If you've followed my daily posts and tweets, you know that I've particularly been scornful of the Trumpkin Fox & Friends hosts and of course Trump's prime-time apologist, Sean Hannity. There is nothing "conservative" about a President who has already departed from GOP conservative orthodoxy in terms of downsizing the federal government, spending cuts, entitlement reform, trade and immigration. (Yes, I'm very familiar that Harding and Coolidge initiated the unconscionable immigration restrictions in the aftermath of WWI.)
I have painfully bitten my tongue as Hannity engages in his hero worship of the populist, unprincipled Trump; he has pretended to be a "Reagan conservative", but Reagan was no populist. How soon does he forget/forgive Trump's "Chuck and Nancy" budget deal which undercut the GOP leadership's attempt to win budget concessions? Not to mention he's not touching entitlements which are 70% of the federal budget. Or that Trump has already added $1T to the national debt?
Trump has openly threatened American companies like Harley Davidson whose planned international expansion did not dovetail for his wishes for manufacturing expansion. Trump constantly vacillates in political positioning, which he spins as flexibility and unpredictability, which he perceives as success factors in negotiating. He makes irrational threats like vetoing a budget deal to get more funding for his Southern wall (yeah, the same one he promised his minions Mexico would pay for).
This is a guy who routinely acts outside of expected norms, insulting allies, even threatening to assassinate foreign leaders (Assad). He has routinely intervened bashed judges and certain suspects who have not even had their day in court. He is impulsive and reckless; his totally unprovoked tariffs/trade wars have led to economy-crippling uncertainty. He has constantly threatened the Mueller probe despite its strong bipartisan support, a political death wish.
Trump tries to take credit for the economy but he's actually had very little to do with it. If he actually believes that spin that this is the greatest economy in American history, he is either (1) woefully uninformed in US economic history or (2) seriously mentally ill.
I didn't intend to go on another Trump rant, but it was Fox's late-night xenophobe newbie host, Laura Ingraham, who tested my patience. Among other things, she's trying to claim that Trump's trade wars are brilliant winning tactics against China, Canada, and Mexico. This is sheer idiocy maybe only exceeded by Trump's neo-Bush-like "I have had to go outside free trade to restore free trade."
But she also went on a rant against H1B's, a topic with which I'm specifically familiar; one of my best friends on the West Coast is a naturalized US citizen from India. When we met, he was working towards his green card. And he endured some hardships along the way, including reneged bonuses, pay cuts, etc. But Laura Ingraham's caricature of Disney's outsourcing deal is little more than labor protectionism as usually, typically seen from leftists and their union allies. The fact is that we have a shortage of IT professionals in the high tech industry, and immigrants are disproportionately entrepreneurial and among the developers of productivity-increasing technology, directly related to worker compensation.
