With clear eyes, hard facts, critical thinking, new political strategy, empathy, and a soupçon of Schadenfreude
Category: Situational Awareness
Posts about the situation we are in–the good facts, the bad facts, and the terrible facts. Facts that, if taken on board, will let us “know ourselves, know the other side” and go on to win those hundred battles.
On March 31, I posted a video from the Bulwark posing the question “Want to Beat Trump?” and responding to its own rhetorical question like this: “Get him to 32%.”
And why 32 percent? Because that’s a good estimate of the proportion of Americans who are hard core MAGA nutjobs. A lot of those folks will stay with him to the bitter end. After all, he’s God’s Anointed, n’est-ce pas?
But when you strip his support down to the MAGA nutjobs, you’re going to flip Congress.
And the latest polls show that we are indeed well on our way toward stripping down his support to the hard core MAGA nutjobs.
If you have a bet-your-company problem, and if that problem can be addressed through litigation, and if you have the money, then, in all likelihood, you will give serious consideration to the Susman Godfrey firm—and you’ll probably hire them. Such was the situation in which Dominion Voting Systems found itself, when it retained the Susman firm to sue Fox News for defamation over lies told about its voting machines in the 2020 election. As you probably know, the outcome was that Fox settled for $787.5 million.
Wednesday, April 9, 2025
The Susman firm also represents Dominion in its suit against One America News Network, its related suit against Patrick Byrne, former CEO of Overstock.com, and its suit against Newsmax. In the latter case, on April 9 the district judge ruled that Newsmax made false and defamatory statements about Dominion and its voting machines; the “actual malice” issue remains to be decided, presumably by a jury, after detailed inquiry into the state of mind of the honchos at Newsmax who decided to publish the lies. The smart money is predicting that Newsmax, just like Fox News, is going to have to pay a ton of money.
Also on Wednesday, April 9, a Couple of Hours After the Newsmax Defamation Decision
By pure coincidence, Mango Mussolini decided this would be a good day to denounce Susman Godfrey as a “rogue law firm,” chiefly for defending the results of the 2020 election and for being too zealous in representing the interests of Dominion Voting. Along with the denouncing, he also imposed the customary draconian penalties on the firm, its lawyers, and its clients.
The logical inference: Trump plans to steal the 2026 election, just like he tried to steal the 2020 election. His plan is to issue an impractical and unenforceable order that the states should throw away their existing voting machines and buy new ones. This he did last month. Then, when his side loses bigly in 2026, he’ll lie about the Dominion voting machines to excuse his loss.
But, to advance the lie, he needs help from liars with big megaphones. Like Fox. Like Newsmax.
But even if the liars are perfectly OK with lying, they may be chastened by the fear of big losses in defamation suits.
Hence, in President Lizard Brain’s reasoning, the need to screw the lawyers who are successfully pursuing defamation claims.
For some reason—I assume it’s because of all the nonsense that has happened this week—the press has by and large missed the filing of this complaint. (I just read an article in the New York Times that should have mentioned it, but did not.)
This Coming Week
It is to be expected that, like Perkins Coie, like Jenner & Block, and like WilmerHale, the Susman firm will ask for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction, a district judge will instantly agree, and the judge will issue yet another opinion strongly suggesting that Donald J. Trump should take a long walk off a short pier.
I have three questions.
1. Who the Hell is Giving Trump Legal Advice About the Law Firms, and are They Actively Trying to Sabotage Trump’s Legal Position?
The wording of the Trumpian “fact sheet” and executive order—especially when considered together with the timing of the two events on April 9—is tantamount to Trump’s having prefaced his remarks with “THIS EXECUTIVE ORDER IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND ENTIRELY LEGALLY INDEFENSIBLE.”
2. Does Trump Think for a New York Second that the Supreme Court is Going to Buy This Garbage?
And, if not, what game does he think he’s playing?
Is he just delusional? Well, I don’t know. But he acts delusional. And he speaks in a delusional way.
And if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
3. How is the Susman Firm Going to Play its Hand?
Susman Godfrey can win its case without relitigating the 2020 election, without talking much about its client Dominion Voting, and without going into exactly which lies Fox and Newsmax told and why they told them.
That said, Trump has gone out of its way to make his quarrel with Susman Godfrey all about 2020.
In 2020, Team Trump brought 62 lawsuits to challenge the election. The result? Team Trump lost every single one. Their record was zero to 62.
Now Trump declares that he has the authority to execute a business for being on the winning side in some of those 62 cases.
Might the plaintiff want to call Trump to testify at a deposition, or a trial, as to the factual basis for his contention that he actually won in 2020? (The case law is that presidents do not enjoy absolute immunity from being called to testify.)
And if Trump does testify against the Susman firm, what are the chances that he will perjure himself?
Prof. Pearlstein teaches public and international affairs at George Mason. According to him, that with which we must reckon is that “As a country, we live beyond our means, consuming more than we produce and investing more than we save.”
I urge you to read the article. Much of it, you probably won’t like. But that’s the very reason why you need to read it.
But there is some sweet along with the bitter; you’ll like the multiple reasons why Trump’s tariffs are stupid. After expatiating on the multiple stupidities, Pearlstein ends this way:
That doesn’t mean we couldn’t benefit from raising tariffs on some imports until major trading partners lower tariff and nontariff barriers to American goods or stop subsidizing their exports. The dogmatic free traders were always wrong about that.
But tariffs are unlikely to alter the fundamental reality that, as a country, we collectively buy and invest more than we produce and save, which in broad terms is what the trade deficit represents. A simpler and more effective way to reduce that roughly $1 trillion annual trade deficit is to reduce our government’s $2 trillion annual budget deficit. Unfortunately, Trump is determined to do the opposite. For just as his new tariffs were unveiled, the president and his Republican allies in Congress were pushing through a budget plan to extend and expand tax cuts, increasing future budget deficits by hundreds of billions of dollars each year.
Put another way, by refusing to tax ourselves to pay for all the government services we demand — and borrowing the difference from the rest of the world — we are effectively giving households and businesses the money to buy more of the imports that the president is so determined to reduce.
For the past 50 years, America’s economic fantasy has been that another round of tax cuts or public investments will magically allow us to produce our way out of outsize budget and trade deficits. Instead, the twin deficits rose in tandem. In the real world, the only way to bring things back into balance is to begin living within our means and accept the painful adjustments that it entails. As we learned this week, there are better and worse ways to go about that rebalancing. But delaying that reckoning will only make things worse.
Ed Luce of the Financial Times, acute student of America, and sometime guest on Morning Joe, writes today’s thought piece (particularly choice passages underlined):
We should trust in Donald Trump’s instincts, says Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House of Representatives. Alternatively, Johnson and his caucus should run screaming in the opposite direction. It is too late for Republicans to revert to being a normal party — belief in Trump is their organising principle. But they could play the loyalist by coaxing Trump off the ledge. In addition to their jobs, the future of the global economy, and every American’s retirement fund, depends on it.
Their task is complicated by the fact that Trump still thinks he is on to a winner. Try to stand in his shoes. From his 2011 Obama foreign birth conspiracy to his 2024 conviction as a felon, and so many points in between, Trump has almost annually been left for dead. But his phoenix keeps rising. Trump is a fantasist whose deepest-lodged fantasy — that he is an unstoppable champion — keeps coming true. Why would a little market turmoil stop him?
The starting point is that Trump is a hammer and the rest of the world, as well as half of America, is a nail. Sometimes the hammer can focus on select nails, or soften its blow, but he is always a hammer. That some of Trump’s closest backers, such as the New York hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, are surprised by his global tariff war is a mystery. Trump vowed in almost every single campaign speech to unleash the trade war we are now in.
He has been blaming foreigners for ripping off America since the mid-1980s. Note, his obsession was with Japan, not the Soviet Union. Trump has always been angriest with allies and friends. His deepest contempt is now reserved for Europe and Canada. Psychologists extrapolate from the estate settlement Trump tried to impose on his own siblings. If your instinct is to rip people off, including those closest to you, assume that is everyone’s method.
The mystery is why so many — from Ackman’s fellow billionaires to Florida-based Venezuelans — have bent over backwards to miss who Trump is. A trillion comments have been wasted accusing the wrong people of Trump derangement syndrome. The real TDS afflicts those who keep seeing a rational actor, or an economic chess game, where none exists. The whole market arguably suffers from this syndrome. Shortly after plummeting on Monday morning, a fake news release surfaced that said Trump would announce a pause on his tariffs this week. The markets more than erased their opening losses. All those gains, in turn, were wiped out when the White House issued a denial.
If an online meme can turn a bear market into a bull recovery in the space of a minute, and back again, Trump has the world in his palm. The merest rumour that he might be sane can trigger a buying frenzy. Roman emperors would envy the finger-crooking sway of one man. Yet at some point, possibly imminent, Trump could be forced to pause at least some of his “liberation day” duties. That will trigger a big relief rally. But his pause will be no surer than stray driftwood. The same might apply to his threats of a new 50 per cent tariff escalation on China.
Markets will cheer any hints of bilateral deals Trump plans to strike with more influential demandeurs — Japan, China and India should be closely watched. Investors should also pay heed to the fact that such deals will be struck between foreign governments and Trump personally, not his administration. The departments of Treasury, commerce and the US trade representatives are often out of the loop. Given the lack of boundary between Trump’s public role and private investments, the scope for non-trade-related bartering is great.
The idea that Trump’s impact will be limited to the goods-traded economy is also wishful thinking. Foreigners own a critical share of US Treasury debt. Continued high demand for an asset in whose issuer the world is losing trust is the difference between a Trump recession and a Trump depression. On this, Europe’s governments seem to have better instincts than the equity and fixed-income markets. Rather than escalate the trade war, the EU is mulling only a modest toolkit of retaliations. This is not because Brussels thinks Trump is likely to embrace comity. It is because it fears a tit-for-tat trade spiral will break the global financial system.
Either way, this teachable moment is needlessly belated. Trump’s sane-washers have forfeited their credibility. There is no school of foreign policy realism, or trade mercantilism, that could explain Trump’s actions. If you want to forecast the world, study his psychology. While Trump is in charge, stay short on America.
This follows up on my post yesterday. I have a few more points about this interesting development.
The Federalist Society Angle
Trump 1.0 saw the appointment of around 250 federal judges. Most were vetted and approved by the Federalist Society. One of the guiding lights of the Federalist Society was and is Leonard Leo, who is also one of the instigators of the litigation under discussion here—litigation premised on the claim that Trump acted lawlessly in imposing his Liberation Day tariffs, the centerpiece of his administration’s economic policy.
The Merits of the Case
Who’s right on the merits may bear some tangential relevance to who is likely actually to win the case.
The central issue is this: Trump relied on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in decreeing his Liberation Day tariffs. But that act don’t say nothing about no tariffs. Trump was obviously trying to do an end run around a number of other statutes and regulations that do address the imposition of tariffs. So, says the plaintiff, along with Messrs. Koch and Leo, Trump acted lawlessly–outside the scope of his lawful powers.
That central issue raises, in turn, a host of other legal issues, and I am not an expert on any of them. The Forbes article quotes some people who are actually qualified to speak, who say that the case appears to have merit. And that is my untutored view as well.
How Long Will It Take to Decide the Case?
Plaintiff has not as of yet, and may not, ask for either a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction. Plaintiff and her counsel may well think that asking for this preliminary relief could slow things down.
Moreover, the case appears to be almost purely about issues of law, not fact; there would seem to be little need for witness depositions or document review. It could go quickly, if the district court judge and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals choose to move it along.
And why wouldn’t the lower courts move it along? Like everybody else, they’re watching as their stock market investments go glug, glug, glug, down the old shitter.
An “Exit Ramp” for Trump?
As the pressure on Trump grows, it’s possible—not likely, in my view, but remotely possible—that he might start looking for a way out of his decision to crash the world economic order. Should he want to take an exit ramp, a decision by the Supreme Court ordering him to drop his tariffs could do the trick.
The Incentive/Disincentive to “Onshore” Manufacturing
Finally, if there is any business, anywhere, that is seriously considering building manufacturing capacity in the United States, based on Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs, the pendency of this litigation gives them yet another reason to hesitate. As many have observed, you’re only going to spend the money to build a U.S. plant if you think the tariffs are going to last a long time. The lawsuit is yet one more reason, among many others, to question whether that’s a good bet.
Facing MAGA 