Trump’s Mistake & Bank Downgrades – Top 3 Takeaways – August 16th, 2023
- Huge Trump mistake – he's taking the bait again. Yesterday, on the back of Monday night’s indictment in Fulton County, Georgia, the former and perhaps future President of the United States “Truthed” this: A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia is almost complete & will be presented by me at a major News Conference at 11:00 A.M. on Monday of next week in Bedminster, New Jersey. Based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others - There will be a complete EXONERATION! They never went after those that Rigged the Election. They only went after those that fought to find the RIGGERS! I have no idea how all of Trump’s indictments will play out. Charged with 91 counts across two state indictments and two federal indictments, the possibilities as to what happens here are just about endless. Up to and including Donald Trump winning a presidential election while behind bars. That’s an actual possibility that’s not terribly farfetched. But Trump’s “Truth”, which I just shared with you, is the best insight yet into what this next year might look like from Trump’s perspective.
- There are legal realities and there are political realities. And as I mentioned yesterday, the state indictments in Georgia and New York hold the potential for the greatest legal peril for Trump. That’s due to the inability for any president to pardon him of any potential state convictions. This is surely not lost on him. He’s now in a position where it’s possible that his primary concern is legal jeopardy in these state cases with a secondary consideration of winning the presidential election. And that’s problematic for one very important reason which is illustrated in Trump’s “truth”. As I’ve consistently said about Trump’s proclivity to talk about the 2020 election as “being stolen” ... Elections are always about the future. They’re never about the past. Anyone, including Donald Trump who runs on the past will lose. This has been proven historically, this has been proven as recently as last year’s midterm election cycle, with candidates running in states where they said the elections had been rigged and were stolen in 2020, losing in 2022. And most specifically it happened in three critical battleground states – Arizona, Pennsylvania and yes, Georgia. In those three key states, in a cycle in which Republicans beat Democrats by 2.8% nationally, each Trump-backed candidate that played the rigged election card lost. Most specifically, as it applies to Georgia, where the latest charges have been brought, you have the case of Brian Kemp. Kemp was the governor Trump relentlessly attacked for “allowing” in Trump’s words, the rigged election to happen. He won reelection by 7.5% at the same time, the Trump-backed candidate Herschel Walker lost the Senate race by 2.8%. That’s a problem as Trump is evidently set to go all-in on Georgia’s 2020 election being rigged. And speaking of Brian Kemp, yesterday in response to Trump he posted this on X: The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward - under oath - and prove anything in a court of law. Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor. The future of our country is at stake in 2024 and that must be our focus. It isn’t possible to win over new voters by running on the past. In fact, there’s only the potential to lose some you already have. Trump also runs the very real risk of having some of his supporters not even voting because of a belief the election is rigged anyway. As I’ve said previously, Trump can win the 2024 Presidential Election. However, he only will if he leaves the past behind. The best argument which can be made for a non-Trump candidate in the Republican nomination process is this one. All of the indictments, but especially the most recent one, represent bait for Trump to take. Trump appears to be taking it. This is a bit of an oversimplification, but I bet it holds true. If the Republican candidate for president wins Georgia next year, they’ll win the presidential election. If they lose Georgia, they’ll lose the presidential election. Maybe what Trump’s intending to reveal will help him legally in Georgia (though not likely), but it almost assuredly won’t help him politically in Georgia which could be a huge problem next year if he’s the GOP nominee.
- Fitch warns it may be forced to downgrade dozens of banks, including JPMorgan Chase. What’s that? That happens to be a CNBC headline yesterday that implies, and not just a little, that the banking crisis is anything but over. So now we have three consecutive weeks with three significant credit ratings warnings in the financial markets. Two weeks ago, Fitch downgraded the US credit rating... one week ago Moody’s cut the credit ratings of not one, not two, but ten U.S. banks and placed a host of big-name banks on a ratings downgrade watch. And yesterday Fitch was back saying they may need to cut bank ratings further than Moody’s did in the prior week. The ratings downgrade review by Fitch includes a total of 70 US banks – including, as referenced, JPMorgan Chase. I still don’t know where all of this is going, but for a while many people, many investors, seemed to think the odds were that it really would just work out. It could still happen, but Moody’s told you they don’t think it will be smooth from here and Fitch is indicating something perhaps even bigger could be in the offing if everything doesn’t break just right from here. There’s what amounts to a drip, drip, drip of hints that there could be a second phase of the banking crisis which plays out this fall. It’s a good time to pay down debt, it’s not a good time for any number of reasons starting with interest rates, to be taking more of it on.