Donald Trump’s Taco Thursday
By now, we’ve all heard of the new Wall Street term, TACO Trade, for Trump Always Chickens Out on tariffs and his other disastrous economic policies. We also all know Trump has been itching to do his own Putin style unprovoked attack on a sovereign state.
Apparently, Trump found a target closer to home, the sovereign state of California. It also appears that Trump’s big birthday parade was always going to be a Putinesque consolidation of military force in Washington D.C. We also all knew this day would come.
Personally, I incorrectly assumed the implementation of Project 2025 was going to be more like Project 2029 or 2033, since it seemed unthinkable Trump would ever get another shot at the presidency. And, I thought Trump wouldn’t incite Martial Law until we were closer to the midterm elections.
But it turns out, as soon as Republicans stole the White House, the Senate, and the House in 2024, of which we now have proof, they are “all gas, no brakes.” This style of Accelerationist Politics goes against traditional democracy, environmentalism, protectionism and other ideologies. Trump and his Freedom Caucus have been forcing disastrous economic policy, corruption, and unconstitutional assaults on us from Day 1 of this administration.
The Republican Party’s end game is to install a right-wing regime indefinitely, through the reshaping the U.S. government, by any means possible, as explicitly laid out in Project 2025. Trump, congressional Republicans, and the conservative SCOTUS are all complicit in the mafia state lying, stealing, cheating, threats, bribes, and executive immunity.
But Trump’s attack of Los Angeles and other blue cities by provoking residents with illegal ICE raids to spark protests, then sending in covert agitators to commit violence and make it look like it was the protesters, has revealed something. Our side is also “all gas, no brakes.”
As a Los Angeles resident who has been to every downtown (always peaceful) protest since February 2017, I have been in an elevated state of stress. But, I’m energized because the protests just keep growing, Governor Newsom, Mayor Bass, and democratic congress members have been defiant, Glendale ended its agreement with ICE to detain immigrants, and reporters like Lawrence O’Donnell are fearlessly speaking the truth. We remain undaunted and, as always, I will be at the June 14th downtown LA protests. This is the moment of truth. The ultimate game of chicken. Will this be TACO tyranny? Will Trump blink first? Or will we crash head on, and nobody wins?
Chicago native Lorraine Evanoff earned her degree in French from DePaul University then became a Certified Financial Manager. She worked as a finance exec in film production for seven years in Paris, then in Silicon Valley during the dot-com era, and later for various Hollywood production companies, notably as CFO of National Lampoon. She is currently living in Los Angeles with her husband.