Coffee Talk with Tiff

November 7, 2025 12:00 pm EST Tiff Coffee Talk with Tiff 0
Coffee. Photo by Jonathan Thursfield.

It’s Friday.

President Shitshow’s public schedule for…

11/07/2025:

Time’s a little tight today — I have a funeral to attend this morning — so we’re going a bit lighter and more “grab-what-we-can” with the news. Just a quick rundown and then we all keep moving.

President Social Media Troll mocked Pelosi’s retirement and then told Republicans to “say no” to the nuclear option while also pushing them to kill the filibuster. Sure. Makes sense.

So, we’re just going to walk through this one quickly.

Naturally, he celebrated the news of Rep. Pelosi’s retirement with the subtlety of a foghorn in a library. And, in true form, he accused her of the very things he himself has been investigated for — because projection is still his favorite sport.

This comes after yesterday’s Oval Office appearance, which was interrupted due to a medical emergency (not him). When he returned and took questions, he was asked about Pelosi’s retirement and used the moment to call her “evil.”

While staff and reporters were focused on the medical emergency in the room, this photo was taken. The central figure is standing off to the side, looking entirely removed from what’s happening just feet away. The contrast is… noticeable.

During that same Q&A yesterday, he pushed Republicans to end the filibuster, urging them to use the nuclear option to get his agenda through.

Then this morning, he posted the opposite — telling Republicans to say no to the nuclear option — while still telling them to “terminate the filibuster.” For anyone trying to follow the logic, those are the same thing. He wants the rule gone; he just can’t keep the terminology straight.

And while he was at it, he also confused foreign investment with tariffs. One is money coming into the economy. The other is a tax that Americans pay on imported goods. These are not interchangeable concepts. They move in opposite directions. But here we are.

Well, I think it’s time for them to end the filibuster and just put everybody back to work, vote in voter I.D., vote in no mail in voting, except for military, far away military and people that are very sick. No — I’d like to see one day voting. I’d like to see not 65 days of voting from all over the place.

No, I’d like to clean up the elections. The border, we’ve done a great job. We have a great strong border now, but I’d like to see new rules on immigration that could be fair and good. You know, but rules that you’ll never — the rules that they’re never going to get. There’s so many things we could put in, including tax cuts that we could get and we could do it all ourselves. But to do that, you have to end the filibuster. The filibuster is — and they’ll do it too. They’ll immediately — you know, they’re going — what they’re going to do is — what the Democrats will do is they’re going to make Puerto Rico a state. They’re going to make DC a state. They’re going to pack the court.

They’re going to end up with more electoral votes. They’re going to end up with four Senators because of the two states.

And they’re going to do this 100 percent. They would have done it except Manchin and Sinema got in their way, they would have done it. So, if they’re going to do it, I would do it, I would do it before them.

Like Israel, it’s a little like Israel. Israel attacked first; that attack was very, very powerful. I was very much in charge of that. When Israel attacked Iran first — that was a great day for Israel because that attack did more damage than the rest of them put together.

Roll Call.com. 11/06/2025.

Then this morning came the follow-up on Truth Social, where the terminology and the logic did not exactly match:

Axios (Nov. 5, 2025), summary:
Trump renewed his push to eliminate the Senate filibuster, arguing that the 60-vote requirement is preventing Republicans from passing his agenda. Ending the filibuster would allow legislation to pass with a simple majority — the “nuclear option.” Some Republicans are hesitant because removing it now would also remove their leverage in the future, if they become the minority again. The debate reflects a larger fight over whether the Senate should continue operating as a slower, consensus-driven chamber or shift toward faster, majority-rule lawmaking.

He treated foreign investment and tariffs like they’re the same thing. They’re not.
Foreign investment is money coming into the U.S. economy — a business choosing to build, hire, or produce here.
Tariffs are a tax we impose on imported goods, which consumers and companies here end up paying.

One increases U.S. economic activity.
The other raises costs.
They move in opposite directions.

He speaks as if they’re interchangeable tools, which makes it impossible to have a serious policy discussion. It’s not ideology — it’s basic definitions.

That’s what we’re talking about. I’m going to hope that we win. I can’t imagine that anybody would do that kind of devastation to our country. You know, we’d have to pay back trillions of dollars. We’ve taken in trillions. We haven’t taken in billions; we’ve taken in trillions of dollars. We’ve made trade deals based on that that give us, as an example, European Union $950 billion, Japan $650 billion, South Korea, $350 billion.

Without this, we’re not talking about that kind of money and they’re OK, they’re satisfied. They love us, they just left, they all love us. So, it’s not like we’re such bad people, but they were doing it to us until I came along. Now they don’t do it to us.

Roll Call.com. 11/06/2025.

What’s actually happening:
He is referring to tariffs as if they were payments made to the United States by foreign governments. They’re not. Tariffs are taxes charged on imported goods. Those taxes are paid by U.S. importers and are then passed along to consumers through higher prices. So when he says the U.S. “took in trillions,” what that means is that Americans paid higher taxes on goods they purchased.

And there’s also a basic category difference being blurred here:
He talks about foreign investment and tariff revenue as if they are the same thing or dependent on one another. They are not.
Foreign investment is when companies choose to build, hire, or produce inside the United States. That depends on labor conditions, stability, and economic outlook.
Tariffs are a tax paid on imported goods.
Ending the IEEPA-based tariffs would not cause foreign investment to disappear. These are entirely different flows of money, driven by different conditions.

If the Supreme Court rules that using IEEPA to impose blanket tariffs was unlawful:
The only refunds would be the tariffs U.S. companies already paid on affected imports. These were not payments made by other countries. They were domestic tax burdens that businesses here absorbed and, in many cases, passed through to consumers.

Tariffs on steel and certain critical minerals were upheld by the U.S. Court of International Trade, which means those remain in place regardless of the outcome.

About the “$4 trillion” number:
During oral arguments, the government noted that long-range revenue projections estimate tariff collections could total around $4 trillion over ten years if current tariffs remain in place exactly as they are, with no policy changes, no supply chain shifts, and no reactions from trading partners. That number is not money currently collected, and it is not money paid by foreign governments. It is a projection, not a balance sheet.

Bonus Clip…

“I don’t want to talk about affordability”.

they talk about the cost of Thanksgiving and the cost of living through Thanksgiving and enjoying Thanksgiving.

For Joe Biden, it was 25 percent more than it is for me at a later time. Our energy costs are way down. Our groceries are way down. Everything is way down, and the press doesn’t report it. The press reports whatever the con people say. You know, I call the Democrats con men and women. They make up numbers.

But when you look at 25 percent reduction in costs for Thanksgiving between Biden and me, meaning this administration, that’s a tremendous number. That’s a tremendous — it’s the biggest reduction in cost in the history of that chart or whatever it is, they do, that — they do a synopsis of everything. They — they cover every element of Thanksgiving meals, 25 percent down.

So I don’t want to hear about the affordability because right now we’re much less. If you look at energy, we’re getting close to $2 a gallon gasoline. With Biden, it was $4.50, $5. Another thing, inflation. We had the worst inflation in the history of our country. Now we have virtually no inflation at all.

It’s down at a very low number and a very normal number. So the affordability is much better with the Republicans. The only problem is the Republicans don’t talk about it and Republicans should start talking about it and use their heads, because we have great numbers. We have great — and they’re going to only get better when all these jobs open up, all these factories open up that are being built all over our country. I mean, we are building auto plants, we’re building AI plants, we’re leading in AI over China and everybody else. When all of these plants start opening, we’re going to have a revolution, a positive revolution, economic revolution like never before. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you. Thank you.

Roll Call.com. 11/06/2025.

On the Thanksgiving cost claim:
The price comparison he’s referencing comes from Walmart’s seasonal “Thanksgiving basket” promotion. Walmart has offered these fixed-price bundles for years as a marketing push to draw shoppers into stores for the holiday. Last year, the basket included 29 items. This year, it includes 20 — and primarily store-brand versions. So the lower “Thanksgiving cost” he’s pointing to is not a real decrease in grocery prices. It’s the result of fewer items and product substitutions in a promotional bundle, not the actual cost families are paying for groceries week to week.

On the “I don’t want to hear about affordability” line:
Inflation has slowed, but prices remain higher than before 2020, and household budgets are still strained. Gasoline prices move based on global oil supply and refining capacity, not presidential preference. Core inflation remains above pre-pandemic levels, and wages have not fully caught up to cumulative price increases. So when he dismisses affordability concerns, he’s dismissing the real conditions most households are living in.

That’s it for this morning. I’ll be offline for a bit and back later today.

This is an open thread

PS.

The funeral is for my friend who’s father passed away a couple of weeks ago. We are all sorry for her loss.

About the opinions in this article…

Any opinions expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this website or of the other authors/contributors who write for it.

About Tiff 3365 Articles
Member of the Free Press who is politically homeless and a political junkie.