I don’t find Donald Trump’s boasts about graduating from the famed Wharton business school troubling. Even though he doesn’t have an MBA or a degree in business (he transferred to Wharton and only earned a bachelor’s in economics), as a fellow Ivy League graduate, I sympathize with him (during grad school, I had professors named Dr. Evan Yale and Cornell Scott. Plus, when you add the color of the woman who raised me, technically, I’m a graduate of Yale, Cornell and Brown, so ...)
I’m sure Trump was the guy in the group project who never did any of the research but took full credit for everyone else’s work. Yet, unlike most charlatans, Trump continues to wade into intellectual waters that are too deep for someone who can’t read a balance sheet or understand how business works.
On Thursday, Trump pulled out his gold iPhone (you know I’m not lying) and went to Twitter to explain why he keeps pushing Congress to fund his dumb-ass border wall despite his original assertion that he would make Mexico pay for it.
Trump claims that the money saved from the still-unsigned U.S., Mexico, Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA) is his genius way of getting Mexico to pay for his Great Wall of Racism.
Basically, all he did was change the definition of the word “pay.” But that’s not how this works. That’s not how anything works.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday, according to the Washington Post. “Maybe he doesn’t understand how a trade agreement works.”
The Post notes:
But Trump is claiming that this new trade deal, even though the outcome is uncertain, would somehow pay for the wall, an assertion that has stumped many budget experts.
“Boy, this is a stretch,” said William Hoagland, a former Republican staff director of the Senate Budget Committee.
Hoagland said the only reasoning he could contemplate to back up Trump’s Twitter post Thursday is that if the U.S. economy grows because of the new trade deal, Trump could claim that the new tax revenue is a bonus and therefore is somehow related to Mexico.
But he said the same reasoning could be used to say that Canada is paying for the wall’s construction. Hoagland also said that none of this new money would actually come from Canada or Mexico. In addition, Hoagland said he could not see a scenario under which the USMCA would “save” taxpayer money, as Trump asserted in his Twitter post.
Again, as a grad of Cornell, Brown and Yale, allow me to explain.
The border wall will be paid for by American taxpayers. But the new Republican tax laws gave so many tax breaks to the wealthy that middle-income earners and the poor will eventually shoulder the costs. This will make most people poorer, meaning that they will only be able to afford to eat from Taco Bell’s dollar menu where you can buy 83 chalupas for a buck.
After millions of American assholes turn into temporary fondue fountains from widespread irritable bowel syndrome caused by a steady diet of Taco Bell’s meat-adjacent ingredients, they will have to buy bubblegut medicine. But once Obamacare is repealed, we will only be able to afford to buy prescription medicine from Mexico and Canada. The people who can’t travel out of the country will be forced to use herbal remedies, lowering the price of legalized marijuana.
So, although Trump’s policies will create a bizarro world where American citizens will have to go to Mexico for decent medical care, this also means that Mexican gangs will be coming to the United States to get cheap weed and tacos. That influx of legal dope money will pay for the wall.
It’s the same brilliant economic argument I used when debt collectors have the nerve to question me about my student loans. I don’t know why they can’t understand that I’m planning on signing a book deal with Fenty Publishing (Rihanna owns a publishing house, right?) and sell so many books that it will make Michelle Obama’s Becoming look like a Soulja Boy album. I’m about to take over the publishing world like Cash Money records did in ’99 and 2000 ...
As I often state, one way or another, RihRih’s gonna pay for these student loans.