How the shutdown benefits the Trump Administration: Economic data suspended and more government layoffs

If Donald Trump were to be pushed around the White House rose garden in a stroller by a JD Vance wearing a fanny pack full of emergency supplies such as Cheetos and other orange treats, the president would have thrown them all over the floor in a fit of bad temper. Despite the First Amendment protecting free speech and freedom of the press, as well as this clearly being a satirical hypothetical, I’d just like to point out to anyone reading this with a short attention span — including the president — that is is clearly not the case as far as we know.

Anyway, the President of the United States is clearly a firm believer in ‘it’s my way or the highway’ when it comes to everything from golf to government, and the latest disagreement in Congress has seen him take the keys to the Federal Government and lock the door, with Senators leaving town until at least Friday.

Parks, national monuments, and other hugely popular attractions that bring in millions of dollars annually are all shut down, with Federal control also warning of more serious consequences.

The FBI recently made clear that the shutdown could set off “an unprecedented range of national security and criminal threats” to the US, with the FBI Agents Association telling CNN that “a shutdown can undermine the FBI’s ability to perform its duties at a time when the country faces an unprecedented range of national security and criminal threats — from fentanyl trafficking and terrorism to violent crimes against children and cyberattacks.”

So why is Trump shutting down government? Well, the clearest reason behind the tantrum appears to be that the shutdown is a veil for Trump to fire Democrats and cut their programs. “Well, there could be firings, and that’s their fault,” the president warned, “We could cut projects they wanted, favourite projects, and they’d be permanently cut.” At this point, Trump is not even hiding the shift to a fascistic policy - he’s rooted his authoritarianism into government so well that he feels free to openly admit it.

The government shutdown also allows all the tumbling number counts that are falling like toppled LEGO bricks to be stopped: no longer are we officially counting rising jobless claims, impossibly squeezed retail sales, and ludicrous GDP data — if the numbers don’t exist, they can’t be used against the president.

However, as with most of Trump’s decisions and political moves, there is an analogy that can made involving a baby. And this is exactly like when you play peek-a-boo with a small child whose brain has not developed object permanence. For those who haven’t had their morning coffee yet, that’s the awareness of the fact that that even if I can’t see you, I know you haven’t popped out of existence behind your hands.

Of course, Trump’s brain has not developed object permanence (satire!), so if he can’t see the numbers laid out on a graph that’s the size of a small dinner table and in Comic Sans size 71 (not satire), the data does not exist and he cannot be criticised by the wokerati on the Radical Left (don’t forget the capital letters) for it.

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