RUSH: “Pelosi Disappointed Over Trump’s Deal with Mexico – ‘Threats and temper tantrums are no way to negotiate.’” You see? Here, grab sound bite 25. This is a CNN infobabe who, by the way, used to be an adviser for Barack Hussein O, The One. Her name is Samantha Vinograd. And she’s being interviewed by infobabe Brianna Keilar on CNN.
The question: “Do you think the tariffs –” this is about Mexico “Do you think the tariffs may have helped the negotiations with Mexico but that obviously that’s not the best method? Is that a fair way to characterize your assessment, Samantha?”
VINOGRAD: This is rewarding bad behavior. It is positive for the U.S. economy and Mexican economy and the global economy that these tariffs are not going into effect. But what’s happened is President Trump acted like a bully and the Mexicans agreed to do something so that he could say that he got a victory. It is likely that he will use this as a tool down the road because he can say that he got a reward from it.
RUSH: So a good question to ask here is, “Whose side is this babe on?” But you see, it’s the same thing. Trump acted like a bully. This is no different than our old buddy Myron Brilliant earlier on CNBC criticizing the deal for basically the same thing. The United States winning, that’s unseemly, that’s un-American, that’s not who we are anymore. We don’t stand up for our own best interests. That’s bullying.
I don’t know what these people have a collective guilty conscience over being Americans, they have an intrinsic anti-American point of view. They obviously do not look at the United States as the good guys. But she’s talking about Mexico rewarding bad behavior. Mexico, by agreeing to this, is rewarding bad behavior. The bad behavior is Donald Trump, Donald Trump acting like a bully.
Donald Trump said if you guys don’t start following the law and if you don’t start following through on your commitments that you have made we’re gonna slap tariffs on you. The Mexicans have not been controlling their southern border. Do I need to review any of this?
We have these caravans coming up from the Golden Triangle or some triangle, whatever it’s called, El Salvador, Guatemala, and whatever, and they’re coming up, these gigantic caravans that are bought and paid for with American donor money, and they are recruiting people in these countries to come be part of the caravans that come up and go through Mexico to get into the United States, declare asylum.
Well, asylum law says that you must declare asylum when you reach the first country you’re traveling to when you escape yours. Needing asylum is the same thing as needing protection. You’re fleeing political prisonership, you’re fleeing war, you’re fleeing whatever. And so the first country you get to, asylum law says that’s where you apply for asylum.
Mexico has just been acting as a pass-through and letting all of these people in their caravans come all the way up through Mexico to get to the United States southern border where they cross and then declare asylum. And Mexico has not been following the law. They’ve not been following their own law. They’ve not been following international law, and they have been doing nothing to enforce their own southern border.
And Trump said it. We have been talking to them for 20 years, asking them to hold up their end of this deal, asking them to do that. They have refused to do it. Well, for 20 years the United States says, “Okay. Okay. Well, we tried, but if you won’t, you won’t.”
The United States has not used its power over Mexico to get a result beneficial to both countries. The United States just sat there, sucked its thumb, because that’s the role of the United States in this current world order. So here comes this big balloon from outside the Washington establishment, Donald Trump, said, “I don’t do business this way, and part of making America great again is getting control of immigration.”
So he tells Mexico, asks them to do it. They refuse. He asks again, they refuse, and finally he says, “Okay. If you don’t, we’re gonna start slapping tariffs on you.” It didn’t take them two days and they agreed. And now all of these people are just fit to be tied. What this means to them is the United States, i.e., Donald Trump, has acted as a bully. We’ve been mean. We have used our unfair power advantage, our unfair economic advantage and Donald Trump’s mean personality, and we’ve threatened Mexico.
And that’s just not how the United States behaves. The United States eats the excrement sandwich. That’s our role in the world. We must be apologetic for our superpower status. We must never utilize it, particularly for our own gain. That is unseemly, and it’s not nice. So the United States must subordinate itself. The United States must willingly penalize or punish itself because of its unfair economic and military advantages. And Trump says, to hell with this.
Trump believes that the things we stand for represent us as the good guys, and if we succeed, then everybody who’s allied with us benefits as well. And here comes this babe, Samantha Vinograd who basically has the same attitude as Myron Brilliant and anybody else in the Washington political class. Trump is a bully. The Mexicans rewarded bad behavior on the part of Trump and the United States. And this isn’t good. And now Trump is gonna be using this as a tool down the road. So something good happens for the United States, the United States has a tremendous benefit here, and the media can’t deal with it.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Jackson, Michigan. Mike, great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Longtime listener.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: I got a question. Trump keeps saying that China’s gonna be paying all these tariffs, but the way I understand it is that the importer pays the tariff and then they pass the costs on to the American consumer. So how is China paying the tariff?
RUSH: Well, the charge is placed on goods that are leaving China.
CALLER: But China doesn’t pay the tariff. The importer pays the tariff, and then they pay those taxes to the U.S. government.
RUSH: Right. But the tariff means fewer goods are gonna leave China. Theoretically China’s gonna sell less.
CALLER: Well, that’s in the long term, yeah, but in the short term doesn’t that hurt the American companies that built factories over there like Apple, for example?
This is an imbalance of $500 billion a year that’s gone on for decades. And nobody has done anything about it. And you want to talk about the impact of American businesses not being able to sell in China while their stuff gets in here to compete against American products at much cheaper prices because of this imbalance? It’s gotta get fixed. And that’s just one aspect of it.
So opponents can use the short-term, say, “Well, the immediate implementation of these tariffs, that’s gonna have an immediate cost increase.” And at first it might, but that’s why the tariffs start out at 5%, 10%, then they get elevated to 10 and then ultimately 25%.
The purpose of the tariff is kind of like having a gigantic defense budget. You hope you don’t have to do it. You hope you don’t have to implement them to bring other people around. In the case of the ChiComs, it’s gonna take a long time to fix an imbalance that’s been in their favor for so many years. But it’s unfair right now. You know, talk about the unfairness of the tariffs, the unfairness of the arrangement’s the big deal. Stuff that’s manufactured in China and exported to the U.S. is much cheaper than American manufactured stuff is on average.
And then on the other end of the deal, the ChiComs do not allow the importation of very much from the United States. So we’re shut out of their market. We welcome them into ours at their cut-rate prices, putting all kinds of pressure on existing American manufacturing in competing industries. And it’s something that’s been out of whack for way, way too long, and the fix is not gonna be overnight, but it has to happen.
And, by the way, when it does get fixed it sends a signal all around the world. And the ChiComs are eventually — I think Trump is right — the ChiComs are eventually gonna have to make some concessions on this, as long as Trump is president, because he’s not gonna give up on this.
It’s too important, especially if you add on the importance of it as an election or campaign issue. But just the nature of it being the right thing to do and to correct a very out-of-balance impropriety here that has to be fixed. For the longest time… This actually helps me make the point that I’ve been making today, that people in charge of this kind of thing have been willing for the United States to take second-class status so as not to be seen as bullies, so as not to be seen as mean, so as not to be seen as unfair, so as not to be seen as forcing our way on people.
What good is being the world’s lone superpower if you do not have people proud of that, if you do not have people administering it who think it’s a good thing because we’re the good guys? While that may sound simplistic, it really isn’t. The concept of right and wrong, good and evil is not complex. It’s easy to understand. We are the good guys. Sometimes we make mistakes. But in terms of our structure, in terms of our intent, in terms of our value base and morality, we’re the good guys — at least as founded.
And some of the people who have this point of view think (impression), “That’s a good thing to do, because it’s less likely we’ll make them mad, and then they won’t bomb us. But if we make them mad… Like, if we make Xi Jinping mad in China, why, he might… he might launch an attack! We don’t want to make him mad.” So we take it on the chin, and we make that standard operating procedure. We factor it into economic deals that we’re not gonna get the best deal we could because “this is what you have to do when you’re a superpower: You have to bend over now and then,” and that just doesn’t make sense to a guy like Trump.
Great, great, great question. I’m glad you called.
Related Links