It’s Tuesday…
President Shitshow’s public schedule for…
| Tuesday, March 4 2025 |
| 9:00 AM In-Town Pool Call Time In-Town Pool |
| 8:30 PM The President and The First Lady depart The White House en route The Capitol South Portico White House Press Pool |
| 8:40 PM The President and The First Lady arrive The Capitol White House Press Pool |
| 9:10 PM The President delivers his Joint Address to Congress White House Press Pool |
| 11:20 PM The President and The First Lady depart The Capitol en route The White House White House Press Pool |
| 11:30 PM The President and The First Lady arrive The White House South Portico White House Press Pool |
I’m back from vacation; we had a good time at our Happy Place. I’m still nowhere near figuring out a way to cover the Shitshow in a less ADHD way…
But maybe that’s okay considering President Shitshow has ADHD…
Tariffs…
Leavitt: "Your audience should be aware that tonight — 12:01am — tariffs on Mexico and China are going into effect and another 10%, uh, another 10% on China, 25% on Mexico, 25% on Canada. And the reason is because we cannot continue to allow fentanyl to pour into our country." pic.twitter.com/wA7pZkz9dp
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 4, 2025
On 02/03/2025 CNN fact-checker and all around good guy Daniel Dale offered a fact-check on just how much fentanyl is making it’s way to the US via the Canadian Border.
Fact check: Canada makes up just 0.2% of US border fentanyl seizures (02/03/2025):
Dale has broken down the different claims; worth the read…
I’m sharing just the fentanyl portion of the large fact-check:
Trump has lumped together the Canadian border and the Mexican border when talking about illegal fentanyl imports. The day after his inauguration in January, for example, he said, “The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive. The fentanyl coming through Mexico is massive.”
But there is a massive difference between the extent of the problem at the two borders.
Federal statistics show US border authorities seized 21,889 pounds of fentanyl in the 2024 fiscal year. Of that amount, 43 pounds were seized at the Canadian border — about 0.2% — compared with 21,148 pounds at the Mexican border, about 96.6%.
There’s no indication of any substantial change in the first three months of the 2025 fiscal year (October 2024 through December 2024). Of the 4,537 pounds of fentanyl seized by US border authorities during that period, 10 pounds, about 0.2%, were seized at the Canadian border, while 4,409 pounds, about 97.2%, were seized at the Mexican border.
It is true that the quantity of fentanyl seized at the Canadian border increased in fiscal year 2024. Just 2 pounds were seized there in fiscal year 2023, and 14 pounds were seized in fiscal year 2022. And, of course, even tiny quantities of fentanyl can be fatal.
Fact check: Canada makes up just 0.2% of US border fentanyl seizures (02/03/2025).
AP News posted this morning:
BREAKING: Mexico will respond to 25% tariffs imposed by the United States with its own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods.
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 4, 2025
Follow AP's live updates. https://t.co/rSc9RR4Wrb
Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said Tuesday she’ll announce the products Mexico will target Sunday in a public event in Mexico City’s central plaza, perhaps indicating Mexico still hopes to de-escalate the trade war set off by President Trump.
“There is no motive or reason, nor justification that supports this decision that will affect our people and our nations,” Sheinbaum said.
▶ Read more about Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs
AP News. Live Updates.
As these tariffs go into effect, yesterday he announced that tariffs will go on “external product” April 2nd.
I read some articles looking up “external” tariffs, but so far, they say things like “it’s unclear what products”. Or worse it just says he said with nothing else of substance.
Stay tuned…
As expected by everyone but President Shitshow the stock market is reeling…
As of an hour after the stock market opened…
It closed on Monday…
I use this link from CNN to watch the market…
Canada has offered the following remarks…
Trudeau: I want to speak first directly to the American people… your government has chosen to do this to you. Your government has chosen to put American jobs at risk. They have chosen to raise costs for American consumers on everyday essential items… pic.twitter.com/WQWpBVQxG4
— Acyn (@Acyn) March 4, 2025
Trudeau: "I think in what President Trump said yesterday that there is nothing Canada or Mexico can do to avoid these tariffs underlines very clearly what I think a lot of us have suspected for a long time: that these tariffs are not specifically about fentanyl even though that… pic.twitter.com/KZrGJgDHqN
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 4, 2025
It doesn’t need said but I’m gonna say it anyway…
During Shitshow’s first term, he tore up NAFTA and replaced it with the USMCA trade deal, calling it the best ever trade deal at the time.
So, PM Trudeau is correct this isn’t about what Canada and Mexico can do to work with President Shitshow this is about President Shitshow punishing us, because he lost in 2020…
“Illegal” Protests
Tonight, President Shitshow is going to offer his first address to a joint-session of Congress.
Ahead of the address he posted this on “Lies” Social…
Who determines if the protest is “illegal”?
Foreign Policy
Friday when I was at my happy place, President Shitshow met with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. The Shitshow and his fuckstick VP Vance were assholes. This weekend folks demanded that President Z apologize for saying that Russian President Putin has broke agreements before and what security assurances does Ukraine get for agreeing to give the US 50 percent of their rare minerals?
Today, President Z said this on Twitter…
I would like to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to peace.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 4, 2025
None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under…
Show more =’s
None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.
We are ready to work fast to end the war, and the first stages could be the release of prisoners and truce in the sky — ban on missiles, long-ranged drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure — and truce in the sea immediately, if Russia will do the same. Then we want to move very fast through all next stages and to work with the US to agree a strong final deal.
We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence. And we remember the moment when things changed when President Trump provided Ukraine with Javelins. We are grateful for this.
Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive.
Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format. We see this agreement as a step toward greater security and solid security guarantees, and I truly hope it will work effectively.
@ZelenskyyUa Twitter. 03/04/2025.
This won’t be enough for President Shitshow cause he didn’t say “sorry”…
More Economic News
Friday, is jobs report day. There have been rumors and speculation that the current admin will tickle the numbers to look better than they are.
Story, with @colbyLsmith: https://t.co/X4NbhZcKRJ
— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) March 4, 2025
Opening paragraphs:
Comments from a member of President Trump’s cabinet over the weekend have renewed concerns that the new administration could seek to interfere with federal statistics — especially if they start to show that the economy is slipping into a recession.
In an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, suggested that he planned to change the way the government reports data on gross domestic product in order to remove the impact of government spending.
“You know that governments historically have messed with G.D.P.,” he said. “They count government spending as part of G.D.P. So I’m going to separate those two and make it transparent.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what Mr. Lutnick meant. The basic definition of gross domestic product is widely accepted internationally and has been unchanged for decades. It tallies consumer spending, private-sector investment, net exports, and government investment and spending to arrive at a broad measure of all goods and services produced in a country.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis, which is part of Mr. Lutnick’s department, already produces a detailed breakdown of G.D.P. into its component parts. Many economists focus on a measure — known as “final sales to private domestic purchasers” — that excludes government spending and is often seen as a better indicator of underlying demand in the economy. That measure has generally shown stronger growth in recent quarters than overall G.D.P. figures.
New York Times Gift Link via Ben’s Tweet. 03/04/2025.
Approval Rating
And lastly…
Today is the first day of Trump’s second Presidency that his average approval rating is net negative pic.twitter.com/7izFcopf8q
— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) March 4, 2025
The graph is from Five Thirty Eight.
This is an open thread
P.S.
Yes, there will be a thread for the Shitshow’s address.
We can laugh and cry together while we don’t watch it in full and just watch the clips!
