I've Been Saying...

 Krugman makes the point I've been making for months: focus on the corruption.

Yes, Americans hold a dim view of the morality of their elected officials - the alleged crimes of Swallwell and Gonzalez add to this perception (though it's worth noting that Swallwell went from allegation to suspending his campaign to resigning from Congress in about 72 hours). However, they also really don't like corruption, and corruption IS the point of authoritarianism. It is the lack of accountability to the public that motivates autocrats to retain power. 

Trump is a shitty businessman, but a shrewd manipulator of graft. He didn't want to cede power on January 6th because of his colossal narcissism,  but also because it was easier to make money off being in power. Right now, there are clearly large sums being made around insider trading on prediction "markets" and outright graft through his crypto. If he were to lose power, he would be vulnerable to prosecution.

The results in Hungary are a positive development in the war against international illiberalism. We should keep an eye on how Magyar prosecutes Orban's crimes, too. What we DO know is that corruption played a massive role in motivating the Hungarian people to vote in such numbers that Orban couldn't steal the election.

Similarly, Democrats can leverage people's outrage over things as mundane as the tearing down the East Wing, to as sordid as Epstein, to as lethal as his war in Iran to paint Trump as a corrupt oligarch out to make your tank of gas unaffordable, while coddling his friends in Saudi Arabia. 

Corruption is the rug that really ties the room together, man. 

Good

 Congress finally demonstrated a miniscule amount of moral fiber and engineered the ejection of Eric Swallwell, Democrat of California, and Tony Gonzalez, Republican of Texas. Both men have been accused of fairly horrific sexual crimes. There are two other members - one Democrat and one Republican, both from Florida - who are in similar ethical crosshairs. Yes, the fact that this did not alter the balance in the House mattered. If Cory Mills and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormack were to leave, too, that would represent some semblance of the old order in American politics, whereby people who do unethical shit no longer get to represent the public.

Of all the myriad ways that Trump has warped American politics, one of the worst has been his normalization of simply ignoring these ethical constraints. His blasphemous picture of himself as Jesus healing the sick would be a normal career ending act. For Trump, nothing seems to stick in the same way it has for other politicians. 

Swallwell and Gonzalez leaving Congress is objectively good, because it reintroduces the idea that there are consequences for bad actions. 

Now if we can only apply that to the highest office in the land. 

Insanity

 Donald Trump has decided to wage rhetorical war on the Pope. 

He then posted a picture of himself as Christ. 

This is almost textbook behavior as the Antichrist. I'm sure many of his evangelical followers will swallow this whole, but some are struggling to. Obviously, quite a few Catholics are going to be upset with this. 

The combination of his failed Iran war, skyrocketing prices that simply aren't going to come back down and the failure of Orban to gerrymander his way to authoritarianism has to have him spooked. Like a cornered rat, he's snarling and snapping at everything.

Success

 Viktor Orban has been ousted as Prime Minister of Hungary. 

Orban has been the anti-democratic mole inside the European Union for years. His cultural revanchist populism became a cause celebre in the United States. CPAC moved their meetings there. 

In an absolutely hysterical faceplant, JD Vance - himself a fake populist authoritarian - was sent to shore up support for Orban and negotiate peace with Iran. He has failed utterly at both of his tasks. It would not surprise me if he was sent on these suicide missions largely because he's got the charisma of athlete's foot and the loyalty of a pit viper. 

Peter Magyar (who one wag described as having the name of a Harry Potter character who was visiting from Hungary) is not some left wing hippie. He's a right wing within the context of Europe. 

However, he ran on two fundamental issues: Russia and corruption. The history between Russia and Hungary is...not good! Orban's role as Putin's lapdog within NATO and the EU has been a roadblock to full support for Ukraine's war of survival. Russia worked hard - as did Trump because of course - to bolster Orban, but that likely worked against him. Even with most media outlets on Orban's side, he's going to lose by very large margins.

The small tip of the cap I will give to this awful creature is that - unlike Trump - he has conceded defeat.

For people like Vance and the illiberal cohort of people including Peter Thiel, Rod Dreher and Tucker Carlson, Orban was the model for what they wanted to do for the US. A country where rigging the system allowed them to stay in power regardless of the will of the people. I think we all knew that Fidesz was very unpopular and would lose a fair election, but that they might have so stacked the electoral system and coopted the media that the popular will would not be expressed. And if it was expressed, Orban would not accept it.

There is the famous quote from MLK (a man Orban would have hated): The arch of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice. 

I take hope from Hungary, of all places, that democracy will win in the end. That Trump's egregious and manifest incompetence will overwhelm the efforts of Fox News and gerrymandering to maintain his own version of Orban's illiberal vision. 

Failure

 As the Times editorial board nicely summarizes, the current situation in the war against Iran is a strategic defeat. Simon Rosenberg congregates the news from the past day or so. I'll give my version:

- We start a war of choice without adequately considering what Iran could do in response, once faced with a truly existential threat. 
- Trump substituted wishful thinking for actual foresight. When Iran closed the Straits of Hormuz - which everyone with a brain knew they would - he was scrambling to avoid an economic meltdown.
- He tried to bluff his way to victory by threatening genocide - real, actual genocide - that even some supporters found appalling. 
- He climbed down off those genocidal threats with this amorphous "ceasefire" that looked very much like an Iranian victory.
- Faced with backlash from Israel and the Arab Gulf states, Trump had to renegotiate the terms of peace with Iran.
- He sent his two useful idiots, Jared Kushner and Howard Lutnick, and JD Vance, who has been leaking his disapproval of the war. Making Vance own the peace talks is a form of Trumpist ritual humiliation.
- While the peace talks were predictably collapsing, Trump and the Secretary of State were at a fucking UFC match in Miami. 
- Trump has responded by threatening to "blockade" the Strait, but no one knows what that really means or what he intends to accomplish.
- The project of torching our alliances and insulting our fellow democracies - combined with destroying global economic stability - has nations considering abandoning the dollar as a reserve currency. 

It's just an absolute clown show, but a clown show where random members of the audience are killed and tickets are $500,000. 

Did The Word Finally And Conclusively Turn?

 The week began - yes, it was just this week - with Trump's hallucinogenic appearance next to the Easter Bunny on the White House balcony. Mussolini as imagined by Luis Bunuel. This was roughly the same time he threatened one of the oldest civilizations in the world with cultural extinction. The extremity of his statements seems to have appalled so many people, that Richardson suggests that maybe this could be a moment when people finally wash their hands of him. 

Yes, a lot of the MAGA Civil War talk is overblown. Trump retains remarkable control over his base. However, there does seem to be some understanding that Trump's behavior is well and truly unhinged. 

As things stand now, we have suffered a strategic defeat against Iran. The Straits are still closed, and we will have to pay Iran to reopen them in some way. Iran and the world know that the capacity to close the Straits is retained by Tehran. 

Meanwhile, it's really looking like stagflation is our current economic predicament. 

Last year, I asserted that the AI Bubble was the only thing buoying the economy in the era of Trump's economic chaos. That bubble is dependent on cheap energy and computer chips. Both of those are influenced by the closing of the Straits.

If that bubble bursts - and ideally bubbles DO burst sooner rather than later - then the country will have been driven completely into the ditch by Trump's malevolent incompetence. That might...MIGHT...get him below the 27% floor in his approval rating. 

Oh, yeah. Melania decided to declare that she had no idea who Jeffrey Epstein was. As if you thought that was going away.

Hey, just two and a half more years!

Does The Truth Matter?

 The current situation in the Persian Gulf is objectively very bad for the world. It represents a strategic defeat for the United States. Trump and Hegseth and the professional liars in their employ will assert instead a "great victory."  Oil prices will likely continue to fluctuate as global markets have to process the wild ping-ponging movement of oil out of the Gulf and the slow return of that oil to global markets.

The political question of high gas prices is a tricky question. There are likely some benefits to bringing down gas prices, and they don't really respond to actual supply, it seems, but rather the prospect of future supplies. Tankers take weeks to get from the Gulf to refineries then weeks more to get to the pump. Yet the price at the pump seems to change daily dependent on which lies Trump is spouting at any given moment.

The question of whether this ceasefire will actually lead to peace is one that Trump can't spin. If we start shooting again, that's not something he can lie about. If we capitulate, Trump will simply lie and say we won, and if gas prices fall, then the average dipshit voter might very well believe him. If energy prices stay high, and the impact of our defeat over control of the Straits grows in the public consciousness - the way the collapse in Afghanistan did - then Trump's collapse will continue to his floor of 27%. 

If he reaches that, Democrats win the Senate. Perhaps comfortably.

Oh, and Melania decided to bring up Epstein again, so that looms over everything, too. 

The Stall

 Krugman looks at the somewhat contradictory jobs numbers. Basically, job growth is slow but unemployment is low. How can that be? Well, it's because we are throttling off immigration. We are likely at or approaching negative net migration - more people leaving the country than entering.

The developed world is seeing a similar problem of a graying, shrinking demographic. We live longer and have fewer children, so whether it's Japan or Germany or the US, the replacement rate is a struggle to achieve. The US has avoided this problem by growing its population through both legal and illegal immigration. That has kept the workforce expanding. Illegal immigration helps the most, in some ways, because undocumented workers actually pay into Social Security, but they don't withdraw from it.

Trumpists will cover this looming problem up by claiming ridiculous projections for productivity and overall economic growth. Something, something AI. There is - as with all Republican policies - an extraordinary amount of wishcasting. 

What worries me is that we are headed for a reckoning on the national debt. Trump has added something like a quarter of all of America's debt. In this, he is just a bog standard Republican, albeit more so than most. America has been able to carry a huge debt for a number of structural reasons, and Trump is destroying most of them, including international goodwill towards the dollar. If the economy falls into a recession caused by economic instability from his whacko policies, a bursting AI bubble and the energy crisis his war has created, America could go from a stalled job market to a collapsing one. 

Democrats are always having to clean up Republican messes. If we dip into a recession, we might have to do so with a politicized Federal Reserve and a budget situation from hell. Trump will want to give away massive checks with his name on them. Democrats - who in this scenario easily win the House and likely the Senate - will have to put strict conditions on the money, and they are usually averse to participating in the immiseration of Americans.

The Iran War isn't over. The oil is not flowing, and even if it was it would take months to get back to normal. The labor market has stalled. The economy is sustained only by an AI bubble that is dependent on cheap energy, which we no longer have. 

If the crash is going to come, it needs to come soon, so we can take Republicans out of the equation in Congress and begin the slow process of repairing the structural damage of this awful man and his legions. 

Oh, Look

 The Straits are closed. 

Who could have predicted that the terms of the ceasefire were sham to let Trump climb down from his genocidal threats.

Where To From Here?

 Having slept on last night's news, I do think I was right. Trump's rhetorical escalation was the same as all his other verbal confabulations. If you believe he was going to nuke Iran, I presume you also believe that big, strong men with tears in their eyes routinely approach him, or that former presidents have privately praised him for starting this war with Iran.

Trump has zero credibility at this point, and Iran's current situation proves this. They called his bluff, he backed down and now negotiators have to unravel Iran's insane demands. Israel, I would guess, will have no part of Iran's demands to leave their proxies alone. Saudi Arabia won't stand for a toll on the Straits of Hormuz. The civilized world - which may or may not include the US at this point - cannot allow Iran to retain its nuclear program.

So the "ceasefire" allowed him a quick "victory" that was really a retreat. He has not, however, extricated himself from his mess. There's just no way the other regional powers can let this peace plan stand. If Trump relies on his usual cast of clowns - Jared Kushner and Howard Lutnick - to try and negotiate with Iran...yikes.  Kushner is a fully owned and operated subsidiary of the Gulf Emirs at this point, so maybe he will hold a firm line.

This has all been very stupid, very pointless and very destructive. 

TACO Time

 Trump backed down/was never serious. I think that was always the gambit, but he's such a fucking lunatic, you hesitate to make any firm predictions. The "two week ceasefire" feels like face saving bullshit from every party involved. I'm reluctant to believe that this is the end of Trump's Iranian Misadventure. Maybe they just collapse into status quo ante, but who knows? 

The leaking has started about the process that led us here, and Maggie Haberman has the deets here. My hope is that Trump really has soured on the war and that would make Hegseth the fall guy.  Good.

The war - if it is truly over and I think that's a 50-50 proposition - has been a strategic calamity for the US. We might achieve some measure of status quo ante if that looks like 
- The Revolutionary Guard are still firmly in control in Tehran.
- The Straits of Hormuz are open.
- Iran's military capacity has been deeply degraded - aside from its drones.
- Maybe there's some deal with the nuclear program?

None of that represents a "win" for the United States compared to the situation in mid-February.

Iran took a pummeling. Whoop-de-doo. They were not a serious threat to Israel, but they have established just how serious a threat they are to the Gulf States and the global commerce that flows through there. The degradation of their conventional forces doesn't really move the needle of power in the Middle East. They can shut down the Straits. They demonstrated that they CAN and they demonstrated what that means for the global economy.

Here's the true salient fact. Oil prices will remain high for some time. The Gulf will not suddenly be open and prices will fall and we will be back to $2.75 gasoline. The OTHER products from the Gulf are also unlikely to resume shipping quickly, including fertilizer and aluminum. These will be Covid-like supply chain disruptions that will continue to be felt for months. 

The war has made Trump even more unpopular. His unhinged public performances have MAGA-types calling for the 25th Amendment (sorry, not happening). He has absolutely torched his "brand" of "we need to run government like a business." His genocidal rhetoric was simply a performance, and he thankfully lacks the bloodlust to actually follow through. He's a coward, after all.

Now I'm reading that Iranian social media is saying that America has agreed to a complete and total capitulation, including withdrawing its forces from the region, lifting all sanctions and allowing Iran to control the Straits. That would be a complete and total humiliation for the US and its Gulf Allies. 

This is why the two week ceasefire is likely bullshit and Iran and the US will simply regroup, some oil will make it out and we will be at this again soon. This is the same yo-yo nonsense we saw with his trade wars now applied to shooting wars. There is no way that what Iran is proposing can be acceptable to anyone outside of Iran.

The ceasefire was a TACO from his genocidal statements earlier that managed to freak out even his supporters. He was not going to nuke Iran and he had to take the temporary climb-down, but the Iranian terms are absolutely a non-starter.

Anyway, Kamala Harris had a weird laugh, I guess. I kinda liked it. 

The Madman Theory

 During the late stages of Nixon's presidency, they hit upon a negotiating gambit called the Madman Theory. The idea was to convey to the Vietnamese that Nixon had lost his mind and could start nuking North Vietnam in his madness. The idea was to force the North Vietnamese to accept a timetable that would allow the US to leave Vietnam and not have the sort of chaos that we saw, for instance, when we evacuated Kabul. Didn't work, but there was at least a gap.

When you read Richardson or Aaron Rupar's transcription of Trump's inane babblings, it's tempting to see this as a reinvigoration of the Madman Gambit. The problem is, it seems far more likely that he really is fucking bonkers. The insane tableau of Trump mumbling about Iran with the Easter Bunny standing next to him while kids wait to do an Easter egg roll is...I don't think we have the words to describe it. If he's faking it, we can skip his quest for the Nobel Prize and give him an Oscar.

Garrett Graff and Martin Longman concur that nuclear weapons are likely not off the table. That doesn't mean that Trump's current rhetorical escalation should be taken at face value. His threats to end Iranian civilization could mean just further bluster in an attempt to bring them to the table or the crazy son of a bitch could be considering nuclear weapons. I personally doubt it, because he's expressed a certain fear of the awfulness of nuclear weapons, but he really seems deranged and certainly creatures like Pete Hegseth are not going to rein him in.

Is there someone around him who can impress upon him that he will become a Hitler-level monster if he launches nukes at Iran? Would he care? I think - possibly - he might. But this is a guy who wanted to nuke North Korea in 2017 and a hurricane shortly thereafter. 

If only America had a separate branch of government, say a legislature, some sort of Congress, we might be spared this looming tragedy.

UPDATE: He TACO'd. He's claiming that Iran has a workable plan. I'm skeptical until I hear it from Iran.  

I trust Iran to be more truthful than the President of the United States. Also? Two weeks? He just keeps playing the same old hits. 

In The Midst Of All This Awfulness

 I give you the crew of Artemis.

Terrorism or Errorism?

 Krugman calls Trump a terrorist, using the definition of the Department of Homeland Security. He notes that terrorism is a tactic, not a goal, and that terrorists are usually those who cannot achieve their goals via conventional conflict. Trump's threats to blow up bridges and power plants - as threats - make him a terrorist.

Richardson's view is a bit more nuanced. She notes that Trump is just careening about and this is likely just more bluster. He has a habit of making these crazed threats and then backing down. The problem is that Iran has likely clued into this pattern and will not budge. She does, however, note that early in Trump 1.0, he wanted to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on North Korea and was talked out of it by his generals. He also famously wanted to nuke a hurricane at one point. Perhaps...perhaps...he got the message that nuclear weapons are not toys or magic wands, but does anyone think there are the same sort of professional soldiers in the highest ranks of the military to tell him, no?

I don't think Trump will use nuclear weapons in Iran, but I do think it represents an escalation in rhetoric intended to scare Iran to negotiate. I also worry that while Trump does have a tendency to TACO his threats - he bullies and blusters but then backs down - he's clearly deranged in his thinking these days and has fewer constraints from those around him.

The solution to this war will not come from Washington or Tehran or Riyadh. Some other power will need to host talks to get both sides - led by crazed zealots - to climb down. China would seem to be a interesting choice. Xi has seen his primary global rival repeatedly light itself on fire by electing this dumb fucker twice. He has watched Trump blow up 75 years of American global leadership. If he could negotiate an end to this war, it would be more than the US self-immolating, it would be a positive act of Chinese global leadership.

China - unlike, say Russia - requires the global stability that the US used to provide. Their trade depends on open sea lanes and stable contract laws. While I'm sure they are enjoying America's decline under Trump, if they want to avoid being caught in the vortex of that collapse they will need to step up.

It would be hilarious if Xi - a murderous autocrat - were to win Trump's coveted Nobel Peace Prize by finding an ending to Trump's stupid-assed war. 

The President's Easter Message

 Easter, for Christians, is a moment to reflect on the sacrifice of Jesus. According to the Christian faith, Jesus was the literal son of God who willingly let himself suffer execution on the cross - a fate reserved for pretty horrible criminals - in order to redeem the sins of man. 

Trump's Easter message was to threaten war crimes against Iran. Attacking civilian infrastructure is a war crime. I suppose he's stopped threatening water desalination plants, but that's likely because his Gulf allies depend on desalination more than Iran does. Josh Marshall feels that right now it is Saudi ruler Mohammad bin Salman who is perpetuating the war. If the US packs up and leaves, they will be left to handle the crisis in the Straits of Hormuz. I suppose even more cynically, high gas prices will help the Gulf states in the long run.

Trump has disappeared from the public eye and has not retreated to his safe space of Mar A Lago for the holiday weekend. He tends to do this around the start of every month. The assumption is that he is getting intravenous treatments, most likely for dementia. This is the source of the blotches on the back of his hand. Certainly, his address a few nights ago suggested a man in poor health.

Trump is facing a narcissistic decompression, as his manifest incompetence and stupidity (and the incompetence and stupidity of those around him) has created a situation that he cannot simply walk away from. 

So, Donald Trump - avatar of the White Christian Nationalist movement - threatens war crimes as his Easter message, further abasing the office of the President and the reputation of the nation that ostensibly he serves.