Trump Launches Soul-Crushing-Jobs Program
Trump's re-re-reversal on non-reciprocal "reciprocal" tariff exemption exception exclusions will create millions of dehumanizing jobs that no human wants
Apr. 14: Trump takes exception at calling his tariff exceptions “exceptions” … Warren and the Wall Street Journal join the coalition of the willing in the Global War on Tariffism … Internal document shows Rubio knew in his lying heart that he didn’t have shit on the grad student he kidnapped … Sanders rally is his biggest ever even if that makes Politico sad …
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Once upon a time, economists dreamed of the day when robots and computers and automation would lift the burden of labor from the backs of toiling Americans. No longer would Americans do arduous physical labor now done by machine.
With the economy thus bolstered — equitably! — by machine labor, there would be less physical labor and less work of every sort. Just as humans invented the two-day weekend, they would yet again engineer a quantum leap of leisure time to stroll promenades, linger in museums, laugh with friends, and confront awkward feelings at indie movies.
Well, Pres. Donald Trump is here to free us from this dystopian nightmare.
In a statement yesterday, he explained that there actually are no tariff exceptions for electronics, meaning all those glorious jobs assembling tiny components will soon be the province of millions of Americans who thought American prosperity was going to mean they could be artists or forest rangers.
For a moment on Friday, it appeared as if the Kafkaesque dream of a career hunched over an endless iPhone assembly line would remain limited to impoverished, exploited people in other countries.
That’s because, on Friday, Trump’s Customs and Border Protection (CPB) released a list of products and components that were exempt from Trump’s non-reciprocal “reciprocal” tariffs. The CBP list used words like “exclusion” and “exception.” (This will be important later!)
Then on Sunday, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick explained that the dream of monotonous physical labor was only a dream delayed, and that semiconductors and other digital crap exempt from “reciprocal” non-reciprocal tariffs would be un-exempted from new semiconductor tariffs which are coming “in a month or two,” Lutnick said. “Probably.”
Adding in his mind, “Who the fuck knows with President Flibbertijibbet.”
Then, on more-Sunday, Trump said — presumably just to fuck with Lutnick because how can you not — that nothing had changed.
Even on Friday. Which is why the CBP definitely didn’t list excluded products. These aren’t the tariff exceptions you’re looking for.
“There was no Tariff ‘exception’,” Trump wrote, referring to the “exception” (callback!) his CBP definitely didn’t release a list of on Friday. “These products are subject to the existing 20% Fentanyl [sic] Tariffs, and they are just moving to a different Tariff ‘bucket.’”
Trump did not reveal what the new tariff will be on buckets.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), meanwhile, warned yesterday that companies will hold off on making new, years-long manufacturing plans as long as Trump keeps yo-yoing on the price of imported yo-yos.
“Investors will not invest in the United States when Donald Trump is playing ‘red light, green light,’” Warren said, even though Trump literally doesn’t drive and doesn’t give a shit about even metaphorical red lights such as women saying, “No,” and “Fuck off, what the fuck’s the matter with you, were you raised by goblins?”
Of course, stock markets operate on a very different timeline than factories do, so desperate-for-good-news traders decided to make markets go up today (for who knows how long), praying that Friday’s non-exception “exception” for semiconductors would prove to be the exception to Trump’s tariffs that he said they’re not an exception for.
Good luck with those five-year plans, Corporate America!
Here Are the Jobs Trump Wants for Your Children That You’re Not Having, America
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick actually managed to make some news a week ago previewing the kinds of jobs future Americans will hold.
Lutnick said on CBS that “trillions of dollars of factories are going to be built in America.” CBS’s Margaret Brennan then reminded Lutnick that he had said those factories would be populated by robots.
But Lutnick promised that those robots wouldn’t be alone! They’ll have the next generation of Americans for company:
“...remember, the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones; that kind of thing is going to come to America. It's going to be automated and great Americans — the tradecraft of America — is going to fix them, is going to work on them. They're going to be mechanics. There's going to be HVAC specialists. There's going to be electricians, the tradecraft of America. Our high-school educated Americans — the core to our workforce — is going to have the greatest resurgence of jobs in the history of America to work on these high-tech factories, which are all coming to America. That's what's going to build our next generation of America.”1
Those, however, are many different things. And, hilariously, tariffs have nothing to do with HVAC specialists and electricians. Have you ever imported an electrician? (Not kink-shaming, just asking.)
No, it was the prospect of armies of Americans wielding teeny-tiny screwdrivers for the rest of their lives that made news. And White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt double down, saying that Trump “believes we have the labor, we have the workforce, we have the resources to do it. And, as you know, Apple has invested $500 billion here in the United States.”
Technically, Apple has said it’s investing $500 billion. And as I helped report for TYT back during the first Trump misadministration, Apple lies about investing and jobs.
But Trump has shown he won’t be held hostage to your bourgeois “reality,” man. His job plan isn’t weighed down by the reality of which jobs America actually needs. Pulling food out of the ground, for instance, doesn’t jibe with Trump’s man-dream of gleaming, oily men swinging sledgehammers, so there’s no plan for replacing the migrant workers who make our food-supply-chains work.
And health care is even less manly in Trump World — where every nurse is a woman who moonlights as a porn star — so his voters will have to wipe their own disgusting drool and other squidgy extrusions their own damn immobilized selves.
What we will be getting, though, is healthcare for robots.
“What are the jobs Americans are going to have?” Lutnick rhetorically asked on CNN. “We are going to have mechanics who fix robotics."
And it’s not just high-school graduates who’ll have these jobs. Thanks to Trump’s Wharton-educated management of the economy, crappy jobs are rapidly opening up to everyone.
SFGate reports that even scientists at the National Park Service are now being given shitty shifts cleaning the shitty shit of shitty tourists who can’t hit the shitter with the shitty shit they shit.
Yosemite workers including biologists, hydrologists, archaeologists, wildlife specialists and other scientists were assigned shifts on doody duty after division chiefs got an internal email ordering them to “identify staff that can be temporarily reassigned to custodial duties.”
The cruel irony, of course — beyond using your PhD to clean up pee and doody — is that America doesn’t need all these new jobs. Employment is doing pretty good! That’s why Florida and other Dickensian states are looking at expanding child labor to fill jobs they already can’t find people for.
And the crueler irony is that Pres. Joe Biden already set a massive jobs plan in motion — in sustainable energy.
Even the Right-Wing Wall Street Journal Hates Trump’s Jobs Plan
In a new editorial yesterday, even the terrifying right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board took an imported ginsu knife2 to Trump’s jobs “plan.” (Gift link because the whole thing’s worth reading and also because Communism.)
They call out the Lutnick/Leavitt lie about Apple and iPhone manufacturing jobs:
As CEOs and these columns have argued, there aren’t nearly enough American workers who could do that work. And even if there were, most of the economic value-added doesn’t come from final-stage assembly. It comes from design and higher-end component supply. It is no credit to the Trump Administration to have a Commerce secretary who knows so little about modern commerce.
And the right-wing editorial board points out that giant businesses benefit from exemptions while smaller industries, and smaller companies in industries that aren’t monopolized, suffer.
The tariffs supposedly are in response to an emergency, remember? So, the WSJ asks:
Imports of glassware and umbrellas from China are an emergency but imports of electronics aren’t? What are the [U.S.] Chamber of Commerce and other business groups waiting for to sue to block this presidential overreach?
Good question! Maybe this would be a good time to stand up for all the law firms Trump has rendered unlawful and unfirm!
As for who gets these not-an-exception exceptions, the Journal says, “the opacity of the process for getting one is the Beltway Swamp’s dream.”
Another zinger: “Tariffs are advertised in the name of helping American workers, but what do you know? They turn out to favor the powerful and politically connected.” If only someone had warned you, right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Trump’s non-exception exceptions, the WSJ argues, leave smaller companies out in the cold — because they can’t afford a coat — along with the workers they exploit:
Too bad if you make shoes, or clothing, or thousands of other consumer products that must pay the tariffs but lack the political or market clout to win exemptions. Too bad, too, if you’re a small manufacturer that relies on a component from China but can’t afford a high-priced K Street lobbyist.
Welcome to the resistance, right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board!
Christian Secretary of State False Witnessed His Ass Off
When Christian nationalist Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the unlawful, un-American, uncouth arrest and detention of Tufts grad student Rümeysa Öztürk, he was lying.
The Washington Post has learned that internal State Department documents show that Rubio’s agency knew the Trump administration had no evidence of Öztürk being antisemitic or sympathizing with Hamas.
No antisemitic or pro-Hamas activities. No antisemitic or pro-Hamas public statements. No antisemitic statements like Pres. Donald Trump’s. No pro-Hamas activities like the millions of dollars Israeli Pres. Benjamin Netanyahu funneled to Hamas.
Which means not only was Rubio smearing Öztürk, his reputation, his legacy, and the second or third line of his eventual obituary, he was confirming speculation that the administration had literally nothing on Öztürk except an op-ed she wrote last year.
And, in fact, Dept. of Homeland [sic] Security senior official Andre Watson wrote to State confirming that all they had was the op-ed:
“OZTURK engaged in anti-Israel activism in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israelis on October 7, 2023… Specifically [she] co-authored an Op-ed article … [that] called for Tufts to ‘disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.’”
As the Post notes, Rubio has hinted like a fucking liar with cooties in his brain that there’s more to Öztürk than the op-ed. “I would caution you against solely going off of what the media has been able to identify,” Rubio mouth-lied, making both Jesus and Moses cry, knowing full well — like a liar who chooses lying over not lying — that his own agency had secretly concluded that her opposition to Tufts’ ties to Israel did not constitute antisemitism or Hamas sympathizing.
THE OP-ED As I’ve mentioned before, I served as the editor-in-chief of the Tufts Daily when Pres. Donald Trump was still a tabloid joke. And last week, other Daily alumni and I released an open letter calling for Öztürk’s release.
BONUS STORY In case any of you Newsfuckers missed it, over the weekend your diligent TFN dug into the recent right-wing Supreme Court ruling that Trump can continue deporting accused Tren de Aragua members under the Alien Enemies Act. For now.
The Alien Enemies Act allows the government to detain and remove people acting as a hostile force for a foreign government, and Trump claims Venezuela is issuing Tren de Aragua’s marching orders, entitling him to those “invasion” powers he’s claiming.
Well, just like WMDs were the made-up casus belli for Iraq, Trump is using cherry-picked intelligence to make the connection between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government. So I connected the dots of where he’s getting his bullshit intelligence.
Spoiler: it’s bullshit. In a totally-ignored story last month, the Miami Herald revealed that a “team” of unidentified former U.S. and Venezuelan officials is feeding Trump info. Unidentified except for one. What the Herald didn’t mention, but TFN dug up, is the background of the one known guy on Trump’s bullshit-intel “team.”
You can read the details for yourself in the TFN Bonus Story, but in short, we’re being gaslit once again to give a president extraordinary martial powers again.
Kennedy to Avenge Slain Brothers By Returning the Favor to America
Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., lost his father and uncle to very, very sudden medical problems. And now it’s payback time.
Politico reports that Kennedy’s managed to sever vital arteries of information, cutting off health officials from health information. Meaning: Future America won’t know when health issues emerge and won’t know whether what they’re doing is working. Just like Kennedy’s father and uncle very suddenly didn’t!
Specifically, Politico says that Kennedy’s staffing cuts have eliminated entire departments that gather data about specific health conditions and patients. Among those on Kennedy’s revenge kill list:
Firefighters with cancer! (Literally, the National Firefighter Registry for Cancer went up in smoke).
Newborns getting HIV from their moms.
IVF babies (the congressionally mandated tracking of fertility-clinic success rates was strangled by Kennedy in the crib).
HIV babies.
Asthma rates.
Alcohol deaths.
Abortion counting.
Children with lead in their blood, which is just bad decision-making on their part.
Exposures to radon and other dangerous shit the Environmental Protection Agency is now committed to helping corporate America distribute widely.
America’s only lab capable of detecting “super gonorrhea,” declared an “urgent public health threat” and of obvious personal interest to both Pres. Donald Trump and Kennedy.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lab that analyzes state STD data to identify outbreaks that are again, and we can’t stress this enough, of intense personal interest to Trump and Kennedy.
Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, meaning risks to pregnancies, not the risks of pregnancies that are obviously of intense personal interest to Trump and Kennedy.
This is all obviously in the name of saving us money today that tomorrow we will wish to fuck we had spent and so will Trump and Kennedy as they die of super gonorrhea.
Four Quickies
Pres. Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff met briefly with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday, with more talks expected later this week. The Trump administration is seeking to end Iran’s nuclear program, which is now in its third decade of being within weeks of producing a nuclear weapon. Witkoff is coming off his diplomatic successes totally ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s de-Gazaing of Gaza.
Justice Department lawyers told a judge yesterday that the Supreme Court order compelling them to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvador prison doesn’t mean they have to get him out, just that they have to let him back in the U.S. if he perchance happens to leaves the high-security prison by his own devices as one does. Trump is meeting today with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who is facilitating using the Constitution to wipe Trump’s ass. The Justice Department is arguing that U.S. courts have no say over “foreign policy” and — once the courts buy that bullshit — will extend “foreign policy” to include everything.
Some stupid dipshit tried to blow up Gov. Josh Shapiro’s (D-PA) house real good. They failed, but made a mess, probably scared the shit out of his family, forced an evacuation, and apparently got his alleged ass arrested. The suspect reportedly confessed and told police he was angry at Shapiro and planned to beat him with a hammer. Because, y’know, with everything going on right now, obviously the real problem is Josh Shapiro.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) says his rally Saturday with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in Los Angeles was his largest ever, drawing 36,000 people. Politico reports that it was a failure because California isn’t as progressive as Sanders wants and is merely the most progressive state in the country.
TCB
SWAG Can’t even tell you Newsfuckers how amazing it is to see you sporting TFN swag on the front lines, but we got another dispatch from the April 5 rallies. Here’s Elizabeth rocking her TFN cap in Grass Valley, CA:
And Elizabeth wants everyone to know that “contagious” isn’t misspelled, the “u” is just smaller. TFN salutes this display of size diversity. You can score your own, overpriced, possibly soon-to-be-tariffed TFN swag at The TFN Shop.
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PLUG As promised, I am no longer plugging my interview on the Team Human website and YouTube. Glad that’s over!
ELECTIONS
Tomorrow, April 15 — Oakland, CA, mayoral special election
TAKING ACTION
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have added new dates to their Fighting Oligarchy tour. They’re appearing tonight in Idaho, and have upcoming rallies in California and Montana.
More upcoming events/actions:
Today-The Second Coming: Tesla boycott.
Saturday, April 19: National Day of Action.
April 21-27: General Mills Blackout.
RESOURCES
Mental reassurance that at least lawyers are fighting back on fill-in-the-blank.
REVOLVING DOOR PROJECT
The Revolving Door Project has a number of ways you can help and/or get help/info:
Tip line (assuming you didn’t send TFN your tip first!)
CONNECTING Come say hi on Bluesky, Mastodon or Spoutible!
Go get ‘em, kids!
TFN creator and writer Jonathan Larsen co-created Up w/ Chris Hayes and wrote for Countdown with Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, helped launch CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360° and Air America Radio, and has also worked at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Young Turks.
The next generation of Lutnicks, his two sons, practice the great American tradecraft of mindlessly working on millions of dollars while running his old company, Cantor Fitzgerald.
Ginsu is actually American. Who knew?!?
I just finished reading "1984" again. I'd forgot that it's followed by an Appendix that explains "Newspeak" and other language schemes in the new order of Big Brother. More proof that Humpty Dumpty was right about words meaning what he wants them to mean.
Morning laugh! You clearly need to do standup Jonathan. Hilariously funny and on point but crushingly serious at the same time that in 2025 we have to deal with these soulless, unintelligent “can’t think or find their way out of paper bag with two hands and a flashlight” folks in the Regime/Administration. We must find a way out of this. We have seen this show before and it does not end well for us. Thanks- great post!