The business press is now widely reporting that Trump, after wrecking relationships with all of our allies, is now poised to further urinate on German relations by slapping a 25% tariff on imported German cars.   German automakers’ stocks have fallen over $20 billion since Trump started his most recent attack on trading partners.  Business Insider is reporting that Trump told French president Macron in April that he’s going to keep the tariffs on until there are “No more Mercedes models rolling down 5th Avenue.”

What an idiot.

One of the reasons Trump is so hated by normal people is his fleeting relationship with truth.  In a town where lying is almost more common than breathing, this guy spews falsehood at an even more breathtaking pace than any politician in history.  This week, the Washington Post updated its lie tracker which now sums to 3,251 lies since taking office.

As one of our patrons pointed out yesterday, Philip Roth’s description of Trump says it best:

“I found much that was alarming about being a citizen during the tenures of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. But, whatever I may have seen as their limitations of character or intellect, neither was anything like as humanly impoverished as Trump is: ignorant of government, of history, of science, of philosophy, of art, incapable of expressing or recognizing subtlety or nuance, destitute of all decency, and wielding a vocabulary of seventy-seven words that is better called Jerkish than English.”

Amen.  Pass the earplugs.

In a gigantic breach of protocol, Trump stupidly hinted at jobs numbers over an hour before the official release this morning.  Early markets were roiled by the tweet.  Trump violated his primary responsibility to the American people which is to protect them and the economy.  To self aggrandize, he simply couldn’t resist front running a positive jobs report.  Here is a chart of pre-open dollar moves by month.  The one on the right is today’s:

.2% doesn’t sound like much, but it is billions of dollars in value changing hands.  Trump is so narcissistically disabled that he has no understanding of the effect of his words.  Everything is about him, his grievance, his gnawing need to be praised and the victor that he simple blurts out whatever he believes makes him looks good.

The markets listen very closely to every single syllable uttered by the president and his representatives.  His words carry awesome authority.  Our system of government is not only one of laws, but over 230 years of protocol and tradition.  It’s not set up to endure a feckless moron.  His unpredictable behavior is causing enormous damage in 2 ways: he’s normalizing outrageous behavior which desensitizes the market to actual risks, and his erratic tweeting is shifting billions of dollars of actual value within the market that has introduced unsystematic risk.  The markets hate not understanding risks.

This tweet this morning is one of the most outrageous breaches of confidentiality we’ve yet to see.  And that’s saying a a lot.

To any objective observer, Dinesh D’Souza is a lying shitbag.  He’s famous for his lie-filled films like “Obama’s America” and “Hillary’s America” where he turns logic on its head peddling wild stories about everyone with whom he politically disagrees.  Debunking his bullshit is virtually a full time job for Media Matters. He spins wild conspiracy theories; for example, his book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11 blamed Democrats for the 9/11 attacks.  One of his most famous volumes was The Roots of Obama’s Rage where he fabricated the argument that Obama “was carrying out the anticolonial agenda of his Kenyan father”, whatever the hell that means.  Newt Gingrich often quotes D’Souza especially when repeating his birther lies.  On top of that, D’Souza was fired from a Christian college for making unwanted advances on a woman (not his wife).  And to add felony to lies, D’Souza was convicted of violating federal campaign finance laws by using straw donors to make illegal contributions to Wendy Long, famous in New York for losing to both Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer.  He got a light sentence of a $30,000 fine and 5 years probation.  He’s pretty much among the worst of the worst lie and conspiracy theory spinners, spewing toxic lies by turning history on its head with his down is up, left is right, and the sun rises in the west logic.

So, like criminal Joe Arpaio, he was the perfect candidate for a Trump pardon.  The goofy part of the story? Unfortunately, you have to stoop to reading the Daily Caller to get the goofiness.  The pardon request was made by none other than Trump enemy, Ted Cruz.  That’s right, the National Embarrassment of Texas successfully drove the campaign to get another famous liar off scott free.

Not only is the hole getting deeper, it’s getting weirder.

UPDATE:

I was reminded by a friend of this tweet from 2013 captured by Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post.  This tweet is by the person just pardoned by Trump:

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