What's it got to do with the price of coffee in Columbia?
How the master negotiator is only using reality to his favor, why poets make bad presidents, and Hitler is popular in Arkansas.
Shocking: The guy who is famous for negotiating drives a hard bargain.
What Trump’s detractors have spent the last decade misunderstanding is that Trump’s aggression, the casual way he insults other heads of state, and his unpredictability are not signs of recklessness; they’re tactics.
I don’t know if Trump is a master negotiator. He’s never sold me a pen I didn’t want or convinced me to sell him a prime piece of real estate for less than I wanted. Billionaires don’t have to bargain for much.
Not all who are in the big ‘B’ club share the same attributes. George Soros is a much different type of character than Elon Musk. Mohammed bin Salman isn’t out in the dunes of Saudi Arabia rolling jiu-jitsu with the plebes like the newly-anointed cool guy Mark Zuckerberg. If you can’t lump them together by virtue of their personalities, they at least share one trait in common beyond the endless stream of 0s in their offshore bank accounts.
Billionaires don’t negotiate from a position of weakness. They are fully aware of the leverage they possess and are loathe to relinquish it. This is why MBS throttles oil production, why Musk purchased Twitter, and why Trump imposed a 25% tariff on Columbian goods on his walk from the fairway to the putting green. Because they can.
Lefties and post-modernists are more than adamant that all political games in the West are about power but refuse to see the actual power dynamics at play in the rest of the globe.
Why did China take back Hong Kong? And better yet, why did England (who had brokered the deal promising a century of independence to the province) and America do absolutely nothing? Why is it that China’s taking of Taiwan is virtually inevitable? Because they can.
I’m not saying that might makes right; I’m only suggesting that when negotiating with the home intruder for how much of your stuff they’re going to take, it’s worth determining who’s currently holding the gun.
Deportations have begun under the Trump Administration, and presumably, migrants would be making their way home to their countries of origin. Two military planes were taking migrants back to Columbia when their president, Gustavo Petro, said, “I’ve never seen those criminals before in my life,” and refused to accept his future ex-expats.
In response, President Trump immediately announced a 25% on all Columbian imports — does that include cocaine? A 25% tariff would do serious damage to the South American country’s economy, seeing as the United States is their largest trading partner. It was a little like when the little punk finally stood up to the bully only to instantly regret it.
Sometimes, the bullies aren’t weak, they’re not looking for companionship but don’t know how, they’re just stronger than you.
Within hours, the Colombian president reversed his decision, saying, “Oh, I didn’t know it was those guys! I love those guys!” and welcomed them back with open arms — but not before writing the most ridiculous, overwrought letter of defiance, which I will now quote:
Trump, I don't really like travelling to the US. It's a bit boring, but I confess that there are some commendable things. I like going to the Black neighborhoods of Washington, where I saw a fight in the US capital between Blacks and Latinos with barricades, which seemed like nonsense to me, because they should join together.
What?
I confess that I like Walt Whitman and Paul Simon and Noam Chomsky and Miller.
Hell yeah. Get off the bus, Gus.
I don't like your oil, Trump. It's going to wipe out the human species because of greed. Maybe one day, with a glass of whiskey that I accept, despite my gastritis, we can talk frankly about this, but it's difficult because you consider me part of an inferior race and I'm not, nor is any Colombian.
When did he say that?
So, if you know someone who is stubborn, that's me, period. You can try to carry out a coup with your economic strength and your arrogance, like they did with Allende. But I will die true to my principles, I resisted torture and I resist you. I don't want slavers next in Colombia, we already had many and we freed ourselves.
Wait, we’re coup-ing Colombia, now? I mean I was on board with Greenland…
What I want next in Colombia are lovers of freedom. If you can't join me, I'll go elsewhere. Colombia is the heart of the world, and you didn't understand that, this is the land of the yellow butterflies, of the beauty of Remedios, but also of the colonels like Aureliano Buendía, of which I am one, perhaps the last.
This part is my favorite. Any leader who references One Hundred Years of Solitude as if it were nonfiction is all right by me; I don’t care if they’re socialists.
You will kill me, but I will survive in my people, which lives, before yours, in the Americas. We are peoples of the winds, the mountains, the Caribbean Sea and of freedom.
This dude’s really going through it. Honestly, why do lefties make the best poets? Why can’t conservatives write good songs and make good dances? Tell me your favorite right-wing poet. If you say it’s me, I’m going to be flattered and offended at the same time.
The letter goes on like this for quite some time; he mentions pharaohs, the Romans, and another reference to One Hundred Years of Solitude (which is one too many at this point) before saying that Colombia will feed the world with corn — which is a funny way of saying, “You win, Mister.”
The moral of the story is that strength, economic or otherwise, is not something of which to be ashamed. It should be used readily, appropriately, and especially when some lyrical softy tries to pull a fast one on you.
I’ve been accused of being too pollyanna before — which is a word my dad taught me, so you can guess who did the accusing.
But that’s not the case here. If we’re going to have borders, we might as well act as if we’re separate countries with different strengths and weaknesses.
Instead of celebrating Trump’s masterful use of leverage, many members of the Left lamented that Americans would now be faced with more expensive coffee and flowers — no one mentioned anything about the cocaine.
Why was no one excited about throwing extra wads of cash to the coffee farms of Costa Rica and Jamaica — places that don’t have massive import taxes placed upon them? Do I ask too many rhetorical questions?
Suddenly, American Democrats are concerned about inflation. Chuck Schumer was demanding Trump answer for inflated egg prices this week. It’s a good thing we didn’t have any of that while they were in charge! They would have been incensed!
The right-wingers who are racist aren’t very subtle. They do things like call Ilhan Omar a terrorist (which is different from terrorist sympathizer) or talk about how Hitler would’ve been a good dude to go fishing with (we’ll get to you later, Bryce Mitchell).
The Left sneaks it in a different way. Colombia is only good for the coffee it sells to the States — its own economy be damned! These Spanish speakers are only as good as the goods they bring to market. (Their words, not mine.) (I’m paraphrasing.)
These types are more upset that their gardeners, crop-pickers, factory workers, dishwashers, and housekeepers are being deported than the fact that their engaging in stereotypes they’d harangue the Right for using. It’s a fun way of pretending to be pro-immigration while you’re actually advocating for the exploitation of immigrant labor.
The Left is nominally pro-labor but routinely take a nonsensical position on illegal migrants. Don’t they know Cesar Chavez was against open borders and employing undocumented workers? They don’t know the origins of their own ideology.
Maybe they’re not mad at Trump’s torrid negotiation, but instead envious that he has a coherent negotiation strategy. Who’s pollyanna now?
Success aside, isn’t it too early to hit the links? Biden practically lived on the beach during his four-year presidential tenure and I was hard on the old man.
While I do have a certain allowance for physical activity — as long it’s not choking on a pretzel whilst on a leisurely jog — golfing is more of a leisure activity that I would reserve for someone who hasn’t just been re-elected leader of the free world.
Cudos for multi-tasking, come on, you can play the back nine after we plant an American flag on top of the Kremlin.
Okay, it’s safe to say that some people shouldn’t have a podcast. Most people can hold it together for a few hours without getting too controversial — but at this point, it seems as if uttering a pro-Hitler stance is more of a when question rather than if.
The infinite monkey theorem posits that a monkey randomly striking the keys of a typewriter, given an infinite length of time, will eventually compose the collected works of William Shakespeare in perfect, sequential order.
Well, this is like the internet but with right-wingers and Adolf Hitler fandom. Some get to it faster than others. It took Candace Owens several years to really start hating the Jews. It took Kanye West a decade of rants and one appearance with Alex Jones to put his hand on the bible and profess his love for the guy.
UFC fighter Bryce ‘Thug Nasty’ Mitchell started a podcast and, on the very first episode, told his cohost he thought Hitler was a ‘good guy’ based on his own research — holy smokes, what must this guy’s google search look like. According to Mitchell, Hitler would have been down to go to the fishing hole before he started taking meth, but in reality his heart was in a good place:
He was just fighting for his country and trying to get those ‘greedy Jews’ out of Germany! Just refuting the Holocaust, that’s all!
In fairness to Mitchell, one could argue that he took a baseball bat of a right hand from Josh Emmett, and his noggin still isn’t working correctly. But….the infinite internet pro-Hitler theorem would suggest otherwise. Plus, I’ve never heard of a concussion causing antisemitism.
For his part, Dana White called him one of the stupidest people in the world which sounds about right, but, admirably, maintained he believed in free speech within his organization and would not be seeking to censor Mitchell in the future.
If you’ll allow me a brief diversion, however, I do love the near-universal backlash these monumental idiots receive when they soft-pedal the horrors of the Third Reich, but if someone were to glorify Stalin, Lenin, or Mao, all mass murderers in their own reich right, there would be no ubiquitous disgust — no clamoring for censorship or punishment.
My pollyanna world is one where we recognize human atrocities no matter their political affiliation — where the words Holocaust, Holodomor, and the Great Leap Forward are said with the same unforgiving, caustic contempt.
Until then, however, I’ll be in the strange position of hoping Bryce Mitchell loses his next fight in embarrassing fashion or wins, grabs the mic, and tells us that he, Thug Nasty, is the second coming.
Either way, I’ll be entertained. Just don’t let me start a podcast.
To a better next week,
Cheers,
~FDA