While I may not have, I know many others have become so accustomed to Trump’s abhorrent behaviour that it simply doesn’t register anymore. He has normalised misogyny, just as he has racism, homophobia, ableism and political violence. He is a man who has turned cruelty and social division into a sick art form, defining him as the ‘Abuser in Chief’. In most cases of abuse, the victim can turn to law enforcement and the courts for protection from their abuser, but the highest court in the land has granted Trump a license to abuse as he sees fit with total impunity. This is Trump’s America, the new safe haven for racists, misogynists and homophobes.
When he pointed a finger aggressively at Catherine Lucey, Bloomberg’s White House correspondent and said ‘Quiet, quiet piggy, it wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t a slip of the tongue, it was an unprovoked, angry, misogynistic and denigrating insult, aimed at a woman who was asking a perfectly legitimate question of clear public interest. Trump’s response was one he has used again and again, not just to female members of the press, but to any woman who has dared to challenge him. In a sickening act that followed, his press secretary then stood before cameras to defend his actions.
While the Epstein files are the key to thousands of Epstein’s victims being delivered justice and accountability for the unspeakable sexual crimes committed against them, Trump could not give a damn about that. Women have been nothing but toys to him all his life; they were there to be abused and discarded as the mood took him. I believe that every single participant in Epstein’s child sex circus should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, regardless of political affiliation. To get to the bottom of this industrial-scale child sex abuse, the real key is to follow the money, and that’s the sole reason Trump did not want the files released.
Anyone hoping for transparency in the release of these files will, in my view, be bitterly disappointed. This was a global enterprise that involved billions of dollars and very wealthy, powerful men. It was a business venture supported by those at the top of the economic food chain. It’s not a vast stretch of the imagination to believe Trump has been instructed to shut it down by any means necessary, or face the problem of rich men calling in markers that will destroy him and likely see him facing jail time. It’s another tick in the ‘I must not lose power’ box for Trump. My biggest fear is that when he is out of office, corporate control of the new administration will merely serve to perpetuate the crime and deny justice again for the victims.
Beyond all of the above, it is critically important that the focus now shifts to the economy. We could, of course, focus on the US invading Mexico by mistake, as reported by Politico with the heading:
Pentagon Pete’s War Goons Accidentally Invade Mexico
There is no shortage of clusterf*cks when it comes to this regime and the likes of Inspector Pete Clouseau.
Alternatively, we could focus on foolhardy plans for the potential invasion of Venezuela. As noted by Michael Crowley in the New York Times on November 20th (I have gifted the article so that you can read it without the paywall):
‘..Analysts warn that the troubled recent history of U.S. regime-change interventions in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya could play out again in a post-Maduro Venezuela.
“The thing that really worries us is that they don’t appear to have any serious plan for what happens afterward,” said Phil Gunson, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group and the author of a new report on the subject.’
Gunsen added:
“The idea that you’re going to be able to slot in a government and everything else will just fall into place, I think is just fantasy,”
The difference between a war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Venezuela is one of proximity to the US. Any military intervention to effect regime change to promote Trump as a ‘hard man’ will unquestionably place the lives of US military personnel in danger and prove fiscally draining. It would likely lead to massive instability in the region and further strain a US economy already in distress. War is a very costly distraction if that’s what Trump is looking for.
You have to admire, though, his ability to, as Steve Bannon graciously put it, ‘flood the zone with shit’. Nobody does it better, as Trump himself would say. However, polling indicates that at long last it’s no longer really working. As with all drugs given to an addicted large segment of the population, you have to increase the dose for it to have the same effect. With polls almost on the ocean floor, Trump is desperately flapping around looking for a win, and I’m struggling to see where that might come from. That’s not good news for Nicolás Maduro.
Returning to the economy, Trump claimed at the McDonald’s franchise summit:
“This is also the golden age of America, because we are doing better than we’ve ever done as a country,”
It’s just another in a long list of lies that fail to reflect the broader economic fragility. McDonald’s CEO told CNBC at the end of the summer that households are struggling:
“Particularly with middle and lower income consumers, they’re feeling under a lot of pressure.”
A point echoed by Scott Boatwright, Chipotle’s chief executive, at the end of October, when he said:
Households with an income of less than $100,000 are spending significantly less
Red flags are being raised across the broader economy. Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics, has long warned of the dangers of relying on AI stocks that are currently propping up the US economy. I’ve included a short video below that should help wrap some context around his thinking.
Trump, as ever, will focus on the segments of the economy that support the narrative he’s desperate to sell. However, anyone capable of critical thought will look beyond the shiny trophy he’s waving to the real risk of stripping out the technology companies that are propping up the market. For people like Zandi, who make a living by analysing risk. It’s their job to look beyond the froth and the fairytales and look at the potential dangers that exist beyond Trump’s happy talk. Zandi assesses that almost half of US states (22) are either close to or experiencing recessionary impact right now.
A piece by Hugh Cameron in Newsweek on October 22nd includes the map below, which shows which states are currently feeling economic stress.
There is little doubt, as I have previously stated, Trump has bet everyone else’s house on AI. Like every gambling addict, he’s hiding the risk because he’s confident the bet is a winner. If God forbid he’s wrong, the rich have stolen enough of your money that they’ll be fine. As for you, neither he nor his benefactors care because there’s always some other mug to steal from. Never forget, during COVID, as noted by Oxfam International:
The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day— during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty.
“If these ten men were to lose 99.999 percent of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99 percent of all the people on this planet,” said Oxfam International’s Executive Director Gabriela Bucher. “They now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people.”
Trump is providing an unregulated environment to the technology barons to facilitate the rape the environment and poisoning of the water in cynically targeted low-income and minority communities. All in pursuit of perceived boundless wealth. They are doing this in the clear knowledge that if they succeed, the spoils of victory will be theirs, and if they fail, the American taxpayer will foot the bill for the cost of their failure, because they’re too big to fail. Now, where have we heard that before?
Trump might be claiming costs are down and the affordability crisis is a ‘Democrat hoax’. However, when you arrive at the checkout, you can’t say to the cashier, ‘Can I pay the Trump price, please?’ You have to step outside Trump’s fairytale and take the hit he’s responsible for. He’s a pathological liar; he can’t help himself. What is truly disgusting to me is, as families approach the most expensive time of year, a time when, as parents, we feel we are a failure if we can’t buy gifts for our children, he knows precisely the financial stress people are under as a result of his economic incompetence. That’s why he has Fox News priming its audience well in advance, on how to prioritise their gifts this Christmas.
Rest assured that the top 90% will have a very Merry Christmas as you struggle to put food on the table. A reader of my post yesterday made the valid point that the message of rich vs poor is not as powerful as the rich versus the middle class downward. I really don’t care how you want to interpret my thoughts, but I can tell you for sure that the working poor and the vulnerable won’t need to read Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol this year.
They will be living it because their president has abandoned them on his way to a very lavish Christmas with his rich friends, who have stolen their healthcare and their food assistance.
Quiet piggy should be our collective response to anything coming out of this administration.
This is so very sad that this misogynistic thing is our president. God 🙏🏽 bless America 🇺🇸