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In times like these do I really need a billionaire
Just takin' all my time tryna tell me how he's treated unfair?
- Hayes Carll
It’s bad enough that people just can’t let go of this whole Epstein thing, but now numbers and a Brazilian judge and South Park have all been placed on Donald Trump’s naughty list, which is not the same thing as Epstein’s naughty list, which Trump is not on like nobody’s ever been not on a list before. Besides, Trump says, this Epstein thing is all a Democrat (sic) hoax, and you are stupid if you believe in it.
There are many other things and people turning Trump orange with rage. Those Texas Democrats who are rigging the election by keeping him from rigging the election really get on his nerves—and on Senator John Cornyn’s nerves, too. We must sic the FBI on them, and ICE, since they crossed all those open borders between states. Those Democrats belong in Texas, and we should not let that remind us of how Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred to a cushy minimum-security prison there.
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Teenagers in Washington, DC have drawn Trump’s ire by assaulting [ [link removed] ] Edward Coristine, a former DOGE bro who is now officially employed by the Social Security Administration. Trump has said that the teens should all be tried as adults, and he has threatened to federalize the city. The demographics of Washington, DC and the President’s Central-Park-Five-style overreaction bring to mind a particular subset of teenagers: those who don’t look at all like Sydney Sweeney.
You may remember Coristine as the kid who was dismissed from an internship for giving or selling his employer’s proprietary information to a competitor. But don’t worry: he’s probably not all that interested in divulging your Social Security information. He is also the guy who called himself “Big Balls,” and we all know what that means. No word on whether his tiny testicles were injured in the assault or how many people experienced an attack of Schadenfreude when they heard about it.
Speaking of big balls, Donald Trump is also upset that not everyone loves his plans for a 90,000-square-foot, $200-million ballroom at the White House. Sketches reveal that the ballroom would be decorated in a Versailles-gone-wrong style, which will make all of those people losing their healthcare insurance so proud. Let them eat cake—as long as they can pay.
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All the President wants is a ballroom and a jet decorated in a tacky-yet-pretentious style that only he could love. Is that asking too much? Aviation experts and engineers claim that refurbishing his shiny Qatari luxury jet could cost taxpayers $1 billion [ [link removed] ] or more. Trump has never liked experts or math, so these so-called experts and engineers are really getting him steamed. This is the best deal ever for the American people, and we should all leave it at that, just like Congressional Republicans will.
The perfect storm of expertise and numbers was former Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, who Trump fired for being the bearer of bad news. When the President heard that his tariff schemes were affecting the economy exactly as economists had predicted, he fired [ [link removed] ] and disparaged Dr. McEntarfer. Bad enough that the BLS reported an anemic 73,000 jobs created in July, but they also revised the May and June numbers downward by 280,000 jobs. Manufacturing lost 11,000 jobs and has now shed jobs three months in a row. In 2024, job growth averaged 168,000 jobs per month. The 2025 average is just 85,300 jobs per month. That can’t be true in Donald Trump’s world, where the United States has the strongest economy ever.
The tariffs and Trump-Always-Chickens-Out uncertainty negatively affected hiring. The worst part of Trump’s resulting tantrum over the jobs report is how it has created the same uncertainty about future economic data. If the next jobs report is better, will it be a true sign of economic strength or just political propaganda? How will we know? How will investors and policy makers and the rest of the world know? This is very dangerous territory.
We all know how the Trump administration feels about American Judges getting in their way, but now they have sanctioned a Brazilian supreme court judge and slapped a 50% tariff on the country for bringing Trump’s crybaby buddy Jair Bolsonaro to trial. Bolsonaro claimed the 2022 presidential election was stolen from him, and his supporters rioted in an attempted coup to keep him in power. What a sore loser, right? In the neighborhood I grew up in, a guy like that would have been told to go cry to his mommy.
Trump has complained about Jerome Powell so much that it has become background noise, but he did take a short break from that to insult Taylor Swift, who he said is “NO LONGER HOT” and to express his preference for Sydney Sweeney, who “has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there.” He has watched the ad hundreds of times, no doubt, but even his new American Eagle jeans are frustrating him. They should be buttoning so easily around his 32-inch waist. At least posting [ [link removed] ] in all caps on social media about how hot a young starlet is will surely make everyone forget about this whole Epstein hoax.
Song quote reference: Hayes Carll. “Times Like These.” What it is. Dualtone Records, 2019, YouTube Music App. I used the lyrics as sung, not as printed in the app.
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