Today in Politics, Bulletin 120. 4/28/25

… Trump was up at 5 AM ranting and raving about how unfair the media is and how all his bad poll numbers are rigged. He posted this at 5:32 AM: “We don’t have a Free and Fair ‘Press’ in this Country anymore. We have a Press that writes BAD STORIES, and CHEATS, BIG, ON POLLS. IT IS COMPROMISED AND CORRUPT. SAD!”

… 5:24 AM: “These people should be investigated for ELECTION FRAUD, and add in the FoxNews Pollster while you’re at it. They are Negative Criminals who apologize to their subscribers and readers after I WIN ELECTIONS BIG, much bigger than their polls showed I would win, loose a lot of credibility, and then go on cheating and lying for the next cycle, only worse. They suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and there is nothing that anyone, or anything, can do about it. THEY ARE SICK, almost only write negative stories about me no matter how well I am doing, AND ARE TRULY THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”

(I don’t change his spelling or grammar. You get those exactly how he posted them).

… Fox Business host Larry Kudlow: “Trump has done a fabulous job - we're 100 days in. You got all these polls trying to show how bad he's doing. They are all fixed. They are all fake.”

… MAGA social media influencer Philip Buchanan (Catturd) joined the MAGA CryFest with his hero: “Fake polls from fake news doesn’t fool anyone anymore.”

… Harry Enten on CNN - "If the House GOP is under any illusions that Trump's fall in the polls won't bring them down, they're living on fantasy island. Three recent generic House polls show Democrats up by 4 pts on average, a big shift from 2024. Polls look like April '05 & '17, prior to big Democratic midterm gains.”

… China’s Foreign Ministry said that Trump continues to lie about speaking to President Xi about a trade deal. Spokesman Guo Jiakun responded to Trump’s most recent claim in his TIME interview: "The two heads of state have not called each other recently. I would like to reiterate that China and the US have not conducted consultations or negotiations on the tariffs issue. If the US really wants to solve the problem through dialog and negotiation, it should stop threatening and blackmailing.”

… Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins told CNN that Trump is ready ask Congress to bail out farmers with billions in tax dollars if they face bankruptcy because of Trump’s tariffs: "First of all, the prayer is that that doesn't need to happen. But secondly, if it does, for the short term, just as in Trump 1, we are preparing for that. I'm in constant conversations with our friends on the Hill where the funding comes from, and everyone is committed - food security is national security.”

… I thought MAGA was against socialism and government handouts?

… Sec of Education Linda McMahon: “Unlike the previous administration who falsely promised an illegal student loan bailout, the Trump Department of Education will not force American taxpayers to take on debts that are not theirs.”

… Except they will for farmers, apparently. Maybe Linda didn’t get the memo on that.

… Jeremy Warner, Economics Editor, Daily Telegraph (UK) on Trump’s tariffs: “What’s now increasingly obvious, however, is that Trump is in ragged retreat; he’s compromising all over the shop, such that if the plan was to upend the established global order, one can almost definitely say that, beyond the rhetoric, it is already over. Rank lack of professionalism and organization has defined the endeavor all along, and now it’s coming apart at the seams. Sensing an admin on the run, no one is any longer hurrying to do a trade deal with the US. From Britain to Canada and beyond, getting the right deal rather than a quick one has become the new mantra.”

… “Trump has in the meantime made himself – and the US – into an international laughing stock, never mind the damage that policy uncertainty is inflicting on the global economy. You’d be forgiven for thinking that chaos is itself the policy goal. Repeatedly forced to row back on its demands and aspirations, the WH has been left looking back-footed and ridiculous.

… “Hopes of an early trade deal with Japan turned to dust after its trade representative took great offense at the abrasive, street-fighting manner of Howard Lutnick, and returned to Tokyo in a state of apoplectic rage.”

… “According to Anthony Scaramucci, the way to interpret Trump is to take him seriously but not literally. As we are now learning, it should in fact be the other way around: he should be taken literally, but not seriously. His policy positions change with such frequency – often dramatically so – that it is impossible to know what’s real and what isn’t. One moment, he wants the chairman of the Fed Reserve fired, the next he says he’s never had any such intention. It would be nice to think that tomorrow we might awake to find it’s all been a bad dream, but sadly, this is no nightmare: the bewildering confusion of it all is entirely real.”

… JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon told a group of 500 investors during IMF conference that the “best case scenario” for the US economy is “a mild recession” caused by Trump’s tariffs.

… Fox’s chief political analyst Brit Hume wondered how Trump could claim that tariff revenue was going to replace income taxes at the same time he is negotiating trade deals to eliminate tariffs: “So what happens to the revenue from tariffs if he reaches all the new trade deals he's promised?”

… WSJ reports that people are opting in to Social Security benefits earlier than they planned because of DOGE: “Pending Social Security claims for retirement, survivor and health insurance benefits totaled 580,887 in March, up from 500,527 a year earlier. While multiple factors likely contributed to the increase, agency officials said at a March 28 meeting that ‘fearmongering has driven people to claim benefits earlier.’”

… Kathleen Romig, Dir of Social Security and Disability Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told NYT that changes to the program, talks of more radical changes by Musk and others, and deep staffing cuts have seniors who planned to opt-in at 67 or 70 choosing to do it now at 65: “That is leading people to make decisions based on fear.”

… Trump endorsed himself in Canada’s election today: “Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st State of the United States of America. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE!”

… Conservative PM candidate Pierre Poilievre was apoplectic, since every time Trump talks about Canada he costs him votes. He posted on X: “President Trump, stay out of our election. The only people who will decide the future of Canada are Canadians at the ballot box. Canada will always be proud, sovereign and independent and we will NEVER be the 51st state. Today Canadians can vote for change so we can strengthen our country, stand on our own two feet and stand up to America from a position of strength.”

… Adam Klasfeld with AllRiseNews reported from the courtroom in the big Jenner & Block lawsuit which will establish precedent on Trump targeting law firms. Jenner's lawyer to the court on the harm being caused by firms who have caved to Trump: “The harm that’s flowing from that is that it’s incentivizing and reaffirming the construct in which the executive branch says accommodate our views or face the music."

… Klasfeld: “Jenner's lawyer notes that Trump located his levers of power against the firms, common in all of these executive orders: Security clearances, govt contracting, EEOC investigations, and access to federal buildings.”

… “Judge Bates appears skeptical that he can touch the security clearance provisions, where Trump has broad latitude. Jenner's lawyer responded Trump's actions here are so transparently retaliatory that he has latitude.”

… “Multiple times throughout the hearing, Judge Bates has raised his voice incredulously about the DOJ's arguments. ‘Isn't Jenner still entitled to due process?’ Bates presses the DOJ. ‘Can the president just decree in the government contracting arena?’”

… Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) posted this on X today: “We should arrest 100 more judges. Arrogant elitist black robes have been raping our core principles for decades. If the DOJ needs a list, I have it.”

… MAGA activist and podcaster Laura Loomer, who is jewish and doesn’t like AG Pam Bondi: “How come there aren’t any Jews over at the DOJ in senior roles? Everyone knows Jews make the best lawyers. Maybe that’s why the DOJ under Blondi is doing such a bad job securing victories for Trump, and why liberal activist judges are winning. Gotta get some Jewish lawyers.”

… Yes, she calls her ‘Blondi’.

… Karoline Leavitt held a press briefing with Tom Homan this morning on immigration. Reporter: Have there been any negotiations between the US and El Salvador to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release? Leavitt: “The president of El Salvador told all of you in the Oval Office - El Salvador does not intend to smuggle a designated foreign terrorist back into the US.”

… Homan was then asked if Mexico was paying for the new border wall construction: “They have been in a roundabout way.”

… Congress is now back in session after ANOTHER two week recess, and Rep. Marge Greene says she’s energized to take on Republican leadership: “I’m flying back to Washington tomorrow, and I’m ready to rip some people apart. I didn’t run for Congress to cozy up to Republicans, I ran to hold them accountable to the American people’s agenda.”

… Greene then warned that MAGA voters may not show up for Republicans in the midterms if the budget framework contemplated by leadership ends up passing: “Not delivering President Trump’s campaign promises of NO TAX on tips, overtime, and Social Security will cost Republicans the midterms bigly.”

… Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) on Fox Business: “Right now, we are hemming and hawing over all the provisions of the tax cut. We're stuck in this process of reconciliation. We have a static number that we work with with the CBO and the Joint Tax Commission that says we have to be within these numbers. Even though we could get dynamic growth, we can't look at dynamic scoring. So, were trying to thread a very narrow needle.”

… “The Senate is putting out a number that we don't have to comply with. We want the cuts. It's a bone of contention on our side. This is not going to be an easy process. There's going to a lot of horse trading going on in the next several weeks. But we want the cuts. We have to have the cuts.”

Translation: They want to estimate huge economic growth way higher than reality (“dynamic scoring”) to project bigger revenues to hide the fact that their budget is going to absolutely explode the deficit to record numbers. But CBO won’t let them. So they either have to do almost no spending cuts, big defense spending increase, big border increase, massive tax cuts, with insane deficits; or they have to cut entitlement spending to draconian levels - which will wipe out 20-30 Republican House seats in the next election.

… Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) on Fox Business: “We want to implement Trump's agenda. I know there's a lot of things he's talked about. You know, now he's talking about no income tax, anybody earning under $200,000, no income tax on tips, overtime, etc. Those things cost money. And so we're going to have to find the ways to pay for that, because we can't continue to borrow and we can continue to increase the nation's debt.”

… “We have members that are in those swing districts that are going to be pretty vulnerable. And we don't want to lose the majority. So we want to make sure that they're protected. But then again, we also have to satisfy the members of the Freedom Caucus that want bigger, bigger spending cuts and some somewhere in the middle, we're going to have to negotiate. We're going to have to compromise.”

Someone asked how the chowder competition went. They were all very different - people in Maine are so creative with arts, crafts, and food. I voted for the one that had smoked shrimp which was also very creamy but had a dash of some kind of asian chili sauce in it. There was only one that went with a traditional clam chowder, which was also very good.

If you missed yesterday’s Bulletin, you can find it here.

… Steve Bannon told his MAGA audience that Greene is right that Republicans are selling them out: “You get screwed every day of your life and in broad daylight. They’re not making any real cuts to federal spending - none. You know what the tell is? The debt ceiling. Wait until you see what they ask for in the debt ceiling raise - it’s going to be $5T over 2 years. Then we’re going from $37T to a $42T national debt. And they’re not going to cut defense spending. They’re going to add another $150B.”

… “When Pete Hegseth puts out a trillion dollar defense budget, I’m not feeling good. I’m not feeling like they have control of the building. You are not going to be able to