Trump has got the ultra-low interest rates he wants. US 30-year bond falls to lowest interest rate in American history, lower even than during Great Recession bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Result of all this Trump success in achieving his economic agenda: US stock markets accelerate their slide, as more and more indicators flash impending recession. bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Not since 1837 has a US crash been more the work of 1 single person. It's all Trump's doing
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Government taking control of private companies ...
Supply shortages and price increases due to government attacks on free commercial exchange;
The government imposing huge fines on media corporations for First Amendment protected speech that displeased the president ...
Enormous tax increases imposed on Americans without any vote by Congress;
Violent convicted criminals released onto the streets because they directed their violence against persons the president targeted as his personal enemies ...
In a few minutes, @theAtlantic will release video of the episode of David Frum show featuring ex ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink. Audio is already posted on your favorite platform. (thread)
The interview with Ambassador Brink and the opening monologue were recorded before today's news of Trump cut-off of essential weapons of self-defense to Ukraine. But both were recorded in ominous awareness that Trump abandonment of Ukraine was imminent. 2/x
A point I make in opening: while Trump's Putin-subservient abandonment of Ukraine deserves as much anger and scorn as the non-Putin side of the political spectrum can muster ... a word also has to be said about Biden administration's lack of urgency to aid Ukraine in time. 3/x
The Benin artifacts previously delivered to Nigeria from UK and Germany have disappeared from public view. They are not on display in any museum. Some or all may have been sold into private markets. (Links in next tweet)
The late PJ O'Rourke had a great line: "Just as some things are too strange for fiction, other things are too true for journalism." The fate of artworks delivered to Nigeria is one of those subjects too true for journalism. Fiction and fantasy are reported as moral imperative.
In 2018, protesters against gasoline tax demonstrated in Paris. A radical few set fires near the Arc de Triomphe, creating scenes of chaos for social media platforms - like the iconic image below. (THREAD)
To the consumer of social media, it must have looked as if France hovered on the brink of revolution in 2018. Paris engulfed in flames! (2/x)
Here's how things looked to Parisians, though. Some agitator poured gasoline on a bike at a distance from the Arc, set it on fire, and then photographed the monument through the black smoke created by burning tires. (3/x)
Here's the decision just won by @IlyaSomin and allies striking down Trump's tariffs as an abuse of presidential emergency authority. It's blinking inspiring. (thread) cit.uscourts.gov/sites/cit/file…
The Trump administration argued that US federal courts must accept presidential claims of "emergency" at face value, no matter how manifestly nonsensical and in bad faith those claims in fact are. The US Court of International Trade said, in effect, "not so fast."
Courteously but forcefully, the Court demonstrated that Trump's actions are only tenuously related to the pretextual emergency Trump proclaimed. Trade is a congressional domain, and Trump abused the constitutionally limited power Congress delegated him.
President Trump and his family are extorting billions of dollars from US companies and foreign nations. In new piece for @TheAtlantic I examine past US corruption - and conclude Trump can't be compared to anything American, only Russia or Africa. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Today's @TheAtlantic piece linked above is supplement to monologue on the David Frum Show today. Trump's analogues are not Nixon, Harding, or Grant. They are Putin, Mobutu Sese Soko, and the Duvaliers in Haiti.
@TheAtlantic I once owned a dog who avidly chased squirrels, but looked away when he met a deer. My wife explained: "Some things are too big to see." I recall that saying when journalists get excited over "Biden was addled" and ignore "Trump is a Putin- or Mobutu-scale crook."