Links - Watching As Trump Takes More Rope
Left to his own devices, he has always been self destructive.
At least three things keep piling up for Trump:
A growing reputation for outrageous lies
Contradictions within policy stances
Flagrant disregard for norms and decency not to mention constitutionality
These have a corrosive effect as his supporters and apologists can only look the other way so much. When pressed to defend him and their support, he makes them look increasingly foolish. I would argue that these are the main reasons why Trump’s approval rating is so abysmal and getting worse.
The fact that supporters are left holding the bag should come as no surprise since they are the marks for his con. His purpose is not policy or even to own the libs. It is simply corruption for personal gain. Aligning somewhat and sporadically with conservatives and others of the right is just a means to an ends.
Zooming in a bit on each of the three areas of pile up, we can say:
The lying is something that will burn a supporter more than the others. One can rationalize away policy contradictions, since most people don’t understand the nuances of policy anyway (the blind arguing with the blind), as well as norm/decency violations, since “it’s not wrong when our side does it” sadly has potency. Yet lies once exposed stand out without cover embarrassing those who believed or defended.
Contradictions will harm the elite and expert supporters since they can’t hide from their sophisticated opponents. And the real world is a bitch when bad policy plans make first contact—witness the “liberation day” disaster.
One can only hold one’s nose so much. Eventually there is a straw breaking the camel’s back effect when it comes to norm/decency violations. And this ultimately gives standing to impeachment/removal even without the constitutional violations.
In consideration of this, Richard Hanania, who reluctantly supported and voted for Trump, wrote an essay on what he got wrong about Trump.
Hanania sees three major areas where Trump has been a significant disappointment.
There are many reasons to criticize the Trump administration, but to me there are three policy areas in particular that are most worthy of attention. We could classify them as the war on the economy, the war on science, and the war on the rule of law.
In his view these bode very badly for America going forward once one considers how strongly the Trump-personality cult has a grip on the conservative movement. It seems he would agree with me that we are suffering the near-worst-case scenario of what we could have expected from Trump 2.0 with little hope of a reversal.
Even intelligent people, when they’re part of MAGA, become stupid when it comes to policy, even if they can be savants in terms of flattering the ego of one man, as we’ve seen in the case of JD Vance. The right is an epistemological wasteland right now, and anyone who relies on it for information or seeks camaraderie within its confines eventually becomes Catturd, even independent of the influence of Trump himself. A movement this low in human capital simply poisons everything. Even when it gets an underlying principle right like opposition to DEI or the need to make government more efficient, the cures it favors will be worse than the disease due to the incentives created by a Republican base and media landscape that have seen a major brain drain over the last decade and make fealty to Trump their main priority.
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The theory that “conservatism is becoming little more than a Trump cult” has held up extremely well for nearly a decade now, and even though I subscribed to it before the last election, my main mistake was that I underestimated its strength. If you continue to believe that something as insignificant as Trump looking like a loser in an election or not being eligible to run again can break the spell, you still are not getting the nature of this phenomenon.
In a subsequent essay he expands on the lies Trump and his administration are relying on to sell their policies. This one touches on all three of my points at the top of this post.
They Lied about Immigrant Crime
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They Lied about Tren de Aragua’s Connections to Maduro
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They Lied about the Criminal Records and Gang Ties of Those on the Flights
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They Lied about the Need to Send Migrants to El Salvador
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They Lied about the Legal Status of Venezuelans
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A MAGA might admit that 1-4 are lies, and then say “I don’t care, they’re here illegally! This is what happens.” Maybe you believe that a third world prison camp is a justified punishment for illegally crossing a border. This view, however, setting aside its repulsiveness, rests on a false premise. Reuters reviewed the circumstances of 50 Venezuelans shipped to El Salvador and found that 27 had active asylum claims before the courts. In other words, for the time being they had permission to stay in the US. The Trump administration will claim that Biden’s actions were somehow illegal or illegitimate, but it’s a generally accepted principle of justice that people are not punished for following the law as it was understood and enforced at the time they committed an act.
MAGA can at this point fall further into the abyss, and become even more morally deranged. “I don’t care if Biden told them they could stay. They’re not citizens, no promises made or reasonable expectations of safety can be honored. Trump can torture them to death for all I care because I’m America First! And plus they forced us to take the vaccine!! We’re a nation not an economy. So no dolls this Christmas!” At this point, you just have to shake your head and say, well, that’s a value system I guess. But if you have any moral system other than Trump is God or all foreigners should be made to suffer, this is not going to strike you as a compelling argument.
Touching on lies but more centered on contradictions, Alex Nowrasteh points out the glaring problem(s) with the dual claims that illegal immigrants are a problem and that there are many millions more residing here than official figures show.
This is a classic case of you can’t have it both ways. IF there are roughly double Nowrasteh’s estimate of about 15 million illegals, which is already significantly higher than official estimates, then their crime rates are even lower and effects on government resources and the economy at large is even less.
As he concludes,
Many commentators, journalists, and Vice President JD Vance, among others, have embraced the claim that there are more than 30 million illegal immigrants in the United States. That is extremely unlikely. But if there were, then the overall effects of immigration on the United States would be much smaller than commonly perceived. They would be one of the least crime prone and dangerous subpopulations who have zero effect on the labor market, pay more taxes than they consume in benefits, and are assimilating just fine into a culture that is somewhat hostile.
In all, the presence of more than 30 million illegal immigrants would be confirmation of the tremendous contribution of immigrants to the US, even when the law is a tragic mess.
So which is it? Are illegal immigrants a small problem or an especially small problem? But even that framework is disingenuous. The question should be: are illegal immigrants benefit or a big benefit?
Continuing with the area of policy contradictions, Scott Sumner has a great post that while focusing mainly on tariffs gives deep insight into bigger economic truths. The main takeaway is that nationalistic instincts of the current administration like others before it are working at cross purposes to their purported goals.
National security among other ends is achieved through pro-growth policies and integration. To say that the right wing is fighting yesterday’s war with yesterday’s tactics is a severe understatement.
The media often suggests that the cost of tariffs is higher prices for consumers. In my view, that’s hardly a cost at all. Unless we have a miraculous reduction in spending, the US will need more revenue. And any new tax will hurt consumers, not just taxes on imports. The actual problems with tariffs are much more subtle, more indirect. Here are just a few of them:
Tariffs hurt export industries, even if foreign countries do not formally retaliate...
Foreign countries are likely to retaliate...
Tariffs make economies less technologically sophisticated...
One argument for tariffs is that free trade costs jobs in blue-collar industries, making our society less equal. But tariffs are an extremely regressive tax, which hits the young and the working class much harder than affluent older people like me...
Nineteenth century “infant industry” arguments have no bearing on a 21st century economy with complex global supply chains that would take many years to disentangle. ..
Protectionism is even worse if combined with other nationalistic policies that increase global distrust by reducing student travel, business travel, and tourism...
A major trade war is likely to throw monetary policy off course, potentially making any resulting recession much worse than what you’d get from the direct effect of tariffs (which is actually fairly modest.) ...
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An intelligent administration that worried about the welfare of American blue-collar workers and the strength of our national security would focus like a laser on a few key issues:
Make our economy as productive as possible, through free market policies...
Strengthen our alliances with like-minded democratic nations, if only so that they will continue to supply us with needed components in any future economic conflict. Instead, we are doing the opposite.
If we must intervene to strengthen a particular industry that is crucial for national defense, use subsidies, not tariffs.
Reduce our budget deficit.
Become deeply entangled with our potential future adversaries...
Encourage many more Chinese students to study in America, and vice versa...”
Lastly and most disturbingly, David Bier released a comprehensive report detailing how among the Venezuelans deported to the El Salvadorian prison included dozens of legal immigrants.
Shortly after the US government illegally and unconstitutionally transported about 240 Venezuelans to be imprisoned in El Salvador’s horrific “terrorism” prison on March 15, CBS News published their names. A subsequent CBS News investigation found that 75 percent of the men on that list had no criminal record in the United States or abroad. Less attention has been paid to the fact that dozens of these men never violated immigration laws either.
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Sadly, no information regarding one in three of the men could be found online. Maybe no one in their families knows they are missing, or maybe they are too afraid to speak up. For 48 percent of the 174 about whom we have some information, we have no information about their method of crossing into the United States. For many, the only information is Facebook or Instagram posts from their mothers pleading for information about their children. About 100 relatives also signed a letter to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, but it contains no case-specific information.
The government calls them all “illegal aliens.” But of the 90 cases where the method of crossing is known, 50 men report that they came legally to the United States, with advanced US government permission, at an official border crossing point. A Reuters survey of 50 men also placed the proportion of those who entered legally at about half. This isn’t surprising because about half of all the Venezuelans who have immigrated over the past two years came legally as well—either as refugees, parolees, or visa holders. The proportion isn’t what matters the most: the astounding absolute numbers are. Dozens of legal immigrants were stripped of their status and imprisoned in El Salvador.
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These people came to the United States with advanced US government permission, were vetted and screened before arrival, violated no US immigration law, and the US government turned around and “disappeared” them without due process to a foreign prison. It is paying the Salvadoran government to continue to keep them incarcerated.
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As Cato’s Ilya Somin points out, all people are entitled to due process under the US Constitution before the US government imprisons them. This is true whether they entered legally or illegally. But the fact that the US government now has the reputation of sending legal immigrants to foreign prisons without due process may deter many people from wanting to come legally and build their lives in a country where the rule of law is so absent.
With any hope, Trump will continue down these paths gathering more rope for which to hang himself granting us reprieve from his awful, corrupt policies.