Thanks, and … Exactly!

Yep. That tax bill is set to be a disaster for the country. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, and the middle class will get smaller as more and more of them slide into the ranks of the poor. The only thing you can say in mitigation for people like Cohn on that one is many actually believe it will work. But, of course, I don’t know whether he’s one of those, or a Paul Ryan-type, who knows it won’t and will use is as an excuse in the future to reduce entitlements, destroying the lives of even more people.

I can see decent people working for Trump. People trying to keep the lid on, to keep the damage to a minimum. But Cohn doesn’t really seem to fit the description. He was a key figure in crafting the Trump Tax Bill. No one that worked to craft that bill can reasonably be described as trying to keep the Trump administration from causing too much damage. I don’t see Cohn’s resignation as a demonstration that he is a stand up guy. Disagreeing with Trump is a very low bar.

Granted, there are so many things that Trump has done that could end up being the most damaging, but that tax bill is definitely one of them. If it is fully implemented and or stays in force for any significant length of time, it could easily end up being the most damaging thing Trump ever does as POTUS.

I did not know about these stories, nor did I know he had a degree in economics. If indeed he has a degree in economics, he obviously must not have been the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Here in SA there are quite a few minibus taxi-drivers rumored to have bought their drivers license. If one looks at their driving, that does not really appear to be far-fetched, to put it mildly. The parallel with Mr Trump’s economics is difficult to suppress, somehow undeniable indeed.

I agree the EU planned that, and that it was very clever of them to pick those things. Paul Ryan is a free trade person, and so he won’t be keen anyway. (I haven’t checked McConnell’s views.)

Cohn was reported to have written his resignation latter after Charlottesville, but decided to stick with Trump. I do wonder if he was getting a lot of pressure to remain as a sane voice. This time Trump demanded Cohn go out and speak in support of the tariffs, which he couldn’t do. It is normal to have to stick with the leader once they’ve made their decision, but I sure as hell couldn’t do it if I disagreed. At least with Charlottesville he was allowed to say he disagreed with the boss, and maybe that was the difference. I’m not necessarily sticking up for him because I don’t think anyone who’s decent could work for Trump.

It also speaks to Trump’s ignorance when he says things like “Trade wars are easy to win” as you pointed out. I guess he thinks wars of any kind are a zero sum game; one side (America) wins everything and loses nothing because the other side (rest of the world) loses everything. It’s Trump’s simplistic (not to mention deranged) views of how the world works that makes him such a dangerous tool…or dangerous fool? I can’t decide, both words work so well.

Lastly, I find it pathetic that it took tariffs to finally be the proverbial straw that broke Cohn’s back. Trump saying white supremacists calling for the burning of Jews “had some good people”…nah, I’ll stick with him. POTUS using a bull horn to denigrate minorities: immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, African Americans, transgender people…nah, I’ll stick with him. His abusive treatment of women, his adulterous affairs with porn stars, meh, that’s ok. But when the tax scam passed, that meant mission accomplished for him. He was probably just waiting for the next inane Trump move to hang his hat on and resign. It happened to be tariffs. At least we know what motivates the man…the same god the motivates the entire administration: money. Either way, he’s forever tainted having worked for such a corrupt and despicable human being; I hope his desire for getting even more unimaginably wealthy was worth it.

Trump got an economics degree. His constant inability to do the most basic economic analysis makes me believe the stories that he was a weak student and his father paid for his degree via very large donations.

Yes, that is an error! Thanks for spotting it. I’ll fix it asap.