Corruption: Once More With Feeling

 It has been my position that the single most consistent line of attack against Trump should be his corruption. Everything that he does can likely be tied back to some interest - usually including himself - that profits from his actions. Recently, he decided to pay a French company $1,000,000,000 to cede their lease to a wind farm off the East Coast. Why? Why would the US government deprive a private company the opportunity to build a wind farm? There is the usual Republican friendliness to petrochemical companies, but this seems so obviously self-defeating. When it all comes out, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that there is money changing hands under the table.

In Iran, we now have pretty compelling circumstantial evidence that Trump and the people around him are conducting insider trading around futures markets. Krugman is being little - it has to be said - shrill in calling this treason, but it sure as hell seems like a crime. I don't think he engaged in this very unpopular war simply to make a buck, but once begun and especially since it started going poorly, he has done what he always does, which is to find a way to personally benefit from the destruction that he and his policies caused.

Perhaps the reason why the oil shock from Trump's War has been somewhat muted is because markets aren't necessarily following the TACO rule so much as not wanting to invest in an obviously rigged market. Trump has now said we are negotiating with Iran. Iran says this is bullshit. There is some evidence that Trump's new timeline of five days is just to get Marines in theater, but not attack until markets close on Friday. 

I remain guardedly optimistic that Trump's corruption and incompetence will undo him. Fraud doesn't work in the long run, and the man is the walking personification of fraud. When his hold on power is wrested away from him, the creatures that have gorged themselves at this trough of corruption and self-dealing might be surprised that he did not pardon them on the way out. 

The challenge for whomever restores American democracy will be to hold those who have violated the public trust accountable, despite the inevitable caterwauling about "lawfare" from Fox and Fiends. Trump was prosecuted because he's broken the law. This has given Republicans cover for when Trump demands spurious investigations into his opponents, based on political malice. There needs to be a Truth and Reconciliation committee, only without the reconciliation. 

Someone said that the 48th president of the United States (unless it's Vance because of the actuarial table) will spend an entire term cleaning up Trump's mess. That process has to start by driving the money changers from the temple. 

It's Not The Crime, It's The Cover Up

 The refrain of "it's not the crime, it's the cover up" from the Watergate Era, refers to Nixon's role in covering up the White House involvement in the Watergate Break In. In order to protect the White House in general, Nixon authorized criminal actions to thwart the investigation.

Today, we have something that in many ways is far worse than Watergate, with the Epstein saga. Here, again, we have a clear cover up that creates a visible effect without actually being visible. We don't know what was in the investigation that Senator Wyden uncovered (that Richardson references at the link). What we do know is that there are only two possible explanations for the DOJ's contempt of Congress.

The first and most obvious one is that Trump and/or other members of his administration are all over the files. Wyden's discoveries relate to drug trafficking and money laundering (in addition to the human trafficking that we have been discussing). We know how Trump was always kind of short of money. We know that Trump laundered bribes through his properties - renting or selling above market prices to Russians and others. 

The second, but still plausible explanation is simply that Trump and Bondi and others obstruct for the sake of obstructing. Deny, attack, deny, attack. That's pretty much the single playbook that they use. Never admit weakness, never admit you were wrong. Know that Fox and similar organizations will smooth out the rough edges of your lies. If you cave into Wyden on the money laundering and drug trafficking issue, then you might have to cave on other redacted files.

The problem is that by constantly covering up whatever is in the files, you're allowed for the worst possible information to become plausible. The cover up becomes confirmation of the crimes.

It's The Corruption - An Ongoing Series

 It is a daunting task to try and create a singular line of attack on Donald Trump and MAGA. There is just so much that they do that is transgressive, incompetent, cruel and self-defeating that finding a single tack to take - a central narrative - can be really hard. You can focus on ICE's murderous behavior...but here comes Epstein. Focusing on Epstein? Here comes some racism!

I've argued that corruption needs to be a powerful unifying thread in attacks on Trump. First, because he's easily - and I mean by far - the most corrupt president in the history of the Republic. Harding, Grant, Nixon...they didn't really personally enrich themselves. Trump is making money for himself and his crime family. 

As Krugman points out, there are very, very extensive ties between Trump and the petrostates of the Persian Gulf. There has been a lot written about whether Israel forced us into war, with a lot of that discussion veering quickly into antisemitism. However, the role that Saudi Arabia played has been less focused upon. 

"We went to war for Israel and Saudi Arabia, and the result is that oil companies and oil producing states are going to reap a massive windfall" is a decent line of attack. The "forever wars" rhetoric could founder on the fact that at some point Trump will simply declare victory and go home. I don't think Iran is a "forever war"; it's the expenditure of tens of billions of US taxpayer dollars to make oil producers rich - just like his ban on renewable energy is to make oil producers rich.

Anger at rising gas prices will translate into anger at Exxon and Shell and Gulf. Link that to Trump via the corrupt self-dealing that is exemplified in everything that orange fucker does.

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. 

Epstein And Indiscriminate Allegations

 Martin Longman writes about the allegations against Trump that we know of in the Epstein Files that have actually been released. 

He makes a good point that these allegations or even simply contact between Epstein and other elites - broadly defined - tend to erode our judicial system's requirements of the presumption of innocence. Some of the people being dragged or fired seem to have been in Epstein's orbit in some manner and that alone is enough to cost them a job. The arrests in Britain actually deal with sharing classified information with Epstein, not his more lurid crimes. Andrew Windsor-Mountbatten almost certainly raped minors. He's apparently a world class scumbag.

That's the thing, though. One of the legacies of #MeToo was that men who treat women badly, tend to treat WOMEN badly. If they sexually harass one woman, they harass multiple women. Few men rape ONE woman. The crime of rape is not fundamentally about lust but about power and violence. 

Donald Trump's presence in one specific incident - the Bitten Penis, if you will - represents that power and violence. So does the Access Hollywood tape. So does the E. Jean Carroll case. So does the testimony of Stormy Daniels, where she acquiesced to sex rather than risk violence. So does the allegation of abuse by Ivanka Trump. 

Sometimes, women invent accusations of sexual assault. That happens. Rarely...never to my knowledge...do multiple women invent accusations about the same man. Deshaun Watson was a sex pest, harassing masseuses with great regularity. It wasn't just a one time misunderstanding. We have ample, ample evidence that Trump sees women as sexual hosts not romantic partners. 

We keep waiting for some final smoking gun to be discovered that definitively links Trump to raping someone. I don't think we are ever really going to have that moment of clarity. I would also argue that we don't need it. It is precisely the multitude of credible - if not always proven - allegations against him that should allow us to pass judgment on this fucking monster.  

Hunh...

I guess in some places, if the president tries to overthrow democracy, they can toss him in jail. 

I guess in some places, if a well connected insider cavorts with Jeffrey Epstein, they can arrest him.

Well done Britain.

Billionaires Are (Mostly) Sociopaths

 Krugman recaps the rise of the "Centi-Billionaires" who dwarf all human wealth from previous eras. He notes that this era compares unfavorably with the Gilded Age in terms of wealth inequality. That's certainly something. This ties into the Citizens United ruling that unlocked the ability of the super-rich to exerts incredible influence on our elections. Would Trump have won had Musk not bought Twitter and turned it into a Nazi echo chamber? What are we to make of Bezos destroying the Post? The Ellisons destroying CBS?

Krugman notes that this is not solely about making money. The utility of spending all that money is not to make marginal gains. Destroying the Post and CBS is NOT good for their bottom lines. It has to be about the deep howling void in the center of their souls. Compare Bezos or even Gates to their ex-wives, who using their divorce riches to actively work to better the world.

When we look at the depredations of Trump and his cronies, it's not simply about getting more loot. Today, I start teaching authoritarianism in Comparative Government and one of the hallmarks of authoritarianism is (the poorly named) phenomenon of rent seeking. Elites use the government to exploit money and other forms of wealth for their own benefit. The make the government buy jets or house them, like Kristi Noem does. They rake in billions in crypto in return for gutting oversight - creating a potential time bomb in the heart of the economy.

When that happens - when Trump makes the IRS pay him $10 billion to settle a meritless lawsuit - the incentive, in fact the prerogative, is to never give up power. You can afford to leave office, because you will lose access to that money and potentially be prosecuted.

For the billionaires who support Trump, they simply cannot accept democratic control of their fortunes. They are self-identified Uber mensch. The rabble cannot touch them or thwart them. For Trump and his ilk, democratic accountability could lead to a reckoning from his many crimes. 

Can they put this into action and end American democracy? We will know in about seven months.

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.

Corruption

 When the Whigs - both American and English - talked about corruption, what they meant was not necessarily outright bribery or quid pro quo relationships, but rather the overall rot at the heart of monarchical politics. I think that's why "corruption" in this archaic sense is really so apt to describe Trump's maladministration. 

When you look at something as facially absurd as actively blocking green energy, you have to balance the supreme idiocy of Cleek's Law (oppose whatever Democrats support) but also the naked financial relationship between hydrocarbon extraction industries and the Republican Party. There is absolutely zero reason to support coal, except to enrich coal mine owners. Solar, wind and battery technology are cheaper and more sustainable, and the lies Trump tells about it are just another example of the rot of corruption in our government.

To be clear, it's not just Trump. If you look at the fall of Marco Rubio or JD Vance from bog standard asshole Republicans to Trumpist creatures actively destroying America's place in the world, you can trace this to Josh Marshall's Authoritarian International. Whether it's the techno-libertarian/post-liberalism of a Peter Thiel or the petrostate autocrats of the Persian Gulf or the cultural revanchists of the post-Soviet world, you are talking about a fundamental corruption and rot at the heart of everything. All of this, by the way, was made possible by the corruption of the Supreme Court and decisions like Rufo and Citizen's United.

Trump is flamboyantly corrupt in so many ways, but when you look at the naked enrichment and entitlement of people like Kristi Noem, it's pretty apparent that Trump is not just the largest practitioner of corruption, but the vessel through which others enrich themselves. 

When a culture becomes corrupt enough, it seems foolish to be honest. 

One of the largest problems Democrats have is trying to focus on one outrage, because Trump commits so many. You can't message against the farrago of horseshit coming from the GOP. As we enter the celebration of our 250 years of independence, we should look to revivify the old Whiggish language of corruption.

It fits to a tee. 

Corruption

 Yglesias looks at the kind of bizarre way that Americans look at public corruption. The whole thing is bizarre, as it usually is when you ask Americans about policies and specifics. For instance, 86% of respondents say that public officials who take cash in return for votes is corrupt. That means 14% are either unsure or think that's not corrupt.

Anyway.

Some of the things that people think are corrupt really aren't. If you get speaking fees for a group that has any political agenda (which is most groups), 62% think that's corruption. If a politician votes with "social elites" over constituents, 78% think that's corruption. In other words, if a politician votes for climate legislation that his constituents disagree with, then - rather than being just a policy disagreement - respondents see that as corruption.

All of this is to say, that this is why Donald Trump's unprecedented corruption seems to sail under the radar. Sure, there are things like his demolition of the East Wing that have landed in public opinion, but overall, people seem inured to Trump's really unprecedented corruption. Yglesias says it's the most corrupt in decades, but I think it has to be considered the most corrupt of all time. Certainly no president has engaged in such naked corruption. Grant and Harding had men around them who were corrupt, but they engaged in very little themselves. Trump is engaging in the outright sale of his office.

Because Americans think "all politicians are corrupt" - and they think that because they define corruption so loosely - then Trump is able to get away with unprecedented corruption because "they all do it."

We see this in the fact that Trump basically won in 2024 by carrying low-information voters. This tends to show up in the fact that they just weren't aware of things like "tariffs lead to higher prices" or "deportations won't increase jobs." It also shows up in things like being surprised that Trump would pursue vendettas against his enemies - something he admitted to on the campaign trail. Low information voters tend to blame the president for higher prices, even if - like Biden - it's not particularly his fault. They are less upset with inflation than with nominal prices. Because prices aren't coming down (which would actually be bad), they think it's corruption. In this case, it's incompetence and malevolence. 

Morris gives us this graph:

Trump won in 2024 in large part because ~one-quarter of the electorate wasn’t paying enough attention to his promises to know much about what he’d do as president. Now that they are seeing the results — especially on prices — they are just as anti-Trump as voters who spend all day consuming political news.

The corruption thing is part and parcel of the striking ignorance of the American voter.  Evidence seems unimportant, because evidence cannot contradict certain dearly held positions, and we are cooked because of it. 

Privilege

 An interesting and slightly odd confluence of columns by Yglesias on DoorDash economics and Krugman on the coddled lives that Trumpists have carved out for themselves at the public's expense. What's the link? The idea of what constitutes comfort and privilege is always changing - both for the general public and individuals.

I've felt this was true, when I look at how unbelievably comfortable life has gotten and yet how unhappy everyone seems to be. The DoorDash thing is a good example. As Yglesias notes, food delivery was formerly restricted to pizza and Chinese food. The idea that you could get a Big Mac or a Starbuck calorie bomb or Lamb Vindaloo delivered to your home in a frictionless transaction is something we couldn't have dreamed of fifteen years ago. As that becomes commonplace (along with Amazon delivering anything you want in a few days) your experience with the world becomes incredibly easy in a way that only the VERY affluent of a couple of decade back would have been able to access. 

As things get easier, our natural hard-wiring about threats and hardships get recalibrated towards whatever the most frustrating or upsetting thing in our lives actually are. 

At this point, you can add in comparison being the thief of joy. As unbelievably coddled as many of us are (historically and globally speaking), we have access to a tiny fraction of the privileges of true wealth. This is where Krugman talks about JD Vance bringing food to Milan. Food.  To Milan.

What he does is link this (and Kash Patel and Kristi Noem's abuse of federal resources) to the "Epstein Class." We rapidly become accustomed to the perks that life offers us, and we become blind to how we got them in the first place. We also become blind to the work that goes into providing them to our every whim. (I don't use DoorDash, because I find it extravagant, but I also know that people rely on working for DoorDash to make ends meet. I'm conflicted.)

With Epstein, we have hundreds of names of prominent people (almost all men) who, at best, looked the other way. Epstein was an extraordinary suck up to rich and powerful men, I would guess especially those rich and powerful men who had a yawning void of insecurity in their core. How many of them actually abused girls? I do hope we find out and hold them accountable. How many of them turned a blind eye to his depravity? I would guess that number is the considerably larger one. 

Pedophilia is a psychological pathology; expecting beautiful girls to fawn all over you is too. Seeing this go on from the corner of your eye and excusing it or denying what your eyes tell you is part of the pathology of privilege. "Epstein is such a great guy, I can't be seeing what I'm seeing" is precisely the mindset of men who have risen to a point where they just don't fucking care about the Little People. (There was an interview with Melinda Gates who attended one of those parties, was creeped out, told her husband and he ignored her concerns.)

As has been said, there are two Epstein scandals. There are the crimes specific to Epstein himself and his cohort like Maxwell. We don't know yet, for sure, who is in that circle. Then there is the second scandal of everyone who saw, who understood, who said nothing. 

Real vs Hypothetical Dangers

 Trump has threatened to "nationalize" elections. 

This is exactly the sort of bullshit that outlets like the Times or CNN are just completely unequal to covering in a normal way. "Nationalizing" the elections is blatantly, clearly unconstitutional. I know Bannon has been pushing that, too, but that doesn't make it more legal. There is functionally no way that I can see where he could even begin the process of pulling this off. He will not get a bill through Congress, for instance. 

Yes, there are legitimate concerns about Trump and Bannon and Miller using their Brownshirts in ICE to intimidate people at polling stations. I worry about states like Georgia that have a massive, concentrated city of Democratic votes and what Trump might try to do to deter voting. Generally speaking, Georgia Republicans have been pretty solid on election integrity, but Florida? Texas? 

We are sitting here nine months from what should be a Democratic wave that delivers at least the House, but possibly the Senate. That election remains the single most important event in preserving American Constitutional government, and Trump is threatening that. 

The question for "The Resistance" is how much energy to put into fighting something that might be the functional equivalent of his threats to make Canada the 51st state or, yes, annexing Greenland, 

Consequences

 The central, depressing fact of the Epstein Files is the sheet amount of horrific and criminal behavior seems to have been carried out with full impunity. We see this time and again. The Watergate burglars went to jail, Nixon didn't. The soldiers who tortured people at Abu Ghraib went to jail, the architects of the torture regime didn't. 

Donald Trump has been found in a court of law to have sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll. Donald Trump is all over the Epstein shit. 

Donald Trump will never see the inside of a jail cell. 

All the people who say he "should"...that's true but not relevant. What's more, legions of his horrific creatures will be pardoned, most likely, on his way out the door. Trump is famously disloyal, so maybe he lets certain figures dangle in the wind, but major figures can and will be pardoned preemptively in order to enforce loyalty until the last minute.

The idea of impeaching and removing Kristi Noem is appealing on multiple levels... but it's not happening. However, should Democrats really hit a massive series of Blue Waves - Blue Tsunamis - that get them a Senate majority near 60 votes, they need to start thinking about impeaching various Trump figures after the fact. 

Take this story. This is naked corruption, which has its own clauses in the Constitution. Trump will most likely pardon Witkoff and his sons, but impeaching them and convicting them in the Senate should be still on the table, as that bars them from public office ever again. Ideally, as the Trump Era shudders to some wretched close, there will be a handful of Republicans who will want to slam the door on it. Impeaching will be easy, convicting hard. We saw that after January 6th. However, the MAGA base doesn't give a shit about Witkoff or Miller or Bondi or Noem. 

It's unsatisfying, but likely the only consequences for these creatures that we will ever see. 

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.

Well, That Was Fucking Stupid

 TACO returns. 

Trump chickened out on his plans to annex Greenland (Iceland? Greenland? Iceland?) by coercive means. On some level, this is just the obvious psychology of a bully who had his bluff called. Perhaps someone showed him the polling numbers that have "Annexing Greenland" lower than "Trump's handling of the Epstein Files." More likely the cratering bond markets in the face of a potentially ruinous rupture between the US and Europe got his attention.

The relationship between the US and Europe since 1945 and 1989 has been one of incredible benefits to both sides of the Atlantic. Trump is congenitally unable to conceive of a mutually beneficial relationship. In his warped, blinkered world view, there are only winners and losers, conquerors and victims. When Europe stood up to him - I can just imagine Hegseth and Miller repeating the fiction that Europeans are just cheese-eating surrender monkeys - he must have been shocked. Called on his bullshit, he did what he always does in such situations: he declared "victory" and retreated. 

Still, the damage is done. When Mark Carney, of all people, is declaring that the old order of a US-led community of democracies is dead, I think he means it. I think he's wise to say it. I do think a future, not-insane US president can undo some of this damage, but let's be clear: if you are Europe or Canada or Japan-South Korea, can you really rely on the US? Are you going to put yourself at the mercy of a bunch of misogynist swing voters in the Upper Midwest every four years?

And this was all SO FUCKING DUMB. Greenland? Seriously? The plan, I think, was that this would be the pretext to break up NATO. Trump's insane, rambling screed at Davos sounds like a guy trying to get his third wife to divorce him by abusing her verbally and making her initiate the divorce proceedings. I don't think even Trump wants his fingerprints all over the demise of NATO. He's an expert at creating crises and then getting someone else to hold the bag for them. He's a coward, as we know all bullies are.

Your obligatory reminder that at any moment, the Republican Party could remove this manifestly unwell man from his position of power. Yes, Trump is uniquely awful, among the worst people this nation has ever produced. But he is not doing this alone; the silence of the GOP is as damning as his inchoate whining speeches. 

Europe's Leverage

 Trump is throwing another tantrum. He's pissed that a sovereign country won't bend the knee and cede him Greenland, so he's throwing up tariffs against the entire EU. Krugman points out why this is unlikely to be as effective as he thinks. He makes the point that Trump is completely irrational, and while I largely agree with that, I think there is a rational reason why he's pursuing this: He wants to blow up NATO.

Kelly and others from his first term said that, if reelected, Trump would pull the US out of NATO in his second term. Doing this frontally would engender backlash; if he just pulled us out for no reason, people would question his purpose, even with the craven confines of the GOP caucus. Instead, he picks a stupid fight that itself becomes a loyalty test and then uses that pretext to blow up the Transatlantic Alliance.

Yesterday, stocks dove and bonds rates got very pessimistic about the future. The ultimate weapon the world holds against us is the immense amount of US Treasury bonds that they hold. If they liquidate them, it will hurt, but it will also crater that value of US debt and make it much harder to finance the reckless tax cuts that Trump has passed. 

Trump's bluster has backed everyone into their corners, including himself. That's a dangerous place to be. Trump's social media output reeked of flopsweat and desperation, throwing unhinged rants in every direction. His approval ratings continue to tank, even on immigration. The generic ballot is 51-43 among registered voters, but 55-42 among committed voters. That latter number is worth watching, as some MAGA will likely just sit out the midterms in the wake of his continuing shitshow of an administration.

Europe will hopefully show more resolve than they typically do, even if it tips the world and them into an economic slowdown. The alternative might be an unthinkable war.

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.

Europe's Next Steps

 The EU and NATO leadership is aghast at Trump's latest fetish for annexing Greenland. They should be. It's appalling. 

What should they do? They've sent tripwire forces to Greenland with the clear message that any military action would risk war with European countries. While Rep. Don Bacon has said that this would lead to impeachment, does anyone believe that Republicans would advance articles of impeachment? Or that enough Republicans in the Senate would vote to remove? "These men are coward, Donny."

If Europe cannot rely on Republicans to have a backbone, what should they do? I would say exactly what they are doing and more. Send NATO warships to Nuuk. Be crystal clear what would happen if Trump thinks he can send in some Rangers and Marines and seize Greenland. There are two reasons why this should work and one reason it won't.

The first is that Trump tends to bluster and bully, but then back down in the face of real opposition. TACO or Trump Always Chickens Out was about tariffs, but it's true across different events. He's a bully and bullies tend to back down from a show of strength. I'm sure the sycophants around him and his own preconceptions are telling him that Europe is weak and decadent, effeminate. Demonstrating that you won't be pushed around would garner Trump's respect, not a lethal response.

The second is that Trump is so damned thirsty to get peace prizes and sell himself as a peacemaker, that it seems you could leverage that. He's not going to start a shooting war and credibly claim to be the Peace President. Even he can't tolerate that much cognitive dissonance. Look at Venezuela; he okayed a lightning raid, verbally asserted control of the country, but does not seem to be eager for boots on the ground. This is where the bluster and threats break down. He has competing agendas in being Mr. Peace Prize and Mr. Imperialist and it seems unlikely he would do anything that might lead to American soldiers coming home dead.

The reason why it might not work is that Trump is fucking insane. As in detached from reality. He is surrounded by repellant sociopaths like Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth who are capable of any manner of atrocities. Do you want to wager lives on the predictability of Trump's response?

You see the same dynamic, I think, in Minnesota. Walz has called the National Guard on standby to keep the peace. Trump, I think would back down, but Miller is salivating over an opportunity to escalate things in Minneapolis, and Walz calling out the Guard could be the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act.

It is chaos. It is dangerous. The person most responsible for this is chaotic and dangerous - a doddering old maniac with delusions of grandeur. He is quite unpopular. 

But Kamala Harris had a weird laugh so what are you gonna do?

Rules And Norms

 My Comp Gov textbook defines a "regime" as the rules and norms that govern political behavior and structures. In the US, the Constitution is the regime, but there are other norms that have governed our political system.

Trump is bulldozing them like the East Wing of the White House.

The partisan gerrymandering is one example of simply making up things as you go along and kudos to Democrats for realizing that unilateral disarmament in this environment is folly. When it comes to something like the presidential pardon power, it was assumed that the President would be bound by public virtue and a sense of the majesty of the office and his obligation to serve the law. Trump's selling of pardons is, it seems, within the scope of the letter of the law. He can be impeached for this behavior, but not prosecuted. He will, of course, pardon the thugs like Greg Bovino and the grifters like his entire family on his way out the door. 

The norms, on other words, aren't working.

We need new rules. 

Greenland, Red Light

 Trump's obsession with Greenland is just so monumentally stupid, even depraved, that it's a struggle to make sense of it. Of course, it's a struggle to make sense of gutting moneys to research cancer, but here we are. It seems the push to annex Greenland might be a product of some of the following factors:

- Trump sees both the size of Greenland on a Mercator projection and heard that it has a bunch of rare earths, so his smooth brain thinks it will make him a great president.

- Trump is actively trying to blow up NATO, and this is an easy way to do so.

- Trump doesn't care about NATO one way or another, he just wants to bully another country and express his contempt for Europe as a whole. This would be part of his Donroe Doctrine.

We also have to consider that the various creatures around Trump have varying agendas and that they can easily manipulate him, using some combination of the above. That seems to be sort of what happened with Venezuela, where Miller's rabid racism, Rubio's anti-socialism and Hegseth's bloodthirstiness all allow for different levers to be pulls in pursuit of the same end. Whether it's "Kill Brown People", "Topple a Dictator" or "Thing Go Boom" they could all agree to push this mission. There is considerably less consensus among Republicans about actively taking over Venezuela.

With Greenland, we are once again at the fickle mercies of Republicans finding their spine and principles. There are quite a few Republicans that still believe in NATO and might oppose this, but it's essential that they be on the record NOW, before Mango Mussolini commits another war crime.

There is just TOO MUCH NEWS right now, but this is a big one.