There is an argument that the country has been deeply divided for many years. The anti-Obama rhetoric was strong. Some of it was political. Much of it was racial. The election of our “favorite” Donald divided the electorate among the 40% who supported him and the rest who saw him. Almost a year-and-a-half into Donald’s lone term in the Oval Office, we thought we would check in with supporters with some updates. As The Donald Turns presents, “Hey, Red States.”
As The Donald Turns; Hey, Red States
- Hey Red States, in case you missed it, Donald started a trade war with China. Sure, he says it isn’t one, but yeah, it kinda is, and it is one the United States cannot win. Sure, Donald talked tough during the campaign, but the majority of the country did not believe him. He talks tough about a lot of things, but rarely comes through. Two weeks ago, Donald issued $50 billion in tariffs on Chinese imports into the US. That means, the cost to the Chinese manufacturers will ultimately be added to the price of the goods and thus the US consumer will pay the price.
Donald said China would not retaliate. Of course, China immediately retaliated. And then retaliated again days later. Wednesday China issued a list of similar duties on key American imports including soybeans, planes, cars, tobacco, beef and chemicals. So, Hey, Red State cattle ranchers, and soy bean farmer farmers, tobacco growers in the Carolinas and Kentucky, auto assembly line workers, and drug manufacturers, are you winning yet? Just asking, because your jobs are in jeopardy if this sticks. Not to mention that tariffs raise prices on commodities and are a regressive tax on low income families.
Here is the biggest challenge with Donald’s Twitter muscles. Let’s say you are Boyd Crowder running your Oxy drug ring in the rural mountain towns of Kentucky and you are doing fine. But you decide you can get tough with Wyn Duffy who has been flooding the market with some of his own supplies. You threaten Duffy. The problem is Duffy also owns millions of your debt. What happens? Duffy, and his cohorts, can crush you any time they want. You picked the wrong fight and have no allies left. Your oxy and meth business in rural Kentucky is in jeopardy.
Now, we know if you did not watch the TV series Justified, the previous story has you scratching your head. But our Red State friends…they are getting what we are throwing down. In international terms. China owns trillions of dollars of US debt, and Donald is picking a fight with them. The US has few allies in the fight because Donald exited the Trans Pacific Partnership for no reason other than ego. The US is on its own in this fight. If China flexes it muscles and stops buying US Treasury notes on the debt agreement, the US economy will crater within days. There is your master businessman, Red States
- Now to make you Red State folks happy, Donald says he is sending US Military to the border with Mexico. In one speech, Donald says the US has open borders and it is unsafe. Then in another speech he says he has done more to stop illegal immigration than any president ever in history. Confused? So is he. So how did it start? The Three People on A Sofa Show ran a story that a hoard of invaders left Honduras and was running through Mexico to get to the US and invade our country. This was a real Taco Bell Run For the Border emergency. Since Steve Doocey of Fox was clearly running the immigration policy, Donald saw the urgency and declared that he would be sending the military to defend the border with Mexico.
There were a few glitches here:
1) This hoard of brown skinned marauders was really an annual political pilgrimage into Mexico that shines a light on the plight of those in danger in Central America. They ask for asylum in Mexico, a few get it, and the rest are put on a bus and sent home. Never more than 60 have ever made it to the US for asylum in any given year.
2) Donald said the brown people were coming to take advantage of DACA. Of course unless they also had a time travel machine to transport them to 2007, none of them were eligible for DACA, but these are Donald facts.
3) People who passed high school government classes knew that it is illegal for active US military to serve as police of US territory under Posse Comitatus laws.
4) Donald announced, via Twitter, that he was sending the military, but forgot to tell the Defense Department, so there were no actual plans in place.
To help clarify how he is going to defend the southern border, Donald sent a blonde Norwegian to the White House podium. The irony was Donald-esque. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen admitted that what the president meant was that he would deploy the National Guard to work with the border patrol. And what the president meant was that since he has not declared war or a national emergency, he cannot federalize the National Guard and will be asking for the cooperation of the governors from the border states.
What did not get clarified was how from April 2016-April 20017, border crossings were at a 40 year low, but in the first full year of Donald’s administration, there was a sharp increase. Maybe they wanted jobs building the wall? The bigger issue that was skipped was how the biggest number of illegal immigrants every year come from people over-staying their temporary visas, not border crossings.
The secretary had no details on length of deployment, costs, plans or strategies. But for you Red Staters, at least we are stopping those people from coming and taking the jobs Americans don’t want anyway.
- And hey Red Staters, here is some good news on that border wall you chanted for all during the 2016 campaign. It is well under way. They have started building it!!! That $1.6 billion in the Omnibus spending bill is going to build the wall. Congrats Red States!!! Now for those of us who follow facts, we know the money was earmarked specifically for repairs to existing border wall/fencing and could not be used for new construction. So, what happened? Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen said even if it is just repairs to 100 miles of existing fencing, since it is happening under Donald’s watch, they consider it to be the Trump Wall. Alright Red Staters, 100 miles down, only 2,500 more to go!
- Lastly, we know we all like social media. Red Staters, Russian Bots…we all follow Donald on Twitter. We all retweet pictures of him with the Easter Bunny, when he his telling kids the White House does not have a name. But some of you are not like our business proposal.
Donald has been going after Amazon and its business relationship with the US Postal Service. Of course, he is factually wrong, as he is often prone to be. USPS is losing money off daily postal services like mail and postage. It also is hamstrung by a federal law that mandates it annually has 50 years’ worth of pension funding for current and future retirees. No other company anywhere has that mandate. Donald’s real reason is he hates Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos who also owns the Washington Post. But as Donald trashes Amazon, the stock craters and people’s personal wealth and their 401ks suffer because of the pettiness of the president. Something has to give.
We have done the preliminary leg work but implore the numerous financial wizards who read this column to help with the logistics. Our staff has examined the current valuation of Twitter. We have seen the current net value of Jeff Bezos. You see where this is going right? Even you Red Staters? Bezos buys Twitter and then all of a sudden, there is one account that notoriously violates the Terms of Service agreement that quickly disappears.
What would we all do for entertainment? Hey, our Red State friends tell us Roseanne is back on.
