"A ‘Little’ Disturbance."

In October, Trump stated, “We will begin a new era of soaring incomes. Skyrocketing wealth. Millions and millions of new jobs and a booming middle class. We are going to boom like we’ve never boomed before.”

Then last week, he said, “[T]ariffs are not just about protecting American jobs, they are about protecting the soul of our country. Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again, and it is happening and it will happen rather quickly. There will be a little disturbance, but we are OK with that.”

The stock market continued to fall alarmingly. The extreme volitility makes it so businesses don’t know how to proceed and investors don’t know how to invest. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt advised, “If people are looking for certainty, they should look at the record of this president.”

His business record is horrible, built on lies, evasion and deception. What he is doing now is affecting people’s lives. The little disturbance, translated: people losing jobs, losing their 401Ks, losing businesses.

And I won’t even talk about the commercial he did for the Musk yesterday at the White House, promoting Tesla. Musk’s company is flailing. What Trump did was unethical, but it’s also a distraction.

Here is an article about the judges who are stopping Trump’s various moves as he attempts to give the executive branch more power. The NY Times reports, “While some rulings have gone the president’s way, taken as a whole, they represent an effort to push back at Mr. Trump’s serial attempts to increase his authority and the executive branch’s dominion over the government. They reflect a fraught and chaotic moment where so much seems uncertain and the federal government itself is under siege.”

The government has detained and is trying to deport a legal citizen, Mahmoud Khalil. Khalil was an organizing protestor during the Columbia School protests against Israel’ s Gaza policies last year. Holder of a valid green card, Khalil has been moved to a Louisiana detention center, and has not been allowed to speak to his lawyers. Secretary of State Rubio claims he has the right to do this, make a sweeping decision to evoke a green card and deport someone under a 1952 provision. The provision says that any “alien whose presence or activities in the United States the secretary of state has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”

Here is a NY Times article to read more on this.

I hope you have a good rest of your Wednesday, thanks for being here. See you tomorrow.