The Fictive Nexus

 Trump's war with Iran is only his second most important war. The war with the truth is one that he has been waging for his entire life. As a malignant narcissist, Trump cannot be wrong. He is always right, always winning. The realities of the Iran War are intruding upon that cocoon of lies. Today, Trump said that he was close to a negotiated deal with Iran; Iran said, "Bullshit." 

The question some have asked is whether Trump's lies about the war are 
A) Part of an effort to manipulate markets.
B) A fundamental disconnect with reality.
C) Just who he is: a liar.

Reality really does get the last say. Trump, however, has created a public career where his lying has not been nearly the disqualifying character flaw that we would have hoped it would be. Trump's congenital contempt for the truth has somehow not become the defining trait when the new media reports on his utterances. When Trump says anything at this point, it should be treated as false until otherwise verified. The continuing, persistent treatment of Trump as if he were a normal human being - much less a normal president - is the height of the sanewashing that routinely occurs.

This is why Trump could only have risen to prominence in the Republican Party. The reason is because of Fox News. Fox has primed a generation or two of "conservatives" to respond in a Pavlovian way to the red meat and lies of Republican politicians. We have certified morons like Senator Tommy Tuberville decrying Sharia law in the US...which isn't a thing. But if you've marinated in Fox for decades, it might be. 

One of the theories behind John Fetterman's complete abandonment of Democratic partisanship is that after his stroke, he's become closer to his Fox News addicted brother. That would absolutely track. 

Trump is a uniquely awful human being - among the worst public figures this or any other country has produced. 

He could not have become president without Fox News.

MAGA Is A Cult

 Morris looks at the viral poll from CNN that says that 100% of MAGA supports Trump's war in Iran. Of course, MAGA supports the war, because Trump could literally give their kid measles, the kid could die and they would eat that tragedy up with a spoon. It is absolutely a cult, and trying to care about MAGA is pointless, unless you're Trump.

The critical numbers to look at are who is self-identifying as MAGA and self-identifying as Republican. MAGA has slipped from 36% to 30%. That's significant. We need to keep an eye on people moving from Republican to independent, as well. Typically, people don't identify as Republican and vote from Democrats. They stop identifying as Republicans first.

Trump is such a uniquely awful human being that he continually repels people. Many Republicans keep returning to him like an abused dog hoping this time will be different. Some, though, start to fall away. As they fall away, it really doesn't matter in November if they vote for Democrats or just stay home. Either one works.

The Adults In The Room

 In 2016, many Republicans - when faced with the grotesquerie that is Donald Trump - assured themselves that the "adults in the room" would restrain his worst, most venal impulses. Every time Trump did something egregious, this concept of "adults in the room" was widely mocked.

When he ran again in 2024, many warned that Trump 2.0 would not have even those few voices of reason that had apparently constrained him during his first term. 

What we are seeing in Iran is a vivid example of what happens when you put people like Pete Hegseth in charge of a massive bureaucracy like the Pentagon and then have him running around doing workouts with the troops rather than soberly (ahem) considering the impact of military policy. Trump Unleashed was catnip to his cultists, but it's already resulted in the murders of three Americans by state security forces, crashing the post-Covid recovery with tariffs and macroeconomic uncertainty, measles outbreaks, widespread, staggering amounts of corruption and the wrecking of a global system of alliances that has largely prevented Great Power conflict.

This was, of course, predictable and predicted. 

I'm going to be moving around a bit, not sure how much content I'll be providing for the next week. 

Yes, Corruption

 Richardson is a far better historian than me, researching and cataloguing events in greater detail. She, too, used her post about yesterday to look at corruption and compare it to the restraint that Washington showed during his presidency. 

Some details:

- Trump has filed a trademark for any airport named after him. Palm Beach Airport is currently in the process of being renamed for him, but he wants Dulles. If that happens, he gets all profits from the merchandise and to license his name. This is basically the bulk of his career before entering politics. Trump is a poor businessman when it comes to  building properties and developing products, but he can slap his name from his tabloid driven celebrity onto any old shit and make a quick buck. 

- The Trump Crime Family has made somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 billion because of his presidency. Much of this comes from crypto-laundered bribes, but it also comes from crap like Trump sneakers, bibles and those stupid fucking hats. Because everything is a lie with this asshole, Trump's mouthpieces like to blabber about how he is only putting hard working Americans' needs above his own. This is bullshit, and, yes, that should be the message for Democrats. Everything else works off of that.

- Trump is suing the IRS for $10 billion and sycophantic weasel Scott Bessent will almost certainly cut him a check. If this happens, this has to be the biggest story of the year, even bigger than Minneapolis, and - yes - even bigger than someone's elderly mother being kidnapped. A president who loots the treasury for his own enrichment is so far from any other presidential scandal that we have ever had as to beggar the imagination. Even if - as I predict - he "settles" for $2-3 billion and thus claims he saved billions, this is clear graft. This is a scandal the likes of which are usually reserved for Gilded Age hacks like the Whiskey Ring. Never - and I do mean never - has corruption on this scale reached the Oval Office.

The "Epstein Class" of billionaires is as popular as syphilis right now. Hang that around Trump's neck. Billions for him, no health care for you. Billions for him, no housing for you.

The Damage Done

 The sheer amount of damage that Trump and Republicans are doing to the world is tough to keep track of. Certainly, millions of people - many of them children - are going to die because they killed USAID. Other outrages - putting his name on the Kennedy Center - are easily fixed. Reversing his budgets are done in 2029 (presuming we still have a democracy by then). He is increasingly toxic, and as Minnesota demonstrated, when the people stand against him, he loses.

There are two areas that were especially galling yesterday. 

Trump basically went all in in dragging the power grid back to 1947. By repealing every single piece of constraint on emitting greenhouse gases, he is paving the way for massive amounts of pollution. The question, though, is really whether companies will actively move backwards on this. Yes, the massive open coal pits of Wyoming will continue to feed the data centers being built there. However, some tech companies are more eager to build small scale nuclear plants, because they have to know that once Trump is gone, coal will no longer be viable. It's not viable now, due to cost, not "woke."

Why is he doing this? To pwn the libs? In return for payoffs from hydrocarbon companies? However, if you're Ford or GM, do you really want to fall behind the rest of the world as they spring towards more hybrids and EVs? 

We also have the baffling (but not baffling) decision to simply not review the efficacy of mRNA flu vaccines. This is RFK, Jr's war on vaccines that everyone with half a brain saw coming. The US already takes longer than Europe to approve new drugs and treatments. Now, we have a really promising new form of vaccine and it's being killed to placate the roughly 20% of Americans who are skeptical of vaccines, a 20% that resides overwhelmingly now in the Republican Party.

Europe will no doubt plow ahead with medical advances, but the US is ceding that ground and it has been the US that has usually been at the forefront of medical breakthroughs, which is really the only possible defense for our expensive health care system. Our medical care costs too much in order to fund medical research and treatments. Now, we are destroying that, too. 

All of this is just an inconceivably stupid catering to unbelievably stupid people. 

Providing Democrats win in November, businesses will have to evaluate what the end of Trump and Trumpism might mean for them. I can't imagine the executive that will greenlight a coal burning power plant, knowing that it will never be profitable and won't even come online before Trump is out of office. Hopefully, medical research will simply relocate overseas so that science can progress during our sojourn in the America where race science is more popular with the government than actual science. 

So much awfulness everywhere you look. 

Bondi Beeyotch

 Pam Bondi's performance yesterday was...woof. Performance is the right word for it, as it was calculated to appeal to the gelatinous rage mass in the Oval Office and him alone. It was more than "combative", it was unhinged.

Kevin Kruse put it best:

So, to wrap up today's insanity: President Trump, who is deeply implicated in a pedophilia scandal involving his best friend, the sex trafficker, sent Attorney General Bondi -- who only has that job because Trump's first choice was also implicated in a separate pedophilia scandal -- to the House to stonewall releasing the full files about the president's pedophile friend, relying there on the friendly support of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, who was himself implicated in the coverup of a *third* sexual abuse scandal at a college.

And as others noted, Bondi also helped cover up Epstein's crimes as Florida AG!

What The Hell Was That?

 Two head scratchers.

Yesterday, Pete Navarro went on the TeeVee to prep viewers for a bad jobs report. Basically urging markets not to freak out over a bit of bad news. Everyone was preparing for an absolutely apocalyptic jobs number. We got a good one.  While my first impulse was that they cooked the books (and maybe they did), why send out Navarro to warn of a bad one? Maybe they did cook the numbers, Navarro saw the real numbers and no one told him about the fudged numbers. Navarro IS a complete idiot, but it still didn't make any sense.

Then we had the closing of El Paso's airspace ostensibly for days. Then, nope, it was re-opened. Why? Something to do with drones at Fort Bliss, but the original order was for ten days. El Paso is not close to anything (except Juarez). It needs an airport. Maybe the Defense Department wanted it closed and it was pointed out to them that they can't just seal off a small city because they want to. Maybe the original order was for ten hours and those complete fucking morons can't read. The official reason was that they were testing new counter drone technology, except, no, Transportation Secretary MTV Real World says that cartel drones violated the airspace. That's almost certainly bullshit.

Krugman spent some time ripping apart Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for lying about his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Richardson has a fuller run down of the Epstein developments. TL;DR: The Trump administration is lying at a rate that science cannot measure. They are lying about small things and big things. The thing about lying is that it's hard. You have to remember the truth AND the lie. So you get the weird El Paso situation. Someone is lying - likely Real World - and that will lead to cascading series of other lies.

It is tiresome at this point to note that if Scandal X had happened in any other administration then yadda yadda yadda. What's apparent is that MAGA has now dug itself so deeply into a world of outrageous fictions that they cannot go back. What's more, they cannot admit it. MAGA is never wrong, even when it is, in which case, it's Joe Biden or the Crooked Media's fault. 

The genius of democracy is its ability to self-correct. Democracy assimilates information and reacts accordingly. Maybe not always well, but it acknowledges the reality of the situation. If you don't, you lose the next election. MAGA - as a deeply authoritarian movement - cannot self correct. They also cannot tolerate a "loss" so they don't fire hacks like Hegseth or Lutnick. The hackery is the point. 

When a truly shattering crisis comes - and it will come - these idiots will hold the fate of our country and our world in their palsied hands. 

Yeah, He's A Racist

 Yesterday, Trump retweeted an incredibly racist "meme video" of the Lion King that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. (There are no apes in the Lion King.) For those of us not in the cult or not in the Very Serious Media that cannot fathom that Donald Trump (Central Park Five, firing Black dealers at his casino, Birtherism, Charlottesville, yada yada yada) might actually be a seething racist this was hardly a surprise. 

Somewhat surprising was the host of usually sycophantic Republican legislators saying "This is racist, take this down." When a Republican Senator from Mississippi say, "I dunno, but this is pretty racist" then it's a pretty good bet that it's racist.

Also less surprising was the inevitable journey that the White House embarked on when called on this. 

"This video isn't racist. You woke snowflakes in the media can't tell a joke."

"OK, this racist video was actually posted by a staffer who has access to the President's social media accounts at 12:30AM."

Then they ask Trump: "Yeah, I posted it. So what?"

A-plus work everyone. 

This feels similar to the Alex Pretti video where they initially went into attack mode, realized it wasn't playing well AT ALL and then actually seemed to lose support in certain segments of MAGALAND/GOP.

Again, I feel like pointing out that the GOP does not have to actually put up with this shit. When Nixon went off the rails, they cut him loose, because the country and even the party came first. This bloated narcissistic racist piece of shit does, indeed, seem to win elections that he should lose, but this iteration is WAAAAAAY worse that the last time - and getting worse by the day.

They own this fucking guy.

Will It Work?

 Democratic leadership has settled on a set of demands for funding DHS. It is simultaneously ambitious and insufficient in many ways. Personally, I would ban Border Patrol from being anywhere that isn't the border. That will both reduce the gun-slinging cowboy dynamic within cities but also deny DHS a LOT of their foot soldiers.

Still, what Democrats have landed on is pretty popular with the public at large. The most popular reforms are making ICE/BP wear body cameras; independent investigations of ICE shootings; requiring a judicial warrant to enter homes; allowing people to video ICE; banning racial profiling; ban ICE from entering schools and churches; focusing efforts on deporting criminals, not just anyone who looks Brown.

This is where the upside-down nature of American politics in 2026 comes into play. The requested reforms are popular. They really aren't THAT controversial - or wouldn't have been before Trump came on the scene. Yeah, you should have a warrant to enter someone's home. Yeah, we shouldn't have a masked secret police dressed in paramilitary costumes yanking people off the street. 

However, there can be no distance between Republicans and Trump. You cannot defy Dear Leader. Even if Democrats are able to pass these reform bills, there's little chance Trump will actually sign them. Shutting down the government - even just part of the government - has rarely worked to extract concessions from the majority.

Of course, if and when it doesn't work, we will be told it is because Democrats are feckless and won't fight for things. Even as FEMA and TSA close and things get dicey, and Democrats will once again face the fact that closing the government hurts people, they will be expected to cave, because no one expects Republicans to care about people beyond their base. Even though the reforms are very popular, Republicans will simply double down on cruelty in the service of Trump and his hateful legions. 

There's Something Happening Here

 Yesterday, there was a special election in a Texas state Senate race. Trump carried the district by 17 points in 2024. Yesterday, the Democrat won by 14 points, a 31 point swing. Democrat Taylor Rehmet spent almost no money compared to his well-funded and Trump-endorsed opponent and still won a landslide. Rehmet is an Air Force veteran and union leader and the sort of male-coded candidate that I personally think will overperform, due to vibes about Democrats being too female, too minority centered. 

Fox News actually does respectable polling, and they have Democrats winning the generic ballot by 6 points, the highest they've ever recorded. As Morris notes, generic ballot polling doesn't tell us what will happen this November, but the party that doesn't control the White House usually picks up about 6 points between January polling and November voting. They start this cycle in the strongest position that they have ever been in. 

Republicans are doubling down, in many ways, on the racism of their immigration policies. Even Americans who might support tighter border controls are not thrilled with the images coming from Minnesota. Trump (or Miller) thinks that they can just change the optics by firing Bovino and his Nazi wardrobe, but that's actually not the imagery that has people enraged. It's five year old Liam Conejo Ramos being arrested for the crime of being brown. 

Meanwhile, with Republicans falling further and further underwater, the slow leak of Epstein files show that that story isn't going away either. As I wrote on Friday, Trump's policies are even less popular than he is himself. Oddly, with Democrats it's usually the opposite. Democratic policies are generally pretty popular - healthcare, taxing the rich, actual infrastructure spending, better education - but Dem pols usually poll worse. Once Trump's personality cult has to assimilate the fact that he really is a pedophile and rapist - if they even can assimilate that information - then the bottom truly does fall out. 

The prevailing fear many of us have right now as we look at the political dynamic is that Trump will throw everything at the wall to try and subvert the midterms in nine months. As of now, he has been largely confined to more or less "legal" attempts like gerrymandering mid-decade. As America rejects him, he will grow more and more dangerous, Stephen Miller will get more and more fevered in his assault on the Constitution. 

However, last night's election results could mean that they won't be able to pull it off. 

The Discontent of Content

 Let's just recap yesterday's Friday news dump with Richardson. 

- Millions of Epstein files were released, with Trump's name prominent in many of them, and many with his name were the then subsequently scrubbed. Among the allegations were forcible and statutory rape by Trump and beating up a girl. 

- They arrested journalist Don Lemon for recording a protest at a church. They had to venue shop in order to find a grand jury willing to indict, as judges turned them down.

- Massive protests in subzero weather, which barely registered in the media.

- Trump threatened military action against Iran.

- Trump announced his candidate to head the Federal Reserve...and his name was in the Epstein files.

- We have a partial government shutdown, though Republicans and Democrats agreed in funding for everything but DHS, while they try and rein in the abuses there. Because Mike Johnson is a toady, he has the House in recess, but we shall see if they come back and keep the lights on.

- Oh yeah, Catherine O'Hara died, but that's not really relevant to this.

Among the many lenses through which to view Trump and his cronies is the lens of "Content Creator" - itself a vacuous designation of "just some idiot with a camera." Bannon and Trump have seized on the micro-attention spans of America and provided a firehose of "content" that thwarts efforts to grasp and understand (and counter) all of his awfulness. You think shooting a VA nurse in the back is bad? How about we go ahead and arrest a journalist? You like that? No? How about we bomb Iran?

The thing is, it gets old after a while. It gets exhausting. Those of us who are slaves to following the news have been exhausted since this time last year. For most Americans, it's background noise...until you shoot a VA nurse in the back ten times. 

I saw my conservative cousin paste something on Facebook, which is the usual nonsense about Trump. "I wish he didn't tweet so much. I wish he wasn't so verbally mean and crude. But, gosh darn it, he's authentic and I just can't quit him." The thing is, unless you are part of the 27%, you simply get exhausted. This shit ain't OK.

Anyway, we probably are going to war with Iran to distract from the evidence in the Epstein files that Trump may have killed someone.

The Fault Line

 Morris makes an important - really important - point. Trump maintains a level of popularity that exceeds his policies. For whatever reason, people like Trump. They don't like his policies. This is why Republicans perform so much worse when he's not on the ballot.

The military-style occupation of Minneapolis is the new child separation policy. As Trump's policies become more and more unpopular, his own popularity plummets. The GOP should see that plummet further. What's more, his voters stay home.

He's old. He looks like shit. Death comes for us all. When he's gone, that movement will collapse.

Dignity Wraiths

 In Trump's first term, Josh Marshall coined the term "dignity wraiths" to describe those creatures who debased themselves to get into Trump's good graces, only to be further humbled and laid low by Trump's essential depravity and cruelty. Lindsay Graham was a good example. I think Bill Cassidy, who was the deciding vote to put that charlatan RFK, Jr. in charge of America's health, is another example. For his trouble, he has earned a primary challenger, boosted by Trump. 

Krugman makes a similar point with regards to the business leaders who have flattered and bribed Trump in order to avoid his wrath and cultivate his support. History has shown that this rarely works out well. Take Maria Corina Machado, who gave away her Nobel Prize, thinking it would move Trump into actually taking over Venezuela. He took it, she looked the fool and Trump is content to commit more piracy in seizing Venezuelan oil tankers.

On this MLK Day, Richardson reminds us that heroes are not perfect people. King himself was a serial philanderer. Heroism is not the same as saintliness. Heroism is meeting a challenge with courage and resolve. America needs more heroes right now. We need people who are in comfortable positions and enjoy great privilege to show half the resolve and courage as the Minnesotans protesting the military occupation of their cities. We need people like Lisa Murkowski to leave the Republican Party instead of knitting her brow and expressing her concern. 

You cannot placate this man. I have a hunch that NATO sending tripwire troops to Greenland will have the needed effect and Trump will not invade that country. They will negotiate some watered down, bullshit deal for minerals or basing rights, Trump will slink away, and his cultists will extol the Art of the Deal.

You cannot negotiate with the howling void at the center of this man's soul, and doing so will only lead to your own living damnation.

The Politics Of Renee Good's Murder

 Josh Marshall asked (sarcastically) "Is it good politics to defend a harmless woman getting shot in the face?" He was rebutting the idea that Trump has some mastermind media strategy that allows him to shape reality. In fact, that's clearly not the case - or not exactly the case.

The initial polling is pretty clear on two things: Democrats are outraged at this, Independents are pretty much opposed and Republicans are mostly OK with it. This polling will likely change, especially as there is a continuous stream of video from Minneapolis of people being harassed or beaten by ICE goons. Given both the pushback from the residents of Minnesota, the besieged psyche of ICE/BP, the belligerent nature if ICE/BP folks and the clear message that acts of violence will be met with official impunity, I suspect we shall see another shooting sooner rather than later.

What's more: It's Minnesota. Yeah, the Twin Cities are lefty-coded, but Minnesota could not be more centrally in the actual "Heartland." This isn't Portland or San Francisco or LA. It's white people being shot. There is a certain sociopathic segment of the Right that will cheer this on, but if this sort of state violence continues, I think it's going to make more and more segments of our society REALLY uncomfortable.

King Donald The First

 The atrocious murder of Renee Good in Minnesota by masked agents of the state has been likened to the Orwellian line of  "The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command." This connects - and rightly so - the actions of the Trump administration with 20th century totalitarianism. I don't think they've achieved it, but that is clearly their goal.

However, in describing Trump himself, I think Krugman is correct here and here. Trump clearly sees himself as a monarch, a sovereign. His actions work to blur the lines between the state and his person. He sees the achievements of the state as HIS achievements and the resources of the state as HIS resources. This is why dissent of any kind is "treason," because the king is the sovereign. 

The basic, foundational idea of America - the thing we are celebrating this year's 250th anniversary - is that the people are sovereign. Trump's "L'etat cest moi" bullshit is deeply, deeply Unamerican. The raid to get Maduro was a very impressive bit of work by the extraordinary professionals of Joint Special Operations Command. Trump thinks he did it. He crowed about watching it on TV, like he was playing some sort of video game and the controller was in his hands. His desecration of the East Wing of the White House is reminiscent of some fading potentate building a palace in his own honor to stave off the looming reality of his own mortality. 

I honestly am not going to predict the fallout from Good's murder or Trump's illegal actions in Venezuela. I've been humbled trying to predict things where Trump is involved. Still, shooting a white mom in the face is not likely to increase support for his internal deportation policies. Those policies were never popular, as people wanted more border security, not attacks on their schools and neighborhoods in an effort to deport some roofers, line books and housekeepers. Before these events we had two polls on Trump's job approval. CBS had 41-59 or 18 points "underwater" and Rasmussen (Rasmussen!) had him 45-53 or 8 points down. 

ICE itself has seen support collapse, from +16 to -14 in November. That number is sure to fall further. People want the border "secure" but they don't want raids on apartment buildings, they don't want masked goons provoking confrontations on American streets. Support for abolishing ICE entirely has reached 42%, up from 29% in 2018. Not yet the majority position, but this was before ICE start shooting people in the face and then being held unaccountable for their actions.

I've been learning about pre-Norman Britain, and it is striking how the character of government often depended so completely on the character of the king. Trump is a man of low character, and his administration reflects this. I was reflecting on the fact that "shame" isn't actually a bad thing, if it serves a moral code. Relentless shame is debilitating, but if you wrong someone and feel shame, that's actually good. It allows you to make amends and rectify your behavior.

Trump's superpower is shamelessness, and that extends to his courtiers, who smear Renee Good rather than reflect on their actions that led to her slaughter in the streets of her hometown by agents of the state that are not welcome there. Their king revels in the blood on his hands, he bathes in it.

But hopefully, America remembers that we are not a nation of kings.

The Lying Is The Point

 Yesterday, video clearly showed an ICE officer in Minneapolis shoot and kill a woman who was "in the way" of an ICE raid. He violated many basic rules of law enforcement - don't stand in front of a vehicle; don't discharge your weapon into a moving vehicle - and he basically murdered her for "not complying."

Immediately the Trump administration made false claims about the woman, the incident and the nature of the threat to ICE. There are so many disturbing aspects of this incident that it does remind me of January 6th, in terms of which aspect I should be angriest about.

This happened for one reason only: Trump and Stephen Miller are looking for performative acts of oppression and intimidation in "blue" cities. They aren't finding the hundreds of thousands of "illegals" in these cities, and maybe they are stupid enough to think that this is just a matter of more raids. In fact, these wholesale assaults on civil liberties very much feels like the point of all of this. They've started to focus on Minnesota because of a fraud case surrounding day cares, which is currently being adjudicated. Yes, it was a crime, but it's being dealt with appropriately. The pretext is all that matters.

It is, of course, depressing to go online and see the inevitable toeing of the party line for what amounts to the lynching or extrajudicial killing of Renee Nicole Good. All the Trump sycophants and fascists immediately assumed the GroupThink about radical antifa leftists and the utter bullshit that - apparently in their minds - justifies shooting a mother in the head from point blank range.

It is also incredibly depressing to see the "she should have just complied" crowd place the cause of her death on her as opposed to the ICE agent who was very much NOT in danger of imminent death. That these are the same people who think Ashlii Babbit is a martyr and January 6th was no big deal is not surprising.

It is the ability of Trump and Trumpism to get their followers to believe the lies - even with obvious video evidence showing the opposite - that is truly terrifying. The actual act of violence is appalling, but life can be cruel and capricious. Terrible things do happen. 

It is watching the entire Republican Party bow down before an altar of lies that is so unsettling. How can you recreate civic democracy under those circumstances?

Stupid Imperialism

 As Trump's imperial project stalls at home, with the National Guard removed from American cities and Republicans beginning to buck him in the House, Trump looks afield to sate his imperial pretensions. As with everything he does, it's stupid - a sort of "Didn't Do The Reading" attempt to mimic the late Gilded Age of McKinley: tariffs and wars of empire.

Richardson notes his rambling, incoherent speech yesterday, and how it ties to his renewed threats against Greenland. This is a great example of Stupid Imperialism. (All imperialism is pretty stupid, but this stuff is...woof.) Trump wants Greenland because it looks huge on a Mercator projection and because he heard they have rare earths. Rare earths are not "rare" but are simply hard to refine. China - who doesn't give a shit about polluting its own air and water - have moved into a monopolistic position on rare earths because they have built infrastructure, not because they own the dirt.

Even with Venezuela, Krugman notes that much of Venezuelan oil wealth is hypothetical to the point of being fictional. It's heavy, bitter crude rather than the light, sweet crude that refines most easily into usable petroleum. 

Let's leave aside the stupidity of Trump saying we "run" Venezuela, when we obviously do not. Let's leave aside the stupidity of tearing apart the NATO alliance to annex Greenland for no meaningful advantage. Yes, the process is stupid and thuggish.

The thing is, the GOAL is stupid, too. The original mercantilism arose from Malthus' insight into the economics of scarcity. If there was a limited amount of a good or resource, it made sense to have a national monopoly on that. Adam Smith and the industrial revolution ended that basic idea - even if it took a century to learn that it was dead. There is no advantage to an empire, which is why - leftist caterwauling to the contrary - America largely did not pursue a true empire. When we did, it largely ended poorly.

The dumbification of America has happened, because one of our two major parties has lobotomized itself to reflect the imbecility of their Orange God. 

January 6th

 Richardson makes a compelling case about the links between Republican rhetoric surrounding Democratic electoral victories that stretches back to the 1990s, and Trump's efforts to overthrow electoral democracy five years ago today.

She goes on to note the common thread from his two impeachments and the complete faceplant from Merrick Garland to delay the appointment of Jack Smith and then the SCOTUS' grant of immunity for presidential actions and how that created the lawlessness we see from Trump now.

Trump's whole life has been a bully who uses his money to bully contractors and debtors and escape the most significant consequences for his actions. He ran for president - allegedly - to boost his ability to start some sort of OANN type "Trump TV" to challenge Fox from the right. (Let that sink in.) Once he won, he now has to continue to bully and threaten to stay on top. The entire system of constitutional checks and balances is as foreign to him as calculus is to a sea urchin. 

January 6th was the moment when the old Republican Party could have held him responsible for his actions and we could have escaped this nightmare. If ten more Republican Senators had voted to convict in the Senate - and they all knew he was guilty - then we would not be staring down the insanity of 2025 and now 2026. We would not be threatening Greenland/Denmark. We would not be levying tariffs on whatever seizes his fancy. We would not be rounding up citizens and residents and deporting them to offshore gulags. In fact, there probably (certainly) would be a Republican president right now anyway, given the anti-incumbent tides that swept the world after Covid. They could have had their tax cuts and deregulation. 

Instead, it has become a party steeped and dependent on fear-mongering conspiracy theories.

Instead, democracy in our country is undergoing a series of battering blows every day. 

A Distraction, Not A Lifeline

 The idea that Trump launched his raid in Venezuela to distract from both the Epstein Files and Jack Smith's testimony about Trump's criminality is a solid theory. I do think, however, that there were a lot of agendas pushing the escalating attacks on Maduro over the last year. Rubio wants regime change in Caracas and Havana. Hegseth wants to watch Delta Force kill people. Trump wants the oil. It is worth noting that Venezuela's oil is of notorious low quality, making it difficult to refine and use productively. However, that subtlety is unlikely to matter to Trump's lizard brain. For instance, rare earths are not "rare" it's just hard to refine them. Still, that fucking moron just heard "rare" and wants to annex Greenland.

As Elliot Morris points out, Americans do not want to go to war in Venezuela. The results are pretty stable, as most Americans remember what happened the last time we invaded a country to install a friendly government. A plurality of Republicans oppose this move as well, especially those who aren't in the MAGA cult.

Morris also noted a few days ago how different the perceptions of Trump are depending on whether you watch Fox News. This is a huge problem in deprogramming people from the MAGA cult. As long as they get this incredibly warped view of reality from Fox, their loyalty to this president will be unchallenged. In the Fox Cinematic Universe, Trump did a cool-assed John Wick-Rambo raid. For the rest of us, the essential impression is that this was tactically impressive and strategically incoherent. Amazing job kidnapping the president of a sovereign country, I guess. What now?

The fundamental question at this moment is whether we really will be putting "boots on the ground." If we are, that requires Congressional approval that I don't think will be forthcoming. Trump will likely ignore this and do it anyway, which creates yet another chapter in our ongoing constitutional crises. 

So, does this distract from the Epstein and Smith news? Yeah, sure. But not in a good way, because people aren't really on board with another example in naive nation building.

The Unbearable Hypocrisy of MAGA

 Look, if you get upset about hypocrisy, you're going to be upset a lot. Still, the hypocrisy of MAGA is just too much to stomach. Here are two examples.

Trump has been launching illegal attacks on boats in the Pacific and Caribbean. As this report suggests, at least one of the attacks has probably killed marijuana traffickers. There is zero evidence that any of these boats are carrying Fentanyl, which is the purported casus belli behind the attacks. At any rate, Trump has pardoned maybe the largest money launderer in the world, because crypto. He's more or less legalized marijuana and pardoned numerous people affiliated with drugs but he's fine killing the poor people who are probably carrying pot or maybe cocaine while they are out fishing, because it's a way to make a quick buck. Now, they can't go more than a mile or two offshore to fish, because they might be killed by Stephen Miller's rage against people who put spice in their food.

The thing that has MAGA all frothy online is a story from a few year back about a massive fraud uncovered by Minnesota and federal law enforcement back in 2022. Many of the people involved are Somali-Americans, so this is a great way to be xenophobic, racist and also point a pale, quaking finger at Ilhan Omar. Yeah, it's fraud; yeah, it's a crime; yeah, they should go to jail.

However, Donald Trump has been convicted of fraud on several occasions. The election case in which he was found guilty in the spring of 2024 was effectively a fraud case. Trump "University" was found fraudulent in 2018. Trump's "charitable" Foundation settled allegations of fraud in 2019. 

What's more, it is difficult to list all the people convicted of fraud that Trump has pardoned - almost certainly in exchange for cash - since returning to office.

They don't care about drugs; they don't care about fraud. However, many in MAGA really do. They turned to Trump because their blighted communities - hollowed out by retail monopolies and declining job opportunities - have turned to opioids. This is why Miller and Rubio's plan to oust Maduro has been cloaked in attacks on fentanyl traffickers. They also feel cheated by a system that is rigged towards the rich and well connected - people who can commit fraud and get a presidential pardon.

If they ever realized how bad they've been played, then Trump's approval rating would be at 5%.