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Tariffs: Trump Acts Like the WWE Hall of Famer That He Is
We often reference Donald Trump's time as a reality TV star. However, one should also recall that he is a big fan of, and a Hall of Famer for, World Wrestling Entertainment. Not surprising, given how much Trump and professional wrestling have in common: lots of bluster, lots of drama and, generally, very little substance.
There may be no current issue where this facet of Trumpism is more on display than the ongoing performance of tariff theater. Yesterday was supposed to be the day that Trump put on his serious face and announced what tariffs he's going to impose, and on whom. He's been teasing it all week, just like WWE teases its weekly Friday Smackdown. Heck, we're kind of surprised Trump doesn't call it the Tariff Smackdown.
As you might guess from this, if you did not know already, Trump didn't actually announce much of anything. The "big" news yesterday was the announcement of a policy that Trump called the "Fair and Reciprocal Plan" on trade. It says that the various executive departments will take a look at tariff rates, report back... sometime (maybe by April?), and that information will be used to "restore fairness" in the United States' trade relationships.
In other words, there has been no actual change in policy, as yet. There wasn't even much of a clue as to what hypothetical changes in tariff rates might be imposed, either in terms of which countries might be targeted, or which goods. The release from the White House lists a half-dozen examples of what it considers unfair trade practices, but doesn't even commit to action in those (ostensibly egregious) cases. Further, as we've already been reminded, less than a month into Trump v2.0, any "new" tariffs might only last for 24 hours before they are lifted.
We wish we understood this approach of threatening big action, and then not following through. We've got our guesses as to what's going on, of course:
- This is a negotiating tactic (or, at least, Trump thinks it's a negotiating tactic). In support of this thesis, we
will note that the release yesterday makes use of the phrase: "THE ART OF THE INTERNATIONAL DEAL." Because if you're
looking for ideas about complicated international negotiations, the place to look is definitely a 38-year-old book by a
small-time real-estate operator who couldn't even bother to do the writing himself, and so hired a ghostwriter.
- Trump, reality star and wrestling hall-of-famer that he is, loves the drama and loves the oxygen he sucks up, and is
going to drag this out for as long as is possible, in search of headlines.
- Ultimately, Trump knows that any tariffs he imposes are going to create some pain (and maybe a lot of pain), both in terms of the stock market and in terms of consumers' wallets, and so he's finding it hard to summon up the courage to actually pull the trigger.
That's the best we can come up with. Maybe it's one of these, maybe it's more than one, maybe it's something else. There are two things we are much more confident about, however. The first is that, despite Trump's claims to the contrary, tariffs are not a magic bullet that is suddenly going to raise vast amounts of money for the U.S. Treasury. Yesterday, one Wall Street analyst endeavored to project how much revenue might result from blanket reciprocal tariffs on America's main trade partners. The annual total? A little over $17 billion. When it comes to an economy that produces $30 trillion in economic activity per year, that's a rounding error. Heck, it's a rounding error on a rounding error.
Second is that shilly-shallying around like this ultimately produces the worst of both worlds for Trump. It spooks the markets and makes consumers nervous, while also making other countries more willing to stand up to him, either because the populace is angry and want their leaders to push back (e.g., Canada), or because they have become persuaded that he's just another boy who cried wolf and that he's full of wolf crap. (Z)
Federal Workforce: A Lot of People Will Soon Be Office Packers
When it comes to federal employees and their job security, there have been three major developments in the past 24 hours or so:
- District Judge George O'Toole (a Bill Clinton appointee)
dissolved his order
placing a hold on the "buyout plan" for federal workers concocted by Co-Presidents Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
- About an hour later, the Trump administration
announced
that it had fallen well short of its "voluntary" workforce reduction goals, with only 77,000 federal workers taking
the buyout. The Co-Presidents had hoped for at least double that.
- About two hours later, one of the DOGEys sent an e-mail to all federal employees advising that the buyout offer was no longer on the table: This was both petty and foolish. There was some number of federal workers that did not want to resign while the freeze was in place (for fear of putting a target on their backs), but who planned to resign if the judge ruled as he did. If Musk and his people had waited until the end of the week, they would have gotten that 77,000 up a bit, and maybe more than a bit.
While this drama was unfolding, at least seven executive agencies commenced mass firings. The exact number of people who are to be terminated is not known, but is certainly in the thousands, and will likely reach the tens of thousands.
This is obviously very shabby treatment of folks who have given themselves over to public service and who, on the whole, do very good work for not-so-great pay. If cutting the federal workforce was really that important, well, about 5% of people quit or retire each year. So, if the administration just left those jobs open, it would have achieved a fairly smooth 20% reduction (and maybe more, as more and more people ended up overworked by having to take on additional duties). Instead, the Co-Presidents just had to deploy their sledgehammer approach. Is that because of the Silicon Valley mantra to "break things"? Or is it because federal workers leaving their jobs in 2027 does not help to undermine investigations against, say, Tesla that are happening right now? We report, you decide.
Needless to say, this story is not over yet. O'Toole's ruling was based on something of a technicality; federal workers' contracts say they have to exhaust all administrative remedies first, and THEN they can go to court. So, maybe they will begin pursuing administrative remedies (which, if there are 40,000 or so cases, will really gum up the works). Or, the federal government employees' unions may well appeal O'Toole's ruling. They had not made a decision as of Thursday evening.
Musk and Trump also know that, at the moment, they are targeting the low-hanging fruit. They've excised the 77,000 people who were willing to go voluntarily, while the ongoing terminations are focused on probationary employees who have relatively few protections when it comes to job security. If the Co-Presidents want to make further reductions in the federal workforce, well, it gets a lot harder from here. (Z)
Trump and Adams: A Corrupt Relationship Blossoms
For decades, people have known that Donald Trump is a sleazy operator. More recently, it's become clear that his fellow New Yorker Eric Adams is also a sleazy operator. Maybe it's something in the water. Or the pizza. In any event, sleaze tends to attract sleaze, and recent news makes clear the extent to which Trump and Adams are a match made in heaven (or, probably more accurately, somewhere a bit south of heaven).
On Monday, deputy AG Emil Bove, a former prosecutor who aggressively pursued Jan. 6 cases at the Southern District of NY before he became Trump's consigliere and toady, ordered Danielle Sassoon, the interim U.S. Attorney for SDNY, to drop all charges against Adams in the feds' ongoing corruption probe. However, and this is critical, she was ordered to drop the charges without prejudice. That means they could be refiled, which therefore keeps the Sword of Damocles over Adams' head, so as to guarantee his fealty to Donald J. Trump. Sassoon had been appointed to the interim position by Trump just last month. She's been with SDNY since 2016, is a former clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and current member of the Federalist Society. In 2023, she successfully prosecuted Sam Bankman-Fried, who received a 25-year sentence.
In his order, Bove conceded that his request was completely unrelated to the strength of the case, admitting that he had not even looked at the evidence or the charges. Instead, he gave an explicitly political reason for conditionally dropping the charges: so that Adams could be pressured to step up his cooperation with Trump's immigration sweeps and to make sure everyone on Adams' staff said only nice things about the Don. On Wednesday, she sent a strongly worded letter to AG Pam Bondi, accusing Bove and Adams of a quid pro quo. Rather than comply with Bove's illegal order, on Thursday morning, Sassoon resigned.
Bove then attempted to transfer the case to the Public Integrity Section in Washington, which handles corruption cases. However, the acting chief of that section, John Keller, and the acting head of the criminal division, Kevin O. Driscoll, also resigned. So, what did Bove do in response? He threatened to prosecute Sassoon and placed the other principal AUSAs responsible for the case on administrative leave, despite confirming in the order to drop the case that it "in no way calls into question the integrity and efforts" of those prosecutors and of Sassoon.
Meanwhile, no request for dismissal of the case has yet been filed. Given that the judge has to approve the request, if it ever does get filed, it's safe to assume he'll look even more askance at a clear effort to leverage a criminal prosecution for political purposes. The #2 at SDNY, Matthew Podolsky, will presumably take over until Jay Clayton, Trump's nominee for U.S. Attorney, is confirmed, at which point this will all be dumped in Clayton's lap. It will be interesting to see how Podolsky responds if Bove orders him to submit the request to dismiss.
Needless to say, while this unlawful pressure campaign is generating a lot of headlines, it won't lead to Trump's impeachment. But it's worth noting the courage and integrity of the men and women at the Department of Justice who are doing their best to take a stand for the rule of law and to call attention to the illegal actions of Bove and others leading the Department. It has to be painful to leave a job they had taken such pride in, and served so faithfully, under these circumstances. In an e-mail, Sassoon said, "It has been my greatest honor to represent the United States and to pursue justice as a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York." Bove should remember that, as Judge Beryl Howell pointed out in her order granting a FOIA request for records related to the classified documents case, "While the Supreme Court has provided a protective and presumptive immunity cloak for a president's conduct, that cloak is not so large to extend to those who aid, abet and execute criminal acts on behalf of a criminally immune president." He's not going to be prosecuted anytime soon, but the statute of limitations on federal corruption charges is 5 years while, last we checked, Trump's term runs only 4 years.
As to Adams, he's got plenty of problems to worry about. As we note, it is far from certain that a judge will sign off on a deal that is plainly corrupt. And even if Adams does overcome that hurdle, his dirty laundry has now been aired for all to see (and smell). That includes Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY), who has the power, under New York State law, to remove Adams with cause. If he is kicked out of office, his usefulness to the Trump administration ends, and maybe the federal charges come back to life (or maybe the dismissal order never gets filed in the first place). On top of that, there could be state charges against him. So, he's got no particular reason to rest easy right now. (L & Z)
In Congress: RFK Jr. Approved, Cassidy, McConnell Can't Find the Special Sauce
You might want to stock up on N90 masks and vitamins, because Robert F. Kennedy is now the United States' Secretary of Health and Human Services. Although maybe that office should now be known as United States' Secretary of "Health" and Human Services.
In the end, the vote broke along party lines, except that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) crossed the aisle to vote with the Democrats. Despite many of them expressing "concern" about Kennedy, no other Republican found it within themselves to oppose the anti-vaxxer and conspiracist, despite knowing full well that his ascension means that people—and, in particular, innocent children—will die needlessly.
Besides "public health" and "the American people," we'll point out two big losers here. The first is McConnell, whose career is clearly winding to an end, and who is clearly going to go out with a whimper. He was the most powerful man in the Senate for the better part of two decades, and in that time, he secured passage of not a single bill of his own, while at the same time laying the groundwork for the rise of a president he finds abhorrent. Now that he's a backbencher, his influence seems to have evaporated. It's a pretty lousy final chapter for a career that, we would guess, history was already going to view harshly.
The other loser here is Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who might have brought Kennedy down if he came out strongly against the nominee, but who instead publicly waffled, and then meekly fell into line. It is hard to imagine how he could have played his hand worse, heading into next year's reelection campaign. The Trumpers are already unhappy with him because he voted to convict Donald Trump after the second impeachment trial. This just served to reaffirm their suspicions and their dislike. Meanwhile, pulling a Susan Collins and expressing "concern," while not actually doing anything about that concern, is not going to please Never Trumpers, or independents, or Democrats who might otherwise have thought about crossing the aisle to support a Trump resister. Cassidy is going to face a fierce primary challenge, and he may well not survive.
We will admit that we are at least a little surprised that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) did not join McConnell in voting "nay," since she usually doesn't express "concern" unless she means to act on it. But she was apparently more concerned about other matters, introducing a bill to switch Mt. McKinley back to "Denali." After all, if you're a Republican and you're going to push back against Trump, you've got to pick only the truly important battles.
And as long as we are on the subject of confirmations, we'll note one other story. Because of the budget battles on the horizon, Republicans really don't want to be down one seat in the House, if they can avoid it. So, the Senate is currently slow-walking the confirmation of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) as U.N. Ambassador. How long that might last, and exactly how Trump and Stefanik might feel about that, is not currently known. (Z)
Jockeying for Position: 2026 Races Continue to Heat Up
There's been a fair bit of news in the last 24 hours about the major 2026 political races, despite the fact that we are only in February 2025.
First up, and of the greatest consequence, Sen. Tina Smith (DFL-MN) has decided to call it a career. She's only 66, which is young by the standards of the U.S. Senate. However, after 1½ terms, she has decided that she's had her fill. Frankly, we're surprised anyone manages to spend even 2 years in the presence of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), much less 7 or 8 years.
Naturally, a political party never likes to see an incumbent retire, especially in a purplish state. That said, and as we've noted a million times, midterm elections usually feature a backlash against the party that controls the White House. That figures to be doubly true with this White House. So, it's probably as good a time as any to try to elect a new incumbent. Also, although Minnesota is purple, it's a very blue shade of purple. While the Republicans have run a few very close races, they haven't actually won statewide since 2006.
This being the case, every office holder at the state level is a Democrat-Farmer-Laborer. And so, the blue team's bench is very deep. Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan has already jumped in, and Gov. Tim Walz said he might get in, too. State Secretary of State Steve Simon and state AG Keith Ellison are possibilities, as are Rep. Angie Craig and Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis. For a few hours yesterday, there was a "draft Al Franken" movement, but he quickly shot that down and said that, at age 73, he is not interested in trying to reclaim his former seat. Dean Phillips has also taken a pass.
On the Republican side, the cupboard is a bit more bare. Royce White had declared even before Smith dropped out; he's the former NBA player (he played 3 whole minutes in his career) who has some... unusual ideas, and who got smoked by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DFL-MN) last year by 16 points. Former Navy SEAL Adam Schwarze is also in; his main qualification for office is that he is a former Navy SEAL. State Sen. Karin Housley is considering a run; she got crushed by Klobuchar back in 2018. Meanwhile, Rep. Tom Emmer and former governor Tim Pawlenty have already made it clear they are out. Add it all up, and while this seat will be on everyone's "races to watch" list, that's only because so many of the seats up next year are 100% safe. This one is not 100% safe, but it's much closer to being that than it is to being a toss-up.
The other news is gubernatorial in nature. Arizona holds its primaries late in the cycle, so there is a tiny bit less pressure to make decisions... in February of the year before the election. For that reason, presumably, Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) has not yet announced if she will stand for reelection. Until she makes a decision, the race on that side of the aisle is in a holding pattern.
On the other side, however, there is at least some pressure to get into the race before the many other ambitious (and often nutty) Arizona Republicans can get in. Rep. Andy Biggs, who is rather well known for socializing with white supremacists, had already thrown his hood into the ring. And yesterday, businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson got in as well. Unlike Biggs, she's not crazypants. Unfortunately for her, crazypants is what Republican primary voters in Arizona like. In Taylor Robson's first run for office, the 2022 gubernatorial primary, she was defeated by Kari Lake.
Taylor Robson is claiming that she has Donald Trump's endorsement, but take that with a few grains of salt. First, his "endorsement" was clearly left pretty vague. At one of the seemingly infinite number of right-wing conferences, Trump told her: "Are you running for governor? I think so, Karrin. Because if you do, you're gonna have my support, OK?" Further, even if Trump did endorse her, well, Trump endorsements are subject to revision, based on polling.
Finally, the lieutenant governorship in Ohio was left vacant when Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) was appointed to the seat left open by J.D. Vance. However, it's not vacant anymore. Gov. Mike DeWine has picked former Ohio State University head football coach Jim Tressel to take Husted's place. Tressel's previous experience in politics includes: [This space intentionally left blank.]
DeWine undoubtedly made this pick because modern Republican politics often have more to do with celebrity than with anything else, like, say, qualifications. The Governor knows that Vivek Ramaswamy has wide name recognition, and some meaningful amount of support among the MAGA base, and was trying to program against that. Of course, that assumes that the 72-year-old Tressel tries for a promotion next year. The coach has not gotten into the governor's race yet, since he hasn't even been approved as lieutenant governor by the state legislature. However, when asked, he most certainly did not give the Full Sherman. So, it's clearly a real possibility.
If the primary ends up as Ramaswamy vs. Tressel, it will be hard to think of a race, anytime in American history, more devoid of qualifications for office than that one. Well, OK, Dr. Oz vs. David McCormick was very close. (Z)
I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Eddie Murphy Is "The Nutty Professor"
Our headline theme clues, last week, were: (1) the headline for the first item today was almost "MuskWatch: Americans are Leary of Elon" and (2) "you should be thinking about people. Some very stand-up people." Here's the solution, courtesy of reader G.M.K. in Mishawaka, IN:
They're the names of comedians:
- MuskWatch: Pushing All the Wrong Buttons—Red Buttons
- Pam Bondi: Bill Barr, the Sequel—Roseanne Barr
- Donald Trump: He Was Nailed to the Cross for Me—David Cross
- I Read the News Today, Oh Boy: Rock Fish—Chris Rock
- This Week in Schadenfreude: Don't Mess with... Black Churches—Lewis Black
- This Week in Freudenfreude: Tryin' to Get Up That Great Big Hill of Hope—either Bob Hope, or the yakkety sax man himself, Benny Hill
To make sure we only used people who are widely recognized as stand-up comedians, we limited ourselves to Comedy Central's list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians. Eddie Murphy, from the headline of this item, is on that list, of course. So is Denis Leary, from the hint we decided to discard.
Here are the first 50 readers to get it right:
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We really wanted to get Lenny Bruce in there, but it just wasn't doable.
As to this week's theme, it relies on one word in some cases, and on multiple words in others. It's in the Trivial Pursuit category Famous People & Events (which appeared in several of the special editions of the game). And as to a hint, we'll note this one's a bit on the tough side, but you should really start by looking at the calendar.
If you have a guess, send it to comments@electoral-vote.com with subject line "February 14 headlines." (Z)
This Week in Schadenfreude: Tesla Starts the Year in a Hole
At the moment, there is not much that the average citizen can do to push back against the anti-democratic activities of Co-President Elon Musk. However, as both David Zipper (of Slate) and Jonathan V. Last (of The Bulwark) point out, there is one potential attack surface: Tesla.
As anyone who follows the stock market, even a little bit, knows, Tesla's share price is far out of line with the company's fundamentals. That is to say, it's wildly overvalued, based primarily on hopes for the future of electric vehicles, and on the belief that Musk is a miracle worker. Meanwhile, an enormous percentage of his net worth is tied up in Tesla stock. He's never going to be poor, of course. But if Tesla takes a huge hit, then Musk takes a huge hit, both in the wallet and in terms of his public image and his ego.
Naturally, most people are not in the market for a Tesla. But some people are, and Zipper and Last both advise those folks to look elsewhere, especially since Tesla's products have been pretty much stagnant for 7-8 years. They also advise that consumers avoid renting Teslas, and that those folks who own Teslas should sell them. The latter move will serve to drive down the price for used Teslas, which in turn will drive down the demand for new Teslas.
Already in 2025, Tesla registrations are way down, and that's in comparison to 2024, when they were also way down. This is true in the U.S., and it's even more true in Europe. For example, sales are down 60% in Germany and 63% in France, as compared to the same time period last year. This is despite the fact that EV sales, overall, are up considerably.
It is not entirely clear why so many people are losing interest in Tesla. Part of it is undoubtedly increased competition; quite a few legacy car makers have come out with EVs that are attractive in various ways, while there are also some very interesting new EVs coming out of newly founded carmakers in India and China. In comparison, Tesla models—which again, haven't been substantially updated in years—are old hat. Presumably, Elon Musk's turn toward far-right politics, both in the U.S. and in Europe, hasn't helped the brand out, either, since EV purchasers skew pretty liberal.
The only major new product that Tesla has launched in the last half-decade is the Cybertruck, and the news on that front is very poor. First, presumably because the vehicle is expensive (and, to most people, really ugly), it's just not selling. For example, there were just 9,000 of them sold in California last year. Not great in a wealthy, EV-friendly state with more than 30 million people. Further, the Cybertruck has not undergone government testing because the government has limited resources, and focuses on vehicles that move far more units than Tesla does with the Cybertruck. However, a private automotive publication (AutoWire) has crunched the data, and found that Cybertruck drivers are 17 times more likely to burn to death in a crash than were drivers of the notoriously unsafe Ford Pinto. That revelation is not going to help sales (though it will help the pocketbooks of lawyers who specialize in lawsuits against car manufacturers).
Add it all up, and Musk the businessman is on a downward trend, one nearly as precipitous as the upward trend of Musk the co-president. In the end, the two careers are not compatible; he's hurting Tesla by not being available and by being toxic. It is likely he's going to have to choose one career or the other sometime soon, and that could mean that his time as Tesla CEO is nearing its end. (Z)
This Week in Freudenfreude: Time to Head to the Beach, Boys
Representation matters. Certainly, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism thinks so, which is why they conduct an annual, exhaustive study—called the Inclusion Initiative—of the 100 highest-grossing films of the year. What the scholars look at, specifically, is every single speaking part in every single movie. They track gender, race, "major role" status, and the like, in order to see how well filmmakers are capturing the diversity of the real world.
Back when the study began, in 2007, representation of women in movies was pretty dismal. This, in fact, was the primary impetus behind the project. How dismal? It's hard to believe, but only about a third of the people with speaking parts were women. And the number of women protagonists (i.e., the character or characters driving the narrative arc of the film) was even smaller, at just 20%.
Since then, however, the number of women protagonists has slowly crawled upward. And in this year's study, released earlier this week, a rather important benchmark was reached. Across the top 100 movies of 2024, more than half featured a female protagonist. To be more precise, that was the case with 54 of the top 100 films. That's not only a high for years covered by the survey, it's the first time where the percentage of women protagonists is higher than the percentage of women in the general population (50.5%).
This is not to say that films are, as yet, perfectly representative. The study also tracks age, and film characters skew much younger than the general population. That is particularly true of female characters. There were eight Top 100 movies last year with a female protagonist over the age of 45. That's better than the one such movie in 2007, but it's rather behind the 21 such movies last year featuring male protagonists over the age of 45. If only Harrison Ford would stop making so many damn movies.
Of course, one should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Even if films are not perfect representations of the U.S. population (and probably never will be), the filmmakers are doing much better than they did even 20 years ago. So, a hat tip to them. And have a good weekend, all! (Z)
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