The purported trade war with China has a bit of illusion associated with it because China’s export juggernaut marches on even without us. The reports clearly explain how China has shifted its production and is now selling to other parts of the world, particularly Europe and southeast Asia which makes them much less reliant upon us and much more likely to be uncooperative. Good luck on getting raw earth minerals out of China anytime soon, or in any regular commodities.
The first response from Mr. Trump with regard to the victories in New Jersey and Virginia was, of course, voter fraud, which seems somewhat ironic when one considers the fact that the Republicans are still in charge in Virginia, so they must be committing fraud to help Democrats get elected.That really does not make much sense, but, then again, it is Mr. Trump talking. Republicans have also instituted a lawsuit in California claiming that the redistricting plan passed by the voters is unconstitutional, which is, again, a rather ironic approach given Texas and several other Red states that have done exactly the same thing. Unfortunately, we have a Supreme Court that does not apply the law and certainly does not apply it equitably.
There is a growing body of reports of MAGA Republicans complaining about their grocery bills, electricity costs and other inflationary trends. What did they expect Mr. Trump would produce; a miracle by reducing those costs which no one believed was possible, except, obviously these MAGA Republicans.
The new acting ICE Director has pledged to fulfill Mr. Trump’s largest deportation effort, and was quoted as saying, “No one is off the table”.Mr. Trump campaigned on closing the border which he has done and done successfully. The irony with that, of course, is that the language from the new ICE Director is a complete change from what Mr. Trump campaigned on. He campaigned on closing the border and deporting the worst of the worst. Now, he is going after anybody and mostly picking the low hanging fruit. He is not making efforts to get the worst of the worst, although occasionally they come up with one and they make a great display of those arrests, but they are not accomplishing what Mr. Trump claimed would be done.
There have been many reports of Mr. Trump claiming that the Democrats are lunatics, communists, radicals, etc. and we have had many reports from the Democratic side saying that Mr. Trump and his cronies are in fact, fascist. Seems to me that there is a bit of truth in both of these taunts, however, the supporters of each side do not seem to be able to do any type of self-reflection, in other words, they don’t view themselves objectively. We certainly know the level of anger between the two sides is great but when people lose the ability to look at themselves, that is a real problem.
Mr. Trump when asked about one of his recent pardons advised that he did not know the person and didn’t even recognize the name. He has been making a great deal of noise for months about Mr. Biden’s pardons, and his allegations that Mr. Biden did not actually make the decision to pardon the individual. It appears to me Mr. Trump has just admitted this same thing. The question is, in how many other cases would that be true? Since he has pardoned many, many people over his term in office to date I suspect very few are actual known to him, so whether or not you use the auto pen or you sign blindly, seems to me it is the same result. I am sure that if reporters started asking about individual names, after a day or two his staff would catch on and they essentially would not allow him to answer the question, Of course, that is an answer in and of itself. Nonetheless, this is another one of those ironies just like the attack on John Bolton. Seems to me like Mr. Trump did exactly the same thing there as well.
It appears that Vice President Vance is in a bit of a conundrum as the Secretary of Homeland Security has criticized the Pope with regard to remarks made by the Pope concerning the immigration policies of the Trump administration. It will be interesting to see where Mr. Vance lands on this, or if he lands at all as I suspect he will be silent since he certainly doesn’t want to offend Miss Nome, nor Mr. Trump and probably he does not want to disrespect the Pope. We’ll learn soon what his real religious convictions are.
Congresswoman Stefanik has made it official; she is running for Governor on the Republican side. I initially thought she had cleared the field, but it appears the Nassau County Executive has challenged her as having a very limited constituency. It also appears she is scrubbing Mr. Trump from her ads and her website. I suspect that is not going to fly very well with Mr. Trump, so how does she get back to the middle if that is what she is trying to do? It is unlikely that she is going to be able to do that given her vociferous and volatile attacks over the last several years on Democrats, college presidents, etc. The real issue here is that she is not fit to be Governor. In future comments, I’ll explain how she treated the NY 21, which I previously represented, and I think you will find that this is a person who is not going to do her job for New Yorkers, she is only going to do her job for Ms. Stefanik.
Bill Owens is a former member of Congress representing the New York 21st, a partner in Stafford, Owens, Piller, Murnane, Kelleher and Trombley in Plattsburgh, NY and a Strategic Advisor at Dentons to Washington, DC.
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.
