Coffee Talk with Tiff

July 17, 2025 12:44 pm EDT Tiff Editorial (Open Thread) Comments Off on Coffee Talk with Tiff
Coffee. Photo by Jonathan Thursfield.

It’s Thursday…

President Shitshow’s public schedule for…

Thursday, July 17 2025
9:00 AM
In-Town Pool Call Time
In-Town Pool
10:30 AM
The President receives his Intelligence Briefing
Oval Office 
Closed Press
Unknown
1:00 PM
Press Briefing by the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room 
On Camera
4:00 PM
The President signs Executive Orders
Oval Office 
Closed Press

Gang today’s post is going to be random thoughts and feels provided by me.

Pool Note — Wednesday

At yesterday’s remarks, President Confused appeared to blame former President Biden for the appointment of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell — a curious statement, considering Powell was his own nominee in 2017. Staff did not offer clarification, likely because at this point, correcting the record is a full-time job with no benefits.

Reporters exchanged glances. No one asked a follow-up. We all know how that goes…

Trump via shitty YouTube transcript:

Well, he’s too late. He’s always been too late—hence his nickname, “Too Late.” He should have cut interest rates a long time ago. Europe has cut them ten times in a short period of time, and we cut them none. The only time he cut them was just before the election, to try and help Kamala or Biden, whoever the hell it was—because nobody really knew. Obviously, that didn’t work. But he tried to cut them for the Democrats, Kamala. And how did that work out? You tell me. It didn’t work out too well, did it?

I think he does a terrible job. He’s costing us a lot of money, and we fight through it. The country’s become so successful that it doesn’t have a big impact, but it does hurt people wanting to get a mortgage—people who want to buy a house. He’s a terrible Fed Chair. I was surprised he was appointed. I was surprised, frankly, that Biden put him in and extended him. But they did.

So no, we’re not planning on doing anything. We’re very concerned. He’s doing a little renovation for $2.5 billion of the Fed building—building a renovation—and they have a close to $900 million cost overrun. And it’s a shame. But the biggest cost overrun is the cost overrun for interest rates, because we should be paying three points lower, and we would save a trillion dollars a year in interest if that were the case. And all it is is the stroke of a pen.

And that goes for his board too, because his board is not doing the job. They should try and rein this guy in. So he’s doing a lousy job. But no, I’m not talking about that. Fortunately, we get to make a change in the next—what, eight months or so? And we’ll pick somebody that’s good. We’ll pick somebody—I just want a fair job.

White House YouTube shitty Transcript. 07/16/2025.

Pool Note — Wednesday (continued)

During the same Oval Office remarks — also known as his daily session of holding court beneath enough gold-plated decor to make Versailles blush — President Confused stated that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is “already under investigation” for fraud.

Asked for clarification, a senior official, speaking on background out of sheer exhaustion, sighed audibly before replying: “He’s not. We assume he meant someone else. Or no one. Honestly, we stopped trying to translate around the Gilded Throne months ago.”

Trump via shitty YouTube transcript:

Morning. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet.–[he was talking to another reporter] Go ahead.

Q: You mentioned fraud in an earlier answer. Are you saying you want to investigate the Fed Chair for fraud related to this renovation?

Well, I think he’s already under investigation. He spent far more money than he was supposed to on rebuilding. I didn’t see him as the kind of guy who’d want rooftop parks and everything else on top of buildings. But who wants to spend that kind of money for the Fed? The Fed is supposed to sit there and say where interest rates are going—and a couple of other very easy things to do—and he spent two and a half billion dollars. I think he’s, you know, I think he’s got some problems…

White House YouTube shitty Transcript. 07/16/2025.

This morning, “Jerome Powell” was trending for me on Twitter. And of course I clicked — because I always click, even when every neuron is screaming don’t. I hovered over his name like it might bite, already filled with that familiar dread that only economic headlines and existential collapse can inspire

I did find something — an Axios article shared by a Twitter rando — but can I find it now? Of course not. Because, like an absolute genius, I once again decided, “Eh, no need to bookmark this probably important thing.” It was attempting to back up President Demands Things That Already Happened claiming Powell’s under investigation for fraud… which he isn’t. But let’s not let reality ruin a perfectly good narrative spiral

Driving the news: Powell has asked Fed IG Michael Horowitz to review the costs of the building and any other related matters Horowitz deems appropriate, the source said.

  • The IG’s office has reviewed the long-planned project before, but this review is meant to be a fresh look at a time of heightened scrutiny.
  • White House officials and congressional allies have accused the Fed of building an excessively luxurious campus at its longtime headquarters building, and another historic building next door.

Of note: The Federal Reserve Act grants the Fed’s Board of Governors wide authority over its real estate decisions, stating that it “may maintain, enlarge, or remodel any building or buildings” it has acquired or built “and shall have sole control of such building or buildings and space therein.”

In an FAQ published on its website over the weekend, the Fed asserted that the board “generally is not subject to direction from the NCPC on its building projects,” and that it did not believe the changes it made to its project would require “further review” from plans approved in 2021.

Axios. 07/14/2025.

So, to sum up, President Confused has no plans right now, but maybe might fire Powell eventually to replace him with…

And the fed chair is not under investigation for fraud, he has asked for an investigation into the renovations costs himself.

Moments after President Desperate-to-Be-a-Dictator wrapped up his soft-focus Q&A with reporters trained not to notice when he forgets which century we’re in—boom, the prosecutor tied to Epstein, Maxwell, and Diddy gets canned. What timing.

That prosecutor also has to be the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey.

This morning she responded to her abrupt firing.

The letter image:

Bonus content…

President Confused rolled into PA to talk investment but couldn’t resist veering off-script into a fever dream involving his MIT professor uncle and the Unabomber. Classic ‘wait, what?’ energy.

I took an image of this text using the YouTube shitty auto transcript:

CNN Fact-checker Daniel Dale fact-checked the above weirdest fanfic so far from President Fanfic is cool:

First, the president’s uncle died in 1985. Kaczynski was publicly revealed as the Unabomber more than a decade later, in 1996, when he was captured; before that, he had lived as a recluse in the Montana wilderness. There is no apparent reason that Donald Trump would have been asking anyone about Kaczynski in 1985 or earlier.

Second, Kaczynski attended Harvard University and the University of Michigan, not MIT. An MIT spokesperson said in a Wednesday email: “We have no enrollment record or information that Ted Kaczynski ever attended MIT.”

Harvard has long allowed some students to register for classes at nearby MIT, but media outlets and MIT itself have found no sign that Kaczynski ever did that during his time at Harvard in the late 1950s and early 1960s – much less that Kaczynski, a Harvard mathematics major, studied under Trump, the MIT professor of electrical engineering. MIT reported on its website in 1996 that Kaczynski’s high school guidance counselor said Kaczynski had been offered admission to MIT in the 1950s but had chosen Harvard instead.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the president’s tale.

What the president could have accurately said is that his uncle was an esteemed MIT professor. The MIT spokesperson said Wednesday that John Trump “remains among the longest-serving professors in our history and was a highly valued member of the MIT community throughout his tenure as a researcher, innovator, entrepreneur, teacher, and colleague.”

CNN. 07/16/2025.

At some point the mental health of our current president will shadow the mental health of the former president…

A blogger can dream…

This is an open thread

About the opinions in this article…

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About Tiff 3296 Articles
Member of the Free Press who is politically homeless and a political junkie.