You may recall it was a lifetime ago — oh wait, it was yesterday — that Dear Leader signed an Executive Order designed to get the ball rolling on his long-promised border wall. Problem is, there is no money in any existing federal budget to actually do that, so the order is toothless.
Today, Press Secretary Sean Spicer floated an Alternative Fact to reconcile that discrepancy: Hair Twittler would get Mexico to pay for the wall by taxing Mexican imports at a hefty 20% rate.
And it didn’t take long before the other shoe came a-droppin’ down on his head, like rains before the flood. Dems quickly began pushing the #TrumpTax meme, Republicans had nothing to say on the subject (and not saying anything is apparently the current GOP-speak for “Trump’s an idiot but I can’t say that out loud.”)
Respected economist Paul Krugman explains why this is such a bad, bad, BAD idea:
And here Krugman links to his own blog posting from last Christmas, in which is preciently predicted the trade war that Trumplethinskin now seems determined to start.
The upshot of all this was a very quick walkback of the tax idea by Spicer. Less than two hours later, he was saying that it was “only an idea” and not a real policy proposal. Well gee thanks, Sean. It’s lucky that the stock markets had already closed for the day when you floated that trial lead-balloon. Let’s see what the Hang Seng does when it opens in a few hours.
And what was Paul’s response to all this? Classic!
GunFail Chapter I ?
UPDATE: It seems Krugman was just getting warmed up. Here’s a follow-on tweetstorm:
With alcohol, probably ...