Our Game Show President’s latest fuck up brings his old political dominatrix back for more punishment, when he threatened to impose tariffs on another nation that has a stranglehold on our manufacturing infrastructure, merely to stem the tide of weird paranoias in his head. This makes no sense to anyone with a modicum of understanding about treaties and international trade, and certainly for every member of the U.S Congress, including even those appalled Republicans who normally kiss his ass. But for Donald Trump, it was a winner. The minute he rode down that escalator and started calling Mexicans rapists and killers, or well… some of them are fine… but mostly rapists and killers, he finally had himself a fine argument to run the free world instead of having his contract renewed by the National Broadcasting Network.
Soon there would be a wall, with Mexico paying for it, and more racist nonsense that went over big in the anti-free-trade wing of the Republican Party, heretofore relegated to a dark quasi-conservative philosophy once pitched by the kind of laissez-faire isolationists that doomed the economy for generations. And then there’s the aforementioned ill-conceived tariff threats that forced Trump to cave and then, as is his childish wont, claim victory and get all pissy when anyone not affiliated with state-run television at FOX News couched it as an ass-kicking.
Unfamiliar with anything that has occurred in American history or the basic tenets of governance over the past centuries, Trump—who continues to float the idea of nations paying the U.S. for our occupations of said countries for our national security post-WWII—merrily conflates the idea of trade with national security. His ridiculous China trade war (including executive orders that are so wildly idiotic that it would take four columns to cover it all, and I am beyond tired citing stupid shit this guy does, so go research it yourself) is destroying our farming industry, causing market unrest, and has just begun effecting our consumer bases.
It also forced Trump’s National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn to quit in protest. So, of course, this growing fiasco became the basis for the President’s reasoning for taking on Mexico, which he has deemed an existential threat to our nation, even though illegal immigration has been down for ten years and was at an all-time low during the previous administration. In fact, Barack Obama’s border run was so invasive he began to get serious backlash from the Latino community that most likely resulted in the less than stellar turnout for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
A short aside here, it should be noted that the laws Trump uses to its most horrific depths in jailing children in inhuman conditions at our border was supported and enforced by the Obama Administration, which Trump and his usual lackies have cited to get the backlash for this national blight off their backs.
Mexico held firm against being threatened with tariffs for weeks, while waiting for the U.S. Congress to lose its shit, which it did. Even Mitch McConnell, who has been using Trump’s empty philosophical husk to ram-rod outdated right-wing crap through the Senate for over two years now, told El Douche to snap out of it. Trump—as he did with Nancy Pelosi after shutting the government down and bringing us to the brink of war with North Korea—avoided the catastrophe by reverting to his own personal delusions, then reversed course at the last minute to claim that his brilliance saved the day. This is tantamount to someone lighting your house on fire and then after putting it out says, “You’re welcome.”
The Mexican government even tried to save Trump from himself by agreeing to things they had already agreed to months before his showboating to throw him a PR bone, but then they heard Trump was doing a victory lap and telling the international press he had bested them. So, Mexico came clean and told everyone nothing was changed by the phony tariff threats. Trump then did “that Trump thing”—calling an impromptu press conference, basically to wave a piece of paper around telling everyone a “secret deal” was made.
Mexico—unfamiliar with “secret deals” that easily sucker the great unwashed up north—not only denied this goofiness but had its foreign minister produce paperwork of the actual deal. When reporters studied Trump’s paper-prop, it jived with Mexico’s and he looked like an idiot.
Again.
I say again because for some reason Mexico is the gift that keeps on giving for Trump—and the pill that taketh away (as in the fabricated “caravan” nonsense Trump tried selling to stem the tide of the Blue Wave that inevitably turned into a tsunami last November). The whole “Mexico is paying for the wall” thing has been an abject embarrassment. Even Trump knew it when less than a week into his presidency he begged then-Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to go along with the ruse to cover his ass. Leaked White House transcripts has Trump whining, “The fact is we are both in a little bit of a political bind, because I have to have Mexico pay for the wall—I have to.” Peña Nieto literally laughed and then told the President that he would not be taking any bullets for his lying, forcing Trump to ask him to simply keep it under his hat. “You cannot say that (you will not pay for the wall) to the press. The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that. You cannot say that to the press because I cannot negotiate under those circumstances.”
Trump even tried threatening to shut down relations because of this, but Peña Nieto instead told his press that he told Trump to go hump it, and then watched his approvals go through the roof, while Trump ate shit.
And then this week happened and, well… bon appétit!
To be fair to Trump, he counts on people not having a clue what is really going on, which has kept his 38-42 percent of Americans digging his schtick. That is why he absolutely needs Mexico to play the villain in order to keep the MAGA-era relevant. That is why, despite getting skunked again and again by Mexico, he keeps going back to that poisoned well. The President needs Mexico. And it appears, Mexico—or at least its government—loves having him.
