Author: Tom Sullivan

The existential threat to Trump is Trump

Somewhere in my dimming memory of high school, I recall a pep rally cheer that went:

Whomp ’em up! Side ‘o the head! I said, whomp ’em up side ‘o the head!

It comes to mind this morning in the context of predictions that those needing to brace for a womping are American drivers. Donald Trump’s periodic brags about ending the war he started Feb. 28 may sway oil markets momentarily. But a reckoning is on its way (Politico):

Supply of oil — especially in Europe and Asia — is dwindling and a price shock is coming, said Dan Pickering, chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners.

He said that when the summer driving season begins there will be another gas price shock that “hits people in the face.”

“There’s a day of reckoning coming,” he said. “It will be painful because I can tell you that the stock market’s ignoring this.”

The rubber will hit the road, in a manner of speaking, in just a few weeks.

Another spike in prices around Memorial Day could be a fatal blow to Republican chances for holding onto the House next year, as Americans’ confidence in the economy continues to drop.

Trump on Monday was reviewing Iran’s latest peace proposal, which arrived after he canceled his top negotiators’ planned trip to Pakistan for talks. He continues to maintain that a quick resolution to the war with an agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is within reach.

Uh-huh.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz isn’t buying it. He told some secondary school students on Wednesday that “there is a sense that a whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, particularly by these so-called Revolutionary Guards.”

No one needs it spelled out which nation Merz means, but what the hell (The New Republic):

“It is quite obvious that the Americans have absolutely no coherent strategy whatsoever,” Merz said to students in his home district of Marsberg. “And the fundamental problem with these kinds of conflicts is always the same: It is not enough to simply get yourself in—you must also figure out how to get yourself out.”

Trump had trouble getting himself out of the Hyatt ballroom on Saturday, even with lots of help.

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Trump won’t be getting any help from Germany in exiting Iran:

“If I had known that this would go on for five or six weeks and keep getting worse, I would have made my point to him even more forcefully,” Merz said. Rising fuel prices as a result of the war are affecting economies all around the world, especially Germany, the leading economy in Europe, a point Merz stressed in his remarks. 

“This war against Iran has a direct impact on our economic performance and must therefore be brought to an end as soon as possible,” Merz said.

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has given it the upper hand in the conflict with the U.S., and the world is noticing that Trump hasn’t produced any results from negotiations in Pakistan. The longer this conflict drags on, the worse it reflects on the president.  

Trump’s disenchanted MAGA base will begin evaporating despite the intense gravity of his black-hole-like grip. All they need do is stay home in November.

Point to where the bad man hurt you

Beltway press members continue to relive their WHCD trauma from Saturday night. Over and over again. They obsess over details that don’t matter, a reader laments, while Trump’s Iran war grinds on virtually wiped from the front pages and with the Epstein files a memory. Outside the Beltway, ordinary Americans are processing grinding trauma of another kind.

Gallup’s annual Economy and Personal Finance survey this morning reports that Americans instead obsess over the cost of living. The survey finds that 55% cite recent price increases which make it harder to maintain their standard of living:

Less than half continue to rate their financial situation as “excellent” or “good” (currently 46%), and more than a third call it “only fair” (35%). Relatively few say their situation is “poor” (19%).

The recent dip in people’s confidence about their finances contrasts with 2016 through 2021, when half or more typically rated their finances positively. Today’s readings are more in line with 2008-2015, although not quite as negative as the ones during and immediately after the Great Recession from 2009 to 2011, when about four in 10 were positive.

These sorts of numbers make Republicans’ prospects for November look even bleaker.

Americans’ financial outlook in 2026 is also historically poor, with a record 55% now saying their financial situation is getting worse. While similar to last year’s 53%, this is up from 47% in 2024 and marks the fifth consecutive year more Americans say their finances are worsening rather than improving.

The only similar multiyear period when the larger share felt their financial situation was worsening was during the Great Recession.

We know how badly the 2010 midterms went for Democrats. Republicans are looking at the same. That is, assuming Democrats don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

For anecdotal evidence that MAGA Joe (with anger management issues) is feeling acute economic pain, review Sign Guy’s recent close encounters with men driven ape-shit by cost reminders.

Axios adds:

Reality check: Inflation is still elevated from where it was the last time Trump was in office, but it’s certainly lower than at its peak in 2022.

The big picture: Still, the recent surge in gas prices has increased the pressure on American pocketbooks.

• The average price of a gallon of gas is $4.11, says AAA. It was under $3 before the war started on Feb. 28.
• Many Americans blame Trump for the increase.

There is a divide between the activist left and the Democratic establishment visible in the kinds of signs spotted at No Kings rallies. The signs are all about democracy, ICE, Trump, and the Iran war. The Democratic establishment wants to run on “kitchen table” issues. Somehow the party needs to keep activists engaged while campaigning on economic issues that ordinary voters vote on. Normies may care about those other things, but it’s issues closer to the grocery store and gas pump that drive them to the polls more than what’s happening in distant Iran or Minneapolis. Feeling poorer is pretty immediate.

Republicans will stoke fear like it’s going out of style, of course. The last thing they want is to draw attention to an economy the Trump Gang torpedoed like an Iranian frigate.

Elections are about whom you trust to have your back, about the answer to “Is this person on the ballot like me?” Voters need to feel Democrats have their backs more than Trump and his billionaire friends. Stay out of the sandbox. First make sure voters feel seen.

(h/t SD)

Props for the “aganda”

MAGA Republicans did not pause even for a news cycle to milk Saturday’s assassination attempt for maximum political advantage. The Boss had other ideas. Rather than use Saturday’s aborted attack to raise his polling from the toilet, Donald Trump pivoted immediately to promoting the gilded ballroom he wants built where the East Wing once stood.

MAGA took the cue to unleash propaganda. It’s a matter of national security!

“Come-bye“

Border collies are not this quick to respond.

The Guardian reports that the Department of Trump heard the whistle too:

The US Department of J (DoJ) has used the weekend shooting in Washington DC to pressure a preservation group to drop a lawsuit seeking to halt the construction of Donald Trump’s White House ballroom.

Several Trump administration officials, including the president, seized on the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner to advance their case for the completion of the controversial $400m project, for which the White House’s East Wing was suddenly demolished, arguing the new ballroom was needed as a “safe space”.

On Sunday night, Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, posted on social media a letter to lawyers representing the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) calling the trust’s lawsuit “frivolous”. It demanded that the organization voluntarily withdraw it or face a new dismissal motion from the Department of Justice (DoJ).

Brian Beutler comments at Off Message. Republicans’ “sudden enthusiasm for joining this particular political fight has less to do with any supposed threat to Trump than with resetting the game board after a series of recent defeats. Most pointedly, the gerrymandering race-to-the-bottom Trump kicked off in Texas last year.”

And Iran. And dormant land mines in the Epstein files. Remember them?

The GOP’s redistricting loss in Virginia is “a huge threat to their authoritarian project,” Beutler writes. So even though Trump pivoted from the WHCA attack, the GOP can use the ballroom to smack Democrats about the head and shoulders:

Now, I suspect they’d be clamoring for Trump’s ballroom today whether or not the Virginia referendum went well for Democrats. But knocking Democrats back on their heels is a huge ancillary benefit. I suspect (though I may be wrong!) that they will try to force votes to authorize Trump’s ballroom in short order, on a bet that frontline Democrats will splinter—fearful that Republicans will equate opposition to the ballroom with support for violence against Trump.

This would be yet another huge lie. But, if Democrats don’t embrace their fighting spirit quickly and refuse to be bullied, it will probably work as intended.

Besides, “A ballroom on White House grounds should not ever be the venue for a professional association’s annual gala. The White House press corps does not work for the White House.”

It’s not clear to me that the public so consumed with bearing the burdens of the Trump economy, and so pissed off over Trump’s Iran debacle, will even rise to the bait here. It’s Trump who’s compromised national security and people’s pocketbooks with his Persian Gulf misadventure. The public is more consumed with the costs of gas and food. Will they buy the transparently non-connection between the assassination attempt and the ballroom project? I think not.

“The ballroom talking point—echoed now by senators and the acting attorney general and all those braindead mouthpieces above—is the definition of a non-sequitur,” writes Beutler.

Any Democrat who allows themselves to be bullied into voting to authorize this monstrosity will be voting for corruption out of fear. They might tell themselves it’s a savvy, low-stakes maneuver, but they’ll quickly find they’re unable to explain themselves to their supporters.

My bet is that they won’t have to. Earlier in his commentary, Beutler advised Democrats to bask in the “feeling of strength” from their Virginia gerrymandering win and in “how good it feels to not simply roll over.” Let’s hope that they don’t.

Let Trump’s minions act like border collies this time.

Every statement is a Rorschach test

Americans of the Trump 2.0 era don’t need guns to have hair triggers. Digby already remarked on Donald Trump’s self-own Sunday night with Nora O’Donnell of “60 Minutes.” She quoted from the “manifesto” of Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner shooting suspect: “I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands in his crimes.”

Trump pounced, attacking O’Donnell for reading the line:

Trump: “I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you’re horrible people…I’m not a rapist. I didn’t rape anybody.

O’Donnell: Oh you think he was referring to you?

“I’m not a pedophile,” Trump said, ignoring the question.

Everyone knows that the alleged attacker meant Trump without naming him. Including Trump. O’Donnell meant to bait him by quoting it. She got her sound bite.

But as I mentioned Friday, someone in this heated political environment will read partisan motive into any comment on current events even when no personalities, parties, programs or policies get named. Every statement is a Rorschach test. One person’s “Thank you for seeing me” is another’s thumb in the eye.

Of course, that’s exactly what Trump was hoping to give the assembled media on Saturday night before an aborted assassination thwarted his plans. He meant to get even for his roasting at the 2011 WHCA event. Getting even may be one of Trump’s few principles. Even if it takes 15 years.

Trump telegraphed his move. John Barron opines for the Australian Broadcasting Company:

Appearing back in the White House Press Briefing Room after the dinner and speech were cancelled on the orders of the Secret Service, Trump still dressed in black tie, suggested his speech would now have to be rewritten.

“I was all set to really rip it … and I said to my people this would be the most inappropriate speech ever made,” Trump said, before adding, “I don’t know if I could ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight, I think I’m probably going to be very nice … I’ll be very boring the next time.”

Trump meant to give it back to the press ten times worse. Oh, the disappointment!

The irony? “John Barron” is the pseudonym Trump once used on the phone with reporters to promote himself.

Trump gets even with people for not coming to his aid, as he told Charlie Rose in 1992. Now means to get even with NATO for not helping him attack Iran, despite NATO being a defensive alliance. NATO countries had no obligation to aid Trump.

I don’t know the gentleman below. Trump may not know “what Russia is planning for the Baltic states,” but the rest rings true. So watch for it:

Trump keeps saying “NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.” He says it like a grievance. He will keep saying it. Expect it at every rally between now and 2028.

Understand what he is actually doing. He is not venting. He is building a case.

Because he knows what Russia is planning for the Baltic states, and he is pre-loading the public argument for why Article 5 does not apply when that moment arrives.

“We asked, they refused.” That is the exit ramp. Simple. Memorable. Wrong, but effective.

Let me be precise about what is happening here.

Trump keeps saying “NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.” He says it like a grievance. He will keep saying it. Expect it at every rally between now and 2028.

Understand what he is actually doing. He is not venting. He is…

— Gandalv (@Microinteracti1) April 25, 2026

Trump has had it in for NATO since he first took office in 2017. Now he has another cudgel for getting even. He bides his time and never forgets.

(h/t NK)

The pandemic split a generation

As an election watcher/worker, this Axios report that Gen Z is not monolithic caught my attention:

Gen Z isn’t one generation: Research suggests it’s two, split by the pandemic, and the younger half won’t sit still. After lurching right, the youngest voters are souring on the administration, per a recent Yale poll.

Why it matters: The generation raised on lightning-fast cultural and tech shifts has become a sought-after — and perhaps, predictable — swing group. Politicians and institutions treating them as a monolith risk misreading the country’s young people.

• That partisan split between two distinct sub-generations became evident in 2024, with young men, in particular, swinging rightward.
• The divide runs deeper than the ballot box, shaping the way younger and older members of the generation view institutions, brands and tech, and even how they develop trust.

NC Democrats’ chair Anderson Clayton, 28, was on the Bulwark Focus Group podcast on 3/21. The focus group was Gen Z. The very first audio clip played [timestamp 7:00] was a woman saying, “I’ve never really felt seen by either parties.” That’s what I’ve witnessed in 8 months of weekly rush-hour messaging to commuters: young people want to be “seen” more than “policied” at. They view politics as a red kid and a blue kid fighting in a sandbox over control of the sandbox and think: What has that got to do with my struggles? They don’t feel seen by politicians, so they don’t vote like seniors. Polticians don’t pay them as much attention because they don’t vote like seniors. It’s a vicious cycle.

That’s why YOUR LIFE SHOULDN’T BE THIS HARD draws thank-yous and requests for pictures week after week after month. It’s like instant trust. People feel seen.

Rachel Janfaza, author of “The Up and Up” explains that the Covid pandemic split Gen Z in two:

• Gen Z 1.0 graduated high school before COVID-19 and grew up without TikTok. Black Lives Matter was part of the cultural zeitgeist.
• Gen Z 2.0 graduated after the pandemic, their school years shaped by masking, quarantines and remote learning.

“No other generation in modern history had been through this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic,” Janfaza tells Axios. And, “no other generation has had the core mode of communication and culture shift as quickly as ours.”

What the polling looks like:

By the numbers: In Yale’s spring 2026 youth poll, 52% of voters aged 18–22 favored Democrats on the congressional ballot — a dramatic reversal from a year earlier, when they favored Republicans by nearly 12 points.

• The one exception: men aged 18–22, the sole young demographic that shifted away from Democrats.
• The earlier rightward tilt wasn’t driven by true conservatism, Edelman says, but by “rebellion and also being very frustrated with the status quo.”

Caveat: Yale’s 18–22 subsample skews male, according to the poll’s write-up.

I keep trying to get our people to pay more attention to and adjusting their pitches for younger voters. Almost half of younger registrants are registered independents. If they voted like seniors, they could upend American politics.

But then the Trump administraion is doing a pretty good job of upending politics all by itself.

Absolute disaster for the Republican Party. CNN's Harry Enten confirms the GOP's net approval rating in Congress has completely collapsed, plummeting an astonishing 89 points to negative 56! Even their own voters absolutely despise the chaotic Trump aligned Congress. pic.twitter.com/JanEI7iChw

— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) April 26, 2026

The “stars” did not align

Another memorable night at the White House correspondents’ dinner. This time for gunshots in the lobby rather than cheap shots from the dais.

“Trump and Media Unharmed After Attack; Officials Swarm Suspect’s Home,” reads a headline on The New York Times landing page.

Journalists, media executives, celebrities, Trump administration officials, and others had assembled Saturday evening and taken their seats in the ballroom on the lower level of the Washington Hilton. Donald Trump had entered to “Hail to the Chief” and was situated on the stage. It was his first time attending as president. Waiters were clearing salad plates. A banner over the stage read “Celebrating the first amendment.”

Then, The Washington Post reports, “loud popping sounds” came from the lobby:

“I thought it was a tray going down,” Trump would say later.

For the third time in less than two years, Trump found himself under the threat of gunfire. Hundreds of people — table after table — dove to the floor, reporters huddling next to Trump officials and other dinner guests, some draped by white linen tablecloths, others pressed up against the ballroom’s walls.

“Get down, get down!” someone yelled out.

At the front of the room, Secret Service officers first rushed Vice President JD Vance off the stage, then Trump a few seconds later. Other officials in the line of succession, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, were quickly whisked away, too.

Men in tuxes and women in gowns ducked to the floor. Secret Service and security officers swarmed across the ballroom, some shouting, “Clear a path! Clear a path!” as they hustled officials from the room. Trump et al. retreated to secure locations.

The Times reports:

No one had a hint as to what was going on — except that Mr. Trump had been rushed from the stage, which was now occupied by a pair of security officials brandishing large guns. (Later in the evening, officials said that an armed man had charged a security checkpoint and that a Secret Service officer had been shot.)

Somebody came to celebrate his Second Amendment.

The Nerd Prom got cancelled quicker than Elon Musk shut down USAID. The “in” crowd got shown out. “Chaos and Confusion,” declares Politico’s headline.

Meaning just another day in Trump’s Washington. Trump later used the incident to pitch his proposed ballroom with its bulletproof glass. He’d prepared “the most inappropriate speech ever,” but now he’d have to shelve it.

“I don’t know if I could ever be as rough as I was going to be tonight. I think I’m going to be probably very nice,” Trump said. “I’ll be boring the next time.”

A California man is in custody, reports The Guardian:

The suspect was in custody and being “evaluated” at a local hospital, though he did not appear to have been struck by gunfire. He was identified as Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, the Associated Press reported, citing two law enforcement officials.

Jeffrey Carroll, the DC police chief, said investigators believed the suspect fired a shot and was armed with a shotgun, a handgun and knives. He also said the suspect was believed to have been a guest at the hotel. A motive for the attack had not yet emerged, officials said.

Jeanine Pirro, a US attorney for the District of Columbia, said the defendant was being charged with two counts of felony firearms and assault charges and would be arraigned on Monday. She expected more charges to follow.

Al Jazeera offers this preliminary background on the suspect:

Facebook posts appearing to be linked to Allen indicate he was recognised as “Teacher of the Month” in December 2024 by the Torrance branch of C2 Education, a national private tutoring and test-preparation company for college-bound students.

A LinkedIn profile under the suspect’s name describes him as a “mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth”.

I’ve been to many less opulent “rubber chicken” dinners, and a couple in that ballroom. My neurons fire funny. The Times headline about officials “swarming” the suspect’s home immediately brought to mind chicken “swarm-a.”

Update: Of course, they did. Helluva choir.

MAGA accounts tweet in unison about the need for a White House ballroom following WHCD incident pic.twitter.com/3acgko7qv3

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) April 26, 2026

I remember a decent United States

Some say you can’t legislate morality. Others push back saying that every piece of legislation reflects moral choices. “Budgets are moral documents” is often attributed to Rev. Martin Luther King. Over at Slate, Nicholas Enrich argues that if the U.S. wants to redeem its moral standing after the predations of the Trump era, it must begin with restoring USAID. Lawmakers stood by as Trump and DOGE “killed a congressionally mandated federal agency that had enjoyed broad bipartisan support for more than six decades.” That action left a stain:

The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development has taken a devastating toll, with more than 750,000 lives already lost—most of them children—due to the cuts, and far worse yet to come. The reckless destruction of USAID stands out as one of the most costly decisions of the Trump administration to date. That decision, however, does not have to be a permanent one.

Candidates for president should make it a campaign pledge to rebuild USAID:

This should be an easy promise for anyone seeking office. The case for USAID is both unequivocal and overwhelmingly popular. The agency was one of the best investments across the entire government. On less than 1 percent of the federal budget, USAID saved 92 million lives around the world in the past two decades alone. And it made Americans safer too. The agency helped countries develop early warning systems to ensure that infectious disease outbreaks were rapidly detected and contained before they risked spreading to our borders. It projected American generosity and soft power in ways that built lasting alliances far more efficiently than could ever be achieved militarily.

But USAID didn’t make things go BOOM! Donald Trump like things that go boom.

“USAID worked well. It was dismantled to satisfy the ego of a billionaire at a cost of the suffering of millions,” Enrich writes. “It is not enough to decry the damage done by DOGE’s destruction. USAID can be rebuilt, and it must be.”

The agency’s logo—a handshake over the words From the American People—was a ubiquitous reminder that the U.S. was committed to making the world a healthier and safer place. That is why Congress created USAID as an independent agency in the first place, and now Congress must insist that it be reestablished.

One of my neighbors retired from USAID. Get him to talk about projects he worked on around the world and your pride in America swells. I’d like that feeling back. Wouldn’t you?

On the lack of human decency front, this announcement from the “goes boom” Trump administration that it will reinstate death by firing squad;

“The prior administration failed in its duty to protect the American people by refusing to pursue and carry out the ultimate punishment against the most dangerous criminals, including terrorists, child murderers, and cop killers,” said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.  “Under President Trump’s leadership, the Department of Justice is once again enforcing the law and standing with victims.”

Raw Story collected online response:

“So the government that can’t deliver mail reliably now gets to decide who dies and how?” Political commentator Joe Lowson wrote on X.

“Wealthy men in suits who have never seen up close or engaged in violence now seemingly obsessed by it,” television personality Damon Bennett wrote on X.

“Was anyone anywhere asking for this? The lack of focus on the real issues is frightening,” Peter Hopey, writer and former columnist for the Bleacher report, posted on X.

“Let’s see how this one plays out,” film critic April Wolfe wrote on Bluesky.

“I thought this was an Onion headline at first,” Cristóbal Muñoz, who self-identifies as a Southern California Business owner, wrote on Bluesky.

The death penalty as the “ultimate punishment” has been a talking point on the bloodthirsty right for as long as I can remember. Decades ago, I heard this topic debated on the radio. The right alleges without evidence that we need the the ultimate punishment (death) as a deterrent to vicious crime. But, the Opposed debater asked, what’s so ultimate about the death penalty?

“For every criminal you do not execute, you’re taking an innocent life,” Opposed said, mocking the right’s position. So what if you could demonstrate that a sentence to a life of torture was a better deterrent? Then would the right argue that for every criminal you do not execute, you’re taking an innocent life?

A moral society has limits and adheres to them, Opposed argued. The state should not practice behavior it legally condemns.

Opposed did not foresee the Trump administration.

He’s in. He’s out. He’s in….

A flagging economy isn’t the only thing Donald Trump has trouble propping up. Also, his own eyelids.

Trump is about to hit REM on camera during an Oval Office event. It's just incredible. pic.twitter.com/h0BwcHLURJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 23, 2026

The New Republic:

Our nearly 80-year-old president appears to have nodded off during a meeting, for the umpteenth time. 

President Trump’s eyes grew visibly heavy around the halfway point of his televised announcement of a deal with drug company Regeneron on Thursday afternoon, closing fully and reopening multiple times while suited Cabinet members and pharmaceutical executives stood behind him in the Oval Office. 

This is the same man who keeps calling former President Joe Biden “Sleepy Joe.” 

MAGAs are losing it

Win McCormack at The New Republic contemplates what makes bullies like Donald Trump cave. It may be, he considers, Trump’s saving grace:

My principal concern right now is the midterm elections, and whether our system of democracy will continue to prevail or be seriously compromised or even snuffed out completely by Trump. I didn’t mention above my conviction that Trump is, above all, a destroyer, and his goal, consciously or unconsciously, is to destroy every good aspect of the American project, top to bottom, in every field of endeavor and accomplishment. But I also didn’t mention what I consider his saving grace, though that might not be the right term for it. I refer to the all-important fact that he is, I believe, quintessentially a coward, with a host of fears that run very deep and haunt him. He can be brutal, but only when it is easy and safe to be brutal—when he thinks the field before him is wide open to such behavior.

What concerns me is not just what Trump will do in the days leading up to and after the November election, but how his ride-or-die supporters will react to Dear Leader and MAGA Republicans gettting body-slammed by voters and facing in a Democrat-controlled Congress honest-to-god, rigorous investigations of adminstration perfidy (fingers crossed). They are painfully aware of how bad the economy is. They know his promise to lower prices “starting on Day One” was a fraud. He’s irrational besides, writes McCormack.

The tariff issue, on which The Donald still refuses to acknowledge that tariffs are paid by the receiver of foreign goods rather than the sender, is one example of the actual operation of his befuddled mind.

His supporters are paying the price for it.

For the first time in 16 years, today's Fox News survey has Democrats holding a four-point advantage over Republicans on the economy, @ForecasterEnten reports. pic.twitter.com/7fX5pznuWl

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) April 24, 2026

Trump has betrayed them on keeping America out of foreign wars. The Iran war has driven up the cost of everything. They know it every time they fill up or buy groceries. Any reminder drives some of them ape-shit.

Ten days ago I recounted the reaction of one driver to a roadside message: PLAN NOW FOR YOUR $5/GAL STAYCATION. The driver of a work truck doing about 35 mph, popped open his door and stepped out onto the running board of the vehicle he was driving to scream at Sign Guy. He risked his life, the life of his passenger, and the lives of surrounding motorists in the process. He was that out of control.

Everyone feels like the wheels are coming off the country. So the point of such a message is not to goad MAGAs (a minority here; the county went 61-37 for Kamala Harris in 2024). It is to acknowledge commuters’ struggles, to help them feel seen. But it’s also a Rorschach ink blot that an unbalanced handful perceive as a poke in the eye.

This week features a sign inspired by the cookie aisle at the grocery store (image above): $4 OREOS IN 2024 NOW COST OVER $6. * It’s a product everyone knows, fondly remembers from childhood, and buys for their kids. It’s not an economic abstraction. It’s personal. And in Trump’s economy, it’s become unaffordable. The entire cookie aisle on Sunday was lined with sale stickers. No one’s buying. Guess why.

A driver this week was so incensed at being reminded that $4 OREOS IN 2024 NOW COST OVER $6 that he exited and initiated a physical altercation that ended with the intervention of pedestrians. I asked if he really wanted to explain to a judge that he assaulted a senior citizen over the price of Oreos. But they are that crazy.

It will get worse before it gets better, others have said before me. But if they’re this crazy now, the worse the economy gets for them and for Trump through the summer, and the worse prospects look for Republicans heading into November, they’ll feel even more like cornered animals. Buckle up.

On advice of friends, Sign Guy ordered a body camera.

Update: Photos by Julie Harrison

* One woman threw her hands wide behind her windshield and said (I could read her lips), “I know, right!?”

The come-to-Jesus apology that isn’t

Michelle Goldberg considers the press that Tucker Carlson is getting this week over his admission(?) that he’d “be tormented for a long time by the fact that I played a role in getting Donald Trump elected. And I want to say that I’m sorry for misleading people.”

Carlson went on, speaking to his brother, Buckley: “You and I and everyone else who supported him – you wrote speeches for him, I campaigned for him – I mean, we’re implicated in this for sure,” Carlson said. “It’s not enough to say, ‘Well, I changed my mind’. “

That’s the exchange that drew all the headlines. But the brothers Carlson were not done. They went on to construct a conspiracy theory for explaining where Trump went wrong.

Goldberg writes (gift link):

I’m all for embracing converts to the anti-Trump cause. But if you listen to the dialogue between Tucker and his brother, it’s clear that rather than honestly reckoning with their role in America’s derangement, they’re developing a new conspiracy theory to explain it away.

Trump, they strongly imply, has been compromised — maybe even blackmailed and physically threatened — by Zionist or globalist forces seeking the deliberate destruction of the United States. On Tucker’s podcast, Buckley described a systematic undermining of America through the George Floyd protests, mass migration and now the war with Iran.

“It can’t be a confluence of random events,” Buckley said. “It is clearly by design. It’s clearly been a long-term plan.”

So is his brother Tucker’s career. Trump is on his way out. So Tucker Carlson is putting some daylight between himself and Trump without putting daylight between himself and the MAGA audience that keeps him living the celebrity lifestyle to which he’s become accustomed. Tucker will need them to keep buying what he’s selling in a post-Trump America. Knowing they’ll choose a TV huckster rather than a competent lawmaker, perhaps as some speculate, he even sees an opening to run for president himself. This isn’t Carlson’s come-to-Jesus moment some are celebrating. It’s positioning.

Goldberg lets the hot air out of the Carlsons’ ass-covering, “the Jews made Trump do it” theory. The plain truth is, Goldberg explains, Trump has “never been better than this, and he didn’t need to be manipulated to make everything in America worse.”

Nor did Tucker Carlson, as Jon Stewart pointed out on CNN’s “Crossfire” 20 years ago.

Rolling Stone reminds its readers that Carlson’s performative career has always involved presenting one face to the right wing media-consuming public while keeping his real opinions to himself:

In private text messages to his colleagues at Fox News — which were only revealed after the network was sued for defamation by Dominion Voting Systems — Carlson referred to the president as a “demonic” around the time of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. “I hate him passionately,” Carlson wrote at the time. “I can’t handle much more of this.”

And yet within a year, he was campaigning for Trump’s reelection and floating conspiracy theories that the Jan.6 attack on the capitol was simply the work of “tourists.”

If Carlson had reservations about the president — and we know he did — he pushed them down and did what he swore he would never again do after being burned by the Iraq war. He once again set aside his own concerns, his disdain, and his supposed principles, in service of the right-wing movement du jour. Carlson likely did so believing that even though he despised the president, the ends would justify the means, and he could use his platform and connections to influence outcomes and check the excesses of the man he once called the “single most repulsive person on the planet.”

Carlson’s admission that he had fallen for the charlatan figurehead of this movement should not be mistaken for an act of true contrition. His break with the president comes after years of documented disgust of Trump, and at a moment where a public rebuke of the president comes with no severe political cost. The Iran war is unpopular, Trump’s approval is at a historic low, and his conservative allies are becoming increasingly comfortable breaking with him on an issue-by-issue basis — or entirely.

Before I’ll credit him with conversion, I’ll wait until Tucker Carlson apologizes for being Tucker Carlson.