View from K Street: The Duck Soup Presidency

“Who ya gonna believe? Me or your own eyes?” Chico Marx, Duck Soup (1933)

You couldn’t make this up. President Trump doesn’t like the employment data generated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), so he fires the BLS commissioner, who has no role in compiling the data. The commissioner’s “hands off” role is intended to ensure no political taint of those crucial data.

Coffee prices shoot up 30% in 10 days, but the president assures us foreign countries are paying the tariffs, making America rich.

The president declares a national security emergency, claiming a small, obscure Venezuelan gang is invading the United States. As a result, thousands of peaceful Latino emigres are incarcerated and deported, without due process.

The federal government’s own statistics show violent crime in D.C. is at or near all-time lows, but the president declares a crime emergency and deploys the National Guard to patrol the Capital streets.

The president cancels the collective bargaining agreements of over one million federal workers at the Agriculture Department, the EPA, and a dozen other similar agencies based on a purported national security emergency. The White House fact sheet, perhaps inadvertently, identifies the real reason as the unions’ “hostility” to the president’s agenda. Despite that, the appeals court approves.