Trump Is Destroying Everything He Touches by JJ

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Trump Is Destroying Everything He Touches

POSTED BY: JJ
UPDATED: Wednesday, December 10, 2025 07:38
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Tuesday, December 9, 2025 9:53 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump Warns of ‘Dark and Sinister Forces’ as Supreme Court Decision Looms

By Shane Croucher | Dec 09, 2025 at 07:08 AM EST

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-tariffs-supreme-court-ruling-111
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President Donald Trump warned that the Supreme Court ruling against him in a key case on his power to apply tariffs would be the "biggest threat in history to United States National Security."

"We would be financially defenseless," Trump said in an early hours post on Truth Social, pointing to a report that the European Union is planning to apply new tariffs on China. "We would not be allowed to do what others already do!"

Trump said tariffs have "greatly enhanced" national security and that they had made the U.S. the "financially strongest" country in the world, adding: "Only dark and sinister forces would want to see that end!!!"

Supreme Court Weighs Future of Signature Trump Policy

In November, Supreme Court justices heard oral arguments in the case that challenged Trump's executive authority to impose tariffs—his signature economic policy—over the head of Congress.

The court expedited the case after a request from the Trump administration. Justices are yet to make a ruling, one that could upend a foundation stone of Trump's policy agenda.

Lower courts have repeatedly ruled against the administration's authority in imposing broad and sweeping tariffs on an emergency basis.

Trump has liberally used tariffs since retaking office in January. He sees them as a vital tool of American economic power, one that can protect and rebuild American manufacturing and production sectors by deterring unfair global competition.

The Republican president has also used tariffs to punish U.S. rivals and foes, such as China for its role in the fentanyl trade and Russian trading partners for their role in aiding the Kremlin's war on Ukraine.

But critics of the tariffs—a tax paid by the importer—say they are pushing up inflation and can deprive American firms of raw materials and other products they need.

Moreover, they say Trump has also used tariffs aggressively against allies, weakening vital strategic partners that the U.S. should be helping to strengthen.

And they have prompted trading partners to hit back with their own tariffs on American imports, hurting U.S. exporters.

What Supreme Court Justices Are Thinking on Tariffs

A potential majority in a ruling against the tariffs would almost certainly bring together the court’s three liberal justices and at least two conservatives.

Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, both Trump appointees, and Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to be the most likely to rule against the president.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose tariffs, but Trump has claimed extraordinary power to act without congressional approval by declaring national emergencies under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

At the hearing for oral arguments, Gorsuch signaled he was troubled by the idea that Congress could give away its power over taxes to the president.

"The power to reach into the pockets of the American people is just different and it’s been different since the founding," Gorsuch said, when disputes over taxes helped spark the American Revolution.

Both Barrett and Roberts asked questions indicating at least some unease about how the case should come out, and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas also could support the administration.

Kavanaugh asked about the 10 percent worldwide tariffs imposed by President Richard Nixon under a predecessor to IEEPA that used very similar language.

Understanding Nixon’s tariffs, which were upheld by an appellate court but never reached the Supreme Court, "is real important to deciding this case correctly," he said.

Barrett and Kavanaugh seized on arguments made by the challengers that the president could order a complete trade embargo but not impose tariffs of even 1 percent under the emergency law.

"Doesn’t it seem like it would make sense, then, that Congress would want the president to use something that was…weaker medicine than completely shutting down trade as leverage to try to get a foreign nation to do something?" Barrett asked.

Tariff Revenues Defy Trump Claims

The president has said that the U.S. is taking in "trillions" of dollars from import tariffs and other investments. But the actual numbers are far less than that. Treasury Department data shows that revenue from tariffs in the last fiscal year was nearly $195 billion. In the current fiscal year, tariffs have earned around $31 billion so far.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, December 9, 2025 2:09 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

It's moot.

SCOTUS will side with Trump on this.

Your article written by "experts" who are always wrong about everything isn't worth reading.

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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 7:35 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump Says That You Are the Problem
Everything is perfect. Why aren’t you grateful?

By Paul Krugman | Dec 10, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-says-that-you-are-the-problem

Last night Donald Trump gave an important speech on the economy in Pennsylvania — supposedly in a working-class area, although the actual venue was a luxury casino resort. The event was initially touted as the start of an “affordability tour,” the first of a series of speeches intended to reverse Trump’s cratering approval on his handling of inflation and the economy. A number of news analyses suggested that he would use the occasion to blame Democrats for the economy’s troubles.

That was never going to happen. Trump did, of course, take many swipes at Joe Biden, as well as attacking immigrants, women and windmills. But to blame Democrats for the economy’s problems he would have to admit that the Trump economy has problems. And the speech was important because it revealed that he won’t make any such admission, and will continue to gaslight the public.

On Monday Politico interviewed Trump, asking him, among other things, what grade he would give the current economy. His answer: “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.”

In fact, until very recently Trump wouldn’t even accept the reality that ordinary Americans don’t share his triumphalism. When Fox News’s Laura Ingraham asked him a month ago why people are anxious about the economy, Trump replied

I don’t know they are saying that. The polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had.

Since then Trump and his minions seem to have come around to admitting that Americans are, in fact, unhappy with the state of the economy. But if the economy is A+++++, why don’t people see it? The problem can’t possibly lie with him — so it must lie with you. “The American people don’t know how good they have it.”

I put that line in quotes because it isn’t a caricature or a paraphrase. It is, in fact, literally what Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said the other day:

We’ve made a lot of gains, but remember, we’ve got this embedded inflation from the Biden years, where mainstream media, whether it’s Greg Ip at the Wall Street Journal, toxic Paul Krugman at New York Times or former Vice Chair, Alan Blinder, all said it was a vibecession. The American people don’t know how good they have it.

Incidentally, I appreciate the personal plug. Trump has already called me a “deranged bum.” Now Bessent says I’m “toxic.” Give me a fake peace prize, and I’ll have all the honors anyone could ask for.

Anyway, I may not be a political strategist, but I don’t think “You’re all a bunch of ingrates” is a winning message. It was, however, really the only message Trump could deliver, given his utter lack of empathy or humility.

At this point I could bombard you with a lot of data showing that the economy is not, in fact, A+++++. But it isn’t a disaster area, at least not yet. So why are Americans feeling so down? The main culprit is Trump himself.

First, during the 2024 campaign Trump repeatedly promised to bring consumer prices way down beginning on “day one.” We’re now 11 months in, prices are still rising, and voters who believed him feel, with reason, that they were lied to. Last night Trump insisted that prices are, in fact, coming way down. Again, “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” is a self-destructive political strategy.

Second, Trump would be in much better political shape right now if he had basically continued Biden’s policies, with only a few cosmetic changes. When he took office inflation was on a declining trajectory. Consumer sentiment was relatively favorable at the start of 2025. Americans were still angry about high prices, but the inflation surge of 2021-3 had happened on Biden’s watch and was receding into the past. My guess is that many voters would have accepted Trump’s claims that high prices were Democrats’ fault and given him the benefit of the doubt about the economy’s future if he had simply done nothing drastic and left policies mostly as they were.

Instead, he brought chaos: Massive and massively unpopular tariffs, DOGE disruptions, masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street, saber-rattling and war crimes in the Caribbean. Many swing voters, I believe, supported Trump out of nostalgia for the relative calm that prevailed before Covid struck. They didn’t think they were voting for nonstop political PTSD.

And there’s more to come. Health insurance costs are about to spike, because Republicans refuse to extend Biden-era subsidies. Inflation may pick up in the next few months as retailers, who have so far absorbed much of the cost of Trump’s tariffs, begin passing them on to consumers.

So the “affordability tour” is off to a disastrous start. And it won’t get better, because while Trump insists that the problem is you, it’s actually him. And he isn’t going to change.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 7:38 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

There hasn't been any cratering on Trump's approval. He's still above where Biden, Obama and GWB were all at during this time in their 2nd term.

Keep dreaming, Paul.

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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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