Learn whether you qualify as a MAGA:
Donald Trump’s description: “It was a loving crowd, too, by the way. There was a lot of love… I’ve heard that from everybody. Many, many have told me that it was a loving crowd.”
If you believe him, you qualify as a MAGA.
Trump called those whom he pardoned “people who love our country.”
If you believe him, you qualify as a MAGA.
Trump said the rioters had been treated “unbelievably poorly.”
If you believe him, you qualify as a MAGA.
Trump referred to the defendants who were pardoned as “hostages,” claiming they had been unfairly imprisoned.
If you believe him, you qualify as a MAGA.
Trump said “If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.
If you believe him, you qualify as a MAGA.
Trump and his campaign supporters have been routinely defeated in court.
“Judges have denied or dismissed dozens of cases backed by Trump and his allies, who have pushed unsupported charges of widespread fraud in battleground states,” said a Jan. 7 Fox News report.
If, despite 62 out of 63 Democrat and Republican judges tossing Trump’s claims out of court, you still believe the election was rigged, then you qualify as a MAGA.
If you think there is nothing wrong with a President spouting the unsupported, paranoid idiocy that 82% of Americans believe the 2020 election was rigged, then indeed you qualify as a MAGA.
Trump’s Venezuela invasion has exposed one of his biggest lies
by Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic
There was a time, not long ago, when people would claim with a straight face that Donald Trump was a populist who prioritized the interests of working-class Americans and avoided stupid foreign wars.
“Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars,” then-Sen. J.D. Vance crowed in 2023. As Trump assembled his second-term national security team in 2024, Republican Sen. Rand Paul, of Kentucky, claimed to be “amazed by the Trump Cabinet” and the president’s rejection of “warmongers.”
A mere two months ago, one of those Cabinet officials, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, told a conference in Bahrain that Trump had ended the “counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation building” that has defined U.S. foreign policy for decades.
If you believe that “not starting wars” is a good thing, but starting a war with Venezuela also is a good thing, then you come in at the top of your class in the MAGA world.
But there is even more for MAGAs to love.
Despite Trump’s boasts that he doesn’t take a salary for being President, and that the Presidency is costing him money:
The Trump family has raked in an astonishing $3.4 billion over his two presidencies
Thanks to Trump’s two presidencies, the family has made $2.37 billion from cryptocurrency; $339.6 million from financial ventures; $270.8 million from hospitality; $116 million from media; and $277.7 million across other sources, including his private jet, legal fees and merchandise.
And none of this includes the $2 Billion (!) Jared Kushner’s private equity firm received from the sovereign wealth fund controlled by Saudi Prince Mohammed.
Trump’s biggest lie about the economy: ‘I inherited a mess’ By Ned Barnett, Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025
President Donald Trump’s contentious speech on the economy Dec. 17 contained his usual exaggerations and falsehoods, but his most prominent lie was one that too many have come to accept as truth.
Trump opened his remarks with it. Speaking of the nation’s economy, he said: “Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess.”
No, he didn’t. Trump inherited a strong and improving economy, and he has made a mess of it.
Trump campaigned as if the economy were in a free fall that only he could reverse.
In a speech in August 2024, he said, “Vote Trump and your incomes will soar, your savings will grow, young people will be able to afford a home, and we will bring back the American dream bigger, better and stronger than ever before.”
That’s not what happened. Instead, Trump imposed sweeping, disruptive and inflation-fueling tariffs.
He has taken a draconian approach to immigration that is depriving businesses of workers.
His cuts in university research grants are slowing scientific progress and hurting regional economies.
“If it weren’t for the tariffs, you would be seeing inflation settling lower,” said Gerald Cohen, chief economist with the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“The economy Trump inherited looked pretty strong going into the beginning of the year.”
And the crackdown on immigration, he said, “is definitely having an effect. One reason the unemployment rate isn’t higher is that the labor force is shrinking.”
Once you see through Trump’s fog of false claims and his incessant blaming of Biden, it’s clear that the economy would be quite strong if he had done nothing.
There would be no new tariffs. No Elon Musk eviscerating the federal workforce. No cutoff of research grants. No sharp reduction in legal immigration and no roundups of undocumented immigrants who have no criminal record. No stopping renewable energy projects.
And soon it will get worse.
The sharp hike in health insurance premiums under the Affordable Care Act will hit tomorrow. Coming cuts in Medicaid and food assistance under Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” will increase the number of uninsured people, threaten rural hospitals, strain state budgets and overwhelm food banks.
And finally, there is this hint that the worst outrages are yet to come:
Trump Floats Cancelling Election, Then Insists He Won’t Nik Popli Tue, January 6, 2026
President Donald Trump on Tuesday floated the idea of canceling future U.S. elections, elevating a longstanding concern among critics of how he might try to limit threats to his power in his second term.
Trump brought up the idea while speaking to House Republicans at their annual retreat, and then quickly insisted he was not calling for such a move, casting his remarks as a critique of Democrats rather than a proposal.
“They have the worst policy,” he said in his remarks at the Kennedy Center to about 70 House Republicans. “How we have to even run against these people—I won’t say cancel the election, they should cancel the election, because the fake news would say, ‘He wants the elections canceled.’
“He’s a dictator.’ They always call me a dictator.”
Only Trump has suggested canceling the election.
He has introduced this topic to gauge public reaction. If the response from his supporters, the MAGA base, is positive, or at least not overwhelmingly negative, Trump will bring it up repeatedly (accompanied by denials) until it becomes less shocking and appears more feasible to execute.
If you like the costly tariffs, Gestapo-like roundups of innocent, brown-skinned people (valuable workers), the research cuts, a return to massive inflation, the return to environment-destroying fossil energy, unaffordable healthcare insurance, and the incessant lying, lying, lying, then you can wave your confederate flag, vote to be ruled by a king, and proudly call yourself a MAGA.
Until the elections are cancelled and dictator Trump’s Gestapo (aka ICE) comes for you just because . . .
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
Twitter: @rodgermitchell
Search #monetarysovereignty
Facebook: Rodger Malcolm Mitchell;
MUCK RACK: https://muckrack.com/rodger-malcolm-mitchell;
Only a nation of fools would give tax breaks to religion while discouraging science and education.
……………………………………………………………………..
A Government’s Sole Purpose is to Improve and Protect The People’s Lives.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
The Emperor’s New Oil Wealth The truth behind Trump’s black, sticky fantasy
Paul Krugman
Jan 07, 2026
An oil spill in the Orinoco Belt
When George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, he claimed that the goal was to establish a democratic regime. Some members of his administration may even have believed that. But many leftist critics insisted that it was all about seizing Iraq’s oil.
Although I was an outspoken opponent of that war, and deeply cynical about the Bush administration’s motives, I never believed the “war for oil” story. The principal motivation for the war, I still believe, was to wag the dog — to use a showy military victory to secure Bush’s reelection. According to some political scientists, that was a mission the war did, in fact, accomplish.
Donald Trump’s Venezuela venture is a very different story. During his triumphalist press conference after the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, Trump never used the word “democracy.” He did, however, say “oil” 27 times, declaring, “We’re going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago.”
Even so, whatever it is we’re doing in Venezuela isn’t really a war for oil. It is, instead, a war for oil fantasies. The vast wealth Trump imagines is waiting there to be taken doesn’t exist.
You may have heard that Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves — 300 billion barrels. You probably don’t know that Venezuela’s reported oil reserves tripled while Hugo Chavez was president. This increase, from roughly 100 billion to 300 billion barrels, didn’t reflect major new discoveries or exploration. Instead, it reflected the Chavez government’s decision to reclassify the country’s Orinoco Belt heavy oil as “proved” — oil that can be recovered with reasonable certainty under existing economic and operating conditions:
Source: Torsten Slok
As Torsten Slok of Apollo, who recently made this point, notes, “Much of the oil is extra-heavy, which has low recovery and a high cost to produce.” This suggests that Venezuela’s claims to have immense usable oil reserves were politically motivated hype.
This view is supported by the fact that the huge increase in Venezuela’s reported oil reserves wasn’t followed by a surge in production. On the contrary, Venezuelan oil production soon plunged:
Source: Torsten Slok
Plunging production was associated with a steady degradation of Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, which would take years and many billions of dollars in investment to restore. Given these costs as well as political instability, major oil companies clearly aren’t enthusiastic about the idea of sinking money into Venezuela.
On Monday Trump suggested that he might reimburse oil companies for investment in the nation he claims — with no basis in reality — to control, reimbursing them for their outlays there. That is, we’ve gone in a matter of days from big talk about huge money-making opportunities to a proposal to, in effect, subsidize oil-industry investments in Venezuela at U.S. taxpayers’ expense.
Which is not to say that nobody has profited from the abduction of Maduro. A few months ago Trumpist billionaire Paul Singer bought Citgo, the former U.S.-based arm of Venezuela’s state-run oil company. Citgo owns three Gulf Coast refineries custom-built to process Venezuelan crude, refineries that have suffered from the U.S. embargo on imports of that crude. If Trump lifts that embargo, Singer will receive a huge windfall. But this windfall will have nothing to do with reviving Venezuelan production.
Singer has made huge political donations to Trump, raising questions about how much he has influenced policy. His purchase of Citgo was also remarkably well-timed. What did he know?
At a deeper level, Trump’s apparent belief that oil in the ground is a precious asset is decades out of date.
These days oil is cheap by historical standards. Here’s the real price of oil — its price adjusted for overall inflation — since 2000:
Source: Energy Information Administration
Oil prices are low mainly because of increased supply due to fracking, and the potential for more fracking is likely to keep them low for the foreseeable future. The breakeven price of fracked oil — the price at which it’s just profitable to drill a new well — is around $62 a barrel in the most important U.S. producing regions. While global oil prices fluctuate, they tend to return to that breakeven price after a few years:
And $62 a barrel wouldn’t be high enough to make investing in the Orinoco Belt, where the estimated breakeven is more than $80, profitable even if there were no political risks.
In short, Trump’s belief that he has captured a lucrative prize in Venezuela’s oil fields would be an unrealistic fantasy even if he really were in control of a nation that is, in practice, still controlled by the same thugs who controlled it before Maduro was abducted.
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I left the following comment on Krugman’s blog too:
“Unfortunately, it’s much deeper, scarier and sicker than even “it’s about the oil.” The first layer of lies – that it was about drugs” was so weak that no one but the most credulous or maybe anti-drug supporters would accept it, even partially.
The MSM blew that apart instantly, but then got complacent on part lie #2: “it’s about the oil.” Yes, Venezuela has the heavy oil that our Gulf coast refineries need, it would take billions to rebuild them or other to process heavy oil to process what we have in America: light, sweet crude. Heavy crude used to come from Canada, but they are tariffed (and terrified) and almost an enemy now. Also, tellingly, the heavy stuff is what gets made into jet fuel for you know, just in case there’s going to be long range bombing missions. And the Paul Singer angle is definitely a factor. Trump is paying back his donor.
But the 3 layer is where the real payback happens: the Petrodollar. Maduro was bypassing sanctions by selling oil to China for Yuan, not dollars. This threatened the hegemony of the petrodollar, already slipping due to decades of sanctions from both parties, the rise of China and BRICS – BRICS+ is now nearly 30 nations, a loose organization comprising 40% of world trade, dollar-free. Look what happened to Qaddafi when he dared to create an alternate gold dinar, or Hussein when he sold oil to the EU for Euros. The importance of the Petrodollar goes back to Kissinger but now that we barely manufacture, or even grow anything exportable, only our military maintains U.S. power. As Krugman has pointed out, China is richer than the U.S. on a PPP basis. The U.S. can’t turn this around quickly, if at all. But both parties feel defending the Petrodollar is worth almost any price. That’s why you hear mostly muted concern or nothing at all from the Democratic side. This will ramp up once it becomes clear what a costly quagmire Trump has gotten us into. But by then, he’ll be after Greenland in a serious way.
There’s even a 4th layer of motive where few have gone, but it’s documented, a book preceding Trump, believed by Musk, who had dinner with Trump shortly after the kidnapping of Maduro. It may be crazy, but the Tech billionaires are getting away with it: the Technate. This is a region of north South America, all of North and Central America, and Greenland, imagined as the new American sphere of influence. Popular liberal commentator Kyle Kalinsky talked about it at the end of his video: https://youtu.be/1ODTrRGLbbs?si=uAEfYtWeveTku-9V&t=881. It’s wild, but aren’t we there?
The geo-strategist Peter Zeihan recently described how Canada MIGHT become part of America, province by province, without firing a shot by the U.S., with Alberta voting to secede and join America as state 51 to bypass the oil tariffs’ Alberta and Saskatchewan actually trade more with America than with the rest of Canada and they resent environmental and tax restrictions made by the eastern government. Once they fall, Zeihan’s theory goes, the rest of a divided Canada would be too weak – and demographically too old – to hold together. The referendum failed this past fall, but it could be brought up again under heavier pressure now. If Canada, or parts of it, feel the only choice is “join or die” they might just choose a province by province join, which would at least bias Congress more in their favor against future American dominance. Oh, and Zeihan says a decision by the Canadian supreme court over French Quebec says that a province can peacefully secede without violating their Constitution. How very Canadian! The U.S. had a Civil War over that sort of thing. https://youtu.be/jSkgLNSLaYg?si=TCADmWSpHWtLa1NP
The old New World Order – never well defined – is over. What comes next is unclear, even to Trump. But it will be more unstable, more like the old gunboat diplomacy of the early 19th century, but with air power and coordinated special forces strikes and 3 major spheres of influence. Europe is in trouble, but they grew complacent on American support, which is mostly over. Canada too (sorry, but it’s true). The U.N. is almost irrelevant and that’s partly their fault for foisting the most corrupt countries to the heads of human rights committees etc. Good luck to us all!”
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Good comments, Scott.
Craziness and “unthinkableness” coming faster every day. Quantum mechanics-style unpredictably. It makes me glad I’m 90, but sorry for my kids and grandchildren.
One funny phrase in your comment: “unclear, even to Trump.” EVEN to Trump? The only things clear to Trump are how much he can steal and how many pieces of property he can name after himself.
This may be the greatest kleptocracy in history, supported by the largest mass of bigoted, self-mutilating dummies in history.
Eventually, the Atlantic and Pacific may function as the final dividing lines between the U.S. and China, and then we will learn the truth about a theory of why we never have been in contact with an alien, intelligent species: At some level of intelligence, they annihilate themselves.
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Day of InfamyUnfortunately, this isn’t a bad dream
Paul Krugman
Jan 6READ IN APP
Travel day yesterday, so no time for a full-scale post. But I have to acknowledge this horrible anniversary.
Five years ago Donald Trump tried to overthrow an election he lost. He failed, and I assumed that the threat was over. Never in my worst nightmares did I imagine that he would make a comeback and return to the White House. But there he is. And he’s every bit as bad as his opponents and critics warned he would be.
I’m not going to talk today about how we got here and strategies for getting out. All I want to do right now is to say that we should be clear about what is happening.
American fascism is on the march, and anyone who balks at saying that clearly, who makes excuses and pretends that Trump and the people he brought in aren’t monsters, is deeply unpatriotic. If we are to have a chance at saving democracy, our first duty must be clarity. No sanewashing, no bothsidesing. Only facing the horrible truth can set us free.
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