Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump has been erratic for years and years, including the entirety of his first presidential term. Now, add in several new/semi-new developments: (1) cognitive decline (possibly serious), (2) a sense of invulnerability triggered by defeating his court cases/being declared a king by the Supreme Court/winning the popular vote, and (3) no further need to appeal to voters beyond the base. Under these circumstances, it's very difficult to know what exactly to make of his pronouncements.
Case in point: Trump's declaration, now repeated several times, that on his second first day in office, he is going to slap 25% tariffs on everything coming into the United States from Canada and Mexico unless they do something about immigration and fentanyl smuggling. On one hand, he made this a central plank of his presidential campaign this year. On the other hand, such a move would have very obvious deleterious effects on the economy, and he would own those effects. Even the powerful right-wing propaganda machine would be unable to convince voters, excepting the True Believers, that the sequence (1) Trump slaps huge tariffs on North American imports, and (2) goods from Mexico and Canada go way up in price, necessarily means (3) "Damn you, Joe Biden."
It might be useful, at this point, to talk a little bit about the core plank of Trump's 2016 presidential run, namely that there would be a wall built along the U.S. border, and that Mexico would pay for it. That did not happen, of course. Trump couldn't even get the wall built with a Republican trifecta, and the potential for Congress to agree to cut the necessary check. So, he redirected some funds allocated for the military, built a few miles of wall, posed for some photos, and called it a victory.
When we wrote about the tariffs a couple of days ago, we proposed that he might take the same tack here, claiming a "win" without any particular basis for doing so. That said, we thought that it would take some time—a year or two—which was about the same timeline for declaring a "win" on the wall. It would seem that our timeline might have been in error this time, by a lot, because Trump is already declaring victory on the tariffs.
As soon as Trump made his 25% proclamation, he got phone calls from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. Let us pause to note that, as with the wall, the real target here is Mexico. We very seriously doubt that even the True Believers care about Canada, first since that nation is not actually sending fentanyl or undocumented immigrants to the U.S. in any meaningful numbers, and second because most Canadians are white (i.e., not from a "sh**hole country"). Trump only included Canada on the list because of NAFTA v2.0. Mexico, by contrast, actually does send undocumented immigrants and fentanyl to the U.S. in meaningful numbers (albeit, not in the manner that Trump claims). Further, most Mexicans are brown, while their leader is both a woman and a Jew (and if you doubt that MAGA nation has noticed those latter two facts, just check the right-wing social media platforms sometime).
You can presumably see where this is headed. Trump hasn't said a word about his call with Trudeau, but he's already claimed victory vis-à-vis Mexico. After talking to Sheinbaum, he hopped onto his highly questionable social media platform and posted this:
Just had a wonderful conversation with the new President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. She has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border. We also talked about what can be done to stop the massive drug inflow into the United States, and also, U.S. consumption of these drugs. It was a very productive conversation!
Presumably, he tossed the "Pardo" in there, which is not usually used, to remind everyone that Sheinbaum is also a Latina. In any event, Trump's proclamation was greeted with a round of "Huzzahs" among his right-wing supporters.
There is only one small problem, and you probably already know what it is: It's not true. Sheinbaum does not particularly want a trade war with the U.S., but she's also not going to allow the first act of Trump and Sheinbaum to be "Donald walks all over Claudia." She probably also suspects, probably rightly, that, at least in the short term, the U.S. will be hurt more by the tariffs than Mexico will be. In any event, after Trump took his victory lap, she very quickly released a statement, in Spanish, in which she said that she made no such promises, and that "We reiterate that Mexico's position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples."
So, where does this leave us? Who knows? And we don't feel too badly that our crystal ball is murky; even Maggie Haberman (a.k.a. "The Trump Whisperer") has no idea what to make of it. Her exact words: "I have no idea what that actually means."
We do know a couple of things, however. First, as we wrote yesterday, quite a few Republican politicians (and voters) are excited about a trade war. They might not be too happy if Trump decides to back down without firing a shot. We also know that there will still be plenty of undocumented immigrants (asylum-seekers or not) coming into the country, and plenty of fentanyl, and people will notice.
On the other hand, we also know a couple of things that point in the other direction. First, Trump is very good at creating an alternate reality for his faithful followers. If he says "immigration crisis solved!" or "fentanyl crisis solved!" maybe they will accept that as fact. Second, it helps that the places that tend to be most anti-undocumented-immigrant also tend not to have many undocumented immigrants. So, the True Believers might not be exposed to much evidence that Trump is full of it (although those same places tend to have pretty bad fentanyl problems, and so that will still be on display).
The upshot is that, thus far, the features of Trump v2.0 are awfully similar to the features of Trump v1.0. That he's drawing from the same old, worn-out bag of tricks has not escaped the notice of the commentariat. Yesterday, social media was full of comments like this one, from Matthew Yglesias: "Trump creating a fake crisis with Mexico over fake tariff threats only to settle it in exchange for fake concessions all over a holiday week when he's not even in office yet is a reminder of how exhausting-yet-boring four full years of this will be." Yglesias also observed that there has been a decrease in border crossings, thanks to an agreement made by the Biden administration. So, to the extent that there IS a "victory" here, it's Trump claiming credit that rightly belongs to Joe Biden.
And that's not the only example of Trump stealing credit from Biden over this holiday weekend. Within 24 hours of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon/Hezbollah being announced, Trump and those in his circle were taking all the credit. The President-elect has humble-bragged in a couple of media hits, while NSA-designate Mike Waltz took to eX-Twitter to tweet this:
Everyone is coming to the table because of President Trump.
His resounding victory sent a clear message to the rest of the world that chaos won't be tolerated. I'm glad to see concrete steps towards deescalation in the Middle East.
This one, we not only predicted, we pretty much hit the bullseye:
Will Donald Trump get any credit for this?: He really shouldn't, since he and his team didn't have anything to do with it (although they have been getting briefings). That said, the Republican spin machine is very powerful, and we can envision something along these lines: "Hezbollah knew they had to get while the gettin' was good, because in just a few weeks, there will be a new sheriff in town."
You should not be impressed, as this was about as easy as predicting that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. However, we do thank the many readers who brought this story to our attention, starting with B.C. in Walpole, ME, who wrote: "About 8:30 this morning, I read where you raised the question, 'Will Donald Trump get any credit for this?' You said he would, despite not deserving any. About two hours later, he may not have been getting credit, but he was already taking it."
There have been a few flare-ups of violence, incidentally, but thus far the ceasefire appears to be holding. The first week or so is the real test. Now, if it does NOT hold, what do you think the odds are that Trump, Waltz, etc. will accept responsibility? You surely don't need our help to be able to answer that question. (Z)