CSotD: Sunday Wrap-up
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The big news seems to be that the “gold” Trump phones are finally shipping, and, as Jones says in his commentary, that should bring down the curtain on the jokes about them, or at least on the jokes about them not existing. We can still joke about them not being made in the USA as initially promised or about them being gold-colored rather than gold.
Both Jones and this article explain what they are, which isn’t much, $499 being at the lower end of the middle range, so that another way of looking at it is “What do you want for $499?”
And if your answer was a gold telephone, more the fool you.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Still on the topic of the mountains laboring and bringing forth a mouse, another disappointment is that our big Deal Maker appears to have come home from his summit with little to show for it.
Telnaes and Bramhall compete for the best depiction of bathos, and I’ve seen nothing in the news to counter their conclusion that he basically came back empty-handed, though a few of the billionaire buddies he took with him may have made a few contacts. But they weren’t there long enough to have had any real talks, so however they profited from the trip remains in the future and might have happened anyway.
Stein, however, notes that it wasn’t simply a wasted effort but a potential earth-shaking loss, if Xi has succeeded in getting Trump to abandon Taiwan, as looks possible. Allowing China to capture Taiwan would have impact, but the greater impact — whether Taiwan itself stands or falls — would be in yet another message that America doesn’t support its allies and can’t be counted on or trusted.
Assuming that message wasn’t already clear from our abandonment of NATO, ambivalence about Ukraine and withdrawal of troops from Poland. If Trump and his America Firsters are more interested in making nice-nice with Putin and Xi, the moral of the story should be clear to the rest of the world.
Though it was nice of Xi to give Dear Leader a packet of rose seeds.
“We will provide the president with some of our Chinese rose seeds, as he wants to plant some in the rose garden,” a translator said, according to the press pool report.
“I love that. That’s great,” Trump replied.
Yeah, well, don’t let the Bamboo Curtain hit you on your way out.
If you don’t think Xi knows that Trump already tore up and paved the White House Rose Garden, I’ve got a gen-u-wine gold made-in-America watch to sell you.
Meanwhile, back in the US, Melania’s infamous jacket is getting a workout from cartoonists, and if it was a foolish message for anyone in her position to send unintentionally eight years ago, that basic insensitivity has gained meaning now that Dear Leader first admitted, and then doubled-down on, the fact that he really doesn’t think about how much Americans are suffering financially.
Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran — they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing — we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.
And that’s Fox News chewing him out. Howard Kurtz notes that he might have done better to focus on the nuclear part, but is kind enough not to point out that we had an internationally agreed-upon, well-monitored treaty to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons until somebody tore it up.
And back when we had a workable treaty with Iran, we complained about gas being $3.11 a gallon and inflation at 3.0%. As Milbrath points out, not thinking about the economy and its impact on people even a little bit has its consequences.
It is, Whamond points out, a lousy message to send voters, including your own base, just a few months ahead of the midterms. He may be able to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing votes, but jacking up gas to $4.51 a gallon and raising the price of anything that arrives by truck, boat or airplane is different.
It’s less about whether Republican voters will forgive him in November than it is whether they will show up at all. If Biden voters stayed home in 2024 because of Gaza and the price of eggs, we’ll see if Republicans show up for an off-year election despite rising prices and an unwanted war.
And, to go back to Taiwan and all that, this isn’t a self-contained problem. Trump’s adventurism is causing serious problems across the globe, and the fact that his America First policy doesn’t even put Americans first is cold comfort to the rest of the world.
The old saying is “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog,” but Trump doesn’t have one.
And if he thinks Putin and Xi are his friends, maybe he just doesn’t understand the word, while the United States is hemorrhaging friends at a prodigious rate, thanks to our Dear Leader.
It seems that Trump judges our economy, as Brown contends, by how well his inner circle is doing.
I’m reminded that Rose Kennedy raised her boys on the Biblical phrase “To whom much is given, much is expected,” and Bobby specifically traveled to the Mississippi Delta to see for himself what poverty and racism looked like.
By contrast, Trump was brought up on the Gospel of Prosperity, in which God rewards his faithful and if he wasn’t psychologically inclined towards empathy, that upbringing wasn’t likely to instill it.
Not that insensitivity at the top is unusual: Herblock leveled the accusation at both Goldwater in 1961 and Reagan in 1984. But at least, in the past, politicians had advisors to warn them when they were acting in ways that would alienate people.
There were people like that in the first Trump administration, but they were fired or forced to resign, hence the elaborate praise showered on him for the cameras by his current cabinet.
And hence the “Gapitalism” Breen sees dividing our nation between the fortunate 1% and the rest of us.
Mike Peterson has posted his "Comic Strip of the Day" column every day since 2010. His opinions are his own, but we welcome comments either agreeing or in opposition.
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