West Coast port officials on Friday told CNN that, for the first time since the pandemic, there were as of that morning zero container ships headed from China to be offloaded at American docks, a sign all the more troubling for the fact that six days ago, 41 vessels had been scheduled to depart from the bloated, dysfunctional autocratic state that is nonetheless the US’s largest trading partner.
Thus it’s no real mystery why convicted felon President Trump is making the kind of panic moves like he did that same morning, posting “80 percent Tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B.” He’s been warned repeatedly by his minions that what he set in motion with “Liberation Day” will, within the next few weeks, come to bear down on an electorate of which a near-majority last year bought into horseshit like the Fox News propaganda above – which you may remember used what was actually a 2011 photo of a store in Japan from near that nuclear reactor that exploded after being hit with a goddamned tsunami – being used to exploit lingering supply chain issues from – again – COVID.
Yeah, COVID’s actually going to be something of a running theme here given the certain overlaps in the respective situation. In fact it overlaps in so many respects – except for the deadly virus part.
There’s still a sickness though: The cult mindset of lowly supplicants like feckless Ohio MAGA Congressman David Joyce THIS WEEK. He probably doesn’t believe the shit that’s coming out of his mouth – claiming that “the American people understand shared sacrifice” and will pay significantly more for the shit they buy that’s made in China, thus the GOP will be just fine politically. Whatever amount of “shared sacrifice” existed as a patriotic virtue prior to COVID was completely annihilated by it specifically because Republicans needed to do so to keep their cult intact during the pandemic.
They turned wearing a mask into a political act. Fucking Lauren Boebert launched her career by refusing to comply with state COVID safety measures and acting like it wasn’t real at her shitty greasy spoon/gin mill that eventually failed anyway. Believing that stupid hydroxychloroquine was an effective treatment for the rona was a pretty goddamned solid indicator of one’s political preferences. The Trump Regime and the MAGA propaganda-industrial complex scrambled to find a place to point fingers, be it at Blue State governors for “economy-killing lockdowns” and China for letting the virus escape a lab (which It probably did. But irrespective of its provenance, what right wing lab leak truthers failed to acknowledge was that their theory didn’t actually make the virus go away or – more importantly – make Trump any less grossly incompetent at handling the pandemic).
In a way it was George Floyd’s murder and the civil unrest that followed that helped stabilize the situation politically for the first Trump Maladministration in its twilight year. Nobody can say what would’ve happened if not for the reckoning that followed Derek Chauvin’s savagery in Minneapolis, but there’s a case to be made that the “ANTIFA BLM THUGS RIOTING AND BURNING DOWN CITIES” song-and-dance did a lot more to redirect the focus away from the White House and GOP’s shambolic COVID response than blaming goddamned Andrew Cuomo for the nursing home deaths.
The MAGA cult’s going to need a similar miracle in just a few weeks because this sort of bullshit stupid John Barrasso spewed this morning, with him outright not addressing what’s going to happen when Americans – who three years ago were already beyond tired of shortages and high prices – are confronted with empty shelves when they go to the hardware, home goods, office supply, toy, and a shit ton of other aisles, if not the entire stores themselves. Just saying “IN JUST THREE MONTHS, TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS (and therefore, record numbers of JOBS!) HAVE BEEN POURING INTO THE USA. THIS IS BECAUSE OF MY TARIFF POLICY, and our great November 5th Election WIN! The very STUPID Democrats are doing everything within their power to disparage what is happening. They are totally unhinged, and have lost all levels of Confidence. It is a financial REVOLUTION, and they are being Crushed. MAGA!!!” as the fat bastard posted on his lame Twitter knockoff this afternoon is prooooobably not going to cut it either when the low-infos start to tune in.
Then they might start “disparaging” the completely unforced clusterfuck he wrought upon them too.
The Left wing trash media, who ignored any story about illegals murdering Americans, are now showing selective pictures of children crying to once again side with illegals over Americans.
“Enemy of the people” aren’t strong enough words.
— Catturd ™ (@catturd2) May 11, 2025
Bringing up George Floyd’s murder and its aftermath might be tempting fate however. It’s not entirely clear what Catturd is referencing here, but it’s very likely to be the horrific, shameful scene in Worcester, Massachusetts this week in which the daughter of an undocumented woman was tossed to the pavement by cops protecting ICE agents from an angry, obstructive crowd that had gathered to impede her arrest. This isn’t to say it won’t be a narrow line for Trump and his cult to walk if such scenes repeat themselves and get wide coverage across various information bubbles, but there’s a timeline in which the whole “Law and Order” circlejerk comes back as a convenient out for the MAGA media ecosystem – with the bonus illegal immigration angle – to play up when their audiences are getting hammered by more inflation. It’s dicey, especially when there’s going to be plenty of the “family-oriented” victims Catshit is decrying, but they will try. Be ready for it.
Barring that however, in the “all economy, all the time” version of Summer 2025, there is considerable danger for the Republican Party. Tens of millions of Americans who don’t wear MAGA hats or even particularly like Trump cast a ballot for him last year because they’re fucking stupid and they believed his shit about lowering the cost of living and making them rich on day one. It’s one thing to distract them and make them forget they ever bought those lies. When they show up at Walmart and there aren’t any tampons or protective cases for their iPhone or Hot Wheels tracks or boxer briefs or plastic cutlery or you name it and then they’re going to be wondering what the fuck is going on. The first Google result they see probably isn’t going to be the Breitbart article that takes 1,200 words to explain why it’s actually Biden’s fault and even if it is are they really going to sit through the whole thing? Will Joe Rogan have the capacity to unpack it for them on his show?
White House warns China-made dolls have lead paint — after Trump says tariffs may mean fewer toys https://t.co/03OK14BhTG pic.twitter.com/unjP80lo8E
— New York Post (@nypost) May 1, 2025
That it’s been nearly two weeks since Trump first started with this ridiculous “two dolls instead of 30” line and they still don’t have anything better than telling Americans to reject materialism like some 1990s Gen X “slacker philosopher” assclown probably does not bode well for how the Republican messaging operation is going to bullshit their way out of the coming public outrage. It isn’t just friggin toys, it’s so much more that so many businesses and workers depend upon the steady flow of from China to pay their bills and live their lives that’s at about to be interrupted for an indefinite stretch of time. Team Orange can’t even freaking consistently say what the point of this stupid shit is – to onshore terrible manufacturing jobs nobody wants, to get China to buy more American agricultural products or whatever “fairness” looks like, to get them to pretend to stop exporting fentanyl, or whatever stupid new story they’re going to pull out of their asses tomorrow.
Still, the attempts might end up being “entertaining” to those of us who get certain sick, perverse satisfaction out of watching the Trump Regime fuck up and embarrass themselves and their voters, maybe even something like the pics of empty shelves at Target are AI generated or were actually from Japan in 2011 after the 9.1 magnitude earthquake sent a tsunami into a nuclear power plant which went into meltdown, forcing hundreds of thousands to evacuate. There’d be a lot of parallels to that situation here, except for the part where about the earthquake was an act of God, not some fat fucking degenerate idiot who thinks he is one and thus knows exactly what he’s doing.