04/10/25
Good morning! It’s Thursday, April 10th.
National Hug Your Dog Day
Wait until Ruth hears about this. She’ll be furious.
And now, the news.
Ta-Riff Off
Starting with the markets!
What a world. What a life!
On Wednesday, you will truly be shocked to hear that Trump, master negotiator that he is, is pausing all reciprocal tariffs for 90 days. Probably because of the gigantic math error that led to many tariffs being wildly higher than even he planned.
Well, not all of the tariffs will be paused.
China’s tariffs will stay in effect and, after China announced 84% tariffs on all American imports, now their tariff rate will be 125%.
125%!
In response to the escalating tariffs in China, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said, “I’m not calling it a trade war but I’m saying that China has escalated and President Trump responded very courageously to that and we are going to work on a solution with our trading partners. It’s China’s decision that we have a deficit with them. They sell us over five times what we sell them.”
“It’s China’s decision that we have a deficit.”
It’s actually our decision, because we buy things from them. What are they supposed to do? No, stop giving us money?
Pretty silly thing to say.
And when someone’s saying something silly, you can count on our press secretary to be like hey! That’s MY job! I need to say something sillier. So she added: “The entire world is calling the United States of America, not China.”
Babe, the entire world is calling America because they’re worried about us! We are unwell!
Trump put tariffs on the McDonald Islands. Literally, only penguins live there. These are welfare checks!
But like I said, he’s chickened out, I mean rolled back, on all the other reciprocal tariffs. Why? Because people were getting a little yippy.
Literally. "They were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid.”
Yeah, man, we were getting yippy! You’re out here telling us that everything from every single country is going to be crazy expensive without a plan to support making it here in America. All of my clothes are made by penguins at a bespoke store in Antarctica because I try to shop small.
It’s called Stitch and Slide.
Now you’re telling me all of my bespoke sweaters, fin-made with a little pebble sewn into the pocket to show they care, are going to cost 10% more? You bet I’m gonna get yippy!
And what advice does he have for us yipsters?
“Be cool.”
Literally, all caps on Truth Social, that’s his advice… BE COOL.
Well, ironically, my penguin trailer isn’t feeling very cool, Donster. So how can I be expected to be cool? Also, you’re really gonna tell people to be cool? You, with the world’s longest ties, are going to tell people to be cool?
Why don’t you be cool, for once, and like… stop. Ya know?
Anyway, predictably, he backed off the tariffs. The relational damage is already done, the tariffs on goods from China are escalatingly bad, but that’s where things stand right now.
So just BE COOL everyone.
Pentagon Says We Shouldn’t Do Drone Strikes
-via AP News
Another thing everyone should just BE COOL about is doing drone strikes in Mexico.
BE COOL DUDES.
No no, that would be terrible!
Luckily, on Tuesday Colby Jenkins, the assistant defense secretary for special operation at the Pentagon told a Senate committee that Trump’s designation of drug cartels in Mexico as foreign terrorist organizations does not mean the military have automatic authority to do drone attacks.
So see? Colby said no! We’re fine!
RFK Jr Is Still Learning
RFK Jr sat down for his first TV interview since running Health and Human Services (cursed sentence!) and in that interview he… admitted that he’s not even familiar with all of the programs he helped cut!
$11 billion in proposed cuts to programs to help fight infection disease, mental health, addition and… childhood vaccines. Doesn’t know anything about em!
Should we have had the brain worm sit down for an interview instead?
I don’t know why, but his answer is worse than his answer. Like the actual words are worse than what it means. "No I'm not familiar with those cuts. We'd have to go … the cuts were mainly DEI cuts, which the president ordered."
Should we have had the brain worm run the department instead?
Honestly, it would probably be better.
On Sunday, after a second child in West Texas died from measles, and after he went to West Texas and in an Instagram post he buried the truth that the vaccine works… he later tweet, and then confirmed with Fox News, that actually the best cure for measles is a steroid and an antibiotic.
That’s a lie!
And we know it’s a lie because there is no treatment that really helps measles.
It’s a true “the best treatment is prevention” and the best prevision is the vaccine!
Is the brainworm available to just like, help out a little?
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SCOTUS Lets Trump Fire Federal Workers
-via AP News
On Tuesday the Supreme Court ruled in Trump’s favor by blocking a lower court order that would have forced the Trump administration to allow 16,000 probationary federal employees to return to work.
So now those employees are still out of work while this fight continues to play out in court.
If you think this is complicated, imagine being one of these federal employees who got into a career of service just to like give kids tours of owls trees and stuff.
AP Allowed at the White House
-via AP News
Citing the good ole First Amendment, a federal judged ruled on Tuesday that the Associated Press needed to be able to return to covering the White House, and specifically in the pool spray which, as I’m sure you remember me telling you, is the smaller group of reporters that gets to cover the President when not everyone in the press can be there.
That smaller group of reporters is responsible for taking the information and spreading it to the rest of the press, so the President being able to say that a huge outlet, like AP, can’t be there because they disagree with the fact that the AP wants to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of Mexico because calling it the Gulf of America is EMBARASSING.
Immediately following the ruling, an AP reporter and photographer were turned away from joining the motorcade so… things are going great!
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BUSTED
-via ABC News
And finally in Dang it! They caught us! News…
The U.S. Coast Guard busted 45,000 pounds of cocaine with a value of over $500 million.
It’s unclear where the bust took place, which is so annoying because I have been racking my brain to try and figure out where on earth I left my 45,000 pounds of cocaine!
It got got and FBI Director Kash Patel (another cursed sentence!) had a whole press field day about it. And listen, of course we want to DARE to say no to drugs and violence and all that, so this is good… and what I’m about to tell you is neither here nor there but… the sunglasses he’s wearing at this presser are so lame.
Again, neither here nor there but like… the tie was hideous, it was also not loose enough to be loose on purpose but not nice looking either, and the sunglasses were lame and my guy, like – you knew you were going to be on TV!
Anyway… hey after you finish going through all of it, can I get my cocaine back? I mean… not MY cocaine. I was holding it for a friend.
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And that’s it. That’s the news.
I’m proud of… dogs.
And cats! And cats, geez Ruth RELAX.
But more than dogs, because Ruth is looking at me and I’m genuinely scared to the bone to say more than cats… because you’ve never threatened me with a sharpened dewclaw… I’m proud of you.