YOU Get a Car Loan! And YOU Get a Car Loan!
YOU Get a Car Loan! And YOU Get a Car Loan!
Trump offered auto-loan tax breaks, which buyers will need after his tariffs raise car prices
Oct. 11: Trump talks more price-hiking tariffs … AOC vows war to defend Lina Khan … RIP, 73% of Earth’s animals … Nobel Peace Prize a blatant conflict of interest …
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Was it a coincidence that Tesla CEO Elon Musk self-rolled out his long-awaited-by-credulous-bros robotaxi yesterday, on the same day Pres. Donald Trump promised to end taxes on car loans?
What, you think they plan shit?
Trump was in Detroit yesterday, addressing an audience of middle-class workers rich people when his brain suddenly issued the newest of his campaign promises that he didn’t mention once during his four years already in the White House.
Because Detroit = cars, Trump said many things about cars, regardless of whether they made sense. His well-thought-out impulse promises included:
Making auto loans tax deductible,
Raising tariffs on Chinese cars assembled in Mexico as high as 1,000%, a number Trump calculated on the spot which just happened to be very round, and
Blocking Chinese auto parts from coming into the U.S. via Mexico, possibly by building some sort of wall.
Reportedly, Americans are carrying $1.6 trillion in debt on their car loans. So Americans could save a lot of money not paying taxes on that $1.6 trillion. Which is good because they’ll need that savings to be able to afford cars under rePresident Trump.
That’s because raising tariffs on imported cars means prices on those cars go up. And what does Detroit do when import prices go up? That’s right, Trump’s plan will raise U.S. auto prices. That’s what tariffs do — eliminating overseas advantages of cheaper labor, non-existent environmental rules, etc. — so that American manufacturers can now afford the higher costs of manufacturing in America…by raising their prices.
Related: See TFN’s deep-ish dive on tariffs and the lies about same by Sen. JD Vance (R-OH).
In short, U.S. car buyers will see little or no benefit, since the tax savings will be eaten up or even surpassed by higher car prices. So who will benefit?
Banks will make out like bandits banks, because higher car prices means more money loaned to buy them and because more people will be able to afford auto loans without having to pay taxes on them. And car companies will make out like banks because they’ll be able to raise prices without international competition driving prices down.
And if a single auto executive proposes keeping prices low, the very next day they’ll get a memo reading, “Bill, we poisoned your three lunch martinis and told Israel your kids are Hamas. Of course we took your pension.”
But the point isn’t the dumbness of Trump or his voters, the point is that Trump is yet again running to the left of Democrats, on a platform of swing-state socialism.
As Politico notes, Trump has already promised to cap (already capped) credit-card interest rates, and to eliminate taxes on tips, Social Security benefits, and overtime. Which just means that C-suite executives would now be paid in tips, overtime, and Social Security benefits.
So Trump is effectively upending decades of Republican doctrine and just buying votes by giving shit to people, which is what Republicans used to accuse Democrats of doing before Democrats forgot that for fifty years FDR was American Jesus and so Democrats shifted instead to promising us an “opportunity economy” and “modernizing” our economy by letting bankers turn mortgages into derivatives and ultimately just magically make up money on their computers.
In the 2016 campaign it was Trump who said socialized health care sounded awesome and only let himself off the hook for not pushing it here by claiming — without explaining — that it wouldn’t work here. Which only means it wouldn’t get passed here. So, somewhere in his head, Trump understands that (a) giving people shit is good politics and (b) there’s actually no good reason not to.
Which means our best bet for universal health care might be a Republican president, if we can first just redraw the map of America so that every state’s a swing state.
MORE LEFT-FLANKERY Vice Pres. Kamala Harris so far has refused to say whether she’ll keep Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. After Harris’s surrogate, billionaire Mark Cuban, said he’d federally trade Khan for someone else, progressive Democrats — and Democrats who see this race as a battle of policy priorities — rose up yesterday.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) got all Bronx on Cuban’s bullshit, writing, “[S]ince billionaires have been trying to play footsie with the ticket: Anyone goes near Lina Khan and there will be an out and out brawl. And that is a promise.”
TFN told you earlier this week about Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sticking up for Khan. Over the summer, TFN confessed that Khan’s about as close as TFN will ever come to stanning anyone. And who else thinks Khan’s doing a good job?
Meet Sen. JD Vance (R-OH). Vance acknowledges his party hates Khan for battling to break up big companies the way the federal government is supposed to have been doing since the days of the other Roosevelt, President Teddy. (h/t)
“A lot of my Republican colleagues … say, ‘Well, Lina Khan is sort of engaged in some sort of fundamental evil thing.’ And I guess I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job.”
That’s because Vance represents the GOP’s anti-corporate wing. And that’s not just Republicans who hate “woke” corporations. Some of them, like Vance, understand how big corporations have demolished Main Street and small business and small towns.
People can call it horseshoe theory, but there’s no point blaming the horse when it’s the blacksmith making the horseshoes. Okay, terrible analogy. The point is that Democrats used to be strong on this, and whether they’ve sold out or been so bullied by Republicans that they now feel obliged to be corporate friendly, either way they’re again vulnerable on their left flank and there’s a growing re-alignment among Republicans to exploit that vulnerability.
If that brand of Republican populism wins, the people Democrats are fighting to protect will lose out. The best way to protect disenfranchised people — women, people of color, LGBTQ+ — is to fight harder than Republicans do against the rich people who would deny us an economy that benefits all of us. Speaking of whom…
Musk Delivers New Technology for Killing People
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s robotaxi finally showed up last night. Musk told a crowd of gullible sheep at a Tesla presentation that his company’s long-awaited-by-sad-people Cybercab has no steering wheel and no pedals, finally making good on the promised dream of motorized, autonomous coffins.
Musk said the Cybercabs will self-roll-out in 2026. But the alleged tech that’s allegedly behind them will be available in some Teslas starting next year, Musk said at the presentation in Hollywood, world capital of lies.
With unsupervised, full self-driving mode, Musk said, you can go anywhere. If you’re a passenger, Musk said, “you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” including Heaven.
To demonstrate just how innovative he is, Musk called the presentation “We, Robot,” re-innovating Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot.” And Musk called his robot “Optimus,” disrupting Hasbro’s Transformers. The terms “Robotaxi” and “Cybercab” deploy similarly derivative portmanteau technology, or portmantech, as I’ve just invented totally new from whole cloth.
What Musk didn’t unveil last night was what the fuck to do about drivers losing their jobs. And neither of our political parties is funding research on tech capable of autonomously driving automation’s profits to the people. Instead, Tesla and every other company have programmed their GPSes to self-drive all the fruits of automation directly to C-suite executives. No passengers.
Of course, in the past of America 100 years ago, people rejoiced in the promise of automation and robots. That’s because they believed any society smart enough to have robots would share the benefits. Ha ha stupid past people.
As of this morning, the unofficial Tesla death rate stands at 47 people. But here comes 2025!
Three Out of Four Animals Aren’t
In the past 50 years, Earth’s animal population has dropped by 73%, a new study estimates. (h/t)
In less bloodless words, that means humans took less than half a century to wipe out the vast majority of Earth’s living creatures.
The World Wildlife Fund issued its report earlier this week, without changing its name to the World Less-Wildlife Fund.
Environmental organizations have been tracking the populations of 5,495 species of fish, mammals, birds, and reptiles, and it’s getting a lot harder. Here are some of the specific findings, in case you want to feel especially guilty about any particular animal:
Freshwater fish populations: -85%
Ocean populations: -56%
Animals smart enough to live on land (mammals and reptiles): -69%
“The fabric of nature is unraveling,” said WWF Chief Scientist Rebecca Shaw. Which you’d think would be someone’s lead story, especially The Fucking News, right? But who’s gonna click on the unraveling of the fabric of nature, amirite?
Anyway, if you’re freaking out wondering what we’re going to eat, just remember that factory farms are hard at work growing the population of chickens and cows.
And science is constantly inventing new sources of food, such as nutritious unemployed drivers.
Groceries Are Actually More Affordable Now Than They Were Under Trump
Yes, the sticker price for groceries is higher than it was back in 2019. But Americans — and people who live in America but aren’t Americans but do eat food — are on average making more money now than they did in 2019.
Which means, according to a new analysis by MarketWatch, that a smaller chunk of your day is spent working for food money. As MarketWatch writes, “[I]t’s easier for the average American worker to put food on the table than it was a couple of years ago.”
Here’s what that looks like, courtesy of MarketWatch’s handy chart showing how much of your workweek is dedicated to fending off starvation:
And the rising wages being calculated here aren’t even being skewed by the obscenely inflated salaries of middle management or the passive income earned stoled by our oligarchs!
So, our high-sugar, processed foodstuffs still cost more, but we actually have more cash left over now for buying shit to fill the void in our lives created by a culture of consumerism. Yay! And if it doesn’t feel that way, just remember that under Democratic presidents everything is terrible because Republicans say so and what’re media gonna do, not report that?
Russia’s Neighbor Awards Nobel for Anti-Nuke Efforts in Clear Conflict of Interest
Norway’s Nobel Committee this morning awarded the prestigious annual Nobel Peace Prize, which comes with a million dollars cash, to a group of atomic-bomb survivors working for “a world free of nuclear weapons.”
The group, Nihon Hidankyo, which roughly translates as Japan bomb shelter, was formed by survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, meaning they’re incredibly old.
Beyond the unspeakable cruelty of handing all that money to people with only years or weeks left to enjoy it, the Nobel Committee had an obvious conflict of interest in the award.
The committee praised the group for “demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.” Adding in the committee’s minds, especially not used by Russia, on us.
The closest thing the committee came to full disclosure was acknowledging that the “taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure.” No one specifically mentioned recent nuclear threats by Russian President Vladimir Putin, but you can bet his ears were burning.
The peace prize was established by Alfred Nobel, using money he got from inventing dynamite. His will outlines three goals for winners to pursue: Improving fraternity between nations, abolishing or reducing standing armies, and holding or promoting peace congresses.
Pretty sure no one’s ever qualified to win one for abolishing or reducing a standing army, though.
Crime Watch
A criminal gang pleaded guilty yesterday to laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in drug money, with transactions totaling $18.3 trillion now in question.
Normally, the sentence for narcotics warlords is lifetime exile to an off-world work camp mining adamantium and dilithium crystals on the prison planet of Takron-Galtos.
But there’s zero prison time when the warlords are bankers. Especially when they’re Canadian bankers, like the nice folks laundering drug money at TD Bank. (The “TD” stands for Too Dirty, eh.)
So the punishment for the company, which we should note is a legal fiction, is to pay $3 billion for being a key part of the drug gangs who prey on our children and cocaine-fueled executives. And the punishment for the individual bankers who preyed on our children and cocaine-fueled executives? Well, uh, their company has to pay $3 billion!
No, when you’re a banker your sentence is an extremely contrite press release. That’s your cue, CEO Bharat Masrani: “These failures took place on my watch as CEO and I apologize to all our stakeholders.”
He apologized, okay? What more do you bloodthirsty Newsfuckers want from the man?
Should-Be-a-Crime Watch
Former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) is running for Senate against Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks. Polls show that he’s currently losing. It’s not clear that their one and only debate last night helped either of them.
And it definitely won’t help Hogan that word came this week about how often the state helped Hogan’s clients.
Hogan came to office as governor from a business as a real-estate broker. So when the state ethics office reminded him that the state Treasury isn’t a piggy bank for his business, Hogan double pinky swore that he would have nothing to do with his business, aside from the ways he’d remain involved with it.
Well, it turns out while he was governor, almost 40% of the state’s affordable-housing competitive bids were won by his company’s clients. Specifically, won by just six companies out of more than 60 companies competing, according to Time Magazine. And, yes, there’s a phrase I’ve not heard in many years. Good for you, Time Magazine!
And according to Time, because I just like saying that, the awards were doled out by the state’s three-member Board of Public Works, one of whose three members is Hogan. And he voted multiple times to give his clients those state awards, at the same time he was still participating in his company’s leadership meetings.
Let’s all remember that Hogan didn’t want to run. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) recruited Hogan to avoid having some Trumpian clownshow blow the race, calling Hogan his “best” recruit. Y’know, because Hogan didn’t say something stupid, he just profited off the state taxpayers.
I’m sure McConnell will have a good laugh over that one with Senator Alsobrooks.
TCB
JOURNALISMING I’m hoping to get a new story posted on the Jonathan Larsen Substack this weekend. I’ll have a link to it in the very next TFN, but if you want to have it emailed to you as soon as it appears — or if you want to support the original reporting I do — you can become a free or paid subscriber. Thanks, I’m excited to see where this one goes!
NICOLE SANDLER I know, I know — I lied about this week’s Monday edition of The Nicole Sandler Show, of which there wasn’t one. I’m told, however, that next Monday will definitely be The Fucking News day with me and Nicole Sandler. So please join me and Nicole live on Monday at 5pm eastern time.
As always, you can support TFN with a one-time PayPal donation or by upgrading to a paid subscription. You can also support TFN by restacking and sharing it on social media. We’re on Threads, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon, Spoutible, and Twitter.
The election is less than four weeks away. I recommend LOLGOP’s Substack for finding things you can do and BoltsMag.org for good reporting on lower-profile races. Most of all, TFN recommends keeping calm and carrying on.
Give yourself a good weekend, and go get ‘em, kids!
Thank you as always Jon. I watched the very strange cult performance of the Muskie, it was the same old shit and fake promises as always and so you need Optimus to serve the drinks.
TD, huh. Now there is a surprise. 🙄