up! A fact that leads me to remind, as I often do, to stay tuned...