As of the close of the day on April 22, my positive/negative score on the Trump administration stands at -519.
I'm including many more headlines these days. This is to be expected, given the FAFO principle (Fool Around and Find Out.) The first couple of months was the administration doing a lot of very questionable things. Now we're starting to see the fallout, which will continue to push the score down.
22 April 2025
-1: Headline: Global growth forecast slashed by IMF over tariff impact; US growth 1.8% instead of 2.7% [BBC]
-1: Headline: Harvard sues Trump administration over $2.2B US grant freeze (CBC)
-1: Headline: Hundreds of scholars say U.S. is swiftly heading toward authoritarianism (NPR)
-1: Headline: US sets tariffs of up to 3,521% on South East Asia solar panels (BBC)
-1: Trump rails against having to do due process for “millions of criminals” Biden let into the country [162]
-1: Trump rails again about being required to do due process for criminals [163]
References
162. Trump: “How can Biden let Millions of Criminals into our Country, totally unchecked and unvetted, with no Legal authority to do so, yet I, in order to make up for this assault to our Nation, am expected to go through a lengthy Legal process, separately, for each and every Criminal Alien. As usual, TWO DIFFERENT STANDARDS, only leading to the Complete and Total Destruction of the U.S.A. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
163. Trump: “I'm doing what I was elected to do, remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don't seem to want me to do that. My team is fantastic, doing an incredible job, however, they are being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court, which I have such great respect for, but which seemingly doesn't want me to send violent criminals and terrorists back to Venezuela, or any other Country, for that matter People that came here illegally! The Courts are intimidated by the Radical Left who are, “playing the Ref.” Great Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito correctly wants to dissolve the pause on deportations. He is right on this! If we don't get these criminals out of our Country, we are not going to have a Country any longer. We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years. We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country. Such a thing is not possible to do. What a ridiculous situation we are in. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
21 April 2025
0: Headline: Millions of student-loan borrowers could start losing Social Security benefits and tax refunds (Business Insider)
-1: Dow Jones down another 2.5% after Trump attacks Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell [159]
-1: Headline: Trump’s Surgeon General Pick Distorted Key Parts of Her Résumé (Substack)
-1: Headline: Japan refutes Trump’s 'bowling ball test' claim for imported vehicles (nhk.or.jp)
-1: A president with six bankruptcies and two failed casinos chastises businesses that criticize tariffs [160]
-1: Headline: Hegseth had a second Signal chat where he shared details of Yemen strike (AP News)
-1: Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth goes on a rant about the Signal chat affairs [161]
-1: Headline: 75% of US scientists who answered Nature poll consider leaving (Nature)
References
159. Trump: “Preemptive Cuts in Interest Rates are being called for by many. With Energy Costs way down, food prices (including Biden’s egg disaster!) substantially lower, and most other “things” trending down, there is virtually No Inflation. With these costs trending so nicely downward, just what I predicted they would do, there can almost be no inflation, but there can be a SLOWING of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW. Europe has already “lowered” seven times. Powell has always been “To Late,” except when it came to the Election period when he lowered in order to help Sleepy Joe Biden, later Kamala, get elected. How did that work out?”
160. Trump: “The businessmen who criticize Tariffs are bad at Business, nut really bad at Politics. They don't understand or realize that I am the greatest friend that American Capitalism has ever had!”
161. Hegseth: “What a big surprise that a few leakers get fired and suddenly a bunch of hit pieces come out from the same media that peddled the Russia hoax, won't give back their Pulitzers, they got Pulitzers for a bunch of lies ... This is what the media does. They take anonymous sources from disgruntled former employees and then they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations.”
arktimes.com
apnews.com
Biden’s declassified internet censorship plan relied on USAID to “combat online disinformation.”
www.bbc.co.uk
