A more likeable Trump than usual (i.e. than the real Trump via Twitter and other off the cuff venues) regaled us with America’s successes (real and imagined) since his election and introduced us to an unusual number of American heroes in the audience. It was feel good all around and as the Christian Science Monitor so aptly forecast, “Teleprompter Trump” won the night.
But did this leveraged real estate developer plunging us further into the debt for growth edifice really say “beautiful, clean coal”? I just thought it was not only odd, but one of the goofiest things I’ve ever heard a political figure utter. “Beautiful, clean coal”… are you shittin’ me? His administration has “ended the war on beautiful, clean coal” was the longer version of the quote. [edit] evidently this is something he’s said before and reprised it for all you coal fans out there.
I was eating a late dinner when he said that and I almost laughed the chicken right out of my mouth. More info than you needed, but… this administration is all about wars, isn’t it? The war on coal, the war on religious freedom, the war on our borders, the war on the American worker and so on. Typical of Trump’s cartoon-like persona and method of communicating, everything is us (the good, religious, red white and blue, hard working… beautiful Americans) vs. them (other nations – and their castoffs – leaching off of our wellspring of wealth and American ingenuity).
Remember this: Trump is a real estate developer who used credit (debt) to gain great power and influence (and to get on a dumb TV show). So what if he went bankrupt a couple or more times and used the system to massage his way out of it (screw creditors?) and reboot his empire.
Check out the 2nd link above. It includes a video of David Stockman (interviewed by FOX), whom many FOX viewers consider a quack. Whether his numbers are right or wrong, his point is that the real estate developer in chief has inherited the Fed/Obama bubble and is amplifying it (our theme all along after all, has been that fiscal inflation/reflation policy is to replace monetary inflation/reflation policy). In my opinion he’s running the country the way he ran his RE empire.
Last night was all feel good and no sizzle. “Teleprompter Trump” won the night! Now back to reality, and Twitter Trump.
