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The Intellectualist

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Apr 8

Bob Woodward on Donald Trump: “It looks like he wants to destroy the economy.”

A Warning from Watergate: Woodward Returns

🧵1/11: On March 28, 2025, Bob Woodward sat down with The Washington Post’s Colby Itkowitz for his first major interview since Donald Trump’s second inauguration.

It was more than a retrospective.

It was a warning.

A quiet alarm from the man who helped bring down Nixon, now sounding the signal again—this time, not over a break-in, but over the deliberate unraveling of an economy.

Woodward has written books on ten presidents. He’s interviewed Trump extensively. But in this conversation, he didn’t hedge.

When asked what Trump’s end goal appears to be, Woodward answered plainly:

“It looks like he wants to destroy the economy.”

theintellectualist.com/bob-woodward-t…

Doctrine of Destruction: Trump’s Economic Endgame

2/11: To understand why a president might do that, you have to understand what he’s trying to build in its place.

During Trump’s first term, in January 2018, he summoned his economic advisors to the Oval Office.

He wanted tariffs—aggressive ones.

His chief economic advisor, Gary Cohn, warned him that tariffs would backfire. They’d raise prices on American consumers.

They’d jeopardize the very stock market gains Trump often boasted about. They’d risk triggering retaliation from allies.

Trump didn’t flinch.

He dismissed Cohn, called him a “globalist,” and told him to sit on the couch—like a subordinate being punished.

That word, globalist, wasn’t random.

In far-right discourse, it’s a term saturated with anti-Semitic overtones—used to cast Jewish figures as manipulators of finance and internationalism.

Cohn, a Jewish man and former president of Goldman Sachs, wasn’t just being ignored.

He was being marked. It wasn’t a policy debate.

It was a purge.

theintellectualist.com/bob-woodward-t…

Trade as Target: The Infrastructure of Influence

3/11: That moment passed quickly. But its implications did not.

Soon after, someone inside the administration handed Woodward a piece of paper—torn from a notepad, written in thick black Sharpie.

Just three words, scrawled in Trump’s hand:

“Trade is bad.”

That wasn’t economic analysis. That was a doctrine.

Trade isn’t just policy.

It’s infrastructure.

It supports tens of millions of American jobs—in agriculture, energy, logistics, shipping, and tech.

It links our prosperity to our influence.

It binds us to our allies and keeps autocracies in check.

To declare “trade is bad” is to reject not just globalization—but interdependence itself.

Some will say Trump was simply pursuing tough-love trade policy.

That tariffs are leverage, not ideology.

But leverage isn’t wielded with a sledgehammer.

And real strategy doesn’t end in isolation.

In the months after that Oval Office confrontation, Trump imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum.

The world responded in kind. Canada, the EU, and China hit back with retaliatory tariffs.

American soybeans sat rotting in silos.

Machinery costs rose.

Farm bankruptcies spiked.

The Federal Reserve estimated that more than 300,000 jobs were lost before the pandemic ever arrived.

We’ve seen what happens when leaders conflate nationalism with economic retreat.

From Smoot-Hawley in the 1930s to Brexit today, the cost is never abstract.

It’s supply chains broken, prices inflated, trust shattered.
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The Intellectualist

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Apr 2

Trump to Unveil Largest Tax Increase in World History

A Hidden Tax Bomb, Not Passed—But Imposed

🧵1/10: What if the biggest tax hike in U.S. history wasn’t passed by Congress—but snuck in through a tariff?

That’s exactly what President Trump is planning, according to economic columnist Matthew Lynn, writing for The Telegraph on March 31, 2025.

Liberation Day: A $600 Billion Fiscal Earthquake

The initiative is called Liberation Day.

It’s expected to be unveiled this week, and it could impose tariffs so sweeping that they’d generate an estimated $600 billion a year in revenue.

That’s not a side policy—it’s a fiscal earthquake.

To put that in perspective, it would exceed all corporate tax revenue in the United States and instantly become the third largest source of federal funding, behind only income taxes and payroll taxes.
youtube.com/watch?v=kvdfyn…

Navarro’s Pitch: A Massive Tax Shift Without a Vote

2/10: Trump loyalist Peter Navarro pitched the plan on Fox News, saying the goal is to tax imports—particularly foreign cars and manufactured goods—in a way that “brings jobs back.”

But Navarro also admitted that the federal government could collect $600 billion a year through this new tariff structure.

If that happens, it would amount to a 15% increase in total U.S. tax revenue, without a single act of Congress.

How Trump Can Do This Alone

How is this possible?

Because under the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the president has unilateral authority to impose tariffs.

That means this $600 billion tax could materialize without a single Congressional vote.

It’s a stunning shift in the structure of American taxation—executive fiat replacing legislative deliberation.

youtube.com/watch?v=kvdfyn…

The Real Cost: You Pay, Not China

3/10: And despite the patriotic branding, the true cost will land on consumers, not foreign governments.

For illustration: a working-class family in Indiana earning $48,000 per year may already be spending nearly 20% of their income on imported necessities—from electronics to appliances to school supplies.

If tariffs add even 10% to those costs, their effective purchasing power could shrink by thousands.

A Stealth Tax Masquerading as Trade Policy

This isn’t a trade policy. It’s a stealth tax detonation wrapped in a flag. And if enacted without offsetting tax cuts, it will bleed American wallets slowly and silently—like a leak beneath the floorboards.

The Illusion of Reshoring—And the Cost of Protectionism

Supporters argue that tariffs might encourage U.S. manufacturing.

That’s not impossible.

Some production may indeed shift from Stuttgart to South Carolina or from Shenzhen to Seattle.

But that shift would take years—if it happens at all.

And in the meantime, prices will rise, wages may stagnate, and American consumers will be footing the bill.

Worse still, protected domestic companies tend to grow sluggish and inefficient.

Without international competition, there’s less pressure to innovate, reduce costs, or improve productivity.

The tariffs become a comfort blanket for monopolies—and a straitjacket for everyone else.

youtube.com/watch?v=kvdfyn…

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Apr 1

To Help Trump Defy the Constitution, a GOP Senator Proposes Ending Judicial Independence

When the Judge Serves the Ruler

🧵 1/10: What happens when the judge serves the ruler?

That question haunted the Founders. They had seen what power could do to justice—and what justice must do to constrain power. That’s why they built a system where the law stands above the leader, not beneath him.

Imagine if a president lost in court—not because of bias, but because the law and the facts weren’t on their side.

A federal judge rules that the president’s actions are unconstitutional or unlawful.

Checks and balances working exactly as designed.

Now imagine that president simply creates a new court—one that agrees with him.

A custom court. A bench dressed to obey.

That isn’t reform.

That’s absolute power, rubber-stamped and notarized.

So ask yourself: What happens when the courts are no longer independent—but installed?

When the robes answer not to law, but to loyalty?

youtu.be/Stodp_iUn6U

The Proposal

2/10: On March 25, 2025, Ashley Moody, a Republican U.S. Senator from Florida, proposed exactly that.

Appearing on Fox News, she suggested that the federal government should create “specialty courts” to bypass federal judges who issue rulings unfavorable to President Donald Trump.

Some defenders argue this is a fix for judicial bias—a counter to so-called “liberal” courts.

But reform operates within the system.

This proposal operates above it.

Reform seeks to uphold the rule of law.

This replaces it.

And this comes as the administration Moody defends openly defies court orders, purges civil servants, and rewrites institutional norms in real time.

Moody, a former federal prosecutor and Attorney General of Florida, framed it as reform.

But in truth, it was an attempt to sidestep judicial independence altogether.

Her proposal isn’t reform.

It’s an attempt to selectively silence the courts—using tools that history, and the very Framers whom people like Moody claim to venerate, explicitly condemned.

It echoes the kind of system the Founders studied, feared, and rejected.

The Star Chamber

The Founders knew what happens when rulers shape courts to serve their will.

In pre-democratic England—before the 1689 Bill of Rights—prerogative courts operated under direct royal authority.

Unlike common law courts, they had no juries, followed no standard legal procedures, and weren’t accountable to the public.

They held secret hearings and punished dissent without due process.

They didn’t exist to deliver justice—they existed to enforce the monarch’s will.

The most infamous of these was the Star Chamber. It answered directly to the crown. It bypassed juries, ignored legal protections, and became a tool for silencing opposition.

Its original mission was noble—punishing powerful nobles who intimidated the courts.

But once the king controlled it, it became something darker: law in appearance, repression in practice.

Its abolition in 1641 wasn’t just legal housekeeping.

It was a declaration: liberty cannot exist where power controls judgment.

The Founders’ Design

3/10: The American Founders studied what the Star Chamber became—and vowed never to repeat it.

They pored over Blackstone’s Commentaries, Locke’s Treatises, and the debates that dismantled prerogative courts.

They weren’t just building a government.

They were building a firewall against the corrosion of justice.

Their break with Britain was more than rebellion. It was reinvention.

They had seen what happens when Parliament is sovereign—when rights can be granted or revoked at will.

They rejected a system where liberty depended on the generosity of those in power.

Freedom, they believed, required more than elections. It required structure.

A written Constitution that bound all branches—not served them.

Judges who didn’t answer to presidents or parliaments.
Rights that were protected, not bestowed.

The British system was liberal for its time.

It replaced kings with parliaments.

But Parliament simply inherited the unchecked authority of the crown.

The Founders understood that concentrated power was dangerous—no matter who held it.

So they divided it—into three co-equal branches.

They drew from Montesquieu’s theory of separation of powers, where ambition would check ambition.
And they reinforced it with Madison’s warning in Federalist No. 47:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands… may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

They didn’t aim for perfect leaders.

They built institutions to withstand imperfect ones.

Lessons from Fallen Republics

And they knew those institutions could erode faster than they were built.

They studied republics that promised liberty—but succumbed to those who weaponized it.

In Athens, demagogues like Cleon rose not through wisdom, but spectacle.

He inflamed public passions, punished dissent, and made law a tool of vengeance.

Athens gave voice to the people—but lacked structure to withstand manipulation.

In Rome, it was generals instead of orators.

The Gracchi brothers bypassed norms in the name of reform.

Marius fused military command with political ambition.

Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon not to destroy the Senate—but to neuter it.

He ruled in the name of the republic while dissolving its substance. And when he died, it wasn’t restoration.

It was the beginning of empire.

Authoritarianism doesn’t always arrive with a crown.
Sometimes it arrives with applause.

Venice fell more quietly.

Once a republic governed by merchant councils, it became rule by secrecy and silence.

The Doge remained. The rituals endured. But real power vanished behind closed doors.

youtu.be/Stodp_iUn6U

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Mar 30

The Disappeared: Trump’s Mass Deportation Machine and the Shadow Prison in El Salvador

A Knock at the Door, Then Nothing

🧵1/10: Imagine waking up one morning to discover that your brother is gone.

Not missing—disappeared.

No phone call. No charges. No lawyer.

And days later, a message appears—he’s been deported to a country he’s never been to, locked in a concrete hell designed for gang leaders and killers.

That’s not a story from Argentina’s Dirty War or Stalin’s gulags.

It happened in the United States—in 2025.

And it’s still happening, as you read this.

This is the story of The Disappeared—238 Venezuelan men secretly deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador’s most notorious prison, CECOT—a facility condemned by the United Nations, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch for crimes against human dignity.
youtube.com/watch?v=pJIGxn…

Not Criminals—Targets of Vulnerability

2/10: They weren’t taken because they were criminals.

They were taken because they were vulnerable—asylum seekers, migrants, dissidents—fleeing persecution, hoping for protection under American law.

Instead, they were swept up under a statute from 1798—the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime relic once used by John Adams to jail immigrants.

The Trump administration revived it and reinterpreted it to enable a deportation machine without trial, judge, or oversight.

This wasn’t a crackdown on MS-13.

Most had no criminal records.

Some were flagged only for tattoos—like Jefferson José Laya Freites, deported because of a lion on his forearm. It was assumed to be gang-related. It was actually a tribute to his Christian faith.

Or Arturo Suárez Trejo, a Venezuelan singer living in Houston, legally awaiting an asylum hearing. One morning, ICE agents came to his door.

“He’s being transferred to finish processing,” they told his daughter.

He never came home.

His family later identified him in a prison photo—head shaved, shackled, kneeling in the white uniform of El Salvador’s mega-prison.
youtube.com/watch?v=pJIGxn…

Black Saturday: The Collapse of Judicial Authority

3/10: This was the reality on March 15, 2025—Black Saturday—the day the Trump administration defied a federal court order and deported a large number of these men to CECOT.

A judge had ruled the deportations unconstitutional and ordered the flights turned around. The planes were in the air. The White House ignored the ruling. They kept going.

It was the day the United States crossed a line no constitutional democracy should ever cross.

CECOT: A Modern Gulag

Because CECOT is not a prison.

It is a modern gulag.

No windows.

No sunlight.

No visitors.

No phone calls.

Prisoners are held in stress positions, denied food, beaten with batons, and stripped of all identity.

They sleep on concrete in crowded cells—100 men to a room.

Their heads are shaved. Their movements are choreographed by armed guards.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture condemned CECOT as a site of systematic abuse.

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, presents it as a symbol of authoritarian control.

But it is also a dumping ground—for prisoners deported by foreign governments looking to disappear them without scrutiny.

And that’s where the United States sent people who had done nothing wrong.

Not back to Venezuela.

But to a third country—with no legal jurisdiction, no treaty obligation, and no accountability.

Photojournalist Philip Holsinger captured their arrival: shackled men, trembling, forced to kneel.

An ICE agent was present at the plane. The transfer was coordinated by American officials.

Detainees were offloaded rapidly—processed like inventory, not people.

One man clutched a broken rosary. The crucifix had snapped off.

He held it anyway.

This wasn’t deportation.

This was disappearance.

The Legal Definition—and the Human Cost

And the difference matters.
Deportation is a legal process.
Disappearance is a crime against humanity.

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance—signed by the United States in 2000—defines it as:

“The arrest, detention, or abduction of persons by agents of the state… followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person.”

That is what happened here.

Families were told nothing.
Some were lied to.
Legal representation was severed.
Communication ceased.

We do know the names of the 238 men.

CBS News published the full list.

Among them:

Andrys Caraballo, a makeup artist last seen in ICE custody.

David Larez, a father of three, awaiting asylum processing.

Luis Molina, a diabetic who needed daily insulin.

Anyelo José Sarabia González, 19, deported for a rose tattoo.

Jerce Reyes Barrios, 36, a former Venezuelan soccer player flagged for a rosary and a soccer ball.

We don’t know where most are now—or if they’re still alive.

But we know this violated a federal court order.

This was not a miscommunication.

It was a deliberate act of executive defiance.

Stephen Miller and senior DHS officials orchestrated the flights in secret. Internal documents reviewed by CBS and Axios confirm the operation was timed to outrun judicial oversight.

But at 6:51 p.m. ET, Judge James Boasberg issued a legal injunction.

He ordered that the planes be turned around.
He told DOJ lawyers: “You need to ensure compliance immediately.”

They didn’t comply.

The planes kept flying.

Thus came Black Saturday: the first time in modern U.S. history that a president defied a federal court order—and faced no consequence.
youtube.com/watch?v=pJIGxn…

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Mar 26

The Rise of Hitler: A History of How Democracy Fell in Germany and Its Parallels to Today

🧵1/13: His past was steeped in scandal—a felon, accused of treason and sedition, his actions and rhetoric frequently straddling the line of legality.

He was convicted for attempting to overthrow the government, yet this criminal history didn’t disqualify him.

It only made him more appealing to those who viewed the establishment as corrupt and broken. Instead of disqualifying him, his criminal record and charges became part of his defiant charm, painting him as an outsider willing to fight the system.

Every accusation, every charge of treason, only fueled his rise, showing his supporters that he could not be tamed and was the only one willing to challenge the powers that had held the nation in their grip.
youtu.be/ShqC3146Shw?si…

2/13: At first, they dismissed him. The elites, the media, the political class—they thought they could control him. They mocked him as a sideshow, a foolish provocateur, destined to be forgotten.

But in the wake of high inflation, economic instability, and a country that had lost its bearings, his words struck a chord with those who had been cast aside.

In an age of rising populism, economic dislocation, and a shrinking middle class, his rhetoric didn’t promise solutions—it promised retribution.

It wasn’t just blame he offered; it was a convenient, scapegoated enemy to rally against.

His was a message soaked in anger, dripping with resentment for anyone deemed an outsider.

Minorities, immigrants, political rivals—all of them were the root of the nation’s collapse. And in this narrative of vengeance, he found his power.
youtu.be/ShqC3146Shw?si…

3/13: It wasn’t just the forgotten and the downtrodden who rallied to him.

His support was a web of disenfranchised voters, alienated workers, and desperate communities—a rage that turned inward, then outward.

People who had once believed in the promise of democracy now saw him as their only hope, their only defender. He was the hammer to crush a system they believed had betrayed them.

They didn’t care what he stood for, as long as he was willing to destroy the things they hated. And with every provocation, every scandal, his following grew—spurred on by his audacity and his defiance.

The more they despised him, the more they were drawn to him, their loyalty strengthening with every wave of mockery that he deflected effortlessly.

youtu.be/ShqC3146Shw?si…

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Mar 26

Trump’s War on Lawyers Leaves His Critics Defenseless

When the Law Stands Down

🧵1/9: Some stories reveal injustice. Others show how justice itself disappears.

In a March 25, 2025 report published by The Washington Post, journalist Michael Birnbaum reveals that major U.S. law firms are now refusing to represent opponents of President Donald Trump, as the administration escalates retaliatory actions that many legal scholars warn are reshaping the American justice system itself.

Weaponizing the Legal Profession

President Donald Trump is no longer just targeting political adversaries—he’s targeting their lawyers.

Through executive orders, punitive sanctions, and quiet threats, the administration is redrawing the boundaries of professional risk.

Once-proud firms that challenged Trump’s first-term agenda are retreating, fearing loss of federal access, clients, and economic survival.

“The law firms have to behave themselves,” Trump declared.

“They behave very badly, very wrongly.”

His message is clear: resistance has consequences. And America’s legal firewall is starting to crack.
theintellectualist.com/trump-legal-cr…

The Chilling Effect in Action

2/9: The tactics are surgically coercive.

Targeted law firms are barred from federal buildings.

Their attorneys stripped of security clearances.

Executive orders direct federal agencies to sever all contracts with any business that employs them.

The chilling effect is deliberate—and immediate.

Former Biden officials now facing litigation say they can’t find lawyers.

One had five firms withdraw, including a pro bono partner who backed out the day after Trump signed an order against Perkins Coie.

“The partner was livid,” the former official said, “but said leadership wouldn’t take the risk.”

When the law firms tasked with defending liberty retreat, what remains to defend the Constitution?

Compliance vs. Consequence

The harm is financial, reputational—and constitutional.

Perkins Coie estimated losses of 25% of its revenue after the order.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell issued a restraining order and expressed deep alarm:

“It sends little chills down my spine.”

In response, the Justice Department tried to remove her from the case, accusing her court of bias.

Another firm—Paul Weiss—chose compliance over confrontation.

After a closed-door meeting at the White House, it agreed to donate $40 million in legal work aligned with Trump’s policy goals.

The executive order against it was promptly rescinded.

Resistance brings punishment.

Compliance brings reprieve.
theintellectualist.com/trump-legal-cr…

Autocracy in Legal Clothing

3/9: This isn’t new. It’s just newly American.

Legal scholars like Scott Cummings and Claire Finkelstein say this playbook mirrors Russia, Hungary, and Turkey—where lawyers aren’t arrested, just made irrelevant.

“This is using law to erode the institutions meant to check power,” said Cummings.

“They’re dictating the terms under which lawyers can practice,” added Finkelstein.

If lawyers become instruments of executive favor, then the adversarial system collapses—functionally, if not formally.

The Sixth Amendment promises counsel.

But when no one dares to provide it, the promise fades into mere suggestion.

Fear Replaces Advocacy

Nonprofits working on immigration and civil rights now report that big firms no longer answer their calls.

“It used to be—this is wrong, and we’re going to represent it,” one said. “Now, it’s a slower process. People are scared.”

Intimidation works not by swinging a hammer—but by hanging it overhead.
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