Letters from an American - September 5, 2024

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

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September 5, 2024. The U.S. government continues to tighten the screws against Russian malign activity. This morning, the Department of Justice announced an indictment charging Dmitry Symes for violating U.S. sanctions against Russia. Symes allegedly worked for a sanctioned Russian television station and laundered the money from his work. Symes advised Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. A second indictment charged Symes' wife, Anastasia, with sanctions violations and money laundering through the purchase of fine art. The Justice Department also issued a grand jury superseding indictment against six Russian computer hackers. Five were officers in Russia's military agency, one is a civilian. The six are charged with hacking into and leaking information from, as well as destroying, Ukrainian computer systems.

The hackers also attack systems in European countries that support Ukraine and in the U.S. The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information on the defendants' locations or their malicious cyber activity. The fallout from yesterday's revelation that six powerful right-wing media figures were on the Russian payroll continues. One of the right-wing commenters referred to in yesterday's indictment, Tim Poole, has pushed the idea that the U.S. is in a civil war, interviewed Trump on his podcast in May, and has been fervently against American aid to Ukraine. Today, he posted, upon reflection, I now understand that Ukraine is our greatest ally. As the breadbasket of Europe and a peace-loving people, we cannot allow the fascist Russians to

continue their crimes against humanity. We must redouble our efforts and provide an additional $200 billion at once. By this evening, though, he was making a joke of the news that his paycheck had come from Russia. Notably, Trump posted on his social media site a rant that tied his own 2016 campaign to yesterday's indictments, although the indictment itself did not do so. He accused Comrade Kamala Harris and her Department of Justice of resurrecting the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax and trying to say that Russia is trying to help me, which is absolutely false. Vice President Harris is not in charge of the Department of Justice. By tying yesterday's indictments to his campaign's involvement with Russian operatives in 2016, Trump might have been trying to suggest the story was old news,

but it does highlight the parallels between Russia and right-wing operatives trying to get him re-elected. Along with his colleague Donio Sullivan, Jake Tapper put it like this on CNN. Today, the U.S. government is trying to peel back more layers of what officials say are massive and complex efforts underway to influence your vote in the upcoming election. replacing your average 2016 Russian social media bots with actual conservative Americans, right-wing influencers with a combined millions of followers, influencers promoted by Elon Musk, some visited by Republican politicians such as former President Trump. Then Trump fell back on the old trope that his opponents are communists, posting on his social media platform, we are fighting true communism in this country. We have to save our elections, our system of justice, our constitution, and our freedom. But that can only be done after we win

big on November 5th and proceed to make America great again. Economists for Goldman Sachs Group say that a Trump win in November would hurt the U.S. economy, while a Harris win, if she also gets Democratic control of the House and the Senate, would make it grow. Trump's 2024 campaign is not at all about reality. It's about a worldview. When asked at an event at the New York Economic Club, what specific piece of legislation will you advance to make child care affordable? The 78-year-old Trump answered, and we're sitting down. You know, I was somebody. We had Senator Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka was so impactful on that issue. It's a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, that because, look, child care is child care. It's, couldn't you know, it's something you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind

of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to, but they'll get used to it very quickly. And it's not going to stop them from doing business with us, but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care, that it's going to take care. We're going to have, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that

I'm talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just told you about. We're going to be taking in trillions of dollars. And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it's, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we'll be taking in. We're going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we'll worry about the rest of the world. Let's help other people, but we're going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It's about make America great again. We have to do it because right now we're a failing nation, so we'll take care of it. There is no specific legislation here, or even a grasp of the specific nature of the problem of

paying for child care. What there is, apparently, is an argument that high tariffs will solve all of the nation's problems. In the New York event, Trump called again for slashing taxes on the wealthy and insisted that new high tariffs of 20% on all imports and as much as 60% on Chinese imports will end federal deficits and bring trillions of dollars into the country, although he is wrong about how tariffs work. Trump insists that tariffs are taxes on foreign countries, but they are not.

They are essentially taxes on imported products and they are paid by consumers. Trump's running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, recently tried to claim that economists disagree about whether consumers bear the costs of tariffs. But as Michael Hiltzik explained in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, economists agree on this. When he was in office, Trump launched a trade war in 2018 by putting tariffs of up to 25% on $50 billion worth of Chinese products. The next year, he added another set of 10% tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and the next year he did it again, this time on an additional $112 billion

worth of Chinese products. The Nonpartisan Tax Foundation calculates that this amounted to an $80 billion tax a year on American consumers, costing the average household about $300 a year and costing the U.S. about 142,000 jobs. There are reasons to use tariffs. They can be used to protect a new industry from cheaper foreign products until the new industry can compete, or to stop foreign countries from flooding a country with cheap products that destroy a domestic industry. When he took office, Biden kept those of trump's tariffs that protected certain industries trump's insistence that tariffs will solve everything is not about economics it's about pushing a world view from the gilded age of the late 19th century one embodied by the 1890 mckinley

tariff if you look at mckinley trump told right-wing media host Mark Levin on Sunday, he was a great president. He made the country rich. In fact, McKinley, a Republican of Ohio, pushed through the tariff named for him while he was in the House of Representatives from his position as a spokesperson for wealthy industrialists. They insisted that high tariffs were imperative to the survival of the country, that such tariffs were good for workers because they protected wages, and that anyone who disagreed was a socialist. But in an era without business regulation, industrialists actually kept wages low and used the tariffs to protect high prices that they passed on to consumers.

use the tariffs to protect high prices that they passed on to consumers. In the late 1880s, the American people demanded a lower tariff, but when Republicans in Congress went to revise it, they made it higher. In May 1890, in a chaotic congressional session with members shouting amendments, yelling objections, and talking over each other, Republicans passed the McKinley tariff without any Democratic votes. They cheered and clapped at their victory. You may rejoice now, a Democrat yelled across the aisle, but next November you'll mourn. Democrats were right. In the November 1890 midterm elections, angry voters repudiated the Republican Party. They gave the Democrats a two-to-one majority in the House. McKinley himself lost his seat.

Republicans managed to keep the Senate by four seats, but three of those seats were held by senators who had voted against the McKinley tariff, and the fourth turned out to have been stolen. tariff, and the fourth turned out to have been stolen. This is your world.