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Month: December 2025

Merry Christmas To All!

Published by digby on December 24, 2025

Thanks so much for hanging out with us here at Hullabaloo this past year. it’s been a tough one but we came through it. (One down ,three to go!) It’s a privilege to be able to do this and to share what we know and what we do with so many people all over the world. We’re truly blessed and I try to never forget that.

I thought I would share a piece I got in my email this morning from Niall Harbison, the man who rescues dogs in Thailand that I’ve featured on my Friday Night Soother. His feed is the first thing I look at in the morning and it keeps me from despair. The stories can be hard sometimes but they are always offered with a sense of hope and optimism. And it usually pays off.

Anyway, here’s what he shared for Christmas eve and I thought it was an excellent message for dog lovers and lovers of humanity as well:

I got a stark reminder of just how hard life is for so many people today when I offered to make some personal videos for those who were having a tough year.

Kind people send me the messages nominating their mums, best friends or work colleagues who follow me and the dogs. I always think I have it tough with dog issues and managing my mental health but a quick look through the messages reminds me just how brutally tough this time of year is for many.

Life or death. Addiction. Extreme worry for family and friends. Loneliness. It is a time of year where all out problems are accentuated and magnified.

Life Isn’t What You See On Instagram

Open your phone tomorrow and you’ll see footballers and celebs in mansions with their families dressed in matching pyjamas.

There will be an abundance of presents, new designer gear and big tables of food in your apps from people you know. All that stuff is lovely and it should be celebrated but I know the pressure that content puts on a lot of people.

This is a really hard time of year for so many but it’s worth remembering that nearly everybody out there is putting up their best facade. Life is so much harder than what we share online. This is true during the holidays but also throughout the year.

You might follow me and see a 60 second happy video of a dog with nice music but that is a snapshot of their life. I’ve presented them as well as I can and help them as much as possible but just like humans the struggle is real and it is a daily one.

Tilting The Scales Towards Kindness

It would be easy to look at the world and think everything is bad. The algorithms and news channels feed us sad and divisive content because they know it keeps people enraged and engaged.

In my own world of rescuing dogs I see constant cruelty and neglect towards animals. It would be easy to focus on the dogs I’ve seen shot, stabbed, starved and dumped this year but the only way to change the world is by focusing on kindness.

For every human who keeps a dog on a chain like Maximus there is another out there waiting to take a chance on a forgotten dog. To make him part of their family and show him love and be his hero.

It’s a great time of year to remember to help others. A 15 minute cup of coffee, a little text message or even a simple smile could make someone’s whole holidays. If you can tip a little more try to do so. Say hello to someone in the park. Swallow your pride on an issue. Presents will be quickly forgotten but kind actions could be remembered for a lifetime.

Life Comes With Ups And Downs

I have been at rock bottom myself at Christmas before. I’ve sat alone drinking bottles of vodka with my phone switched off in a dark room on the big day itself. 5 Years ago just before I got sober I tried to drink myself to death. I nearly succeeded.

What Is super important to remember is that you can always make comebacks no matter how bad things seem. Look at Prince and Bowie the huskies who we found last year abandoned by owners in the Thai heat. Bowie was pregnant and Prince had been so hungry his stomach was full of sand and rocks he had eaten. You couldn’t find 2 dogs at a lower ebb.

Fast forward 12 months and here they are looking utterly spectacular and loved in their forever homes in Germany and Wales respectively. I didn’t ask their families to send me photos, that’s just what their lives now look like!

I tell my own, Bowie and Wynter (Prince’s new name) stories to show people that comebacks are always possible in life for both dogs and humans. You might feel a bit rubbish, lonely, sad or down right now but there is always hope. If you only take one thing from this email please make it be that there is always hope.

The festive period is seriously hard for people. I look around today and I see huge groups of people drinking Champagne at lunchtime and sipping cocktails on the beach. Everybody seems to be laughing and having the time of their lives.

The easiest thing to do as an alcoholic would be to go and join then! The voice in the head is always there…”Oh you’ve done so well this year saving dogs Niall, a couple of beers is the least you deserve and nobody will never know”.

That’s why I’m out doing as many rescues as possible today. It’s why I’m writing a Substack at 10pm on Christmas Eve. It’s why I’ll spend Christmas morning making 200 personalized videos for people to wake up to. I am purposely keeping myself busy and away from areas of temptation.

But I also realize just how lucky I am. I have my purpose and my calling in life. I know precisely just how many people out there are sad right now. Those hiding behind pained smiles. People having a couple of pills to get through a family meet up. The people who know deep down they have addiction issues. The people worried sick about their health or that of a loved one. Those with crippling grief. The list of struggles is endless.

Please just remember you are not alone. Not only have I struggled in the past but right now there are millions of people just like you having a hard time. It is to every one of you that I wish you have some peace if at all possible. It doesn’t always have to be a Merry Christmas or a Happy Holidays. Sometimes you just need to get through it and thats fine too!

From me and the dogs, I send you all huge love from the bottom of my heart for supporting us this year.

Huge love from me too to all of you wonderful people who care enough about the world around you to pay attention, stay engaged and gather wherever you can to find the solidarity we need to keep trying to make this world a better place. If nothing else, we can at least try to keep each other sane, right?

Merry Christmas from my own godpups, Chester and Eevee!!

cheers,
digby


QOTD: Adam Serwer

Published by digby on December 24, 2025

It’s not as pithy as “the cruelty is the point” but it’s right on the money. (gift link)

When the 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson asked why “we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes,” he was identifying no mere contradiction, but liberty as it was imagined by men who owned other human beings as property. Slaveholders such as John Calhoun saw slavery as inseparable from their own freedom, and they worried that the false doctrine of abolitionism would eliminate that freedom away. “Already it has taken possession of the pulpit, of the schools, and, to a considerable extent, of the press; those great instruments by which the mind of the rising generation will be formed,” Calhoun said. (It seems the “woke mind virus” was telling lies about the great and benevolent institution of American slavery as far back as two centuries ago.)

Defending slavery, however, required invasive uses of power, such as banning antislavery literature and returning escaped Black people to bondage. Many white Americans in the 19th century began to understand that the “Slave Power” curtailed their freedoms as well. And this is what many people forget: Systems of domination rarely spread their blessings widely. The Redemption-era revocation of Black freedoms didn’t result in prosperity for white people writ large, but a Gilded Age in which the upper classes gained unfathomable wealth and economic crises left millions destitute. The nation may have held on to white supremacy, but it also got low wages, a threadbare welfare state, and a society dominated by the rich. Everyone else was too divided by race and class to challenge them.

If you think it can’t happen to you, think again. They’re coming for all of us.

Read the whole piece — it’s bracing but important. The old saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” has never been more relevant.

Happy Hollandaise!


It’s Not Working

Published by digby on December 24, 2025

Zeteo talked to some members of the Trump White House about their damage control efforts on the Epstein files. It’s hilarious:

Trumpworld is wildly unimpressed with the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, with many in the MAGA and GOP elite flabbergasted at how Donald Trump’s Justice Department keeps pathetically bungling its own cover-up.

“They keep making it look like we have something to hide,” a White House official complains to Zeteo.

On Tuesday, Zeteo contacted numerous Trump advisers, senior administration officials, Republican lawmakers, right-wing media figures, and other close allies of the president asking them to grade how the Justice Department (which acts as an extension of President Trump’s corrupt wishes) has handled the Epstein saga, particularly from July to the present.

All but one of the dozen-plus Trumpland denizens (who were granted anonymity to speak freely) responded with an “F” or “F-minus.” And one respondent was even harsher: “F-minus-minus.”

I’m not sure why they think there’s any good way to handle this. The problem for Trump is that he’s closely associated with this monster and these files are salacious and super intriguing, gross as they are, with all these famous people involved and the enduring questions about why they are working so hard at covering it up. I think the cat is out of the bag now and nothing they can do will quell the scandal.

Having said that they certainly could have taken this seriously and handled it professionally for the sake of the survivors. Instead of taking over the DOJ X feed and communicating like a bunch of snotty schoolboys, they could have done this right and let the chips fall where they may. The fact that they haven’t done even that, argues strongly for the fact that they are covering for Donald Trump.

This plaintive whine from Monday certainly isn’t going to put an end to the speculation:

By the way, just have to share this little tidbit I came across today:

hmmmmm.

Happy Hollandaise!


Insurrection Resurrection

Published by Tom Sullivan on December 24, 2025

Don’t give Trump ideas

NO TROOPS FOR YOU!

By now you’ve heard. Ed Kilgore tells it:

More often than not in 2025, when the U.S. Supreme Court issues one of its highly procedural “shadow docket” emergency orders involving Donald Trump’s executive prerogatives, the conservative majority has delivered for the president. But not today. In a final order before the Court shuts down for Christmas, six justices (the order itself was unsigned, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence and Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch signed dissents) agreed to uphold a lower-court ban on Trump’s deployment of Illinois and Texas National Guard troops in Chicago for purposes of aiding federal immigration agents and cracking down on protesters.

As the Washington Post explained it:

The Trump administration justified putting the National Guard under federal control by invoking a law that allows the president to federalize the Guard if he is unable to execute federal law using “regular forces.” The administration argued that language referred to civilian law enforcement agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

SCOTUS, for once, was not buying it. Nor the DOJ’s argument that the courts had no business reviewing a commander-in-chief’s orders for the military.

The court’s majority rejected the administration’s argument. The law’s reference to “regular forces” probably refers to the U.S. military, the court said, not to civilian law enforcement. Because of that, the justices said, the president’s authority to federalize the National Guard “likely applies only where the military could legally execute the laws.”

Under a federal law known as the Posse Comitatus Act, the circumstances in which the military can be employed for law enforcement purposes are very strictly limited, the court noted, suggesting that the same would be true for Guard troops.

Now what? Justice Brett Kavanaugh saw fit to suggest in a concurring opinion that Trump might deploy troops to U.S. cities using the Insurrection Act.

“The Court’s legal interpretation,” Kavanaugh wrote, “could lead to potentially significant implications for future crises that we cannot now foresee.” Denying use of the Guard in an emergency, Kavanaugh writes in a footnote, “could cause the President to use the U. S. military more than the National Guard to protect federal personnel and property in the United States.”

Do. Not. Encourage Him.

CNN observes:

The current version of the Insurrection Act was last invoked by President George H.W. Bush during the 1992 Los Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of four White police officers in the beating of Rodney King. Perhaps the best-known use of the Insurrection Act was in 1957, when President Dwight Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to integrate its schools.

That order followed the Supreme Court’s historic decision three years earlier in Brown v. Board of Education that declared segregated schools unconstitutional.

William Banks, a Syracuse University law professor and expert on the Insurrection Act, told CNN that such a move would almost certainly be more politically dicey. “Instead of part-time National Guard personnel, the president could send in the 82nd Airborne in heavy armor and gear and gin up some heavy martial images for our screens,” Banks said.

One saving grace is that we saw how poorly regular troops responded to Trump’s using them as props for his birthday parade. How might they respond to being deployed against Americans protesting ICE raids ro an invasion of Venezuela?

Happy Hollandaise everyone.


Whose Wonderful Life Is It Anyway?

Published by Tom Sullivan on December 24, 2025

Malefactors of great wealth are out for control

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) is former labor secretary Robert Reich’s personal favorite. After his tenure with the Clinton administration, Reich taught public policy at UC Berkeley, so one sees why.

Reich posted a delightful, 4-min. YouTube video on Tuesday in which he uses the film to illustrate lessons from the film teaches about the relationship between working people and the rich. Reich derides Mr. Potter (Lionel Barrymore), the wealthiest man in Bedford Falls, and his bottom-line view of the world. Potter treats working people like “cattle,” says George Bailey (James Stewart).

The Potters of the world, Reich argues, should see working people as “assets to be nurtured and developed rather than as costs to be cut.” A strong working class is the foundation of a thriving economy. The rich would be better off in the long run with a smaller share of an economy growing rapidly than with a larger share of one growing more slowly because working people earn too little, barely make do, and have too little to spend.

That makes sense as an economic argument. But it’s not the entire picture. If it were, the Potters of the world, including our rising billionaire-oligarch class, would have figured that out without Reich’s help.

Our 21st-century Potters concern themselves with making money, yes. They have no need for more. They have enough to last, the saying goes, until the sun burns out. But money is also a proxy for power, and power is the real game. Wealth gives the rich power over the lives of the “rabble,” as Potter calls them in the film. Mr. Potter didn’t need any more money. He needed to see George Bailey ruined and the rabble he helped prosper kept in their place.

Wealth is how the rich keep score. And it enables “malefactors of great wealth” to dominate and reshape the world as kings and emperors do, unbothered by the wants of their communities. Other people are raw material, costs to be minimized.

Over the holidays, many families will play Monopoly, the classic, “multiplayer economics-themed board game.” From the Wikipedia entry:

The history of Monopoly can be traced back to 1903,[1][9] when American anti-monopolist Lizzie Magie created a game called The Landlord’s Game that she hoped would explain the single-tax theory of Henry George as laid out in his book Progress and Poverty. She devised the key features of the game. It was intended as an educational tool to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies. She took out a patent in 1904. This shows the game’s characteristic features of a square circuit consisting of corner squares (one the starting point) and a series of intervening spaces where players went round and round until the game’s goal was reached.

By Mack Male from Edmonton, AB, Canada – Monopoly, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109449852

And what is the game’s goal? To accumulate as many pieces of colored, fake currency as possible? To create the virtuous cycle of wealth creation Reich mentions? No. One wins Monopoly by economically dominating other players into submission and ultimate bankruptcy.

See Jim Stewartson’s commentary on The Dark Enlightenment and its goal “to replace the government with a patriarchal, feudalist, white supremacist oligarchy.”

The alleged benefit of this new post-democratic world is a futuristic utopia of abundance where a small technocratic royalty will provide everything for the serfs [and] decide everything for us—even if we don’t like it.

The Reich video misses that.

Happy Hollandaise!


The President of Europe?

Published by digby on December 23, 2025

I think not

Sure, Donny, sure:

Unreliable. Creating more problems than solving them. A negative force on the world stage. This is how large shares of America’s closest allies view the U.S., according to new polling, as President Donald Trump pursues a sweeping foreign policy overhaul.

Pluralities in Germany and France — and a majority of Canadians — say the U.S. is a negative force globally, according to new international POLITICO-Public First polling. Views are more mixed in the United Kingdom, but more than a third of respondents there share that dim assessment.

Ya think??? He’s taken a wrecking ball to our country and wants to do the same to all of our friends.

President of Europe? Please. The only person who would say that is Viktor Orbán.

When asked whether the U.S. supports its allies around the world or challenges them, a majority of Canadians say the latter, as well as just under half of respondents in Germany and France. In the U.K., roughly 4 in 10 say the U.S. challenges, rather than supports, its allies, more than a third say it cannot be depended on in a crisis, nearly half say it creates problems for other countries, and 35 percent say the U.S. is a negative force overall.

I can’t imagine why they think that:

He called Europe a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people in a recent POLITICO interview and his sweeping National Security Strategy argued that the continent has lost its “national identities and self-confidence.”

He’s a pig and he’s making the United States an enemy of our closest allies while sucking up to every tinpot dictator like Putin and those freak shows Milei in Argentina and Bolsonaro in Brazil. And it’s not because he has some big ideological agenda (that JD.) It’s because he’s a cretinous moron who hasn’t the vaguest idea what he’s doing and is running the country on the basis of who licks his boots the hardest.

It’s so dispiriting.

It’s going to take a lot of effort to crawl back out of this abyss but it’s still doable, thank goodness. But we can’t afford any more of this.


Will They Rally Round The Trump Flag?

Published by digby on December 23, 2025

There is some skepticism among Republicans about the incipient war in Venezuela:

The Hill’s Alexander Bolton reports Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told GOP senators last week that Trump isn’t pursuing regime change, but some Republicans are skeptical given White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’s comments to Vanity Fair in which she said Trump wants to keep “blowing up boats until Maduro cries uncle.”

Senate Republicans largely support Trump’s tactics of targeting Venezuelan boats, but some argue attacking the regime directly would go too far. “I think we just have to be very careful when we’re dealing with regime change. It seems to backfire a lot,” Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall (R) said.

Another Republican senator said they believe the administration is intent on ousting Maduro. “I don’t want to have another Iraq or Afghanistan,” they said, referring to the wars in which the U.S. helped oust Saddam Hussein and the Taliban from power. Both situations quickly turned into quagmires that dragged on for years.

Trump said Monday that it would be “smart” for Maduro to give up power, but said it’s up to him. “But again, we’re going to find out,” he said.

Meanwhile, Trump on Monday continued to ramp up his rhetoric against Colombian President Gustavo Petro, warning him to “watch his a‑‑” and close alleged drug factories in his country. “I love the Colombian people,” Trump said. “But their new leader is a troublemaker, and he better watch it. He better close up those cocaine factories. There are at least three major cocaine factories. We know where they are.”

That’s small potatoes. Get a load of what America’s Future Dear Leader has in mind:

SA: But there’s a bit of a paradox there, isn’t there? Because on the one hand, the administration says that America in the past too often lectured the world on moral values and so on. And yet the National Security Strategy document that was recently published made certain claims about what Europe should be like civilizationally. So even to get them to be where we want to be, we still have to lecture them.

JDV: We have much greater cultural, religious, and economic ties with Europe than we do with anywhere else in the world. That is just the nature of things. And so I do think that we’re going to have certain moral conversations with Europe that we might not have, for example, with a Democratic Republic of the Congo, because there is this sense of shared history and shared cultural values. To tie it back to a more specific or direct American interest, France and the United Kingdom have nuclear weapons. If they allow themselves to be overwhelmed with very destructive moral ideas, then you allow nuclear weapons to fall in the hands of people who can actually cause very, very serious harm to the United States. 

SA: What sort of ideas?

JDV: I think there are, for example, Islamists-aligned or Islamist-adjacent people who hold office in European countries right now. Right now, maybe at an extremely low level, right? They’re winning mayoral elections, or they’re winning municipal elections. But it’s not inconceivable to imagine a scenario where a person with Islamist-adjacent views could have very significant influence in a European nuclear power. In the next five years? No. But 15 years from now? Absolutely. And that is very much a very direct threat to the United States of America. So I do think there are ways in which the moral conversation does absolutely bleed into America’s national-security interests. 

Basically, he says that if Europe doesn’t do exactly what we tell them to do, they will be a threat to our national security. It’s the new go-to.

Donald Trump is a dangerous cartoon character creating chaos and mayhem, using the power of the presidency in a vain attempt to fill the screaming void of his narcissistic neediness. JD Vance is not. He is the full realization of power-hungry, American, fascist, expansionism. If he becomes president we are done.

There are probably a lot of MAGAs like this who are eager to get down to business:

Trump’s opening the door. JD Vance is ready to walk through it.


A Cajun Goes To Greenland

Published by digby on December 23, 2025

Oh boy.

Landry said Trump called him and asked if he would help Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who the governor said is “doing a phenomenal job.”

“The president said ‘y’know what? You went to Korea one time and came back with a steel mill. Could you go to Greenland and talk to them about the opportunity of being a part of the United States?” Landry says in the video.

This. Is. Nuts.

In case you were wondering what Greenland thinks about sending this Cajun weirdo in to “persuade them” to give up their sovereignty so they too can become submissive vassals for the orange emperor:

Every single day it’s another announcement by a mad king. This week alone he’s done this and announced that he’s planning to spend hundred of billion on new navy ships the Navy doesn’t need just because he’s got the mind of an 8 year old and he wuvs the way the big battleships look. He’s calling them the “Trump class.”

I’m sure you know that he is a malignant narcissist who needs to put his name on everything in sight because he obviously feels he doesn’t exist unless he does so. He’s been pretty clear about this:

I don’t know who’s sicker in this scenario, Trump or the sycophantic weirdoes like Jesse Watters who think it’s awesome.

Happy Hollandaise everyone.


Holiday Cheer For One And All!

Published by digby on December 23, 2025

Thank you so much to everyone who has been so generous this year. It’s such a great validation of what we’re trying to do and I really appreciate it.


It’s getting hot on the right and we are here for it! I wrote yesterday about some posters on X talking about a rebrand of the GOP to the “American First” party, with nobody but the old loser conservatives calling themselves Republicans. I kind of thought it was just casual blather but maybe not:

Appearing at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference on Sunday, Don Jr. blasted GOP critics of his father ― who he deemed “Republicans In Name Only,” or RINOs ― while suggesting the party rename itself after one of the president’s signature phrases.

“Midterms are coming around the corner, and make no mistake, the Democrat Party wants to do whatever they possibly can to shut this movement down,” he said. “Not just the Democrats. The RINOs.”

He went on to note: “You see the manufactured attacks on JD [Vance], myself, my father — anyone who understands that this isn’t the Republican Party anymore. It’s the ‘America First’ Party. It’s the ‘Make America Great Again’ Party. And we are not going back!”

Interesting, no?

But here’s a bit of a problem: it’s not just the Trumpers who want the name:

At the moment, I don’t think she’d be welcome in the new Trump America First Party. And what about MAGA? Is that chopped liver? No MAGA party?

This is all just blather at the moment. But when people start talking about breaking apart and calling themselves something different, it means something. You might even say that the Republicans are in disarray. And it’s happening while they have complete control over every branch of government! What’s up with that? Is it possible that they sense on some lizard brain level that they are completely going off the rails? Time will tell…

There is so much bad news these days that it’s hard to keep up with it and maintain your sanity. But these last few days as we’ve watched the MAGA coalition at each others’ throats I have to say I’m starting to feel just a bit more optimistic. This is a story I plan to keep on all next year because it could end up saving the country. This is a Nazi party for dummies and they are imploding. Can we possibly be so lucky?

If you’d like to help us keep an eye on this and other important stories going into this midterm election and beyond, you can do so below or at the snail mail address on the left.

And thank you all so much for your support all these years. It means the world to me.

cheers,
digby

Happy Hollandaise everyone!


National Security Blanket

Published by digby on December 23, 2025

It appears that Trump has found a new permission slip that allows him to do whatever he pleases without any oversight from Congress, the courts, states or other responsible parties. It’s in addition to his now standard emergency declarations which I assume they are seeing as possible roadblocks to their untrammeled power. Now, everything is a matter of “national security.”

They announced that Trump is halting wind power projects on the east coast. Axios reports:

 It’s among the most sweeping broadsides yet against the renewable energy source that’s most directly in President Trump’s crosshairs.

  • It follows billions of dollars in investments into the large-scale projects.

The Interior Department announcement alleges there are national security risks “identified by the Department of War in recently completed classified reports.”

[…]

  • It alleges that unclassified reports show that offshore wind can create radar interference called “clutter.”

We know why this is happening. First and foremost it’s because Trump has a maniacal hatred of wind turbines because Scotland refused to remove them from offshore of his golf club and he thinks they destroy the view. Remember this greatest hit?

Check out the moron they hired to be the Sec. of Energy:

National security? No.

But that’s not all. Get a load of this one:

Donald Trump’s administration has argued in a court filing that the president’s White House ballroom construction project must continue for reasons of national security.

The filing came in response to a lawsuit filed three days earlier by the National Trust for Historic Preservation asking a federal judge to halt the ballroom project until it goes through multiple independent reviews and wins approval from Congress.

In its filing, the administration included a declaration from the deputy director of the US Secret Service saying more work on the site of the former White House East Wing is still needed to meet the agency’s “safety and security requirements”. The administration has offered to share classified details with the judge in an in-person setting without the plaintiffs present.

The government’s response to the lawsuit offers the most comprehensive look yet at the ballroom construction project, including a window into how it was so swiftly approved by the Trump administration bureaucracy and its expanding scope.

The filings assert that final plans for the ballroom have yet to be completed despite the continuing demolition and other work to prepare the site for construction. Below-ground work on the site continues, wrote John Stanwich, the National Park Service’s liaison to the White House – and work on the foundations is set to begin in January. Above-ground construction “is not anticipated to begin until April 2026, at the earliest”, he wrote.

Utter nonsense, of course. They’re lying as usual. And even if it were true, a normal person would be embarrassed that they’d gone ahead and demolished the building without taking this under consideration. But he’s anything but normal.

Whoever came up with the national security rationale is pretty smart. (It’s certainly not Trump.) We have let presidents run wild for decades using that as an excuse and they’ve been allowed to keep the reasons secret and the motives obscure. Nobody until now has thought to use it for such petty, personal projects but we’ve never had such a petty, ridiculous president before either.

Traditionally, the Supreme Court has held that the president has extremely broad power in this realm and the Congress has been content to go along. There’s little reason to think that the Court who said the president couldn’t possibly do his job is he isn’t allowed to commit crimes with impunity won’t allow this. (And in the case of the ballroom, it will be moot anyway since he’s just going to go ahead and do whatever he wants anyway.)

There’s going to be more of this, much more. Maybe even this:

In fact, I would guess he’ll blathering about “national security” whenever he sees some land he wants. I’m sure they can cook up a reason why we absolutely need to invade someplace to protect ourselves. It wouldn’t be the first time that a would-be conqueror did such a thing.

Update —

Fergawdsake:

Happy Hollandaise everyone!