Fundamentally Wrong

 I think Yglesias is way off base here with regards to Iran, but then again, this is an area where he usually is wrong. He thinks that Democrats will struggle to find a way out of the Iranian morass, should it linger until 2029. His argument is that while Democrats will want to resolve the issue, Iranians won't trust the American public not to elect another mouth breathing moron to scuttle any deal that Dems strike.

This is such a perfect example of Murc's Law, where only Democrats have agency or responsibility.

As it stands, Iran is mighty big pissed at the US for bombing their cities and killing their leadership. As bad as oil prices are, the Iranian economy is in the shitter. The primary reasons that they are holding out are that the fundamentally distrust Donald Trump for legitimate reasons, and they are willing to make their populace endure really tough times in order to drag him down.

If this situation is still smoldering in 2029, the Iranians will be looking for an exit, too. They can't keep going on this route indefinitely either. What's more, Democrats will be able to draw on international partners and institutions in ways that Trump can't. 

Framing the problem as "Iranians can't trust Democrat, because Republicans" misses Iran's motivations to punish Trump. He's the guy that opened this disaster. They may have qualms about a future Republican administration, but they will have strong incentives to come to the table, once Trump - who cannot be trusted at all - is no longer on the other side of it.

Democracy v Oligarchy

 There is a clear sense that the mass of voters would prefer different policies than the self inflicted harm of Trump's erratic "policies." The Downballot notes that the historical trends of primary turnout suggest a 13 point advantage for Democrats this fall. Some of that advantage comes from disgust with Trump, which is running quite high. An autocrat unwilling to listen to criticism isn't likely to make popular choices or correct course.

The question really at this point is about money. In the olden times of "normal" politics, industries would lean one way or another in their contributions, because they wanted certain outcomes that aligned with one of the two parties. They would not, however, go all in on one party, because if that party gets locked out of power, then they can get hosed. (You see a similar dynamic with Netanyahu's bear hug of the GOP, which - along with his war crimes - has alienated Democrats to the point where supporting Israel is now a net negative in the Democratic Party.)

The problems that Democrats currently face is that Trump is vindicative prick who uses the powers of his office to punish his foes. If you give to Democrats, you could wind up seeing licenses yanked or meritless prosecutions initiated against you. That is usually reserved for Trump's public antagonists though. If you quietly give to the DNC, I don't think Trump will come after you.

The second issue is more problematic. The combination of Crypto Bros and Tech Lords who have moved decisively behind Trump and who have mountains of cash and a desire to be protected. Interestingly, this is less true of AI companies, who seem to be asking for regulation. Crypto, though, is a fundamentally bullshit industry whose main purpose sure seems to be criminal. The idea that Iran is using crypto to evade sanctions and fund their war industries, while Trump acts to insure no oversight of crypto is just a perfect distillation of the corruption and incompetence of Trump 2.0. 

It seems pretty clear that the broligarchy will spend heavily in behalf of the GOP this October. The question will be whether that makes a dent in the roiling anger of the American electorate.

Russia, Russia, Russia

 Things are looking dicey in the increasingly hot war between Russia and Europe. When Putin invaded Ukraine for the second time in 2022, I did a primer for the school, and I confessed that I couldn't understand what Putin was doing. Invading a sovereign country is not acceptable behavior and Russia was not strong enough to act as a global hegemon. The US and China can possibly survive international condemnation, but Russia is not the Soviet Union. Whatever Putin hoped to achieve would be counterbalanced by the global response.

We are now over four years into Putin's "special military operation" and there are no signs of Putin bending to the geopolitical reality of his situation. Some of this is because of the aid he's received from China, North Korea and Iran, but undoubtably, Putin is banking on having a friend in the White House.

The links between Trump and Putin are similar to so many other Trump scandals. It's all out there in the open, like Don Junior having his wedding parties paid for by a Putin-aligned oligarch. The brazenness of it - and the pure volume of shit like this - make it hard to really generate public outrage over the naked corruption and the aligned agendas of Trump and Putin. 

That's the situation today, with Trump both mired in his dumbass war with Iran and naturally sympathetic to Vladimir Fucking Putin. 

Now, for whatever reason, Putin sure looks like he's threatening war with NATO. Trying to figure out what he's thinking is difficult. First of all, he's largely losing in Ukraine. While there's a decent argument that the Ukrainian Army is the best in Europe at the moment, it's still relatively small compared to the rest of Europe. Why would Putin add to the forces arrayed against him? Even without the US support, NATO would seem primed to add to the defeats that the Russian military is currently experiencing.

The other reason that this is mystifying is that Putin's real successes have come in the grey spaces of informational warfare. He's boosted right wing parties and candidates from Trump to Brexit to Marine Le Pen to Alternative for Deutschland. He actively worked to help Trump get elected in 2016 (and we have to assume did so again in 2024), and that is his greatest strategic victory ever. Trump has done more to degrade Russia's (and China's) most powerful geopolitical rival than any other measure Russia could have taken.

Why attack Europe if you will cut the legs out of that effort within Europe? Especially given the weakened state of your armed forces?

I suppose he could think that an attack on the Baltic States could fracture NATO, but I don't think it will - with the exception of the United States. Then again, there are still enough "national security Republicans" left to be a bulwark against that - not to mention how Trump's capitulation to Putin would play in the midterms. I suppose he could look at the coming midterm and think he's squeezed everything he can out of Trump, but again, why would throw away his greatest achievement to expand a war that he's already losing?

Attacking the Baltic States in order to link up to Kaliningrad and "restore" the old Soviet borders would seem deeply flawed strategic thinking, but so was invading Ukraine - or attacking Iran. He could blunder into World War III because he fundamentally doesn't understand that state of play right now, and by "he" I mean both Putin and Trump. 

Breaking Ranks?

 Richardson notes how many Republicans are starting to break with MAGA. She doesn't front this point, but this is a variation of the the "scheming vizier" or "bad boyars, good tsar" idea. This is a meme, really, from centuries ago, where anything good that happens is because of dear leader, but anything bad is because of the advisers around him. 

The Republicans who are endorsing Democrats aren't breaking with Trump. They are breaking with some policies - like mass, indiscriminate deportations or the Iran war - that poll poorly, and blame them on misguided advisers. They realize that they cannot attack Trump directly, or they will lose their office like Thomas Massie and others who have stood up to Trump. "Gosh, whomever decided that we needed to wage trade wars sure was misguided, and Trump should stop them from advising him anymore." This is so self-evidently stupid, I don't know what to say.

The thing is, Trump isn't exactly on the ballot. The embattled GOP reps who are trying to distance themselves from Trump's catastrophic reign of error are having to tie themselves in knots. I do wonder if anyone will buy it. MAGA will be pissed for calling out the obvious racism and misogyny in their ranks, but I don't know if doing that will win the dissenters any votes.

Still, 35% approval is too high for these vicious clowns.

Tantrums

 If there is a theme to Richardson this morning, it is the extraordinary tantrums that Donald Trump (and by extension, Mike Johnson) are throwing daily. Trump's idiocy has come face to face with reality and the feedback he is getting is bad. Sycophantic minions like Natalie Harp have cocooned him from reality for a while, but feedback on the Kennedy Center, interest rates and the Iran War have forced him to confront his own putrid record.

Mike Johnson basically prorogued the House rather than let Thomas Massie's articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth come to a vote. That means that they would certainly pass. What's interesting is whether it would have acquired the 67 votes in the Senate. If you were a vulnerable Senator running for reelection, why wouldn't you create some distance between you and the toxic war that is sending gas prices spiraling. 

So, yeah, all Trump is offering is the whining, petulant cries of a toddler who has been told, no.

Russia, Russia, Russia

 One of Trump's uncountable lies is that the Mueller Report exonerated him. Mueller found widespread efforts by Russia to influence the 2016 election and that Trump and others around him tried to obstruct the investigation. Russia wanted Trump in the White House, and though no one appears to have directly coordinated with Russia, they welcomed the help. I would hardly be shocked if Paul Manafort coordinated with Moscow, but they couldn't find the evidence of that.

Yesterday brought the totally unsurprising report that a Russian oligarch close to Putin threw lavish parties for Donald Trump, Jr. at his recent wedding. It was Don Junior who famously said years before Trump polluted our civic life that Russian lenders kept Trump afloat when credible banks stopped loaning to them. Meanwhile, Trump's son-in-law - who for some reason has been given responsibility to resolve the Ukraine war - says that all that's need for peace between Ukraine and Russia is for Ukraine to accept defeat and cede territory to Russia.

Oh, and Trump is blaming high oil prices on Ukrainian strikes at Russian refineries, not his ill conceived war against Iran. 

The crazy thing is, we know that Trump is Putin's puppet. The evidence of his treachery is simply overwhelming. Yet - as with so many Trump scandals - we come up against two barriers. The first is obviously that his cult will never abandon him. The second is that the sheer brazenness of his outright perfidy sort of boggles the mind. It's so obvious and so substantial that it's hard for normal people to get their heads around it.

Interesting

 Apparently the attacks that were launched by Iran in early July were launched by a hardline faction within state security without the approval or even knowledge of the president. 

Iran's current president is not, I think, a crazed ideologue. Iran IS suffering in this war, even if it's not exactly going great for the US. I am deeply, deeply concerned about Houthis trying to shut off the Bab al Mandeb; global oil production and refining capacity is in the shitter; inflation is going to get worse.

Iran, however, is really suffering, but if the hardline faction are in charge, then they simply don't want peace. They don't care if the Iranian people suffer immensely; this war is what they want.

Also, the Supreme Leader hasn't been seen since the war began and his father was killed. Rumor has it that he's badly disfigured, if he's even alive. This, too, gives the hardliners leeway to do whatever they want, as the only figure with the authority to stop them is either dead, incapacitated or unable to fully exercise his office.

This is a well sourced story from within the Iranian government, so they want the word out. The US isn't winning this war, but we shouldn't assume Iran is winning it either.

Power Doesn't Panic

 I read Richardson, as I do every morning, but then didn't find anything to add. However, thinking about it, it occurs to me that many of the actions of Trump and his minions give off a reek of panic. The efforts to stop mail-in voting, the floundering around in Iran, the chaotic building spree that winds up going off the rails like the Reflecting Pool fiasco...there seems to be a mad thrashing about.

Trump has started musing in that unfiltered way of his that he's mortal. Maybe all the vibes and rumors of health problems are real; he certainly looks like shit. 

However, while we know he's a malevolent force in our country and the world, there is something panicky about his actions. He's rushing shit like the Arch de Trump and the ballroom, because he knows he's running out of time. Maybe it's health, maybe it's November.

Power doesn't panic. Power controls. Trump is spinning out of control.

That comes with risks - huge risks - but it also suggests that even his Swiss Cheese mind is aware that things are unraveling and he's scared.

What Does Defeat Look Like?

 The ongoing destruction of American military preparedness is very much the fault of Pete Hegseth and therefore Donald Trump. When the rogue's roll of Cabinet appointees came out in the winter of 2025, Hegseth's CV was the thinnest and obviously Defense is a critical Cabinet position. He has lived down to the worst assumptions about what his tenure would be. RFK, Jr may be currently responsible for more American deaths though. Still, the fact that Hegseth still has a job is inconceivable in a normal political environment.

There are obviously short and long term consequences for this disastrous fustercluck in the Persian Gulf. In the short term, the US military does not have enough of certain important types of missiles and interceptors to be at peak military readiness. The individual crews of ships in the region are being worked beyond endurance. For what? We aren't invading Iran and we can't bomb them out of their strategic position.

In the medium term, one has to worry about Trump's decision to keep Hegseth, because he wants a lackey at Defense. Trump has zero loyalty, so he's not sticking with this idiot out of principle. 

In the longer term - and let's presume we retain American democracy - what will the Iran War mean for the US military. Some of this is wrapped up in the short term; Hegseth's evisceration of brain power in favor of physical fitness is driving away the sort of smart officers who will be required to rebuild the American military for the 21st century battlefield. 

I am fairly confident that in the corners of the Pentagon and the War College, serious officers are looking at the Persian Gulf (and Ukraine) and seeing what the future of warfare looks like. They will not be able to realize these institutional changes, which puts the US behind China in the race for drone dominance. In fact, in a lot of ways, we already trail Ukraine when it comes to the sort of drones that seem likely to be the dominant battlefield weapon of the immediate future.

After Vietnam, junior officers like Colin Powell rose through the ranks determined that there would not be a disastrous war like that again. Then Powell himself helped engineer the Iraq War disaster. Yet, the US military had the capacity to retool and rearm fairly quickly. We likely retain that capacity.

The question is whether we will get a civilian leadership in the Pentagon to move us towards that future or whether Trump will keep Hegseth around doing push up photo ops and ignoring the reality staring him in the face.

The Politics of Surrender

 Yglesias makes sort of a good point, but in his usual polemical style that robs it of its merit. He says Democrats should "surrender" in the trade war with Canada. That's just aggressively stupid rhetoric from a guy who prides himself of his language, but also his edginess. Democrats shouldn't "surrender" on anything. They should END the trade wars, the should END the Iran war - though that gets tricky.

Ending the trade wars is easy, because they are almost all certainly illegal. Trump's bizarre obsession with tariffs is politically unpopular, and - as Yglesias notes - it is unpopular across just about every interest group you could think of. So you just end them. There's no "surrender" involved and using that term would be political malpractice.

This becomes clearer when you look at the Iran situation. The US and Iran are launching shit at each other again. Why? Because Trump cannot extricate himself from this colossal mistake. There is no clean exit and Iran knows it. Iran's victory exists in enduring the sort of pain that is unimaginable in the US, because this is a war of regime survival for them and it's a fucking video game for Hegseth and Trump. 

I don't even know if there IS a solution to this ongoing disaster, unless China and Russia want to jump in and pressure Iran to come to the table. Why would China want to extricate the US from this quagmire? I suppose the economic cost of continued restrictions on oil supply will bite them, too, but again, they might be willing to suffer through that, because the Iran War is just an ongoing disaster for the US. Combine it with the incessant attacking of our allies, and Trump is working overtime to isolate the US from everyone in the world.

However, as we saw in Afghanistan, simply declaring defeat and withdrawing isn't popular either. Americans are not necessarily smart when it comes to foreign policy, and they would prefer a perfect outcome every time. They want to end the war in Iran without using ground troops and without losing. That's more or less impossible. 

The struggle for Democrats is that someone has to pull the plug and it won't be the GOP. They may have to force the US to come to grips with its defeat and that won't be popular.

Losing Wars

 Trump and Hegseth lost the Iran War, because they don't understand war properly. They think the expensiveness of a weapon's system is what matters. It's like the old Spinal Tap joke ("But this one goes to eleven."), where you can't even see the stupidity of the metrics that you're using. With Hegseth's hard-on for "lethality" he completely missed that wars are inherently political acts and leading a democracy to war requires public suasion first and foremost. Sometimes (Pearl Harbor, Fort Sumter, 9/11) that suasion is handled by your enemy. Trump/Hegseth never made a case for the war, they just did it, trusting that the disparity in military budgets would carry the day. It has been the political will and the ability to leverage cheap drones that has led to an Iranian victory (and it leading to a Ukrainian one, as well).

Of course, the Iran War isn't Trump's only ongoing war. His trade war with Canada is now accelerating. Like the previous example, Trump's fundamental stupidity means that he doesn't understand the basic dynamics of the situation. The US and Canadian economies are mixed together; trade wars make zero sense. Like with Iran, it's a question of political will. Canada is united, the US is not. What's more this will have its biggest impact in states close to Canada. Are their important elections in Maine, Michigan, Alaska and Wisconsin, I wonder? Are farmers' votes important in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas?

I know I've beaten this dead horse to a bloody pulp, but Trump doesn't understand the process of creating a policy, because he spent his entire adult life running a company of about 10 people, bullying other people and then going bankrupt. He never had to do real horse trading or compromising; in fact, he finds those things contemptibly weak. 

When Trump looks at the smoldering mess he's making, he blames it on Biden. This isn't just his malignant narcissism. This is his entire way of doing business over the past 50 years. Nothing his fault; attack, attack, attack; deflect, deflect, deflect; never admit weakness. Character really is destiny. Ignorance really isn't bliss.

If Democrats and independents wind up sweeping through elections in the Great Plains and along the Canadian border, it will be because Donald Trump has dragged us into wars that we did not have to fight, with goals that were unrealistic in the most optimistic projections and have been waged with a fecklessness that would shame a toddler.

Pawns

 One of Trump's defining character traits is a complete lack of empathy to the point of sociopathy. He cannot see other people except as they exist to be utilized by him. 

His recent comments about the conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln can be filed in the massive folder "Things That Would End Any Other Politician's Career." He has trapped himself within his ignorance surrounding the Iran War, but while he's "suffering" from cratering approval ratings, the sailors floating off the coast of Iran are truly suffering. Soldiers based in the Middle East are dying and being wounded by Iranian attacks. For Trump, though, their suffering is irrelevant. He needs a way to declare victory over Iran and if the troops suffer, well, they're just "suckers" anyway for volunteering.

Just a hateful human being, and I use the term human being loosely.

It should also be said that sailors and soldiers will endure a lot. If the mission is broadly legitimate. This one is not, and that has to weigh on the service members.

Trapped

 The Iran War (and tariffs) have started to create inflation that is deeply hurting Trump and Republicans. Under Josh Marshall's Unitary Theory of Power, a decline in power in one area leads to a decline in power elsewhere. If people don't like your tariffs and your Gestapo killing Americans on the streets of Minneapolis, they aren't going to care for your triumphal arch or your war with Iran.

And the war with Iran is going very, very poorly. As Philip Gordon notes:

“U.S. acceptance of Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz is an extraordinary outcome only made conceivable by an administration that squandered legitimacy, alienated allies, attempted regime change in a war it had not adequately prepared for and that is being forced to accept a catastrophic outcome without viable alternatives.”

This is the logical outcome of an Administration that has spent a year and a half pissing off the rest of the world and then being so immune from internal debate and criticism that it thinks Iran is Venezuela. I've written about how people want "disruption" because they think that everything sucks and incumbent politicians are at fault. What Iran and the entire Trumpist foreign policy is demonstrating is that breaking things because they aren't perfect returns us to a state where we understand why those institutions were created in the first place. Allies matter and behaving like a petulant toddler means that in this moment, Trump stands alone in a shithole of his own making. 

No one is coming to help us.

Here is the situation that Trump (and Hegseth) have led us into:

- We are running dangerously low on precision munitions that allowed Trump to exert miliary force from a stand-off distance.
- We are also running dangerously low on anti-missile ordinance.
- The American people do not support the war and never have.
- Prices are rising because of the war, and that is one thing they won't accept.
- There are no more levers to push to get Iran to surrender. They know all of the above are true.
- The only way to free the Straits of Hormuz is to send in ground troops that will lead to thousands of flag draped coffins.

Iran has been deeply damaged, but the regime doesn't care about the suffering of its people. The US has been deeply damaged in terms of its credibility. 

The only winner of this war is likely to be China. In fact, Xi has a real opportunity here to place China at the head of the table here. If the pain from this standoff gets worse, then Xi can come in a broker a deal. The Iranians rightly don't trust Trump, but they can trust China (I can't believe that's where we are). 

Europe won't help us, because we've pissed them off repeatedly. The other Middle Eastern countries are exasperated by Trump's fecklessness. That more or less requires some other head of state to come in and resolve this issue. India is to Islamophobic, so that pretty much leaves China, I suppose the EU could try, but would Trump trust them? Would they trust Trump?

We are learning in real time how Trump managed to go bankrupt selling gambling, football and steaks to the American public.

This Is Bad

 Pete Hegseth's little war with Iran has consumed most of our advanced stand-off munitions. We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to create these missiles that can be safely fired outside the range of defensive batteries. Cruise missiles and the like are very effective...and very expensive and very hard to make.

Hegseth is a preening idiot whose qualifications to lead the world's most expensive and professional military is that he was a Fox News blowhard. His macho posturing worked...ok...when dealing with alleged drug boats that he could simply blow out of the water. Even the raid on Venezuela worked well, because it was so limited in scope.

Iran has been preparing for this moment since 1979. We know this, but Hegseth ignored the warnings. Now, we have degraded our advanced weaponry to the point we have degraded our overall national security. He should lose his job, but he never should have had it in the first place.

His ridiculous emphasis on cartoon masculinity does not inspire confidence in making wise decisions. The overall corruption of the administration is also not inspiring confidence in making good decisions in the face of this legitimate crisis. The great strength of a functioning democracy is course correction. During the Civil War, both sides struggled early in the war with "political generals" who earned their stars by being political figures who could raise a regiment of volunteers. The rise of actual competent generals like Grant, Sherman and Sheridan happened because feedback was assimilated in ways that doesn't happen in an authoritarian system. Apparently Trump didn't know about the munitions shortages, because no one wanted to be the one to tell him.

The solution to this emerging crisis is actually fairly simple. We should partner with Ukraine to mass produce drones. They could get 33% of the drones we build in return for their knowledge. Drones do not have the range of a cruise missile or an ATCM, but they could move to immediately repair the hole in our munitions.

However, we do not have competent people running the Defense Department and the Executive Branch. Hegseth is mewling about testosterone and there are unlikely to be enough corrupt kickbacks in a drone program to make it worth Trump's while.

We are a weaker country because a bunch of insecure men in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris' laughs. We have a president whose admiration of Putin has replicated Putin's disastrous defense posture.

Bliss...Until It Isn't

 One of the nice things about the trip we were on was that I didn't feel compelled to read my writers every day. I didn't need to process all the hot takes and sage musings that I usually do. Driving through the Colorado high country, I could just take it all in and enjoy the company of friends and family.

It strikes me that this is how most Americans live and it must be nice. Sure, there are times when things seem really bad, and you don't have the cognitive architecture to process and understand it, but most of the time, a certain amount of ignorance really is blissful.

I did peek in on Krugman's shorter pieces, and it was interesting the theme of the past week has been just how damaging ignorance can be when it typifies the people in charge of government. Two examples that Krugman cites are the willful ignorance (or more like obstinate refusal to acknowledge facts) around climate change and the lying ignorance around the Iran war. 

Of course, you can't have any of this without the signature fact of the age: Donald Trump is a deeply stupid and damaged man. He has then surrounded himself with other deeply stupid people and smart people who make themselves stupid to twist themselves into courtiers to sate the omnivorous ego of this awful fucking man. 

The bizarre spectacle of the Fauci obsession is another brick in this towering edifice of stupidity. Anthony Fauci - and really the whole communicable disease community - were groping in the dark in the early days of Covid. They erred on the side of caution, but the stupidity and lack of leadership of Donald Trump and the fever swamps of right wing and woo woo conspiracy sites made Covid something it wasn't. "It's just the flu." 

In the end, over a million Americans died earlier than they otherwise would have because of Covid. If things like masking where taken seriously, that number would be lower. If people took the vaccine, that number would be lower. America had one of the worst records during Covid, because we were led by deeply stupid people in the early days of the pandemic, and because right wingers politicized it. 

People will point to the closing of schools as being a mistake, because kids rarely died from Covid (How many dead kids would have been too many?). This neglects that teachers - many of them older - were also part of school communities. 

All Fauci did was try and save lives. His caution and the desperate need for Covid to be a "lab leak" made him out to be a villain. Six years later, he's being dragged before Rand Paul because RFK, Jr. searched every file to find his personal diary - a diary that does nothing to discredit his decision making. 

One of the conversations we had in Colorado was with an old friend who works in the tech sector. He said he read a definition of intelligence that was basically: the ability to make predictions. I have been thinking about intelligence as a concept, and I came up with four different levels of intelligence.

The first is "Training" or simply the ability to be trained. A dog can be house trained, and a kid can be trained in spelling. The second is "Knowledge." This is the ability to recall information. Again, a dog can remember where her favorite plushie toy is, and a kid can remember the French word for toy. The third level is - with a nod to my friend - "Prediction" or "Analysis". Can you use knowledge and your mental training to predict things or draw meaningful connections? The final level is "Wisdom". Do you know the true value of things - not its price, its value?

When I think about the Trumpist movement - extending beyond Trump himself to his whole movement - I can see some Training, but when it comes to Knowledge they are so warped in what they "know" because they just don't want to understand the complexity of the world. They don't value complexity. 

This is how you get the Iran War. This is how you get inflationary tariffs. This is how you get a tariff on Canada for not raking their forests. 

The root of populism is that any person is as good as any other person and therefore rule by elites - especially cognitive elites or experts - is disdained in favor of putting loyalists into positions of authority and even in the implementation of policy.

It's stupid and it's degrading this country a little bit every single day. 

The Post-US World

 Richardson does her usual brilliant round up of the day's atrocities, which is usually most damning when it just quotes Trump verbatim. In this case, there is the embarrassing performance of Trump at the NATO summit in Ankara.

Krugman provides a bit more analysis. Trump went in and started doing his usual blustering bullshit, including resurrecting his Greenland nonsense. What was significant is that it seems that NATO heads of government mostly just ignored the senile old fool. As Krugman argues, this is because what Trump has done is expose every possible weakness in America's place in the world.

We are measurably weaker than we were on January 19th, 2025.

His tariffs have not worked to do anything but weaken our economy by driving up prices. Europe is de-Americanizing its economy, working to decouple from their crazy cousins in Washington. The debacle in Iran - now starting up again - has demonstrated his fecklessness and the failure of defense planners to recognize the new contours of 21st century warfare. He has abandoned the commitment to defend democracy in Ukraine. His constant antagonism has led countries to begin to move away from a dependence on US financial institutions. 

Richardson points to a quote from Robert Kagan:

In January, Robert Kagan warned that Trump’s destruction of the order that has underpinned global security for the past 80 years was creating the most dangerous world since World War II. With the end of open access to global resources, markets, and strategic bases and without reliable friends or allies, the U.S. will need more military spending than ever.

“Americans are neither materially nor psychologically ready for this future,” Kagan warned. They are accustomed to the “basically peaceful, prosperous, and open world” and have come to think it is “the normal state of international affairs, likely to continue indefinitely. They can’t imagine it unraveling, much less what that unraveling will mean for them.”

Everything will be up for grabs, Kagan wrote, with myriad “flash points for potential conflict.” “If Americans thought defending the liberal world order was too expensive,” Kagan wrote, “wait until they start paying for what comes next.”

"There is a lot of ruin in a nation." We will find out just how much.

Anti-System Politics

 Richardson has a throw away line in the middle of her recap, where she suggests that the unexpected victories of DSA candidates in NYC has Republicans worried. Conventional wisdom, as typified by Yglesias, suggests moderating the Democratic party's stances in order to win enough races to save democracy in America. The extremist rhetoric of people like Chevalier muddy that message, and there are real concerns that Michigan and Maine's Senate races could be thrown away by unsuitable candidates.

As David Nir and Jeff Singer point out, there is a broad anti-incumbent mood out there. Some of this on the Democratic side is being upset with an older generation of politicians. I don't think this is entirely about "fight", but rather lingering issues with Biden's age and even Trump's. It's about Democratic House members who have died in office in a razor close House, depriving Jeffries of votes. Sure, there's some of Biden's old "we can work together" ethos being repudiated, but really they are just old, and don't seem equal to the moment. 

Also, whether Trump, Milei, Magyar or any other number of politicians, we are looking at a broadly anti-incumbent climate. While I am deeply disturbed by Graham Platner's idiocy and impulse control issues, he DOES represent that anti-politics politician. Maybe that's enough to carry him to victory over one of the strongest electoral overperformers in the Senate. OTOH, Roy Cooper seems to be coasting to a Senate victory in North Carolina, and Sherrod Brown seems to be leading in Ohio. 

In the end, the 2026 elections will be a referendum on a very unpopular president. I don't think that things are going to improve for Trump, especially since he can't seem to extricate himself from his Iran catastrophe. Nominal prices remain high, inflation isn't likely to abate, he's corrupt as hell and people see that. 

It may very well be that Trump's massive unpopularity carries the day, but the stake are high, and I think we can all worry. I certainly thought that 2024 would go differently, so I can't take anything for granted.

Peace Likely Won't Help Trump

 The surrender to Iran has largely been understood as Trump desperately needing to turn things around before the midterms. He needs the oil to flow again and bring prices down. As Krugman explains, though, that's unlikely to happen for a lot of reasons. Among them are the fact that even if the war was really over - and the ceasefire keeps collapsing because Trump keeps threatening Iran - it would take weeks and months to restore the flow of oil, urea and other goods through the Strait. We would also have to replenish reserve stockpiles that we have been drawing down to reduce the impact of the loss of the Gulf oil on world markets. Finally, there are baked in inflationary effects from this war that we really haven't seen yet, but almost certainly will.

So, Trump seems to be flailing around. You have weathervanes like Tucker Carlson blowing away from Trump. Leaving aside whatever pathologies are surrounding Trump psychologically and neurologically, he is facing collapsing poll numbers and rumblings among his base that portend even more ominous signs. The MOU is simply another sign of this flailing. His desperation for a favorable peace deal is more palpable than the load in his Depends, and Iran knows it.

There are a host of things going wrong, all of which create a gestalt of incompetence and corruption. While I think a lot of what Yglesias writes about politics is suspect, he's right about persuadable voters. This is really just another way to describe the Ariana Grande Voter Theory, and we have to acknowledge that partisanship has left American democracy at the whims of people who do not understand American democracy. 

This should redound to Democrats' favor in November, because things aren't great now and are going to stay bad. Trump can't help but make some of these things worse - the Reflecting Pool is a good example of how he simply cannot admit a mistake - and so the question for the midterms is pretty simple.

Democrats will turn out. They are motivated. Even if many of them have qualms about the party, they are going to show up. They will hold their noses and vote for people like Graham Platner. The questions are about what will happen to Republican turnout? And where will the feckless middle land? If a lot of Republicans just sit out the midterms, that's important. If angry Ariana Grande voters show up to vote for Democrats, that's important. 

We need both Houses to really correct things. I don't think surrendering to Iran is going to help Trump prevent that.

UPDATE: We are in the midst of a market correction. That seems an especially likely outcome over time. The stock market seems disconnected from the world at large. 

When we have market crashes, typically we get some foreshadowing in the spring and the real collapse in the fall. Is this foreshadowing or just a small correction?

Can America Lead Again?

 This thread is an interesting one, where Bret Devereaux makes the case that future democratic leaders around the world will, in fact, be eager to make friends with a post-Trumpist United States. I think it's broadly true on the merits. The US remains an impressive country. The gleeful reactions of international visitors to the World Cup is a helpful reminder that Americans - if not their government - retain a lot of goodwill, because Americans are generally nice and welcoming and generous. 

I think that the malignant forces that launched Trump into a position of power are not unique to the United States. Britain is losing another Prime Minister to what is fundamentally the dysfunction created to British government by Brexit. 

Brexit preceded Trump and was a herald of the anti-globalization, anti-international movement that benefits backwards powers like Russia. Fears of immigrants and the loss of status of "native" whites is a common thread running through British and American politics since 2016. This anti-integrationist populism was roundly defeated in Hungary recently, but only after two decades of non-democratic corruption and cruelty. 

We need to get past this faster than that.

As Trump's ridiculous tariffs and his defeat in Iran have shown, even the a superpower can be defeated if it's left isolated. Trump isolates America further and further every day. His beef with Georgia Meloni is great example of his crass belligerence undermining what SHOULD have been a productive relationship with another right wing populist. The idiot just can't help himself as he tries to protect his whiny assed fragile ego.

Meanwhile, Vance is being humiliated at peace talks, because Trump continues to undercut him and give him jobs that would be difficult in the best of circumstances, not counting for the fact that ANY agreement with the US while Trump is president is effectively useless. 

America will shamble along, a concussed giant stumbling across the world stage, until Trump finally dies or leaves power.  When that happens, I do believe that the world will be wary of the post-Trump US, but not hostile. 

We need each other. That's what Trump and Brexiteers don't understand.

Trump's War On Competence

 Krugman makes the case for how Trump and Hegseth's racism and misogyny have undermined military competence and readiness. The case against Trump is that he sees the military as a form of brute strength that he can use as an extension of his personal whims. It's not just the success of the Venezuela raid, but the need to surround himself with men in uniform. (Happy Pride Month, Donald.)

With Hegseth, you get a bully's understanding of military strength: How many pushups can you even do, bruh? As Ukraine and Iran have demonstrated during the Ukraine War, drones are the future of warfare, but Hegseth being dismissive of that threat is largely how we stumbled into a humiliating defeat against Iran (and how Russia is sliding into defeat against Ukraine).

Meanwhile, the Washington Post remembered that it used to be an excellent newspaper and did a deeply researched story on outgoing DNI Tulsi Gabbard's membership in a cult. (The Post does still suck, as it puts its' stories behind a paywall; a smart paper would give that article away.) Gabbard was always rumored to be pro-Putin and pro-Assad puppet, but I wonder how much of that was because of the cult she was in. It's a weird Hindu cult, where the leader does not appear to be Hindi. Yet there are strains of Hindutva in the virulent anti-Islamic bigotry. India has also had an unusually close relationship with Russia over the decades, though Russia's behavior in Ukraine has strained that.

Gabbard and Hegseth got their jobs because Trump liked the way they looked and spoke on TV. Gabbard is photogenic, and I guess Hegseth is, too. (Your mileage may vary.) Gabbard was a "Democrat" who spoke ill of Democrats, and Hegseth was a blustering bully from Fox. They had very little qualifications for the actual jobs that they hold and now we have lost a war to Iran and we have no idea the damage Gabbard has done to American intelligence operations and capacity.

Elect a stupid clown, get a stupid circus.