Thursday, April 03, 2025

Trumponomics — What Does It Entail, How Is It Misunderstood, and What Is Trump's Endgame?


If you have ever wondered about Donald Trump’s economic policies, ROF's Sébastien Laye explains Trumponomics to you at Policy Sphere: What it entails, how it is misunderstood, and what is Donald Trump's Endgame.

Donald Trump’s economic policies, often labeled “Trumponomics,” have sparked intense debate ever since his first term and remain a polarizing topic after his Liberation Day. Beyond the usual noise in the news cycle, analysts here should only refer to Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore’s books: the seminal “Trumponomics” and the more recent “The Trump Economic Miracle”. At their core, these policies center on tariffs, tax cuts, deregulation, and a rhetoric of restoring American industrial might. Considering trade policies alone without coherent domestic measures would be nonsensical.

 To many, Trumponomics appears erratic—Critics argue it lacks coherence, while supporters see it as a bold reimagining of America’s economic role. This text seeks to clarify what Trumponomics really entails, why it confounds so many, and what Trump might ultimately aim to achieve (in my humble opinion). 

What Trumponomics Entails: A Simplified Breakdown

Most journalists (due to a poor training in basic economics) misrepresent Trumponomics. At the core, it can be distilled into three interlocking components: protectionism, fiscal stimulus, and strategic bargaining. Each reflects a departure from the neoliberal consensus that has dominated U.S. policy since the late 20th century, and achieve more than meets the eye. Tariffs, for instance, are not just new levies, but very often a negotiating tool to lower protectionism worldwide or spur neighbors to solve problems (fentanyl)

  1. Protectionism via Tariffs
    The most visible element is Trump’s use of tariffs—taxes on imported goods—to shield American industries and level the trade playing field. When the US, under the neoliberal consensus established in the 1990s, welcomed new countries in the WTO and lowered its own barriers, it gave access to its huge domestic market while most countries maintain  their barriers. Hence, neoliberal globalization spurred global growth at the detriment of US manufacturing workers. That is NOT TO SAY that the US did not profit it, but that only global US-corporations and billionaires enjoyed the ride: not so much regular people, except fr cheap consumer products. Tariffs, in our view, aim to make domestic production competitive again. Historical examples like 19th-century America, postwar Japan, and South Korea—nations that built industrial bases behind tariff walls—lend credence to this approach. Critic argue that tariffs increase prices and will reduce domestic consumption. But Trump also pursued policies to force the appreciation of our trading partners currencies, which very soon will compress the price impact on imports. 

  2. Fiscal Stimulus through Tax Cuts and Spending
    Trumponomics pairs tariffs with tax cuts, notably the 2017 reductions extended into his current term, and selective deregulation. Their broader intent is to incentivize investment in U.S. manufacturing, countering decades of offshoring. The logic is straightforward: if tariffs could make imports costlier, tax breaks act as a counter-measure here and make staying home profitable.

  3. Strategic Bargaining on the Global Stage
    Beyond economics, Trump uses tariffs as a geopolitical tool, a lever to renegotiate America’s place in the world. He sees the U.S. as overburdened by its role as provider of the global reserve currency—the dollar—which props up foreign economies while hollowing out American industry. It is time for a reset, what I would call an anti Nixon shock (more on that later). Tariffs are less about immediate trade balances and more about forcing concessions—currency adjustments, manufacturing relocation, or purchases of U.S. goods—from trading partners. This hub-and-spokes vision positions America as the central negotiator, dealing with nations individually rather than through multilateral frameworks. Trump wants one-on-one discussions.

Why Most People (including economists) Do Not Understand Trumponomics

The apparent simplicity of Trumponomics belies its complexity, leading to widespread misunderstanding. Three factors—conceptual, practical, and perceptual—explain this disconnect.

…/…

What I believe is Trump’s Endgame

What, then, is Trump aiming for? While his tactics appear disjointed, a plausible endgame emerges when we stitch together economic and geopolitical threads. Here’s what I think Trump, Hassett, Bessent, Lutnick and others have in mind (or what I would advise them to pursue).

  1. Restoring Industrial Might
    At its heart, Trump seeks to reverse America’s manufacturing decline. He believes the dollar’s hegemony, while a geopolitical asset, overvalues U.S. goods, pricing them out of global markets and flooding the country with imports. But still he is appreciative of the strategic power brought by the dollar exorbitant privilege. The trick here is to lower the value of the dollar (to spur the industrial renaissance) while maintaining, or only slightly weakening, the dollar status. We are running out of time to operate this delicate reset and we will not be able to do it in 5 or 10 years because otherwise, other powers might succeed in replacing the dollar with their currencies. 

  2. Rewriting the Global Order
    Trump’s tariffs are a means, not an end. Varoufakis in Europe suggested a two-phase “masterplan”: first, shock foreign central banks into depreciating their currencies (easing dollar pressure), then negotiate bilaterally to lock in advantages—currency swaps, manufacturing shifts to the U.S., or forced exports like weapons. …/… We need to convince the Europeans to swap their US bonds into ultra long term or perpetual bonds and lower our costs of borrowing. They should also buy our weapons and when required, maintain factories and data centers in the US (Germans, are you listening ?). In exchange, we will provide the security and safety shield we had been providing ever since WWII (without any advantage to us): it is easy to see the chess game at play here around Ukraine: despite grandiose goals, the Europeans will not be able to build their common Army. They will soon come back to Big Brother, and this time there will be a price tag but peace and serenity will be back over the European continent in 18 months. This will be a monumental deal for the US, and Putin will accept it as long as it does not extend to former USSR countries: does he really care that Italy or the Netherlands turn into US vassals. And the European Union in all this ? I forgot to tell you that its future is bleak: Von Der Leyen and Macron, in their insane pursuit of an authoritarian European superstate, will fail.

  3. Engineering a Controlled Reset
    A bolder interpretation posits Trump deliberately courts a downturn—squeezing debt-fueled excesses—before sparking a rebound via tax cuts and deregulation . Think Thatcher or Reagan: short-term pain for long-term gain. If true, this gambit aims to reset America’s economy on firmer industrial ground, even if it risks (short term) alienating voters or investors. The payoff would be a leaner, stronger U.S., less beholden to foreign creditors or Wall Street’s whims.

Trumponomics channels a historical playbook—protectionism as nation-building—while addressing real grievances: the hollowing out of America’s working class amid globalization’s unequal gains. Its tariff-centric, bargain-driven approach defies neoliberal norms, which is precisely why it baffles so many. Trump’s endgame likely blends industrial renewal with a reassertion of U.S. power, aiming to reshape both domestic and global economies.

Also by Sébastien Laye: Why Does Donald Trump Bother the Élites in France and Europe So Much?

"Trump Draws the Commercial Bazooka", Writes the French MSM: ROF's Conquer and Laye Head to TV and Radio Outlets to Defend the White House's Liberation Day Tariffs


ROF's Nicolas Conquer heads to BFMTV to defend the White House's Reciprocal Tariffs on what Donald Trump calls Liberation Day

The key thing to remember: these tariffs are a CEILING.  

Trading partners who lower their barriers will see these increases reversed. RECIPROCITY. 

Common sense, for true free trade.


L’essentiel à retenir : ces tarifs sont un PLAFOND. Les partenaires commerciaux qui abaissent leurs barrières verront ces hausses annulées. RÉCIPROCITÉ. Du bon sens, pour un vrai libre-échange. #Trump #LiberationDay

 

In the meantime, besides ruffling feathers on LinkedIn, ROF's Sébastien Laye was on La Matinale de Radio Courtoisie telling its listeners, as well as Liselotte Dutreuil and Alexandre de Galzain, that "The American economy will continue to grow and create jobs. It's better to do the hard things now to get results before the 2026 midterm elections." 

"L'économie américaine va continuer à croître et créer des emplois. Il vaut mieux faire les choses difficiles maintenant pour avoir des résultats en vue des élections de mi-mandat de 2026"

Sébastien Laye, entrepreneur et conseiller économique du parti américain Républicains en France. Auteur pour Contribuables Associés d’un rapport intitulé La Simplification Administrative : sortir de l'enfer bureaucratique français et Richard de Seze, directeur de la rédaction de Radio Courtoisie.

Why Does Donald Trump Bother the Élites in France and Europe So Much?

Besides appearing on a French radio station, Sébastien Laye ruffled feathers at LinkedIn as he tried to solve a central riddle:

Why does Trump bother the elites in France and in Europe so much? 

As an American citizen myself, and considering that these largely outdated and bankrupt élites in France had nothing legitimate to say on the subject, I asked myself this question.  

To take France as an example, French graduates of the
École Nationale d'Administration (l'ENA) have feared Trump since his re-election: 

1. Trump is the antithesis of their mental software
ENA graduates are trained in
technocracy, norms, collective thinking, and risk avoidance. 

Trump embodies:
• Absolute individual will,
• Action without safety nets,
• Personal judgment above consensus,
• A logic of brutal disruption.  

Whether you like that or not, they fear him because they can
neither anticipate nor decode his policies. It eludes their map of power.  

2. Trump reveals their strategic impotence 

The French state, over-administered, is slow, procedural, and inflexible.  

Trump, for his part, acts like a pure capitalist actor:
• He redefines the framework (NATO, WTO, various trade agreements, etc…),
• He disregards institutions when they don't suit him,
• He confronts France with its strategic marginalization:
"What weight does Paris have in the face of a Trumpian Washington?"
His re-election underscores their dependence on an equilibrium they no longer control. 

3. Trump shatters their illusion of a multilateral world  

The ENA graduates live in the De Gaulle-Mitterrand legacy of
"enlightened multilateralism," where France plays a moral role above its real power.  

Trump, by demolishing this game (UN, COP, UNESCO, Paris Agreements, etc), exposes the fragility of their diplomatic storytelling. He desecrates French soft power—in action, without asking permission. 

4. He speaks to the people – not the elites 

The ENA graduates have rarely boots on the ground,
are often out of touch with the real people. 

Trump, despite his billionaire status, understands popular anger and speaks directly to the crowds, without filter or perspective. This profoundly destabilizes a French elite who still believe that legitimacy comes from education and abstract reasoning. 

5. Trump could impose a new grammar for transatlantic relations 

A France accustomed to a certain status quo (tacit American protection,
hushed diplomacy, symbolic place at the UN) is seeing the arrival of a Trump:
• Who haggles over everything,
• Who values ​​might over law,
• Who demands proof of strategic loyalty (as with Israel or Taiwan). 

This forces the French elite to choose: fall in line or step aside. 

In addition, ROF's Sébastien Laye was on La Matinale de Radio Courtoisie telling its listeners, as well as Liselotte Dutreuil and Alexandre de Galzain, not to mention Richard de Seze, that "The American economy will continue to grow and create jobs. It's better to do the hard things now to get results before the 2026 midterm elections." 

"L'économie américaine va continuer à croître et créer des emplois. Il vaut mieux faire les choses difficiles maintenant pour avoir des résultats en vue des élections de mi-mandat de 2026"

 En français dans le texte — Sébastien Laye :

Pourquoi Trump dérange t il autant les élites francaises ???? Américain moi-même, et considérant que ces élites largement dépassées et en faillite en France, n'avaient rien à dire de légitime sur le sujet, je me suis posé la question.

Les énarques français craignent Trump depuis sa réélection :

1. Trump est l’antithèse de leur logiciel mental

Les énarques sont formés à la technocratie, à la norme, à la réflexion collective, à l’évitement du risque. Trump, lui, incarne :

• La volonté individuelle absolue,

• L’action sans filets,

• Le jugement personnel au-dessus du consensus,

• Une logique de disruption brutale.

Qu'on aime ou qu'on aime pas.

Ils le craignent parce qu’ils ne peuvent ni l’anticiper ni le décoder. Il échappe à leur cartographie du pouvoir.

2. Trump révèle leur impuissance stratégique

L’État français, suradministré, est lent, procédurier, peu agile.

Trump, lui, agit comme un acteur capitaliste pur :

• Il redéfinit le cadre (OTAN, OMC, accords commerciaux),

• Il méprise les institutions quand elles ne lui conviennent pas,

• Il met la France face à sa marginalité stratégique :

« Que pèse Paris face à un Washington trumpien ? »

Sa réélection souligne leur dépendance à des équilibres qu’ils ne contrôlent plus.

3. Trump fracture leur illusion d’un monde multilatéral

Les énarques vivent dans l’héritage gaullo-mitterrandien du « multilatéralisme éclairé », où la France joue un rôle moral au-dessus de sa puissance réelle.

Trump, en démolissant ce jeu (ONU, COP, Unesco, accords de Paris), expose la fragilité de leur storytelling diplomatique.

Il désacralise le soft power français – en actes, sans demander la permission.

4. Il parle au peuple – pas aux élites

Les énarques sont souvent coupés du terrain, du peuple réel.

Trump, malgré son statut de milliardaire, a compris la colère populaire et s’adresse directement aux foules, sans filtre, sans surplomb.

Cela déstabilise profondément une élite française qui pense encore que la légitimité vient du diplôme et du raisonnement abstrait.

5. Trump pourrait imposer une nouvelle grammaire des rapports transatlantiques

Une France habituée à un certain statu quo (protection américaine tacite, diplomatie feutrée, place symbolique à l’ONU) voit arriver un Trump :

• Qui marchande tout,

• Qui valorise la force sur le droit,

• Qui exige des preuves de loyauté stratégique (comme envers Israël ou Taïwan).

Cela force l’élite française à choisir : s’aligner ou s’effacer.
Also by Sébastien Laye: Trumponomics — What Does It Entail, How Is It Misunderstood, and What Is Trump's Endgame?


Sébastien Laye, entrepreneur et conseiller économique du parti américain Républicains en France. Auteur pour Contribuables Associés d’un rapport intitulé La Simplification Administrative : sortir de l'enfer bureaucratique français et Richard de Seze, directeur de la rédaction de Radio Courtoisie.

Tuesday, April 01, 2025

The Marine Le Pen Ban: Don't Courts Prove Once Again that Politicization Comes from the Left and that the Right Is Justified in Opposing Their Respective Judiciaries?

Over at X, Sébastien Laye reacts to the news regarding the Marine Le Pen ban from public office, calling upon Donald Trump to use Washington's economic weapons against his country:
The US should sanction France for anti-democratic practices since the main political opponent (once again like in 2017) has just been barred from running for the next presidential election

In France, indeed, these judgments have not only targeted members of the "far right", but members of the traditional, or institutional, right as well.  As Sébastien Laye points out in the French version of his tweet, three other politicians that judges have targeted in the past eight years are favored 2017 presidential candidate François Fillon (his surprising embezzlement investigation in the middle of the 2017 presidential election allowed Emmanuel Macron to win the Élysée palace), party honcho Patrick Balkany, and former President Nicolas Sarkozy. By the oddest of coincidences, all three are members of Les Républicains, once one of two mainstay parties in the French Republic.

Demandons des sanctions internationales contre la France qui DEGAGE systématiquement via les juges toute opposition depuis F.Fillon


What is ironic, and what few in the power structure seem to notice, is that for decades they have dismissed or demonized le Front National as being brainless paranoids for denying the democratic aspect of this country central to Western Civilization (« tous pourris » — all of 'em rotten to the core). What does the judge's decision do but confirm — and not just to le Rassemblement National's members — that there was truth in what Jean-Marie Le Pen and his daughter have been saying all these years?

On a general note, in recent years, there have been a flurry of rightist governments around the planet who have picked a fight against the countries' respective supreme courts. They include nations as various as Poland, Hungary, Israel, Brazil, and, needless to say, the United States. In MSM media, both in America and abroad, the rightist governments are invariably presented as undemocratic (and indeed, dangerous and deranged) rightists going against democracy and against civilization itself, politicizing what should be a neutral position, and demonizing innocent people (judges of all stripes) who are simply doing their jobs.

As seen recently in Romania, as well as in Brasilia, it turns out that, generally speaking, the situation is exactly the opposite: the politicization came, in the past, from the left, and what the right is doing is restoring, or trying to restore, the status quo of the judicial branch as a neutral and impartial arbiter.

Related: Having said all that, Americans must still come to terms with the fact that Marine Le Pen is far from a conservative in U.S. terms ("the French Donald Trump") and with a fundamental misunderstanding — The truth about European "conservatism" that American conservatives must understand

Saturday, March 29, 2025

Is General Mayhem the Dystopian Future for International Technologiy Rivalries? Read About MAIM (Mutually Assured AI Malfunction) in the U.S.-China AI Race


Over at the Washington Examiner, Sebastien Laye examines the dystopian future with regards to computer technology and whether international AI rivalries promise nothing but general mayhem. Sébastien Laye on Mutually assured malfunction and the new AI cold war:

There is nothing a public policy analyst enjoys more than a good analogy. Artificial intelligence literature is replete with them, provided regularly by think tank experts, industry luminaries — Anthropic’s Dario Amodei’s “Machines of Loving Grace,” referencing poet Richard Brautigan, remains my favorite — and philosophers of diverse perspectives. Recently, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt introduced another intriguing concept in his comprehensive paper “Superintelligence Strategy”: MAIM, or mutually assured AI malfunction.

The acronym is a reference to the Cold War era and the Rand-coined MAD, short for mutually assured destruction. Such evocative acronyms, reminiscent of nuclear tensions, are undeniably effective at capturing the public imagination. Schmidt’s parallel innuendo here is that as we were on the brink of utter devastation 50 years ago during the U.S.-USSR nuclear race, we are in the same predicament today as we are caught in the midst of the U.S.-China AI race. Although I do not fully subscribe to this view, believing firmly that the United States can and should lead, albeit with China closely trailing, many economists seem convinced that the race will have no winner.

In a paper titled “The Manhattan Trap: Why a Race to Artificial Superintelligence is Self-Defeating,” Corin Katzke and Gideon Futerman used game theory to investigate the dynamics of international AI competition. Their conclusion was that such a race would be even more dangerous for international stability than the nuclear race as it would heighten the risks of great power conflict, loss of control of AI systems, and the undermining of liberal democracy.

This is also what Schmidt postulates in his paper, highlighting the differences between the nuclear race with the risk of an AI malfunction and even of preemptive strikes by one of the two rivals. Like the Cold War’s MAD doctrine, which hinged on the devastating cost of nuclear conflict deterring aggression, MAIM could function as a deterrent equilibrium or incentivize international collaboration in AI.

MAIM proposes that large-scale attempts by any single nation to achieve unilateral dominance in artificial intelligence capabilities will inevitably invite retaliatory sabotage from rival states. We can envision several forms of actions, ranging from covert cyberattacks degrading AI training processes to more direct physical assaults on data centers, underscoring the fragility inherent in maintaining unilateral AI projects aimed at strategic monopoly. … Thus, the assurance of general mayhem underpins a precarious yet possibly stable deterrence regime. …

Tuesday, March 25, 2025

"Brutal Americans"? The issue is that we've never been brutal enough — with the evil of the world or with those who would take advantage of us, as a nation or as taxpayers


Check out the date for the following CNN interview. Then see who was the guest of Larry King making the comments.

A lot of people are tired of watching other countries ripping off the United States. This is a great country. They laugh at us. Behind our backs they laugh at us, because of our own stupidity and our leaders. … I think that it is an issue that ought to be brought out to the fore. … 

I believe it's very important that you have free trade. But we don't have free trade right now, because if you want to go to Japan or if you want to go to Saudi Arabia or various other countries [to European countries], it's virtually impossible for an American to do business in those countries — virtually impossible — I have many friends they go over to Japan they can't open anything, they need approvals, they need this, that. In the meantime, Japan comes over to this country, they're buying up Wall Street, they're buying up Manhattan real estate … So the fact is, we don't have free trade …  

 … There are many other countries, and taking tremendous advantage of this, including NATO. If you look at the payments that we're making to NATO, they're totally disproportionate with everybody else's, and it's ridiculous … not giving [the money] to countries that don't give a damn for us to start off with … [A development forecast for the future] going to be bad unless we do something about this horrible, horrendous deficit. 

— Donald Trump, Larry King Live, September 2, 1987

One of the big misconceptions of the 2024 election, both domestically and abroad, is that it is America — or, if you will, that it is President Trump — who is — gratuitously — starting economic conflicts with friends and allies when in reality he is reacting to (unfair) tariffs already in place against the United States. Although it is far from unfair to say that the imbalance has been going on for so long that foreigners and Americans alike have forgotten how it has developed into the status quo.

You cannot understand Donald Trump unless you take a look at the numerous interviews the "famed real estate developer" made in the decades before he ran for president. Although the main focus is not always in the political realm, in interviews with Larry King, David Letterman, and Oprah Winfrey, at some point he eventually complains of countries "ripping off the United States" (which invariably leads to the question whether he intends to run for president).

What Donald Trump has been saying since the 1980s, therefore, is that A) the world, and certainly Europe, has been considering America its piggy bank all this time and Uncle Sam its sugar daddy, and that B) they have not an iota of gratitude for this — which might alleviate the lack of balance at least somewhat — but only mockery and contempt. 

How does that make you think about Donald Trump's attitude?

In that perspective, Tom Knighton hits the mark as he tells America — and the international community (first and foremost our European "friends") that The Problem Is We Haven't Been the 'Brutal American' Before (obrigado to Instapundit's Sarah Hoyt).

I'm not a warmonger. People die in war, and as a veteran and a father of someone who is still draft age, I'm not keen on sending people into war needlessly.

But when The Atlantic published a piece over the weekend referring to us as "the brutal American," I was a little miffed about it.

See, there's an argument to be made that the reason the world is such a fiasco as it stands right now is that we weren't brutal. We haven't put Iran in its place. We didn't truly pull out all of the stops going after the Taliban. We didn't really do much with ISIS. We stood aside throughout much of the Syrian civil war and mostly let nature take its course. We've allowed socialist Venezuela to fester in South America and we did nothing as the Cartels seized more and more territory in Mexico.

Those weren't our fights, you see, and we couldn't police the world. We weren't the brutal American and the world kept going to crap.

European nations refused to spend anything on their own defense, content that we Americans would always be there to save them. They looked down on us for not being sophisticated enough to embrace their soft socialist policies and infringements on rights. They'd ask when we were going to be sensible and restrict guns or start cracking down on hate speech or any of a thousand other petty tyrannies they used to judge us as the rubes who don't know what's best for us.

And we let them.

We allowed them to do that while cowering behind the shield we provided them. We were the knight in shining armor, valiantly standing between the ravenous horde of communism, and when that fell, we stayed because threats were still there. The Soviets were gone but Russia remained. China was still there.

After the Gulf War, they weren't eager to fight, and our presence was enough, but our "allies" still thought of themselves as our betters. They were the aristocrats and we were the pawns.

We were not brutal with their sensibilities. We were not brutal with the dictators and tyrants we allowed to flourish. We were not brutal with the evil of the world or those who would take advantage of us, as a nation or as taxpayers.

Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic called us the "brutal Americans" as if that is something we should be ashamed of.

Personally, considering that all of it stems from President Trump not playing along with the status quo in the world, I'm fine with that term. 

The issue is that we've never been brutal enough.

I've long thought we, as a nation, should be slow to anger, but when we are, we should descend upon our enemies with the fiery hand of God. 

I have often said that the national anthem should not be The Star-Spangled Banner; it ought to be The Battle Hymn of the Republic (something agreed with by people as various as Harry Jaffa and Robert F Kennedy Sr, who promised to make it so in the 1960s).

Our wrath should serve as a warning to all who would threaten liberty that to do so is to invite destruction, unlike anything you have ever seen. We should leave a scar upon the psyches of the vanquished meant to last a thousand years.

 … I say we embrace the role of the brutal American if that's what it takes. We will not be taken advantage of anymore. We will not be ignored, looked down upon, or treated as less than on the world stage, especially by those who have taken no steps over decades of pleading to manage their own defense.

Related: The Censorship Industrial Complex — Vance's Message to Europe Was in Fact "Stop secret information warfare against the United States"

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Not limited to slavery, Jim Crow laws, and legal segregation: Using lawfare against political opponents is nothing new for Democrats

In the American Spectator's This Mess Is of Your Own Making, Chief Justice Roberts (thanks to Sarah Hoyt), links to 's A Short History of Democratic Party Lawfare

The party’s use of the criminal justice system to maintain political power dates back to slavery.

Many Republicans and conservatives have accused today’s Democratic Party of using “lawfare” against President Donald Trump and his supporters. They claim that this use of lawfare against a political opponent is unprecedented. But it is not unprecedented. What follows is a short history of the Democratic Party’s use of lawfare to attain and maintain political power.

The Democratic Party’s use of law and the criminal justice system to maintain political power dates back to the “peculiar institution” of slavery. It is often ignored or deliberately forgotten that the Democratic Party was the party of slavery. In the states of the Deep South and elsewhere, Democratic Party legislators enshrined slavery into law, Democratic executives enforced those laws, and Democratic judges upheld those laws against legal and constitutional challenges. Democratic presidents like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and Andrew Jackson were slaveholders. So were many Democratic governors. It was Democrats who insisted on passage of the Fugitive Slave Act as part of the Compromise of 1850. It was a Democratic Supreme Court Chief Justice (Roger Taney) who wrote the court’s opinion (Scott v. Sanford, known as the Dred Scott case) upholding slavery and declaring African Americans to be chattel.

It was Democratic Party state and local officials that in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction imposed so-called “Jim Crow” laws in many states of the Deep South. Indeed, as part of a deal for not continuing to challenge the controversial presidential election of 1876 (which included two sets of electors in three contested states and a Republican majority commission that awarded the 20 disputed electoral votes to Rutherford B. Hayes), Democrats insisted on an end to Reconstruction, which allowed them to pass and enforce segregationist laws. As African American populations rose in the south, this was a mechanism for oppression, control, and maintaining Democratic Party political supremacy. And when southerners took the law into their own hands by lynching African Americans, it was local, state, and national Democratic political leaders who ensured that anti-lynching bills did not become laws, and that rigged juries would acquit the murderers of African Americans. At the national level, Democratic control of key congressional committee chairmanships ensured the defeat of effective Civil Rights bills for decades until 1964 — Robert Caro’s multi-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson goes into great detail as to how this worked.

Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, a rabid racist, authorized segregation within the federal government. Franklin Roosevelt refused to support anti-lynching laws. Democratic Senate leader Robert Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan. So was Democratic Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black. Democratic governors like George Wallace and Lester Maddox — to name just two — were openly segregationist.

Lawfare was not limited to slavery, Jim Crow laws, and legal segregation. Democrat Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order that forcibly removed more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes on the West Coast and interned them in camps during World War II, a Democratic Party-controlled Congress legislated in support of that order, and a majority-Democratic Party Supreme Court upheld this massive legal and constitutional injustice. Democratic Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson used the IRS to investigate political opponents. More recently, Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama did this, too.

Lawfare was also involved in the Democratic-led coup (known as Watergate) against President Richard Nixon, this time with the full-throated support of the mainstream media, who hated Nixon ever since he helped to expose Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy. Geoff Shepard in several books has revealed the collusion between Democratic congressional staffers, the Democratic Party-staffed special counsel’s office, senior FBI agents, and federal judges, to prosecute Nixon’s staffers and ultimately remove Nixon from office.

So using lawfare against political opponents is nothing new for Democrats.

Related: A Century and Half of Apartheid Policies — From Its 1828 Foundation, the Democrat Party Has Never Shed Its Racist Past 

Also: • What Caused Secession and Ergo the Civil War? Was It Slavery and/or States' Rights? Or Wasn't It Rather Something Else — the Election of a Ghastly Republican to the White House?
• During the Winter of 1860-1861, Did the South's Democrats Obtain Their Aim — the Secession of 7 Slave States — Thanks to Elections Filled with Stealth, Lies, Voter Fraud, Intimidation, Violence, and Murder? (Wait 'til You Hear About… Georgia's Dark Secret)
• Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech"
The Greatest Myth in U.S. History: Yes, the Civil War Era Did Feature Champions of States' Rights, But No, They Were Not in the South (Au Contraire)
• Harry Jaffa on the Civil War Era: For Democrats of the 21st Century as of the 19th, "the emancipation from morality was/is itself seen as moral progress"
• Why Does Nobody Ever Fret About
Scandinavia's — Dreadful — 19th-C Slavery Conditions?
• The Confederate Flag: Another Brick in the Leftwing Activists' (Self-Serving) Demonization of America and Rewriting of History
How to Prevent America from Becoming a Totalitarian State
• Inside of a month, Democrats have redefined riots and election challenges from the highest form of patriotism to an attack on democracy — And by “democracy”, they mean the Democrat Party
• Why They Don't Tell You the Whole Truth: The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence


Saturday, March 22, 2025

Has Anybody Noticed? Nothing About Leftist Pressure to Force Tesla Owners to Sell Their Cars Makes Any Sense at All — 3 Pointed Remarks

Have y'all seen Instapundit's post about the video of "a masked male suspect [who] hunted down a [mother] for driving a Tesla"? Katie Daviscourt:

On March 19, a masked male suspect hunted down a woman for driving a Tesla in the Seattle area.  

The suspect allegedly followed the victim, cut her off, stopped in the middle of the road, exited his vehicle, and demanded she sell her Tesla, stating it was a "Nazi" car.  

This incident occurred in Lynnwood, WA, where there have been several attacks on Tesla vehicles and store property. 

This leads Glenn Reynolds to comment: 

SOMEBODY IS GOING TO GET SHOT IF THIS KEEPS UP. AND FRANKLY, THEY’LL DESERVE IT. 

With Stephen Miller adding, for good measure, 

Pretty much right here is when a conceal carry permit comes in pretty handy.


Has it occurred to you — has it occurred to anybody (and especially to leftists) — that the action, beyond being reprehensible (where on Earth was the driver's "safe space"?!), makes no sense whatsoever? (Apart from virtue signalling, natch.) Let's assume the drama queen manages to terrorize (sorry, to peacefully persuade) the woman to sell her Tesla. 

First of all, what does this do Elon Musk (assuming that "Gruppenführer Musk" does indeed deserve punishment)? Nothing, absolutely nothing. The vehicle was paid for when it was first purchased from a dealership — by the woman herself or by someone else who later sold it to her (see third point below). How does pressure to (re)sell the "Nazi" car in any way affect Elon Musk, the Tesla company, or any of its dealerships? Not at all.

Second of all, how is this going to unite the Left?! The vast majority of Tesla users are not Despicable Deplorables but, I think it is fair to surmise, (devoted?) leftists. Isn't having a deranged fire-eater in camouflage and a ski mask — who looks, if anything, like a violent criminal car-jacker who indeed deserves to be resisted with a lethal firearm — threaten you and your car more likely to lead to "a liberal who has been mugged by reality"

These are my fellow comrades in arms?! Getting me to sell my Tesla, and/or spray-painting my Tesla, and/or keying my Tesla, and/or firebombing my Tesla, and/or spreading unspeakable filth on my Tesla (not to mention doxxing me and/or crushing my Tesla under a multi-ton Olmec head)?! Maybe Donald Trump's MAGA crowd is not as bad as it first seemed, or certainly not as bad as my fellow leftists have now become. (Spoiler: Yes, Virginia, the Locofocos were always this deranged.) 

Thirdly, and this is the most ridiculous point: So the drama queen manages to terrorize (sorry, to peacefully persuade) the woman to sell her car. Presumably, to sell it to a neighbor or a local and, presumably, to sell it to someone who wants to make use of his or her new purchase. So, guess what! The "Nazi" car has not vanished; it is still going to be on the road! The same Tesla will be driving down the very same road, or a similar road, in a day or in a week or two, and come to the attention of another deranged leftist, or perhaps to that of even the very same Locofoco, who is going to be as outraged as ski mask was a few days prior and (overre)act in exactly the same way. (If the very same dude, will he even recognize that this is the exact same "Nazi" car he did this to a few days or a few weeks before that?!) 

What's our "committed" leftist (or his partner in crime, i.e., in virtue-signalling) going to do? Stop the new owner and terrorize (sorry, peacefully persuade) him or her to sell his or her car?! Well, in that case, we're back to square one, ain't we? If the fire-eater succeeds, the new owner is also going to want to sell it to someone else, a someone who also wants to derive benefit from the purchase. And so the brand-new owner will also soon be driving his "Nazi" car the down the road… We have the makings, here, of a perpetual motion machine (or, rather, a perpetual outrage machine).

Related: • French TV Channel Beclowns Itself While Trying to Defend Leftist VIPs Raising Arms in the Nazi Salute
The Era of the Drama Queens — Every Crisis Is a Triumph
• Do You Know What Abraham Lincoln Called the Democrats, President Trump? The Locofocos

Friday, March 21, 2025

The GOP's Paul Reen Appears on Radio Courtoisie Discussing the Subject of the Geopolitical Views of Donald Trump


Invited by Antoine Guillaume and Gicquel François-Xavier, Paul Reen, the media director of Republicans Overseas France (ROF), appeared on Radio Courtoisie's Libre Journal de l'Occident (audio at link) show along with Québec's Alexandre Cormier-Denis of Nomos TV.

Libre journal de l’occident du 19 mars 2025 : “Guerre et Paix : la Géopolitique de Trump”

Patron d'émission le 18 mars 2025

  • Alexandre Cormier-Denis, fondateur de Nomos TV
  • Paul Reen, directeur média des Republicans Overseas France

Thème : “Guerre et Paix : la Géopolitique de Trump”

référence :

Étiquettes :

 

Thursday, March 20, 2025

Plantu and France's "Nuanced" Cartoons of the Yankee Nation: Devilish Capitalist stereotypes, Nazi Sieg Heil salutes, bloody vampire teeth, and KKK Klansmen as White House columns

"The exit is thataway!"
Devilish capitalist stereotypes, Nazi armbands, Sieg Heil salutes, bloody vampire mouths n teeth, and Ku Klux Klan members as White House columns, all of which are contrasted with innocent baby-faced Ukraine, baby-faced Europe, and the rest of the baby-faced planet… 

The nuance and fair-mindedness of Plantu has hardly improved since he was the daily cartoonist on the front page of Le Monde…

"What's more, the faggot didn't even wear a tie!"
Closed border crossing: "Fuck Everybody Else"

  Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog can also serve as a description for Europeans:

Having utterly and spectacularly failed at preventing Donald Trump’s second term, the loony leftists in the Democratic Party are gradually shedding their Trump Derangement Syndrome for other targets upon which to demonstrably and irrationally vent their spleen. Vance Derangement Syndrome raged for a while, but it seems that the left has settled on Musk Derangement Syndrome as the best way to demonstrate their ludicrous, self-defeating behavior. So much so that Doug Ross compiled a list of Top 20 Violent Anti-Musk Protests: The Unhinged Left’s Greatest Hits.

 … [Leftists tell each other that] you simply didn’t call people who disagree with your politics Nazis hard enough. Doubling down on that will surely make your agenda of child mutilation, trannies in women’s sports, open borders and wasting taxpayer money to secretly fund the far left super popular.

"The exit is that over there!"

"What's more, that faggot didn't even wear a tie!"

Closed border crossing: "Fuck Everybody Else"

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

The NYT Interviews 14 Voters Hit by Hurricane Helene; Rare Are Those Who Defend the Left


In the wake of disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, along with ever-increasing doubts about the government, The New York Times decided to let 14 Hard-Hit Voters Debate a Big Question in the Era of Trump and Musk:

‘What Is Government For’?

The problem, for the left, is that no more than one or two of the participants — and they are of all races and from all walks of life — seems to be willing to defend the Democratic point of view outright; and that barely.

In the wake of the crises of the decade so far — the pandemic, extreme weather and natural disasters, among others — Americans have increasingly expressed their doubts about institutions, the government especially.

Since Donald Trump’s return to office and the rise of Elon Musk as a major political figure, there’s been intense focus on a simple set of questions: What should the government be for? Who should it help? What explains its failures? In Opinion’s latest focus group, we spoke with 14 people from North Carolina who were either directly affected last year by Hurricane Helene, or who had close friends or family members who were. Because of that event, many of them were directly confronted with these questions of government help and trust in institutions. At a time when the future of many government services could change significantly, we asked them about what Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk are doing and how other leaders, like Joe Biden, handled the crisis.

“The whole system of fixing things is broken. Everything that’s supposed to be in place is not there,” one participant said, describing his worries about not only North Carolina but also places devastated by wildfires in recent years. Some worried about FEMA’s future, even if they were deeply dissatisfied with the recovery efforts last year, others wanted to rethink it entirely, and others expressed frustration with the lack of understanding in this hyperpoliticized environment and the false claims that circulated last fall.

And at a time when people — including participants in this group — expressed real concern and worry about government cuts, layoffs and funding changes, many also expressed a skeptical and dissatisfied view of how government performs today. What does government do well? One participant answered, “Provide complicated explanations for why it does what it does.”

 Read all the questions and the various answers…

Another Chinese Belt & Road Victory; This Time, in a Black Sea Harbor on the Georgia Coast


Not content with building, only three or four months ago, the largest harbor on South America's Pacific coast (in Peru), reports that China is engaged in the process of constructing a deep-water port project on the Black Sea (in Georgia), something that one would think should upset Beijing's ally Russia at least as much as, if not more than, Western nations. But apparently not, according to the New York Times. 

This, as Xi Jinping rails and sputters about having suffered a loss at the hands of Donald Trump at the Panama Canal, although China did succeed in having its preferred candidate emerge as the head of the OAS. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal's Walter Russell Mead reports that 

China strengthens its ties with Russia and Iran while Western alliances are fraying … While Western attention was largely on events in Ukraine and the Middle East, China has been steadily moving toward its long-term goals.

in the :

For more than a year, pro-Western marchers in Georgia, a former Soviet republic that borders Russia, have been accusing their government of allowing Moscow to increasingly reassert its sway over their country.

But driving around this nation of 3.6 million people in the heart of the mountainous Caucasus region, the influence of another ambitious power becomes apparent. China has been stepping up its activities in the region in recent years, building infrastructure and expanding trade routes that it hopes will boost its economy.


  … To the west, preparations are underway for another Chinese company, China Communications Construction Company, to develop Georgia’s first deep-sea port on the Black Sea as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure and trade initiative.

The port, as yet unnamed, is now at the center of a debate in Georgia and abroad about China’s growing influence in the region and the Caucasus nation’s pivot away from the West. Inflaming the situation is the fact that the project was stripped from a group of Georgian, European, and U.S. companies — the Anaklia Development Consortium — before eventually being promised to the Chinese company last May.

Salome Zourabichvili, the former Georgian president who emerged last year as a leading voice for the pro-Western opposition, said the move was like “stabbing our relations with our American and European partners.”

In July, a State Department official said that awarding the port project to the Chinese company was “incompatible” with wanting to join “U.S. and E.U.-based international organizations.” In 2019, the United States had billed the port as something that could “prevent Georgia from falling prey to Russian or Chinese economic influence.”


  … For Georgia, the port would help develop the country as a regional transport hub.

For China, the port would become a gateway to the Caucasus, linking Asia with Europe across what it calls the “middle corridor.” It would allow Chinese companies to ship their goods from China via railways in Central Asia and across the Caspian to Europe, skirting Russia, which has been the target of Western sanctions because of the war in Ukraine.

 

… Russia, which is still considered to be Georgia’s main trading partner, could also be a major beneficiary of the project. Novorossiysk, the main Russian port on the Black Sea, has been hobbled by Western sanctions, and with the new Chinese-built routes, goods could flow into and out of Russia unimpeded across the Caucasus.

The port situation highlights how the rivalry between China and the United States is growing in the region, pulling in smaller countries like Georgia.


Related: You Cannot Understand Trump's Greenland-Panama-Canada Declarations Unless You Recognize the Extent of the China Threat
• A national security imperative: By doubling down on partnerships with Ukraine and Greenland, the U.S. aims to break free from Chinese dependency while reinforcing its technological supremacy
• Beijing's Road & Belt: China is not only trying to junk the Monroe Doctrine, it wants to establish itself as the head of the OAS

Monday, March 17, 2025

Pure Jacobin hatred for anything pro-American: Every other decision in the Biden administration was intended to harm our country and destroy the United States as we know it

What is the Democrat message?

asks John Kass (thanks to Glenn Reynolds and also to Sarah Hoyt). 

Do they even know?

Is the Democrat message pure Jacobin hatred for anything pro-American and anything that could be considered pro-President Donald Trump?

They’re feral creatures now, lonely, isolated, frightened without leadership, desperate for relevance, without any cogent message, terrified at what’s to become of them.

And quite mad, like inmates in Victorian lunatic asylum.

 … Long ago, the Democrat Party had a choice:

Cleanse themselves of their Barack Obama infection, cleanse themselves of Obama’s racist and radical addiction to racial preferences that we now know as DEI, amputate any limbs that had become sodden with jacobin  gangrene and become what they had been: a patriotic American party of the American working class.

Or, they could continue following the discredited Clintons and Obamas down the sewer.

The Democrats chose the sewer.

They didn’t do a damn thing except scream. And their childish foot stomping was on display for all the world to see last week at President Trump’s Congressional address.

 … Democrat open borders policy that ushered in an untold number of foreign terrorists and deadly street gang members from Latin American prisons are to be protected. Anyone who threatens their power will be demonized and hounded by the jacobin mob that has been paid by U.S. tax dollars funneled through Dark Money and Soros operations via U.S. AID and other sources. These money funneling operations are protected by left-wing federal judges by Obama and his meat puppet who was on the Ukrainian payroll Joe Biden.


The aforementioned Instapundit's blogfather goes on to link Bravo Blue's John A. Lucas quoting Judd Garrett's What's Important:

Today Judd Garrett posted an article on Substack that, at least for me, is a must-read. I will link and summarize it briefly and will then add a reflection from my own experience. Judd’s article is here: What's Important - by Judd Garrett. Here are some excerpts to whey your appetite:

There is a lot of talk, speculation and fear mongering surrounding what Donald Trump has been doing since he was inaugurated in January. He is starting a trade war; the tariffs are on, they are off, they are back on again; the stock market has been very volatile; the jobs numbers were not great; we don’t have a peace deal in Ukraine; there isn’t a ceasefire in Gaza; all of our hostages are not home yet; maybe we are sliding into a recession. Democrats are claiming that Trump voters are having buyer’s remorse.

. . . . The approach to illegal immigration is a touchstone issue for me when I am evaluating a President and his administration’s performance. Under Biden, illegal immigration was at an all-time high and now less than two months into Trump’s administration, it is at an all-time low. Why is this such a defining issue? It tells me how much our President cares about the country or how much he is actively trying to destroy our country. Joe Biden was actively destroying the United States of America by not only flinging our southern border wide open and inviting the rest of the world to come in, he was actively flying plane loads of illegals to the interior of the country with pre-paid debit cards, cell phones, essentials bags and housing lined up at taxpayer expense.

That was all designed to destroy the United States as we know it. The PHDs and engineers from other countries were not coming en masse; the uneducated, the unskilled, the criminal aliens, the drug smugglers, the gang members were the ones who came. Everyday under Biden our country was getting worse and worse, regardless of what the economic indicators were saying, and it was all done intentionally which made me believe that every other decision that the Biden administration was making was intended to harm our country or at least was not designed to make our country better. Everything that was done by the previous administration was done to help ensure permanent Democrat power in Washington for decades to come and if that meant destroying the country in the process, so be it.

It is dramatically different under Trump. Trump solved our most glaring problem from day one - the threat to our national sovereignty from mass illegal immigration. I sleep better at night knowing that Tom Homan is on the job, and thousands of illegal aliens are being shipped back to their own country every day. The country gets better with every criminal alien, gang banger, cartel member who is removed from the country. Our country is not about our politicians or our laws or even about our Constitution - it is about our citizenry and removing thousands of people every day who came here to poison our communities or commit violent crimes or exploit our system and generosity, makes us better.

I don’t know how many of those other issues are going to resolve themselves - will Trump’s tariffs improve our economy? Was the Ukraine-Russia peace deal good? Will Trump’s threats to Hamas end that conflict and bring our hostages home? I don’t have the answers to those questions, but what I do know is after 4 years, we finally have a President who is putting America first, who is working in the best interests of our country and not trying to destroy it, who is willing to attack and destroy the mass unelected bureaucracy which was bankrupting America. It is finally good to know we have a president who is working for the best interests of America and its citizens.

 … I sleep well at night, knowing that we have a President who puts us and our country first.

Related: •  Mark Levin points out that The Democrat Party Hates America
• Trump's Wow Moment — The only reason for wanting open borders: you're either stupid or you hate the country
• Colorado Democrats Make It Unmistakable: They Hate the Constitution