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 the 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.

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.

Chained Inflation

 There is pretty good evidence that inflation is just now getting priced into actual consumer goods. There is a lag between oil and gas prices rising and prices in food and other goods rising to compensate for those increases.

The real worry right now has to be chained inflation. The inflationary spike around Covid was clearly caused by supply chain issues surrounding closed down manufacturing and shipping. Once the Covid restrictions were relaxed, the prices stabilized. People knew that these surges were temporary. Even with the price surge with the Liberation Day tariffs were considered to be temporary and reversible. 

With the Iran War, the shutting off of the Straits is not a simple case of turning a faucet off and on. It will take many months to get supplies rolling again. That means that prices will remain stubbornly high for months and suppliers will need to price that in. They will have to assume that prices in July or October will be higher than they are now.

This is what we've managed to avoid in the previous inflationary spikes. This is also what Larry Summers missed when he predicted the need for a recession to get out of the Covid inflation.

If we are looking at chained inflation, we will need the Federal Reserve to force a recession on the economy to quell the fires burning through the economy. However, we know that Trump is already working to destroy the independence of the Fed, and we also know that his coterie of sycophants is congenitally unable to manage a crisis with expertise and wisdom.

The recession might just save democracy in America, but it's going to suck ass. 

The Purge

 As Martin Longman notes, Trump is lashing out at his Cabinet because of his own incompetence. Others in the crosshairs include Tulsi Gabbard, Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Howard Lutnick. Lutnick would be the only man removed from his position. Pete Hegseth is not apparently on the list, though he is significantly worse than some of these other fools and morons. 

As Morris notes, Trump is very unpopular. People are saying they have never seen unpopularity like this before, really huge unpopularity. As a malignant narcissist, Trump cannot be the reason why he is unpopular, it must be the people around him. Bondi abased herself over Epstein and whatever the fuck that performance was before the Congressional hearing and it did not help her. Now she is still subject to Congressional subpoenas, but without the need to protect the pedophile-in-chief. The impulse to fire people because you yourself suck might not be all that well thought out.

Authoritarianism fails because authoritarianism is brittle and inflexible. Trump's personality is brittle and inflexible. Hopefully, we will see more purges and infighting. 

"Confusion to my enemies."

Disastrous

 Look, I had better things to do than watch Cheeto Benito slur and mumble his way through some half-assed update on his Iran War. As Josh Marshall noted, it was a terrible speech that spooked ALL the markets. Krugman makes roughly the same point.

Perhaps Trump is stung in his small, craven id by the concept of TACO - Trump Always Chickens Out - and feels compelled to not wind this war down quickly.

Then again, the problem is that, strategically, Iran is winning. They are demonstrating that they can absorb far more pressure than we can. Trump never sold this war to the public, so he can't really turn around and ask for ground troops or people to buckle up for $5.00 a gallon gas. We are still going to GET $5.00 a gallon, but he can't admit that. Iran is being leveled tactically, but they are pretty much OK with that, because things were already pretty shitty and they don't have to answer to their public.

Trump cannot walk away easily from this, though I suspect he will try. It's unclear whether we are actually going to deploy the combat troops we are sending to the region. Frankly, the only defensible use of them might be to invade Yemen and degrade the Houthis to deprive Iran of one of their few remaining proxies that has any combat effectiveness. However, sending US soldiers to die killing Yemenis while Iran jacks up fuel prices is a political non-starter.

The contours of the end of this conflict currently looks like this. Trump will feel compelled to "do something" in terms of "boots on the ground." His "doing something" will be stupid and "lethal" just not in the way Hegseth wants it to be. In the end, he will climb down from this cliff, but he will leave the Iranian regime in control of the Straits of Hormuz, where they will charge tolls for transit. 

In the end, Tehran will have a revenue source that they don't have now, because this fucking idiot thought getting involved in a war on the Middle East would be easy.

Pundit Fallacy

 Yglesias says that Democratic strategists that say that Democrats need to find a straight white guy to nominate in 2028 are being dumb. His argument is that women get elected to Congress just fine. In fact, what he runs into is a data problem. There are hundreds of legislative elections every two years, so you get a robust set of examples/

With the presidency, we have basically two examples. In 2016, the least qualified person to ever be a major party nominee took on arguably the most qualified candidate ever (who wasn't running for re-election). The reality TV star who mocked Gold Star families, bragged on tape about sexually assaulting women and clearly had no idea what to do about health care managed to beat a former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State. Eight years later - having botched Covid, launched an insurrection and been convicted of 34 felonies - he again beat a well qualified woman.

Maybe Trump's brand of toxic masculinity really does appeal in ways that JD Vance (I don't think he will be the nominee) can't pull off. Maybe whomever comes after Trump won't be able to motivate latent misogyny in the same way.

But this shit is typical of the Yglesias Fallacy. He once argued for the Pundit's Fallacy, that every pundit thinks that if a candidate just adopts the same positions the pundit holds, then they will win. The Yglesias Fallacy is that the median voter really understands policy at all. That they don't just vote the vibes, but sit there and ponder over white papers.

Partisans have ideological positions; that's why they are partisans. The voters that decide elections are feckless rubes without a complicated thought to pollute their beautiful spotless minds. When it comes to female candidates, "There's just something about her...:"

Unitary Power

 Richardson' daily catalog of the atrocities is particularly redolent of flop sweat coming from Trump. There were a host of court decisions against him, including his precious ballroom project. He issued an Executive Order on mail-in voting that is just blatantly illegal and unconstitutional. He's floundering on Iran and the resulting economic pain it's causing.

All of this is to say that Trump's tight grip on power seems to be slipping. The ultimate sign will be large fissures between the White House and Congressional Republicans. I would guess that this would only happen after primaries are over and incumbents feel secure enough to distance themselves from him in order to stave off defeat in the general election.

April Fool's Day has lost its luster in a world with so much lying, but maybe some small semblance of reality will bring this nattering buffoon back to earth.

Shrill

 Krugman paints the worst case scenario in continued oil disruption. The current price of a barrel of oil - as he explains - is largely speculative. The oil that left the Gulf at the start of the war is only now getting to East Asia. In other words, the actual reduction in the supply of oil really hasn't hit yet. The price increases we are seeing are based the mostly reasonable assumptions about what the price of oil will look like if the war continues. 

There are two looming problems.

The first is that even if Trump could extract himself from this problem of his own making, the supply of oil would remain reduced for months, as damaged Gulf facilities come back online. Additionally, that transportation lag means that the weeks it takes for Gulf oil to get to Asia means that the current void in shipping will last weeks. 

The second is that Trump appears to be doubling down on this insanity by sending just enough troops to make it worse without resolving anything. If he launches an attack on Kharg Island, the disruption in oil supplies will continue well into 2027. 

Once that happens, we could be looking at chained inflation. That was the condition in the 1970s, whereby the price of, well, every output was set in anticipation of where the price of inputs would be. During this latest inflationary period around Covid, everyone assumed that conditions would return to normal, so they didn't want to raise prices too much and drive away customers. If you learn that prices will remain high for months or possibly years, then you raise prices by a lot in June in anticipation of the higher prices in November. 

The problem is that this creates the upwards spiral of inflation that can only be cured by recessionary monetary policy. 

Great job, Donnie. 

Green Shoots

 Krugman notes the unsettling affection that Trump and the creatures around him have for Viktor Orban, Hungary's authoritarian leader. Orban and Putin represent a certain form of autocrat that tends to rely on racial nostalgia to legitimize the destruction of democratic norms. In Orban's case, it was the migrant crisis of a decade ago, where the trauma of the Arab Spring and the civic violence that arose around it spurred a mass exodus of migrants into Europe. In Putin's case, it's nostalgia for the Soviet Union and its ability to dominate the ethnic minorities within its border, minorities that now have their own countries.

In Trump's case, it's nostalgia for an imagined America where white men could dominate everything and "those people" knew their place. There's always fiction in nostalgia, and Trump's version is especially fictitious. Still, the very fact (and it is a fact) that America's president is openly siding with these authoritarian regimes against the democratic regimes of our erstwhile allies is deeply, deeply wrong on a strategic, moral and historical level. 

Trump's rolling disaster of a war in Iran has him silent while Russia provides Iran with targeting data to strike American military assets. He has let Russian tankers supply Cuba, because he simply cannot break with Putin, it seems. Trump routinely insults our allies and neighbors, but have you ever heard him insult Putin? Or even Xi? Is this just a deep seated affinity or does Russia, in fact, have the Epstein Goods on Trump?

Hungary will be a clear test of the long term success of Orbanist politics. He has thoroughly corrupted a young democracy, but if they can vote him out, then the odds of success here in America for a November Blue Wave would seem to be higher. Our institutions are older and more decentralized. Ideally, a Democratic House or hopefully a fully Democratic Congress will be able to investigate Trump's ties to autocrats, whether in Moscow, Budapest or Riyadh. 

Cursed

 Krugman makes a clickbaity argument that the US might be suffering from the resource curse. The resource curse take two forms. The one I'm most familiar with is that poorer, developing countries that have abundant mineral wealth are usually autocratic. The reason is the inverse of the old revolutionary slogan, "No taxation with representation." In a resource state, there is no need for taxation so there is no representation. Additionally, control of the government means control of the resource (usually oil), and that means losing control of the government means losing access to all that wealth. 

Krugman does not seem to be argument that for the US, and I would agree, we aren't in that state. Yesterday's No Kings rallies may have had 8,000,000 attendees. I would say that they one I attended was not necessarily better attended than the one in the fall, but that supportive honking by passersby was higher. Protesting is...weird. It does however stand in for civic engagement. 

The reason why the US is not likely to rely on resources to become a petrostate is twofold. The first is that despite being the world's largest oil producer, oil is still a relative small part of our overall economy. If you want to get rich in America, you go to Wall Street or Silicon Valley, not to Washington, DC to extract rents from the oil industry. 

The second reason is that America already has a well-established democracy. Yes, Trump is waging wholescale war on our democratic institutions and norms, but just like his war against Iran, his tactical wins do not mean strategic victory. Part of the "logic" of authoritarianism and the heart of Project 2025 is that you can simply overwhelm the opposition through "strength" and speed of action. Trump has achieved speed of action - again, in both his assaults on America's democratic institutions and Iran's military infrastructure. However, he cannot understand that the opposition gets its say, too. 

American history is not a triumphal march of progress. It is a long and painful conflict between our ideals and our baser instincts. It is messy. Right now, it seems like everything is unravelling. However, as I said a few months ago, as a political scientist, I would argue that you should be afraid. As a historian, I would argue that you should be patient.

No Kings

 I am off to - I think - the third protest I've ever been to. The second one was No Kings this fall. I am not a protest guy, I am not a crowds guy, but this shit is so fucked up and bullshit that it's prompting me to overcome my previous scruples.

Meanwhile, CPAC was sparsely attended and riven by factions. Factionalism is rare on the right, but common within revolutionary movements, which sums up the basic friction between Trumpism and institutional conservatism.

The House Republicans have rejected the bill to reopen DHS except for ICE. Senate Republicans caved because the TSA situation was getting out of hand and perhaps some of them secretly wanted to rein ICE in a bit, too. The House catering to Trump's diktats over not funding TSA means that it could not be any clearer who is behind the chaos in America's airports.

We will see how many people take to the streets to protest Trump's corruption, war mongering, incompetence and authoritarianism. I'm guessing that the numbers will be large (providing people can afford gas to get there). If it's as big as the fall protests - or even larger - then I think it's pretty clear where the energy rests going into the midterms. I think the key to a Blue Tsunami is a combination of extremely motivated anti-Trump voters and dispirited Trump voters who stay home. 

So if you can go today, go.

Could Trump Accidentally Do Some Good?

 Trump's war is a slow rolling disaster at this point. However, there might be some positives.

The first, obviously, is that if this trajectory continues, Democrats win the House and the Senate.

The second is that rising energy costs will nudge more and more people to renewables. It will be interesting to see if the GOP Congress decides to make things easier on consumers by rolling back the regulatory and fiscal attacks on renewable energy. I know I certainly would like a return to solar tax credits.

The third is that maybe this war explodes the AI bubble. Now this is "good" in a narrow set of ways. Bubbles have to burst, it is in their nature. Best to get that over with. Second, anything that slows down AI and gives us time to adapt to it is good. Third, crashing AI companies means fewer data centers and, again, lower energy costs. Data centers are being built out beyond requirements, and stopping that would be helpful before it gets out of hand.

Of course, we could very well be looking at a 2008 scenario. The AI boom is pretty much the only thing keeping America out of a recession, and once that bubble bursts, we should expect things to get very panful. It could lead to a full blown financial crisis, as many financial firms are knee deep in AI debt.

Luckily, we have a crack team of crisis managers in charge of the federal government, so I'm sure we will sail right through. 

Democrats Win One

 Republicans have caved on the TSA standalone funding. I saw someone online predictably say that this was less a Democratic win than a Republican loss, because Democrats can never win. Bullshit. Democrats laid out a clear line, they held to it and Trump, then Senate Republicans caved. That's a clear "W."

This doesn't really stop the depredation of ICE, but it does begin the process of isolating ICE's budget within the debate over DHS.