Dan Rather on Trump

I follow Dan Rather on Twitter. He is a highly-respected and retired American journalist. Mr. Rather tweeted this week, “Why even bother reporting on what the president says? Headlines this morning go from Trump having second thoughts on tariffs to wishing he raised them higher. And all of this before most Americans had had their first cup of coffee.” Like I’ve been saying, you can’t hardly believe a word that man says. Plus, he’s got his people lying for him just like he does.

Dan Rather meant last week. Right when President Donal Trump arrived in France last week for the G7 meeting, he announced another round of tariffs that he was going to put on Chinese imports to the U.S. The next day, a reporter asked him something like, “Do you ever have second thoughts about putting tariffs on China?” You can’t twist that question. The reporter clearly asked Trump if he ever thinks he maybe made a mistake, that he should not have started this tariff thing with China. China sure didn’t want it.

Trump answered the reporter, “Yeah, sure, why not? Might as well. Might as well. I have second thoughts about everything.”

As soon as that got into the media, Trump’s people knew very well that it showed weakness on Trump’s part in his trade war with China. Trump already has a weak position in this no matter what he says.

It’s quite obvious that China–a Communist nation with a Politburo that sets policy and answers to no one, thus not voters–has leverage over Trump and thus the U.S. in this trade-tariff war. If it goes badly for the U.S., and no deal is made in solving this by the time of the presidential election next year in November, Trump is history–a one-term president. This will especially be true if the economy is tanking. So, China can just sit this out–wait until November next year before doing anything in solving this. This is not rocket science, and Trump has known this all along. It just shows his inept strategy.

So, Trump’s people, such as his economic advisor Larry Kudlow, right away started trying to cover for Trump by spinning his admission of having second thoughts. Larry said Trump meant that he had second thoughts about how he should have raised tariffs higher on China than he was doing. That was a bald-faced lie! Trump’s got his people sometimes lying for him to cover his gaffes. Before Kudlow took his position in the Trump administration, I used to watch him on CNBC as a financial commentator.

After that, Dan Rather tweeted, “Whatever happens, don’t let anyone get away with saying the chaos, ineptitude, cruelty, and corruption of the Trump presidency were unknowable. All of it was entirely predictable, and indeed predicted by many.”

Indeed, it could get bad for this president. There are a bunch of investigations of him as president as well as his prior business dealings. He’s trying to fight subpoenas from Congress. If they get ahold of his income tax returns, he could be in big trouble. Deciding to try to become president of the USA could be the worst decision he ever made.