A Complex Mismatch in Non-Transactional Negotiating Skills: Trump vs Xi

 

A Complex Mismatch in Non-Transactional Negotiating Skills: Trump vs Xi

It’s no secret that China’s President, Xi Jinping, views Donald Trump as an egotistical, weak and bumbling leader, unable to deal with reality, principally responsible for terrible decisions (e.g., the Iran War or treating climate change as a “hoax”), surrounded by unskilled sycophants, and helming the unraveling of America as a great power. Yet Xi has presided over a massive devaluation of real estate values, unemployment of many educated young trying to enter a difficult job market, a loss of faith in his corrupt military leadership leading to a firing of virtually his entire top brass, and uneven growth that has not fared well under US tariffs and sanctions. Climate change, Iran, Taiwan and artificial intelligence (access and development) still top the list of global issues, although “the climate change hoax” is unlikely to be the hot topic of discussion.

Right now, it’s a battle between the only two remaining superpowers; Russia is devolving as the Ukraine War shifts toward Kiev, even as the increase in oil prices boosted Moscow’s gross revenues. But just as Xi is beyond certain that the United States is slip-sliding away, a reality which has been supercharged by Donald Trump in their eye, he is aware that Vladimir Putin is both subservient to Beijing and seems to have shoved his country into the ground, running out of both soldiers and arms at irreplaceable levels. Xi may have his own set of challenges, but he is smiling as Putin and Trump sweat profusely. Trump is en route to Beijing to confront a master negotiator.

Trump’s advisors, who are all acutely aware that Trump plunging polls and inability to solve the nation’s most basic problems, just might make him vulnerable to Xi’s obviously superior power. They fear Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip style, coupled with his desperate desire to find a decent way out of his failed war in Iran, just might have him slip and suggest Taiwan’s future is no longer his concern, as a trade-off for China’s stepping in, offering just enough to Iran to end the conflict and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But Xi has long time been planning for a trade confrontation with Trump over tariffs, sanctions and technology restrictions. Writing for the May 11th New York Times, Alexandra Stevenson and Murphy Zhao, explain the evolution of revenge:

“It is a high-stakes moment a decade in the making. In his first term, Mr. Trump warned that confrontation with China over technology and trade was unavoidable. He placed tariffs on certain Chinese sectors and singled out companies for sanctions. China responded with restrained, largely symbolic countermeasures, as regulators drafted laws mirroring U.S. actions, creating blacklists and export control lists.

“But what started as a game of tit-for-tat has escalated, reaching across global supply chains and leaving countries and companies scrambling to manage the fallout. After years of mostly reacting, China is going after entities that comply with Washington’s sanctions… The growing concern is that both countries will wield their expanding regulatory regimes as economic cudgels, dragging other nations and businesses into the fight. Business leaders and experts warn that the two superpowers are increasingly forcing the world to choose a side: China or the United States.

“In April, Beijing announced sweeping rules giving regulators the power to investigate corporate records, interrogate employees and bar companies or executives from leaving China if they are found to be helping shift supply chains out of the country… The rules also open a new corporate battlefront that Beijing previewed in 2024 after PVH, the owner of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, stopped sourcing cotton from Xinjiang, the western Chinese region. The United States has imposed an import ban on cotton from Xinjiang because of its association with forced labor… China accused PVH of discrimination, initiated an investigation and eventually placed the company on its ‘unreliable entity list,’ a designation that can carry legal consequences, including restrictions on executives from leaving the country.

“It no longer appears to be an isolated case of retaliation. ‘It is posing both a risk and a dilemma: ‘Will you break our law or American law?’’ said Sean Stein, president of the U.S.-China Business Council… The shift in China’s regulatory posture accelerated last year after a series of aggressive actions from Washington, including raising tariffs to 145 percent, imposing fees on Chinese ships at U.S. ports and restricting critical technologies such as semiconductors, chemicals and machinery… Now it has become a hot stove approach: ‘We need to show that when the U.S. takes an action, they will touch a hot stove and get burned,’ Mr. Stein said, summarizing the Chinese perspective.

“This approach means putting new regulatory weapons into action, as Beijing did this month after Washington placed sanctions on five Chinese refineries over their ties to Iran. China ordered the companies to defy the sanctions, invoking a blocking measure it enacted in 2021 to shield companies from foreign laws it opposes… China’s state-controlled media trumpeted the move as ‘a pivotal step in China’s transition from building a legal reserve to the practical application of its foreign-related legal weapon,’ casting it as a stand against American hegemony on behalf of the world.’” The other area of sensitivity is the battle over artificial intelligence.

The United States seems to have a clear lead over the macro picture, the goal of a completely self-generative AI that flies so fast, without human inefficiencies, that it just might be unstoppable. This just may have been the ah-ha moment where even Donald Trump might realize the need for mutually approve guardrails, before AI finally does the damage we all fear. As Jake Sullivan, U.S. national security advisor under President Biden, noted (as reported in the Los Angeles Times, May 11th): “[The Chinese] naturally view any American diplomatic initiative involving limitations or restrictions of one flavor or another on a capability as being a trap… It was a breaking of the seal that we could actually do something on AI,’ Sullivan said. ‘In the transition, I told the incoming Trump team that they should really pick up that dialogue. But the Trump administration’s view was just far more laissez-faire, and they didn’t seem particularly interested in it… ‘That’s all changed in the past few weeks,’ he added.

“A Trump administration once eager to gun for technological supremacy is now, for the first time, reckoning with the power AI could unleash if left unchecked. In a surprise reversal, quiet discussions have taken place ahead of President Trump’s state visit to China this week to explore reviving talks on an emergency channel, officials told The Times, prompted by shared alarm in Beijing and Washington over the debut of Mythos, Anthropic’s powerful new model.

“Mythos’ capabilities are seen across the industry and government as those of an unprecedented cyberweapon , able to infiltrate and exploit digital communication systems — including government databases, financial institutions and healthcare programs — with untold consequences… Whether an announcement will come to fruition this week is not yet clear. Any talks between the United States and China over AI regulations — designing some kind of arms control agreement governing the use of a technology that neither side fully understands or controls — will be fraught with suspicion, misunderstandings and risk, experts say.”

Meanwhile, China’s focus on practical integration of AI with most consumer goods, an area where Trump’s absurd opposition to alternative energy has accelerated China’s setting global consumer AI standards. But AI is a limited area where, if Trump’s ego doesn’t get in the way, there is potential for genuine progress. Can Trump avoid his usual attraction to his transactional mentality, which has not served him well, and focus on the bigger picture of what values are essential for America? Time will tell. But right now, I’d say “advantage” Xi.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless Trump begins to appreciate the stakes at issue, relinquishing his failed “the art of the deal” transactional negotiation strategy in a diplomatic setting with an equally powerful foe, he will only reinforce Xi Jinping’s premonition of Trump’s leading the United States in a downward path from which it would hard to recover.

Weeding Out Competence

                                   The New Republican Party

Weeding Out Competence

The King of Grift, Election Fraud, Damaging Loyalty, Inconsistency and the Great Filterer of Competence out of Government

Trump’s WAR: The average price of gasoline at the pump is $4/gallon, Brent crude – the global benchmark for oil – topped $115 a barrel on March 31st (up roughly 60 percent since the war began on Feb. 28, a surge that some oil majors have turned into bumper profits at consumers’ expense), the stock market is unstable but seriously down, the price of most everything is dramatically up (from basic plastics used in manufacturing, fertilizer, oil and gas, airfares, everything that is shipped), the job picture is abysmal (particularly for young job-seekers), talks of recession are rising fast, climate change is cooking or flooding us all over the nation, new Epstein files are pouring out, almost 9 million people showed up at the March 28th “No Kings” protests, more people are dying in ICE custody, over 350 thousand federal employees have been fired with no cost savings, Iran is firmly in control of the Strait of Hormuz (a squeeze that impacts 20% of global oil supplies), Trump’s request that Congress fork over another $200 billion for the WAR (which has cost roughly one billion dollars/day so far) is falling on deaf ears, his approval levels seem to be sinking faster than the Titanic (especially over immigration and the WAR), Republicans are campaigning for another tax cut (forgetting that the Big Beautiful tax cut impacted US healthcare like a nuclear bomb), Trump has resurrected his 2020 election fraud investigation demands with full GOP support, his political appointees are decimating Constitutional rights with rampant new conspiracy theories and an effort, led by the most incompetent Secretary of Defense/War we have ever had, to convert our military and our country into a white Christian nationalist America… free and clear of Christian values… and this paragraph is just too damned long (it could go on for pages), so let me just say, Trump completely misinterpreted the 2024 election results into cruelty, greed, incompetence, failure and global isolation. Once Netanyahu had pulled enough strings, all of these failed policies belong 100% to Donald John Trump, whose second term has been the most disastrous in our history.

I could embellish the above with snippets of relevancy. Like the fact that the thousand pounds of enriched uranium somewhere in “obliterated” Iran is still one or two levels below weapons grade. Or as Carlo Versano, Newsweek's Director of Politics and Culture reports on March 31st, Trump isn’t remotely as powerful as he claims to be: “Trump, of course, has never been a popular president, and his power derives not from broad-based public approval but by the vice grip he holds on his party. And that hasn't loosened all that much. Republican voters are more or less with the POTUS on the war. But the bottom has fallen out among independents, who have broken with him completely on virtually every issue now. And when they go, it's tough getting them back.” His terrified and sycophantic Republican members of Congress are marching lemming-like off the midterm election cliff, going out of their way to embrace Trump’s unpopular policies, fearing Trump’s “primarying” them off the ticket, a reality with eroding effectiveness, if they don’t follow orders. Trump’s efforts to cull Democratic voters by the Save America Act is failing too.

We’re in this WAR because (pick one): Iran was about to attack American assets, we were giving ordinary Iranians (unarmed and under constant malevolent state surveillance) the opportunity to overthrow their theocracy, our attacks would foment regime change, we needed to safeguard ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Hormuz needed to be a free-passage international waterway, we needed to defang Iran’s hold over regional surrogates, we would jointly (with ??? Iran ??? other) control Iran’s oil and gas assets, we could “take” their oil, we would confiscate all refined nuclear material and finalize the denuclearization of that nation, we would remove all sophisticated weapons (particularly missiles and nukes), Israel asked us to join them and to refuse would be antisemitic, it would be an easy, short-lived mission that would turn the tide in our favor with our overwhelming firepower.

Pete “I’m blind to cultural and political variables, I’m a Christian crusader and I completely do not understand the power of indigenous sustained asymmetrical armed resistance against my powerful Christian military force” Hegseth confirmed “victory” by the number of bombs and missiles dropped as well as the degree in perceived inflicted damage. That Iran could attack forces 2,500 miles away, could take out any tankers attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without Tehran’s blessing and maintained complete control of the Strait did not matter to that incompetent “leader.”

Yet, “President Trump told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, administration officials said, likely extending Tehran’s firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date.” Wall Street Journal, March 31st. As I have stated repeatedly, there is no reasonable likelihood of Iran’s surrender or acceptance of US demands anytime soon (if ever). They can replace leaders by the dozen, no matter how many we kill off. Our best interests in the region – a reasonable level of peace and stability in the region – bear no resemblance to the Israeli goal of obliterating Iran and its ability to do anything militarily ever again.

When Trump first breached his desire to join Israel in a massive follow-up military campaign against Iran, “It was at that moment, before an operation, that prior defense secretaries would typically stress to the president that there were potential downsides to such a move. In the case of Iran strikes, those would include the likely economic fallout should Tehran retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz and the limits of a military air campaign when it comes to destroying the country’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium or in fomenting regime change.

“But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth not only validated the president’s idea to move forward, he also downplayed the inherent risks of the conflict spiraling out of control, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Nobody in the room during that critical meeting emphasized the potential risks of starting the war.” CNN's Zachary Cohen and Kristen Holmes writing on March 31st. I think that this fool-Defense/War Secretary actually believes we won… and won big. Instead, he led his boss down the road to political failure, and all the meaningful signs of genuine military victory were non-existent.

I’m Peter Dekom, and notwithstanding all the blame the President may seek or charge against others, this entire Iran debacle is 100% Donald Trump’s War, all by his lonesome self (sorry Lindsey, you have lost all of any political capital you may ever have had anyway).

Crowning King Corruption

 86 (get rid of?) President No 47? 

New Trump-Centered Passport

                   

Crowning King Corruption

As [British King Charles] delivered remarks to Congress, the official White House X account posted a photo from the monarch’s visit to the White House earlier today. The image shows Trump and Charles laughing, with the caption “TWO KINGS.” 

 MS Now, April 28th.

In China, more than half a century before the birth of Christ, the productive center of the country, the richest farmland generated profound wealth for the Zhou Dukes who carved up the territory. It was the time of Confucius. Three centuries later, power was consolidated into the first Qin Dynasty, led by Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China; it was the era where the legions of Terracotta Soldiers were sculpted to accompany him into the afterlife. No one was allowed to make eye-contact with any of these dukes or, perish the thought, make a statement that contradicted any duke’s perception. The penalty was instant death. It was the time that indirect speech, avoidance of photo realistic art (impressionism with ambiguous symbolism was the rule), and “plausible deniability” became part of Chinese culture. A survivalist approach to explain why a statement could not possibly be a contradiction a of a leader’s perception.

How does Chinese this plausible deniability work? Well, if you must say anything about a Zhou duke’s “my way is the only way” statement, you might at least couch your position by saying, “there are a thousand stars in the sky,” so you could retort defensively, “I was only talking about stars.” That might work, and the duke wouldn’t have to label you a “low IQ” individual… or chop off your head. Donald Trump is perhaps the most self-centered leader on the planet, cares little or nothing for any suffering he may have caused, and while he has not yet executed any of the masses of Americans who disagree, he has very ineffectively ordered his Department of Justice (and “Retribution”?) to seek criminal indictments of his opponents to put them in prison for a very long time.

Ignoring the Constitution, US Attorney-Trump-toadies in various US Attorney offices have pursued indictments for various serious crimes against Trump’s outspoken opponents, almost always resulting in grand jury refusals to indict or a federal judge dismissing any indictments that were issued as either violating constitutionally protected actions or that the purported violative speech is just too flimsy to sustain a criminal cause of action. Take for example the recent federal indictment of Trump nemesis, former FBI Director, James Comey, who posted the above seashell photo on his Instagram account. As absurd as it sounds, the Trump administration decried the photo as a threat to assassinate the President, with the DOJ’s securing an unsustainable grand jury indictment on that basis.

Not only is Donald Trump, currently one of least popular presidents in US history, evincing symptoms of severe mental and physical decline, but he seems to be expanding his parallel universe – where the world worships, exalts and treats him like the most important leader on Earth – into reconfiguring his litany of serious policy errors into triumphs worthy of deep admiration. Trump’s center of the universe self-perception has been unabashedly depicted on his Truth Social platform, as a pope, a full-dress king, Jesus Christ or being tightly embraced by Jesus Christ. Add to this pattern of self-aggrandizement the notion that Donald Trump, directly or through his family, can operate with virtual impunity to make billions and billions of dollars

It’s not as if the United States has never witnessed financial corruption by its president before. As illustrated by The Atlantic’s recently republished a July 10, 2025 article by Casey Michel entitled America Has Never Seen Corruption Like This tells us: “The White House has seen its share of shady deals. Ulysses S. Grant’s brother-in-law used his family ties to engineer an insider-trading scheme that tanked the gold market. Warren Harding’s secretary of the interior secretly leased land to oil barons, who paid a fortune for his troubles. To bankroll Richard Nixon’s reelection, corporate executives sneaked suitcases full of cash into the capital.

“But Americans have never witnessed anything like the corruption that President Donald Trump and his inner circle have perpetrated in recent months. Its brazenness, volume, and variety defy historical comparison, even in a country with a centuries-long history of grift—including, notably, Trump’s first four years in office. Indeed, his second term makes the financial scandals of his first—foreign regimes staying at Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C.; the (aborted) plan to host the G7 at Trump’s hotel in Florida—seem quaint… Trump 2.0 is just getting started, yet it already represents the high-water mark of American kleptocracy. There are good reasons to think it will get much worse.

“Virtually every week, the Trump family seems to find a new way to profit from the presidency. The Trump Organization has brokered a growing catalog of real-estate projects with autocratic regimes, including a Trump tower in Saudi Arabia, a Trump hotel in Oman, and a Trump golf club in Vietnam. ‘We’re the hottest brand in the world right now,’ Eric Trump recently proclaimed. In May, Qatar gave the White House a $400 million jet—a gift that looked a lot like a bribe but that Trump had no qualms accepting.

“And that’s just the foreign front. Domestically, Trump has used flimsy complaints to go after media organizations, resulting in settlements that resemble shakedowns. Last year, he accused 60 Minutes of deceptively editing an interview with his Democratic presidential opponent, Kamala Harris. Legal experts saw the claim as weak. Rather than fighting it in court, however, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million, which will subsidize Trump’s future presidential library and cover his legal fees. Following a similarly dubious lawsuit, ABC sent $15 million to Trump’s library fund and issued a ‘statement of regret.’

“Beyond the court, the president has peddled Trump perfumes, Trump sneakers, and Trump phones, shamelessly using the prestige of the presidency to boost his family’s income. And then there’s crypto: the $TRUMP meme coin, the pay-to-play dinners with investors, the paused prosecution of a crypto kingpin who had purchased $30 million in Trump-backed tokens.

“‘The law is totally on my side,’ Trump said after his election in 2016, when he was asked about mixing his financial affairs with his new office. ‘The president can’t have a conflict of interest.’ That statement is now alarmingly close to the truth. Thanks to last year’s Supreme Court ruling, Trump has presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for any ‘official act.’ He has appointed an attorney general, Pam Bondi [even she wasn’t extreme enough for Trump], who appears willing to do his bidding no matter the cost to the Department of Justice. He has gutted independent bodies that went after white-collar criminal networks, task forces that investigated kleptocracy, public prosecutors that chased public corruption, and regulations that targeted transnational money laundering.

“The list goes on. Trump’s Treasury Department effectively terminated America’s new shell-company registry. His DOJ dissolved task forces that seized stolen assets. The administration froze the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the bedrock of America’s antibribery regime. In sum, Trump has dismantled a network of agencies, laws, and norms that thwarted all kinds of kleptocracy, including the kind that enriches a sitting president.

“Foreign agents are watching as America’s anti-corruption regime crumbles. They see an extraordinary window of opportunity, and they know they’ll have to act quickly to take full advantage. Succoring Trump and his family has already proved one of the fastest ways to guarantee favorable policy. Are U.S. sanctions hurting your economy? Consider building a Trump resort. Want to stay in America’s good graces? Invest in Trump-backed crypto.

“All of this grifting is likely to accelerate. Consider the Qatari jet. The gift prompted plenty of hand-wringing in the United States, but also in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, which saw their regional foe gain leverage over them by charming Trump. Don’t think of the jet as the culmination of the president’s greed; think of it as the new bar for bids to come. Any Middle Eastern dictator who wants to surpass Qatar in America’s estimation now knows his price.” And billionaires seeking continued special treatment in government approvals and contracts know that when Trump asks for a donation for a pet project (say, a garish White House ballroom), stepping up with a big dollar number is simply the price of admission.

I’m Peter Dekom, and aside from my not wanting an international pariah’s photograph in my passport, Donald Trump has become a global blend of autocrat and senior American grifter, who should be considered a serious threat, our con-artist-in-chief and an embarrassment to all Americans.

The Hoax that’s Eating America

 

The Hoax that’s Eating America

The Utter Failure of “Drill baby, Drill”

We’re fighting an economy destroying WAR in Iran, which clearly does not have the nuclear capacity to decimate American cities if you have reviewed our own national intelligence reports, over old-world OIL?! Seriously?! As Donald Trump’s arrogant inner luddite continues to put a major drag on America’s competitive advantage, China seems an ingrate for not sending Mr Trump a formal letter of expression, a profound debt of gratitude for all the wonderful things he is doing for the Peoples’ Republic. I am sure that aside from tearing apart any federal support for alternative energy, Trump is also suggesting that withdrawing from NATO is on the horizon. I can hear Xi Jinping’s heart beating fast all the way to my home. Trump’s WAR is just excellent gravy!

China didn’t have to do much to respond to Trump’s WAR, which resulted in a major global disaster as Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz to a trickle in response (kicking oil and gas prices to record highs everywhere). They have Russian oil if they need it and have shifted their economy to emphasize alternative energy. According to the February 5th Carbon Brief, “Solar power, electric vehicles (EVs) and other clean-energy technologies drove more than a third of the growth in China’s economy in 2025 – and more than 90% of the rise in investment… Clean-energy sectors contributed a record 15.4tn yuan ($2.1tn) in 2025, some 11.4% of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) – comparable to the economies of Brazil or Canada.”

The United States’ automotive sector is not a significant global player in alternative power; China remains the world’s electric car manufacturing center, accounting for more than 70% of global production in 2024, even higher last year. China would not have had the outstanding annualized growth it has achieved without alternative energy sources. For less affluent nations, the ability to dump oil for green energy is a lifesaver. And China’s EV and hybrid vehicles, very competitively priced from basic models to luxury vehicles, are rapidly embracing its new range-busting batteries big time. Instead, we’re destroying our economy to fight a losing oil WAR?

“The CEO of JPMorgan Chase has warned that escalating ‘geopolitical tensions’ could pose significant challenges to businesses and consumers in the U.S…. In his annual letter to shareholders, published Monday [4/6], Jamie Dimon said that the American economy ‘continues to be resilient,’ but that these mounting threats could spill over into trade and energy markets while impacting the country’s wider outlook.” Newsweek, April 6th. Nice understatement, Jamie, with plenty of room for an “I told you so” moment looming.

Xi must be chuckling as a profoundly hated screaming and swearing little orange dictator is now swimming in shark-infested waters, totally alone (except for the SOB who led Trump into this quagmire, Bibi Netanyahu), and facing staggering and escalating costs based on a WAR which Trump alone declared. Every announcement of wild success in the Iran theater touting “obliteration” success is met with the harsh reality that Iran can still shoot down US fighters and bombers and retains unyielding control over the Strait. Trump has been relegated to a making a vituperative threat to unleash hellfire on major civilian targets in Iran, from local bridges to their power grid, all in stark violation of international law, under the Geneva Conventions and other international law. And there is no one to pardon him from these international crimes.

It just may be a come-to-Jesus moment for Republicans, facing midterms with dwindling prospects, who stand in support of massive new military budget requests ($1.5 T defense budget with an immediate $200 B for the WAR) while cutting Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP and even Social Security, already reeling from cuts… all to accommodate increasingly unpopular tax reductions that benefit the mega-rich beyond all logic… covering up Trump’s monstrous continuing litany of mega-policy-errors that are his and his alone.

For those states ignoring Trump’s attack on alternative energy, the rewards speak for themselves. Adele Peters, writing for the April 3rd FastCompany.com, notes how anti-Trump California is still championing “hoax” energy projects to their clear advantage. “A few days ago, the electric grid in California hit a new milestone: At 7pm on March 29, batteries provided 12.3 gigawatts of power—roughly as much as six Hoover Dams, or around 43% of the total demand on the grid.

“Nearly all of that battery storage was built in the last five years. ‘Until 2020 or 2021, battery storage was still quite expensive, but we’ve seen huge price drops over the last few years,’ says Nicolas Fulghum, senior energy and climate data analyst at Ember, a global energy think tank. When it’s paired with solar power, it can ‘bring some of that excess generation in the middle of the day to where it’s really needed, which is during the peak demand in the evening and morning,’ he says.

“The cost of batteries has dropped 99% over the last three decades. Over the last few years alone, the cost fell by about a third. The cost of solar panels has also fallen by more than 90%. By 2024, new solar projects were an average of 41% cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives.” And still Trump fights for a global perspective that does not exist. Still many of his followers refuse to believe the facts, as the Trump administration demands more WAR money, and our least effective Secretary of Defense/WAR is firing every top military general or admiral unwilling to lead this nation in an obviously losing effort, embracing war crimes along the way, to placate a clearly demented policy, a military and diplomatic road to nowhere.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Trump’s self-inflicted march to self-destruction seems to me to be a harsh explanation of nature’s “lemming law.”

Trump’s Need to Contain Research… and Truth

 

Trump’s Need to Contain Research… and Truth

Empirical Research Creates Truth Toxic to Trump’s Fundamental Reliance on Conspiracy Theories

There’s more to Donald Trump’s obsession to cut federal scientific and medical research, even statistical demographic analyses. Counting on a rising populist antipathy to elitist educational institutions, from which Trump is a graduate, Trump has been catering to his MAGA base’s everyman populism, seeking to blame others for their economic malaise and underscore the “credibility” of popular conspiracy theories as viable alternatives to scientific or empirical facts. Trump has been obsessed with his 2020 election loss, claiming the January 6th Capitol attackers were all “patriots” seeking to determine that Trump was the true victor in that presidential race… the ultimate conspiracy theory after 60 losses as Trump and his supporters sought to overturn the election by filing those unsuccessful lawsuits. The current resurgence of investigating that election will not change the underlying facts!

Trump has been willing to twist the bona fide challenges to top universities by alleging “antisemitism” – including any pro-Palestinian support and any criticisms of Israel that do not include anti-religious sentiments. He has directed the DOJ to attack “elite universities” and, with backing from HHS head RFK, Jr (a major conspiracy theorist), cancel federal funding for their unrelated medical and scientific research, which programs have been the backbone of so many major achievements and cures for complex disease patterns. Elon Musk, whose principal successes have been based on science and engineering, embraced his chainsaw DOGE mission with science federal funding crippling cuts… and in the end saved taxpayers almost nothing while decimating careers of those federal employees who lost their jobs.

With the Epstein scandal combined with the skyrocketing consumer costs generated by Trump’s illegal (as determined by the US Supreme Court) tariffs and his failing efforts from his private war against Iran, which has sent oil and gas prices soaring, you might think that as his popularity sinks to new polling depths, he just might moderate his other war… against science. But having wrongfully declared that climate change is still a “hoax,” Trump seems to continue his “double down” philosophy to crush anyone who disagrees with him. Internationally, despite Trump’s claim to the contrary, the United States is more than the “odd man out”; his “drill, baby, drill” has become an international joke… as China is running away with a most profitable effort to reign supreme in the world of building and supporting alternative energy technologies, EVs and needed infrastructure. American companies are not even in the competitive running.

In all of this, Trump’s “whatever corporate America wants” (deregulation) combines with his climate change denial and his general attack on scientific research to produce a rather dramatic dismantling of the Environment Protection Agency under the aegis of former Republican New York congressman, Lee Zeldin, who has embraced his instruction to take down the agency with particular zeal. Writing for the April 27th New York Times, Lisa Friedman describes the de facto closing of an agency that has (had?) protected consumers against everything from carcinogenic weed killers and toxic effluents dumped into public waterways to greenhouse gas emissions that have produced a litany of major “natural disasters” costing lives, livelihoods and hundreds of billions of dollars of hard losses rather directly related to global warming:

“For more than a half-century, a prestigious scientific arm of the federal government did groundbreaking research aimed at saving American lives. It studied fertility, asthma, wildfires, drinking water, climate change and myriad other health threats… In just one year, it has been almost completely dismantled.

“One scientist, a doctor and expert in lung health, has recently been reassigned to a finance office. Another, an epidemiologist, has been told she has a new job issuing permits to handle hazardous waste. A toxicologist researching so-called forever chemicals on the East Coast has been asked to move to Dallas and hasn’t been told whether the research project will continue.

“They are among more than 1,500 biologists, chemists and other experts at the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development who have been laid off, reassigned or pressured to retire. Today, only 124 researchers remain, and this month [April] they must decide whether to remain employed they will abandon their work and move to different parts of the agency, or the country.

“Those who stay will no longer serve in an independent unit designed to be free from political interference. Instead, they will be overseen by Trump appointees or in a new unit directly under the administrator, Lee Zeldin. An internal memo in one office reviewed by The New York Times says its future research must ‘align with agency and administration priorities.’…

“Dismantling the research arm will significantly damage the agency and weaken the government’s ability to protect public health, according to more than two dozen current and former E.P.A. officials interviewed for this article. Some spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

“The science office operated the world’s only laboratory specializing in controlled human-exposure studies to determine the health effects of vehicle exhaust, wildfire smoke, ozone and other pollutants. That laboratory has been closed… Scientists at the E.P.A. had created a way to search for fluorinated chemicals in water supplies, allowing them to detect a toxic man-made substance known as GenX in North Carolina’s Cape Fear River Basin. Many of those researchers have been reassigned.

“And during the Biden administration, the office dived into the health consequences of climate change and discovered, among other things, that extreme heat could significantly worsen dementia. The Trump administration’s version of the E.P.A. no longer has researchers dedicated to climate science.” Corporate America does not want to install updated electrostatic precipitators to further reduce air pollution, stop selling weed killers banned in most of the rest of the world, stop using cheap coal (noting there is no such thing as “clean” coal) and fossil fuels to generate electrical power and most US-made vehicles. The rest of the world seems to find US cars, driven by petroleum products, to be obsolete using old world technology that is fading out fast. We are poised to become the one of last remaining supporters of yesterday's tech.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder how many Americans will die or be seriously, medically impacted by this Trumpian purge of the EPA.

A Very Lame Duck with Very Temporary Control Over a MAGA Dominated Congress

 

A Very Lame Duck with Very Temporary Control Over a MAGA Dominated Congress

If there had been any doubt prior to Donald Trump’s 19 minute April 1st speech on the Iran WAR, the resulting market crash, the soaring of oil prices, the continued refusal of our Western allies to join in fighting Trump’s WAR, post speech poll numbers (worse than Biden’s post-debate crash) confirmed what many surmised: Except for MAGA Republicans, representing a minority of voters, the response by the majority of voters confirmed that Donald Trump has been relegated to a quacking lame duck for the rest of his term. There is no off-ramp for a positive spin to the very WAR he promised would never happen. The resulting inflation won’t quickly fade. The nation is tired of paying for Trump’s never-ending litany of very expensive mistakes and his appointment of sub-par, incompetent lacky-loyalists to senior administration posts. America is alone now.

That Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth were living in an alternative reality was underscored, their WAR statements were at best exaggerations but mostly out-and-out lies, when a purported defenseless Iran managed to down two US aircraft in short order: an F-15E and an A-10 Warthog, leaving one man in dire need of rescue… somewhere in Iran. And even Trump has simply deleted his “excursion” descriptor of the conflict, now using “WAR” routinely. The decades of the United States’ facing “asymmetrical” warfare seemed to have been erased from the government’s memory. “Symmetrical” warfare is where two roughly equal militaries square off. Think WWII. “Asymmetrical” warfare, most of what the US faced after WWII, is where a vastly smaller and less well-armed adversary takes on much larger, better armed opponent. In the case of US conflicts, those smaller militaries – often irregulars or seemingly “defeated” organized armies – usually kept us at bay for decades. Like the seemingly “endless” wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trump has an iron grip on his MAGA elected congressional constituency. That may work in primary battles, but now having lost most of the independents, with Hispanic and “young man” cadres of voters leaving the Trump camp, unless Trump can foist a truly rigged midterm election (still possible) on us, the actual vote tally seems to predict a big GOP loss in general elections.

It’s no secret that Major Pete has little respect for senior officers with decades of detailed leadership training and experience. The ignorant fool always knows better: “The United States is in the middle of a major war, but that didn’t stop Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday [4/2] from firing General Randy George, America’s most senior Army officer. George was the Army’s chief of staff, and he was cashiered along with another four-star general, David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr., the top Army chaplain, in what has been a rolling purge by Hegseth of senior officers—particularly those close to the secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll.

“Why were these men fired while U.S. forces are fighting overseas? The Defense Department has given no official reason for their dismissals, but likely they are the latest victims of Hegseth’s vindictive struggles with the Army, which he feels treated him poorly—the service ‘spit me out,’ he said in his 2024 book—as he struggles in a job for which he remains singularly unqualified.” Tom Nichols, writing for the April 2nd The Atlantic.

Further, the extraordinary interference of Secretary Pete in the promotions of two African-American and two women to flag rank only served to confirm Hegseth’s bigoted and ultra-violent commitment to a white Christian nationalist military with disdain for the rules of engagement and the Constitution… but with unquestioning fealty to lame duck Trump, reinforcing Pete’s distorted view that Americans were now a bigger enemy than malevolent foreign adversaries:

““The memo I’m signing today directs installation commanders to allow requests [from military personnel] for personal protection to carry a privately owned firearm with the presumption that it is necessary… Our warfighters are no less entitled to exercise their God-given right to keep and bear arms than any other American… Not all enemies are foreign, nor are they all outside our border.” Secretary of Defense/WAR, Pete Hegseth, April 2nd.

As for Trump, treating the White House and national monuments as his own private property was hardly enough. The political hacks he has appointed to the DOJ would give him complete control over documents containing our highest level of vital national security information: ““MEMORANDUM OPINION FOR THE COUNSEL TO THE PRESIDENT [April 2nd] You have asked whether the Presidential Records Act of 1978 (‘PRA’ or ‘Act’) is constitutional. We conclude that it is not. The PRA is unconstitutional for two independent but interlocking reasons: It exceeds Congress’s enumerated and implied powers, and it aggrandizes the Legislative Branch at the expense of the constitutional independence and autonomy of the Executive.”

Gary Grumbach and Ryan J. Reilly, writing for NBC News, April 2nd, add this perspective: “The Justice Department has issued a legal opinion arguing that President Donald Trump does not have to turn over his presidential records to the National Archives at the end of his administration…. The president ‘need not further comply with its dictates.’…

“‘If the Trump administration chooses to follow the opinion from the office, which offers legal advice to the executive branch but does not set law, he could face outside legal challenges should he violate the Presidential Records Act in the future… The determination is a signal that the president will not turn over his documents to the archives. Trump was accused violating the Presidential Records Act by refusing to turn over documents he kept after leaving office following his first term…. According to federal prosecutors, Trump willfully retained national defense documents at his private home in Mar-a-Lago, obstructed justice and concealed materials, including a classified military map reportedly shown to unauthorized individuals. The case was dismissed by Judge Aileen Cannon in 2024 before he won re-election.”

Simply put, this Trump lawyer sycophant is telling the President that he no longer has to follow a Watergate-era law barring him from holding on to presidential records when he leaves office. Right… it’s now his personal property, just like the Kennedy Center and the White House. As Trump asks for massive new budgetary allocations for his WAR, offering cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP and even Social Security instead, it is clear that support for Trump is unraveling for the GOP and Trump at WARp speed.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you are wondering what a desperate, failing autocrat looks like.