How to Get Rich in the Trump World

You can't, unless you're rich already, and maybe not even then.  No need to read to the end.

If it was possible, a lot of MAGA would already be comfortably off.  There's no earthly reason to keep everyone suffering for two more years, to open the floodgates of wealth.  The Tarriffs would have worked by now, if they were going to work at all.  They didn't even make Trump rich.  (They were trying to pass a law that would put all the customs payments in Trump's bank accounts, but that didn't work.)

He was trying to arrange for Jan 6th people to get money through suing the DOJ.  But the judge caught them at it.  Interesting idea, to sue the government, and divert the proceeds to certain private citizens.  But most of Trump's ideas are terrible. 

Just this evening, I saw a video of Trump explaining to the Press, why he should be put in charge of the Kennedy Center.  "I'm a fantastic businessman," he said.  "I have lots of experience running successful businesses.  The Kennedy Center has been leaking money since the Sixties."  But Trump bankrupted so many businesses.  The best people to run the Kennedy Center is regular, honest people, not swindlers like Trump and his family. 

It's really interesting that the only people willing to take leadership positions in the Federal Government are failed people, with no government experience—except for Musk, who made all our information available to Palantir.  An exception is Pam Bondi, who was an AG in Florida.  But I consider Florida a shady place, and being a lawyer there is no recommendation. 

Then there's the puppy-shooting governor from Montana.  OK, so she should have known how government worked.  Unfortunately, though, she bought a plane to use as personal transportation, when she worked as the immigration boss.  All the Trump cabinet is possessed with getting fancy personal transportation for themselves, and they use them mostly for showing their sweethearts a good time.  Kash Patel is an example.

TV Ads will Probably Not Make a Darn Bit of Difference

It's my belief that Democrat attendance at the polls, and votes, will not be greatly affected by TV ads.  (I should say that my vote won't be; but it's a mistake to believe that I'm at all typical, really.)  In contrast, I think Republican votes will be influenced by TV ads.  I have absolutely no scientific basis for thinking this way, except that I have a feeling that everyone is sick of being jockeyed around by Big Money.  Once the Big Money <—> TV Ads connection is made, the persuasiveness of the ads will dim, at least for a while.  (Do I have it in for the dimwit sector?  So it seems.)

Archeology 

Were the 2024 Elections Stolen by Trump, Musk, and MAGA?

I just saw a video that seems to claim that the 2024 elections were actually won by Kamala Harris, but were stolen by Trump.

 There is even some belief that all the elections: 2016, 2020, and 2024, were all rigged by Trump.  But he only lost the 2020 election (because of massive early voting by Dems), and Trump knew he should have won, if not for the mail-in vote, which is why he keeps harping about that election. 

Foolishly, Trump has said, in public, that Musk "knows about voting machines," which is why he won in 2024.  So, it appears that Musk found a way to disappear thousands of ballots (presumably for Kamala Harris), which is why Trumpy ended up winning. 

I didn't realize that US elections were such fragile things.  I don't know anything about election security, so I had better pipe down while I'm still ahead. 

Arch 

"New America"

Really?

Trump doesn't know enough about how things are named to successfully taunt anyone with name-calling.

Why not name the toilet of his Florida house "New Maralago"! 

Trump, Influencer Wannabee

I think I've discovered what Trump really, really wants to be.  He wants to be an influencer, and Natalie Harp is his assistant.  She's fairly hip about technology (They say she's the one who helped put up the images of Trump as Elvis, etc, and the Obamas as gorillas), so she can make happen what Trump dreams up.

In my mind, influencers work on selling merchandise.  They do want be well known, but in the way to selling stuff.  But the stuff they usually promote are small, relatively inexpensive things, though the media pays them to advertise ẅhatever they're marketing, which can end up getting them a lot of cash. 

Some of this really parallels what Trump and the family is doing, though in a clumsy way.  (In the post-MAGA world, clumsiness follows the star performers as they chase the dollars.)

Arch 

Tit-For-Tat — Trumpy Style

I'm so embarrassed when I write to friends back home, if they bring up Trump's mean spirited retaliation.  I never liked Harvard University, but since Trump got on their case, I've felt myself drift to their side.  There's no way to legislate even-handedness by the White House.  In the past, any administrative partiality has been kept under cover.  Now, of course, it's all out in the open.  (I wonder why; do MAGA have trouble with being subtle?  I think I know the answer to that.  Is there some benefit to flaunting administrative viciousness?  ICE people perhaps don't pick up on subtlety; so if trump and company want to discourage ICErs from attending Harvard ... no, that doesn't make any sense. 

Arch 

Welfare and Poverty

When the big depression of 1929 happened, I assumed it was just bad luck all round.  But reading I have done recently is convincing me that it was the insatiable appetites of the economic upper-crust coming into a colliding course with the social structure they had set up.

It wasn't just enough to set up factories and schools; they had to find ways to keep the workers (that's us) healthy and happy.  Franklin Roosevelt set up Social Security and other welfare systems so that everyone could aspire to a middle-class life, at least in the future.  All of us would pay into a retirement savings plan, which the Federal Government would manage for us.

Not everyone was happy about this.  The upper-middle-class—the people who owned businesses, and who believed that they were paying an unfair portion of the taxes— didn't like the aspirations of the workers, who hoped to better themselves.  It took close to a century, until most Americans felt that Social Security, and Food Stamps, and Medicare and Medicaid were considered a part of a healthy society.  But there still were people who thought any taxes were too much.

What Trump has tried to do—and largely succeeded—is to find a large set of scapegoats whom to blame for the dissatisfaction of all these anti-welfare people.  It's the fault of Immigrants, first and foremost, then non-whites, then women, then Democrats, and so on.  As long as his supporters hate these same categories of scapegoats, Trump is riding high!

Unfortunately, there is another group of people who are interested in what Trump does; these are the people who have funded Trump, and are hoping to make a lot of money from his economic plans. 

Most of my readers know by now that these people have lots of investments in Wall Street.  If Trump keeps the stock market going up and down, and if he tips his investor friends the wink about exactly when he's going to announce some good news, then they can quickly arrange to buy certain stocks just before he makes his announcement!  Once the announcement is made, the value of those stocks shoot up, and the holdings of these speculators gains a lot of value.

Bad news works the same way: if Trump warns his cronies before he makes a bad news announcement, these fellows have enough time to sell off their stocks at reasonable prices.  When the bad news is announced, the value of those stocks plummets, but it's too bad for whoever bought those stocks.  Stock trading is a silly game anyway; people who do nothing but buy and sell stocks, hoping that their value is going up, very rarely make a killing—unless they know some inside information.  Trump is making a game of creating inside information. 

But to go back to the dismantling of the welfare services, and Medicare and social security.  These are the most vile things that Trump has done; it is singling out people who live in poverty, to make life miserable for them.  Many of these people do vote Democrat, but there is a lot of evidence that the GOP is planning to prevent them from voting.  This will make a lot of people really see red.  In the past, a lot of these people have taken this sort of beating at the hands of Trump and his MAGA buddies, and taken it lying down.  This time, are they going to do the same?  There's more of us than there is of them.