If you look past the Matt Walsh crap Hasan gets to talking about people who are passing as the gender they identify as. And that is one reason why the red states are pushing so hard to trans block kids from using puberty blockers while allowing them for cis kids, they work and are safe but the trans kids won’t go through the wrong puberty giving them the wrong features we normally associate with genders. These people are terrified they won’t recognize who is trans because they pass so well. It shouldn’t be the issue I know as many wonderful trans people who had to go through the wrong puberty are still the gender they know and identify as. Sadly two things are at work. The two groups working together to stop trans positive or any positive LGBTQ+ inclusion / equality are the fundamentalist religious groups who think the entire world should run according to their faith … yet they have different faiths so … and the republican politicians who use it as a way to win votes and keep their base outraged. Both groups have their own agenda and they both ignore science and facts to create the narrative / outrage they desire rather than create a peaceful loving inclusive society. Oh I guess I forgot the white supremacist Nazi’s but they really fall under the Fundamentalist Christian banner right? Hugs.
Category: MAGA / Republican
In The Republican War On Libraries
This came in email a few days ago. The email has a few stories in it that are pertinent to our interests. This was going to be a snippet post of those, but as I read this, I realized everyone needs to read it all, because there’s not much opinionating in it, but/and the actual information does not stop.
The Institute for Museum and Library Services Was Just Gutted
Kelly Jensen Mar 31, 2025
Today, members of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gutted the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS). As of this afternoon, all staff members have been placed on administrative leave. They received a letter from the Director of Human Resources that the leave would be paid for 90 days and that no one will be allowed on IMLS property during that time.
The union representing IMLS staff, AFGE Local 3403, indicated that the decision to fire staff came after a short meeting between DOGE and IMLS leadership. Everyone working at IMLS was required to return government property before exiting the workplace.
Email addresses for all IMLS staff were being disabled today. Those with questions or concerns over IMLS funding will no longer be able to reach the individual or individuals with whom they’d been working.
Further, all processing work on 2025 funding applications is over and there is no information about the status of awards that have already been granted for the year. The union believes most grants will simply be terminated.
IMLS makes up .0046% of the federal budget.
Two weeks ago, President Trump issued an Executive Order targeting funds allocated to libraries and museums nationwide. The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is a federal agency that distributes fund approved by Congress to state libraries, as well as library, museum, and archival grant programs. IMLS is the only federal agency that provides funds to libraries. The Executive Order states that the functions of the IMLS have to be reduced to “statutory functions” and that in places that are not statutory, expenses must be cut as much as possible.
One week later, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) entered the IMLS offices. Many at IMLS were prepared to see their jobs disappear, but that didn’t quite happen. Instead, DOGE installed a new Acting Director of the agency, Deputy Secretary of Labor Keith E. Sonderling.
It wasn’t just a new Acting Director, though. The IMLS took on a new direction thanks to the Executive Order and DOGE. It would now operate “in lockstep with this Administration to enhance efficiency and foster innovation. We will revitalize IMLS and restore focus on patriotism, ensuring we preserve our country’s core values, promote American exceptionalism and cultivate love of country in future generations.”
The new goal of the administration with the IMLS is for it to function as a propaganda machine. This wouldn’t be the first nor the last federal cultural institution to see its mission shift from serving the needs and interests of all of America. On March 28, the administration would issue another Executive Order, this time demanding that the Smithsonian, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and other federal museums stop the “revisionist movement” through displays and installations that showcase American history and culture as “racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed.”
Such institutions are now to engage in “igniting the imagination of young minds, honoring the richness of American history and innovation, and instilling pride in the hearts of all Americans.” The Executive Order specifically notes that the Independence National History Park see time and energy poured into these pro-patriotic efforts in order to be prepared for the 250th American anniversary events in 2026.
The defunding and gutting of the IMLS did not happen without strong support shown for public library and museum resources across the country, both on the ground and in congress.
On March 24, the board of the Institution of Museum and Library Services drafted a letter that went to Sonderling as their new Acting Director. The letter outlines the essential functions of the agency, making it clear that any cuts to the IMLS would have a direct and long-lasting impact on public museums and libraries nationwide. It emphasized that an Executive Order alone is not enough to change the functions or services provided by the IMLS.
All such statutory obligations may not be discontinued or delayed under an Executive Order or other executive action. Sections 9133 and 9176 of the Act affirm IMLS’s duty to obligate and disburse funds to grantees, subject only to the availability of appropriations, not to executive discretion. Any failure to fulfill these legal obligations or to reduce staffing or program operations below the minimum required to meet statutory mandates would place the agency in noncompliance with Congressional intent.
Several members of Congress also pushed back against the Executive Order. On March 26, a bipartisan coalition consisting of Senators Jack Reed, Kirsten Gillibrand, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski sent a letter to Sonderling as well. The letter again defines the role of the IMLS and its obligation when it comes to funding institutions across the US.
Libraries and museums play a vital role in our communities. Libraries offer access for all to essential information and engagement on a wide range of topics, including skills and career training, broadband, and computing services. IMLS grants enable libraries to develop services in every community throughout the nation, including people of diverse geographic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds, individuals with disabilities, residents of rural and urban areas, Native Americans, military families, veterans, and caregivers. Museums serve not only as centers for education but also as drivers of local economic development. The IMLS Office of Museum Services is the largest dedicated source of investment in our nation’s museums, which typically support more than 700,000 jobs and contribute $50 billion annually to the U.S. economy. IMLS funding plays a significant role in this economic impact by helping museums reach more visitors and spur community development.
While that letter circulated, another was passed around the House of Representatives. Led by Representatives Dina Titus (NV-01) and Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), the letter was shared among House members. It urged them to sign on in asking for the administration to reconsider its Executive Order related to IMLS funding and structure.
Public libraries and public library associations nationwide have spoken loudly about how potential cuts to IMLS could impact state and local level services. Among the services that could most quickly and directly impact library users would be the end of digital resource availability through apps like Libby.
It is worth noting that despite some viral claims made online in the wake over fears of IMLS funding cuts, OverDrive’s Libby app and other similar digital resource programs are not funded by IMLS directly. They are, however, sometimes made available in individual states via funding received via IMLS. This is a crucial distinction. Libby and other eresources are not creations of libraries themselves by third-party systems that license access to materials. Libraries pay for that access.
Ebook and digital audiobook services are not funded by IMLS money in every state, and because of how many different types of ebook and digital audiobooks are available–indicative of how many different audiences and needs are being met–essential services without the Libby name recognition are being overlooked. In states where such services are made available through IMLS money, many times the apps and resources are not explicitly named by state funding, making it difficult to determine where such impact would be felt immediately. For example, Indiana libraries use IMLS funding for the Indiana Digital Library, which among its many databases and services provides access to Libby.
Find below a roundup of state library associations, local-level libraries, social media library workers/advocates, and/or local/regional news sources who have identified where and how IMLS cuts would directly impact their state libraries. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but you’ll see within the states here, many rely on IMLS funds to help acquire, fund, and maintain essential digital resources:
- Alabama
- Alaska
- California
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- Florida
- Georgia
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Maine
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina (the reddit post is from a verifiable news source)
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
The future of IMLS remains uncertain, and with ongoing efforts to rewrite the truth of America via Executive Orders and whitewashing cultural institutions funded and respected by American taxpayers, it’s essential to continue speaking up on behalf of your local library, as well as one of your local library’s most crucial federal agencies.
Those which stand to be most devastated by potential cuts are rural and small libraries, who are also most impacted by the administration’s dismantling of the Department of Education and the United States Postal Service.
Whether or not Trump and his DOGE team have the legal authority to shut down the IMLS completely remains to be seen. Eliminating all staff and pausing all funding certainly defies the administration’s own order that only activities outside of “statutory requirements” be touched. Expect a lawsuit to be filed in the courts, much as we’ve seen with the other slash-and-burn efforts taken by an executive branch overstepping its constitutional authority.
Interesting That It’s Tech Magazines That Are Covering News We Can Use
Trump Admin Has a New Target: People Who Aggressively Believe in Nothing
The fight against extremism marches on.
By Lucas Ropek Published April 16, 2025
Over the past decade, there’s been a lot of talk about “ideological extremism” on both the left and right, and the government has often claimed that warped political beliefs are encouraging Americans to commit violent acts. However, under the new Trump administration, the government now seems prepared to go after people who don’t believe in anything at all.
Independent journalist Ken Klippenstein writes that the government has a new target in its war on extremism: nihilists—more specifically, Nihilist Violent Extremists, or NVEs. The government has reportedly come up with this designation as a kind of catchall for the culprits behind various violent incidents, and the term has shown up in several recent court cases.
Who is a true NVE? That’s a good question, and the answer is: anybody. Klippenstein aptly notes that the term has a conveniently loose definition that could be applied to all sorts of different groups that the government considers undesirable. He writes that the NVE term…
…has the beauty of being elastic enough to apply to individuals and groups who are the focus of the administration’s war on all kinds of Americans. Nihilism also avoids all of the rusty and problematic words of the past: subversive, dissident, insurrectionist, revolutionary, or even “anti-government” (the Biden term).
Klippenstein writes that the term was recently used in the legal proceedings of Nikita Casap, a teen from Wisconsin who was arrested in February and charged with murdering his parents. Law enforcement claims Casap also planned to assassinate President Trump to spur a civil war in the U.S. But there are plenty of people who have been accused of committing violent crimes for vaguely anarchistic reasons, be it people like Luigi Mangione, or the gaggle of people of who have recently been arrested for vandalizing and firebombing Teslas, or the Zizians.
The road to this new low in law enforcement terminology has been long. While “ideological extremism” has always existed in the U.S., it became a political (and, eventually, policy) issue in the modern era during the Clinton years, when incidents like Ruby Ridge and the Oklahoma City bombing brought fears of the rightwing militia movement into the mainstream. During the Bush years, 9/11 spurred a war on Islamist extremism—both in the U.S. and all over the world. Then, during the Biden years, the specter of January 6th encouraged the government to declare a war on “domestic terrorism.”
In short, the government has always found reasons to justify its federal police powers, though few of them have ever been as sloppily constructed as the current government’s newest fearmongering buzzword. (snip)
Two From Clay Jones
Home Grown Tyranny by Clay Jones
It’s getting worse Read on Substack
Let’s make one thing clear. The immigrants the Trump regime seized off the street and sent to a Salvadoran prison were NOT deported. To be deported, you have to go through due process. Immigrants who are deported usually have to face a judge. The people sent to the prison in El Salvador never faced a judge before being shipped off or received due process. They were not deported. They were kidnapped.
And this prison in El Salvador, where the president referred to himself as the “coolest” dictator, isn’t so much a prison as it is a concentration camp or a gulag.
Mona Charen wrote, “We are outsourcing torture and murder. What kind of president, what kind of political party, can look at that with satisfaction?” And what American can not at least wonder about their own security?”
Speaking to the “cool” dictator while he was visiting the White House yesterday (and you thought it got weird when Zelensky visited), Donald Trump told President Nayib Bukele (He deserves a “sic” too. Sic) that “home growns” should be next. He said, “The home growns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough.” By the way, the cool dictator didn’t wear a suit and tie either. See what you started, Elon?
But what does Trump mean by “home growns?” He’s referencing American citizens, even those born in the United States, that he deems to be criminals, and they should be sent to rot in a Salvadoran super-max prison where human rights are not a thing.
Then Trump told reporters, “I just asked the president — it’s this massive complex that he built, jail complex — I said, ‘Can you build some more of them please?’ As many as we can get out of our country.”
He added, “If they’re criminals, and if they hit people with baseball bats over the head that happen to be 90 years old, if they rape 87-year-old women in Coney Island, Brooklyn, yeah, yeah that includes them.” Or, if they testify against you, or do their jobs in the Justice Department in prosecuting people who start insurrections and steal classified documents, or they draw mean cartoons about you, yeah, yeah, that includes them.
The prison Trump is referring to and that he wants duplicated several times over is a so-called “terrorism confinement center” (CECOT). Prisoners are kept in their cells for at least 23-and-a-half hours a day. They are starved and beaten. There’s no fresh water. People are tortured. There have been 368 deaths in the prison, and it’s only been around since 2022.
Trump said, “They’re great facilities. Very strong facilities. They don’t play games.” You know, games like due process, civil rights, and human rights…”games” like that.
Trump claims all the bad people he sent there without due process are gang members. Still, there’s a new report that claims 90 percent are not gang members, including Abrego Garcia, 29, a Maryland father who was sent to El Salvador on March 15, despite a 2019 court order prohibiting the return to his home country for fear of persecution by a gang there.
The Supreme Court has ordered the Trump regime to bring Garcia back home. The regime has admitted Garcia was mistakenly sent to this gulag, but the regime doesn’t want to bring him back. The dictator, El Salvador’s dictator, not ours, refuses to send Garcia back to the US. The decision by SCOTUS was unanimous. In case you’re a Republican, “unanimous” means all of them. Do you know how rare it is for all nine members of the Supreme Court to agree on anything? They can’t agree on lunch. There was a near revolt the time it was Clarence’s turn to choose, and he picked Blimpies.
So, if the regime can snatch legal residents off the street, then why can’t they do the same to US citizens? You may believe the Constitution protects you, and yeah…it’s supposed to. But the Constitution didn’t protect Abrego Garcia, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mahmoud Khalil, or Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested yesterday during an interview as part of his application for US citizenship. Ozturk, Khalil, and Mahdawi were arrested and then detained in Louisiana for protesting Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.
If you do get snatched up and sent away, you won’t be able to argue for your constitutional rights from a concentration camp in Central America that doesn’t even have toilets. The people who would argue for your rights may not even know you’re missing until you’re swatting at flying buzzy stingy things in a gulag in a Salvadoran mangrove swamp. They have jungles, snakes, giant spiders, crocodiles, gang bangers, and Blimpies down there. You won’t like it. I have two friends from El Salvador, and neither wants to go back…ever. And they weren’t in a concentration camp.
You know how people look at Indiana and say, “I don’t wanna be stuck there.” It’s kinda the same with Latin America and El Salvador. It’s the Indiana of the Americas.
Douglas Dunn, a friend of mine, posted on this cartoon at Facebook, “You are only as legal — you are only as much a U.S. citizen — as the nearest ICE agent (or his boss) says you are, if they can take you WITHOUT DUE PROCESS so you never get the chance to prove you are a citizen.” Doug is a great writer. He writes gooder than I do.
Trump has made it clear that he won’t bring you back, even if a federal court orders it, even if that court is the Supreme Court voting 9-0. Even Clarence and Sammy ordered Trump to bring Garcia back…with some Blimpies.
They can’t really start deporting American citizens, can they?
Last Friday, Nicole Micheroni, an American immigration lawyer born in Massachusetts, received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security (dog-killer Kristi Noem’s agency), saying her parole status has been revoked and she must self-deport within seven days. The letter (which was snail-mailed with a legal stamp and everything, so you know they’re serious) also said if she doesn’t self deport, then the government will take action. The letter ended with, “Again, DHS is terminating your parole. Do not attempt to remain in the United States – the federal government will find you. Please depart the United States immediately.”
Micheroni made calls and found out the letter was legitimate but intended for someone else. Maybe DHS is practicing for when they do start kicking Americans out of America. But still, if I was Ms. Micheroni, I’d sleep with one eye open for the next seven days, or four years, give or take.
Creative note: I’m never comfortable drawing myself, so consider this kinda-sorta me. When I put myself in a cartoon, I’m afraid I’ll come off as having delusions of grandeur, as though I think I’m important enough that the regime is paying attention to me. I also don’t want to be too kind to myself or even make myself too ugly. I’m still not happy with the self-caricature GoComics is using now (and I never sent this to them. I sent it to Cartooning for Peace. But maybe I should leave it alone in case the regime uses it like a mugshot when they come looking to snatch me off the street and send me to El Salvador.
Music note: I listened to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Are you a Beatles or Stones person? Tell me in the comments. I’m more Beatles than Stones.
Drawn in 30 seconds (Sorry for the earworm): (snip-Go see)
Chunky Cult by Clay Jones
There’s something wrong with Trump’s scale Read on Substack
Rep. Jack Kimble tweeted that “President Trump is now 6’3” 224 pounds with 4.8% body fat. We might lose him to the NFL draft.”
Captain Barbarella, the physician to the president (sic), failed to hide in his memorandum about Donald Trump’s physical that he’s a Trump sycophant. Or at least he failed to hide that he was controlled by a member of the cult.
His doctor’s name is actually Captain Sean Barbabella and NOT Barbarella, the title of the 1968 Jane Fonda space sex movie (I’ve never seen it). If congressman Kimble can accidentally refer to the El Salvadore President Nayib Bukele as President Bukake, I can use Barbarella. Also, I don’t know what “bukake” means because I’m a good boy.
While the report of the exam looks like it was written by a real doctor in most of the details, there are still little bits included to make it political and cultist.
For example, when the memorandum mentions his hearing, it mentions “scarring on the right ear from a gunshot wound,” reminding us that Trump was shot is a superhero to survive it (unlike that sucker standing behind him). The doc also wrote that Trump’s “active lifestyle continues to contribute significantly to his well-being,” with one of those activities being his “frequent victories in golf events,” which makes him “fully fit” to be president (sic).
So it’s not the golfing that makes him physically fit to be president, but the golf victories. See what he did there? It’s like the champion is a Greek Adonis, but all the losers are donut-eating hose beasts. Have you seen John Daly? He also claims he’s 215 pounds.
Just how physically active is golfing when you don’t walk the course? Trump doesn’t even like stairs. Yes, there are elevators in the White House, and fortunately for Trump, one of them is a freight elevator. That brings us to Trump’s weight.
Captain Barbarella reports that Captain Big Mac only weighs 224 pounds. He also reports that Trump is 75 inches tall, which is six feet and three inches. I call bullshit.
Here’s what the White House released:
Unless you care about the president’s (sic) health (and I do not), it doesn’t matter to you or me what he weighs or how tall he is. What is important is that they’re dishonest. What’s important is the depth into which this regime sinks the cult into the government.
Trump, who is 78, needs to appear as a Superman to his cult. I’m shocked the memo mentions he takes aspirin for cardiac prevention. As we’ve learned, they lie about everything.
Right now, the regime is lying to the Supreme Court by claiming they can’t have a man they illegally snatched off the street and sent to a prison in El Salvador brought back to this country.
When Trump was running for president in 2016, Dr. Harold Bornstein stated that Trump would be the “healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” A couple of years later, we learned that Trump had dictated that letter, which didn’t surprise anyone. A doctor should lose his medical license over that. And it wouldn’t surprise us to learn he dictated “224” and “75 inches” to Captain Barbarella and wouldn’t allow him to mention that Trump’s cholesterol is just Big Mac Secret Sauce. His first White House physician was a lying alcoholic lunatic, Dr. Ronny Jackson, who doesn’t practice medicine anymore and is now in a place where he can’t hurt anybody, Congress.
Ronny Jackson claimed that Trump could live to be 200, and judging from the way our luck works, that might be true.
The memo does show that despite spreading debunked lies about vaccines, like his Health Secretary does, Trump is up to date on vaccines.
The part we should care about, and is more absurd than claiming he weighs 224 pounds, is the claim he scored 30 out of 30 on a cognitive test. I checked to be sure the memo didn’t state that he also has hands that are not tiny.
Anyone who believes Trump, the shark boat battery guy, scored 30 out of 30 on a cognitive test needs to take a cognitive test. I don’t believe this doctor would let us know if Trump scored less than 30.
Trump’s last presidential physical had him at 244 pounds. His 2023 arrest in Georgia listed him at 215 (they don’t weigh the prisoners but take their word for how much they weigh), and this exam says he’s 224.
If Trump does weigh 224 pounds, then that’s 224 pounds of walking/talking bullshit.
The one number that’s accurate about Trump is 34, as in 34 felony convictions.
Creative note: I still have a few other ideas I wrote last week that I want to get to, but I knew last night that I needed to cover this today. This idea hit me shortly after I woke up.
Music Note: I listened to The Beatles.
Drawn in 30 Seconds (with music): Sorry for the earworm. (Snip-go see/listen!)
More ugliness from republicans
Let’s talk about Johnson admitting they’re cutting Medicaid….
A tear yet to be shed
In the time since the first European man stepped foot on the soil of these shores, we have done the cringeworthy all too often, but now and again we do that which allows us to still stand tall. My father’s Uncle Dutch went to fight in WW2 and brought back pictures of the horrors of the concentration camps. We stopped that! We stood against the Fascist Nazi. And we should be proud of that.
I am sure that there were people then who believed the Jews, Gypsy’s and Gays were criminals deserving of their internment in concentration camps. I’m sure there were some who believed that Jews had no right to live in Germany. I’m sure that there some who believed that Gypsy’s were inherently criminal, whether they had a criminal record or not. I’m sure that there were some who convinced themselves that anyone who was gay was deserving of all abuse. I’m sure there were some. And, unfortunately, too many others went along with it.
Just like these German men, we will one day be forced to come face to face with what we have done, what we have allowed, because some charismatic charlatan said we should.
It’s a sad day, America.
Hugs.
Truth Hurts
I’m feeling a bit dark today. I’ll lighten the next one up a bit. Hugs! randy
Fools and Damned Fools
Over the past days, our nation, the world even, has been swept through the raging tides of a thief. It was not enough to give tax breaks to the rich, it was not enough to devastate the safety net of the poor, it was now to be the middle class upon the chopping block. And, fools that they were, they rooted him on as he decimated their retirement, made their groceries more expensive, and created a tax on every product they would purchase.
Perhaps I’m “too strong in my opinion”? Perhaps I’m “being unfair to a great patriotic American who only wants to secure a great future for our nation”? Ok, let me ask you who, like me, have invested all that you can into your 401k: How easily can you move your money around? Can you do it within a week? A couple of days? How quickly does your 401k manager react to emergency move requests? How much would you lose in transaction fees? While every middle class American who has their money locked into investments had little choice but to take it up the ass from this particular ass clown’s fuckery with the world economy, his friends and colleague’s pulled some mad money out of their lobbyist bribe fund and made a fortune.
I look forward to the moment the damned fools that voted for this man look deep into their mirror and realize that while he tanked their 401k’s (interestingly every damn republican administration has and twice now on this one), everyone with an ability to move large amounts of money around raped huge rewards.
Well, shit. Nevermind.
Boy, I am sure tired of all this winning.
Hugs Everyone. Good Luck. -randy
Oh, and btw, Liz – not buying it. You ain’t gonna do a damn thing.
maga Cage Match
Everything? by Clay Jones
Morons will be morons. Read on Substack
Elon Musk got into a little tiffy-tiff with Peter Navarro, and I have to say, I like seeing these guys destroy each other.
You can’t choose a side between Elon and Navarro. You can only hope both lose. It’s like trying to choose a side during the war between Iraq and Iran (the US picked Iraq), or when the Dallas Cowboys play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, or when the Atlanta Braves plays of the two baseball teams in Florida, or a fight between the insurance emu or Flo from Progressive, or Ice T in Carshield commercials vs gutter filter commercials, or a contest between Nickelback and the Kars4Kids song, or a battle between ketchup on hotdogs and Domino’s Pizza.
Side note: I just Googled to make sure it is Ice T in those stupid Carshield commercials, and just because I’m trying to be accurate and informative to serve you, I’m going to get thousand of Carshield ads in all my shit now. You’re welcome.
If you see two fucknuts in MAGA caps in a slap fight, you don’t choose a side, and for the love of god, you don’t break it up. You should get some popcorn and encourage each fighter. “Kick him in the nuts! Yeah, that’s how you do it. Hey, other guy. Are you going to let him get away with kicking you in the nuts like that?”
In case you don’t remember, Peter Navarro is a lying sack of turds. He was the director of the National Trade Council in the first Trump administration (sic), then director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. Now, in Trump 2.0 (sic), he’s senior counselor for Trade and Manufacturing. He’s also the first official from Trump’s White House (sic) to serve time in prison for trying to steal the 2020 election. Now, there are at least two felons in the White House.
This week, Navarro “guaranteed” the Trump tariff war will not bring a recession, just like he guaranteed there wouldn’t be a pandemic from COVID-19. Instead of investing in stocks, I’d rather place wagers on Peter Navarro being wrong about things.
But what’s going on between him and Elon?
Last Saturday, a poster on Twitter/X defended Navarro’s intellect as a voice on trade. This is like when a MAGAt tries to tell us that Trump knows what he’s doing. Navarro is a big part of Trump’s trade policies. Musk replied that Navarro’s Harvard Ph.D. suggested he had more ego than brains and that he “ain’t built shit.”
Musk has criticized Trump’s tariff war, and the two-day stock market crash, before coming back and crashing again, cost Elon at least $18 billion in Tesla stock. It’s kinda difficult to tell someone the tariffs are working when that someone just lost $18 billion because of the tariffs.
Then, Elon addressed an Italian political party (think of Nazis with risotto) by video and said, “Both Europe and the United States should move, ideally, in my view, to a zero-tariff situation, effectively creating a free trade zone between Europe and North America.” That goes against Trump’s stance (for now), whose trade policy is wildly going in the opposite direction.
Navarro, who has been defending Trump’s tariffs, has said Trump’s tariffs will bring in over $600 billion in new annual revenue. That can’t be true at all because Trump is calling on other nations to negotiate, so these tariffs will eventually be reduced, either by negotiations or Trump chickening out because his balls dropped off again. If that is Trump’s intention (not his balls dropping off but reducing the tariffs), then we won’t be getting new revenue every year of $600 billion. But, if we do get $600 billion revenue from these Trump tariffs, it will be from American consumers. Navarro should be capable of understanding this because he has a PhD in economics from Harvard.
Navarro has written a dozen books which most economists call bullshit. Despite Navarro’s PhD from Harvard in economics, he believes a trade war with higher tariffs will allow us to cut more taxes. I don’t have a PhD in economics from Harvard, but I still know that tariffs are taxes on American consumers. Duh.
Navarro and Musk don’t agree on trade. So, after an insult from Elon, Navarro sent one back, saying Elon wasn’t a car manufacturer, just an assembler of parts. Uh oh.
Elon responded to the video (which we don’t need to watch), saying, “Navarro is truly a moron.” He also said Navarro is “dumber than a sack of bricks.”
And then Elon tweeted about 20 more times to defend himself and his shitty cars.
Elon is right about this. Peter Navarro is a moron who is dumber than a sack of bricks, but Elon is a moron, too. Elon is a lying Nazi-supporting moron.
But Elon got the better of this since he told Navarro to consult with economist Ron Vara. Who? Ron Vara is an economist Navarro has quoted in several of his stupid books. The only thing wrong with that is Ron Vara doesn’t exist. It’s an anagram of “Navarro.” Peter Navarro has to quote a fictional economist because he can’t find a real economist who shares his dumbasseconomic beliefs, probably because they’re fucking insane. Navarro is that one guy in the office who’ll advise that today’s lunch should be from Blimpies (I just finished 30 Rock).
Even Elon’s brother, Kimbal, said, “Who would have thought that Trump was actually the most high tax American President in generations?” He also said, “Through his tariff strategy, Trump has implemented a structural, permanent tax on the American consumer.”
This is like Rob Gronkowski knowing FTX cryptocurrency wasn’t real money before Tom Brady lost $30 million in it.
White House spokesgoon Karoline Leavitt was asked about the sparring between Elon and Navarro, and she explained it with, “Boys will be boys, and we will let their public sparring continue.”
Oh, yeah. Leavitt is also a moron.
Maybe Trump is getting all of his trade advice from Gronk.
By the way, this is what inspired this cartoon.
Creative note: I have five ideas in my folder to choose from for the next few days. I felt this would be the best for today. This cartoon was so quick to draw that the files of it that I sent to my clients may be the smallest I’ve ever sent. The files with crowd scenes and lots of Easter eggs are huge.
Music note: I listened to Queens of the Stone Age.
Drawn in 30 seconds: (snip-go see it! It’s fun.)
Scottie's Playtime 