THE TRUMP EFFECT ☙ Saturday, November 9, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS
A roundup of the most incredible Trump Effect headlines you could ever wish for. And a whole lot more in today's Weekend Edition. JEFF CHILDERS
Good morning, C&C family, it’s Saturday! What a week. For the record, I am NOT tired of winning yet. So, today’s roundup: corporate media chooses war, but world wants peace; Dems concocting cockamamie Supreme Court schemes in desperate race to brace for collision with Trump; FEMA steps on its own garden snake after whistleblowers out anti-Republican bias, confirming more conspiracy theories; and an amazing roundup of Trump Effect headlines to ensure your terrific weekend.
WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY
>> Yesterday, the Canadian Globe and Mail proved how badly captured the media has become in a story headlined, “Six enigmatic words from Donald Trump have set Ukraine, Israel and the world on edge.” Remember, enigmatic words. The sub-headline explained what Trump’s six mysterious, worrying words were: “I’m going to stop the wars.”
Now, you might think those six words are perfectly clear. But you aren’t nuanced like the Globe and Mail. The baffled Globe’s subheadline went on worrying about Trump’s weird words: “What does the U.S. president-elect mean by that?”
It was so confusing: “I’m going to stop the wars.” The Globe has asked everybody it knows, read Trump’s statement over and over, asked ChatGPT, but it simply cannot fathom what on Earth those words mean. Is he saying he’s going to … stop something? Wars?
I’m old enough to recall when liberalism, on proud display in most major media, used to yearn for someone, anyone, to “stop the wars.” Remember? Hippies. Tie-dye. Peace symbols on VW buses. Flower power. Give peace a chance! And so forth.
But nowadays, the mere suggestion someone might “stop the wars” sinks the media into a deep depression. The world just isn’t making sense anymore.
Also yesterday, in separate stories, the media was thrilled with delight that the Biden Administration is accelerating weapons shipments to Ukraine. Axios ran a story under the very excited headline, “White House will continue to "surge" aid to Ukraine.”
The Globe called the guns, bombs, weapons, and blood money “aid,” like Ukraine is recovering from a hurricane or an earthquake, instead of killing people and wrecking their homes.
Extra-diverse White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre, soon to be replaced, bragged about the accelerated pace of deadly bombs and guns and other lethal instruments Ukraine is using to kill people in large numbers. Karine mentioned not one word about ending the conflict, why would she?
Corporate media has been completely untroubled by the absence of peace talk from the Biden Administration. It’s almost like they love war.
As surely as the sun will rise on Nancy Pelosi’s stock portfolio, the media will predictably complain about whatever peace deal Trump comes up with to rescue the world from global thermonuclear war. He should have got Crimea back! Or, it gives away too much territory! Or, Kamala would have made peace better and faster! Or, now what are we supposed to do with all these nuclear missiles?
The progressive Democrat cable channel is now the same as the war channel. We need a media that prefers peace to endless conflict. Frankly, we will need a whole new media, this one is riddled with security state termites.
>> It’s almost like the Democrats were sure they would win (for some reason). Yesterday, Politico ran an emotionally distressed analysis piece headlined, “Dems agonize over Sotomayor.” It seems the stakes are sky-high: “For Democrats,” Politico’s analysts explained, “this is a hair-on-fire moment.” (Next time, they should make sure their hairspray isn’t flammable.) Cue up more tattooed wailing and the gnashing of facial piercings.
According to the story, Democrat Senators find themselves amidst a sort of unexpected political midlife crisis, triggered by Trump’s election. They are squabbling over the merits of a desperate, last-minute, high-risk play: calling for sickly, aging, far-left Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the wise latina, 70, to wisely retire immediately.
Or even faster than immediately, if it’s possible.
If Sotomayor agreed to divorce herself from the Court without a fight, it would give President Cabbage a shot at replacing her with a perky, blonde, 18-year-old Pilates instructor. Sorry! I mean with a much less seasoned and even more progressive liberal Justice, to save Sotomayor’s slot from the devious schemes and fascist plots of President Trump and his widely despised Project 2025 or 2026 or even Project 2027. (They’re all bad.)
The Democrats are still experiencing terrifying LSD-style flashbacks of the early teens, when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (“notorious RBG”), well into her 80s, refused repeated calls to retire during Obama’s term so that he could appoint a younger Justice. Democrats worst fears came true after Trump beat pollsters’ predictions and trounced Hillary in 2016.
Then, in September 2020, mere months before Trump left office, Ginsburg departed this reality matrix, and Republicans rapidly approved Justice Amy Coney Barrett, shifting the Court to a solid 6-3 conservative majority.
One wonders. If the lying polls had been more honest in 2016, and showed Trump having a stronger chance of winning, would RBG maybe have more strongly considered cooperating with Democrats’ retirement scheme? Who knows. The fake polls may have had a funny way of backfiring, if you think about it. But I digress.
Politico pondered the critical question that has twisted the Democrat Senate into an agonized tapeworm. “What happens,” they fretted, “if she resigns and the nominee to replace her isn’t confirmed and the next president fills the vacancy?”
The unstated answer was, if that happens, Trump could easily appoint three more young conservatives to the Court — tipping it almost all the way over, 7-2 in our favor, for a political eternity.
Well, sometimes you have to take the big chances. I think the Dems should go for it. There are still about two months left, give or take, allowing time off for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year. They could just make it. True, it would be tight. “There would be no room for error or delay,” Politico admitted.
They only have to get sleepy Joe to move at normal human speed. Good luck!
>> In a story first broken by the Daily Wire, CNN followed behind in an article headlined, “FEMA employee removed from role after telling relief team to skip houses with Trump signs after Florida hurricane.” Talk about terrific political timing. Thanks, FEMA!
FEMA disaster relief manager Marn’i Washington (if that is her real name), actually put her disgusting “best practices” instructions in writing. It was in a chat message to her Hurricane Helene FEMA emergency relief team members. Marn’i instructed them to, and I quote, “avoid homes advertising Trump.”
At the time, Marn’i probably thought that was super clever. It wasn’t even a good joke.
Some FEMA staff weren’t as stoked as Marn’i. They followed orders, but slyly slid notes in their online reports about skipping storm-damaged houses with explanations like: “Trump sign no entry per leadership.”
Per leadership. In other words, “under duress.” She made us do it.
Proving FEMA can move fast, when its own butt needs rescue, within 24 hours a FEMA spokesman quickly told the Daily Wire that Marn’i had been “removed from their role,” whatever that means, and FEMA was investigating to cover up, I mean recover from, the ghastly breach of protocol:
“Reaching out to people who may not have been reached…?” What? Oh, nevermind. The point was: was it isolated? Where did Marn’i get the idea it was okay to boldly discriminate against people who supported the President-elect of the United States? Is this how FEMA managers talk to each other? Is this how FEMA is training its supervisors? Did Marni’s manager know? When did Marn’i’s manager find out?
And, what kind of psychedelic mushrooms was she taking on the job?
You all probably trust that FEMA can fairly investigate itself, but yesterday, Governor DeSantis said he directed Florida officials to independently investigate this horrific weaponization of government, preying on vulnerable disaster victims:
Keep the pressure on, Governor DeSantis, and protect Floridians.
Outrage on social media understandably focused on the whole weaponization of the federal government angle. But there are some brighter spots the current discussion might be missing.
First, Marn’i was fairly quickly outed by what appear to have been multiple whistleblowers. Not only did someone at FEMA leak that internal chat to the conservative Daily Wire, but several FEMA staff intentionally recorded the evidence of avoiding Trump supporters in their computer system — so that FEMA couldn’t later claim it was just a joke or something.
Second, President Trump has long said he plans to prune many partisan activists out of the federal government. This story provides clear evidence that pruning is urgently needed, and disproves the media’s argument that “federal employees are completely apolitical.”
Third, the Daily Wire broke the story. Corporate media is becoming increasingly redundant, like an infected vestigial organ, and with any luck can be surgically excised soon, and then we’ll start feeling better.
>> Finally, there’s simply too much winning to report in a single post! The “Trump Effect” is real: the world is already improving in eager anticipating of Trump taking office. So here is a stream of quick headlines for you, one after another. Get ready. First, the Democrats are busy little spiders, spinning the web of a blame narrative, which is keeping them from causing much other trouble. This morning’s New York Times lead op-ed:
Some legacy. The gist seemed to be, Biden told everybody democracy was in peril, but he didn’t act like democracy was in peril by stepping aside sooner. I also enjoyed a tacit admission in the article that Kamala Harris was so awful that as I have always said, she was President Cabbage’s impeachment insurance: “Perversely, Ms. Harris’s apparent weakness as a potential presidential candidate was an asset to Mr. Biden. It helped insulate him from calls to step aside.”
Haha, I told you so. But, if they’re going to blame Biden, how about blaming all Biden’s enablers, the folks who covered for his obvious cognitive decline until it was too late? Oh well. File that under questions that will never even be asked.
Now let’s move beyond the Democrats’ narrative spinning to the really good part. The Trump Effect. He’s not even been sworn in yet, and already the world is getting better, like that scene at the end of the Wizard of Oz when everything turns back from black and white to full color.
First, as I reported yesterday, Trump’s already shattering records. WSFA-12 News:
Trump’s as bad at being a misogynist as being a dictator.
Our economy is already starting to heal. This morning, in the Detroit Free Press:
Look, don’t get wrapped up in how over-valued the market is; that is a separate discussion. Today’s point is about how the market responded to Trump’s election. Wall Street’s over-the-top enthusiasm is the tip of an iceberg of badly needed consumer confidence.
Next, yesterday I also reported how New York City announced the end of its pre-loaded debit card system for illegal immigrants. That was good enough. Then on Thursday, the NY Daily News ran this even more encouraging headline:
In other words, New York City will not become a ‘sanctuary city.’
Outside the US, prospects for world peace began blooming like spring wildflowers. As soon as Trump was elected, the Taliban immediately announced it wanted to ‘strengthen relations’ with the US, and get itself off the terrorist list. Agence France Presse, Wednesday:
Yesterday, President Putin of Russia, with whom the United States is currently battling in a Proxy War, said the West is not an enemy:
The article reported that, while the Kremlin dismissed the notion of a peace deal in 24 hours as being overly optimistic, it conceded that peace is better than continuing the conflict. That’s more progress than Joe Biden has made in three years.
Like a cuddly Koala, China’s President Xi also extended the olive branch of peace. Fortune Magazine headline, Wednesday:
Very suggestively, China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning announced, “We respect the choice of the American people.” By contrast, things under Biden are so bad the Chinese won’t even pick up Tony Blinken at the airport. They’re always busy.
Next, things are already heading in the right direction south of the border. We found out Mexico’s migrant “caravans” began breaking up the day after Trump’s election. Imagine that. Reuters headline, Thursday:
On Monday, President Trump said he would soak Mexico with a 25% tariff on all goods unless that country seals up its porous northern border. They didn’t even have to think about it. The Mexicans believe Trump will do it, and that he has the political capital to make it stick. Real America’s Voice News reported the caravans were breaking up with help from the Mexican government:
CLIP: Real America's Voice reports on Mexican border response after Trump win (2:05).
How about the Middle East? Huge developments, and Trump doesn’t even hold the presidential pen yet. Qatar, which has provided safe haven for terrorist group Hamas for years, suddenly switched positions on Thursday, and told them to get the hell out. Headline from Jerusalem Post:
“Allegedly” due to US pressure. Allegedly. Or, Qatar’s sudden policy shift was due to Trump-like writing on the wall. You decide.
For its part, Hamas issued a statement calling for an immediate end to the war with Israel. Newsweek, headline Wednesday:
Contrast that with the other possibility; that Hamas could have issued a defiant statement promising to fight till doomsday or something. Everybody’s talking peace.
In Europe, the EU isn’t planning to wait around to see if Trump means what he says about tarrifs, either. They believe President Trump will do it. So they’re making the first offer. Politico (EU Edition), headline yesterday:
I mean, you don’t even need to be a negotiating genius like Trump to work with eager trading partners like this. They’re already queuing up.
In other words, neither Trump nor the rest of the world are wasting the next two months. I’m not sure anything like this has ever happened in history before. The closest I can think of is when the Iranians released the hostages right after Reagan was elected. What we saw this week is much like that pre-emptive victory, except on a global scale.
Trump is playing a long game. He has in view permanent structural changes to extend far beyond his next term. For example, yesterday’s EconoTimes headline:
Trump is proposing a constitutional amendment for Congressional term limits: 12 years each for Congress (3 terms) and the Senate (2 terms). With any other president, you’d sigh and say yeah, that sounds nice, but nobody can pull off a Constitutional Amendment, it’s too hard. But look at what Trump just did.
Finally, it’s so hard to pick a favorite, but I admit a thrill of schadenfreude ran up my leg when I read this story: Wednesday headline, Barrons:
Haha, great moments in understatement—uncertain!
According to the article, Moderna —which only makes mRNA drugs— has an “uncertain future” because President Trump was re-elected and plans to inject Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. directly into the government health agencies. Apparently, the thought of losing its friendly government agencies made Moderna’s prospects suddenly become poorer.
If I were a day trader, I would short MRNA.
But after much thought and careful consideration, I decided to award the top Trump Effect to this last story, reported in Voz News under the headline, “Is this the Trump effect? Target ditches 'Happy Holidays' and brings back 'Merry Christmas' in store decorations.” As recently as 2021, Liberty Counsel listed Target on its annual "Naughty Retailer List" for businesses that "mute and censor Christmas."
Get it? Trump already rescued Christmas!
We are looking forward to a very Merry Christmas, indeed. Praise the Lord. Now, we must earn the mercy and grace He has bestowed on a fractured nation.
Have a very, very wonderful Weekend! And get back here Monday morning for more elucidating and refreshing Coffee & Covid.
A roundup of the most incredible Trump Effect headlines you could ever wish for. And a whole lot more in today's Weekend Edition. JEFF CHILDERS
Good morning, C&C family, it’s Saturday! What a week. For the record, I am NOT tired of winning yet. So, today’s roundup: corporate media chooses war, but world wants peace; Dems concocting cockamamie Supreme Court schemes in desperate race to brace for collision with Trump; FEMA steps on its own garden snake after whistleblowers out anti-Republican bias, confirming more conspiracy theories; and an amazing roundup of Trump Effect headlines to ensure your terrific weekend.
WORLD NEWS AND COMMENTARY
>> Yesterday, the Canadian Globe and Mail proved how badly captured the media has become in a story headlined, “Six enigmatic words from Donald Trump have set Ukraine, Israel and the world on edge.” Remember, enigmatic words. The sub-headline explained what Trump’s six mysterious, worrying words were: “I’m going to stop the wars.”
Now, you might think those six words are perfectly clear. But you aren’t nuanced like the Globe and Mail. The baffled Globe’s subheadline went on worrying about Trump’s weird words: “What does the U.S. president-elect mean by that?”
It was so confusing: “I’m going to stop the wars.” The Globe has asked everybody it knows, read Trump’s statement over and over, asked ChatGPT, but it simply cannot fathom what on Earth those words mean. Is he saying he’s going to … stop something? Wars?
I’m old enough to recall when liberalism, on proud display in most major media, used to yearn for someone, anyone, to “stop the wars.” Remember? Hippies. Tie-dye. Peace symbols on VW buses. Flower power. Give peace a chance! And so forth.
But nowadays, the mere suggestion someone might “stop the wars” sinks the media into a deep depression. The world just isn’t making sense anymore.
Also yesterday, in separate stories, the media was thrilled with delight that the Biden Administration is accelerating weapons shipments to Ukraine. Axios ran a story under the very excited headline, “White House will continue to "surge" aid to Ukraine.”
The Globe called the guns, bombs, weapons, and blood money “aid,” like Ukraine is recovering from a hurricane or an earthquake, instead of killing people and wrecking their homes.
Extra-diverse White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre, soon to be replaced, bragged about the accelerated pace of deadly bombs and guns and other lethal instruments Ukraine is using to kill people in large numbers. Karine mentioned not one word about ending the conflict, why would she?
Corporate media has been completely untroubled by the absence of peace talk from the Biden Administration. It’s almost like they love war.
As surely as the sun will rise on Nancy Pelosi’s stock portfolio, the media will predictably complain about whatever peace deal Trump comes up with to rescue the world from global thermonuclear war. He should have got Crimea back! Or, it gives away too much territory! Or, Kamala would have made peace better and faster! Or, now what are we supposed to do with all these nuclear missiles?
The progressive Democrat cable channel is now the same as the war channel. We need a media that prefers peace to endless conflict. Frankly, we will need a whole new media, this one is riddled with security state termites.
>> It’s almost like the Democrats were sure they would win (for some reason). Yesterday, Politico ran an emotionally distressed analysis piece headlined, “Dems agonize over Sotomayor.” It seems the stakes are sky-high: “For Democrats,” Politico’s analysts explained, “this is a hair-on-fire moment.” (Next time, they should make sure their hairspray isn’t flammable.) Cue up more tattooed wailing and the gnashing of facial piercings.
According to the story, Democrat Senators find themselves amidst a sort of unexpected political midlife crisis, triggered by Trump’s election. They are squabbling over the merits of a desperate, last-minute, high-risk play: calling for sickly, aging, far-left Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the wise latina, 70, to wisely retire immediately.
Or even faster than immediately, if it’s possible.
If Sotomayor agreed to divorce herself from the Court without a fight, it would give President Cabbage a shot at replacing her with a perky, blonde, 18-year-old Pilates instructor. Sorry! I mean with a much less seasoned and even more progressive liberal Justice, to save Sotomayor’s slot from the devious schemes and fascist plots of President Trump and his widely despised Project 2025 or 2026 or even Project 2027. (They’re all bad.)
The Democrats are still experiencing terrifying LSD-style flashbacks of the early teens, when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (“notorious RBG”), well into her 80s, refused repeated calls to retire during Obama’s term so that he could appoint a younger Justice. Democrats worst fears came true after Trump beat pollsters’ predictions and trounced Hillary in 2016.
Then, in September 2020, mere months before Trump left office, Ginsburg departed this reality matrix, and Republicans rapidly approved Justice Amy Coney Barrett, shifting the Court to a solid 6-3 conservative majority.
One wonders. If the lying polls had been more honest in 2016, and showed Trump having a stronger chance of winning, would RBG maybe have more strongly considered cooperating with Democrats’ retirement scheme? Who knows. The fake polls may have had a funny way of backfiring, if you think about it. But I digress.
Politico pondered the critical question that has twisted the Democrat Senate into an agonized tapeworm. “What happens,” they fretted, “if she resigns and the nominee to replace her isn’t confirmed and the next president fills the vacancy?”
The unstated answer was, if that happens, Trump could easily appoint three more young conservatives to the Court — tipping it almost all the way over, 7-2 in our favor, for a political eternity.
Well, sometimes you have to take the big chances. I think the Dems should go for it. There are still about two months left, give or take, allowing time off for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year. They could just make it. True, it would be tight. “There would be no room for error or delay,” Politico admitted.
They only have to get sleepy Joe to move at normal human speed. Good luck!
>> In a story first broken by the Daily Wire, CNN followed behind in an article headlined, “FEMA employee removed from role after telling relief team to skip houses with Trump signs after Florida hurricane.” Talk about terrific political timing. Thanks, FEMA!
FEMA disaster relief manager Marn’i Washington (if that is her real name), actually put her disgusting “best practices” instructions in writing. It was in a chat message to her Hurricane Helene FEMA emergency relief team members. Marn’i instructed them to, and I quote, “avoid homes advertising Trump.”
At the time, Marn’i probably thought that was super clever. It wasn’t even a good joke.
Some FEMA staff weren’t as stoked as Marn’i. They followed orders, but slyly slid notes in their online reports about skipping storm-damaged houses with explanations like: “Trump sign no entry per leadership.”
Per leadership. In other words, “under duress.” She made us do it.
Proving FEMA can move fast, when its own butt needs rescue, within 24 hours a FEMA spokesman quickly told the Daily Wire that Marn’i had been “removed from their role,” whatever that means, and FEMA was investigating to cover up, I mean recover from, the ghastly breach of protocol:
“Reaching out to people who may not have been reached…?” What? Oh, nevermind. The point was: was it isolated? Where did Marn’i get the idea it was okay to boldly discriminate against people who supported the President-elect of the United States? Is this how FEMA managers talk to each other? Is this how FEMA is training its supervisors? Did Marni’s manager know? When did Marn’i’s manager find out?
And, what kind of psychedelic mushrooms was she taking on the job?
You all probably trust that FEMA can fairly investigate itself, but yesterday, Governor DeSantis said he directed Florida officials to independently investigate this horrific weaponization of government, preying on vulnerable disaster victims:
Keep the pressure on, Governor DeSantis, and protect Floridians.
Outrage on social media understandably focused on the whole weaponization of the federal government angle. But there are some brighter spots the current discussion might be missing.
First, Marn’i was fairly quickly outed by what appear to have been multiple whistleblowers. Not only did someone at FEMA leak that internal chat to the conservative Daily Wire, but several FEMA staff intentionally recorded the evidence of avoiding Trump supporters in their computer system — so that FEMA couldn’t later claim it was just a joke or something.
Second, President Trump has long said he plans to prune many partisan activists out of the federal government. This story provides clear evidence that pruning is urgently needed, and disproves the media’s argument that “federal employees are completely apolitical.”
Third, the Daily Wire broke the story. Corporate media is becoming increasingly redundant, like an infected vestigial organ, and with any luck can be surgically excised soon, and then we’ll start feeling better.
>> Finally, there’s simply too much winning to report in a single post! The “Trump Effect” is real: the world is already improving in eager anticipating of Trump taking office. So here is a stream of quick headlines for you, one after another. Get ready. First, the Democrats are busy little spiders, spinning the web of a blame narrative, which is keeping them from causing much other trouble. This morning’s New York Times lead op-ed:
Some legacy. The gist seemed to be, Biden told everybody democracy was in peril, but he didn’t act like democracy was in peril by stepping aside sooner. I also enjoyed a tacit admission in the article that Kamala Harris was so awful that as I have always said, she was President Cabbage’s impeachment insurance: “Perversely, Ms. Harris’s apparent weakness as a potential presidential candidate was an asset to Mr. Biden. It helped insulate him from calls to step aside.”
Haha, I told you so. But, if they’re going to blame Biden, how about blaming all Biden’s enablers, the folks who covered for his obvious cognitive decline until it was too late? Oh well. File that under questions that will never even be asked.
Now let’s move beyond the Democrats’ narrative spinning to the really good part. The Trump Effect. He’s not even been sworn in yet, and already the world is getting better, like that scene at the end of the Wizard of Oz when everything turns back from black and white to full color.
First, as I reported yesterday, Trump’s already shattering records. WSFA-12 News:
Trump’s as bad at being a misogynist as being a dictator.
Our economy is already starting to heal. This morning, in the Detroit Free Press:
Look, don’t get wrapped up in how over-valued the market is; that is a separate discussion. Today’s point is about how the market responded to Trump’s election. Wall Street’s over-the-top enthusiasm is the tip of an iceberg of badly needed consumer confidence.
Next, yesterday I also reported how New York City announced the end of its pre-loaded debit card system for illegal immigrants. That was good enough. Then on Thursday, the NY Daily News ran this even more encouraging headline:
In other words, New York City will not become a ‘sanctuary city.’
Outside the US, prospects for world peace began blooming like spring wildflowers. As soon as Trump was elected, the Taliban immediately announced it wanted to ‘strengthen relations’ with the US, and get itself off the terrorist list. Agence France Presse, Wednesday:
Yesterday, President Putin of Russia, with whom the United States is currently battling in a Proxy War, said the West is not an enemy:
The article reported that, while the Kremlin dismissed the notion of a peace deal in 24 hours as being overly optimistic, it conceded that peace is better than continuing the conflict. That’s more progress than Joe Biden has made in three years.
Like a cuddly Koala, China’s President Xi also extended the olive branch of peace. Fortune Magazine headline, Wednesday:
Very suggestively, China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning announced, “We respect the choice of the American people.” By contrast, things under Biden are so bad the Chinese won’t even pick up Tony Blinken at the airport. They’re always busy.
Next, things are already heading in the right direction south of the border. We found out Mexico’s migrant “caravans” began breaking up the day after Trump’s election. Imagine that. Reuters headline, Thursday:
On Monday, President Trump said he would soak Mexico with a 25% tariff on all goods unless that country seals up its porous northern border. They didn’t even have to think about it. The Mexicans believe Trump will do it, and that he has the political capital to make it stick. Real America’s Voice News reported the caravans were breaking up with help from the Mexican government:
CLIP: Real America's Voice reports on Mexican border response after Trump win (2:05).
How about the Middle East? Huge developments, and Trump doesn’t even hold the presidential pen yet. Qatar, which has provided safe haven for terrorist group Hamas for years, suddenly switched positions on Thursday, and told them to get the hell out. Headline from Jerusalem Post:
“Allegedly” due to US pressure. Allegedly. Or, Qatar’s sudden policy shift was due to Trump-like writing on the wall. You decide.
For its part, Hamas issued a statement calling for an immediate end to the war with Israel. Newsweek, headline Wednesday:
Contrast that with the other possibility; that Hamas could have issued a defiant statement promising to fight till doomsday or something. Everybody’s talking peace.
In Europe, the EU isn’t planning to wait around to see if Trump means what he says about tarrifs, either. They believe President Trump will do it. So they’re making the first offer. Politico (EU Edition), headline yesterday:
I mean, you don’t even need to be a negotiating genius like Trump to work with eager trading partners like this. They’re already queuing up.
In other words, neither Trump nor the rest of the world are wasting the next two months. I’m not sure anything like this has ever happened in history before. The closest I can think of is when the Iranians released the hostages right after Reagan was elected. What we saw this week is much like that pre-emptive victory, except on a global scale.
Trump is playing a long game. He has in view permanent structural changes to extend far beyond his next term. For example, yesterday’s EconoTimes headline:
Trump is proposing a constitutional amendment for Congressional term limits: 12 years each for Congress (3 terms) and the Senate (2 terms). With any other president, you’d sigh and say yeah, that sounds nice, but nobody can pull off a Constitutional Amendment, it’s too hard. But look at what Trump just did.
Finally, it’s so hard to pick a favorite, but I admit a thrill of schadenfreude ran up my leg when I read this story: Wednesday headline, Barrons:
Haha, great moments in understatement—uncertain!
According to the article, Moderna —which only makes mRNA drugs— has an “uncertain future” because President Trump was re-elected and plans to inject Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. directly into the government health agencies. Apparently, the thought of losing its friendly government agencies made Moderna’s prospects suddenly become poorer.
If I were a day trader, I would short MRNA.
But after much thought and careful consideration, I decided to award the top Trump Effect to this last story, reported in Voz News under the headline, “Is this the Trump effect? Target ditches 'Happy Holidays' and brings back 'Merry Christmas' in store decorations.” As recently as 2021, Liberty Counsel listed Target on its annual "Naughty Retailer List" for businesses that "mute and censor Christmas."
Get it? Trump already rescued Christmas!
We are looking forward to a very Merry Christmas, indeed. Praise the Lord. Now, we must earn the mercy and grace He has bestowed on a fractured nation.
Have a very, very wonderful Weekend! And get back here Monday morning for more elucidating and refreshing Coffee & Covid.
