Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Republican President Donald Trump’s main political agenda this second term of his presidential career—tariffs. Ever since the 1980s, as a New York real estate tycoon and builder, he had publicly exclaimed that other national governments were “ripping off” the U.S. in various ways, especially with tariffs. He reasoned for all the years since that the U.S. national debt was caused mostly by the U.S. trade imbalance. That occurs when U.S. consumers purchase more products made in foreign countries than the sum total of those foreign consumers purchase American products. Trump blamed some of this on those countries imposing tariffs on their products exported to the U.S. and sold here.
Trump’s Strategy Is Erecting a Straw Man to Knock Down
Donald Trump’s complaints about how the U.S. government operates have often been founded on a shaky basis that I was characterize as “a straw man.” That is, he makes a complaint that he bases on a weak or untrue notion and then offers a remedy for solving it, as in the case of tariffs. I think he generally goes astray with his original argument, in this case that the U.S. trade imbalance is a big cause of our national debt. But I think that imbalance has little or nothing to do with our national debt; rather, it just shows that American consumers have had more money with which to buy things than other people in the world do.
The Supreme Court was expected to rule on Trump’s tariffs any day, first imposed on April 2 called “Liberation Day,” and today it did. Trump had been making public statements for months, pressuring the Court to rule in favor of his tariffs. He had based his supposed power to implement these tariffs on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) passed by Congress in 1977.
Court Rules IEEPA Doesn’t Apply to Trump Tariffs
But Trump’s application of IEEPA had seemed dubious from the get-go. There was no emergency regarding tariffs against us or our trade imbalance. So, the Court ruled that President Trump did not have constitutional authority to impose his outrageous tariffs. They were higher in percentage than the U.S. had ever done going back to the beginning of The Great Depression in 1930. (Those tariffs had actually made The Depression worse.) Trump’s tariffs included 150% on China and then he lowered them. In fact, Trump scared everybody at first with extremely high tariffs, slapping them on over 100 nations, before lowering them. He then got the nickname TACO Man meaning “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
Trump Lashes Out at Justices
Trump responded today to the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling by lashing out against those justices who ruled against him, two of whom he appointed—Neil Gorsuch and and Coney Amy Barrett. He said, “I’m ashamed of certain members of the court,” adding that they were “a disgrace to our nation” and “an embarrassment to their families.” He accused them of being “very unpatriotic and unloyal to the nation.”
But Trump didn’t stop there. He accused those six justices, which included Chief Justice Roberts who wrote the opinion, of being “fools and lapdogs.” He made that clearer by alleging that they were “afraid to do the right thing.” He explained, “I think that foreign interests are represented by people that I believe have undue influence, have a lot of influence, over the Supreme Court.” Wow! Trump just accused six out nine of our Supreme Court Justices of what I think comes close to treason. I’m wondering if any of those justices would have a legitimate libel case against him. Since he didn’t name names, probably not. But the names were obvious—Gorsuch and Barrett for sure.
Trump is always blaming people who disagree with him. I’ve blogged numerous times about how much he violates Jesus’ teaching in his Sermon on the Mount about judging others. For example, Trump called those justices who ruled against his tariffs as being a “disgrace to our nation.” No, Donald. It just the other way around, and you’re too sick in the head to see it—you are an embarrassment to this nation and practically everyone in the world outside of the U.S. who pays attention to you believes this about you. You are hurting the reputation of the U.S. perhaps like no other president has done in 250 years of the existence of this great experiment in democracy.
Donald Trump, Sick in the Head, Needs Therapy
When Donald Trump doesn’t get his way, he doesn’t take it like a man but lashes out, showing that that big balloon depicting a Baby Trump with Diapers fits him. I think his former friend Howard Stern was right when he told The Donald he should try psychiatric therapy as Stern did, which he says helped him a lot. I believe Donald Trump suffers from a narcissistic personality and thus somewhat from grandiosity.
President Donald Trump just keeps doing so many things that are bringing his poll numbers down, down, down. Just take his decision to kill what is now well over 100 people in boats in international waters, alleging they are narco terrorists, which the government never tries to prove with evidence. Or look ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) that has been terrorizes some of our largest cities and mistakenly killing three people now.
Mid-Term Elections Could Lead to Impeachment
The mid-term elections are this November. President Trump has been able to do some of the outrageous things he has done in this past year of his second term since Republican lawmakers have had the majority in both the House and Senate. But now it looks like they will lose the House and possibly the Senate in the election. If that occurs, Democrats will again pursue impeachment of this president, which would be for the unprecedented third time. All of this makes my book, Bible Predicts Trump Fall—which represents blog posts I made during Trump’s first presidency—prescient.
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