"I can destroy the country!"

     Right about now, Donnie Dumbo is spackling the walls of the White House with Heinz ketchup. This morning, the Supreme Court struck down his sweeping tariffs as illegal. Trump had tried to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), thereby circumventing Congress. The Constitution in Article 1 invests Congress with the power to raise or lower tariffs. Trump saw the IEEPA as yet another way to do an end run around Congress.

     The problem for Trump was that he was never able to show just cause for invoking IEEPA or to show what the big emergency was. The lower courts had struck down Trump's tariffs and, as always, he just naturally assumed his lackeys on the Supreme Court would give him what he thinks he's entitled to.

     Another problem was that two of those lackeys, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, sided with Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberals on the court. Now Trump is fuming at them, calling them "an embarrassment to their families". He obviously looks upon the Supreme Court as a giant permission structure granting him the power to do whatever he wants.

     And now he's screaming and kicking his feet like a three year-old whose parents won't buy him that candy bar at the grocery store. For the foreseeable future, no sandcastle within reach of his cloven hooves will be safe.

     Of course, Trump never thinks he ever breaks laws. And when he does, he thinks they should be retroactively made legal or overlooked. And if the SCOTUS rules against him on the rare occasions they do, well, there must be a good reason for them to do so other than Trump being a serial crook who wants to run the US like a king or dictator.

     Naturally, Trump had that covered in his snarling, conspiratorial press conference today: The justices were in the grip of shadowy foreign influences. Of course, it's up to us to decide what those foreign influences were.

     And, it goes without saying that Trump is already showing his contempt for the high court by scheming ways to circumvent their ruling. Of course, he's no longer allowed to victimize nations, namely our biggest trade partners, All he can basically do is the equivalent of leaving flaming bags of dog shit on their stoop, ring the doorbell and run away.

     And what's perhaps the real source of Trump's discontent is the one thing to which the MSM should pay greater attention. This was what Trump said today:

     “But I am allowed to cut off any and all trade or business with that same country; in other words, I can destroy the trade, I can destroy the country! I'm even allowed to impose a foreign country-destroying embargo, I can embargo! I can do anything I want, but I can't charge $1!”

     That's patently false. The SCOTUS never said that he couldn't charge nations tariffs. He just cannot do it unilaterally without the consent of the US Congress. But the real source of his rage was in his inability to "destroy" nations with tariffs that are senseless and sadistically putative. Trump is incapable of actually creating anything worthwhile unless it's wealth for him or generational wealth for his family. 

     And tyrants like Trump always find it easier to destroy than to create. That's the true test of statesmanship. Does a head of state create rather than destroy? When it comes to Trump, I think we can agree on the fact that he fails the statesmanship test every single time.