From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Ever since March 16, when presidential candidate Donald Trump created a controversy by predicting President Joe Biden’s efforts to force Americans to convert their lives to electric-vehicle (EV) lifestyles would end in a “bloodbath” for the U.S. auto industry, the industry’s own disastrous results have consistently proven him accurate.

The latest example came this week when Ford Motor Company reported that it had somehow managed to lose $132,000 per unit sold during Q1 2024 in its Model e EV division. The disastrous first quarter results follow the equally disastrous results for 2023, when the company said it lost $4.7 billion in Model e for the full 12-month period.

While the company has remained profitable overall thanks to strong demand for its legacy internal combustion SUV, pickup, and heavy vehicle models, the string of major losses in its EV line led the company to announce a shift in strategic vision in early April. Ford CEO Jim Farley said then that the company would delay the introduction of additional planned all-electric models and scale back production of current models like the F-150 Lightning pickup while refocusing efforts on introducing new hybrid models across its business line.

General Motors reported it had good overall Q1 results, but they were based on strong sales of its gas-powered SUV and truck models, not its EVs. GM is so gun-shy about reporting EV-specific results that it doesn’t break them out in its quarterly reports, so there is no way of knowing what the real bottom line amounts to from that part of the business. This is possibly a practice Ford should consider adopting.

After reporting its own disappointing Q1 results in which adjusted earnings collapsed by 48% and deliveries dropped by 20% from the previous quarter, Tesla announced it is laying off 10 percent of its global workforce, including 2,688 employees at its Austin plant, where its vaunted Cybertruck is manufactured. Since its introduction in November, the Cybertruck has been beset by buyer complaints ranging from breakdowns within minutes after taking delivery, to its $3,000 camping tent feature failing to deploy, to an incident in which one buyer complained his vehicle shut down for 5 hours after he failed to put the truck in “carwash mode” before running it through a local car wash.

Meanwhile, international auto rental company Hertz is now fire selling its own fleet of Teslas and other EV models in its efforts to salvage a little final value from what is turning out to be a disastrous EV gamble. In a giant fit of green virtue-signaling, the company invested whole hog into the Biden subsidy program in 2021 with a mass purchase of as many as 100,000 Teslas and 50,000 Polestar models, only to find that customer demand for renting electric cars was as tepid as demand to buy them outright. For its troubles, Hertz reported it had lost $392 million during Q1, attributing $195 million of the loss to its EV struggles. Hertz’s share price plummeted by about 20% on April 25, and was down by 55% for the year.

If all this financial carnage does not yet constitute a “bloodbath” for the U.S. EV sector, it is difficult to imagine what would. But wait: It really isn’t all that hard to imagine at all, is it? When he used that term back in March, Trump was referring not just to the ruinous Biden subsidy program, but also to plans by China to establish an EV-manufacturing beachhead in Mexico, from which it would be able to flood the U.S. market with its cheap but high-quality electric models. That would definitely cause an already disastrous domestic EV market to get even worse, wouldn’t it?

The bottom line here is that it is becoming obvious even to ardent EV fans that US consumer demand for EVs has reached a peak long before the industry and government expected it would.

It’s a bit of a perfect storm, one that rent-seeking company executives and obliging policymakers brought upon themselves. Given that this outcome was highly predictable, with so many warning that it was in fact inevitable, a reckoning from investors and corporate boards and voters will soon come due. It could become a bloodbath of its own, and perhaps it should.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

” He’s essentially throwing his principles overboard and his supporters under the bus.

If I were working for him right now and he were president I would have advised him under no circumstances to support the bill and instead focus our attention on the on the borders of the United States [and] restoring the rule of law. “

With another interview appearance, retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor has warned the United States is no longer in control of the wars it continues to fund, against overwhelming public opposition.

According to Macgregor and host Clayton Morris, a former Fox News anchor, “70 percent of the American people” now oppose sending money to fund wars present and future in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

What is more, Macgregor says that given Donald Trump’s “catastrophically stupid” support of the $95 billion funding bill passed by Congress on April 20, if he were working for Trump now he “would have to resign.”

Speaking of Trump’s approval for the bill, Macgregor said, “What he did… is essentially align himself with the money pigs in Washington who were interested in everything other than the American people.”

Macgregor’s verdict on Trump was damning:

He’s essentially throwing his principles overboard and his supporters under the bus.

If I were working for him right now and he were president I would have advised him under no circumstances to support the bill and instead focus our attention on the on the borders of the United States [and] restoring the rule of law.

So why did Trump go ahead and endorse billions more for two wars which are widely acknowledged as having been disastrous – if not genocidal – failures?

“I think Mr. Trump wants desperately to be president,” explained Macgregor. “So, he is turning to everyone and anyone who has money willing to support him and will promise to do so – whatever they’re asking.”

The retired colonel is the CEO of Our Country, Our Choice, an organization which appeals to Americans “to come together to save America.” It’s motto is “Truth sets you free,” echoing the Christian roots of the American dream which is, according to Macgregor, verging on becoming a nightmare.

Macgregor is not afraid to speak uncomfortable truths, whether about his former president, or about the perilous state of a world on the brink of war. He considers Trump’s decision “outrageous “ and says Trump has “made a bad mistake… I think it will haunt him.”

Instead of supporting the funding bill, Macgregor says Trump “should have stood with the 21 members” of Congress who opposed it because, “quite frankly, most of America stands with those 21 members.”

Macgregor is aware that this is about political power, not the interests of the people – whether they be in the U.S. or in Ukraine. He is practically alone in noting that throughout the proxy war, the Ukrainian people seldom get a mention.

“No one expresses any interest in what’s happened to the Ukrainian people,” he said, before citing the horrendous toll of deaths and injuries which has devastated the Ukrainian populace.

“Ukrainians are exhausted. They’re tired of this war. They’ve lost now, we think, 600,000 dead and another million or two wounded.”

Added to these sobering figures is the fact that much of the surviving population has fled.

“Millions have left. The country is destroyed. It desperately needs peace.”

As the Washington Post claimed last December, up to “90 percent” of the money given in “aid” stays in the U.S. anyway. On April 21, the U.K.’s Financial Times concluded that the aid package “would not stop Russia.” On April 23, it reported that Ukraine now “pressures draft-age men abroad to join the war effort,” following a Politico report of last month titled “Draft-dodging plagues Ukraine as Kyiv faces acute soldier shortage.” The report cites the BBC in claiming up to “650,000 military aged men have fled the country” in the past two years, despite a law forbidding them to do so.

Former humanitarian volunteer and Catholic convert Ryan Miller told LifeSiteNews last month of how human traffickers operate freely on the Ukrainian border, preying on women and children separated by this law from their husbands and fathers.

This news portrays a grim reality behind the Ukraine flag-waving seen on the United States House floor. It is a narrative of ugly truths supporting Macgregor’s assessment of a war he has consistently claimed could never have been won. Against the notion that America must “stop Putin,” he said:

We’ve never had any option other than to accept his [Putin’s] victory because, as we said from the very beginning, Ukraine had no more chance against Russia than Mexico would have against us in the United States.

The second war funded in this package has, according to Israeli media, already ended in “total defeat.”

Israeli newspaper Haaretz published this story on April 11, “Saying What Can’t Be Said: Israel Has Been Defeated – a Total Defeat”

The story by Chaim Levinson displayed a remarkable level of candor.

“The war’s aims won’t be achieved, the hostages won’t be returned through military pressure, security won’t be restored and Israel’s international ostracism won’t end.”

Macgregor shares this assessment, which he couples with a warning that “Biden is not in control” of events in the Middle East, and neither is the U.S. “Mr. Netanyahu is in control. And he cannot back down. If he does not escalate, he is finished.”

Macgregor warns that the “world has turned against Israel, we are increasingly isolated, but we are not in control. Mr. Netanyahu owns us. What do we do?”

Macgregor stressed that U.S. backing for Netanyahu is the result of his having more influence in the U.S. government than the president. This means, in effect, that the U.S. is funding a man whose only option is to escalate to war with Iran.

“Mr. Netanyahu is in a difficult position,” explains Macgregor, “we can’t help him. All we can do is tell him to back down. He can’t back down.”

“Netanyahu has to escalate or he’s finished. So I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the Israeli-Iranian confrontation.”

Warning that Netanyahu is likely going to “kill women, children, and men with no connection to Hamas in Gaza’s Rafah area,” he foresees a real potential for the outbreak of a major regional war involving the U.S.

I don’t think we’ve even seen the beginnings of what could happen in the region because, if anything, we’re seeing more and more and more solidarity across national lines inside the Muslim world.

As this develops, Macgregor claims even the Western military alliance is leaderless:

NATO is essentially a battleship with no one on the bridge and engines that don’t power the ship anymore. It’s adrift.

He says in previous years the “stupid comments” of French President Emmanuel Macron to threaten to send French troops to Ukraine would have been unimaginable. Responding to claims that French and American soldiers are now on the ground in Odessa in Ukraine, he replied, “A Russian this morning contacted me… and said that he sees no French or American troops in Odessa.”

His relief at this news was tempered by a stern reminder that such an action would lead to a U.S. war with Russia, which has the largest nuclear arsenal on earth.

I sincerely hope that that condition does not change. If it does, then I think the Russians will accelerate all of their movements and we will find ourselves at war with Russia unnecessarily.

He asks, “For what particular purpose?”

The direct funding of two major flashpoints for a global war left the host, Clayton Morris, unable to explain Trump’s support of the move.

“This rises to the level of coming out and supporting the COVID vaccines,” he said, speaking of Trump’s recent praise for the mRNA injections.

“I think there was a lot of MAGA Republicans who said ‘Wait a second – did Trump just praise COVID vacc [sic] – wait did I hear that right?’”

The news of Trump’s backing for the war funding has left Morris equally baffled, as he quoted Trump’s recent comments:

In the same week [Trump] says we’ve spent 7 to 9 trillion dollars on boondoggle wars in the Middle East… where we have blood on our hands… we’ve got nothing but blood and misery, we should have never supported those Wars.

He added, “and then four days later… supporting speaker Johnson supporting all of this money to Ukraine and Israel and Taiwan? I just can’t wrap my head around it.”

For Colonel Macgregor, this is a decision which will follow Trump long into the future.

“So we have to be realistic about this whole business. He’s let a lot of people down. I think it will come back to haunt him.”

The dangerous business of funding death no longer haunts only the politicians – like Trump and Netanyahu – who rely on it to secure their power. If Macgregor is right, the world may be engulfed in a nuclear war as a result of these bargains with the devil.