The Donald Trump Score Card

Democrats decry ‘sham for justice’ after prosecutors drop Trump charges

excerpt:

"Responding to news that the special counsel Jack Smith had dropped all charges against Donald Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and retention of classified information, Dan Goldman, a prosecutor turned New York Democrat and member of the House oversight committee, lamented “a shame for justice in this country”.

“It establishes that Donald Trump is above the law,” Goldman told CNN. “The supreme court put him above the law [by ruling that he had ‘absolute immunity’ for official acts] but now he appears to escape full accountability for what were crimes charged by a grand jury.”

Goldman rejected the argument that by re-electing Trump, the American people had acquitted him of all charges.

“I think what was very clear is that people voted for Donald Trump because they thought that he was going to improve the lives of the middle class, and perhaps in addition that he would secure the border,” Goldman said. “They did not vote for him to dismantle our democracy, to attack the constitution, to politicize all of our agencies, and certainly not as a referendum on his criminal cases."

 

Trump is playing kingmaker in the situation of two open FL House seats that were vacated by Waltz and Gaetz.


https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/25/trump-kingmaker-florida-house-delegation-00191568

 

Popular vote totals make Trump’s ‘mandate’ look like a mirage

excerpt:

"But the details matter. As things stand, according to the latest tally from the Cook Political Report, Trump won 49.86% of the popular vote — a margin of 1.6% over Vice President Kamala Harris. (The Democratic nominee, interestingly enough, came up short while winning a higher percentage of the popular vote than Trump received in 2016 or 2020.)

The bottom line is unambiguous: As a matter of arithmetic, the 2024 contest was a close race in which more Americans voted against him than for him."

 

In a way, Waltz is correct. It's after the transition when Trump is president that adversaries will have full opportunity of taking advantage of Trump and how easy it is to manipulate him because of his narcissism and unwillingness to accept objective facts.

In addition, Trump himself acts as an adversary of the U.S. and will be able to once again take full advantage of it once he is in office again.

 

Trump spends lavishly on the military. Musk is expected to be forced to accept increases in military spending rather than cuts.

 

Immigrants Across U.S. Rush to Prepare as Trump Promises Mass Deportations

excerpt:

"A particular concern is the upcoming winter break when many international students may visit their homelands. On his first day in the White House in 2017, Mr. Trump banned people from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, creating chaos at airports. It was challenged in court, but a subsequent version of it survived.

The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has issued a travel advisory to all international students, faculty and staff, urging them to “strongly consider” returning to the United States before Inauguration Day, and said that students could move into their dorms early.

Wesleyan University, a private university in Middletown, Conn., emailed its international students on Nov. 18 with similar advice. It said that being in the country around Jan. 19 was “the safest way to avoid difficulty re-entering the country.”"

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/...ed-from-agencies-amid-legal-standoff-00191399

excerpt:

"The Trump transition’s unprecedented delay in signing the agreements has so far prevented the incoming administration from having any formal contact with federal agencies, including sending in groups of policy advisers known as “landing teams.” It also means they can’t access cybersecurity support or secure email servers for transition-related work, or request FBI background checks for their nominees.

Both the Trump transition and the White House confirmed to POLITICO that negotiations on the agreements are still underway. But until the standoff is resolved, Trump’s Cabinet nominees will gain no more insight than the general public into the workings of the departments they’re supposed to run."

 

Trump's pick, Bessent, thinks Trump escalates to de-escalate.


https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/us/politics/trump-billionaires-economic-nominees.html

excerpt:

In an interview with the journalist Mark Halperin in October, Mr. Bessent gave a much more free-market vision of Mr. Trump’s trade agenda.

“Donald Trump really is a free-trader,” he said, saying that Mr. Trump had offered to drop American tariffs if other countries dropped theirs. “I think a lot of what he’s doing is escalate to de-escalate. And my goal for his administration would be to save international trade, not end up looking like something with turn-of-the-century tariffs.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/us/politics/trump-billionaires-economic-nominees.html

excerpt:

“For all his talk of looking out for working-class Americans, President-elect Trump’s choice of a billionaire hedge fund manager to lead the Treasury Department shows he just wants to keep a rigged system that only works for big corporations and the very wealthy,” said Tony Carrk, the executive director of the government watchdog group Accountable.US.

 

Trump's chaos that makes markets unpredictable plays well for high risk investors like hedge fund managers who take advantage of market jolts and turns. It doesn't lend itself well to working class people who can't afford to take high risks on investments, many of whom don't even have the money to do it in the first place.

 

Bessent is in a fantasy world if he really thinks that way about Trump.

Bessent is also short by about one century.

Trump wants two turn-of-the-century tariffs, all the way back to the early 1800's when tariffs were a significant part of the country's income.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/us/politics/trump-billionaires-economic-nominees.html

excerpt:

"When Donald J. Trump first ran for the White House in 2016, his closing campaign advertisement lamented the influence of Wall Street in Washington, flashing ominous images of big banks and the billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros.

Now, as president-elect, Mr. Trump has tapped two denizens of Wall Street to run his economic agenda. Scott Bessent, who invested money for Mr. Soros for more than a decade, is his pick for Treasury secretary, and Howard Lutnick, the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, will be nominated to lead the Commerce Department. Mr. Trump’s choices to lead his economic team show the prominence of billionaire investors in setting an agenda that is supposed to fuel a “blue-collar boom” but that skeptics think will mostly benefit the rich."

 

Trump said today that on day one of his administration he will impose 25% import tariffs on Canada and Mexico as a way of trying to stop the illegal drug use problem in the U.S.

He also says he will impose an extra 10% on China.


Trump vows tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China over border and drugs

excerpt:

“On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

 

Trump is using words to make it sound like Mexico and Canada will pay the tariff money to the U.S.

Trump isn't charging Mexico and Canada with anything.

He imposing a 25% tax on American businesses who import. They pass it along to the American consumers which raises prices.

 

The appeal to institutionalism over Constitutionalism.


We Know Who’s to Blame for Trump’s Evasion of Justice. It Isn’t Jack Smith.

excerpt:

The lesson here seems to be that whether you are a Merrick Garland or a Pam Bondi, a Juan Merchan or an Aileen Cannon, a Jack Smith or a John Roberts, when the institutionalist rubber meets the temporal road, the Donald Trump character wins every single time. While one side doesn’t feel any compunction about ignoring the law, the other is hesitant to upend a nonbinding institutional norm. Lawlessness appears to be an agreed-upon outcome, a literal get-out-of-jail-free card, for whichever entity evinces the most contempt for the law.

 

We Know Who’s to Blame for Trump’s Evasion of Justice. It Isn’t Jack Smith.

excerpt:

"Where to place the blame? Attorney General Merrick Garland is partly at fault for waiting so long to commence the investigation into Jan. 6; his institutionalist instincts paralyzed the Justice Department for nearly two years, giving Trump a chance to run out the clock by the time Smith finally indicted him. Judge Aileen Cannon is guilty of sabotaging Smith’s other prosecution, over the theft of classified documents, a prosecution which should have been a slam-dunk. In a simplistic sense, the voting public also bears culpability for putting Trump back in the Oval Office despite his egregious attempts to steal the previous election. But that victory could not have happened without the Supreme Court, which essentially nullified the constitutional bar against insurrectionists returning to office, then awarded Trump sweeping immunity in Smith’s Jan. 6 case. The court’s immunity decision guaranteed that the former president would not face trial before the election, which in turn prevented the public from hearing the full range of evidence against him."

 

Judge Cannon of Florida is off the hook.

She dismissed the criminal documents case against Trump in July 2024 after the presidential immunity ruling by the Supreme Court and after Clarence Thomas in the ruling opined that he thinks Jack Smith didn't have the authority to prosecute Trump (which didn't have anything to do with the ruling, but Thomas said it anyway).

Jack Smith has dropped the appeal to reinstate the case.

If Trump hadn't won the 2024 election, Smith would have continued to appeal Cannon's dismissal. The case could have been reactivated and possibly overseen by a judge other than the very Trump-friendly Cannon.

Considering the time span and statute of limitations, the case will probably never be reactivated after Trump leaves office, which would be in January 2029. If he leaves office early, the DOJ will have been made in his image and wouldn't file charges against him again.

Cannon has her satisfaction of ending the case. Her decision will never being evaluated by an appeals court and the case will never go to a jury trial.

 

Hegseth wants to fire generals who he considers to be 'woke'.

Trump has nominated Hegseth to run the Pentagon.


GOP rep pushes back on Hegseth’s idea to fire ‘woke’ generals

 

Hegseth as co-host of a Fox News event on Flag Day threw an axe while on-air that accidentally struck and injured a West Point military drummer.

Article from 2018.


West Point drummer sues Fox & Friends over stunt-gone-wrong | Daily Mail Online

 

YouTube video:

Hegseth hits military drummer with axe.