The other day a commenter here said, “Being There is a horror story, in my opinion.” I can see his point. I never, when I first saw the movie, thought that there was ever, ever — ev-er — any possibility that a character like Chauncey Gardiner could exist or move in the circles that Fate hilariously dropped him into. But this was all in the pre-Trump era. Now we see Being There taking place for real. The American electorate made that happen. So here we are, a few days into month five of this four-year sentence that half of the country is serving (while the other half ironically is being harmed by their Messiah, but they haven’t figured it out) and the words “chicken” and “taco” have just been assigned a new cultural significance. Watch this clip, which is part comedy, part horror, and then we’ll talk about Taco Trump.
This is equal parts hilarious and disturbing.
😂😂😂
— Scottacular (@Scottcrates) May 29, 2025
If this is a new story to you, I like Charlie Sykes’ rendering of the tale better than anybody’s:
How thin skinned is the man-child who occupies the Oval Office? This thin-skinned: Trump angrily lashed out at a reporter who asked him a question about his serial flip-flops on tariffs.
“Mr. President,” CNBC White House correspondent Megan Casella asked Trump, “Wall Street analysts have coined a new term called the TACO trade. They’re saying “Trump Always Chickens Out” on your tariff threats. And that’s why markets are higher this week. What’s your response to that?”
Trump bristled and raged. “Don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question… To me, that’s the nastiest question.”
Considering that we live in an Economy by Whim, the question about TACO trades may also have been dangerous, because there was a non-zero chance that goading Trump this way might lead to a global depression.
Within hours, however, a federal court handed down a stunning ruling that declared Trump’s whole “Liberation day” tariff scheme illegal. The ruling, reported the Financial Times, was “a blow to the White House that could throw the president’s global trade policy into disarray.”
If you were like me, you spent a few minutes last night trying to figure out whether this was the epic smackdown it appeared.
Indeed, it was.
“Is There a Dignified Legal Way, Preferably in Latin, to Say “Holy Shit”? wrote Paul Krugman. He followed up this morning: “I, like many observers, thought that we were past the point where the merits of cases mattered. It’s gratifying to learn that I was wrong.”
Heather Cox Richardson writes:
The judges, one appointed by President Ronald Reagan, one by President Barack Obama, and one by Trump himself, noted that the U.S. Constitution gives exclusively to Congress the power to impose tariffs. In 1977, Congress passed the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, often abbreviated as IEEPA, delegating to the president the power to adjust tariffs in times of national emergency, but Trump has used that power far beyond what the Constitution will permit.
Since he took office on January 20, 2025, the judges noted, Trump “has declared several national emergencies and imposed various tariffs in response.”
But the IEEPA has “meaningful limits,” the court writes, and “an unlimited delegation of tariff authority would be unconstitutional.” The court blocked all the tariffs Trump imposed under the IEEPA, thus ending Trump’s tariff spree, although the administration will appeal.
“Congress manifestly is not permitted to abdicate or to transfer to other the essential legislative functions with which it is thus vested,” the court writes.
In a rational and functioning constitutional system, this ruling would wake up a non-brain dead Congress. But, alas, we do not have such a system, nor such a Congress.
Exit take: Predictably, the ruling enraged MAGA, and as Richardson predicts, Trump will appeal the ruling. But here’s a contrarian take: by throwing a spanner into Trump’s trade war, the court may have done Trump a favor, by rescuing him (and the rest of us) from the consequences of his ghastly judgment.
The markets, predictably, are overjoyed.
That’s what TACO now means. Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping could have told you this on Day One of Trump’s administration, or even during his last administration. The rest of the world has Trump’s number and has had it. And as Charlie Sykes points out, disaster has momentarily been averted again.
I hate to sound like the prophetess of doom, but as unstable as this man is, and the lunatics around him, it is only a question before something horrific happens. We already have $60 Million aircraft (two in fact) falling off of the same aircraft carrier, while the Secretary of Defense spends all his time trying to ferret out leakers and seeing if his wife can get a security clearance, because she accompanies him to classified meetings.
Meanwhile, Dan Bongino wants you to know how miserable he is. He “stares at the four walls all day.” Um….Dan? That’s called having a job. His tone of martyrdom is noteworthy.
Dan Bongino just broke down on live TV—called himself “divorced,” backpedaled to “separated,” and spiraled into a self-pity monologue.
The alpha act collapsed mid-sentence.
Even Kilmeade had to throw him a lifeline.Tough guy? Nah. Fox just aired a full-blown therapy session.
— AnatolijUkraine (@AnatoliUkraine) May 29, 2025
Bongino probably had some idea this was a glamorous gig and now he’s finding out the reality of the situation, that he has no freaking clue what he’s doing and everybody at the Bureau is laughing at him and Kash Patel. This is not the James Bondian, uber cool, svelte, all the men want to be you, all the women want you, glamorous kind of a gig he thought it would be. The man is clearly miserable. Too bad. If he hasn’t caught on to Everything Trump Touches Dies, then it serves him right.
Meanwhile, enjoy a few TACO memes.
This is what the world sees when they look at America. And the month of June will be a shitshow on steroids when Trump celebrates his birthday on the 14th with his military parade. Maybe Mussolini will come back from the grave to join him. It’s totally his kind of a bash.
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I suspect MAGAtworld will have to import plenty of paid spectators for the Trump Show, give them flags (Trump flags, of course, or Confederate) and make sure they have lots of water to keep them from leaving. What does this say about the US military, that it allows this illegitimate president to highjack a parade meant to celebrate our armed forces, not his birthday? I despair.
Please let that day be one with violent thunderstorms in the DC area. I mean full-on high winds and driving rain. And a forecast for another front moving in the next day. Perhaps next two days.!
AI is gonna take trumpty down. I asked the Pictory tool at ChatGPT to create a video of trump being consumed by a taco, but it gracefully declined saying it couldn’t create content that was disrespectful of real people. However ChatGPT did suggest getting around its rules by using a fictional character or clever metaphor, leaving the impression it was raring to go. Maybe your creators can explore this.
Too bad Trump is a real person. One of the most vile and despicable humans ever to be born but an actual person. I’m sometimes gripped by fear inspired by The Doors’ Riding On the Storm: ‘There’s a killer on the road; His brain is squirming like a toad; Take a long holiday, let your children play; If you give this man a ride sweet family will die; Riders on the storm…’
I still can’t believe how f**ked up this country is that after the sh*t show of his first term, almost half this country (just barely enough) voted to “Give this man a ride.” I know amphibians can’t get rabies but it’s hard to believe that there’s not few RABID toads fighting with each other in the space where Trump’s brain is supposed to be.