The Mistakes Just Keep Piling Up
Part of the reason that the voters see Trump v2.0 as chaotic is the increasingly long list of news
stories that show how
incompetent
Donald Trump and the people around him are. In small matters and large matters, many negative
incidents have occurred and it gives people the feeling that the administration doesn't know what it
is doing. The Biden and Obama administrations never had a long list of mishaps like these:
- Signal: At least two times, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has put
secret war plans out on an unapproved channel where participants without a security clearance could
see them. He even had an unsecure PC and an
unsecure Internet connection
installed for his use, in violation of all DoD security rules. Any Democratic Secretary of Defense
who did this would have been impeached and convicted already. People don't like the lives of service
members being put at risk due to politicians ignoring the security rules. Remember that Republicans
rode Hillary Clinton's e-mail server to victory for years, even though there is no evidence that
anyone other than Clinton and her staff had access to it.
- Harvard: Someone sent Harvard an outrageous list of demands,
basically saying that unless it let the administration run the university, billions of dollars in
funds would be (illegally) withheld. After the resulting storm died down a bit, the administration
said it was a
mistake.
We don't know if it was really a mistake. If it was, they are incompetent. If it was not a mistake,
they are going full-blown authoritarian. Neither is a good look.
- IRS commissioner: Trump appointed Gary Shapley as acting commissioner
of the IRS. Two days later he
fired
Shapley. Supposedly, Elon Musk was the genius who suggested Shapley, but when Secretary of the
Treasury Scott Bessent got wind of this, he blew a gasket and demanded that Trump fire Shapley. The whole
thing reeks of gross incompetence.
- Tariffs: The initial round of tariffs on "Liberation Day" was a
disaster. Apparently someone asked an AI chatbot to provide a tariff for each country, and it used
some nonsensical formula to pull numbers out of thin air, including a tariff on an island
occupied only by penguins. A few days later, Trump yanked all the tariffs and announced new ones.
Couldn't he get this right the first time around? Apparently, no. He now
claims
he has made 200 trade deals, even though that’s more countries than the world has, according to most
lists. Of course, most lists do not include the penguin kingdom of Heard and MacDonald Islands. In any
case, this claim is obviously a lie. Trade deals take months to negotiate. He probably hasn't completed a single deal
yet. At best he might have a concept of a plan that he could propose if the other side decides to
show up for negotiations.
- DOGE: Elon and the Muskrats are just slashing the budget without any
idea of what they are doing. Musk eliminated the government workers who look after nuclear safety
and power grid security. They (and many others) had to be brought back. Musk promised $2 trillion in
savings. So far, he has
saved
$160 billion at best, but has also run up a bill of $135 billion for correcting his mistakes. Our
staff mathematician claims $160B - $135B ≠ $2T. We don't know. Our calculator app doesn't do
trillions.
- Markets: Trump's poorly thought out policies have caused the stock
market to tank (causing trillions in losses), the bond market to panic, and the U.S. dollar to
lose
about 9% of its value since Jan 20. His billionaire cronies don't like this kind of volatility.
- Kristi Noem:
The Secretary of DHS had her purse
snatched
while at a D.C. restaurant, despite a full security detail present. Her $4,000 Gucci purse contained
her driver's license, apartment keys, blank checks, passport, official badge, and $3,000 in cash.
This is getting a lot of attention, and maybe should get more. Think about the things she was
carrying. Why would you need that much cash, plus blank checks, plus a passport? One possibility is
that you want to be prepared to flee the country. Certainly it is unusual.
And Noem is not only careless, but also tone deaf. Forget her bragging about shooting her puppy in
the head. That was before she joined the Cabinet. But wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch and tactical
gear while using the El Salvador gulag as a backdrop for a speech praising Trump suggests she is in
over her head. For a professional politician, she ought to know better. She is not among South
Dakota's best and brightest.
In addition there are many things Trump has done that are not mistakes but also are not popular.
He has made a serious effort to stop scientific research on reducing climate change
(and the accompanying hurricanes, wildfires, floods, and tornadoes), curing diseases, and creating
new industries. He has targeted Head Start and heating oil programs for poor people. He has deported
people without due process and defied the courts on this. He soured all of America's allies on
America. And many more things. Voters don't keep track of all this stuff, but at some point the overall
message is: "Can't they do anything right?" (V)
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