Pretzel Logic

It is hard to argue against success

The Trump Administration Is Not Just Erasing History; They're Rewriting the Future. So went one headline in Newsweek last week. As if Trump’s attacks on democracy aren’t bad enough; now he’s screwing with our future too!

Question for you: If the future is so easy to rewrite, why is Trump the first president ever to do so? And who wrote the original version of what hasn’t happened yet? That is another question that I have for the author of this article.

The person who wrote this story for Newsweek is in charge of all the funding for libraries everywhere in the United States. Shouldn’t Americans expect more from a man who reads books for a living? If up to me, I’d send him to the blackboard to write one of the Yogi Berra classic lines a thousand times: “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”

There is an all-out assault on the English language going on in America today and its coming in the form of daily press releases and opinion pieces from an outraged minority of very unhappy people. Typically, you see their work in fringe news outlets, on social media, and Substack but some of it bleeds over into the mainstream. Trying to attract attention to themselves with eye catching, bolded headlines; arguing on behalf of unpopular opinions and fringe views. Hating Trump, Republicans, and party turncoats.

What’s bugging them? They got used to having lots of power and now they cannot exist without it. They’re irrelevant and it’s killing them. They thought that their future was already written, for their collective benefit, and then seventy-seven million votes undid everything that they had planned for themselves. They blame Trump or more accurately the assassins who did not kill him.

What we are witnessing is the end of the era of 60 Minutes and the prestige that once went with excellent news coverage and thoughtful, well written opinion pieces and editorials in this country. The reason why so many wanted to go into journalism. It’s over; the internet has finally killed it.

These writers are either out of work or practically out of work and they are getting desperate. The fewer followers that they have, the smaller their platform, the louder they scream and bold cap. Either way they have too much time on their hands and apparently cannot afford a good thesaurus or dictionary. No one uses these writing resources anymore. Maybe they rely on ChatGPT and AI too much for their copy.

In the past I have bemoaned the overuse of words like unprecedented, crisis, unconscionable, existential, apocalyptic, etc.; that is nothing compared to the specious and spurious legal and moral arguments that are getting made every day in these angry posts and news stories. These people are fighting back the only way they know by contorting the English Language into political pretzel logic and trying to shove it into the mouths of the lazy and gullible.

Thier pretzel logic looks appetizing, but their opinions make no sense upon inspection. You cannot rewrite the future. The Trump Administration is not attacking democracy. We are not in the midst of a constitutional crisis, unless you want to conflate governance with an act of aggression, unless you view legislation and executive orders as illegal activity. We have courts to decide that, and the courts are busy.

Our government is working exactly as designed, except that we do not have a functioning second party participating. Not at this point anyway. There is no responsible voice on the other side of the aisle, and we have a terminally ill media doing the refereeing. The Democrat Party is not participating in Democracy. What is lacking in the first 100 days: a picture from the oval office with Chuck Shumer there or Hakeem Jeffries. Everyone else has made the visit, even Gretchen Whitmer who covered her face.

A lot of these angry people, like Jim Acosta the former with CNN talking head, are taking to Substack in droves and clogging up this platform worse than a fraternity house toilet on a Sunday morning. The master of the English Language and blank verse, John Milton (not Yogi Berra) is rolling over in his grave. Forget about the crazy opinions, it’s just bad writing and pure sophistry. Milton’s favorite character, the Fallen Angel, Beelzebub is blushing from an inner circle of hell. It’s as if someone has penned The Resistance for Dummies and it is selling like hotcakes.

For example, dozens and dozens of news stories out last week about the failure of DOGE. Some people are laughing about it on social media and making astonishing claims about Musk’s “epic fail”. According to the official government website, DOGE has identified $160 billion in savings as of this writing. Not a bad haul for 100 days; according to DOGE that equals $1,000 in savings to every taxpayer.

But that is well short of his one trillion-dollar goal. So, after countless headlines early on about Musk “gutting” “destroying” “taking an axe” to our precious government agencies, Musk is now being prosecuted for failing to cut enough. No good deed goes unpunished! His work at DOGE and his absence has likely caused Tesla to lose a trillion in value over the same time period. Now that’s an accomplishment that these unhappy folks can get behind! Misery loves company.

As many observers and commentators noted before Trump’s second term began, it is much more difficult than you might think to cut federal spending. Problems that take a long time to develop take a long time to fix. Especially if carefully selected circuit court judges are undoing every layoff; reinstating pork barrel funding and generally countermanding every executive order with Trump’s signature on it.

Shrinking the size and scope of the US Government will be a long, drawn-out battle that will go on for at least three more years— the rest of Trump’s second term. The Democrats looks at Trump’s petty stubbornness as a weakness; in this instance it will be his greatest triumph. With or without Musk at his side, he is determined to slim down the US government just as Regan did. In that sense, the authors of this story were right, Trump is going to rewrite the future of the US Government, thank goodness.

The esteemed economist Milton Freidman once said this about the US government, “I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending.” He won a Nobel Prize, but no one would take his advice seriously today, because he observed and commented on other unpopular things too, like there is no such thing as a “temporary” or “interim” government spending program in spite of what the legislation might be titled.

Freidman was also a staunch supporter of immigration— even illegal immigration. But he also noted that we cannot afford both a welfare state and illegal immigration. Mind you he wrote that before Medicare got expanded. You have to have a job to come here to the United States and the whole point of the American dream is self-sufficiency and rugged individualism. No one should be encouraged to come to this country for the free services.

In the meantime, everyone in the media is talking about a guy who came into this country illegally, with a killer name, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Doesn’t even need hyphens; just rolls off the tongue and sounds almost literary. A South American surrealist poet you ask? Perhaps now that he has more time on his hands.

We all know his story. Married while in detention, arrested for merely wearing a gold chain, the wrong tattoos, and a Chicago Bulls cap. He cares for three disabled kids, and yet somehow always has the capability of being in the wrong place at the wrong time; he was seeking asylum in America when he was mistakenly deported by the Trump administration.

In spite of past transgressions including domestic violence and suspected ties to gang related activities, “NBC, ABC, and CBS have all done a grave disservice to the basic facts of the controversy by consistently referring to him as a ‘Maryland father’ and in some instances even presenting false information, like calling him a legal resident,” the Center for American Rights said in a complaint filed with the FCC. CBS can ill afford more scrutiny like this at the FCC.

There is one significant legal question front and center, and in this case, everyone agrees on what this is. The answer is contained in the last part of the very question that folks are asking: what constitutes due process for someone who is in this country illegally? Every President in the last twenty years has deported people who do not belong here. Heck, Trump just admitted to deporting 150,000 of the worst of the worst in his first 100 days in office. According to the folks who complain about the future being rewritten, this is no longer a thing; you can’t do that anymore. Naturally Trump and most Americans do not agree.

Obama was nicknamed “the Deporter in Chief”, God bless him; he sent over three million people back to where they belong without so much as a single negative headline. Why is there a new “due process standard” applied because Trump wants them out? It’s because a handful of people in America are angry that they no longer get to call the shots and because they are losing the argument in the court of public opinion.

More than ten million people were not vetted coming into America; are we going to give each and every one, a Court TV trial on the way out the door? That’s the Democrat’s plan as I predicted in my post Back in the Day: make the whole process so expensive and painful that Trump and the whole racist Republican party gives up on it.

There’s no possible solution to our failed immigration system the Democrat party tells us. We must have bilateral legislation and new laws which they can support. The are not participating in the solution. They see no reason to retreat from that hopeless and nihilistic stance which has worked so well for them until Trump’s second coming. There is no reason to abide by the laws on the books in the meantime. We will see shortly how this policy works out in the midterms.

Another big failure for Trump this week has been his senseless and irresponsible attack on the Ukraine War. It hasn’t worked either; in fact, it has made things worse if you believe the pretzel logic at 60 minutes. At this point, France is even considering sending in soldiers and there is talk of the EU taking on Putin as well. All-out war in Europe once again you ask? That will be the day!

But wait, Putin signals that he might settle peacefully if he gets to keep what he has already taken which is about 20% of the old Ukraine. Forget about Crimea or any other part of Ukraine where they speak Russian; it’s his already. Ukraine lost Crimea and most of the Donbas Region over a decade ago and they will not be getting it back.

The 60 minutes team travelled to Ukraine essentially to show their support and to urge Zelensky to hold out until he gets what he wants. I guess CBS is not just reporting the news, they are directing and influencing foreign policy and creating the news as well. But even the mighty 60 Minutes team does not get to pick the winners and losers. Just ask the Palestinians. The losers never get to decide the future in this cruel world where strong men like Putin hold power. That’s reality.

Speaking of strong men, we’re also reading and hearing a lot more about Hitler these days. Al Gore, Larry David, and James Clyburn all invoking the Fuhrer in not so oblique references to Trump’s Regime and the authoritarian state that we are all living in. This is so old that there are very few people on the planet who might get offended by the ridiculous and troubling comparison which appears to be the reason why it is happening so frequently.

The mere fact that these people can say or write this claptrap without worry of repercussions, undercuts the basic premise of their arguments. So much for the logic of this simile which falls apart faster than a Chinese made five-dollar toy on Christmas Day. The bottom line is that America has never been more tolerant than it is today. That is not going to change overnight, and it is totally ridiculous and insulting for these angry people to act as though it will.

If you are looking for good reading, a really precise narrative with lots of astute observations, I would point you to Mark Penn’s Harris/Harvard polling results which were just released. Press Release: April 2025 – Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll The latest polling was done just ten days ago, mid-April. and shows that Trumps approval ratings on the immigration issues are as high as ever.

His handling of the economy is down slightly after a lot of bad publicity about the tariffs and Musk’s involvement with DOGE is getting old it looks. But generally speaking, Americans think that Trump is doing a good job. At least he is doing something and trying to make things better. It is impossible to read the report on the recent polling any other way.

Meanwhile over on CNN, Harry Etten keeps looking at the data and he reaches the same conclusion much to the dismay of the few thousand angry people tuning in. They wish it was worse and can’t wrap their heads around what success looks like. Democrat party approval ratings at all-time lows; the majority of young men are going MAGA. More Americans than ever saying that we seem to be on the right track again.

In about 100 days Trump is well on his way to accomplishing many of his campaign promises and goals, albeit over a bumpy and circuitous road it seems like sometimes. Closed the border, deported the worst of the worst, saved $150 Billion, started a tariff war with China, and perhaps ended the war in Ukraine, if Putin and Zelensky are willing. Lowered the price of eggs! More encouraging to those that are actually paying attention, he shows no sign of letting up and running out of gas. This is no fad; President Trump is in it for the long haul, dammit.

Then Biden comes out of his short-lived retirement to focus America on the fact that he is old enough to remember when those “colored kids” came to our schools on busses. Very reassuring. Six months ago, he couldn’t remember signing an asinine ban on LNG exports! Just a couple of months ago, he was the most powerful person in the world and had his finger on the nuclear button. He and Janet Yellen were responsible for our economic future. Is that the future that Trump is rewriting? We can only hope.

Nate Silver is out with a good suggestion for the Democrat Party, get public opinion going against Donald J Trump. Hence the non-stop polling and predictable headlines. Silver is a genius at self-promotion and just happens to be in the business of public opinion. He is busy manufacturing the coveted results right now. Self-fulfilling prophesies that will finally stop Trump, he hopes.

The Democrat party just needs more protests and resistance, or more to the point, more news stories about protests and resistance. They keep looking for a cause to get behind, but nothing is resonating with the public and people are too busy for mass protests. Americans are also skeptical of what is being reported, and they are waiting to hear both sides of the story. Making up their minds on their own, more or less, and not being swayed like they were in 2019.

Always the showman, Silver is predicting that AOC will run for President after her wildly successful Fighting Oligarchy tour. We need a two-party system in America for the country to be successful and to legislate; unfortunately, the Democrat Party has collapsed at exactly the wrong time in history and the result just may be that they nominate a four-term congresswoman from the Bronz who has never done anything except smile. Democrats deserve better; where is Joe Manchin, or Tim Ryan for that matter, when you need them?

If, according to Silver, the key to overturning the Trump agenda is public opinion, then all we need is more polls that show Trump’s support is way down. We could have an election every month! This is the fantasy world that the Democrat Party inhabits. Impeachment. Hence the barrage of negative news stories; creating chaos that gets pinned on Trump. Here’s a good one from Barrons today: Stock Swings Worsen as China Pushes Back Over Tariffs. Seriously? This headline came after the market rose by another thousand points— is that is what they mean by worsen?

This is how the grift of these self-fulfilling prophesies work. First, Jerome Powell speaks at an investment conference and says that interest rates will not be coming down anytime soon. The market reacts and plunges by 2% in a single session. That night, Trump tweets out that he is not happy with Powell; the press reads Trump’s tweet, just like we all do, and reports that Trump has threatened to fire Powell which he never said.

Then the markets drop another percentage point or two on the impending firing of the Fed Chair that isn’t going to happen. Next, these same reporters write that the cause of the drop is Trump’s threat to fire Powell which never happened in the first place. Soon enough everyone is talking about their 401K balances.

A day or so later a reporter asks Trump directly “Are you going to fire Powell?” Trump says no and the markets rise. The public hears Trump say that. Then the reporters report that Trump “walks back” his threat to fire Powell. There are your “stock swings” explained in a nutshell. Pretzel Logic.

I wasted hours trying to find evidence that Trump has ever threatened to fire Jerome Powell (he actually hired him); you are welcome to conduct your own research on the matter. What you will learn is that “according to unnamed sources in the White House, someone was looking into it.” Once upon a time in fantasy land.

This cycle of news coverage is so obvious now and transparent that even the most casual and unschooled viewer can see it coming a mile away. CBS news, along with other major news outlets is imploding as a result. The Executive Producer of 60 Minutes quit in a huff over “journalistic integrity issues” while numerous lawsuits and FCC complaints hang over Shari Redstone and Paramount’s head.

Paramount is trying desperately to get a merger done to escape a viewership and sponsorship nightmare. Meanwhile the nightly news team and the 60 Minutes correspondents are driving the valuation of CBS down with their childish and irresponsible behavior and then torching the owners on the way out the door. Whose journalistic integrity are we talking about again?

Perhaps the craziest pretzel logic was reserved for the infamous turncoat Robert F Kennedy Jr. who pledged to find the root cause of Autism by September. Immediately the angry left lost control of their emotions, “no not that!”. Kennedy acknowledged that he has never received so much negative feedback from the public including when he endorsed Trump for President.

I was impressed when Kennedy pledged to use the power of AI to tease this information from the millions of medical records that we already have accumulated on paper. At Adrentech we have successfully converted voice calls to text, deposited thousands of text documents into a content management system and then used a large language model to analyze and report on call volume, call reasons, and to recommend operational improvements to address customer service deficiencies. This technology is affordable, available today, and it actually works.

What I heard from Kennedy made a lot of sense and lined up with my personal experiences. Not so for the Democrats who have dubbed this process, “an autism registry” invoking dark images from America’s past experiences with Tuberculous where those inflicted are thrown in sanitariums and forgotten. They claim that this approach will violate the rights of autistic people. They have no interest in science or solving problems for that matter. It always gets back to power and the control of information. That and stopping Trump.

What it looks like is that they are afraid of technology and finding a cure for a puzzling condition that has been on a dramatic rise for twenty years. That and the news media hate a traitor to their Democrat party more than anything else in this world including anyone who is just trying to help Trump like Elon Musk. What they really hate, and fear most of all, is the possibility that Trump will succeed at anything else that he attempts to do, including rewriting our future.

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In closing, I need to take ownership of my own shortcomings. There are two sides to Substack, the newsletter which goes out to my subscribers, and the website which is where I store my content. In my last post, Big Numbers, I inadvertently included some text that was not my own in my newsletter that went out on April 15th after the end of my own writing. I’ll call it inadvertent, accidental plagiarism that I did not intend obviously. It wasn’t even good writing! Here’s a link to the post as you should have seen it:

Let me explain. I often paste other people’s content, graphs, and writing below my posts to reference while I write. In this instance, I forgot to cut that shit out of my essay leaving it there like it was my own which it was not. I corrected it on the internet, but the damage was done in my email newsletter that went out before I caught the mistake. The sausage making was not intended for my readers to see.

While I am at it, my sincere apologies for any other grammatical, punctuation, or spelling errors that I have made over the past four years too. I’ll strive to do better. Thanks for reading.

Like it or not, my material is always as original as I can make it.