So, not sure if this is a distraction from something else, or just plain petty childishness?
The U.S. Supreme Court has angered
President Trump plenty of times. But it’s rare for the Court to deliver as big a blow as it did last week, when it
ruled in a 6-3 decision that Trump can’t ignore the constitution and impose his sweeping
tariffs under an emergency law bypassing all other layers of government like a King.
And it’s even more unusual for the justices to come face-to-face with the president just days after delivering a huge rebuke to his agenda.
(YouTube & "If you strike me down...")
So what should we expect from Trump during Tuesday’s State of the Union Address? Will he just read some carefully worded remarks that express his disappointment with the decision and lay out his new plan for tariffs? Or should the justices who choose to attend the speech brace themselves for schoolyard taunts from the president?
Judging from Monday morning’s
Truth Social diatribe, you should put your money on the latter approach. Trump began referring to the U.S. Supreme Court as the “supreme court,” explaining that he “will be using lower case letters for a while based on a complete lack of respect!” (This clarification was necessary, as Trump notoriously
follows his heart on capitalization.)
Then he unintentionally paraphrased
Obi-Wan Kenobi, claiming that by striking down his tariffs, the justices have made him more powerful than they can possibly imagine.
The decisive win for the American constitution will be perceived by Trump as a decisive loss for himself and thus a big blow to his ego.
He’s going to lash out over this, against someone. He’ll want to assert dominance. A lot of it will be domestic bluster, but some of it could be foreign pressure….& there are two big, obvious targets for that.
First, however, let’s talk about the bigger and more obvious one: Iran. The president has been talking tough about Iran for months and building up military forces in the region for weeks. This week, for example, there was a major transfer of air assets from the United States to the Middle East, and a second U.S. Navy battlegroup is on the way.
None of this is happening because of the Supreme Court ruling. Iran’s brutal crackdown on its own restive population has clearly been on Trump’s radar, and there is a desire among some elements of his administration to finish off the Iranian nuclear program, or even the regime itself. So this isn’t exactly a tail-wagging-the-dog scenario, and we shouldn’t pretend it is.
But we also shouldn’t ignore that Trump is going to want some kind of win, and he’s got a pretty direct way to seek one out. Hell, he might even settle for a negotiated solution he could boast about having brokered. And Iran’s leaders have probably reached the same conclusion as I did above: they might be inclined to cut a deal now that they would’ve scoffed at even a few days ago.
Then, weirdly, there’s Canada which has found itself in Trump’s crosshairs a few times in recent weeks. Trump didn’t take kindly to Mark Carney’s otherwise well-received speech at the World Economic Forum and even called out the prime minister by name in Davos. He wasn’t happy about our trade deal with China either, although
he seemed all over the place on that one, eventually settling on displeased. He’s threatened to block the opening of a new bridge between Ontario and Michigan, and recent reports suggest he wants to abandon CUSMA and pursue individual trade deals with Canada and Mexico. Deals made on his terms, of course.
It could be worse: we could have aircraft carriers sailing our way instead. But the fact of the matter is, Trump has long harboured some level of interest in Canada, and not the good kind. We seem to get under his skin. Now he’s politically wounded, and even his own party is just maybe starting to tire of his signature economic policy — one the Supreme Court just struck down.
Combine that with all his other problems, and it’s clear why Trump will want to put some points on the board. Promising Americans to reveal what the U.S. government knows about alien life, as he did last week (yes, that was an odd sentence to type) is probably not going to cut it.
Iran might. But we could well find ourselves on the menu — so let’s hope those aliens Trump has been talking about need plenty of Canadian lumber and car parts and potash and uranium and crude and so on and so forth.
Recent weeks have revealed cracks in the president’s political foundation. He's going to want some kind of win.
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(At least nobody’s mentioned Epstein above)
![il_fullxfull.6705349382_liek[1].jpg](https://forums.canadiancontent.net/data/attachments/31/31663-3bc4f6f192d7a6fc54d888b33d2bbfe4.jpg "il_fullxfull.6705349382_liek[1].jpg")
In his social media post, Trump said Omar and Tlaib, "should actually get on a boat with Trump Deranged Robert De Niro, another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely Low IQ, who has absolutely no idea what he is doing or saying — some of which is seriously CRIMINAL!" etc…