During a week in which his tariffs – which consumers always pay for! – crashed the stock markets and shook up the world economy and as the ramifications of the gutting of the federal government by Elon Musk were being realized, the first felon elected president thought his time best spent promoting electric cars.

The consumer backlash against the unelected Musk and his destruction of citizen safeguards cost his Tesla car company $330 billion in market value over three weeks.

So, what’s a guy to do? Well, in the vernacular of college sports today, he cashes in his NIL [Name, Image and Likeness] chips and has the guy he bought for $270 million give a sales pitch. In front of our White House!

He backed that up with: “Could you imagine if President Barack Obama had brought his unelected African friend to cut?”

Trump – with no conception of irony – later said that he felt “very badly” for the workers fired by his purges, but “many of them don’t work at all.” This from the guy who dunned the country for $18.2 million to play golf over seven weeks and who is spending his workday hawking cars.

Of course, paid spokespeople have no convictions beyond their paydays. So, while doing his best Junior Samples imitation [“Call BR-549”] for Musk’s electric vehicles, Trump’s Environmental Pollution Agency was announcing plans to weaken or abolish environmental protections designed to curb the pollution from gas-powered cars.

Last summer, Trump told Big Oil reps to show him the money and he would turn them loose to “Drill, baby, drill” regardless of the pollution they produce and the immediate and long-term damage of increasing greenhouse gases.

The Guardian reports the polluters responded with $445 million in Trump campaign contributions, not including “money funneled through dark-money groups.”

He is delivering on his pledge.

As mentioned, hacks for hire have no principles. They follow the money like a truffle-sniffing pig.

So, out of one side of his mouth, Trump promotes gas-guzzlers [I drive one] while, out of the other side of his mouth, he stars in an infomercial for Musk.

In front of the White House! Which, for most of the past 80 years has been home to the leader of the Free World.

But no more.

Trump has abdicated that role with his devotion to Russian Czar Vladimir Putin by shilling for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The guy who lied more than 30,000 times during his first term, has, with a straight [pitted, orange] face, blamed Ukraine for defending itself. And his minions in our foreign offices are doing the same.

The only question is whether Russian operative Krasnov is paying Putin for the Russian interference on his behalf during his election campaigns or as part of a desired deal to secure that coveted Trump Tower Moscow. For all the pro-Putin posturing pouring from Trump he should ask for another hotel in St. Petersburg.

[Well, there is that possible blackmail angle to consider.]

Trump has assured us, “I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.” He hopes to become another one without realizing that Putin will drop him like a used towelette when he is no longer useful – just as Trump uses and then abuses and loses one-time allies.

When he first announced his candidacy back in 2015, Trump bragged that he was too rich to be bought by special interests, chiding fellow candidates receiving donations: “They will be bombarded by their lobbyists that donated a lot of money to them … They’re not putting that money up because it’s a wonderful charity.”

He elaborated, “So their lobbyists, their special interests and their donors will start calling [anyone else who might have won in 2016] … And they’ll say: ‘You have to do it. They gave you a million dollars to your campaign.”

Well, Trump might be slow on the uptake concerning tariffs, but he gets the drift of grift very well.