Musky Odor

 Amazon was not profitable for many years. Today it makes most of its money off cloud storage, not sending you a three-pack of tighty-whiteys in 24 hours. The point being that you never know when the next huge company will emerge. 

Krugman looks at the IPO for SpaceX. (First of all, NVIDIA is now the company with the largest market cap. More than Alphabet (Google), Apple and Microsoft.) SpaceX jumped ahead of Amazon, making Musk the world's first trillionaire. All of these companies are - more or less - IT companies. Apple, I guess, actually makes physical products, as does NVIDIA. There's a tangible "thing" there. SpaceX seems to be in the same space, in that they have a lot of shitty IT stuff (Twitter, Grok) but they do have a good satellite system.

What's crazy about these IT companies is that most of them were not profitable for years. Eventually, they found a way, like Google did, of monetizing their product. Amazon moved into cloud storage, because being the world's largest retailer wasn't profitable enough. If you look at the most profitable companies in the world, the usual suspects are there, but so are Saudi Aramco, Berkshire Hathaway and a bunch of banks.

The valuation of SpaceX is entirely a valuation of Elon Musk. Microsoft - whom no one loves, and that includes freaks like me who actually use an MS system - has $125B in profits off $318B in revenue. SpaceX has $4B in LOSSES off $19B in revenue. How are there market caps the same?

Ultimately, it's a bet on Musk. He's this crazed, ketamine fueled weirdo whose manifest strangeness is presumed to represent genius. Yes, Tesla makes an amazing battery and Starlink is very impressive. But Grok?  The Boring Company? His purchase (and destruction) of Twitter? You can hand-wave away these flops as the price of genius, or you could look at Musk and see a nine year old boy rattling off dreams ("I'm gonna go to MARS!") and mistake that for vision, because was right about lithium batteries. He's so fucking strange that he must be a genius, right? So let's buy into SpaceX, because...space is profitable?

Silicon Valley is all about hype, and sometimes that hype pays off. Sometimes it very much doesn't. Musk, sadly, has largely accumulated so much speculative money that even if his endeavors crash and burn, he will likely blithely sail along on his riches. 

The plutocratic freakshow this diminished age deserves.

Also

 I haven't written about the Iran Memorandum of Understanding, because there is nothing to write about. This all feels like more bullshit that Trump gave himself as a birthday present. 

We shall see in the coming days, but at best this ends the war with Iran in a largely improved strategic positions, even if their regular military capacity is badly degraded. They have learned the lesson that that simpering idiot Pete Hegseth has not: 21st century warfare belongs to cheap drones.

Iran controls the Straits. That is a new geopolitical reality created by Trump's stupid war. The MOU is an attempt to move past this with some handwaving, but it's the truth. What's more, oil prices are unlikely to fall to pre-war levels for quite some time, so I'm not even sure this works to his benefit.

But, Yes, Right About This One

 If I felt that Krugman was a little too easy on the First Gilded Age yesterday, today I think he gets it right. The real issue with the super-rich is their shamelessness. Certainly, Trump is the great pioneer of all this - his tabloid persona cultivated throughout the '70s and '80s was designed around the Yuppie culture, but it was more depraved than that. The obvious punctuation mark of this was Epstein. 

Back in the 90s, as I referenced yesterday, there were efforts by Ted Turner to shame people like Bill Gates into philanthropy. It worked in Gates' case, but there have been other efforts by the emerging billionaire class to have at least SOME charitable work, even if it's something as trivial as the Google Money trying to preserve "Old" Nantucket.

With the rise of Trump in 2016, we saw the destruction of so many political norms. He insulted a Gold Star family, people with disabilities, he used slurs, he refused to release his tax returns, he was caught in tape bragging about sexual assault...and he still "won." The lesson that so many people - rich and poor - took from this was that the norms that had largely existed for years, decades or even centuries were now moot.

We recently saw this on Twitter after Trump's re-election, with people using the slur "retarded" with virulent gusto. It's juvenile and the very definition of "punching down" in ways that any normally emotionally adjusted person would find gross and cruel. Look, I don't think I need to put my pronouns in my email signature; I think my gender presentation is pretty straightforward. Having to do so was annoying for a few moments, but I got over it, because I'm an adult. There are, however, people who made opposing these actions their whole personality. Bullying became an act of rebellion against the norms that have arisen over the last few decades.

For the superrich, they've always been more constrained by norms more than laws. Rockefeller and Vanderbilt were sons of bitches. Rockefeller, though, pretended to piety in ways that eventually moved him towards some charitable work. Certainly the example of someone like Carnegie pricked the sensibilities of other very rich men. Today, our leading philanthropist is likely MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos' ex-wife, who has given roughly $26 billion in gifts. Bezos himself has given "only" $4 billion; Musk really hasn't given anything. Those sorts of billionaires have the capacity to change the world for the poor, but instead they spend lavishly on themselves and their hobby horses.

When we finally de-Trumpify America, one of our priorities has to be writing stronger rules to constrain the rich. Trump has taught them a lesson that Rockefeller or even Vanderbilt never learned: When you're rich, they let you do it.

Not So Sure About This One

 Krugman makes the case that today we have more oligarchic politics than the last Gilded Age. He uses a few crude numbers to argue that we have more wealth concentrated in the hands of a few individuals now than we did 140 years ago. I think that is probably true, because the nature of wealth overall has changed. I also agree with him that there were some cultural guardrails that encouraged men of great wealth to fund some form of charitable work. In fact, I remember Ted Turner working to shame people like Bill Gates into throwing some of his wealth into charity - and it worked!  The Gates Foundation does great work.

Some of the comparisons Krugman makes are not very apt. The Gilded Age did not see a president as corrupt as Trump - no such figure has ever existed. However, just about every other level of government was absolutely saturated with a depth of corruption that is just inconceivable today. This corruption launched two broad political movements: Populism and Progressivism. 

These two movements were demographically dissimilar, but they shared ideological DNA: namely that American democracy had become a corrupted oligarchy. This was why the Progressive Amendments were addressing. The income tax, the direct election of Senators, even woman suffrage and Prohibition, were all efforts to redeem American democracy. 

Why Prohibition? Because alcohol and the saloon were at the heart of vote-buying and machine politics. You think partisanship is bad today (it certainly is), but in the Gilded Age the parties largely existed to distribute graft rather than public services. This was at the heart of Garfield's assassination. In order to win elections and control the distribution of graft, votes were bought with alcohol. Additionally, the parties were not ideological but rather demographic. Violence often attended elections, as mobs roamed the streets looking for people from the opposite party. Voting was not done by secret ballot, so people knew who you voted for. 

Finally, while we have more wealth inequality than we had back in the Gilded Age, we also have more overall wealth. Every vice of poverty that we can imagine today existed back then. The poor of 1890 were crushingly poor. Tuberculosis would cut through tenements like a scythe carrying off children by the hundreds. Farmers were so burdened by debt that they stormed the Kansas capital with guns trying to get relief. 

There was no food assistance, no public health, no income tax, no worker safety measures, no medical care for the young or elderly, no protections against child labor, no protections against monopolies, no civil rights for anyone but white men, no protections for women...it was grim.

I don't think things are going great. However, the one restraint Trump is facing is the fact that there are still laws in this country and they still have force. Go look at the tarps on the Kennedy Center. 

Things are bad. The Gilded Age was crushingly awful.

Freddie The German

 The World Cup is off to a great start, with compelling victories, heroic losses, honest draws. However, the star of the Cup so far is not Messi, Mbappe or Yamal; it's a German tourist who has won over the country and social media. During his travels - which are mostly narrations of food he has eaten and normal American shit that he's done - he has earned the attention of sports teams and American stars. JJ Watt hooked him up with a hotel room and a bunch of swag, including a signed jersey.

There are a few things about Freddie that have people embracing him. 

First, he blanks out his face (or rather covers it with his favorite player Renaldo's). Anyone else - any American - would likely be seeking to grab those fifteen minutes of fame. They would be trying to seize their monetized moment, like the Hawk Tuah girl. This guy is just looking to have a blast and largely succeeding.

Second, I think Freddie is seeing us the way we would like to be seen. America is going through some shit right now. Trump turning the White House into a trailer park is just deeply shameful. Our politics - especially online - has degenerated to Trump's level of invective nastiness. Lies and insults shape our public discourse.

But Freddie is simply reminding us that BBQ tastes great. That Buc-ees are both hilarious and impressive. That this really is a beautiful country and that most Americans are really nice. 

People are good. A person - some more than others - can be bad, but people are generally good and most of the damage they do to the world comes from fear, pain or ignorance. This World Cup is already full of moments like Freddie's that remind us that the best way to live is with open hearts and open arms. 

What A Lovely Evening

 Last night, we saw the best half of soccer that a USMNT has probably ever played - given the stage. 

We also saw them start to chisel Trump's name off the Kennedy Center.

Small victories, maybe, but we will take what we can.

Blood For Oil

 WAAAAAY back in 1990, as the United States gathered together a coalition backed by the United Nations to restore Kuwaiti sovereignty after Saddam Hussein invaded that country, the antiwar Left held rallies crying "No Blood For Oil." That never seemed persuasive to me, as we could have bought oil from Iraq as easily as Kuwait. In fact, I guarantee that's what Trump would have done. Bush 41 was a true internationalist and institutionalist, and he wanted to restore the purpose to the UN and the luster to American arms. He more or less accomplished both. 

However, now that Trump is president, we have a clear case of him moving towards a literal "blood for oil" scenario. Trump really got a kick out of his video game heroics in Venezuela, and a bunch of cronies and Netanyahu convinced him that a similar outcome was in the offering in Iran.

It was not.

This has now led us into a dangerous impasse. America has struck more or less what it could strike and damaged a lot of Iranian leadership and military hardware. Iran, however, has already placed many of its eggs in the drone basket that is changing 21st century warfare. Iran also has decided that it can weather the very real economic pain that the war if creating in Iran, whereas the Americans cannot. A lot of this is because this war was never explained to Americans and never supported by us. You can ask people to sacrifice, but there must be a Glorious Cause to enlist their sacrifices. 

Trump, meanwhile, has of course telegraphed his next move, because he's a senile old dipshit that can't resist opening his festering gob. He is considering an attack on Kharg Island. This would certainly hurt Iran, but it will lead to significant American casualties. 

In Venezuela, he was able to pull off an almost bloodless operation that deposed a dictator and replaced him with a dictator that will follow Trump's lead. It is completely plausible - almost inevitable - that we find out that Americans close to Trump and Trump himself are profiting off Venezuelan oil. Sending US ground troops to Kharg would be another oil grab. Pure and simple.

Now, this operation could conceivably force Iran to negotiate in earnest - if they felt they could trust the US, which they do not. More likely hundreds of Americans will die, thousands will be wounded, Iran will hunker down, oil will spike to $150 a barrel, Americans will be pissed, no one will bail Trump out from a quagmire of his own making and...Yeah, that's the most likely outcome. America takes the island with many dead and it solves nothing in the short term.

Trump was sold another Venezuela: quick strike, profit! Instead, he's being mugged by reality. He's too dumb (with a "b") to understand that, so he's liable to be manipulated by the evil and stupid people around him to make this even worse.

The Party of Bill Clinton

 The Big Dog has taken some reputational hits in the past decade. The #MeToo movement was not kind to his serial infidelity and the unequal nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Balancing the budget - an extraordinary achievement in many ways - was largely derided in left wing economic circles amid the lunacy of Modern Monetary Theory. The wreckage of 2008 argued, correctly, for Keynesian deficit spending. If you want to see what the wrong thing to do in 2008-2010 was, look at Britain's austerity program.

All of which brings me to the debate about what Democrats should do if they win in 2028 (which they almost certainly will if we have free and fair elections). The problem is that, much like Clinton, this hypothetical Democratic president and Congress will face fiscal realities arguably more dire than Clinton faced.

This includes Social Security.

The problem, as I see it, is that we have an ideological schism in everyone to the left of Mitt Romney. Right now you have a vague sort of Bernie Bro, DSA type of leftist and they have been countered by a technocratic prioritizing of "abundance." The argument is fiscal policy, which is taxing and spending. There is a broad acknowledgement that we need to tax the rich more, but when it comes to Social Security, something like Elizabeth Warren's "wealth tax" might not work. To shore up Social Security, you need to increase the steady stream of revenue. 

Some of that might come from moving from a payroll tax to more of an income tax. As Krugman notes, the explosion of the wealth gap comes not from a divergence in salary, but in equities. A CEO might have a large salary, sure, but he also has a ton of stock options that are taxed differently than salaried income. 

Capturing that will piss off a lot of people, though doing it subtly - a scalpel rather than a battle axe - might ease some problems.

By the time Trump is finally forced off the national stage, America will be facing multiple crises of his and the Republican's making: a galloping climate crisis, America's diminished standing in the world, poisonous divisions within the body politic, an AI movement largely unfettered from public accountability, a degraded military from numerous misadventures, a need to re-attract immigrants to a place that doesn't feel as safe as it once did, widespread public corruption...the list goes on.

The fiscal crisis will not be a "Trumpist" crisis; it's a Republican crisis. It's the old "starve the beast" form of governance that will require the next government of adults (ie Democrats) have to clean up the mess. 

American politics really went off the rails after the 2000 election. Some of that was 9/11, but if Nader doesn't run and Gore actually wins, the track of American history might not include 9/11. It certainly wouldn't include Iraq. It wouldn't include Bush's wasteful tax cuts. Gore was as exciting as a Saltine cracker, but his governance could have built on Clinton's and created a financially solvent country that felt no need to elect the charlatan from the tabloids and reality TV.

If Democrats swarm back into power in 2028, they will have to make actual hard governing decisions on boring shit like how to shore up Social Security, how to reduce the deficit. When Clinton did it, interest rates fell, businesses expanded and the economy boomed - and not just at the top. 

The question is: Would an angry Democratic primary electorate vote for this candidate?

No, He's Responsible

 Yglesias writes a decent column about Trump's war on government competence, best exemplified by DOGE. He notes how cuts to various agricultural and public health programs are running into real world consequences, notably screwworm, measles and Ebola. Yet, he then says that some of this isn't "Trump's fault." His argument is that - unlike the disastrous war against Iran - these are not direct policy consequences. Trump didn't CAUSE screwworm or measles or Ebola to exist.

I honestly don't even know how you get yourself into that rhetorical space. 

Krugman - famously called "shrill" by his editors - tends to lean the other way. He makes a much more expansive case for things like the problems farmers are having because of Trump's trade policies and that same war in Iran. Of course, many of those deep rural voters are both upset with Trump's policies that have actively immiserated them, but they are also unlikely to vote for Democrats. 

Leaving aside the fact that they won't switch parties, let's look at how they won't hold Trump accountable. Elections are how you hold elected officials and indeed all the organs of government accountable. It is precisely this accountability that makes democracies more functional in the long run - even if they short run is messy as hell.

If farmers are pissed about Trump's policies, then they should vote for Democrats to force a course correction. However, if you start adopting Yglesias' framing of Trump not being responsible for shit that happens even though he gutted the institutions designed to keep that shit from happening on to your head, then you can make the easy walk to "both sides are to blame, I guess I'll just keep voting Republican."

I realize Yglesias is not a partisan propagandist, but technically neither is Krugman. They both purport to be part of the "reality based community." At school, we are urged to practice scrupulous non-partisanship, but Donald Trump IS a felon, and pointing that out - or that tariffs and wars are inflationary - is not being partisan. 

We have a measles and screwworm outbreak in this country, because Donald Trump and the Republican Party have waged war on technical expertise and government capacity. Yes, he didn't actively infect kids with measles or cows with screwworm, but his policies are making this a growing health and economic crisis.

There is simply something very strange about how Yglesias frames his political discussions, and excusing Trump for the destruction of public health measures because he didn't cause the illness is top of the list in strangeness. 

Gordon Wood

 Gordon Wood died yesterday at the age of 92, amazingly struck down by a car and not his advanced age. Wood was one of the finest living historians of US History and certainly the Dean of Historians when it came to the American Revolution. Himself a student of Bernard Bailyn, Wood argued for the essential revolutionary nature of the American Revolution. He stood against some - and I occasionally include myself - that argued that it was more a War of Independence than a true "revolution," especially if compared against the French or Russian Revolutions. In this telling, the Civil War and Reconstruction Era is much more of a revolution than replacing the monarchy with a representative government.

But of course, establishing a Republic - over so large an area no less - was a revolutionary act. It was fraught with pitfalls and dangers that the generation that framed the Constitutions was very much aware of. 

None more so than James Madison.

It was Madison who spent years thinking about how to preserve liberty and self-government. Today, we think of them as being reinforcing, but it was understood at the time that self-government tended to degenerate to anarchy, which led to the rise of a dictator. As Madison wrote in the Federalist: 

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

This framework is at the heart of our long practice in representative government, of combining democracy and republicanism to create something truly new over 235 years ago when the Constitution was written. 

As Richardson notes at the link above, Madison was also the author of the Bill of Rights. Initially reluctant, he came to see how writing down fundamental rights was part of the needed constraints on those who governed, especially the desire of those who - once in power - might wish to restrict the freedom of the press to blunt criticism of themselves, or perhaps ban public assemblies and petitions to the same purpose. 

It also extended to the free practice of religion, which had been pioneered by Roger Williams of Rhode Island in the 17th century, but then picked up by Virginians like Madison and Thomas Jefferson. If a government could dictate religious belief and practice, what couldn't they dictate? The free exercise of conscience preceded all other rights.

As we begin to mark the commemoration of the Declaration of Independence, we can see these "inalienable rights" under assault from a cabal of wicked people who surround a fundamentally ignorant and weak bully who would destroy those very rights that the Revolution was fought over. Pete Hegseth wants to tell servicemember how to worship. Various creatures wish to destroy the free press and outlaw protests. This is not hyperbole. 

Wood's death - just a few weeks before the 250th anniversary of the declaration of universal, inalienable rights - should help us reflect on how those rights which were so revolutionary 250 years ago are not self-enforcing. Wood reminded us that we are heirs to a revolutionary tradition, and at the heart of the revolution was the belief that government must belong to the governed. 

The Upside Down

 Among the more infuriating thing about living in Trumpistan is that basic reality is upside down. Yeah, sure, there's the lying, but I'm not even talking about Trump's incessant falsehoods. Trump largely benefits from "vibes" in terms of his being a "businessman" and "dealmaker" when his track record is quite the opposite.

No greater example of this upside down dynamic exists than "Trump is a tough guy." To recap:

- Trump avoided Vietnam by getting the family doctor to write up his bone spurs.
- Trump wears a LOT of makeup.
- Trump is fastidious about his hair.
- Trump refused to go to a veteran's service in France, because it was raining, and it might make his hair look bad.
- Trump rolls over on his back and piddles on his belly anytime he's around a dictator.
- He has a child's conception of what strength is.
- He, like all bullies, is a physical coward.

Yesterday, Meet the Press aired part of an interview with Trump. Only part, because Trump got pissy and red in the face and then walked off the set when called out on his lies. Not even "called out", Kristen Welker pressed him to provide evidence for his farrago of falsehoods. He of course has no evidence for electoral fraud or FBI complicity on 1/6 or any of the bullshit he spews forth all over the national discourse. Welker, unlike the usual sycophants he surrounds himself with, continued to press the man-baby on the lack of evidence. He lost his shit.

If you ever wondered what a decompressing narcissist looks like in real time, watch the clip. He gets rid in the face. He blusters. He hurls more lies. He hurls insults. He uses spurious ad hominem attacks to try and change the subject. He storms off in a pissy little huff. He even lays hands on Welker in a way that was likely meant to intimidate her, but it honestly looked like he was unsteady on his feet as he rose to pout his way off camera. 

Trump moral unfitness for office has been explained away by his cultists by saying, "Sure, he's a bit rough around the edges, but that's because he is a tough as nails businessman."

Bull.

Shit.

Finally Too Far?

 Whiskey Pete Hegseth has been a national embarrassment since he was plucked from Faux News to lead the biggest, most important bureaucracy in the country. (Technically, he was an embarrassment before that, but only to his friends and family.)

Recently, his remarks at the D-Day commemoration seemed to suggest that he's a Nazi. Or that he would have, at least, been manning a pillbox overlooking Omaha Beach (O-MAGA beach?). The sad thing is that this is not, by any stretch of the imagination a disqualifying statement in the Trump Administration.

No, what might finally rid us of this bothersome pest is his decision to strip Mormonism from the approved list of Christian religions serviced by Christian chaplains in the military. This is a BIG deal for Mormons. Mormons have always been unusually skeptical of Trump for a deeply conservative group of people. Despite - or perhaps because of - their pious religiosity that have resisted MAGA. They still largely vote for him, but with deep misgivings.

If the Mountain West had a competent Democratic Party, they would be flooding the airwaves with this. Not just Utah, but Idaho, Wyoming and Arizona, where there are a lot of Mormons. Again, maybe you just get them to stay home in November, but this is not a brick that Republicans can let slip from the coalition.

Or maybe Trump (or the people telling him what to do) will finally fire this foolish asshole. 

Good Take On Platner

 As is so often the case, Josh Marshall expounds on a point I've been trying to make.

In this case, what Graham Platner says about the factional divisions within the Democratic coalition.

Markets

 The jobs report was unexpectedly strong yesterday. It wasn't historically good or anything close to it, but it was a solid report. As Krugman points out, the stock market - especially the NASDAQ - fell off quite a bit. Why would the stock market fall on a decent jobs report?

The answer is interest rates. Tech companies are highly dependent on debt and that's why the NASDAQ fell. Given that we have not entered a cratering job market BUT prices are continuing to rise because of Trump's Iran Misadventure, the Federal Reserve is not going to cut rates. This is the '70s oil shock dynamic, and if inflation becomes an expectation then you will have to see a Fed Recession to kill it. Not a good dynamic.

So, the Fed won't cut interest rates. Secondly, the budget deficits are growing so incredibly large that government borrowing is going to start squeezing out private borrowing, if it hasn't already. That will make interest rates rise, too. This cost of borrowing is going to bite everywhere: credit card interest rates, meeting payroll, mortgages, college loans...And as inflation heats up, people will need to borrow more simply to meet their living expenses. That will happen in a lending environment that will be quite tight.

The real question is whether a Fed increase will burst the AI bubble. Sure, some of those companies are likely in decent shape, but there are a LOT of AI start-ups, and they aren't making money, they are living off their perceived future value and operating off of borrowing. If that tanks, then we are possibly in the stagflation dynamic.

You Should Support Talking Points Memo

 Right now, they are doing impressive investigative work on the corruption by US Attorneys, beginning with the so-called Broadview Six case.

Here.

Here.

Here.

Here.

With media like 60 Minutes falling under the sway of bootlicking lickspittles, you really need to support independent media.

Vandalism

 Buried in Richardson's "documentation of the atrocities" is this nugget:

Aligning with Project 2025, which criticizes federal science programs for paying too much attention to climate change, the Trump administration is also tearing out a $368 million deep-ocean observation system along the Pacific Coast that monitors marine ecosystems, coastal environments, and the ocean currents that affect climate change. Eric Niiler of the New York Times reported that the U.S. began operating the system in 2016 and expected it to continue for 25 years.

The system is in place. It is not a budgetary drain, and I would guess tearing it out will cost money. As we enter a "Super El Nino" cycle, monitoring these ocean currents is really important to understand what the weather will be for the next two years.

There are countless other examples of this rampant vandalism, of which the destruction of the East Wing of White House and turning the reflecting pool on the National Mall into an aboveground pool are only the most obvious physical examples.

We are building our retirement home, and as we have a decent sized pile of money to pay for the build, we wanted to place solar panels on the roof to reduce our monthly bills, once we become fixed income retirees. There had been in place a sizable tax credit for installing solar, and because we want to have as robust a solar array as possible, we could really have benefitted from that. Without getting into details, the difference in cost between what these panels would have cost us last year versus this year is enough to buy a small car.

The only reason to do this is from an ideological obsession with hurting the plans of anyone to operate independently of large utilities and petrochemical companies. It hurts Americans who just want to control their (spiking) energy costs. 

These are policies, and policies are easily changed by future Democratic administrations (providing we have democratic elections), but man, this is going to hurt, ironically because the median voters was upset over nominal prices.

Vengeance As Governance

 Krugman picks up on the Pulte clown show at DNI. He argues that while this is obviously about Trump requiring slavish loyalty and a desire to persecute Trump's many enemies, it also demonstrates that he has given up on governing.

I would actually argue that Trump never was interested in "governing" in any previously understood meaning of the word. He wanted to be the CEO/CFO of America so he could loot the country as his personal ATM. His first term was characterized by the "Adults in the Room" holding his most base instincts at least somewhat in check. (I think a lot of us were appalled by the framing of "Adults in the Room" in his first term, but boy howdy has it proven to be true.)

If Trump wanted to avoid future Iran catastrophes, then appointing a hatchet man at DNI would be a terrible idea. You absolutely need a functioning intelligence service and a credible leader of that apparatus if you want to protect the country that you were elected to serve. Of course, Trump doesn't want to serve anyone but himself.

In some ways, this is another example of the way in which authoritarianism fails. Democracy provides feedback to leaders. Democrats learned in 2024 just how damaging inflation was (and a president unable to articulate himself publicly). They have adjusted accordingly. The current GOP is an authoritarian cult of personality. They cannot course-correct. So, you get unqualified hack after unqualified hack, which will lead to more disastrous policy decisions like the Iran War.

JFC

 Trump has selected Bill Pulte to be interim Director of National Intelligence after Tulsi Gabbard steps down. Pulte has less than zero experience to hold this important position. This piece by The Hill is telling. The Senators aghast at Pulte's nomination are...Thom Tillis (retiring), Bill Cassidy (defeated by Trumpist in primary), John Cornyn (ditto) and the Very Concerned Twins of Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. 

This clown whose only qualification is his sycophantic attention to Trump's puckered asshole has already used mortgage data to go after Letitia James and Adam Schiff. He cannot, under any circumstances, be allowed to take this job. Gabbard, with her pro-Russian politics, was terrible enough, but Pulte will make this country less safe while arguably turning the intelligence apparatus of the United States on Trump's political enemies.

The Crash Out

 Richardson tries to drink from the firehose of bullshit coming from the White House, but narrows herself to two stories and subtly links them: Iran refusing to bend to Trump's demands and his crashing out on social media.

Trump has had two superpowers in his career as a businessman: He is absolutely shameless and he can drive a narrative through brute repetition. On the latter point, Trump was one of the first people to become famous for being famous. Under the idea of "there's no such thing as bad press" he relentlessly promoted himself through the NY tabloid ecosystem. Trump was successful, because you read about him in the Post, so he must be successful. Of course, reality controls the president in ways that it doesn't control a con artist real estate "developer."

His shamelessness manifested in suing vendors and contractors to renege on payments, his abuse of bankruptcy laws and his loach personal behavior. It politics, his ability to ignore what used to be the expectations of moral behavior from our elected officials allows him to constantly bull his way through what would have led any normal political figure to resign in shame.

In the Richardson missive, she points out that Iran wants nothing to do with a negotiated settlement that isn't a clear strategic win for them. This includes continued control over the Straits of Hormuz and billions in reconstruction funds. Trump really is powerless to stop them from making these demands and Iran is perfectly willing to let its people suffer in order to outlast Trump. 

All of this is causing him to self-sooth by releasing ridiculous AI art of him as a peer of George Fucking Washington, a man whose signal defining trait was strength of character and morality. As his position vis a vis Iran gets weaker, his narcissism requires him to post more and more nonsense about how awesome he is. I suppose there's a decent chance that this shit is just generated by staffers to placate him and this smooth-brained man-baby can't help but push it out on to an unsuspecting world. 

Trump's biggest previous crash out was election denial and January 6th. He's dumber and less constrained now, so I have no idea where this will end up, but I doubt it will be a place any sane person wants to be. 

Talarico

 I generally find Yglesias' takes on politics to be blinkered. He really does seem to think that swing voters care about policy. I think evidence has demonstrated over time that that really isn't true. Swing voters are vibe voters, and even if those vibes are downstream from policy, they really aren't digging into those policy specifics. Trump ran on "bringing prices down on Day One" and tariffs. That's incoherent, but didn't matter.

I do think, though, that Yglesias is right in this column about Talarico. In many ways, the Texas situation is the inverse of the Maine race. In Maine, you have a Democratic challenger who has more red flags than a May Day parade, whereas Talarico just gives off endlessly sincere and thoughtful energy. Meanwhile, Ken Paxton would immediately become the worst Senator in America if elected. He's endlessly corrupt and malevolent. 

The hope is that about 1,400,000 Republicans voted in the runoff and Paxton got 886,000 votes. In 2024, Ted Cruz got almost 6 million votes in the general election, whereas Colin Allred got a hair over 5 million. Can Talarico draw enough independents who voted for Cruz to get closer to 5,500,000? And will Paxton lose - either because they are voting for Talarico or not voting at all - enough votes to drop below that 5.5 million number? 

Yglesias notes that Talarico is taking somewhat heterodox positions on things like oil and gas that will play well in Texas, but might upset Democrats in California. While there remains a certain segment of the censorious Left that might challenge Talarico on this - including perhaps bitter-enders from Crockett's campaign - I do think most Democrats understand that Talarico can't take the same positions that a candidate running in Oregon might.

Where this gets interesting is that Platner is taking roughly all the right positions, and for the moment he seems to be winning, even with massive amounts of personal baggage. Paxton is not, I think, an electoral overperformer the way Susan Collins is, but then again Texas is not Maine. Platner is VERY unpopular with online Democrats, precisely because his baggage is very real and very troubling about the sort of person he truly is. He does not have a long track record of public service to evaluate him on, so you have to look at character and personality. The personality seems suited to the moment, but the character looks toxic as hell.

Would the Censorious Left be better off simply ignoring Platner's baggage in the way that they seem to be ignoring Talarico's policy stances? Technically, Platner is not the nominee yet, so they can make the case for Mills to jump back on and there is a third candidate on the ballot. I see people vehemently hating on Platner, largely because they hate the people - the Pod Bros and the Bernie Bros - who foisted him on us. 

Personally, where I draw the brightest line is simply if the person is a Republican or not. Talarico can carve out space that fits Texas, even if it doesn't gibe with the overall Democratic policy suite. Platner can prove that he's growing into the role, as long as he gets rid of Susan Collins. 

Democrats have to "hold serve" everywhere - Michigan looks dodgy - and then pick up enough seats to not only take the majority, but neutralize Fetterman. That means North Carolina, Maine, Texas, Ohio and maybe some surprises like Iowa, South Carolina, Montana or Nebraska. 

That means swallowing candidates that don't fit your personal preferences, and you have to be OK with that.

TrumpBucks

 Donald Trump wants to put his scowling mug on a new $250 bill. 

Two things:

First, it's illegal to put a living person on the money. That Trump is even trying is a monument to his narcissism and insecurity. He's already fired one person for refusing to break the law, which - again - very in keeping with his second term. Loyalty to Trump's bloated, pustule of an ego is more important than following the law or professional standards.

Second, can you think of anything more tone deaf in an age when voters have complained about inflation than putting your face on a bill that literally represents the decline in value of the dollar? I remember going to Italy before the Euro and it cost 1000 lira to buy a soda, back when a soda was a dollar. We are sort of approaching the psychology of chained inflation and Trump plastering his ugly face on the physical manifestation of that inflation is just...

Thanks, Americans who refused to vote for the qualified woman - twice - and gave us this idiotic monster.

The Summer Of His Discontent

 Richardson lays out what a shitty week Don Trumpeone just had. The Senators whose jobs he took away are pissed, the Courts are removing the presumption of good faith by government lawyers, and his efforts to aggrandize himself are falling flat. 

Perhaps nothing so perfectly captures this moment as his quagmire in Iran. He can't surrender even though he's been beaten strategically, because Trump's whole schtick is that he's a "winner." He could no more admit defeat in Iran than in the 2020 election. He has exactly zero good options here and the clock is ticking on enough Congressional Republicans to spit the bit and invoke the War Powers Act. 

Meanwhile, gas prices aren't budging, and with gas reserves being drawn down, we are potentially about to hit another spike in prices. Regardless, ending the war tomorrow would not restore either the reserves nor the pre-war prices. It will take months to get prices down to pre-war levels, a timeline that likely extends beyond the midterms. 

His floundering abroad and his sabotage of Senate Republicans may finally have enough members start to push back against his monarchical pretensions. People are legitimately pissed about the ballroom, the arch, the reflecting pool, the gilded tackiness, the plans for a $250 bill with his ugly mug on it, his indifference to people's economic distress, his tariffs, the rising cost of fertilizers, high interest rates from deficit spending and inflation...you get the idea.

These craven lickspittles in the GOP thought that if they embraced Trump just enough that would save them. Instead, insufficient fealty leads to the fates of Tom Tillis, Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn. Too much fealty could drag down unpopular faux Trumpists like Lindsay Graham.

I'm fascinated by what will happen around July 4th. It should be a moment of national celebration. Even the Bicentennial, laden as it was with inflation and the stench of Watergate, felt like a reprieve from our malaise. I have to wonder if this 250th anniversary will feel more like an expression of revolutionary rage than the nostalgia that Trump craves. 

Platner

 When Graham Platner first appeared on the scene, I got it. I got the vibe. He had the sort of rough charisma that seemed like it would appeal to Mainiacs.

The sheer number of red flags that have popped up has obviously given a lot of people real qualms about this guy. It is very difficult to support a guy who casually carried a Nazi tattoo for years or said some of the dumbassed things he's said. 

However...

Defeating Susan Collins is an imperative. Platner is leading in the polls, but previous challengers to Collins have been leading at this point. 

What worries me is that there are a LOT of people online who are furious at Platner and his accumulated misdeeds. Many are rightfully worried about a repeat of John Fetterman, a guy who got into office based on vibes. 

Still, it pains me to see good people taking sides on this. As soon as you take a firm side, you cannot move off it easily. This is true of MAGA and the Bernie Bros. You dig in; you refuse to compromise; you approach this as a zero sum endeavor.

You absolutely do not have to support him. If you want to defeat Collins, just ignore him (unless you live in Maine). Stop creating an identity around intramural conflict, because you're going to have to move on at some point.

The Lies That Bind

 Martin Longman looks at the tactical bind that the GOP is in this November. The basic issue is this: MAGA is centered in "low information" voters. These are people who do not think in especially ideological terms, but rather respond to various cues about the world in a less systematic way. Trump, in this telling, is simply one of dozens of global leaders who have risen to power because the "system" sucks and they want someone to upset the apple cart. It's broadly populist in its contempt for governing expertise and compromise, because they just want to burn the whole thing down.

Trump is currently burning the whole thing down.

Turns out, though, that burning the whole thing down is actually really damaging to a lot things that MAGA likes. Additionally, MAGA is now invested in the arsonist. They simply don't vote in the same numbers in special elections certainly, but also the midterms. Democrats did surprisingly well in the 2022 midterms, despite Biden's low approval ratings, because Trump's GOP really are only TRUMP'S GOP. Without him on the ballot, Republicans could suffer in the turnout war.

The problem - as Longman and others have identified - is that Trump is incredibly unpopular. What's more, he's really unpopular on the issues that people care the most about. Then you add in him saying shit like he doesn't care about the economy or the midterms (his way of preemptively deflecting the stench of coming defeat) and why would anyone come out and vote for the GOP. 

Susie Wiles is talking about a convention in August or September to rally the MAGA faithful. The problem is that he's becoming increasingly toxic. If you are the Democrats, you WANT to run against Trump, against gas prices, against corruption. By all means, re-center Trump in the popular imagination. Democratic partisans are going to crawl through broken glass and lemon juice to vote this November. Blacks are pissed at the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Hispanics are pissed at the wanton cruelty of ICE. Suburbanites are repelled by the corruption and incompetence. The idea that they can rally these infrequent voters who often back Trump seems false on the face of it.

Unless they are hardcore MAGA, they wanted the price of stuff to come down. Inflation is not only had right now, but it looks to get worse over the course of the next six months. Oil prices won't come down for a year or more even if the war ended tomorrow. Fertilizer prices are going to create chaos on the Farm Belt and the grocery store.

Wiles may feel like her only avenue is to "let Trump be Trump" but that seems foolish.

The Magaification Is Complete

 Last night's demolition of John Cornyn is the final death knell of the old Chamber of Commerce GOP. Paxton is the personification of the moral rot at the heart of the GOP: an adulterous grifter with an opposition file a foot thick. Yet the primary voters swallowed him whole. 

Talarico is the anti-Paxton in so many ways - in fact he was one of the prosecutors during the failed impeachment of this gutter dweller. If Talarico can't win, then Texas is irredeemable. If the stench of Trump's corruption mingling with Paxton's corruption isn't enough to make Texas voters gag, I don't know what to say. 

He does have a real shot, but he's going to need money to handle the onslaught of attack ads that are headed his way.

As Chait notes, Trump's record of destroying his perceived enemies within the GOP is near perfect. His record in general elections is far weaker. His coattails are short and the GOP performance in off year elections - including 2022 - is far weaker than it should be based on fundamentals. 

Trump himself my defy the laws of political gravity, but like a drowning man, he pulls under those around him.

Busy Day

 Busy time of year. I also learned that the degenerative condition in my neck might require some surgery. Or maybe a lot of surgery. But maybe no surgery. But one of the discs is in a bad place and if were to get into a serious accident, it could impact my spinal cord. Or maybe not. And maybe the fusion I had 25 years ago is solid. Or maybe it's not. One option would relieve my symptoms, maybe, but I might also lose the use of my right arm for a few months. But probably not. But maybe.

So, yeah. Busy day.

Another Failure

 In some ways, Donald Trump represents what happens if Republicans actually governed on what they say they want to do. "I believe in American manufacturing" becomes ruinous tariffs. "I believe Iran is an outlaw nation" becomes the current fiasco in the Gulf. "I oppose abortion" becomes Dobbs. "I believe in a color blind America" becomes naked white supremacy.

Nowhere is this truer than in Trump most orthodox Republican policy: massive tax cuts for the rich. Reagan famously (or maybe not) raised taxes when the Laffer Curve proved to be laughable. Bush 41 raised taxes in the face of a significant debt crisis. Clinton balanced the budget largely via increasing taxes, and then Bush 43 blew that all to hell.

Trump's tax cuts and overall chaotic stewardship on economic issues is creating a massive debt problem. Roughly half of the entire $39,000,000,000,000 debt was accrued under Donald Trump, a man whose business practice consisted largely of running up debts, then declaring bankruptcy and walked away from the wreckage.

Sadly, we know exactly what is required to solve this issue, and no one is interested in doing the hard work of restraining spending and raising taxes. "Tax the rich" is a nice bumper sticker and we absolutely need to tax capital gains more aggressively. However, you cannot do the things liberals and progressives want to do simply by taxing the rich more aggressively. One reason is that skyrocketing debt crowds out private borrowing and makes interest on the public debt more burdensome. 

Clinton's economy was really good. I know there's a whole whining culture about how nothing is affordable, because they can't DoorDash 7 nights a week. The permanent unhappiness about the economy is both real and also imagined. In a lot of ways, things are pretty good, especially compared to 2008 or 2020. It does FEEL worse, and that's before Trumpflation really digs into our wallets. 

The spiraling debt will make everything - and I mean - everything more expensive, by driving up borrowing costs for everyone. Economic stagnation caused by trade wars and deportations means that we won't be able to grow out of our debt situation very easily, but that's going to be a requirement of the next administration.

I'm sure that the American people are super duper eager to sacrifice to make that happen.

Abandoning Oneself

 Trump's approval rating is in the thirties, which is historically unpopular.

That seems higher than it should be.

As Martin Longman points out, the GOP is REALLY dependent on the Trump cultists and the idiotic voters who don't know which party supports universal health care. The latter are turning against him. These vibe voters have had enough of $4.70 gas and declining purchasing power. That's what makes most analysts think that even the GOP's gerrymandering won't be enough to save them.

But how the hell do a third of Americans still support this guy? It's not just partisanship, but this piece has a nugget buried in it that might help.

Think about MAGA; it's a cult. He's just an awful, stupid human being. Yet millions of Americans avidly supported this guy as a "disrupter" who was going to upend a frustrating status quo and usher in a return to the "good old days" which is really just nostalgia for a past that didn't exist. Now, the evidence that he is just a stupid, corrupt, senile old fool is piling up. His war against Iran was a disaster. His stupid ballroom and arch and reflecting pool are examples of both his stupidity and his greed. 

If you're the average GOP voter, though, you've been supporting this guy again and again. All the pointy headed libtards have been accurately describing how awful this guy is, but your defense of him has simply made you need to defend him more. I liked John Edwards as a politician, but when he turned out to be a moral sewer, I moved on. When Biden's age and speaking decline proved impossible to ignore, I moved on. I am not "invested" in the person.

MAGA is invested - not in the GOP - in Trump himself. His bloated person IS their belief system. They cannot abandon him without realizing that the last decade has been their disgraceful embrace of the worst this country can vomit up. 

Even if they were "smart enough" to change, they cannot without abandoning what has become not just a voting preference but a fundamental part of their entire personality. 

The Autopsy

 The DNC did what parties do when they lose an election they feel they should have won: the commission an autopsy, a report on what went wrong.

The DNC commissioned an autopsy, but it was a trash heap on top of a dumpster fire. It was little more than a blog post of conventional wisdom. 

DNC Chair Ken Martin made the correct decision to scrap it, because it was trash. However, the drumbeat of "What are you covering up?" became so loud, he released it last week. Guess what? It was a trash heap on top of a dumpster fire. 

My favorite criticisms are those about how shoddy an unhelpful the "conclusions" are. Yes. Yes, that's why it wasn't released. You can criticize Martin for who he hired to write it, but you can't criticize him for trying to bury it, because it's a piece of shit.

You are going to win in 2026 and 2028 because Trump and the Trumpublicans are fucking awful. Yes, that's pretty much all you need to do. Because most voters are smooth brained naïfs wandering guilelessly through a pristine political landscape in which no past, present or future really exist, things sucking will pretty much do it. Even a good autopsy would have been mostly useless and mostly devolved into the sort of online slapfight that serves no one but the GOP.

Anyway, Trump apparently just surrendered completely to Iran, so...

Misconduct

 The Online Famous Popehat (Ken White) has a thread where he discusses the rank misconduct in the case against people opposing ICE in Chicago. There's a no-zero chance this actually leads to disbarring some of the lawyers. It sure sounds like this needs to start happening to DOJ lawyers, because the worst thing we can have right now is a  bunch of DOJ lawyers that aren't afraid of losing their law licenses. Same goes for doctors giving professional cover for RFK's assault on public health. Every lever of civil society needs to be pulled to help push back against this shitshow. 

It's A Cult

 Reading this piece about the Texas Senate GOP runoff and Trump's endorsement is to see just how Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs the average Trumpist is. The reason they believe the 2020 election was stolen is because they are aggressively, willfully ignorant to the point of insanity.

As Trump slips into historic levels of unpopularity, his cult will seemingly slip further into an alternate reality. Conversely, when I read this about the schism in the left and whether there can be a left populism, it inevitably founders on the fact that most people on center-left actually care about results and not performative vibes. The people supporting Greene over AOC are just the absolute dumbest people within what can very loosely be called the left wing coalition. 

The Right is prone to being a cult, because they are reflexively drawn to hierarchies. The left is drawn to schisms and in-fighting, which makes the emergence of a "Democratic Trump" a non-starter.

Cracks

 Josh Marshall likes to note that in politics power is unitary. You either have the juice or you don't. Trump - old, incoherent, corrupt with collapsing poll numbers - is losing his juice. In fact, the one way that he still does have juice - over the GOP cult of personality - is only making things worse for members of Congress. As the midterms approach, those members are either being primaried away or looking at an increasingly dire landscape. As a result, they are starting to buck him: on Iran, on his stupid ballroom, on his criminal slush fund.

Do I think this will last? Probably not. These are craven men and women. What it does create is a sort of YOLO Caucus, especially in the Senate. Collins is in trouble, Tillis, Cornyn and McConnell aren't going to be there in January...why should they genuflect before Trump's stupid agenda?

This doesn't mean things will go smoothly. Desperate to reaffirm his authority, Trump looks - unbelievably - to be preparing to invade Cuba. Since he is a smooth brained nepobaby who never had to suffer a true consequence in his life, he has learned exactly nothing from his Iran debacle. Stymied at home, feeling the pangs of narcissistic wounds, he could very well launch his third military adventure.

A Cuban invasion might shore up his support in Southern Florida, but it's going to be another sign for any voter capable of seeing it that he does not give a flying fuck about how your life is going. He's going to launch his wars, build his ballroom, payoff his cronies. 

Boomerang

 Trump's purge of people like Bill Cassidy and Thomas Massie was intended to have a chilling effect on Congressional Republican. What if it has the opposite effect?

There are three areas where even the lickspittles in the GOP Caucus are choking to get them down. The first is the obvious slush fund for January 6th criminals. Given the fact that the Capitol Police nearly gave their lives on that day, given the GOP's reflexive support for police in general, and given the fact that the January 6th mob likely would have killed members if they had broken. It is also so brazenly corrupt that it's hard to justify on any level outside the cult.

The second is the ballroom. Somewhat surprisingly, the destruction of the East Wing of the White House actually did resonate with voters, even in the midst of the government shutdown. Trump's bizarre obsession with it is a great example of how out of touch he is with most voters. His constant stream of bizarre statements about how he doesn't care about the American public's economic hardship is something that Republicans are going to have to navigate in the midterms. Drawing a line on the ballroom is a good place to do it.

Then there's Trump's monumental (literally) edifice to his fragile ego: the Arch de Trump. Again, this is so obviously, brazenly out of touch and unpopular, that the funding for this could easily be a place where Republicans kick back against Trump's weird priorities.

I don't expect a wholesale revolt. The GOP is a combination of craven cucks and true believers. Given the margins, I also don't think you NEED a wholesale revolt. Why would Massie or Tillis or Cornyn or Cassidy want to support Trump? How much latitude can they afford to give Susan Collins or Ashley Moody or Dan Sullivan? Even Lindsay Graham and Roger Marshall better look over their shoulder. If they are viewed by voters as being so beholden to Trump's wars and vanity projects, they could get swept out the anti-incumbent tide.

Republican Senators, in particular, were very angry over Trump endorsing Paxton over Cornyn, because Cornyn is their colleague and Paxton is a fucking criminal. We've been waiting for the Congressional GOP to grow some spine, and it likely WON'T happen, but it COULD.

Donald Trump, Family Man

 This seems hilarious, but is really incredibly sad, as in pathetic.

Another Way To Fight Back

 In Texas, the two candidates in the Democratic runoff for the 35th district include Maureen Galindo, a therapist with no track record in public office, but a history of saying really, really vile things. This includes putting Jews ("Zionists") into camps. She's being propped up by a PAC called Lead Left, which no one has heard of. It's almost certainly a rat fucking effort by the GOP to elevate horrible people with which to smear the Democratic Party and potentially throw swing seats to Republicans.

It's unethical, but in the world of 2026, it's par for the course. Democrats should try and respond in kind.

Get Thomas Massie to run as an independent, for instance. See if you can create a "grassroots" MAGA Party that runs lunatics and siphons off votes from Republicans.

Democrats want to run as institutionalists in a time when the public wants arsonists. In order to keep the house from burning down, you might have to play by a different set of rules.

More Adventures In Orbanism

 Trump is setting up a taxpayer funded slush fund to pay his foot soldiers from the January 6th insurrection. It is easily the single most corrupt act in a corrupt presidency, simply because he's brazenly stealing your dollars in the open to pay his criminal cohort.

Krugman's position is that this is a sign that Trump isn't expecting Democrats to overcome his gerrymanders. While it is true that we have an uphill fight against these gerrymanders, the lesson of Hungary is that public outrage at corruption is greater than even the most severe attempts to destroy substantive democracy.

More likely is simply that this is a mad dash to plunder as much as possible before Democrats take control of the Congress. For Trump himself, he has never faced real consequences for his lifelong lawlessness, why should he fear it now, when he's the sitting president? Also, it seems pretty much like he's fading into senescence. Why wouldn't those around him loot as much as possible before he strokes out? Park it in a Cayman Islands' bank and move to a country without an extradition treaty and hope you get better lawyers than Alina Habibi. 

I've been screaming it for months, but the corruption is the main issue that will depress Republican turnout and drive independents towards Democrats. 

UPDATE: Richardson (naturally) catalogs all the corruption involved here.

An Evangelical Christianity Problem

 Richardson lays out the case against presuming America is a "Christian Nation." This is - ironically - against the backdrop of another one of Trump's grifts, this one surrounding the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Trump and his creatures are trying to hijack the celebration of America articulating the idea of limited, representative government to create a cult of personality around Trump and elevate the ahistorical idea that America was founded for White Christian Men. (Ok, yes, men, but still.)

When thinking about "conservatism" in general, we should understand that conservatism has a preference for established hierarchies. That's not always bad, but it obviously can stand in the way of human progress, which is the essential tension in most democratic politics.

Trumpism and the modern GOP is not even "conservative" in that sense. They are not trying to protect established hierarchies, they are trying to revivify old ones - ones that previous generations disassembled. An obvious example is the effective ending of the Voting Rights Act, in order to re-establish White Supremacist government in the South. 

This twisted form of Christian Nationalism that Trump and his cadre of institutional arsonists are trying to create is a deference to a hierarchy that Americans have never really cottoned to: one that deifies the sitting president. Trump routinely calls members of the press who challenge him on anything - even questions of fact - "traitors" because in this mindset, questioning the president is treason to the country, because l'Etat c'est moi.  

This blinkered, chauvinistic version of Christianity is a fringe sect, but it still constitutes millions of Americans and the very bedrock of Trump's support. If you believe that a literal angel sits on your shoulder and protects you from the temptations of demons, I guess you can believe that Trump is a savvy businessman sent by God to redeem this nation. 

Max Weber referred to the period when America wrote its founding documents - the period known as the Enlightenment - as the "disenchanting of the world." The magical thinking Christians wish to re-enchant the world. This blind deference to authority is not only deeply un-American, it is a prime grifting opportunity, a tradition that goes back to the fictional Elmer Gantry and the very real Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and however many youth pastors who raped children. 

Eat Your Own

 The defeat of Bill Cassidy in the Republican primary in Louisiana is a sign of where the Republican Party is, and it's not good. Cassidy was decent Republican by the standard of the Republican South. He voted to convict Trump of his very real offenses on January 6th, and that was that. Even after being the deciding vote that gave us the trainwreck of RFK, Jr, his offense of holding Trump to the most minimal of standards was too much for Trump, and the cult that exists in the remains of what was once the Grand Old Party.

For existing Republicans, the fates of Cassidy and Thomas Massie are reminders of what happens when they cross Trump and expect that he be held accountable for his crimes. If you cross him, you will lose your primary, no matter how well you've served your constituents. 

However, the ultimate test of this will occur in November. It's unlikely that a Democrat can win the Louisiana Senate seat, because it remains a very conservative state. However, if Blacks turn out in protest of Callais, and the GOP is seen as representing Trump and billionaires...a guy can hope!

Like A Fiddle

 Trump's trip to China was...something. China stage managed the optics and the protocols to make the US and China look like peer countries. This has been China's goal for a while now. China remains a relatively poor country; it's GDP per capita is close to Mexico's. It is clearly a Great Power, but it's goal is to be seen as the next superpower to stand equally with the US. 

As a result, China stage managed everything. Xi did not meet Trump at the airport, sending lesser functionaries instead. He referenced the Thucydides Trap (I'm trying to imagine how many times his aides tried to explain to Trump who Thucydides was), which explicitly posits that China is rising and the US is declining. In fact, he got Trump to sign off on this, when Trump blamed it - as he does everything - on Biden.

This image is worth more than an aircraft carrier to China.

Trump, of course, came home blathering and boasting about "deals" that will probably evaporate - if they ever existed in the first place. Fox and similar outlets will fluff him endlessly. Sure, there's the endless fanboying from Trump towards any dictator, but this was deeper. Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines and South Korea are all now deeply aware of how little they can rely on the US to stand with them, should China become belligerent. 

Just as Presidents have more latitude to act in foreign relations, they have the capacity to do more damage in that arena, too. Trump is turning his back on our allies, including Europe. He is Orban on a superpower scale.

Let's hope we get an Hungarian Solution to this newest Orban.

Let Them Eat Ballroom

 Paul Krugman points out that Trump's "big win" in China is that China will start buying more American petroleum....which will further drive up the cost of gasoline here in the US. This is just rudimentary market stuff. Oil is famously fungible; it's a global market and every gallon sold to China or Europe is a gallon not sold in the US, reducing supply and driving up costs.

As Trump and Republicans try and dismantle democracy via partisan gerrymanders, they have to contend with the idea that Trump's cratering approval rating will create a dummymander, where they take reasonably safe seats and dilute them with Democratic voters in order to crack open Democratic districts. At the moment, the Democratic Party lags Trump's disapproval rating, because Democrats have zero levers to constrain Trump and therefore "look weak." I would anticipate that - if current trends continue and I see no reason why they wouldn't - Democrats will make gains on the generic ballot. Of course, Senate seat can't be gerrymandered, and I would expect Democrats to do particularly well there in places like Ohio, Iowa and Alaska that aren't typically seen as battlegrounds. Gerrymandering itself is likely to motivate Black voters in particular in places like South Carolina and Georgia that should only help Democrats.

In the midst of rampant inflation directly caused by Trump's war in Iran and now prioritizing oil sales to China, Trump has also devoted his true energies to really unprecedented levels of corruption. Trump has benefited from the cynicism most Americans feel about politicians, but his destruction of the East Wing of the White House and his continued desecration of the nation's capitol to assuage his fragile ego has created an easily understandable image of monarchical corruption - just in time for the 250th celebration of America throwing off monarchical rule.

Trump, of course, seems oblivious to his political peril, when he says things like "I don't think about Americans' financial situation." Now, there's a context for this about weighing the impact on the American economy and preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but he can't deliver a coherent sentence, because he's a senile old dipshit. The result, is a perfect soundbite to play on repeat (if Democrats get their shit together).

Trump extorting the Executive Branch, trading favors for payouts and generally prioritizing the wealthy over Americans is the precise conditions of a Blue Tsunami, powerful enough to overcome Republican gerrymandering efforts. 

Art Of The Steal

 Trump is in Beijing, where he was met not be Xi Jinping but by cheering children, which I have to think is subtle Epstein shade being thrown by the CCP. 

Here is what I fear is going to be the outcome: Xi will agree to help extricate the US and the world from the Iran Fustercluck in return for the US selling out Taiwan. For Xi, Taiwan is a similar obsession as Putin felt for the former Soviet Republics that are moving to integrate with Europe. He wants it "back" and seems intent on making that happen. 

Trump - who is absolutely without morals or loyalty - would sell Tiffany Trump to a human trafficking organization if it would help him assuage the narcissistic injury he's suffering through with regards to Iran. Selling out Taiwan for an off ramp would be something he would jump at.

What Trump the Idiot fails to understand is that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be similar to America's attack on Iran. Taiwan holds a central position in the global economy as the computer chip maker to the world. While Xi no doubt wants Taiwan for reputational reasons, effectively monopolizing chip manufacture would vault China's global prominence clearly ahead of a declining Trumpist America. 

Taiwan, though, has no doubt looked at the looming mainland threat and Ukraine's spirited defense and begun to prepare a drone force to thwart a Chinese invasion. If Xi really is that reckless, the resulting conflict would basically throttle off the majority of the world's supply of chips. 

Dictators are often cagey and capable as they ascend to power, but once in power, they can be captured by their own hubris. It's happened to Putin; it happened to Orban; it happened to Trump. Has it happened to Xi?

Part of the war on expertise is a war on the status quo. For many people, the status quo is not what they want, so they feel eager to overturn things like "globalization" or "liberal economics" or "the liberal postwar order." Once it's gone, though, they might realize what it is that they have lost.

Expertise

 Krugman notes that the Trump Administration's floundering can be traced back to the willful rejection of expert opinion. Whether on tariffs, Iran, climate change and energy policy or diplomacy, Trumpist populism married to Trump's personal enthusiasm for corruption means that anyone who might actually know how to solve a problem will be sidelined and denigrated.

As Krugman admits, experts are not always right. Here's the thing. If I (a few years and several pounds ago) were to take 100 swings at a major league pitcher, I might be able to make contact a few times. That doesn't make me Tony Gwynn. Gwynn may fail 60% of the time, but he's still so much more capable than some schmuck like me. Same deal with expertise: you aren't guaranteed success, but your odds improve a LOT.

It also goes to the basic advantage of democracy - that again, Trump rejects. Democracy has the capacity to self-correct, because it receives feedback from the populace. Expertise in some ways is simply using a broad base of knowledge to understand feedback and predict consequences. "Hey, if we go to war with Iran, they could try and shut down the Straits of Hormuz and that would be really bad." People with a basic respect for expertise - not even of global markets and maritime law specifically - would listen. 

This is why people calling for a "Democratic Trump" as so misguided. There cannot be a populist figure like that in a party that still respects the concept of expertise. Trump's electoral strength is based on idiots who think "common sense solutions" is anything more than a bumpersticker. His failures as a governing figure stem from exactly what won him elections in the first place.

Again, Trump is the symptom, not the sole problem.

Enablers

 Buried in this Sidney Blumenthal op-ed is a reference to the famous "adults in the room" during Trump's first term. 

In Trump’s first term, he was relatively constrained through an alliance struck between the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon, and the secretary of defense, James Mattis, former commander of US Central Command, who filtered the options that would be presented to Trump, insisted on the importance of Nato, and argued to keep the US within the Iran nuclear agreement.

Gary Cohn, the former director of the national economic council, stopped Trump from signing executive orders that would cause economic and national security “catastrophes”, and prevented him from withdrawing from the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement and the North American Free Trade Agreement. “I stole it off his desk,” Cohn told an associate, as Bob Woodward reported in his book Fear. “I wouldn’t let him see it. He’s never going to see that document. Got to protect the country.”

The “committee to save America”, as they were dubbed, included the chief of staff, former general John Kelly, who made a pact with Mattis that one of them would always be in the country to keep tabs on Trump’s impulsivity. Kelly would reflect that Trump did not understand the constitution and had “nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law”.

Not enough credence was given to this basic fact when Trump ran again in 2024. The median American voter was upset by nominal prices and they didn't like Harris' laugh, so they voted not just for Trump, but Unconstrained Trump. The result has been unprecedented corruption, skyrocketing inflation, illegal tariffs, the shooting of unarmed Americans on the streets of Minneapolis, a disastrous war of choice in Iran, slowing growth, the literal destruction of part of the White House, the collapse of the Atlantic Alliance, the murders of people in boats in the Caribbean, and that's all I can come up without googling it.

The recent string of absolutely lawless Supreme Court decisions that have basically enabled Republican mid-cycle gerrymandering while striking down Democratic efforts is an attempt to deny voters the ability to hold Trump accountable for his many crimes and incompetencies. We have to hope that Trump's incredible malice, incompetence and corruptness will overwhelm the banks of the gerrymandered districts.

What Could Trump Do To Get Out of His Iran War?

 Trump has committed the US to a disastrous war of choice that has left the other side militarily defeated by political stronger. Iran has learned how to choke off the world economy at their whim. That's...not good.

So, what can we do.

1) Ground Invasion. I doubt this will happen, and it would go poorly. Ask the Russians.

2) Surrender. Most likely outcome, though the amount of psychic death Trump would experience would be profound. Could he sustain himself if he lost this war?

These aren't great options.

The final option is one that might be available to someone other than Trump. 

3) Establish a multinational force to insure freedom of navigation of the Straits of Hormuz. Create lasting security guarantees for the Iranian government, but use the combined pressure of the EU/NATO and China to re-open the straight. 

The problem with (3) is that it requires Trump not to be Trump. What's more, as this piece lays out, Trump has gone from "unpredictable" to "unreliable." There was a sort of efficacy to Trump's unpredictability, in that it forced opposing actors to be on constant alert for changes in direction. It functioned as a sort of variation on the Madman Theory. "Who knows what that crazy bastard will do?"

Now, however, Trump is accurately seen as simply unreliable. There is no secret plan. What's more, you cannot rely on him to abide by his agreements. This is why he crashed out of NYC real estate. No one would work for him, because he wouldn't honor his contracts. He stiffed people, sued for no reason and was a general asshole. That is a strategy of diminishing returns.

Trump's chaotic unreliability means that no one - and I mean no one - can rely on the US to honor its agreements. That's a real problem for global peace and it makes any solution to the Iran stalemate impossible.

Not Sending Their Best

 The hantavirus outbreak is unlikely to bloom into a full grown pandemic. However, as Yglesias rightly notes, we are likely living in a world where the next pandemic is a matter of when, not if. Connectivity has exploded and that allows a virus to travel around the world quickly. This hantavirus outbreak could be tricky, because it takes a while to develop symptoms. 

Of course, the real issue is that literally the absolute worst people in the world are in charge of American health care right now. The anti-vax movement has largely captured American health institutions and they are actively working to undermine both pandemic response and vaccine development. 

We are seeing in the Iran conflict how the idiocy of this administration can put even a military superpower into a losing situation against a third rate military power. It's bad, but it's not pandemic bad. 

So much of modern life has coasted along on expertise that has largely been operating outside of the public eye. Trump's wholesale assault on competent governance, very much including DOGE, has led to some seriously bad results, but if we get to pandemic territory again...

The Hungarian Solution

 Richardson's run down of the news from yesterday is...quite something. The following news stories dropped or were expanded upon:

- The Secretary of Transportation has spent a great deal of his term filming a reality show (his background) on a road trip.
- A No-Bid contract awarded to a Trump crony to paint the bottom of the reflecting pool to mirror an aboveground pool.
- The Iran War's stated cost of $25 billion is simply an equipment cost, not the various other costs that the war has incurred and will continue to incur.
- FEMA is denying aid to states run by Democrats.
- Trump us using "national emergency" to gut the Clean Air Act without letting Congress weigh in.
- Trump's latest tariffs were ruled illegal.
- Trump's cultists unveiled a 22 foot gold statue of Trump at his Florida golf course, in order to get more crypto lucre.

She then concludes with the lead story, which is the Virginia Supreme Court, on partisan lines, ruling that the new gerrymandered maps - which were approved by the Virginia electorate - was unconstitutional under Virginia law. 

In terms of partisan politics, this latest iteration of courts denying Democrats the same relief that they routinely provide Republicans is a gut punch to Democrats hoping to impose a political cost on Republican efforts to destroy majority rule in this country.

The only solution is the example that Hungary offers. Orban entrenched his rule even more soundly than Republicans have, but a massive wave overwhelmed his gerrymander and negated his control of the media. The lived experience was greater than efforts to control the narrative and people threw him out.

The overwhelming corruption of the Trump Administration is going to be increasingly difficult for Fox News to cover up. Gas prices aren't coming down. Food is going to become more expensive. Meanwhile, Trump is squandering money on ballrooms, reflecting pools and wars of choice.

The news from Virginia and about the Voting Rights Act was a gut punch. As Josh Marshall keeps reminding us, the Courts are currently handmaidens to the death of American Democracy. (Not ALL of the Courts, but enough and obviously the Supreme Court.) However, without the consent of the governed, government is illegitimate. Hopefully in November, the Blue Wave is high enough to swamp any barriers put in its place. 

Unequal To The Moment

 Jesus Christ, Elite Lawyer Brain is going to be the end of democracy in this country.

DOJ-In-Exile

 Josh Marshall has been arguing that we need a Department of Justice-In-Exile. The idea is that there is obviously a massive amount of law breaking going on, and the Trump DOJ is simply not going to look into it - unless it's a Democrat. In fact, Democrats likely don't even have to break the law to warrant investigation and prosecution. If we are going to fumigate the Executive Branch and DOJ, we will need a repository of evidence so that we may hold people accountable. The signal failure of the Biden Presidency was not throwing Trump in jail on January 21st, 2021.

Now, the obvious problem is that Trump can and will pardon people. Some of the DOJ-In-Exile will perhaps be about sending that evidence to state prosecutors. If Trump pardons, say, Tom Homan, then perhaps Illinois could bring him up on charges under Illinois law. 

There's a separate issue that Marshall sometimes refers to, but needs to be repeated. Democrats need to be ready to go on various prosecutions on corruption and fraud outside of the Executive Branch or at least adjacent to it.

Want an example? Elon Musk sure looks like he's committing fraud so that he can become the world's first trillionaire. Given the howling void at the center of this creature in the place where his soul would normally be, his headlong pursuit of "winning" the race to become a trillionaire is naturally the sort of fraud that someone who feels that they are bigger than the law would commit. There's very little chance that Musk will get a pardon from Trump, but he might. He would have to feel that he needed one, and he may be too narcissistic to understand that. 

Anti-trust enforcement is a requirement for the next Democratic Administration. Yes, Republicans will caterwaul about "lawfare" after committing actual prosecutorial overreach. You just have to ignore that and bull right through. Biden and especially Merrick Garland were not capable of understanding that. It will require a new mindset from new leaders.