Trump 2.0, Tech Layoffs, and a Ukranian Who-Dunnit: Last Week in Liberty 11/20/22
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome back to Last Week in Liberty! Each week we break down the most important news stories from a Liberty-minded perspective. Lots to get through this week (even though I say that every week), so lets jump in:
The Return of Trump
Well, Donald Trump is back. What more can be said? Trump had stated in the lead-up to his November 15 event at Mar-A-Lago that he would have a very special announcement coming. Everyone assumed he would announce his candidacy for president (again), and thats exactly what he did. While this was expected - at least ever since the Mar-A-Lago FBI raid - the timing of the announcement is interesting from a strategic perspective:
First, this is very early for Trump to be announcing his candidacy. The 2024 elections are just under two years away at this point, which is a long time, especially in politics. If anyone decides to challenge him, it will probably be another 6-7 months at least before they step into the ring. Trump is probably counting on that, and is using his early announcement to assert his claim over the 2024 Republican nominee before anyone else can have the chance to. Will this gamble work? Tough to tell this far out. In order to secure the Republican nomination, Trump will have to fend off any other potential suitors, most especially Ron DeSantis in Florida (if he decides to run). Jumping in early might be a good way of doing that, but he also runs the risk of exposing voters to Trump fatigue as well. People are going to be hearing about Trump constantly for the next two years at least, which is a lot of Trump for anyone without a MAGA hat to handle.
Additionally, the fact that Trump announced his candidacy so close after the midterms indicates that he was probably expecting big wins for the GOP, and especially for his personally-backed candidates. That didn’t happen. The Midterms were a completely and total disappointment for the Republicans, which takes some of the wind out of Trump announcement. Trump announcing his candidacy under those conditions is less than ideal.
Regardless, announcing at this point in time is certainly a bold move. The next year or so will tell us whether or not it works out for him in the end.
The Mar-A-Lago Files Flop
In August of 2022, Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home was raided by the FBI. The purpose of the raid was to look for particular documents and such that Trump was storing, under the pretense that these documents contained sensitive information. While disputes over what documents and paperwork presidents are allowed to keep for themselves always occur at the end of an administration, this was the first time it had ever resulted in a former president had ever been raided by the FBI. For several weeks after the raid, the big question was whether or not Trump would be prosecuted by the Department of Justice over any impropriety related to those documents. The political implications for the country if that were to actually happen are obvious.
However, the story slowly disappeared from the headlines as the midterm elections began to take center stage in the weeks leading up to election day. Several days after the election, the Washington Post released a report essentially admitting that Trump had nothing of importance in the documents he was storing at Mar-A-Lago:
“That review has not found any apparent business advantage to the types of classified information in Trump’s possession, these people said. FBI interviews with witnesses so far, they said, also do not point to any nefarious effort by Trump to leverage, sell or use the government secrets. Instead, the former president seemed motivated by a more basic desire not to give up what he believed was his property, these people said.”
Now, I’m sure the fact that this information comes out just days after an important midterm election is just one of those weird, wacky, wild coincidences. Considering that the raid happened over three months ago, there’s a good chance they have been patiently sitting on this information for at least a few weeks. Now that it won’t have any affect on the midterms, its safe to release it. Trump wasn’t right about a lot, but he was dead-on when he calls the media the “enemy of the people”.
Given that the documents Trump was in posession of contained nothing of real importance, I highly doubt that any prosecution is coming. Doing so would have set the country on fire politically, and would only have been possible if Trump had been guilty of serious, unacceptable wrong-doing. The fact that these documents are essentially just Trump collecting signatures of world leaders effectively kills any shot at making this mole-hill into a mountain.
Side Note: It is fascinating how through all of the scandals the media has tried to pin on Trump, each one of them has failed to have any lasting impact. RussiaGate was a flop, the Ukraine impeachment is all but forgotten, nobody thought January 6th was good but people aren’t going to vote based on that single day, and now the Mar-A-Lago documents story has come up as a nothing-burger. It is an impressively bad track record
(psst…if you have gotten this far, considering subscribing with your email below if you haven’t already. It doesn’t do much for you, but it helps me out a ton and it would greatly increase my total utility. Thanks!)
Russia Can’t Hold On in Kherson
After previously annexing the territory in September after holding civilian referendums, Russia has now apparently withdrawn all forces from the Kherson region west of the Dnieper River. This places Russian forces in an awkward position, as Putin had explicitly stated that the territory was now a part of the Russian Federation. They now either have to admit that Ukraine has invaded and occupied Russian territory, or that it was never actually Russian to begin with.
This is about as bad PR as the Russians could ever ask for, as this withdraw makes Russia look anemic and weak. Putin held referendums in these territories precisely because he wanted to try and make Russia seem like protectors and defenders by granting them citizenship. Even though he evacuated the population, the people being moved from their homes probably can’t help but feeling that they might have chosen the wrong side.
Examining the bigger picture, this is really just the latest in a long strand of failures from the Russian side of the war. They failed to put a quick end to the conflict in the spring, they failed to make serious territorial gains in the summer, and they have failed to rebuff the Ukrainian offensive in the fall. Its not all bad for the Ruskies, and it isn’t all victories and triumphs for the Ukrainians, but even the staunchest RT watcher can’t spin this war into anything positive at all.
All eyes now turn to the winter. Rumors are that Russia will launch an offensive during the winter, which may see them utilize more of their recently-mobilized reserves. It seems that if they are going to win this war, this winter will be their best chance to do so. Ukraine has the backing and funding of NATO, and most importantly, the United States. Russia can count on some support from China, but they have far fewer friends. Winter offensives, especially in this part of the world, are not easy endeavors at all, but because they didn’t win this war earlier in the year, this is probably their best chance to end this. If they don’t, they will find themselves mired in an expensive and bloody forever-war on their door step. At that point, Putin will get probably desperate. As for what happens then is anyone’s guess.
Whose Missile?
On November 15, the world received the news that a missile had struck the Polish village of Przewodów, killing two farmers living there. Immediately, the most important question in the world was: who fired that missile? Now, it was almost certainly an accident no matter whose it was, but regardless, it was still technically an attack on the country of Poland. If it was the Russians, then Poland could conceivable invoke Article V of NATO, which states that an attack on a NATO country is perceived as an attack on all of them. If Poland then decided to go to war, then NATO would be dragged along with them, and then we get the World War III and everyone dies in a nuclear apocalypse.
Thankfully, the evidence on the ground suggests that the missile was not in fact of Russian origin, but actually came from Ukraine. The world breathes a sigh of relief, but Ukrainian president Zelensky has continued to claim not only that the missile was not Ukrainian, but that it came from Russia and that they fired it at Poland intentionally. Shortly after the news broke, Zelensky also implied that NATO should use this as a justification for attacking Russia as well. The fact that Zelensky is openly calling for the initiation of World War III and continued denial of any explanation that doesn’t make Russia look bad makes should raise suspicions regarding his motives. He blatantly looks like someone promoting an agenda (his agenda, specifically), and not actually trying to get to the bottom of what happened. I understand wanting to drum up sympathy for your country’s cause during wartime, but cavalierly looking to drag the world’s major powers into an unimaginably destructive war is horribly irresponsible.
This missile-fiasco also demonstrates just how dangerous Western involvement in the Ukraine war really is. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that a nuclear holocaust was averted, but a realistic path towards that outcome was. What other “incidents” might occur before this war is over? The U.S. has personnel on the ground in Ukraine. If a drill sergeant gets hit with a stray bullet or trips and falls on a Russian bayonet, will the U.S. be content to just sweep that under the rug? What about if another missile accidentally hits something more important than a middle-of-nowhere Polish village? NATO and Russia cannot ever be allowed to go to war, and this conflict is far too close to that outcome for comfort. The West is playing with fire here. If it goes wrong, however, we all get burnt.
Amazon Brings Out the Axes
According to reports from earlier this week, Amazon is preparing a large round of layoffs that could result in as many as 10,000 employees losing their jobs. Layoffs in the tech sector have been happening in various companies for the past several months, but what is most surprising about these in particular is the timing. Black Friday and Christmas are right around the corner. Amazon, being primarily an online retailer, is usually busier now than at any other point in the year. Traditionally, Amazon hires additional staff around this time to make sure they have enough labor to handle the holiday demand. Instead, this year they are handing our pink slips for their White Elephant gifts.
This is just further evidence of the downward trend of the economy and the impoverishment of the American consumer. The Holidays is generally when people are out spending their money and buying up goods and services. Even whenever consumers can’t really afford to do so, they will generally go out and buy things at Black Friday and Christmas gifts anyway. The fact that Amazon is entertaining layoffs means that they aren’t expecting consumers to spend. Not because they don’t want to, but because they just don’t have the money. Savings rates are near all-time lows, and consumers have already taken on more and more debt all year to make ends meet.
The culprit? Inflation. Ordinary people have struggled to put food on the table and gas in their car because of the last 18 months of rising prices. The result is that at the end of the year, they have less money than ever to go out and spend on non-necessities. Amazon is seeing this in both economic trends and their internal data, and are looking to cut costs themselves as revenues will fail to meet holiday expectations from previous years. The vast majority of economic news over the past several months has been negative, and there will probably be a whole lot more bad before we start hearing any good.
DHS “Disinformation Board” Lives on in Secret
You may remember from this past April an announcements from the Department of Homeland Security concerning the creation of a “Disinformation Governence Board”. They claimed that the board would have no actual power to affect policy, but would only make recommendations to companies and institutions about how they moderate the content on their platforms. After massive backlash, however, the DHS announced that their plans for the board were suspended. However, it appears that reports of the death of the Disinformation Board were greatly exaggerated.
According to leaked internal documents, much of the role that the DGB would play will instead be picked up by the DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or “CISA” (a lot of acronyms, I know). CISA predates the DGB, but it was planned for the DGB to “act as the DGB’s operational wing, enforcing its directives and cracking down on the spread of particular stories and narratives via direct media and social media interventions.”
Even though the CISA’s face might be gone, it will still carry on the tasks planned for the DGB: “The solution, proposed by director of CISA’s Election Security Initiative Geoff Hale, was to outsource the work of battling disinformation to cutouts, using NGOs and nonprofits as a ‘clearing house’ for ‘counter-narratives,’ in order to ‘avoid the appearance of government propaganda.’”
Additionally, CISA believes that they “should proactively provide informational resources – and assist partners in providing informational resources – to address anticipated threats”.
I don’t know about you, but I feel much better knowing that we have our dedicated public servants working to make sure that we have access to only the best and most truthful information out there. When possible, I always trying to outsource as much of my thinking as possible to unelected and unaccountable government bureaucrats.
Interesting Links from this Week:
An unseen interview from George Bush and Dick Cheney has just been unclassified this week.
Tho Bishop breaks down lessons from the midterms.
The nonsense talking point about “voter supression”.
An illustration of the awful state of the economics profession.
Sam’s Club is cutting the cost of their hot dog combo!!!
The new emergency satillite phone feature in iPhone 14 that you hopefully never have to use.
Controversey over how Qatar treats migrant workers who helped make the World Cup a possibility.
Quote of the Week:
“This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the “hidden” confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this incidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ arguments toward the gold standard.” - Alan Greenspan
That’s all for this week folks. Thanksgiving is this week (if you live in a country that celebrates it), so make sure to take some time to just be thankful for the blessings of life. If I awaken from my stuffing-induced food coma in time, I’ll see you all next week.
(Also, why is stuffing only ever eaten at Thanksgiving? Stuffing is delicious, and should be eaten year-round. Doesn’t make sense to me.)
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