HALF-FULL REPORT 05/02/25
Wednesday April 30
A First 100-Day Whirlwind yes – and yes, Trump’s celebratory Michigan Rally and speech on Tuesday night (4/29) was awesome — but Trump is also playing long ball.
It’s now a cliché that corporate America is focused only on the next quarterly report, or politicians are too gutless to do what it takes to actually solve a problem for the short term public outrage it would cause – far safer just to keep kicking all the problem cans down an endless road.
Trump wants to stomp America’s problem cans into the ground, solve them, dig a hole and bury them, and is willing to risk public ire megaphoned by the Dems and their media. If nothing else, this is what will make T47 a truly historic presidency.
The President is challenging the American people straight up to forego immediate gratification and resultant demand for punishment of politicians who don’t provide it, and support instead what needs to be done to solve problems preventing a far better future for our country. Here are two examples this week.
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What other politician in modern history would have the huevos to publicly say he’s not concerned about the impact of his policies on American consumers? Specifically regarding his massive tariffs on China:
“(China’s) having tremendous difficulty because their factories are not doing business. They made a trillion dollars with Biden … selling this stuff. Much of it we don’t need. You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be empty’. Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.”
Only Trump. The only exception would be President Reagan at the start of his first term, who with his Treasury Sec Paul Volker skyrocketed interest rates to 20.5% prime (!) to combat double-digit inflation and unemployment. It worked, ushering in the great Reagan Economic Boom. That’s Trump’s goal, and only he has the moxie to do what it takes.
Sure enough, look what’s happening to China already: Chinese Workers Protest as Factories Shut Down Due to Trump Tariffs (4/30).
“Angry Chinese workers are marching in the streets of China’s industrial cities to protest layoffs and unpaid wages after President Donald Trump’s tariffs forced their factories to shut down. Unemployment was already a big problem for China’s faltering post-pandemic economy, particularly youth unemployment, and now analysts are predicting Trump’s tariffs could wipe out more than 16 million jobs.”
Commie-run China’s sinking deeper into beaucoup deep kimchee is one cause of many to celebrate T47’s first 100 days. Here’s a quartet more.
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This is just one recent example (last 3 weeks) from one single fed agency, of which there are dozens, of the psychotic amounts and purposes of taxpayer money spent in the trillions by woke deep state bureaucrats. Check @DOGE on X for lots more examples.
Musk’s goal of eliminating between $1 to $2 trillion from annual federal spending is laudatory enough. Yet even more potentially valuable is wide exposure to voters of what their tax money is being wasted upon. Musk is a truly heroic American – and POTUS gets the credit for enabling him to be so with DOGE…..
Here’s a must-read: The Biggest Shot of Adrenaline Into U.S. Manufacturing Since WWII. PJ Media’s Stephen Green intros:
“We might be about to witness ‘the single biggest shot of adrenaline into U.S. manufacturing capacity since World War II,’ according to a new analysis of the defense supplementary bill working its way through the House.”
The bill is not all about funding Trump’s brilliant Golden Dome (the link is to a 5-minute video explaining it). It’s about Reindustrializing America’s entire defense industry. With full support by POTUS and SecDef Hegseth, the bill is spearheaded jointly by House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers and Senate Armed Forces Chairman Roger Wicker: here is their joint statement on the bill (4/27)….
Did you know that it’s federal law that commercial truck drivers must show proficiency in English but it’s never been enforced, thus allowing non-English speaking drivers (often illegal aliens) to steal American drivers’ livelihoods? Trump fixed that with his EO on Monday (4/28). No wonder then: Truckers Celebrate as Trump Blocks Loophole for Foreign Drivers, that our POTUS is their hero with good reason…..
And counting. We have a Woke Democrat-Fascist Judiciary waging war upon POTUS and America itself. Obviously, this has gotta stop – but how?
Ever hear of Rogan O’Handley? His FB/X accounts and other platforms as DC Draino have some 7 million followers. He’s in the White House Press Corps now. At Monday’s (4/28) White House press briefing (full transcript, at 12:21), Karoline Leavitt asked Rogan for his question:
“Thank you, Karoline. In Trump’s first 99 days, we’ve seen a coordinated assault on the rule of law by radical judges who are thwarting his agenda with an unprecedented number of national injunctions…. Many are now calling for Trump to circumvent these radical judges and consider suspending the writ of habeas corpus solely for these illegal aliens in accordance with the terms of Article I Section 9 of the United States Constitution, which explicitly allows for such a measure when there is a rebellion or invasion… I think almost every reasonable American would agree that 15 million illegal aliens coming across our border under Joe Biden counts as an invasion…
Can you please let us know if and when the Trump administration is planning to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to circumvent these radical judges who are infringing on his Article II powers and to start shipping out illegals en masse?”
Her reply:
“I have not heard such discussions take place, but I can assure you that the President and the entire administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies to ensure we can continue with the promise of deporting illegal criminals from our nation’s borders. And I also agree with the premise of your question… We’re complying with court orders, but we’re going to continue to forge ahead with this mass deportation campaign and the President is open to all remedies to do that.”
It should be an easy argument to make that habeas corpus applies to American citizens and those here legally, not to illegal invaders. SCOTUS decisions show no precedent that it applies to illegals. Further, the Constitution is clear: Article I, Section 9, Clause 2: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” QED.
Trump may indeed find this is the only solution, issue a Suspension EO and persuade Congress to pass authorizing legislation – with the latter, SCOTUS could not object. Another problem can stomped and buried by 47.
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What a difference a week makes. Last Friday’s HFR pleaded with POTUS to get out of Woke City blaming Ukraine the victim, not Russia the warmonger, and come back to the White House.
Sure enough, he was back in 72 hours after: Moscow Rejects Trump Peace Proposal, with Putin’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov not just rejecting Trump’s plan that gave Russia almost everything and Ukraine, but insultingly making total surrender demands upon Ukraine and the West. Lavrov:
“We will accept a ceasefire only if the following conditions are met: the removal of Mr. Zelensky and his neo-Nazi regime from power, international recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea and [the four annexed Ukrainian regions of] Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and a major restriction on the size of Ukraine’s army, among other measures.
All the commitments Kiev assumes must be legally binding, contain enforcement mechanisms and be permanent.. There must also be
lifting of all sanctions, withdrawing lawsuits and cancelling arrest warrants, as well as returning Russian assets subjected to the so-called freeze in the West.”
Finally it dawned on POTUS that no deal can be made with Putin. That was Monday (4/28). By Wednesday (4/30), Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced: Agreement to Establish United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund. Bessent’s words:
“This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump Administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term. President Trump envisioned this partnership between the American people and the Ukrainian people to show both sides’ commitment to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine. And to be clear, no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”
Wow. No wonder my friend of many years, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the Foreign Affairs and Defense Editor for the London Telegraph, writes yesterday (5/01): The Tables Have Turned, And Putin’s Russia Is Now In Dire Trouble.
“The tables have turned: it is suddenly Vladimir Putin who is in trouble, trying to hold together an exhausted war economy as the price of Urals crude crashes to $56 a barrel – from $77 in mid-January – and as the global economic downturn tips the whole commodity complex into a cascading bear market.
The Kremlin has clearly overplayed its hand, miscalculating how far it could push its maximalist demands and how long it could keep stringing along a prickly and impatient US president.
Republican senator and Trump golf partner Lindsey Graham is going for the jugular. He has the votes in the Senate for legislation that imposes 500% punitive tariffs on any country that buys Russian energy or strategic minerals, if the Kremlin ‘refuses to negotiate a peace agreement, violates a peace agreement or invades Ukraine again in the future’.
Russia’s ‘hot Keynesian’ war machine is now in the same state of exhaustion as the imperial German war machine in 1917. The latest Russian offensive has largely petered out, at terrible human cost. Russia is nowhere close to conquering the four oblasts so presumptuously annexed. It’s now a war of economic attrition, which Russia is losing and, thanks to Trump’s new investment deal, Ukraine will be winning.”
What a week! And to top it off, the stock markets are exploding up with the jobs report and Xi signaling he’s caving on Trump’s tariffs. Hope you’re as joyous over this week as am I.