Saturday Report 4/5/25 - Gilded Age Alert! Trump Wrecked the Economy with His Trade Wars — Then Went Golfing While America Burned!

The Best of the Rest of the News…

— What to know about today's nationwide “Hands Off!” protests. While the original idea for the protests was to focus on state capitols and federal buildings, it now appears there probably won’t be anyplace in America where there won’t be some show of disapproval for the way the Trump regime is wrecking America on behalf of Oligarchs, Putin, or for some other reason nobody understands. The organizers say they’ve received at least a quarter-million RSVPs; total attendance will be an order of magnitude larger, at least. I had lunch yesterday with a fellow who has inside information on what’s going on in Africa and across many developing nations; they’re all reaching out to China, since Trump and Musk gutted USAID, and China is rapidly and gleefully taking them — and their natural resources and strategic locations for military bases — into the fold. Did Musk do this because USAID was a big factor in bringing down the apartheid government in South Africa when he was a kid there being chauffeured to elementary school in a Rolls Royce? Or was it because Chinese President Xi asked Russian President Putin to pass along a “favor” request to Trump? Meanwhile, Trump is overseeing what will probably become a second Republican Great Depression (it took 20 years for the Dow to recover from the last one) which is also greatly benefiting Russia and China. And don’t get me started on his gutting our government and his latest announcement that he wants to dump around 80,000 soldiers from our military just as we’re facing the first serious military challenge since WWII (did Putin order him to do this?). Screwing with Social Security, student loans, labor law enforcement, firing scientists, gutting regulatory agencies that protect average people from the avarice of the billionaires: It all adds up to an administration that is fundamentally anti-American and anti-middle class. And now they want to give a $4 trillion tax gift to America’s billionaires. Democrats need to start talking seriously about impeaching this monstrous cult leader who Putin and a handful of turncoat billionaires (with help from five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court) helped put in charge of our country. See you in the streets later today!

— The tariff war begins...as Trump promises a new gilded age. He wrecked America in 74 days. China was the first country to announce retaliatory tariffs, throwing a 34% hit on US agricultural products. More will come as country after country discovers they can’t negotiate with Trump unless they help make his family richer. And that will continue to drive the stock markets of countries around the world down; soon there may well be no safe investments outside of US treasuries and gold. And Trump saying he wants a new gilded age? Apparently, since gilded implies “gold covered,” he thought we were doing really well during the last gilded age (roughly 1870-1913) but, in fact, it was only the morbidly rich who benefited. As Derek Thompson writes for The Atlantic: “By 1880, in the middle of the Gilded Age, if you lived to be 10 years old, you would die at 48, if you’re an American white male, and you would be 5 feet 5 inches tall. You would lead a briefer life and be shorter than your Revolutionary ancestor. And you were one of the lucky ones, because on average, 20 percent of infants would die before age 5. You’re living in an environment where, as America urbanizes, there’s no reliable sewage system. There’s no pure water. There’s no public health.” Yeah, Trump, Vance, and Musk: bring that back. Your billionaire donors will love it and the rest of us are just useless eaters, right?

— Voters Revolt: AOC Crushes Schumer in Shocking Primary Poll. Democrats are craving new, aggressive, progressive leadership: Data for Progress conducted a poll of likely primary voters in New York state, asking how many would support Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez if she took on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for his seat in that body. A shocking 55% supported AOC, with only 38% saying they’d vote for Schumer. Democrats have been in the wilderness ever since Bill Clinton led the party away from its progressive FDR and LBJ roots and into embracing Reagan’s neoliberal policies of low taxes on rich people, corporate deregulation, “the end of big government,” and “the end of welfare as we know it.” Joe Biden was the first Democratic president to repudiate Clinton’s and Obama’s neoliberalism, but he was so ineffective at communicating the great things he was doing that most Americans still thought we were in a recession the week of the 2024 election. Progressives are finding their voices, though, and increasingly the corporate sellout democrats like Jared Golden, Rahm Emanuel, Josh Gottheimer, and Chuck Schumer are finding themselves on the outside looking in. Bernie is pulling crowds as large as 34,000 people, while the Congressional Progressive Caucus is organizing town halls in Red districts all across the country. Corporate Dems suggest it’s just a flash in the pan, but my take is that the days of sucking up to big corporations and hustling big donors are about to come to an end. And the sooner the better.

— Rightwing conspiracy-nut blogger Laura Loomer ordered Trump to gut the senior ranks of our national security apparatus, and he did it! She lives in the dark underbelly of the internet, famous for Putin’s trolls driving narratives, and she apparently took some of those perspectives to Trump this week and suggested he fire a number of senior security officials. It’s not a stretch to think that maybe she got the idea from Putin’s trolls, who convinced her these people weren’t sufficiently loyal to Trump. Which raises the question: What’s the basis of her hold on Trump? Remember when, during the campaign and Melania refused to travel with Trump, Loomer was accompanying him on his big jet with its huge kingsized bed? Or does she know something the rest of us don’t? This apparently required him overriding his new Putin-friendly Director of National Security, which makes it all the more astonishing.

— World News: Trump says, “Free Marine Le Pen,” is using your tax dollars to set up refugee centers in South Africa for white people who want to “flee” to the US, and Pussy Riot warns Americans. Far-right French politician Marine Le Pen was convicted of embezzlement this past week and barred from politics for the next five years. While she’s free on appeal (and the sentence was only for 2 years house arrest), the ban on political activity stands — and Trump is furious, posting to his Nazi-infested social media site “Free Marine Le Pen!” Meanwhile, the US Government is using our tax dollars to rent space in downtown Pretoria, South Africa to house and process white people who want to flee that country. You know, like Musk’s family? (Or are they all over here now?) The New York Times is reporting: “Under Phase One of the program, the United States has deployed multiple teams to convert commercial office space in Pretoria, the capital of South Africa, into ad hoc refugee centers, according to the documents. The teams are studying more than 8,200 requests expressing interest in resettling to the United States and have already identified 100 Afrikaners who could be approved for refugee status. The government officials have been directed to focus particularly on screening white Afrikaner farmers.” And these are the people who say DEI — which does NOT give preference to racial minorities but merely says considering hiring from a larger pool of people than just white men — is some sort of terrible racial discrimination? The blatant white supremacy bias of Trump, Musk, et al has become so impossible to ignore that it’s astonishing our corporate media is still so wary of mentioning it. And, finally, the Russian dissident musical group Pussy Riot held a march/demonstration in New York City this week warning Americans that they’ve already seen this movie in their home country and Americans should pay attention now to the ways Trump is changing our country. They said: “We are here now because we see the (rise) of authoritarian(ism) here. We want to call people to not be silent and we want people to remember to not to give up, even in the difficult conditions — to have hope inside, to have belief.”

— Gilded Age Alert! Trump wrecked the economy with his trade wars — then went golfing while America burned and our dead soldiers were returned! Four American soldiers died during training exercises in Lithuania; when their bodies were transported through the streets of the capitol city, Vilnius, thousands of Lithuanians and much of their countries military turned out to line the streets to pay tribute to them. But Trump couldn’t be bothered to meet their arrival at Dover Air Force Base; instead he chose to attend the LIV golf tournament that Saudi Arabia is apparently paying him tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to promote at his Doral course. Nero had nothing on this guy. And what about that little line in the US Constitution that says: “[N]o Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under [this Constitution], shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Again, he’s committing naked crimes right in front of G-d and the entire world. Will Congress ever wake the hell up?

— Hunter in a Farmer’s World:

Do the fun stuff last

— Wisdom School:

When the Universe Guides You