Today's News: Trump is shooting himself in the foot

Once again, Trump is shooting himself in the foot. 

I think that he and his minions thought it would be terribly ballsey to make a whole bunch of controversial nominations right away for Cabinet positions and directorships, so he could swagger around Mar-A-Lardo and boast about Trump Two: The Revenge Tour, as well as eliminating any questions about his Biggest! Win! Ever! Mandate. 

Of course, it isn't working out very well. 

Because #ETTD Everything Trump Touches Dies.

The early nominations only gifted reporters and bloggers with opportunities for combing through the job histories and social media profiles of every nominee, to find all their embarrassing relationships, past legal follies, and other grotesquely disqualifying antics. Now Trump has lost AG nominee Matt Gaetz and DEA nominee Sheriff Chad Chronister, he is on the way to losing Fox News commentator Pete Hegseth as Sec of Defense and possibly also Tulsi Gabbard as NSI, not to mention Kash Patel at the FBI. And there are still at least two months to go before any of Trump's people will be confirmed in these jobs and able to run roughshod over what used to be a government. Everyone is already ignoring that crazy DOGE lunacy.

Every Trump nomination

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— StrictlyChristo 🦋🇺🇦🌻 (@strictlychristo.bsky.social) December 4, 2024 at 5:15 PM

And that Mandate? Not so much...

 David Rothkopf / Need to Know

The Incredible Shrinking Trump Mandate

History Will See This Election as an Historic Squeaker

...He is barreling into this presidency as though there is no force big enough to stop him, as though he were king of the world. Some of his cabinet appointments have told us that he believes this. So too have some of his other behaviors—appointing friends, family members, other convicts, to top jobs…promising bold measures that no administration in the past has been able to achieve…signaling to the world that he would be bound by no ethical norms. ....

Heck, he seems to have assumed the presidency already even though his inauguration is still five or six weeks away. He’s sending emissaries out into the world. He’s announcing international policies on trade. He’s got his advisors going up to the Hill to work on his budget priorities....

But he reality is creeping up on the court of King Donald I.

The GOP Senate’s expression of displeasure with the appointment of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General was a signal that Trump would not get his way with everything. In fact, it was the first big reminder that although the GOP controls the Senate, they only do so by a few votes. Four or five Republicans object to something and it will not happen. That factor has already has led to Trump’s DEA nominee to drop his candidacy. And it seems likely to soon claim Trump’s Defense Secretary nominee. After that, it may also stop the nominations of Kash Patel to the FBI and Tulsi Gabbard to be DNI.

It will likely be a historic string of set backs for the new administration. Perhaps in a year or two it will be forgotten. But what will remain is the sense that Trump cannot dictate outcomes. The Senate…which also rejected his plea for recess appointments and his idea that there would no background checks on his nominees…rejected these ideas without a vote, just with a few Senators indicating to their leadership and the press that they opposed these ideas…has asserted to a degree their role as a separate but equal branch of government. They may give Trump much of what he wants. But they will not give him everything and he and his team now recognize that.

The narrowness of Trump’s win however will soon be even more apparent in the House of Representatives. There, the GOP nominally has a five vote edge. But three of those members will be leaving (two to join the administration, one, Gaetz, by not assuming his seat). That makes the GOP margin for the next few months just 1 vote. That means that every proposal that the Trump Administration makes for legislation will need the GOP to be unanimous. Thinking back over the past few years we know how rarely that happens. And when you think of the top items on Trump’s agenda—like big budget cuts—it is hard to imagine any of them that will not hit some district so hard that a Republican member will oppose it and demand a change.

While Jesus may have said that it is easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven, I can think of two rich men (the DOGE doges) who will find it’s easier to get a camel through the eye of a needle than to get big sweeping budget cuts through a House of Representatives in which the GOP only has a one vote margin.

And even should more Republicans replace those who are vacating the empty seats, a three person or four person margin is not much better. (What’s more the clock is ticking. The midterms are now 23 months away. Look at recent midterm elections and the odds are against the GOP maintaining their majority beyond that. So, what does that give them…maybe 20 or 18 months with a majority as big as three or four votes? It’s going to be very hard to get much done in that environment.

It’s made even more complicated because every big budget cut hurts some special interest group or some big business or big GOP donor who is going to push back. Congresspeople running for reelection will be hyper sensitive to this.

So, while the month since the election has been a pretty heady one for Trump, it may be remembered as a brief moment in which his victory seemed big whereas the results of the four years to follow—which are likely to include getting much less done than he wants and when he does get things done to achieve them on a much smaller scale—may send a message that unfortunately for Trump and the GOP was not big enough.

Their inability to do much will not sit well with voters who are likely to also receive multiple reminders that a.) Trump is not a great manager, b.) some of his nominees that do get through will be terribly underqualified for their jobs, c.) some of his big initiatives will fizzle because of court cases or push back from our allies or markets and therefore d.) maybe they’d be better off with a leadership change in 2028. (Sorry, J.D., it’s just true.)

If all that happens as I expect it will…then in the future historians will not write of Trump’s massive 2024 win but rather they will observe that it was too narrow for him to do much of what he wanted to do and that ultimately the term will prove to be a source of frustration and difficulty for the GOP going forward.

Wishful thinking? We shall see. ...

Here's an update on how things are going with Trump's "plan" to deport millions: 

Jeff Tiedrich / Everyone is entitled to my own opinion

...Donny Convict’s plan to round up and deport the shit out of every immigrant in America is already blowing up right in his big dumb pumpkin face.

Donny is super awesome at coming up with harebrained ideas — but because he’s a low-wattage imbecile who acts first and thinks never, he totally fucking sucks at implementation.

one question that Team Donny never thought to ask in advance is hey, where do we deport all these people to?

The incoming Trump administration is preparing a list of countries to which it may deport migrants when their home countries refuse to accept them, according to three sources familiar with the plans.

The countries on the list have included but may not be limited to Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, Panama and Grenada, the sources said.

so how did Team Donny compile this list of tiny countries and territorial islands on which they’ve decided to inflict their unwanted cast-offs?

who the fuck knows? maybe they threw darts at a globe.

anyway, good luck shipping millions of deportees to a place like Turks and Caicos, which in the first place is British territory, and in the second place is a series of tiny fucking islands in the middle of the Atlantic Fucking Ocean.... the Bahamas has already told Donny to go fuck himself sideways.

Donald Trump in 20 years

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— Adam Parkhomenko (@adamparkhomenko.bsky.social) December 4, 2024 at 3:41 PM