Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 4, 2025
The stock market rout continued today. As expected, China announced retaliatory tariffs in response to those President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday. Chinese leaders say they will impose a 34% tariff on all U.S. goods imported into China next Thursday. Apparently, Trump did not think China would respond to his tariffs, and tried to sound as if he was still in control of the situation.
Trump is spending a long weekend in Florida, where he is attending the LIV golf tournament at his Doral club. But at 8:25 this morning, he reposted on his social media channel a video in which the narrator claimed that Trump is crashing the markets on purpose. The video claimed that legendary investor Warren Buffet “just said Trump is making the best economic moves he’s seen in over fifty years.” It went on to explain how “the secret game he’s playing” “could make you rich.” Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway quickly denied Buffett had said any such thing as the video claimed. “All such reports are false,” it said. In March, Buffett called tariffs “an act of war, to some degree.”
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Egberto Willies: Rachel Maddow: Trump crashed the world’s markets based on the advice of a fictional economist.
Rachel Maddow revealed a sad reality. Donald Trump crashed the Stock Market on Wall Street and the world markets based on tariff advice from Peter Navarro via a fictional economist named Ron Vara.
Thom Hartmann: Saturday Report 4/5/25 – Gilded Age Alert! Trump Wrecked the Economy with His Trade Wars — Then Went Golfing While America Burned!
2paragraphs: After Trump Tariffs, Billionaire Richard Branson Says “Strong Leadership Means…Realizing Your Mistake and Correcting It. Quickly.”
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John Pavlovitz: My Privilege Made Me Grieve Losing an America That Never Was
I’ve shed many misplaced tears recently.
For a while I thought I was grieving over the loss of America; that I was missing something we used to be, a place we once were, a new national erosion of hope I thought I’d been witnessing.
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But the thing about the America that I miss (the America that hasn’t been), is that I believe it’s still the America worth fighting for. It may not be the country we’ve ever quite had, but it’s the country we should be about making together.
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Steven Beschloss: What Does Hope Look Like?
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Today’s topic could be about fury or madness, sadness or loss, stress and distress, but I’d like to lean into hope. Because even in the darkness, even as the evidence of destruction mounts, we can find signs that this insane chapter is neither monolithic nor will it be never-ending. What are a few of those signs, offering reasons for hope this week?
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Daily Mail: Why EV-hating Trump has accidentally driven the final nail in the coffin of gas cars
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Atlantic: Wall Street Blew It
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What happened on Wednesday, in other words, was not a case of the president throwing the market a curveball. It was a case of him doing exactly what he’d promised to do and what he’s wanted to do for decades.
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Washington Post: A scary quote for the GOP on Trump and tariffs
Perhaps the most infamous quote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) ever offered about Donald Trump came in May 2016.
“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” Graham said, “and we will deserve it.” The Twitter post remains live to this day, nearly nine years later.
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Daily Beast: Axed Vaccine Chief Reveals RFK Jr.’s Crackpot ‘Data’ Demands
‘VERY SCARY’
Dr. Peter Marks is being forced to resign from the FDA because the Trump administration does not want someone who is “rigorously science-driven within the organization.”
Dr. Peter Marks, a top vaccine chief at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who tendered his resignation last week, has revealed some of the demands made by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that made his position untenable.
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Speaking to The Wall Street Journal ahead of his last day in the role on Saturday, Marks revealed that Kennedy’s team sought nonexistent data that they could use to justify the anti-vaccine narratives Kennedy has become known for.Marks told the paper, “I can never give allegiance to anyone else other than to follow the science as we see it. That does not mean that I can just roll over and take conspiracy theories and justify them.”
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(more Daily Beast …)
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Jess Piper: Dear Educators…
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Sarah Jones: Hands Off! More Than 1,200 Protests are Planned Today Against Trump and Musk
More than 1,200 “Hands Off!” rallies are planned to show the world “We do not consent” to the looting of our country. Trump and Musk “think this country belongs to them. We are fighting back!”
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