Trump loves to loudly proclaim to the world that his negotiation skills - which both Putin and Zelynsky are giving "Yeah, bro, sure, whatever" responses to right now - are the greatest the world has ever seen.
But in the first weeks of his term, rather than bringing congress to heel with his brilliant and unmatched capabilities, he instead rolled over without even the slightest resistance. Trump gave congress carte blanche to create his Big Beautiful Bill. And, as any American with an IQ higher than 60 could have predicted, it is a budget-busting, pork-laden monstrosity, taking spending to levels higher than seen even under Joe Biden and COVID.
And look at the way that both Trump, congress, and MAGA frame this bill. They'll point to the few legitimately valuable items in it, pointedly ignore the fact that it continues to drive the US off of fiscal cliff even faster than Joe Biden was doing, and then lie through their teeth that we have to do this because there is no other way to get the benefits.
Don’t worry!
His “very smart people” are totally right about things this time when it comes to trade.
There is zero - I repeat, zero - moral difference between the people who pushed for "experimenting" with lockdowns because "we have to do something!" and the people who push for "experimenting" with trade wars because "we have to do something!"
Musk is out.
Musk put himself in a corner where he can't rip into Trump and he has to play nice probably at least through the midterms, but just look at the guy's face and watch him refuse to give a straight answer here. He put a lot on the line with endorsing Trump and starting DOGE, and Trump absolutely stabbed him in the back. Trump's supporters will blame congress, but Trump has very openly and loudly endorsed all of the DOGE-defying moves that congress has made, and has viciously attacked the one congressman (Thomas Massie) who has stood against it.
The reason is simple: Trump cares about trophies. Cutting the budget is not a trophy. DOGE trying to take a chainsaw to government was a trophy, but as soon as DOGE became more of Musk's than Trump's trophy, Trump stopped caring about it because congress offered him a Big, Beautiful Bill as a trophy instead. Just like the FBI offered the opportunity to build a Big, Beautiful new headquarters building for them (Trump loves buildings!). ...
As comedy slowly slides into unfunny wokeness hell, the last comedian standing (assuming he doesn't drop dead first, I mean just look at the guy; he's a trainwreck) will be Doug Stanhope. He closed out his recent special "The Dying of the Last Breed" with this bit on how important it is that we be able to make fun of anything. Because making fun.
Language warning, duh.
Preliminary Q2 numbers for Argentina are in. This is still subject to adjustment but so far their preliminaries have been pretty accurate under the Milei administration.
Slashing spending works. Trump and Bessent are very optimistically projecting economic growth of 3% doing the opposite of what Milei is doing to deliver 7.6% - and climbing!
