Trump's Pep Rally

To deter Congressional minds from thinking about the fact they lost the war against Russia in Ukraine, Trump turned his address to a joint session of Congress into a high school type pep rally complete with a rooting section in the audience as the transcript shows. At least he didn’t wear a MAGA cap. His few mentions of law and order omitted naming the biggest law breakers of all—Wall Street banks, who launder the drug cartel’s money amongst many other crimes. Nor did he mention the genocide he’s abetting in Palestine. This portion shows what his economic program will be based upon (all emphasis mine):

As commander in chief, my focus is on building the most powerful military of the future. As a first step, I am asking Congress to fund a state-of-the-art golden dome missile defense shield to protect our homeland — all made in the U.S.A.

Ronald Reagan wanted to do it long ago, but the technology just wasn’t there, not even close. But now we have the technology. It’s incredible, actually. And other place — they have it, Israel has it. Other places have it. And the United States should have it too, right, Tim, right? They should have it too. So I want to thank you. But it’s a very, very important — this is a very dangerous world — we should have it.

We want to be protected, and we are going to protect our citizens like never before. To boost our defense industrial base we are also going to resurrect the American shipbuilding industry, including commercial shipbuilding and military shipbuilding. And for that purpose, I am announcing tonight that we will create a new office of shipbuilding in the White House that offers special tax incentives to bring this industry home to America where it belongs. We used it to make so many ships. We don’t make them anymore very much, but we’re going to make them very fast, very soon. It will have a huge impact.

To further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we’ve already started doing it. Just today a large American company announced they are buying both ports around the Panama Canal and lots of other things having to do with the Panama Canal and a couple other canals. The Panama Canal was built by Americans for Americans, not for others. But others could use it. [Black Rock is part of the administration?]

The last paragraph shows he was what was once known as a Nativist and a Know Nothing. The term tariff was mentioned 18 times. This is one of them and shows that when it comes to tariffs Trump knows nothing and confesses it to the world:

[W]hatever they tariff us, other countries, we will tariff them. That’s reciprocal, back and forth.

Whatever they tax us, we will tax them.

Later in that same paragraph is Trump’s main delusion:

We will take in trillions and trillions of dollars and create jobs like we have never seen before.

And whoever his advisor is that said such trillions were possible is just as delusional. Such delusions almost make Reagan’s Voodoo Economics seem sane. On Inflation:

A major focus of our fight to defeat inflation is rapidly reducing the cost of energy.

His focus is on the price of oil and thus gasoline and diesel prices. It should be noted that the highest national average price for gas was $5.016 on 6/14/22, and for diesel $5.816 on 6/19/22 which are now $3.107 and $3.656, respectively. This Forbes article from Trump’s first term could probably be republished. This site‘s chart provides a look at the 3-month spread in price volatility for both gas and electricity. What they’ll look like come August would be instructive. Trump declares, “As president, I’m fighting every day to reverse this damage [inflation] and make America affordable again.” I do miss ShadowStats. The Brownstone Institute provides this paper about inflation and GDP 2022-2024, that the former is understated causing the latter to be overstated and that in genuine terms the US economy was in recession during 2024.

In a comment elsewhere, I compared Trump’s Pep Rally to Putin’s Leap Day Address to Russia’s Federal Assembly that laid out his vision and specific plans out to the year 2030. The way Russia has distributed specific holidays for select groups like teachers, firefighters, science, etc., allows Putin to have many pep rallies through the year, not just one, and allows him to deal with major policy issues when he addresses various government departments and branches, as he did today, addressing telephone and internet fraud, which is epidemic. What I await from Team Trump is their budget proposal where policy plans, goals and means of finance must be specific.

One last note. Trump offered to Putin the cutting of US defense spending by 50% provided Russia and China would also cut theirs the same amount. Since it appears his entire MAGA plan involves beefing up the MIC with even more contracts they are unable to fulfill, does he have a Plan B or was his 50% cut unfounded bluster? I do recall one very famous American Peacemaker: The Colt Single Action Army Handgun Peacemaker M1873. Here’s one they made for kids:

Looks like the real thing. I think cops would agree.

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