Catherine Rampell: Donald Trump Got Rolled By Canada & Mexico

"Jesse discusses several moments from yesterday's news cycle that prove Catherine Rampell's assertion on CNN that "Trump is trying to repackage the status quo as a victory. That's what the leaders of these foreign countries are learning. You don't actually have to give Trump anything. You have to let him announce victory on TV."

Source:Jesse Dollemore talking about how Scott Jennigs also got "rolled" by Catherine Rampell.

From Jesse Dollemore

Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell on CNN last night debating Donald Trump propagandist Scott Jennings: 

“I mean, I don’t know what Trump wanted in this situation,” she began. “Again, he didn’t actually get anything. But if he were to put these tariffs in place, they would be very painful- 

For American consumers. Okay, Scott, I mean this is, this is public information!” continued Rampell. 

If you don’t know that these countries have-, are committing to do exactly what they have already been doing, either you haven’t done your homework, or you think the American people are idiots because again, they’re doing exactly what they were already were doing,” said Rampell.

The pair continued to snipe at each other until anchor Phil Mattingly finally stepped in and broke it up... 

From Mediate

CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins last night on President Trump's trade wars with Mexico and Canada: 

"President Trump is declaring victory for now, in his trade standoffs with Mexico and Canada, with the President pausing, for at least the next month, on actions that could have dramatically increased prices for Americans on everything, from cars to avocados.

But Trump, the same person who, of course, on the cover of “The Art of the Deal,” said this today about his goal, ultimately with Canada. 

That was after his first phone call with Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, today, but before his second one. I was there in the East Room, shortly after that second call had ended.

Trump here, overall, seems to have won an agreement, where Canada is really going to do what it was already going to do. The Prime Minister saying this $1.3 billion border plan that he announced, back in December, is going to go into place.

And as for Mexico, this is how President Trump explained that result.

According to Mexico’s Defense Ministry, there are already 15,000 troops, nearly, they're on the border. It’s a deployment that started in 2019... 

From Mediate

As my colleague Ederik Schneider wrote about this yesterday: 

"Sorry, but I don't give credit to people for: 

Not jumping off the bridge. 

Not breaking into my house. 

Not hitting my car when they're parking. 

I don't give cabbies a bigger tip from dropping me off at the right location. 

When you almost create a trade war and you are just pausing that trade war, you don't deserve credit for almost blowing up your house, but putting pause on that. Perhaps you really want to look at the consequences of that. Will the insurance company be fooled. That sort of thing.

The CTV News piece is correct:America gets  0.2% of its fentanyl from Canada. So where is the victory here? How is Canada putting more of their own troops on their border with us, a victory for America? If anything, Canada with its unpopular and outgoing Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, caved. And Donald Trump takes a victory lap for not blowing up his own house." 

From The New Democrat

As Ederik mentioned yesterday and what Jesse Dollemore talked about today, is that Donald Trump creates all these man-made disasters (generally unintentionally, I believe, because he doesn't know what he's doing) and gets leaders of other countries to make some announcement announcing that they're doing what they already agreed to do years ago, or at least weeks ago.

Countries like Canada and Mexico, Britain, the European Union, already have a pretty good dossier  of President Trump. They know how easy it is to play him, to manipulate, to make him feel good. And they do that because if they make him feel good, he'l probably leave their countries alone. 

In the 1950s and 60s there was a term for someone like Donald Trump: he's what you would call back then a "damn fool". Another term from that era would be patsy. "Damn fool" would probably be a good term for most of Donald Trump's blue-collar supporters who see them as their lord and savior, who will take America back to it's "glory days' and they'll be in-charged again. But that's a different discussion. 

My point here is President Trump when he announced his tariffs on Canada and Mexico over the weekend, got burned by that. The Stock Market took a tumble and what mostly likely happened is that his oligarch backers got on him about that and told him that he needs to retreat (or something to that affect) and end, or at least pause these tariffs. 

So what the President did on Monday was try to save his face by announcing that he he reached new border agreements with Mexico and Canada, that were already in place. And tried to take a victory lap on that. But as much as President Trump might hate this, we still have free speech and a free press in America. And Catherine Rampell and a lot of others, including The New Democrat, called him out on that. 

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