Archives for category: Character

Heather Cox Richardson reviews Trump’s erratic behavior since he started a war against Iran. He repeatedly announces that he has won the war, that negotiations are going well, and then threatens Iran with obliteration. Is this incoherence “the art of the deal” or is something else going on?

Remember the days when foreign policy was debated by experienced diplomats of the National Security council behind closed doors? When policies were the result of deliberation, not announced at 3 am on social media by the President, acting alone to vent his grievances? Remember when negotiations were led by the Secretary of State, not the President’s son-in-law?

That’s the way it used to be done. That’s the way it’s done in other countries. In the U.S., today, in the Trump era, one man makes policy in the middle of the night, depending on his whim.

She writes:

At 8:03 this morning, Easter Sunday, President Donald J. Trump’s social media account posted: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*ckin’ Strait, you crazy b*stards, or you’ll be living in Hell—JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

There are many things that could be going on with this ultimatum, which actually doesn’t sound like Trump’s usual style, in the same way the post of yesterday morning didn’t.

The post appears to be threatening to commit war crimes by attacking civilian infrastructure, and it appears to suggest Trump is considering using tactical nuclear weapons. He emphasized the production of such weapons in his first administration. He seemed to encourage this interpretation in an interview with Rachel Scott of ABC News today. She said Trump “told me the conflict should be over in days, not weeks but if no deal is made he’s blowing up the whole country with ‘very little’ off the table. ‘If [it] happens, it happens. And if it doesn’t, we’re blowing up the whole country,’ he said. I asked if there’s anything off limits. ‘Very little,’ he said.”

In 2023 a book by New York Times Washington correspondent Michael Schmidt alleged that in 2017, when Trump was warning North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on social media that North Korea would be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” behind closed doors he was talking about launching a preemptive strike against North Korea and of using a nuclear weapon against the country and blaming someone else for the strike .

Schmidt reports that Trump’s White House chief of staff at the time, retired U.S. Marine Corps General John Kelly, brought military leaders to try to explain to Trump why that would be a bad idea and finally got him to move away from the plan by telling him he could prove he was the “greatest salesman in the world” by finding a diplomatic solution to his fight with the North Korean leader.

In his own book about that period, journalist Bob Woodward wrote: “The American people had little idea that July through September of 2017 had been so dangerous.”

But Trump’s secretary of state Mike Pompeo told Woodward: “We never knew whether it was real or whether it was a bluff.”

And that is another way to look at the post from Trump’s social media account: that he is panicked that he has not been able to bully other countries into fixing the mess he created by attacking Iran and precipitating the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and is now simply trying to bully Iran. In The Guardian last Monday, Sidney Blumenthal noted that Trump “has declared ‘victory’ more than eight times,” says he has “won” more than ten times, and said Iranian forces have been “obliterated” or suffered “obliteration” more than six times. Blumenthal noted Trump is now threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s power grid and has used the words “decimate” or “decimation” at least six times.

Trump’s crazy post does, after all, push back yet again the deadline for his threats to rain destruction on Iran, which he then extended again in another post at 12:38 P.M. saying: “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!”

This dynamic was not lost on Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote, who noted: “It was March 23rd. Then March 27th. Then March 30th. Then he gave that weird address on April 1st. [N]ew deadline April 4th. Then April 6th at 7 AM. Then April 7th at 8 PM. And now another address tomorrow at 1 PM. The chaos is intentional.” She also noted that his deadlines and his abandonment of them often seem tied to the rhythms of the stock market.

In an interview with Barak Ravid of Axios today shortly after this morning’s post, Trump reiterated that “if they don’t make a deal, I am blowing up everything over there” but also said the U.S. is “in deep negotiations” with Iran and that he thinks a deal can be reached. Trump told Ravid that his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—not Secretary of State Marco Rubio—are talking with the Iranians. Sources told Ravid that mediators from Pakistan, Egypt, and Türkiye are facilitating the talks.

But Iranian officials are refusing to deal with Witkoff and Kushner after they apparently misunderstood earlier negotiations and instead told Trump the talks weren’t going well before he launched strikes. Neither Witkoff nor Kushner is a trained diplomat, and both have deep financial ties to the Middle East. Notably, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who urged Trump to start the Iran war, has invested at least $2 billion in Kushner’s private equity firm.

On March 13, Rob Copeland and Maureen Farrell of the New York Times reported that Kushner is trying to raise $5 billion or more for his private equity firm from Middle East governments at the same time as he is also supposed to be negotiating peace in the region.

But Stephen Kalin, Eliot Brown, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal reported today that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has already cost the Saudis about $10 billion, and the grand plans of MBS were already falling short of money. Some of those plans were U.S. investments. The reporters note that even before the war, the Saudi’s sovereign-wealth fund, the same one that invested in Kushner’s private equity firm, had sold much of its U.S. stock portfolio. Last year, MBS promised to invest up to $1 trillion in the U.S. Those investments are now under review.

Regardless of the inspiration for Trump’s post, by itself it tells a very clear story. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s former assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi posted: “The American president has lost his mind.”

Journalist Steven Beschloss wrote: “This is an actual post. This is not funny. This is beyond desperate. This is a deeply unwell man who doesn’t belong anywhere near the levers of power. Every member of his cabinet and Congress is complicit in not demanding his removal now.”

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) posted: “If I were in Trump’s Cabinet, I would spend Easter calling constitutional lawyers about the 25th Amendment. This is completely, utterly unhinged. He’s already killed thousands. He’s going to kill thousands more.”

The 25th Amendment establishes a process through which a majority of the Cabinet and the Vice President, or another body Congress designates, can remove a president deemed “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”

Murphy was not the only one thinking along those lines. Hollie Silverman of Newsweekreported that on the prediction market platform Kalshi, which allows traders to buy “yes” or “no” shares on the question “Will the 25th Amendment be used during Trump’s presidency?” “yes” has moved in recent days from 28.6% to 35.1%.

Notes:

X:

ChrisMurphyCT/status/2040776740465758422

Bluesky:

momcjl.bsky.social/post/3mis5h2vqf22j

atrupar.com/post/3mircanvivc27

brandonfriedman.bsky.social/post/3mirrdrhshc2e

muellershewrote.com/post/3mirt6ivxbs2j

muellershewrote.com/post/3mirrzjeacc2j

markey.senate.gov/post/3mirmazhmfs2j

rrkennison.bsky.social/post/3mirnrdmn2k2p

frankfigliuzzi.bsky.social/post/3miqtagxuhs2o

stevenbeschloss.bsky.social/post/3miqrghkdds2n

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Dr. John Gartner has been warning the public about Donald Trump since 2015.

Not enough people heard him.

Trump’s MAGA base became obsessed with him because they thought he was a strong man. They were impressed that he was a billionaire, a very successful businessman who had achieved financial success because of his brilliance. Even better, this billionaire expressed their grievances. He was on their side. Like Trump, his followers believed that the rest of the world was cheating them, treating them unfairly.

Many evangelical Christians believed that Trump was God’s instrument, the one who would end abortion and make America a Christian nation. Those who hated blacks and immigrants, who believed that these groups were stealing their jobs and destroying their white Christian homeland, thrilled to his rhetoric about ending DEI and getting rid of immigrants.

They were willing to overlook his moral flaws because they believed his promises. He was the ultimate film-flam man, the carnival barker who could sell ice to Eskimos. There was a time when divorce or even infidelity could ruin a man’s chances to be president. Not any more. Trump was forgiven his undisguised lust and sexual escapades. His MAGA cult didn’t care that he had been married three times. They didn’t care that he slept with other women while he was married. Strong men did that. They weren’t bothered by his boast that he could have any woman he wanted by simply grabbing their private parts.

The fact that he was a close friend–maybe even the best friend–of the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein did not disillusion his fanatical followers. None of that dimmed their adoration for Trump. If Trump said he knew nothing about Epstein’s activities, that was good enough for the cult.

If he was a philanderer and a sexual predator, well, that just proved that he was a strong man, untouched by political correctness.

They believed he was a brilliant businessman because they saw him on “The Apprentice,” playing a brilliant businessman. Having that deeply rooted belief in his business success, they refused to believe that he had gone bankrupt six times.

His image as a strong man impressed both men and women who longed for a rough, tough guy in the White House. Nothing he did, nothing he said, no vulgarity that he uttered, could dissuade them from their idolatry. No matter how many times they heard that Trump had dodged the draft six times by presenting a letter from a podiatrist claiming he suffered from bone spurs, they simply didn’t believe it.

When Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly, who had been a Marine general, said that Trump had called fallen service members “suckers” and “losers,” Trump denied it, and his devoted followers believed him.

His MAGA base believed that Trump was sent by Jesus to lead them, to protect their gun rights and stop abortion. He alone would save them from the others. He cared about them.

Trump’s rise to the Presidency is an amazing riches-to-riches story. I have lived in New York City since 1960, with a one-year detour in Georgia (when my then-husband was called to active duty after the Berlin Wall crisis) and a sojourn in D.C. from 1993-1994 (first as Assistant Secretary of Education in the George H.W. Bush administration, then as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution).

During the 1980s, the 1990s, and until he annnounced his entry into the Republican presidential campaign in 2015, Trump was viewed as a clown by leaders of the business community. They laughed at him. They knew he was not a successful businessman. It was no secret that he frequently didn’t pay his bills and that banks would not finance his deals.

Trump achieved notoriety as a playboy who took beautiful women to high-end nightclubs. He made sure to get his name in the gossip columns by calling them, pretending to be his own publicist, and giving out the details of where he was seen and which gorgeous woman was with him.

After other banks refused to deal with Trump, he established a relationship with Deutsche Bank, which was documented in 2019 by David Enrich in The New York Times.

In 2003, he borrowed money from Deutsche Bank to pay off loans he owed for his failing casinos. However, “Mr. Trump’s company defaulted in 2004, leaving Deutsche Bank’s clients with deep losses. The bank’s investment division that sold the bonds vowed to not do business again with Mr. Trump.

A year later, though, Mr. Trump approached another part of the investment division for a $640 million loan to build a skyscraper in Chicago. It made the loan — and in 2008, Mr. Trump defaulted and sued Deutsche Bank. That prompted the whole investment division to sever ties with Mr. Trump.

And then, three years after his previous default, Deutsche Bank started lending to him again, this time through the private-banking division that catered to the superrich. In fact, it lent Mr. Trump money that he used to repay what he still owed Deutsche Bank’s investment division for the Chicago loan.

One of Trump’s most successful ventures was selling apartments to wealthy Russians. He got the riches he longed for by selling condos at very high prices to Russian gangsters and oligarchs who needed to “launder” money from their various enterprises.

Craig Unger wrote about Trump and his “Russian laundromat” in The New Republic in 2017.

The magazine, knowing of Trump’s extreme litigiousness, preceded the article with this disclaimer:

The questions began the moment Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015: What were the extent of his financial ties with Russia, and was he compromised? While some on the left conjectured wildly that Trump was a Russian “asset,” Craig Unger did the hard work of connecting the dots—while resisting the temptation to overreach. “To date, no one has documented that Trump was even aware of any suspicious entanglements in his far-flung businesses, let alone that he was directly compromised by the Russian mafia or the corrupt oligarchs who are closely allied with the Kremlin. So far, when it comes to Trump’s ties to Russia, there is no smoking gun,” he wrote. And yet, there was a lot of smoke in the public record showing that “Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia.” Trump may have simply been “a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters” and “an easy ‘mark’ for anyone looking to launder money.” But there’s no question that the trail of dirty money from Russia to Trump is long and wide—and no doubt continuing to this day.

—Ryan Kearney, executive editor, The New Republic

When he descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 to announce that he was running for President, those who knew his history thought it was a joke. The Huffington Post announced that it would not cover his campaign because he was not a serious candidate.

He won in 2016 because FBI Director James Comey announced that he was reopening an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, only days before the election. A few days later, the investigation was closed. But the damage was done.

A cult was born and Trump continued to burnish his image as a savior and a man of strength.

Historians will sort this out in years to come. And we will know someday whether the nation can recover from the damage he has done to our institutions, our institutions of education, the rule of law, the career civil service, scientific research, the environment, and our international alliances. Whatever he touched has made him wealthier and impoverished our ideals and our standing in the world.

You should give serious thought to subscribing to the Meidas Report. It is a citizen-driven media site that has six million subscribers, putting it into competition with major cable outlets.

From its website:

In just a few short years, MeidasTouch Network has grown into one of the most-watched news platforms in the world, with over 9 billion views on YouTube and more than 6.1 million subscribers, regularly surpassing traditional corporate and cable news networks in reach and engagement. We are deeply honored to have also received the iHeart Award for News Podcast of the Year last week and the Webby Award for Podcast of the Year.

Meidastouch.com is a progressive media outlet formed in 2020, during the pandemic, by the Meiselas brothers: Ben, Brett, and Jordan. They cover politics intensely, with videos, blogs, podcasts, and other forms of social media.

They created a PAC to oppose Donald Trump and help Democratic candidates. Ben Meiselas is an attorney. Brett Meiselas is an Emmy-award winning video editor. Jordan Meiselas works in marketing.

With these skills, they have built a media powerhouse.

Here is a recent example, written by editor-in-chief Ron Filipowski. Filipowski is an attorney, having been both a criminal defense attorney and a prosecutor. When Robert Mueller died last week, Trump immediately posted a vile comment expressing his pleasure about Mueller’s death. Mueller, of course, led the investigation of Russian efforts to help Trump win the election of 2016.

Filipowski wrote:

Trump made another disgusting post celebrating the death of former FBI Director Robert Mueller: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”

… His post received widespread condemnation from people in both parties, although his hard core MAGA supporters backed up their hero by trashing Mueller for his report on Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 US presidential election. 

… As a Marine platoon leader in Vietnam, Mueller was shot and later returned to lead his platoon after his recovery. He received a Bronze Star for valor, a Purple Heart, two Navy/Marine Commendation medals, Republic of Vietnam Cross of Valor, and numerous other medals.

… Fox chief political analyst Brit Hume: “This is the kind of stuff Trump does that makes people not just oppose him but hate him. There was no need to say anything.”

… Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO): “The President is a petty, sick, and vile man. Robert Mueller volunteered for Vietnam – at the same time Trump avoided serving. His decades of military and public service to our nation represents everything Trump is not.”

… Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) to Politico: “It is clearly wrong and unchristian behavior. The vast majority of Americans want better.”

… Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) on NBC: “It’s just disgusting, it’s so heartbreaking that we have a president who is cheerleading the death of American citizens. Mueller is amongst many who have been trying to hold this president to account. He’s the most corrupt president in the history of the country.”

… Gavin Newsom: “Trump despises anyone with a deep sense of duty, discipline, and patriotism. Rest in peace, Robert Mueller.”

… Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX): “It is completely tasteless and unacceptable for the sitting President of the US to celebrate anybody’s death – let alone someone who served this country. Trump continues to show us time and time again that there are no limits to how low he is willing to go.”

… Democratic activist Jamie Bonkiewicz got over 44,000 likes on X for this post: “I better not hear A SINGLE FUCKING WORD about the tweets I’ll be posting after he goes.” 

… Many contrasted Trump’s statement with those from other presidents. Barack Obama: “Bob Mueller was one of the finest directors in the history of the FBI, transforming the bureau after 9/11 and saving countless lives. But it was his relentless commitment to the rule of law and his unwavering belief in our bedrock values that made him one of the most respected public servants of our time. Michelle and I send our condolences to Bob’s family, and everyone who knew and admired him.”

… George W. Bush: “Laura and I are deeply saddened by the loss of Robert Mueller. As a Marine in Vietnam, he proved he was ready for tough assignments. He earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart before returning home to pursue law. In 2001 only one week into the job, Bob transitioned the FBI’s mission to protecting the homeland after Sept 11. He led the agency effectively, helping prevent another terrorist attack on US soil. Laura and I send our heartfelt sympathy to his wife of nearly 60 years, Ann, and the Mueller family.”

… Journalist Aaron Rupar: “Incredible – Fox & Friends completely ignored Trump’s batshit post celebrating Mueller’s death during their brief news hit about Mueller’s passing, and instead highlighted the more normal response of George W Bush.”

… Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on NBC: Q – “Do you think it’s appropriate for the president to celebrate the death of a Bronze Star, Purple Heart recipient who served in Vietnam? Bessent: Neither one of us can understand what has been done to the president and his family. Q – So you don’t think there’s anything wrong with a post saying, ‘Good. Robert Mueller’s dead’? Bessent: We should have empathy for what’s been done to the president and his family.”

… WaPo: “In the run-up to Hungary’s pivotal election in April, a unit of Russia’s foreign intelligence service last month began sounding the alarm over plummeting public support for PM Viktor Orban, whose friendly ties to Moscow have long given the Kremlin a strategic foothold inside NATO and EU. Officers from the intel service suggested that drastic action might be necessary – a strategy they called ‘the Gamechanger.” 

… The Russian report said one thing could “fundamentally alter the entire paradigm of the election campaign – the staging of an assassination attempt on Viktor Orban. Such an incident will shift the perception of the campaign out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one, where the key themes will become state security and the stability and defense of the political system.” 

… The Russians staging an assassination attempt of a key foreign political candidate to boost their standing? I’m sure they would never try that in the US.

Joyce Vance was US Attorney for northern Alabama.

She wrote today:

Former Marine, U.S.Attorney, FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller passed away Friday evening. He was a giant of a man whose commitment to justice and fairness was staunch. I met him for the first time during the investigation into the murder of my Father-in-Law shortly before I went to DOJ. His, was one of the good examples. Every prosecutor who came in contact with him was better off for it.

When the Mueller report was finished during Trump’s first term in office, Trump‘s Attorney General, Bill Barr, claimed it was a total exoneration. That, of course, was not the case. Once the entire, albeit redacted, report became available, it was clear that it was a stunning indictment of a sitting president—but one that respected constraints on prosecutors that prevented an actual indictment of a sitting president. It should’ve been a roadmap for Congress to impeach and convict, but they did not take up Muller’s invitation.

Trump shared his comments on the passing of an American hero this morning: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”

Trump is not a decent person and we should not expect decency from him.

Across the country, people who knew and worked with Mueller will be honoring his service to our nation as they remember him. But it’s not just a great man and a loss for the country that we should mourn today. It is also a loss of decency, honor, and integrity. We should have a president who is better than this.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Addendum:

Professor Christopher Lamb at Indiana University tabulated the associates of Donald Trump who were arrested based on the Mueller Report.

After decades of bashing public schools and advocating for privatization, charters, and vouchers, grumpy education reformers should familiarize themselves with the grand successes of Sahli Negassi.

Sahli is a remarkable young man who recently learned that he scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT in reading and math.

He is a senior at West Orange High School in West Orange, New Jersey.

He didn’t go to a charter school or a fancy private school or a religious school, nor was he homeschooled. He went to public schools in West Orange.

Sahli was born in the U.S. to a family of Eritrean immigrants.

Nyah Marshall reported at NJ.com:

During his four years at West Orange High School, Sahli Negassi balanced two sports, served as president of two clubs and excelled in multiple Advanced Placement classes.

And as if that weren’t impressive enough, he recently achieved another milestone — one that fewer than a 1,000 students nationwide reach each year.

He received a perfect score on both the reading and math sections of the SAT. He hopes to be admitted to Harvard and eventually become a lawyer.

Negassi earned a near-perfect score on his first attempt, one that most would be happy with. But, he then took the test again and answered every question correctly, earning a 1600.

“I came into class and I was like, ‘I can do better,’” Negassi said.

Between classes and extracurriculars, he somehow found time to prepare for the test on his own, using free online resources….

His strategy, Negassi said, was all about preparation. Through practice questions, he learned that the SAT isn’t a test of intelligence — it’s about pattern recognition, memorization and time management, Negassi said.

“Preparation for the test fell on me, it was no tutor … it was me and whatever website I could find,” he said Thursday. “I was comfortable applying the skills I had trained and when the time came, it was no pressure.”

Negassi was born in New York City and raised in West Orange. 

He credits his father, who taught him to read before he even entered grade school, with laying the foundation for his success. It was the love and sacrifice of his parents that instilled in him the unwavering determination he carries today, Negassi said.

Negassi was involved in many school activities.

A local West Orange newspaper wrote:

Beyond academics, Negassi is deeply involved in extracurricular activities at West Orange High School. He has been a dedicated member of the cross-country and track teamssince seventh grade and spent two seasons on the color guard. He is also the president of the math team, chapter president of the National Honor Society, a varsity chess team member and part of the Royal Strings ensemble. His involvement in multiple honor societies speaks to his well-rounded excellence.

Sahli played in the String Quartet of the West Orange Music Departnent and was inducted into its honor society two years ago. At the induction ceremony, The String Quartet (Theo Brinkerhoff, Andrew Chan, Alexa Dias, Maya Kirton, Sahli Negassi, Henry Pfeifer) performed “Air” from “The Water Music Suite” by Handel.

I would like to know more about his family, but little is said about them in the coverage. Nothing has been reported about when they immigrated to the U.S. or their occupations.

Andy Borowitz is America’s humorist. More than that, he is incisive and brilliant. He used to write for The New Yorker, but now has his own Substack blog called The Borowitz Report. I subscribe, and I recommend that you do so as well.

In this post, he gives insight into our notorious Attirney General, Pam Bondi, who has turned the Department of Justice into Trump’s personal law firm.

It’s important to remember that she was Attorney General of Florida from 2011 to 2019. She claimed that human trafficking was her #1 issue but somehow overlooked Jeffrey Epstein. As Attorney General, she is still shielding his crimes. Could it be that she is doing this to protect Trump?

Her obnoxious, aggressive, pugnacious appearance before the House Judiciary Committee showed the real Pam Bondi.

Borowitz writes:

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Can the attorney general of the United States go to prison? 

The answer, of course, is yes: John Mitchell, who served under Richard M. Nixon, later served 19 months behind bars for crimes related to the Watergate cover-up. 

Will the toxin known as Pam Bondi follow in his footsteps? 

It’s worth considering in light of her appearance before Congress on Wednesday, a performance that Kimberly Guilfoyle might call “too shouty.” 

Her testimony was unquestionably obnoxious. But was it criminal? 

When you examine the evidence, it doesn’t look good for Pam. 

This was the pivotal moment: responding to a question from California Rep. Ted Lieu about the Epstein scandal, Bondi snapped, “There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime. Everyone knows that.”

Lieu, who must have been tickled that Bondi was dumb enough to step into the weasel trap he set for her, responded that the attorney general might have just committed perjury. Which, as every Watergate superfan knows, is exactly what earned her Republican predecessor, John Mitchell, a trip to the pokey. 

When the Trump shitshow is finally over, two things must happen. First, there must be a solid month of dancing in the streets. Second, there must be a reckoning: ideally, Nuremberg-style trials of the corrupt quislings who enabled this unprecedented crime spree. With those enjoyable tribunals in mind, let us now consider the case of Pam Bondi.


Remember when Trump nominated Matt Gaetz to be attorney general? We were so much younger then—although, it should be added, not young enough for Matt Gaetz.

At the time, I observed that Gaetz’s nomination was not what QAnon had in mind when they said they wanted to bring pedophiles to justice. In the end, Matt turned out to be as reckless with Venmo as he was about the age of consent, and Trump quickly withdrew his name.

Pundits claimed that Trump never expected Gaetz to pass muster with the Senate. By their reckoning, he was a “sacrificial lamb”—an odd way to describe a man who, in his personal life, had consistently behaved like a wolf. But by shitcanning Gaetz, the theory went, Trump was sending a signal to his Senate toadies that they’d better confirm all his other nominees, no matter how idiotic, incompetent, or drunk. When it came to Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Dr. Oz, Kash Patel, and myriad other passengers in Trump’s clown Cybertruck, the gambit seemed to pay off.

Matt Gaetz, peering into the gates of Hell. (Erin Scott-Pool via Getty Images)

As for the job of attorney general, Democrats and Republicans alike seemed relieved that it would not be filled by a summer-stock version of Jeffrey Epstein. Surely, whoever Trump named as Gaetz’s replacement would be an improvement.

Instead, Trump picked Pam Bondi.

In 2016, when she was Florida attorney general, Bondi secured her place in Trump’s heart with a speech at the Republican National Convention. Her bloodcurdling attack on Hillary Clinton inspired the GOP mob to break into a familiar chant, which prompted Bondi to comment, “Lock her up? I love that.” And so, by approving the incarceration of a woman who had never been charged with a crime, Bondi displayed an attitude towards due process that would someday serve her splendidly as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

She would, of course, have another opportunity to assert her preference for imprisoning innocent people with the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. On April 14, 2025, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, Trump’s accomplice in the world’s most notorious administrative error, joined him in the Oval Office, receiving a much warmer welcome there than was offered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. After chummily congratulating each other on the abduction and deportation of a non-criminal, the two men started workshopping how their brilliant strategy might be applied to innocent American citizens.

“The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns,” Trump told Bukele, who calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator”—a stroke of branding so cringe, it’s amazing it didn’t come from Elon Musk. “You’ve got to build about five more places,” Trump advised him.

Where did America’s attorney general stand on this flagrant nullification of a basic right enshrined in the Constitution? Trump added, “Pam is studying. If we can do that, it’s good.”

Pam, apparently, is a quick study. On Fox that evening, she was all in on Trump’s blatantly illegal idea, asserting, “These are Americans who he [Trump] is saying who have committed the most heinous crimes in our country, and crime is going to decrease dramatically.”

It’s not that Bondi is bad at her job—it’s that she’s outstanding at the exact opposite of her job, that is, using the DOJ to subvert justice whenever possible. Bondi’s Department of Injustice, a mutant creation worthy of George Orwell and Lewis Carroll, has proven inhospitable to career DOJ lawyers, who have struggled in court to defend the indefensible.

One such staffer, senior immigration attorney Erez Reuveni, committed what Bondi apparently considers a cardinal sin: uttering a truthful statement within earshot of a judge. After acknowledging what was obvious to any thinking person (but seemingly elusive to Messrs. Trump and Bukele)—that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was a mistake—Reuveni was put on indefinite leave and then fired.

Meanwhile, Liz Oyer, a longtime DOJ pardon attorney, was fired for refusing to restore gun rights to the actor Mel Gibson, who lost them after pleading no contest to domestic battery charges in 2011. Apparently, Trump believes Mel Gibson needs lethal weapons more urgently than Ukraine.

We shouldn’t be surprised to see Trump standing up for the rights of domestic abusers, since a sizable number of the January 6 rioters he pardoned fit that description. He doubled down on his support for this cohort by appointing a crony accused of domestic violence, Herschel Walker, ambassador to the Bahamas.

But what makes the Mel Gibson case particularly rich is that Trump has repeatedly claimed he is punishing universities for their “failure to combat antisemitism.” If Trump is serious about spanking antisemites, he need look no further than his pal Mel. 

After the actor’s 2006 drunk driving arrest in Malibu, the police report indicated, “Gibson blurted out a barrage of anti-semitic remarks about ‘fucking Jews’. Gibson yelled out: ‘The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.’ Gibson then asked: ‘Are you a Jew?'”

Mel Gibson after his 2006 drunk driving arrest (L) and his 2011 domestic violence arrest (R).

In the upside-down world of Pam Bondi, highly regarded DOJ lawyers are fired and Mel Gibson is rearmed. But do such perversions of justice make Bondi a candidate for worst attorney general ever? They most certainly do, when one considers how decisively and repeatedly she has violated her oath of office:

“I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Rather than defend the Constitution, Bondi has used her time in office to tirelessly protect pedophiles—which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with her tenure as Florida’s AG. The following campaign ad from that era, in which she vowed to “put human trafficking monsters where they belong—behind bars,” hasn’t aged well:

As Bloomberg’s Mary Ellen Klas wrote, “Bondi kept her distance from the state’s most prominent sex-trafficking case, even as Epstein’s victims pleaded with the courts to invalidate provisions of his non-prosecution agreement and filed lawsuits alleging that he abused them when he was on work release from jail.”

I am confident that Bondi’s misdeeds—including but not limited to her role in the Epstein cover-up—have more than earned her a Nuremberg-style tribunal. I am not, however, suggesting we chant, “Lock her up.” Unlike our current attorney general, I believe in due process.

Jesse Jackson died.

I was not a friend of the Reverend Jesse Jackson. I had a brief, one-day experience with him. It was an important day for me.

Several years ago, I received an invitation to speak at Jesse Jackson’s church.

At first, I was ambivalent because I had a negative feeling about him. I remembered that he had long ago referred to New York City as “hymietown.” That was blatantly anti-Semitic, and it made me think of him as bigoted against Jews.

But I was interested in meeting him so I accepted the invitation.

When I arrived at his church in Chicago, the congregants were engaged in prayer.

An assistant brought me to meet Rev. Jackson, and he greeted me enthusiastically and warmly.

About 30 minutes later, he invited me to the pulpit to speak. I spoke for about 30 minutes and talked about the threat to privatize public schools and the importance of public schools. His congregation listened intently and applauded the message.

Then Rev. Jackson took me under his wing. He walked me around, introduced me to people, walked me to the meal in the churchyard, filled my plate, and sat to talk with me.

I felt enveloped in his warmth and kindness.

That night, he took me to dinner at a celebrated Chicago steakhouse along with some of his associates and one of his sons. In the hubbub of the restaurant, I strained to hear what he was saying. He spoke so low that I didn’t understand most of what he said. What pearls of wisdom was I missing, I wondered. I would never find out.

But by the time I left, I felt a genuine love for this man.

He was kind, thoughtful, generous, and warm. The people around him basked in his warmth. Briefly, so did I.

Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, wrote regularly for The New York Times. Now he writes a blog at Substack. In this post, he characterizes the deepening dysfunction of our president, Donald Trump.

Things are not going well politically for Donald Trump. The polls show him underwater on every major issue. And while he insists that these are fake, it’s clear that he knows better. He recently lamented that the Republicans will do badly in the midterms and even floated the idea that midterms should be canceled.

And as January 6th 2021 showed, Trump simply can’t stand political rejection. He will do anything, use any tool or any person at his disposal, to obliterate the sources of that rejection.

So as we head into the 2026 midterm season, the best way to understand U.S. policy is that it’s in the pursuit of one crucial objective: Propping up Trump’s fragile ego.

What was the motivation for the abduction of Nicolás Maduro? It wasn’t about drugs, which were always an obvious pretense. By Trump’s own account it wasn’t about democracy. Trump talks a lot about oil, but Venezuela’s heavy, hard-to-process oil and its decrepit oil infrastructure aren’t big prizes. The Financial Timesreports that U.S. oil companies won’t invest in Venezuela unless they receive firm guarantees. One investor told the paper, “No one wants to go in there when a random fucking tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country.”

The real purpose of the abduction, surely, was to give Trump an opportunity to strut around and act tough. But this ego gratification, like a sugar rush, won’t last long. Voters normally rally around the president at the beginning of a war. The invasion of Iraq was initially very popular. But the action in Venezuela hasn’t had any visible rally-around-the-flag effect. While Republicans, as always, support Trump strongly, independents are opposed:

And now the story of the moment is the atrocity in Minneapolis, where…an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good by shooting her in the head.

Trump and his minions responded by flatly lying about what happened. But their accounts have been refuted by video evidence which show an out-of-control ICE agent gunning down a woman who was simply trying to get away from a frightening situation. Yes, MAGA loyalists will fall into line, preferring to believe Trump rather than their own lying eyes. But public revulsion over Good’s murder and Trump’s mendacity are high and growing.

A president who actually cared about the welfare of those he governs would have taken Good’s killing as an indication that his deportation tactics have veered wildly and tragically off course. He would have called for a halt of ICE actions and made sure there would be an objective and timely federal investigation into this national tragedy.

But for Trump, ICE’s violent lawlessness is a feature, not a bug. Sending armed, masked, poorly trained, masked and out-of-control armed thugs into blue cities is, in effect, a war on Americans, just as January 6thwas a war on American institutions. In effect, Trump would rather savage his own people than be held accountable for his actions.

So in Trump’s mind, Renee Nicole Good’s murder is at most collateral damage, in service to his insatiable need to dominate and feel powerful — so insatiable that he is attempting to create an alternate reality, claiming that that Good ran over an agent although there is irrefutable video evidence that she didn’t.

And when one set of lies doesn’t work, he switches tactics – changing the topic, deflecting, and spouting even more lies. Thus, just hours after Good’s death, Trump proclaimed that he was seeking a huge increase in military spending:

It’s a near certainty that Trump’s assertion that he arrived at an immediate 50% increase in the military budget after “long and difficult negotiations” is yet another lie. There’s been no indication whatsoever that a massive increase in defense spending was on anyone’s agenda before he suddenly posted about it on Truth Social.

So what was that about? Given the timing, it’s clear that Trump’s announcement was yet another exercise in self-aggrandizement, as well as an attempt to grab the headlines away from Good’s killing. But what’s also important to realize from Trump’s announcement is that he is now clearly conflating the size of the US military with his ego. Evidently the sugar rush of Maduro’s capture has left him wanting more and more military validation, particularly as his poll numbers tank.

So here’s a warning to the US military: if you continue to indulge the sick fantasies of this man, he will drag this country into more and deeper international morasses to feed his need for glory. Do what Admiral Alvin Holsey, an honorable man, did – stand down and refuse an illegal order. Here’s a warning to the Republicans: if you continue to allow this man to perpetrate war against his own people with impunity through the actions of ICE, you will be remembered as cowards and hypocrites. Here’s a warning to all his other enablers: if you do not do something to stop this madman, you will go down in history as traitors to this country.

And here’s a warning to those directly perpetrating Trump-directed atrocities: He will not be in power forever, and I expect and hope that you will be held accountable, personally, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

President Trump and Secretary Kristi Noem described her as a domestic terrorist. She was painted by them as a zealous provocateur, part of an organized conspiracy or group. They said she “ran over” an ICE agent.

At the time, no one knew much about her.

The New York Times reported:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The woman shot and killed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis on Wednesday was Renee Nicole Macklin Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who had recently moved to Minnesota.

She was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado and appears to never have been charged with anything involving law enforcement beyond a traffic ticket.

In social media accounts, Macklin Good described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” She said she was currently “experiencing Minneapolis,” displaying a pride flag emoji on her Instagram account. A profile picture posted to Pinterest shows her smiling and holding a young child against her cheek, along with posts about tattoos, hairstyles and home decorating.

Her ex-husband, who asked not to be named out of concern for the safety of their children, said Macklin Good had just dropped off her 6-year-old son at school Wednesday and was driving home with her current partner when they encountered a group of ICE agents on a snowy street in Minneapolis, where they had moved last year from Kansas City, Missouri.

Video taken by bystanders posted to social media shows an officer approaching her car, demanding she open the door and grabbing the handle. When she begins to pull forward, a different ICE officer standing in front of the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the vehicle at close range.

In another video taken after the shooting, a distraught woman is seen sitting near the vehicle, wailing, “That’s my wife, I don’t know what to do!”

Calls and messages to Macklin Good’s current partner received no response.

Trump administration officials painted Macklin Good as a domestic terrorist who had attempted to ram federal agents with her car. Her ex-husband said she was no activist and that he had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind.

He described her as a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger. She loved to sing, participating in a chorus in high school and studying vocal performance in college.

She studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Virginia and won a prize in 2020 for one of her works, according to a post on the school’s English department Facebook page. She also hosted a podcast with her second husband, who died in 2023.

Macklin Good had a daughter and her son from her first marriage, who are now ages 15 and 12. Her 6-year-old son was from her second marriage.

Her ex-husband said she had primarily been a stay-at-home mom in recent years but had previously worked as a dental assistant and at a credit union.

Donna Ganger, her mother, told the Minnesota Star Tribune the family was notified of the death late Wednesday morning.

“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” Ganger told the newspaper. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate.”

The New York Times reviewed videos of the incident from three diffferent angles and concluded that she was turning to avoid hitting the ICE agent when he began firing at her.

The day after Christmas, we invited our new neighbors to come over for a drink. Over Christmas cheer, we chatted about mundane things. Then, inevitably, the talk turned to our president. We quickly ascertained that we were likeminded and began comparing notes on his appointments, his policies, and his cruelty. I pointed out that his last “Christmas message” referred to his critics as “radical left scum.” We agreed that this reprehensible and that vulgar language degraded public discourse. What kind of a model did he set for our children? He sounded like a mob boss, not the President of the United States.

That night, I was happy to see that the brilliant journalist Thom Hartmann was as troubled by his coarse language as we were.

Thom wrote:

Yesterday, on Christmas of all days, Donald Trump chose to call Democrats “scum.” Not criminals. Not misguided. Not wrong. Scum. A word we usually reserve for things we scrape off the bottom of a shoe or skim off polluted water. A word whose entire purpose is to dehumanize.

That moment matters far beyond the day’s news cycle, and far beyond partisan politics. It matters because leaders don’t just govern; they model. 

Psychologists and social and political scientists have long pointed out that national leaders function, at a deep emotional level, as parental figures for their nations. They set the boundaries of what is acceptable. They establish norms. They shape the emotional climate children grow up breathing.

America has lived through this before, both for good and, now, for ill.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this instinctively. In the depths of the Great Depression and the terror of World War II, he spoke to the country as a calm, steady parent. His fireside chats didn’t just convey policy; they conveyed reassurance, dignity, and solidarity. 

He treated Americans as adults capable of courage and sacrifice. He named fear without exploiting it. The result was not weakness, but national resilience. 

A generation raised under that moral tone went on to build the modern middle class, defeat fascism, and help construct a postwar world that valued democracy, human rights, and shared prosperity.

Contrast that with the bigoted, hateful, revenge-filled claptrap children have heard for the past decade from the emotionally stunted psychopath currently occupying the White House. Hours after calling you and me “scum,” he put up another post calling us “sleazebags.”

How presidential.

Presidents like Eisenhower warned Americans about the dangers of concentrated power and the military-industrial complex, modeling restraint and foresight. 

Kennedy appealed to service, famously asking what we could do for our country. Johnson, for all his flaws, used the moral authority of the presidency to push civil rights forward, telling America that discrimination was not just illegal but wrong. 

Even Reagan, whose policies I fiercely opposed, spoke a language of civic belonging and optimism rather than open dehumanization.

Go back further, to the Founders themselves, and George Washington warned against factional hatred and the corrosive effects of treating political opponents as enemies rather than fellow citizens. 

John Adams argued that a republic could only survive if it was grounded in virtue and moral responsibility. Thomas Jefferson wrote that every generation must renew its commitment to liberty, not surrender it to demagogues who feed on division.

They all understood something Trump doesn’t, or is so obsessively wrapped up in himself and his own infantile grievances that he doesn’t care about: the psychological power of example.

Donald Trump has spent ten years modeling for America the exact opposite of leadership. 

Ten years of cruelty framed as strength. 

Ten years of mockery, insults, and grievance elevated to the highest office in the land. 

Ten years of praising strongmen, including Putin, Xi, and Orbán, while attacking democratic institutions. 

Ten years of targeting Hispanics, Black Somali immigrants, demonizing refugees, and encouraging suspicion and hatred toward entire communities. 

And now he’s giving us the example of using ICE not simply as a law enforcement agency, but as a masked, armed, unaccountable weapon of state terror aimed not only at brown-skinned families, but at journalists, clergy, lawyers, and anyone else who dares to document their abuse.

Kids graduating from high school this year have never known anything else. That fact should alarm every parent.

Children learn what leadership looks like long before they understand policy debates. They absorb emotional cues, and notice who gets rewarded and who gets punished. 

When a president calls fellow Americans “scum” and suffers no consequences, the lesson is clear: cruelty is permissible if you have power. Empathy is expendable. Democracy is a nuisance. Accountability is optional.

This is how normalization works. What once would have been unthinkable becomes routine. The outrage dulls. The abnormal becomes background noise. And a generation grows up believing this is simply how adults in authority behave.

History tells us where that road leads: dehumanizing language precedes dehumanizing actions. 

Every authoritarian movement begins by teaching people to see their neighbors as less than fully human. Once empathy vanishes, abuses become easier to justify, and violence becomes easier to excuse.

That’s why we all — parents, grandparents, and citizens — have a special responsibility right now.

We can’t assume our nation’s children will automatically recognize how dangerous and abnormal this moment is; instead, we have to name it for them. 

We have to tell them, plainly and repeatedly, that this is not what healthy leadership looks like. 

That calling people “scum” and “sleazebags” is not strength. That praising autocrats while undermining democracy is not patriotism. That power without empathy is not leadership; it’s merely a simple pathology known as psychopathy.

And we must model something better ourselves.

Disagree without dehumanizing. Stand up without tearing others down. Teach that democracy, in order to work, depends on mutual recognition of one another’s humanity. 

Remind our kids that America has, in its best moments, been led by people who understood their role as moral examples, not just political operators. 

And that when CBS, Fox “News,” the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Facebook, X, and other billionaire-owned rightwing media and social media pretend this is normal, they’re spitting on the graves of our Founders and participating in a gross violation of the basic norms of human decency.

Trump’s Christmas message wasn’t just offensive. It was a warning. 

The future lays before us now, and if we care about the country our children will inherit, we can’t let this moral vandalism to go unanswered.