Take The Win 2

Back in early January, I posted a "letter" to President Elect Trump called "Take The Win". In it, I suggested that he continue telling the American people how great he governed the first time, and how wonderful everything is going now, and that he instruct those media outlets which bend the knee to air story after story to illustrate those points. 

I suggested that they show ICE agents arresting the worst of the worst of the convicted undocumented, perhaps even leading them out of American jails towards deportation planes. That he crow about the markets when stocks are breaking records, regardless of whether anything he has done could have made any difference.

That when the avian flu starts to subside, he take credit for falling egg prices. That any peace talk progress between Ukraine and Russia, Israel and Hamas be treated as proof of his strength. 

And, of course, that any drop in illegal crossings be chalked up to his brilliant immigration strategy.

Here is a link to that first post

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2025/01/dear-president-trump-take-win.html 

In some areas, Trump has done that. When the market was up in January and early February, he was first to claim it as his doing. Of course, when it dropped like a stone after his tariff announcements, he reverted to blaming Biden, but that is OK, as long as those media outlets that he controls stayed the course and repeated whatever he deemed real news.

And, while, as an actual grocery shopper and gasoline purchaser (I assume he hasn't done either in decades), I know that the price at the pump is a tad higher than on November 6th, or January 21st depending on your choice of start dates, and that eggs, while still much higher than before the avian flu kicked in, have dropped a bit, just keep repeating the lie that prices have dropped significantly. It doesn't matter than any change in the price of eggs is all about our ability to navigate and deal with the avian flu, he can take the win and pretend that he knows more about chickens and eggs than any farmer.

He even has the Secretary of Commerce repeating the nonsense of gas prices being below $2 a gallon, let alone the Press Secretary who gushes about his accomplishments like a Beatles groupie.

Shame on me though, I never expected the tariff policy disaster. While his minions continue to toggle between the justification that tariffs will reduce the flow of fentanyl, will raise enormous amounts of money, or will bring manufacturing back to our country, actual shipments into America are about to be halved, while exports which might previously have sent American made products overseas via contracts under USAID, and other government funded agencies, have been cancelled by DOGE. 

Fortunately, I see good news ahead.

Depending on the timing around possible shortages in our department and grocery stores, Trump will announce breathtakingly brilliant deals with China, the EU, etc which will soon amount to goods flowing into our country again. Like the arsonist who is first to blast water on a fire he set, Trump will then claim that he rescued America from food and merchandise shortages. It won't matter if at the end of the day, the new "deals" look very much like the old deals, or even if a deal here and there is actually worse for our country.

Take the win, hammer the message that his superior negotiating skills have once again saved the day, and move onto the next topic that can be twisted into a pretzel on purpose only to be straightened out afterwards.

Even better, invent a crisis, rather than causing one. Tell everyone of the next impending disaster, whether it exists or not, then solve it, just like his executive order on undocumented people voting. We know it is not a real problem, but should there actually be a midterm election, and it is proven that the number of voters who were undocumented was paltry, it won't matter that it always was paltry, it just matters that he made it so.

To be honest, it kind of surprises me that Trump is not following my advice/his original playbook of creating controversy (such as his original big lie, that Obama was not born in America), then capitalizing on the gullibility of his cult.

I mean, they believed that Haitians were eating the dogs and cats, why actually address a real issue when you can create one?

In this vein, he is already setting the stage for a "peace" in Ukraine. First he pretended that the United States would pull out of facilitating negotiations. Then he faked outrage that Putin kept slaughtering Ukrainians, as if the tens of thousands that have already been killed didn't matter. Eventually, hopefully soon, some form of reduced hostilities will occur, and Trump can take the win and proclaim that his threat to walk away pushed the combatants to the peace table.

In a similar way, he should return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the US, then hold a sham trial and deport him again. I am sure he can find a judge who will ignore the evidence, (can you say Aileen Cannon) and rule as he wishes. Can you imagine the victory strut he could take when Garcia is deported by rule of law? Whether that rule of law is true to the term, won't matter, just that he can yell "told ya so".

He should also take the win by emphasizing other deportations of real criminals (we know there are many), and stop deporting people whose only crime was illegal entry, or American children who had the nerve to be born to an undocumented parent. Or kids with cancer.

He can even claim that because of his desire to protect women athletes from competing with men, there are now less than a dozen such trans athletes competing in the NCAA. It doesn't matter that the number was never more than that before, it just matters that he take credit for the small number now.

Another good story is to announce that fentanyl deaths are down due to his aggressive actions against Canada and Mexico. Now, of course, he may want to not repeat Attorney General Bondi's assertion that fentanyl seizures have saved 258 million American lives, that number being a tad over blown considering that she is suggesting that without Trump's leadership, roughly 75% of the people that you know, including infants and those over 80 years old, would have died in the past year.

Still, fentanyl deaths did decrease in the last reporting year, summer of 2023 to September 2024. It doesn't matter that Biden was president then, nor does it matter that one of the reasons for this decline is the availability of naloxone (Narcan) which has been distributed through various government programs into the hands of EMS personnel and into the neighborhoods where drug use is prevalent, nor does it matter that those very programs are under attack via DOGE and the president's recent budget proposal. All that matters is taking credit for the decline.

Take the win.

As I said in the first post, we know, above all, Trump likes to golf. The less he intervenes in trade policy, the less he attempts to bully institutions of higher learning, prestigious law firms, non-profit organizations that raise money for political parties and viewpoints he disagrees with, the more time he can spend on rallies and golf.

Take the win.

Tour the country telling your faithful followers how great you are by taking credit for whatever seems to be going well at the time, or even by making up things that were fine before. 

And golf like no other president has golfed before. Perhaps even combine the two and golf with "regular" folks who can then be interviewed on Fox and Friends and gush about Trump's golfing prowess, not to mention his brilliant mind and wonderful personality. 

Just stop governing. Let Congress actually work on laws as they are supposed to, if you believe in the Constitution. You can continue to sign stupid executive orders if it makes you feel important and powerful, just restrict them to idiotic things like declaring paper straws are back, and putting Columbus back in Columbus Day.

Of course, it is also possible that Trump will stick with his other tried and true playbook; continue to cause chaos while raking in millions of dollars selling access to the White House. Like a magician who makes the audience look away from the real trick, Trump may prefer throwing out inane proclamations (executive orders), or putting an AI generated picture of himself as pope, or just merely opening his mouth and verbalizing whatever moronic thought pops into his twisted mind.

All the while extorting money and favors from the stupidly and/or cowardly rich who have made the concept of selling out their country for even more money that they will never be able to spend in 1000 lives, into their new favorite hobby.

Or perhaps both. Take the win by continuing to direct his flock to think and believe whatever he tells them, and make a boat load of money to boot. After all, what is the point of being able to fool people if not to make lost of money.

Whatever permutation of this plan that he chooses, in addition to whatever other transactional scam he can concoct, I see a host of "how great is Trump" stories in our future.

Take the win, but at least leave us some money. Maybe even enough to buy four or five dolls and eight or ten pencils.