Skip to content

Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

For Whom The Gas Pump Tolls

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 17, 2026

An existential threat like the Epstein files

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/gas-prices-could-reach-4-per-gallon-nationwide-average-this-week-259360325729

Dan Pfeiffer this morning recalls an Obama campaign team meeting from 2012. Everything was upbeat and going swimmingly until White House Senior Advisor David Plouffe spoke:

“Gas prices are an existential threat to the entire enterprise. If they keep going up, we will lose reelection.”

The direness of Plouffe’s warning caught everyone’s attention. Plouffe was known for keeping calm under the most intense pressure and never panicking.

But prices went down. Obama won reelection. Donald Trump may not be so lucky in the 2026 midterms. With his attack on Iran, he’s shot himself in the foot in the middle of Fifth Avenue. He’s losing voters.

Elliot Morris has the numbers:

Since the U.S. launched a war against Iran on Feb. 28, 2026, the national average price of a gallon of gasoline has climbed from $2.93 to $3.72, according to AAA. That is the highest price in over a year, and a 27% increase compared to the same time last year. Americans are witnessing the largest month-to-month spike in gas prices we’ve seen in 30 years.

Consumer sentiment is “cratering” as worry about inflation spikes. Even sucking helium, Trump cannot keep the jobs market from deflating:

And gas is just the latest blow. The February jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed payrolls declined by 92,000 — the third time in five months that the economy has shed jobs. This month, unemployment ticked up to 4.44% (dangerously close to rounding to 5%). Year-over-year CPI is running hotter, and that’s before you account for (a) the fact that the BLS changed data sources for legal services last month, leading to an artificially lower inflation reading or (b) the full impacts the war with Iran will have on everything from food to building materials.

“On day one, we’re bringing prices down,” Donald Trump promised crowds throughout 2024. But every major piece of data we have on prices is going in the opposite direction.

Working-class whites and Latinos who helped put Trump back into the White House one year ago have noticed. Low-income white voters have swung 26 points against Trump since 2024. He’s lost more with low-income Hispanics with a 34-point net approval gap.

Simply put, “the data is that workers voted for Trump because he promised to make their lives cheaper — but he has done the opposite at every turn, and is now suffering the consequences.” Their support in 2024 was transactional, and Trump has not delivered, either on an improving economy or on his promise to keep the U.S. out of endless foreign wars.

Trump did not just avoid a foreign war. The dangerous, delinquent idiot started one on a whim. “The casual nature of the declaration of war matched the unmoored nature of Trump’s imperial cosplay,” observes Fintan O’Toole in The New York Review. The reflexive liar has not even bothered to construct a sensible story as to why. Past U.S. conflicts purported to be about “making the world safe for democracy (World War I), defeating fascism (World War II), saving civilization from communism (Korea and Vietnam), upholding international law and the sovereignty of nations (Kuwait), responding to the atrocities of September 11 through the “war on terror” (Afghanistan and Iraq).” Trump’s attack on Iran contradicts his own National Security Strategy published in November.

One area in which Trump has gone the extra mile is in routinely insulting U.S. allies. Now that he’s started a widening war in the Persian Gulf, U.S. allies are letting him stew in it.

O’Toole concludes:

It is obvious that making war is a useful distraction—for himself as well as for the world—from the Epstein scandal. But it is also now the purest form of self-pleasuring. Usually a president going to war is taking on burdens. Trump is shrugging them off, entering a state of weightlessness where all thought of consequences and all concern for mundane irritants like inflation and affordability are left behind.

MAGA has noticed. In the seven months that Sign Guy has been on street corners and overpasses five times per week, last week’s message drew far more middle fingers than in any week since August. It read: IRAN’S LEADER IS DOWN. YOUR PRICES ARE UP.

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes is done with MAGA, even as he’s pursuing a full pardon from Trump. So he blames Israel for the war, not Trump, but he’s done. As Monday guest host on Alex Jones’ show, Rhodes declared “the obvious role of the influence of Zionism in our government,” etc., etc.:

“So that’s why I no longer call myself MAGA. I am an America-only patriot. I’m a Christian nationalist, an American Christian nationalist. I have to open my eyes to the reality in front of my face, and it’s caused a division inside of MAGA, and it’s caused a division on the political right. But so be it,” Rhodes said. 

Trump is burning through supporters faster than U.S. advanced weaponry. For those of a certain age, in there somewhere is a Carnac the Magnificent joke involving diseased camels.

UPDATE:

Second Update:

Hassett: "If the war were to be extended, it wouldn't really disrupt the US economy very much at all. It would hurt consumers, and we'd have to think about what we'd have to do about that, but that's really the last of our concerns right now."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-03-17T11:52:59.676Z

“A Dangerous, Delinquent Idiot”

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 17, 2026

The 25th Amendment needs amending

“I predicted the JFK assassination. Nobody gives me credit for that.” <satire>

I don’t know who this guy is (below), but he’s plainspoken. Just the way MAGA likes it.

England’s prime minister “should do as little as possible. Trump is a dangerous, delinquent idiot who started a war in one of the world’s most historically volatile tinderboxes’ — with no legal rationale, no plan, and no end objective.”

Also, the E.U. to Trump, suck on it, Donald: Trump criticizes allies who rebuffed his calls to help secure Strait of Hormuz

• EU rebuffs Trump: European Union decided against expanding its naval operations around the Strait of Hormuz despite President Donald Trump’s criticism of allies for not supporting the US in securing the vital waterway.

Clean up your own mess, Herr Trump, or we’ll build more wind turbines offshore of your Aberdeenshire golf course.

Has the world finally had enough of this moron’?

Speaking of straits, I’ll pay for his straitjacket if Republicans in Congress can ever find their long-lost testicles and haul him away in one.

Q.E.D.: Cuba is “not in a hurricane zone, which is nice for a change.”

Someone ask Jesse Welles to write a 25th Amendment song.

They Have Their Own King

Published by digby on March 16, 2026

England has had a king or queen for over a thousand years. But they are also a democracy and their elected leaders are not granted unlimited power to do anything they want — unlike the world’s longest continuing democracy which is now under the sway of a megalomaniacal would-be monarch who is rapidly losing his faculties. He could lose his seat overnight. If only we had the same ability to discipline a lunatic leader.

I really hope the allies have learned their lesson with this freak. After his disastrous performance just last month when he went to Europe, threatened to take over a sovereign country by force and insulted everyone in sight they seemed to have finally learned the lesson that appeasing him is a completely useless exercise because he will stab them in the back anyway. There’s just no point in it.

He has to live with the consequences of his actions. We all do or it’s only going to get worse and worse.

,

Dementia Patient Blurts Out Secrets

Published by digby on March 16, 2026

Startling moment even by Trump’s standards, egging Speaker Mike Johnson on to talk about GOP Rep. Neal Dunn’s health diagnosis. Johnson hedges a bit and Trump interjects that Dunn was told he’d be dead by June.

Johnson: Ok, that wasn’t public.

Of course it was really just a way to toot his own horn:

President Donald Trump on Monday left House Speaker Mike Johnson and others visibly shocked by revealing private medical information about a House Republican while television cameras broadcast the scene.

Trump was speaking during an impromptu press conference — where he was expected to field a few questions about the ongoing Iran War — before a scheduled lunch with Kennedy Center board members, when he began praising the way House Speaker Mike Johnson has managed to keep his majority together despite having only a two-vote margin since earlier this year.

Seated between Johnson and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, whom Trump had earlier revealed is battling early-stage breast cancer, he asked the Speaker about one GOP member who was “very ill.” Johnson replied that Florida Representative Neal Dunn had been suffering from “real health challenges” and a “pretty grim diagnosis” while still showing up to work and voting, calling him “a real champion and a patriot.”

Trump then interjected to ask about Dunn’s diagnosis before revealing, unprompted, that it had been “a terminal diagnosis.”

“He would be dead by June,” said Trump, prompting Johnson to jump back in, more than a bit surprised.

”Ok, that wasn’t public,” Johnson said.

Johnson added that Trump had connected with Dunn to offer condolences and later arranged for him to receive medical treatment from White House Medical Unit doctors and other military physicians at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

“The man has a new lease on life. He acts like he’s 30 years younger, and he walked into the conference meeting, and we thought we’d seen a ghost, and I spoke with him over the weekend, and he’s encouraged and thankful, and he thanks the President for his leadership and intervention,” Johnson said.

Trump re-entered the conversation by recounting how Johnson had told him that Dunn had been “terminal” with a “really bad heart” and remarked how there was “nothing they could do” for the longtime Florida representative.

“I realized I have doctors in the White House … the White House, doctors are incredible and they’ve helped me with other people. They’re helping me with people right now, people that are very sick… like they’re miracle workers. And I said, I have to call them. And I called the two doctors, they’re both great. And they immediately went over to see the congressman, and he was on the operating table, like two hours later,” Trump said.

Earlier this year, Dunn said he would not seek re-election in Florida’s 2nd district. Last month, amid rumors that Dunn might resign early, his office told Politico that he would serve out the duration of his term.

I don’t think anyone knows exactly what went on with Dunn’s diagnosis but it’s clear that he did not want the details to be public. But Trump needed to fluff himself on camera so he just blurted it out.

He is a loathsome creature in every possible way.

QOTD: Jimmy Carter

Published by digby on March 16, 2026

2002:

Great American power and responsibility are not unprecedented, and have been used with restraint and great benefit in the past. We have not assumed that super strength guarantees super wisdom, and we have consistently reached out to the international community to ensure that our own power and influence are tempered by the best common judgment.

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes – and we must.

He was awarded the prize during the run up to the Iraq war. Read the whole thing. Carter was long out of office at the time but he used his moment, as an elder statesmen, to make a moral statement at a time when it was difficult to do so.

The astonishing thing is that we’re back where we were then except the people in charge are much worse and the only rationale is the most fatuous of all: the president took the country to war because he “had a feeling” they were going to attack.

Presidential Crash Out

Published by digby on March 16, 2026

Trump had a full blown tantrum last night. I don’t expect that you will read these through but I think it’s important to document them:

He wants to censor the news because he says it’s disseminating misinformation. Someone needs to alert the Twitter files people like Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss because the last I heard they were very upset by this kind of behavior.

But he wasn’t finished. This one seems to have been written in some kind of fugue state:

Imagine if someone said any of those things about Charlie Kirk.

The war isn’t a cakewalk and he doesn’t know what to do. He’s incapable of grace under pressure and has no ability to act any way but impulsively. Epstein is dogging him and the economy is failing rapidly. Will we see a total breakdown in public?

Update — There was more:

This is what that’s all about, if you care. But good Lord: “THEY ARE NOT MAGA. I AM …”

Trump’s Gas Lighting

Published by digby on March 16, 2026

Donald Trump has made many audacious claims during his political career, and he has shown a remarkable talent for convincing people that up is down and black is white. But his latest attempt at gaslighting the nation is his most brazen yet. In the midst of a hike in gas prices the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades, Trump took to Truth Social to lecture and scold the American people. “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” 

He later went a step further in an attempt to convince people that paying more at the pump is actually benefiting them: “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.” 

Watching Trump squirm over oil prices would be amusing if it weren’t a result of a widening war of choice that’s leaving a growing number of Americans and Iranians dead and may well devolve further into a catastrophic regional conflict and international economic disaster. 

After two weeks of airstrikes from the U.S. and Israel, and retaliations from Iran, the American people still don’t know exactly why Trump decided to pull the trigger when he did. One would have thought that if Trump understood anything, it would be that going to war with Iran would disrupt the oil markets at a time when inflation was still American voters’ number one concern leading up to the November midterms. For months he has falsely touted low gas prices as proof that the economy is roaring, and since January he has pointed to his incursion in Venezuela — and seizure of the country’s oil — as the reason why. 

Trump certainly didn’t listen to any of his military advisers who told him that war with Iran would not be a cakewalk. And none of Trump’s briefers drew him any pictures about what would happen if the regime blocked access to the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point at the end of the Persian Gulf through which 30% of the world’s oil flows. Since the war began on Feb. 28, over 1,000 cargo ships, the majority of which are oil and gas tankers, have not been allowed to pass through the strait. 

By Friday night, with frustration mounting, Trump announced the U.S. had bombed military sites on Kharg Island, which is also home to Iran’s most important oil terminal. While its oil infrastructure was left intact, he threatened to destroy the facilities if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened. Hours later, without providing specifics, he said on Truth Social that “Many Countries” would soon be sending “War Ships…to keep the Strait open and safe.” The president urged Britain, China, France, Japan and South Korea to help reopen the waterway, promising that “One way or the other, we will soon get the Hormuz Strait OPEN, SAFE, and FREE!”

Anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of recent history would have known this was likely. Yet CNN reported on Thursday that Trump officials acknowledged to lawmakers in recent briefings that they did not consider the possibility, a revelation that has left experts and experienced hands with their jaws on the floor. “Dumbfounded” is how one former official who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations described their response, explaining that “planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of U.S. national security policy for decades.” The administration was so unprepared for Iran’s predictable response that it pulled U.S. minesweepers out of the Persian Gulf last fall after stationing them there for decades, all for the express purpose of countering a potential closure by Iran. 

Since the oil shocks of the early 1970s, people who follow world events have been aware of the perils of getting into a protracted war with a large oil-producing country in the Middle East. The U.S. even demonstrated it in living color just 20 years ago when we made the tragic mistake of invading Iraq. 

The prospect of a war with Iran always invited the possibility that the world’s oil markets would be severely disrupted, which is one reason why political leaders of all stripes and in all countries have been leery of confronting the regime militarily.

Trump was an adult in 1973 when OPEC (the Arab state members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) cut production in protest of America’s support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. In an attempt to keep inflation low, then-President Richard Nixon instituted rationing. The country was already entering a period of stagflation — simultaneous recession and inflation — an economic condition that played no small part in weakening Nixon during the same period that Watergate was unfolding, which eventually led to him resigning in disgrace. 

Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, his Republican and Democratic successors, dealt with the same moribund economy, and Carter oversaw another oil crisis in 1979 precipitated by the Iranian Revolution. The economic upheaval, and his response to the Iranian hostage crisis, were the biggest factors in his 1980 loss to Ronald Reagan.

Today we’re seeing the result of the aging Trump’s lack of inhibition and unwillingness to listen to anyone but sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear. The strait is effectively closed, just as every analyst on the planet predicted. Oil prices are hovering at just under $100 a barrel, and experts predict that could double as the war drags on. Gas is now, on average, 60 cents per gallon higher than it was in February, and prices are still climbing. As energy costs are the number one driver of inflation, we can expect that rate to rise. And all of this comes on top of an economy already reeling from Trump’s tariffs, which were beginning to bite hard.

We’ve seen this before. Meanwhile, Trump has no idea what to do. The plan to underwrite the insurance for tankers to go through the strait shows a total lack of understanding of how insurance works, and any process for U.S. naval escorts is on hold because it’s too dangerous for all involved. On Monday the president told Fox News that oil tanker crews should “show some guts” and just go through the strait, which is easy for him to say. Now he has given a gift to Vladimir Putin by lifting oil sanctions on Russia, even as CNN reported that the country is aiding Iran by providing “specific advice on drone attacks.”

Early in this second term Trump proclaimed that even in the face of existential climate change, the U.S. was “going back to fossil fuels. We have to go back to what works. We can’t be foolish.” That announcement should have been everyone’s first clue that he had no idea what he’s gotten himself, and the world, into. 

America’s sensitivity to oil prices is well known and well documented. There is no excuse for anyone in government to not understand this and consider the risks. It’s always possible that this will be a temporary economic blip — that the Iranians will give up the closure due to, if nothing else, the environmental horror show being visited on them by the Israelis. In the meantime, here we are, once again holding out hope that Trump — and America — will have the good luck to survive his monumentally terrible judgment.

Salon

Alarm Bells

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 16, 2026

Panic rises. The press hides. Start prebunking.

Republicans are uneasy. Panicked maybe. With good reason (Politico):

Democratic wins have come even in deep red states, including Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi, and often by margins that make Republican leaders uneasy.

“I’m ringing the alarm bell,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas GOP consultant who has run campaigns for Republicans in the state, including Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Dan Crenshaw.

Tara McGowan, publisher of Courier Newsroom, describes for The Daily Blast’s Greg Sargent the concrete block Donald Trump has tied around Republicans’ ankles:

Clearly these tariffs have hurt the economy and our alliances abroad. The cost of living has only gone up. It was a huge promise of Trump and his campaign that that would be a priority for them, as was releasing the Epstein files.

They have bait-and-switched on every single promise made. And instead now we’re in a billion-dollars-a-day war in Iran that no Americans want and that Congress did not approve—a war that is now increasing gas prices that could skyrocket to $5 a gallon on top of how Americans are already feeling squeezed. So of course Republicans are panicking.

Trump demands passage of the SAVE Act. To save his presidency, that is. He and SAVE Act supporters are not just telegraphing their desire to rig the 2026 elections for Republicans. They are practivcally shouting their interest in canceling them altogether.

And so this is the situation they’re in. I think it’s so important because we all need to be pre-bunking this to the American people, right? Making it very clear what they’re trying, and their desperation out of this administration, because the writing is on the wall.

As their panic grows, Trump administration figures sound more like Soviet censors intent on punishing reporting that challenges the party line:

Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened on Saturday to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war with Iran, his latest move in a campaign to stomp out what he sees as liberal bias in broadcasts.

As the war entered its third week, Mr. Carr accused broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions” in a social media post and warned them to “correct course before their license renewals come up.”

“Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,” he said.

The press presents such threats as isolated incidents. But the pattern is clear for those who have survived oppressive regimes. The arc of the MAGA universe is ragged, but it bends toward dictatorship. And their would-be dictator is a madman. Imagine Carr’s response if the press reported that.

Prominent Trump critic George Conway:

For the life of me I’ve never understood why the press and the political class find it so difficult to talk about @realDonaldTrump‘s severe and manifest personality disorders.

These disorders may be impossible for any professional to treat, but they are easily understandable to any intelligent lay person who can read and follow along.

Indeed, Donald Trump’s mental illnesses and the American press and political class’s appalling and shameless cowardice in failing to address them will be someday be a mandatory part of the curriculum for secondary-school and university students the world over.

Conway issued that warning in response to this Aaron Rupar tweet:

The writing is on the wall. Start prebunking.

SAVE America From This Act

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 16, 2026

A.K.A. the Put Elections Officials in Jail Act

https://x.com/DrSianProctor/status/1243622157013233664?s=20

Press coverage of this Trump voter-suppression wet dream focuses on barriers to voting. But it will prove a voter registration nightmare for harried elections officials as well.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) calls the SAVE Act “one of the most despicable pieces of legislation I’ve come across in the many years I’ve been a legislator.”

Legal declaration of citizenship under penalty of perjury is already a requirement for voter registration. But providing documentary proof has not been a requirement for 250 years:

SAVE not only erects that new barrier to voting (it may amount to a poll tax to obtain the necessary documents), but exposes elections officials to criminal penalties, explains the Bipartisan Policy Center:

The SAVE America Act also exposes election officials to heightened legal and personal risk. It establishes criminal penalties for officials who register an applicant who fails to present documentary proof of citizenship, even if that applicant is in fact a U.S. citizen. The bill also authorizes private individuals to sue election officials under the same circumstances.

Together, these provisions could encourage overly cautious behavior (e.g., not accepting applications to register when an election official isn’t familiar with the type of documentation provided) and further strain an election workforce already facing high turnover and burnout.

“Criminal penalties” in the act could mean fines and/or five years in jail for elections officlals for doing their jobs. How are county election officials supposed to authenticate birth certificates they’ve never seen before, some dating back decades, and from 50 different states and U.S. territories? Not to mention elections officials facing lawsuits from MAGA conspiracy zealots. SAVE could dial election registration chaos up to 11.

Sen. Majority Leader John Thune last week told reporters that he did not have the votes to pass the SAVE Act to overcome the Senate filibuster which Republicans have no appetite for eliminating. He nevertheless said he would bring the bill to a vote this week “to put Democrats on the record.” Presumably, for opposing Donald Trump’s insistence that no one vote in this country without first proving their citizenship. Noncitizen voting, like voter impersonation fraud, is virtually nonexistent, but passing new barriers to voting is an itch Republicans can’t help but scratch. Even if it hurts their own voters.

TPM reports:

In order to circumvent the filibuster, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who is sponsoring the bill, Trump and other far-right proponents of the SAVE Act have been calling on Thune to invoke a “talking filibuster,” also known as “standing filibuster,” as a part of their pressure campaign. The method, rarely used in modern times, would force Senate Democrats to continuously hold the Senate floor by debating the bill in question in order to delay and avoid voting on the bill itself.

Such efforts have “almost always failed,” Matt Glassman, senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, told TPM.

Trump wants the SAVE Act badly enough to lobby for it, so do not count on him not being able to pull a rabbit out of his MAGA hat. Make sure your Republican senators know what a shit show this bill is.

Donald The Great?

Published by digby on March 15, 2026

Ugh

I highly recommend this provocative piece by John Judis in Notus even as the header will probably make the hair stand up on the back of your neck a little bit:

I’m sure Lindsey Graham will have that framed for him.

It’s a gross concept but Judis’s thesis is compelling nonetheless and it’s a must read. The thing you have to understand is that if he is an Alexander The Great or a Napoleon it is not a good thing and it says almost nothing about him personally other than he’s willing to break things because he’s too stupid to know the risks. One little excerpt:

Trump’s break with neoliberalism and liberal internationalism perfectly fits Hegel’s profile of the world-historical individual standing at the center of a transition from one era to another. So do his character and leadership. He didn’t merely appear to act out of a “morbid craving” for power and glory; that is at the center of his being. When Napoleon became first consul of the French Republic in 1799, he had one of his successful battles turned into a national commemoration. Trump has put his name on buildings and institutions and lusted after the Nobel Peace Prize. When Napoleon became emperor in 1804, he bestowed titles and riches on his family and supporters. Trump has enriched himself and his family.

Trump, like Hegel’s world-historical individuals, has ignored or repudiated “sacred interests” including the Constitution and its checks and balances. He tried to overturn the 2020 election. He shut down or fired leaders of independent agencies that Congress created. He fabricated pretexts for patently illegal actions by invoking laws that were intended for entirely different purposes — for instance, citing the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, intended to root out French insurrectionists, to justify deporting Venezuelans to a foreign prison without a hearing. His actions — which have included calling Somali immigrants “garbage” and belittling a female reporter as “piggy” — have been, in Hegel’s parlance, “obnoxious” and deserving of “moral reprehension.”

When Caesar vanquished his enemies, Hegel wrote, they “had the form of the constitution, and the power conferred by an appearance of justice, on their side.” Like Caesar, Trump sees himself as above ordinary morality or law. In the wake of his invasion of Venezuela, The New York Times asked Trump if he saw any limits on his global use of power. “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me,” he responded. “I don’t need international law.” This willingness to defy law and morality, and to pursue power and glory relentlessly, has been integral to world-historical individuals — and to their ability to detonate outworn ideas and institutions.

Great. Trump may go to his grave thinking that he’ll be remembered as a world historic figure and maybe he will be. But the odds are that he won’t be remembered fondly.

The thing is that all these prior examples of transformational figures were operating in a world that wasn’t armed with nuclear weapons and facing global climate change. I’m sure those previous transitions were existential for the cultures and peoples involved but this is an existential crisis for the entire planet and the whole human species. The risk is a million times greater. And Trump is a million times dumber.