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. 

Oil Vey

 Oil markets are experiencing real pain right now. Krugman tries to contextualize them, but when he makes a video on Thursday, the situation changes by Saturday.

Gas prices - as distinct from oil prices - have already exploded. Before the war, local gas was about $2.85, not it's $3.99. I've already felt that there is a fair amount of skullduggery in oil markets, but this all seems to make sense. Markets are beginning to realize that Trump can't simply TACO his way out of this mess, as critical facilities are simply gone and will take years to replace. Farmers may not be able to fertilize their fields.

The appalling decision by Trump to open the spigots to Russian and Iranian oil is because he's legitimately and properly concerned by the spike in oil prices, but with so many other critical commodities passing through the Straits of Hormuz, all he's really doing is putting money in Iran and Russian coffers.

Fucking lunacy.

Strategic Incoherence

 If you are thinking either tactically or especially strategically about something, you have to consider multiple outcomes of every action you take. If you do X, what are the potential outcomes? Which of those outcomes is particularly catastrophic, and are there factors that can remove those catastrophic outcomes? 

You absolutely cannot "wing it" or go with your gut.

Unless you're Donald Trump and the gaggle of sycophants and fools that constitute his inner (and outer) circle.

The goal - such as it is - was apparently regime change. The best opportunity for that was when the people of Iran were being gunned down in the streets in early January. Even then, it was primarily wishful thinking, even magical thinking. The ease of Venezuela clearly influenced Trump, as did the need to reassert dominance domestically and internationally.

The result, so far, has been pretty catastrophic. Apparently, no one really expected Iran to do the thing that we all knew Iran would do: throttle oil supplies. For someone so locked into the world view of the 1970s, Trump's ignorance on this is striking. 

To be clear, this is not about national security. Iran did not pose an immediate threat to the US. We've been mostly containing them for half a century. By threatening regime change, we've removed any constraints on Iranian behavior, as this is an existential conflict for them. Yet, apparently, we went into a war with our goals - regime change on the cheap - completely inadequate to the ability to influence events in Iran.

The final expression of just how unbelievably fucked up the "thinking" is on Iran is this: We are letting Iran export oil and reducing sanctions. We are bombing their country, but we absolutely cannot allow them to stop selling oil to China or China might fuck with us and our plate is kinda full right now. Allowing Iran to sell their oil - hell, allowing Russia to sell their oil - is not in America's national security interest. When you are in a conflict - directly or indirectly in Russia's case - you throttle their economy. You have a PLAN to throttle their economy. 

In World War II, America flew a dangerous and costly mission to bomb the oil facilities in Ploesti, Romania. It was the primary oil facility in Nazi occupied Europe, and it was critical that we use oil as a weapon to deprive their military of a critical resource. Today, we are letting Iranian and Russian oil on the market because Trump knows that rising oil prices are politically perilous for him. The war started out unpopular and it will only get more unpopular as the cost of the war and the price of oil soars ever upwards. 

Turns out having imbeciles running your government is a bad idea.

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.

Surprised By The Unsurprising

 Anyone with the sense Dog gave a Labrador retriever would have known that Iran would strangle the Straits of Hormuz. Anyone with the sense that Dog gave a guinea pig would have known that there are thousands of Americans and other nationals in the Gulf and they might want to be evacuated.

When people say that we "rushed" to war with Iran, we do know mean that this was a last minute decision. it certainly seems like this was weeks in the planning. It is precisely the incoherence and incompetence of this "plan" that has sober people concerned. Iran has likely been planning for this since last June, but really for decades. It is not clear that Trump and his crew of podcasters and Fox News personalities have done anything but dust off some old Pentagon contingency plans.

This has led to Trump apparently brow beating oil executives to bring down prices of a global commodity that he has just imperiled. "I've cocked things up, but I'm relying on you guys to fix it." Apparently, he didn't even bother to refill the strategic oil reserve before launching this war.

If anything, our latest foray into the chaos of the Middle East should remind us that renewable energy is not just environmentally sound, but it makes sense in terms of economics and national security.

The Politics Of Trump's War

 It is inevitable that any discussion of the conflict in Iran turn to the impact on Trump and his political fortunes. Especially given the fact that a Democratic Wave in the November elections might be the difference between America surviving as a democracy or not.

Trump's inherent incoherence is going to work against him here. As he tosses out contradictory war aims and negotiating positions, it becomes clear he doesn't have a framework for "winning the war." What's more, Trump made no effort to "sell" the war to the American public. He did not use the State of the Union address to make the case; he only tossed out a few videos on his social media site. He did not engage Congress or the American people in this conflict. It seems that he assumed he would get a quick and clean Venezuelan outcome - neglecting the fact that Venezuela is still a mess.

Americans don't seem pleased with this. YouGov threw out a snap poll (take with a grain of salt) and only 34% of Americans supported the war. In March 2003, 71% of Americans supported the invasion of Iraq, largely because the Bush Administration made a relentless (and flawed and mendacious) case to the American public. Republicans naturally support Trump far more than Democrats, but while 10% of Democrats express any support for the war, only 20% of independents do. Democrats oppose the strikes at 70%, but independents oppose it at 52%. 

Trump never made the case for war, and now he's throwing off bangers like "there will likely be more (casualties) before it ends. That's the way it is." He routinely references Venezuela, "What we did in Venezuela, I think, is the perfect, the perfect scenario." He thinks he can waltz in and out of a Middle Eastern war, the way he did in the Caribbean, which betrays an unsurprising but woeful level of ignorance.

Meanwhile, Iran's closing the Straits of Hormuz is unlikely to make people think that Trump is laser focused on affordability. It might not crater the economy the way the 1979 Iranian Revolution did, but supply chain disruptions have a way of making themselves felt. One driver of the "Biden" Inflation was the supply chain disruption to world oil and gas markets by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There is no reason to believe that we won't see another oil shock, even if it doesn't tip us into stagflation.

Trump is an idiot. Most of the people around him are idiots. They believe in performing on social media over doing the hard work of crafting policy and long term strategy. "The Venezuelan raid went great, let's do that again. It will make great TV." Except the American people are really not at all ready for this, and they made no effort to prepare them for it.

Trump has no reservoir of good will or public trust to draw on, beyond his diminishing base. He is absolutely incapable of filling the role of selfless war time president. I would be shocked if he met the caskets of fallen soldiers at Dover. What's more, it is precisely his rural voter base that is sick and tired of these wars, because they disproportionately fight them. 

Iran is playing the long game, because it must. It can launch swarms of cheap drones until America's supply of anti-missile weapons is gone. If it resorts to tactics that have served it in the past, one would have to expect terrorist attacks at some point. They merely have to hunker down and endure. 

Trump is talking about a four week war. Venezuela might be instructive here, in that we really haven't changed much about the government of Venezuela, except who sits atop it. But we declared victory and moved on. Maybe we see a bunch more dead people - American, Iranian, Israeli, Qatari, Kuwaiti - we degrade the Iranian military...and then the war just ends. It's pretty clear that Trump has no real plan to make "regime change" happen. 

I would be shocked if Trump benefits from a "rally 'round the flag" effect. 

Why?

 Why attack Iran now? 

That question is really paramount in my mind as I try and discern why we have engaged in yet another war of choice in the Middle East. Richardson runs through some of the possibilities.

The proper time to launch strikes was during the massive civil unrest that led to the Revolutionary Guard gunning down thousands of its own citizens. However, most of our military assets were tied down off the coast of Venezuela. So there was a lag between the optimal time to launch strikes and the ability to do so. (Apparently the strikes were planned for earlier, but they learned that Khamenei was going to be in a meeting, so they moved the strikes to target that meeting.)

The popular theory online is, of course, that this should be named Operation Epstein Fury. It's all just another distraction from the Epstein Files. Perhaps. More likely this could be seen as a way to "project strength" or "dominate the news" in the face of sagging poll numbers and widespread dissatisfaction with Trump's presidency. The operation in Venezuela went so well, why not try it again? Of course the operation in Venezuela did not arrest Trump's declining poll numbers, but whatever.

Timothy Snyder suggests that this could be part of the overall corruption of the Trump Administration, in particular their cozy relations with the Gulf States. This feels less like a corrupt quid pro quo ("Attack Iran and we will give you billions in crypto.") and more the corruption of shared values. Trump and his minions love the rich emirs of the Gulf, and they could imbibe their perspectives just by constant contact.

It is the opinion of this humble blog that Donald Trump is a profoundly stupid person. He has the vocabulary of a third grader, fer chrissake. Intelligence can take many forms, and Trump's feral ability to attack and lie is kind of intelligence. What he is clearly incapable of doing is looking ten steps ahead. There is a reason no American president has taken this step, despite almost 50 years of hostile relations between the US and Iran. We have no idea what will come next. Trump doesn't care. Venezuela is currently struggling through a humanitarian crisis. Same with Cuba. Trump doesn't care. Iran might collapse into a failed state, like Libya. Trump doesn't care.

Maybe everything works out. Maybe the Iranian army and elements of the Revolutionary Guard switch sides and drive the hardliners from power. Maybe we kill enough hardliners to facilitate that happening. Maybe Iran doesn't degenerate into civil war and chaos, but becomes a vibrant democracy. It's not totally impossible. What IS clear is that we have no plans or ability to shape that particular outcome.

Special Military Operation

 The seemingly inevitable attacks on Iran began a few hours ago. The two ideas need to be held together in everyone's mind. The first is that the Iranian regime is incredibly malevolent. The second is that air strikes are not going to topple the regime. 

Is there a realistic endgame for these strikes? Almost certainly not. 

Are we at war with Iran? Not technically, because Congress has been excluded from this decision. Only Congress can declare war.

Why are we doing this? This feels like the Trump Administration's incessant efforts to "create content" and "project strength" rather than any overarching strategic goal.

Would it improve the world if the Iran had a new government? Absolutely. There is no evidence that this will topple the regime. Air power can't do that.

Can't a global military power enforce it's will militarily on a weaker power? History suggests not. 

Are the adults in charge? Absolutely not. Epic Fury? We are governed by middle schoolers.

Is this a distraction from the Epstein Files? Maybe, but more likely it's a distraction from the various setbacks that Trump has been dealt recently. Military action is usually a way to restore presidential authority. This seems unlikely to do that.

Are We About To Go To War With Iran?

 Seems like it. But as Cheryl Rofer notes, it's quite difficult to graft rational decision making onto Trump's governance. I have been struck by how out in the open these military plans are. The movement of massive amounts of airpower to the Middle East has not been subtle. Surprise is not apparently the operative word here.

Maybe he is just trying to bully Iran into some form of concession on...something. It certainly seems like his fundamental demand is that Iran no longer be a sovereign power hostile to the United States. As with so much of Trump's blinkered grasp of the world, he seems mired in the '70s and '80s where Iran is this supreme villain that must be squashed, perhaps by Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone. Iran does have a terrible regime, but as with Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, that seems insufficient for embarking on a land war in Asia.

Why?

Is it Epstein Distraction 2,853? Maybe.

I do wonder if Trump is so clearly declining that the creatures around him are basically running wild through the Executive Branch like toddlers jacked up on sugar and, for some reason, Red Bull. That particular cadre of retrograde Republican militarists who just like to explode shit and think it's realpolitik are basically free to do what "common sense foreign policy" says they should do: drop a few million dollars worth of bombs and cruise missiles, which will make the Ayatollah abdicate in fear. I think their inspiration was a Twisted Sister video from 1984.

The Iranian military is mostly a decrepit joke at this point, though they might luck into shooting down an American airplane and that won't be bad at all. A ground invasion? Good lord.

A reminder that Very Savvy Journalists felt that Trump was the "Peace Candidate" in 2016.

UPDATE: Looks like we're effectively at war with Cuba, and I didn't even know it. This has Rubio all over it.

UPDATE II: Given that SCOTUS has just show down his tariff bullshit, I would expect him to channel his rage into missile strikes.

Tariffs

 Krugman has a long, wonky post about why the impact of Trump's tariffs on prices is only about a 1% increase in overall prices. If you want to dig into the weeds of that, be my guest.

Prices rose 2.4% last month (if we believe the government data, which in this case we probably should). Absent tariffs, prices would - presumably - have risen by 1.4%. If I'm right - and I very much might not be - I think that there are two possible impacts of tariffs.

The first is that 2.4% is still on the high side. That makes it unlikely that we will see dramatic interest rate cuts. Inflation is not galloping ahead, but it's not quelled either and people are still upset about prices.

The second is that if prices might hypothetically have only risen by 1.4% without the tariffs, then we might be seeing a slacking in consumer demand. While the economic data are generally positive, consumer sentiment is in the toilet. That might just be the overall unpopularity of Trump. I do believe that people will complain about "the economy" when they are really just unhappy overall. 

The only thing buttressing Trump from hitting the Crazification Factor of 27% approval is that the floor has not fallen out of the economy. My guess is that it was going to happen at some point this year, but maybe it won't. Maybe the US economy is just too resilient to be knocked off course by these corrupt idiots. 

The Fed Is The Bright Red Line

 Trump's spurious prosecution of Jerome Powell is both deeply chilling and unlikely to work. The Federal Reserve was specifically constructed to avoid political pressure. They have to make the hard choices that presidents and congressional members cannot. Paul Volcker purposefully forced the country into a brutal recession from 1979-1983 in order to kill the inflation that had curdled the American economy. Powell has skillfully navigated the post-Covid inflationary period to quell inflation without forcing us into a deflationary recession.

As Krugman notes, this is part of Trump's overall assault on anyone with the temerity to not kiss his ass. He is so ensconced in sycophants that he cannot be contradicted, cannot be defied, and Powell wouldn't cut interest rates. (By the way, why now? Why launch a prosecution now? I have to wonder if they are seeing some flashing red lights on the economy and are that desperate for a rate cut.)

Last year, the Sycophantic Six on the SCOTUS basically allowed the president to fire anyone at any agency, even if it had been set up to be beyond the reach of presidential firings. They specifically said that this does not apply to the Federal Reserve. The reason is that the Court ultimately works for the Money. Yeah, they may secretly thrill to Trump's attacks on Democrats or minorities, but their real purpose was to overturn Chevron and gut the regulatory state. 

The broadest trends in macroeconomics are fuzzy at the moment. The tariffs have not really been universal and the effects have not been as profound as the published rates. There is still some hope that the Court will overturn them, for the same reason that they might protect Powell. The economy is soft, but not receding, and that softness has largely come from Trump's erratic policy making. No one knows what he might do with tariffs or punishing a specific industry from one day to the next. No one wants to go into Venezuela because he might simply walk away from it and stare out the window at his construction project in the old East Wing. 

The economy is frozen in uncertainty, even as Trump guts regulatory oversight and funnels money to the rich. Attacking the Federal Reserves' independence is unlikely to sooth markets and allay the concerns of business.

New York

 I was hoping that the end of the mayoral election would mean being able to stop paying attention to NYC politics. 

I was naive. 

As Krugman points out, NYC is doing great. It's recovered from Covid in ways that place like San Francisco really hasn't (yet). Crime is down, life expectancy is up. Some good policy decisions, like congestion pricing, have worked; others are still up for grabs, and NYC is a great ground zero for "abundance" experimentation, when it comes to housing.

Having just driven to JFK yesterday, I can attest both that the area around Flushing has improved a lot over the last decade, it's still vaguely dystopian in its aesthetics. Business fronts just look dirty and tired. The Van Wyck remains the single worst road in America, with construction that has never ended. If you were from a small town, and flew into NY via JFK or even LaGuardia, you would probably think it was a failed city on the brink of collapse. 

But it's not. It's old and grungy, sure, but it works in it own chaotic way. It will be interesting to see what Mamdani can actually achieve, given NYC's fractious politics and power structures. I'd wager he does some good, but falls far short of the dreams of his most ardent supporters. 

Best of luck, New York. Except for the Mets.

The Twin Horns That Will Gore Trump

 Morris looks at Trump's approval on the economy and health care, and it ain't pretty.  This is fundamentally important, because so much of what Trump is doing that is really, really bad simply does not register with most voters...UNTIL they start to see their money shrink.

All the OTHER stuff will only really land with people once they are angered at his economic policy malpractice. There are two main engines that are driving this: deportations and tariffs. A third factor is high interest rates, but his deficit spending spree means that even if the Fed lowers rates, long term interest rates will remain high. This was the situation in the early '90s, and it required some austerity to make things work.

Since Trump is an idiot surrounded by other idiots, anyone think he will do the right thing? The hard thing?

Wagging That Dog

 Trump is going to address the nation tonight. Sometimes he hypes these event and then it's a huge nothingburger, but there is at least some evidence that involves our escalation against Venezuela. Why are we apparently on the verge of going to war with Venezuela? Maduro is objectively awful, but that's not a casus belli. The drug issue is bullshit, and also it's not a casus belli. 

One possible explanation include the fact that Trump has ceded basically all of his policy making to the various creatures in his orbit - think Miller and deportations - and Marco Rubio really wants to do some regime change in Venezuela. For Rubio, whose parents fled Cuba, Maduro is just another Latin American Marxist that needs to be deposed. The question then is: why not Cuba itself? I mean, if you're going to start (another) illegal war, why not strike at the motherlode?

Another possible explanation is that Hegseth just has his war hard-on so bad that he wants any excuse to "increase lethality" and look like a tough guy in the mirror. The combination of Maduro's leftist politics, the presence of at least some drugs and the general waddling deeper into belligerent waters puts Hegseth's curdled idea of toughness and Rubio's neo-con arrogance into common cause.

The final reason is simply the old "Wag the Dog" scenario from an old movie starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert DeNiro about starting a war to deflect the press' attention from scandal. 

Friday is the deadline for releasing the Epstein Files.

If that wasn't enough, we have a weakening economy, the Susie Wiles disaster and the general collapse in Trump's aura of invincibility. His rancid tweet after the Reiner murders has enraged all but his most loyal sycophants. He appears increasingly old, addled and unhinged. Perhaps the thinking is that they need to escalate this crisis that they made to pressure Maduro to abdicate into a full blown war simply to change the subject from Trump's eroding power.

Or maybe he goes on TV tonight to tell us how great his new ballroom is and how Americans should stop complaining about his economic performance.

UPDATE: Apparently he's going to be boasting about what a great job he's doing, two weeks before millions lose their health insurance. I do hope he continues to try and square the circle of "The economy is great, but it's all Joe Biden's fault."

More On That Oncoming Train

 Two more commentators have looked at Trump's cratering support. Krugman looks a bit more deeply at the coming crisis in ACA. For me personally (even though I made up my mind about Trump in the 1980s) I am now probably looking to postpone retirement until I can go on Medicare, and that sucks for me. And it's absolutely HIS and the GOP's fault. 

It also strikes me that a certain segment of Trump voter will be really slammed by this. That small town entrepreneur who generally supports Republicans because "business" is going to find it impossible to insure themselves. It will also slam people like me - the moderately well off who want to retire a few years before 65. That's a generally "conservative" demographic, though as Paul Campos notes, opposition to Trump should rightly be considered "conservative."

Elliott Morris looks at the numbers and see where Trump could easily lose another 3 points of popularity/job approval. Morris notes that Trump is being shored up by Republicans who don't think he's doing a good job on the economy. Think about that. They don't like his performance on the single most important issue that people vote on. In one sample, if you're a Republican who thinks he's done a bang up job on the economy, you give him a 94% approval rating. Delusional, but it still makes sense. If you don't think he's "achieved his goals on the economy", approval falls to 64%. If economic anger grows, that number goes down. What's more - though Morris doesn't address this - if Trump becomes more and more toxic, then people will simply stop identifying as Republicans. Or if they can't switch parties, they will simply drop out of the electorate.

Ignorance Is Amiss

 G. Elliot Morris writes about how people in polls tend to move towards Democrats once voters are informed about Republican policies. This is a variation of push polling, but in push polling, you often get inflammatory priming statements. "If you knew that Kamala Harris personally wants to perform gender reassignment surgery to third graders, would you be more or less likely to vote against her?"

With Morris' survey, he could say something factual about tariffs or ICE or bailing out Argentina, and then ask for respondents' opinion and they move left. This raises the question: Why don't they know this shit already?

There are a legion of infuriating things about the 2024 election, but the refusal of the media to cover and the Democrats to stop talking about Project 2025 is pretty high up there. The public learned about Project 2025 and largely couldn't believe that it was real, so they actively discounted it when making their voting choice. Could that have swung the election? Morris' work seems to suggest that if more people had an accurate understanding of what Trump was promising to do, that might have moved the electorate 2-3 points toward Harris. That would have moved Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin into Harris' column.

Krugman has been trying to figure out why people are so pissed about the economy over the past two years, when the US did about as good a job as possible getting out of Covid. Inflation as a discrete economic event ended in late 2022 or early 2023. However, because prices remained high and because people had little lived experience with inflation of this sort - you'd have to go back to the '70s to find anything similar - they tended to be angry that prices didn't snap back into place. Trump benefitted from a honeymoon period on the economy, but inflation isn't THAT bad right now and he's getting hammered on the economy.

IQ is not a terribly good measure of intelligence, but it does measure "something." The fact that IQ in general increased is a result of increased wealth as a society. The fact that it's reversing and declining is fodder for a thousand hyperventilating think pieces. For the health of our civic democracy, though, it could be a catastrophe.

Vibecession

 Krugman professes to be somewhat surprised by Trump's collapsing approval ratings on the economy and consumer confidence in general. He suggests that it might be a result of Trump's constant lying and maybe even the fact that - while we have no official numbers - the job market seems to be softening. A lot.

Trump paid a price not just for the shutdown, but the way he held SNAP benefits hostage, the fact that he demolished the East Wing to put in a Mar-A-Lago ballroom and the fact that he held a Gatsby party while people were suffering.

As Marshall reiterates, power is unitary. Trump is increasingly out of touch - or rather he is now being seen as out of touch. This is perhaps the real cost of the Epstein cover up. He said he would release them, backtracked and you can't lie your way out of those basic facts.

Bitcoin fell another 3.7% today. Things are getting shaky and the clowns running things have zero answers.

The Cruelty Is The Point

 The decision to punish stores for making it easier on people to receive food assistance while Trump withholds SNAP benefits is genuinely monstrous. Yglesias lays out the many ways that SNAP is a genuinely impressive policy. OK, it's not 100% perfect, but the basic difference between the two parties can be distilled to Republicans being outraged that one person on five hundred is abusing SNAP benefits and Democrats working to make sure the other four hundred and ninety nine don't go hungry.

Meanwhile, Trump's approval among 18-29 year olds is 75% disapproval. Turns out dismantling the Great Society and New Deal isn't actually popular among people who have no memory (or historical context) for the world that existed before.

Tawdry

 As Krugman notes, Trump's desecration of the White House is not just sad, but it's a direct assault on republican (not Republican) aesthetics. Washington DC is supposed to represent classical virtues, but Trump's aesthetics run to Tin Pot Dictator. His obsession with gilded shit is an expression of the howling void in his soul that needs to be propped up by vanity design.

It all feels part of the complete collapse of American morality under Trump. He trades pardons for cash and all the other things we could list forever. It does not end with Trump though. We have the NBA gambling scandal, which was as predictable as the sunrise. We have the crushing of creativity under an assault of AI "slop".

Everything just feels worse and it starts from the man millions of Americans felt was worthy of the public trust, despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary.

Polarization

 It is beyond banal at this point to note that we live in a polarized country in a polarized world. This tends to work both ways, as when one group or issue becomes allied with one side, the other side moves against it. As an example, Netanyahu has tied his political future to Donald Trump, and he has done so at precisely the time when his actions have outraged many liberals. This makes support for Israel a more partisan issue than it has ever been in the past. If/when Democrats regain control of the levers of government, it would not surprise me if military support for a Likud-led Israel evaporates. 

What has been a long standing tradition of cross-party unity foundered on Netanyahu picking a side, and then acting in a way that reinforced that divide. 

Domestically, I think we are beginning to see the same thing with the billionaire class. This story about a tech billionaire who went from being a standard Silicon Valley Democrat to a Trumpist fascist does not seem to be THAT unusual. Because Trump operates under a penumbra of corruption, the idea that the rules are for the little people who can't pay their way out of them is growing. This culture of corruption is highly appealing to Gulf Sheiks and Tech Bros.

What this SHOULD mean is that Democrats need to learn this lesson, too. They have catered to Silicon Valley in order to get large checks for their campaign coffers. Yes, small donors are great, but when a billionaire writes you PAC a massive check, you can relax for a few days before you beat the hustings again. 

For all the talk of the "populist moment" the idea that Donald Trump and Republicans are on the side of the working class is just laughably perverse. The reason they could position themselves there is because Democrats were the party of cultural elites and the power of economic elites seemed less pervasive. Yes, there was the Occupy moment, but that passed. 

Now we have farmers who are going to have to file for bankruptcy because of Trump's trade wars. Now we are paying 50% more for electricity because data centers are sprouting up like spring dandelions. Now we have rural hospitals closing to pay for tax cuts for billionaires.

Democrats have done a great job messaging around the shutdown. Many are linking "tax cuts for billionaires" to the cuts in health insurance benefits. However, for Democrats to really become a majority party in both Houses in 2026, they need to be well-positioned to leverage popular outrage at the very rich. 

Those tech billionaires aren't coming back. They've tasted the honey of corruption and they like it. 

Eat the rich. Break up tech monopolies. Regulate social media. Win fabulous prizes.