He made his money as a Florida gambling scammer,
Now he wants to join Congress as “The Hebrew Hammer.”
With Donald Trump’s backing,
It’s Muslim progressives he’s attacking,
We agree with CAIR that he belongs, not in Congress, but in the slammer.
— House Republican candidate and Florida state Sen. Randy Fine (R) said that progressive Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) should consider leaving Congress if he is elected, The Hill reports.
President-elect Donald Trump offered his Thanksgiving greeting: “Happy Thanksgiving to all, including to the Radical Left Lunatics who have worked so hard to destroy our Country, but who have miserably failed, and will always fail, because their ideas and policies are so hopelessly bad that the great people of our Nation just gave a landslide victory to those who want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Bloomberg: “Gross domestic product increased at a 2.8% annualized pace in the third quarter, the second estimate of the figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed Wednesday. The economy’s primary growth engine — consumer spending — advanced 3.5%, the most this year.”
The first post-election Emerson College poll finds President-elect Donald Trump’s favorability rating at 54%, a six-point increase from his pre-election favorability of 48%. President Joe Biden has a 36% job approval rating, a four-year low for the president in Emerson polls, while his disapproval rating remains steady at 52%.
“He promises his base crazy shit. He then announces that he’s about to do the crazy shit. The media freaks out at the prospect of said crazy shit. Trump then wriggles out of doing the crazy shit and — this is the key part — his voters give him credit for the crazy shit anyway.”
Trumponomics Watch The Associated Press: Donald Trump has big plans for the economy — and a big debt problem that will be a hurdle to delivering on them.
Trump has bold ideas on tax cuts, tariffs and other programs, but high interest rates and the price of repaying the federal government’s existing debt could limit what he’s able to do.
Not only is the federal debt at roughly $36 trillion, but the spike in inflation after the coronavirus pandemic has pushed up the government’s borrowing costs such that debt service next year will easily exceed spending on national security.
The higher cost of servicing the debt gives Trump less room to maneuver with the federal budget as he seeks income tax cuts. It’s also a political challenge because higher interest rates have made it costlier for many Americans to buy a home or new automobile. And the issue of high costs helped Trump reclaim the presidency in November’s election.
“It’s clear the current amount of debt is putting upward pressure on interest rates, including mortgage rates for instance,” said Shai Akabas, executive director of the economic policy program at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “The cost of housing and groceries is going to be increasingly felt by households in a way that are going to adversely affect our economic prospects in the future.”
It’s one thing to, at Christmas, give your kid an Atari.
It’s another thing, at midlife, to gift yourself a Ferrari.
But when you’re the U.S. President,
You’ve got to be wary of those emoluments,
And don’t go accepting $400 million jets from the Qataris.
“Democrats are coming around to a new mantra: winning the argument is less important than winning elections. If the path to victory means embracing economic populism, they’ll do it. If they have to make room for new faces, then sayonara, old friends. If they need to tack to the center on some social issues, so be it. If winning requires doing more podcasts, or embracing Instagram influencers, or campaigning on permitting reform, they’ll give it a try. Because now that Democrats have seen what a second Trump presidency looks like, they’re relearning the lesson they should have known all along: only winning is winning.”
“Well, tariffs are taxes, and when you put a tax on a business, it’s always passed through as a cost. So, there will be higher prices. The only trade that means anything is the individual who buys something. That’s the only real trade. And that by very definition, if it’s voluntary, is mutually beneficial, or the trade doesn’t occur.”
“It appears that Trump does care about the internal character of regimes he deals with. Rather than following a foreign policy that ignores values altogether, Trump has a clear preference for values that are, in the American context, historically anomalous or—to put it in less neutral terms—bad. And he wishes to spread those values around the world. … Whatever you say about this policy, it is not amoral. The primary difference between the Trump doctrine and traditional American values promotion is that the former, rather than seeking to impose a moral world order, aspires to create an immoral one.”
“This isn’t ‘The Hunger Games’ for immigrants. This is not, ‘Hey, if you lose, we are shipping you out on a boat out of the country.’”
— Television producer Rob Worsoff, quoted by the Wall Street Journal, confirming that he’s working with the Department of Homeland Security on a reality television show.
“While many have speculated that the Qataris have offered Trump the luxurious plane to curry favor with the famously transactional president, there may be a simpler rationale: they just don’t want it anymore. … The royals have failed to sell the plane, which was put on the market in 2020, according to an archived listing. Giving it away could save Qatar’s rulers a big chunk of change on maintenance and storage costs… Making Trump happy would be an added bonus.”
“The Trump administration has deported at least two immigrants to war-torn South Sudan in defiance of a federal court order, according to attorneys for the immigrants,” Politico reports.
According to new Axios Harris Poll 100 survey results, Elon Musk’s polarizing political activism appears to have come at the expense of his largest companies, as Republicans expressed more favorable opinions than did Democrats. Tesla was in 8th place in the 2021 reputation ranking of America’s 100 most visible companies, but last year tumbled to 63rd and now is near the very bottom at 95th. It placed dead last in “character,” while placing near the bottom in areas like “ethics” and “citizenship. Six other automakers place higher, with the highest being Toyota at No. 4 and the lowest being Ford at No. 60.
“Pope Leo XIV spurned J.D. Vance on Sunday, offering him a quick greeting after his inaugural mass while holding extensive private meetings with other world leaders,” the Daily Beast reports. “The first American pope shook Vance’s hand during a brief, 17-second exchange during the procession line after the mass.”
“The Trump administration is working on a plan to permanently relocate up to 1 million Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to Libya,” NBC News reports. “In exchange for the resettling of Palestinians, the administration would potentially release to Libya billions of dollars of funds that the U.S. froze more than a decade ago.”
A new J.L. Partners survey found 46% of Republican voters are ready to back Vice President J.D. Vance as President Donald Trump’s successor, while no other named prospect got more than double-digit support. Just 8% would back Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, while 7% supported Vivek Ramaswamy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) each received 6% support.