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Notes -
Is presidential corruption still culture war?
You may or may not remember that back in January of this year President Trump, in his personal capacity, sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion in damages related to leaks of his tax returns by a contractor back in 2018-2020. I don't want to dig into the merits of the case as such, except I'll note the legal discussion I've read seems to have a consensus that the case is very weak. It is also very unusual for a sitting President to be suing the government he is in charge of. There are obvious conflicts of interest involved. So much so the judge in that case issued an order for the parties to explain how they are actually adverse to each other, how they disagree, so that the cases and controversies requirement of the constitution is satisfied.
As of today, it seems we may never find out how good the claims are or aren't, how adverse the parties are or aren't. Trump filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss his lawsuit, pursuant to the establishment of a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund". It's not even clear to me the fund is going to be administered by the United States government, as paragraph C provides:
Is this going to be the new normal? If you're President and Congress won't give you the money you want to pay your friends and allies you can get however much you want with this one weird trick!
ETA:
ABC reports that the fund will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General, but the members will all be removable at-will by the President.
We know we're living in the late republic, it's not culture war anymore. Oh, sure, the TDS crowd will get very conspicuously upset about Trump corruption again. But no one else cares.
At a time where consumer sentiment is at the lowest on record, with food and gas and general prices increasing from war/tariffs/etc other choices, I'm not sure "no one cares" is going to be true about a story of the president funneling their taxes towards his personal profit. This is the sort of behavior and outlook that has his approval rating collapsed and Dems sweeping the midterms. People already are struggling, the message of "they cut food support to pay for his friends" is gonna hit pretty hard.
"With crime increasing from rape/jaywalking/etc".
No one cares about tariffs or "corruption", but the war is a disaster.
Even if you don't think the average normie is smart enough to directly link the tariff nonsense to increasing prices, a stagnant economy, and businesses struggling more, those effects are still noticed. For example 1,700 workers at this Goodyear plant just noticed the effects of tariffs. When tariffs took down the long lasting family business sawmill in Roper, NC I'm sure the owner and his employees and customers noticed. On their own a few sufferings here and there won't be noticed, but it's not on their own. Small businesses around the country have been struggling by this unconstitutional theft of their money.
Even some of the bigger businesses have been struggling to weather the costs. They raised prices, lowered reinvestment spending, or cut profit margins (dissuading future investment), etc etc.
You have advanced TDS. For a more balanced view on the ground, I've heard some general grumbling about gas, but it's not nearly as hot a topic as it was in, say, the Bush administration. Current gas prices are still $0.50 cheaper than their peak under Biden, with large regional variation that mostly boils down to "Democrats hate the economy". I've only heard a few people complain about general prices, and every one of them was a 100% Democrat voter. Actual store prices haven't moved in a noticeable way, especially compared to Bidenflation, aside from a few spike categories like ground beef and coffee that seem to be more about industry circumstances than tariffs.
Consumer sentiment has hit a record low so I guess the average American also has advanced TDS.
The YOY inflation rate is almost 4%, the traditional target is 2%. We're at almost double price growth than normal.
Notice how you present anecdotes, I present data.
3.8% (per your source, ~1% of which is gas) is still solidly better than the 9.1% we hit a few years ago. Yes, gas prices are up and that's Bad, but the catastrophic consequences predicted by people who suddenly can comprehend second order effects in only this single situation have been greatly exaggerated.
Voters don't seem to be particularly happy with the "sure prices keep going up really fast but at least it's not as fast as the peak of Biden". They wanted low prices, this has been said over and over and over and over again in focus groups and polling and even just obvious when looking at the no 1 pro Trump sign I saw in my Republican >+20 district. I had neighbors and coworkers and other acquaintances talking about how prices were going to be normal, something that the Trump campaign was constantly promising like “A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper.”
It hasn't happened. People are even more dour than before (see consumer sentiment). They've gone through two admins of extreme inflation and aren't feeling satiated by "at least it's a little slower than peak". They want normal. His approval on inflation is now worse than Biden because they're sick of it. The American people got lied to and at least Biden had some cover of COVID and Russia. Trump's choices are entirely his own and thus they blame the inflation on him.
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