Hello Downriver,
Of all the things being written about the second Trump administration, the one word I haven’t heard bandied about is this: incompetence.
And yet at every turn, the president and his acolytes have proven their inability to deliver even the basic services we expect from government.
But if you think government is the problem, then maybe you’re good with that.
I’m not.
But here’s the stunning part: Trump and his minions have been equally incompetent in delivering on the threat of Project 2025.
There isn’t a single step he and his sycophantic zombies have taken that has worked.
Don’t believe me?
Then believe their actions:
Immigration
Everyone agrees a country should secure its borders.
And in that respect, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says that our southern border is currently the most secure it has ever been.
In fact, DHS says there have been “significant decreases” in daily border encounters and migrant crossings, all attributed to “unprecedented steps” and investments in workforce and capabilities.
But here’s the thing: all of these improvements in controlling our border happened BEFORE Trump started sending troops to our border states or creating military zones along our border with Mexico.
And certainly long before any new fencing was installed. (Which Mexico NEVER paid for.)
So why the need to beef up such security?
Simple: it’s simply a show of power by a man with small hands, but a big ego.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem once said that “President Trump said from the start: criminal illegals have no place in our homeland. He is keeping his promise.”
The incompetence comes in the truth that rather than performing real police work, DHS simply casts a net and takes whatever it catches — whether they’re criminals or not.
Indeed, while Noem and his other groupies have lauded the detention of tens of thousands of “illegal immigrants” by ICE agents, more than 70% have no criminal record.
And many are American citizens.
According to recent reports, there have been dozens of cases where U.S. citizens, including children, cancer patients, and members of Native American and Latino communities, were unlawfully swept up in ICE raids and held for days or weeks without legal recourse.
Some were physically assaulted or deported alongside undocumented family members, often without consent.
Yep, that’s a problem — and a scary proposition, for as a matter of law, ICE does NOT have the authority to arrest, detain, or deport U.S. citizens, since citizens can’t be charged with violations of civil immigration law.
Yet they’re doing it every day — all to meet an internal daily arrest quota of 3,000, which in turn would meet gargoyle Stephen Miller’s fever dream of getting 1 million arrests a year.
And if the occasional American citizen gets detained and deported, well… oops.
That’s gross incompetence — leading to unconstitutional imprisonment.
Trump tariff tax
Trump has consistently bragged of his business acumen, even though time and again his actions have proven his incompetence in that sphere.
You can look it up, but remember that he built some of his “empire” on the bankruptcies of his businesses — including casinos.
(They might be the only casinos in the world that lost all the “house” money.)
Yet this is the man who thinks he can run America.
Well, he is: into the ground.
All thanks to his own bumbling incompetence matched by the ineptitude of those he’s brought into his garish Oval Office.
And near the top of that list has to be his tariff tax on the American consumer.
History tells us that tariffs can be a tidy source of income for a country — and can be, if used judiciously — an effective trade tool.
But contrary to Trump’s bluster, tariffs are paid for by the buyer, not the seller.
It’s also an article of faith by many historians that egregious tariffs in the late 1920s and early 1930s exacerbated a severe recession and exploded it into a Great Depression.
Now, either Trump knows all of this and has chosen to ignore it — continuing his spiel about China or India or England or Mexico or Canada paying the tariffs to the U.S.
Or it’s quite possible he’s never understood how tariffs work.
I doubt that, though, because of three things:
First, he’s terrified of the moment when his insane tariffs are finally passed on to us in the form of higher prices.
Second, he’s also terrified of a potential court ruling that could strip his so-called “emergency powers” to impose the tariffs to begin with. (See below.)
And third, he’s afraid he’ll be found out as an incompetent who doesn’t have a clue how — let alone the ability —to negotiate trade deals without using a tariff hammer.
In short, Trump is a fraud; he’s no great negotiator. He is nothing but a bully who uses tariffs as an extortion tool.
That’s not negotiating; it’s a shakedown. And it collapses when the perpetrator is taken down.
According to analysts with investment adviser Capital Economics, businesses “have been willing to absorb the initial hit via lower margins, although we suspect that was mostly a temporary development as those firms waited for more clarity on where tariff rates would settle.”
However, “we doubt that is a sustainable outcome over the longer term.
“As the uncertainty over tariff levels eases over the next couple of weeks, giving retailers more clarity on rates over the next year or two, we would expect more firms to raise prices,” they said.
Of course, in the meantime, Trump continues to spew his complete misunderstanding of the economics of tariffs.
And he knows he’s lying because of one other fact: If his tariffs are ruled unconstitutional, the money collected will have to be refunded.
Not to foreign governments — but to American importers.
And how much are we talking here?
According to the Treasury Department, it’s $100 billion and counting — or $300 for every man, woman and child in America.
But unfortunately, any refunds would go to the IMPORTERS — not to us.
Oh, and on Friday, a U.S. appeals court ruled that most of Trump’s tariffs are illegal, rejecting his argument that the tariffs were permitted under an emergency economic powers act,.
The court disagreed, calling them “invalid as contrary to law.”
The ruling won’t take effect until Oct. 14, to give Trump and his incompetent lawyers a chance to appeal to his hand-picked (and demonstrably incompetent) Supreme Court.
You see, Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” and it requires that “Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.”
But Trump issued his tariffs by executive order, declaring there was some kind of emergency — which there wasn’t, except somewhere in his bald, make-up laden head.
Of course, Trump is now terrified of the court outcome, too: “If these tariffs ever went away, it would be a total disaster for the country.”
Because he’s already spent that $100 billion on expanding ICE operations.
Oops.
Can you spell “incompetence?”
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Of course, there’s clearly even more incompetency within the Trump administration — especially from those in charge of our health system, military and law enforcement, to name a few.
But I can deal with only so much incompetency at a time.
So, stay tuned.
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To read this full essay, as well as many others — long and short — check out Substack.com and look for me at “Farrandipity.” It’s free. Craig Farrand is a former managing editor of The News-Herald. I can be reached at craig.substack@gmail.com.
