MAHA v MAGA. Place your bets

 

May 18, 2025 (118/1461)

There may be another case of dissension in the ranks. MAHA and MAGA are about to butt heads. In the beginning, TOM gave R Fake Kennedy Jr all kinds of latitude. “I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Trump said. “I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.” This was all leading up to his nomination and subsequent confirmation as Head of Health. But not everyone wants to make America healthy again. “President Trump is working to fulfill the mandate the American people gave him to lower costs and ease the burden on working families, but members of his own Cabinet are undermining that mission,” a Republican strategist working on midterm races said. “RFK doesn’t care that Trump is already burning a lot of capital on his trade agenda, and if he continues to pursue 'MAHA' in such an ideological way, costs are going to soar and our chances of success in the midterms will be jeopardized.” Uh ohhhhh. Who wins out in this war? “The split highlights a MAGA divide between conservatives excited about Trump’s deregulatory and tax-cut agenda versus a new right that favors protectionism, tax increases on the rich and price-limits on prescription drugs, which Trump unveiled Monday in an executive order.” It’s a pinch point when conflicting agendas get caught between a rock and a hard place. My money says that RFK is going to be the sacrifice. And that our health will be the casualty.

TOM is now poking his fat fingers into the world of professional sports. I did a little head scratcher last week when Pete Rose was re-instated. After all this time? Why? Wellllll

Yup. You guessed it. TOM wanted it done. “Make it so.”

“When President Donald Trump and Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred met at the White House last month, they discussed one of the president’s passion projects — reinstating baseball star Pete Rose to make him eligible for the Baseball Hall of Fame.

This week, that’s exactly what Manfred did. But his second term embrace has been different from the rocky relationship of his first, when he used clashes with the NFL and other leagues over racial protests to rile his base. Now, he is enjoying his dominance over those same leagues and using the imagery of his constant association with sports to enter American arenas and living rooms like no other president before. “It’s a massive shift from Trump 1.0. I mean, heck, think about Roger Goodell and the owner of the Washington franchise being in the Oval Office to announce the NFL draft is going to take place in D.C. in ‘27,” said Clay Travis, founder of the conservative sports and politics site OutKick and a Trump supporter, referring to Trump’s May 5 announcement with the NFL commissioner.”

Using the WH as a grandstanding point for professional sports and therefore a place from which TOM can pontificate about American pop culture is definitely something “the likes of which we’ve never seen.”