Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Professor Pape is one of our country’s best experts on air power. https://t.co/8M4SbW20Ch

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) February 22, 2026

Whether he goes or not, this is yet another irresponsible travesty. Trump is either going to war or spending billions and billions of dollars and risking the U.S,. military as a negotiating tool — for no stated reason!

U.S. President Donald Trump is curious as to why Iran has not yet “capitulated” and agreed to curb its nuclear programme, as Washington builds up its military capability in the Middle East, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘frustrated,’ because he understands he has plenty of alternatives, but he’s curious as to why they haven’t… I don’t want to use the word ‘capitulated,’ but why they haven’t capitulated,” Witkoff said during an interview on Saturday with Fox News’ “My View with Lara Trump,” hosted by the president’s daughter-in-law.

How much is this “negotiating tactic” costing? And to what end?

Apparently his unofficial military adviser Lindsey Graham is worried:

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Axios on Saturday that several people around President Trump are advising him not to bomb Iran. Graham urged the president to ignore them….

He has been presented with military options that include killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his son. But his team is also showing some limited flexibility in talks with Iran. A senior official told Axios the U.S. would consider an Iranian proposal that includes some “token” uranium enrichment if it ensures there is no path to a bomb.

Graham, who is close to Trump, is leading the pro-strike camp in Trump’s orbit.Graham visited the Middle East earlier this week and discussed Iran with the leaders of Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

“I understand concerns about major military operations in the Middle East given past entanglements. However, the voices who counsel against getting entangled seem to ignore the consequences of letting evil go unchecked,” Graham told Axios.

They’re really struggling for a rationale for this idiotic gambit. Witkoff now says Iran can make a nuke in a week. And here we thought they’d obliterated the program last year:

US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff told Fox News on Saturday that Iran could theoretically be about a week away from being able to enrich its existing uranium to a weaponized level, though the envoy left out that Iran currently has no access to its material, no machines to enrich it, and no weapons program to use it for any operational purpose.

So we’re back to fighting evil and/or taking out WMD?

All hail the neocons!

Yes, it could be an impersonator. Or even AI.

Except who’s impersonating whom? Have a listen. If this is a Trump impersonator (or AI), he’s got Trump’s inflections, timing, and style down cold. And if it’s not, then the deteriorating Trump has forgotten that everyone knows about “John Barron” and his memory lapses are now worse than we’ve seen before.

🚨 NO WAY 😭

“John Barron” just called @CSPAN to complain about the Supreme Court nuking Trump’s tariffs.

Yes — that John Barron.
The fake name Trump used for decades.

They cut him off mid-call.

💀You cannot make this up. 😂🥴 pic.twitter.com/iOPLRebnYa

— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) February 22, 2026

Of course, the White House will deny it if any reporter still allowed into the Press Room dares ask Karoline Leavitt if the voice on the phone to C-SPAN is her boss.

This clip below is from 2018. It was prompted by a Washington Post column by former Forbes reporter Jonathan Greenberg.

“[Trump] is a consummate con man,” said Greenberg in 2018.

He’s only here to help

ABC News reports a U.S. Navy medical emergency off Greenland:

A U.S. Navy sailor was medically evacuated Saturday afternoon from an American nuclear-powered submarine by Danish military forces, according to a U.S. and Danish official.

The submarine broke from its mission and surfaced about eight miles from Nuuk, Greenland, an extraordinary step for a vessel designed to remain hidden beneath the sea in secrecy.

The sailor was airlifted by a Danish Defense Seahawk helicopter, deployed from the Vædderen, a Danish military patrol ship.

It’s unclear what the nature of the medical emergency was, but it was not combat-related, according to the U.S. official.

The sailor is being treated at a hospital in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital.

Naturally, Peace Prize-hungry Trump rushed to inject himself into the story. He posted to social media, “Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there. It’s on the way!!!”

After Donald Trump’s henchman threatened us with a defamation lawsuit in 2019, Digby assured them “that we believe Donald Trump is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being we have ever known in our lives.” (IYKYK) And here he is proving it in the wake of this medical emergency. What a humanitarian!

On this Sunday morning, let’s not jump to conspiracy theories about the nature of this U.S. Navy medical emergency. Or about how Trump might sense an opportunity to leverage it somehow to “acquire” Greenland for himself. Perhaps he didn’t plan to send a boatload of U.S. “medical personnel” to Greenland on a humanitarian mission.

NBC News reports that Trump issued his disparaging offer of help “moments before hosting a dinner for Republican governors at the White House, where he sat next to and chatted with Landry.” In a “Yes sir. How high?” tweet, Landry expressed his eagerness to work with Trump “on this important issue!” How Landry otherwise figures into Trump’s “hospital boat” tale is unclear beside being named Trump’s special envoy to Greenland in December. Neither man has a hospital ship in his back pocket just now.

It is simply more Trump bluster. Maritime news website gCaptain reports that USNS Mercy, the ship in the image Trump attached to his “truth” is currently out of service:

As of late January, the 1,000-bed hospital ship was firmly in drydock at Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, where it has been undergoing scheduled maintenance since July 2025.

The USNS Mercy, commissioned in 1986, departed San Diego last July for a one-year scheduled maintenance period at Alabama Shipyard under an $18.7 million firm-fixed-price contract for a 153-calendar day mid-term availability, including drydocking. The contract, awarded in June 2025, marked the Mercy’s first visit to Mobile.

AIS data currently shows both U.S. Navy hospital ships—the USNS Mercy and her sister ship USNS Comfort—moored at the Mobile shipyard. Alabama Shipyard announced on January 23 that the arrival of USNS Comfort marked “the first time in 30 years” that the two hospital ships have been alongside one another, calling it “a historic moment.”

Photos from late January showed the USNS Mercy still in drydock at that time.

The USNS Comfort arrived at Mobile in late January and is scheduled to undergo maintenance through late April.

 

 

View on Threads

 

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen graciously told Trump thanks but no thanks to his offer in an early Sunday Facebook post:

Am happy to live in a country where there is free and equal access to health for all. Where it’s not insurances and wealth that determine whether you get proper treatment. You have the same approach in Greenland. Happy Sunday to you all

The world is still laughing at you, Donald.

“I just follow the script. One scene to the next scene […] You talk, I listen, that’s the beginning and end of it right now.” – Robert Duvall

I am not a religious person, by any stretch of the imagination. That said, there is one particular scene in the 1997 indie drama The Apostle that has haunted me for nearly 30 years now. Written, directed, and starring Robert Duvall, the film is a brooding character study/neo noir about a truculent Pentecostal preacher who gets into trouble with the law, goes on the lam, and assumes a new identity. The scene of note (the film’s opener) ensues after Duvall’s character happens to drive by a (possibly fatal) single car accident involving a young couple:

Again, I wouldn’t know a church pew if it hit me on the ass, but I’ll be damned if that scene doesn’t make me believe that there reallyis Somebody Up There…at least for a moment or two. That’s when my logical half takes over, and I remind myself that it isn’t the power of Christ that compels me to burst into tears every time I watch the scene; rather, it’s the power of great acting. Duvall’s performance earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor; he didn’t win, but The Apostle did earn an Independent Spirit Award for Best Film of 1997.

When the news broke about Duvall’s passing this week at age 95, that was the scene that immediately replayed in my head. And God (or whoever) knows, there are any number of classic Duvall scenes that could replay in a film buff’s head, with little prompting. For example, this one is embedded so deeply in my neurons that I can practically smell it:

“You either surf…or fight!” is analogous to Duvall’s approach to his craft; you make a choice, and you commit to it. I hesitate to call it his “method”, because he was not an alum of the Lee Strasberg “method” school of acting. As indicated by the quote at the top of my piece, he would simply “follow the script”, and rest would take care of itself. Of course, that is easier said than done; it still takes discipline and practice, practice, practice to effortlessly “play yourself”. Duvall elaborates on his approach, in this clip from a 2021 interview with Stephen Colbert:

The gist:

“You’ve got to keep it within your temperament, your sense of…anger, your vulnerability; it’s got to be your temperament without stepping out of that, and then it becomes more like acting but you try to keep it from you…interpreted a certain way. […] It’s still ‘you’ doing it within your set of emotions or your psyche or whatever you want to call it…without overacting, you’ve got to be in touch with your temperament.”

Get it? Got it? Good.

I concur with Colbert that Duvall’s performance in Sidney Lumet’s 1976 satire Network is one of his finest. Which is saying a lot, as his resume contains an embarrassment of riches, not the least of which is his performance in Frances Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972):

The Godfather wasn’t Duvall’s first Coppola film; he had previously appeared in the 1969 drama The Rain People (alongside his future Godfather co-star James Caan), and subsequently appeared inThe Godfather, pt. II and The Conversation (both released 1974) Duvall was conspicuously absent in The Godfather, pt. III. He explains in this clip:

Pragmatist.

I know this is a trite phrase, but he truly was one of the greats. Robert Duvall put his heart and soul into every performance, even when he had relatively short screen time…one scene to the next. In addition to the films I’ve already mentioned, here are more recommendations:

To Kill a Mockingbird

True Grit

M*A*S*H

THX 1138 (my review)

The Outfit

The Killer Elite (1975)

The Seven Percent Solution (my review)

The Great Santini

True Confessions

Tender Mercies

The Stone Boy

The Natural

Belizaire the Cajun

Colors

The Handmaid’s Tale

Rambling Rose

Falling Down

Sling Blade

Assassination Tango

Crazy Heart (my review)

The Road (my review)

Previous posts with related themes:

10 Great American Satires

Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut (Blu-ray reissue review)

It is Happening Again

One More Thing...

Kleenex on standby:

More reviews at Den of Cinema

— Dennis Hartley

This sounds like it’s going to be worse than usual:

“The ultimate goal for the president will be to change the conversation. He’s going to try to, yes, fire up Republican voters — especially low-propensity voters. But he’s going to want to break through Democrats’ echo chamber,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell, who expects a lengthy address. “And when else before Election Day are you going to have that many eyeballs tuning in?

“He’s going to bring all the receipts on economy and affordability. He’s going to hit hard on gas prices, and having stabilized Joe Biden’s inflation crisis and on crime — with a murder rate that’s the lowest in 100 years,” O’Connell added during a Thursday telephone interview.

“I think you’re going to hear about the SAVE Act,” O’Connell said, referring to a voter ID bill. “But there will be a lot about aspects of affordability we don’t focus on a lot: housing, drug prices. And banning stock trading by Congress — that pisses everyone off.” […]

It looks like it will be more happy talk:

Trump’s message on affordability during a stop in northwest Georgia on Thursday was that Democrats’ focus on affordability was a “con job.”

“Airfares, hotels, car payments, rent, sports events, groceries, everything’s down, everything’s down, dairy, eggs, potatoes and chicken. Core inflation is now the lowest of any time in more than seven years,” Trump said during a Thursday campaign stop in Rome, Ga. “The last three months, we’ve had the lowest inflation we have had in over a decade, the last three months, it’s 1.4 percent. We had record inflation. You don’t have it anymore. I’m going to make a State of the Union address on Tuesday. I hope you’re going to watch, and we’re going to be talking about it.” 

Great. I’m sure that’s going to be music to Americans’ ears. They love being told that they’re delusional.

Lot’s of Democrats are skipping the speech to participate in alternate events. Maybe I’ll do that too.

It’s hard to believe this is real but apparently it is:

Trump administration officials have struggled to figure out how to increase U.S. military spending by a whopping $500 billion in their forthcoming budget, slowing the overall White House spending plan, four people familiar with the matter said.

President Donald Trump last month agreed to a roughly 50 percent funding boost sought by Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, in the White House’s annual budget proposal. The idea ran into internal criticism from several other officials, including White House budget chief Russell Vought, who warned about its potential impact on the widening federal deficit, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal deliberations.

Since Trump agreed to the higher number, White House aides and defense officials have run into logistical challenges surrounding where to put the money, because the amount is so large, the people said. The White House is more than two weeks behind its statutory deadline to send its budget proposal to Congress, in part because it is unclear how precisely to spend the additional $500 billion, according to the people familiar with the matter

They literally don’t know what to spend it all on. That’s how Looney this is.

I suspect they’ll end up spending it on useless military operations such as the one we’re embarking on in Iran which will end up costing billions even if no shots are ever fired. Trump won’t have his tariffs to throw around quite a freely so he’s just going to start threatening to invade any country that doesn’t do his bidding. That’s expensive.

It doesn’t matter to Trump because he’ll just lie and say growth is at 507% and inflation is negative a thousand and the country has never been richer. I do wonder how Russell Vought is explaining this. I suppose in his mind it’s all good because Trumpian chaos around the world brings us closer to Armageddon which he, as a hard core right wing Christian, sees as his ultimate goal.

If you think it’s a bit much for all these alleged deficit hawks to be going along with, it really isn’t. They were always phonies when it comes to the deficit, running up the tab whenever they’re in power — almost always led by massive military spending — and then wringing their hands over the debt when Democrats take over and try to do something for the people. This is a rather extreme version but really nothing new.

Between Trump’s police state and the military they are spending massive amounts of money. This is a grift to be sure. It’s also the hallmark of a police state.

“Her father is a refugee, and she's achieving glory with the American flag… [And] these people are trying to deport, detain, and deny the next Alysa Liu right now.”

Tim Miller reacts to MAGA celebrating Liu’s Olympic win while backing policies that target refugees. pic.twitter.com/G9pClDoEYy

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) February 21, 2026

Like so many others whom the racists hate and want to ethnically cleanse, Alyssa Liu is an American through and through. Even, I would say, more American than they are. She’s the one who truly pulled herself up by her skate-laces, her refugee family coming here with nothing, and rising to the top of elite athletics to win the gold medal at the Olympics.

That is the American dream and it makes me prouder to be an American than I’ve felt in some time.

If you do, be prepared to be treated like a criminal

The Guardian with a harrowing tale of a British retiree held in detention by ICE for 45 days:

When Karen Newton left home in late July 2025, she knew that international travellers were being locked up in immigration detention centres in the US. “I was aware,” she nods. “But I never thought it would have any impact on my holiday.” Karen, 65, had a British passport and a tourist visa. She hadn’t been abroad for eight years, and was keen for some guaranteed sun. “I really just wanted to get away from the house.”

She and her husband, Bill, 66, had an ambitious itinerary that would take them through California, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana and then on to Canada over two months. Las Vegas wasn’t to Karen’s taste: “Way too commercialised.” She much preferred Yellowstone, where they saw Old Faithful, the famous geyser, as it shot boiling water into the air, and got up close with some extraordinary wildlife. “There was a bison right next to the car. Another time, a wolf walked past.” Her eyes sparkle at the memory. “It was just amazing.”

The dream holiday ended abruptly on Friday 26 September, as Karen and Bill were trying to leave the US. When they crossed the border, Canadian officials told them they didn’t have the correct paperwork to bring the car with them. They were turned back to Montana on the American side – and to US border control officials. Bill’s US visa had expired; Karen’s had not.

“I worried then,” she says. “I was worried for him. I thought, well, at least I am here to support him.”

She didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of an ordeal that would see Karen handcuffed, shackled and sleeping on the floor of a locked cell, before being driven for 12 hours through the night to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre. Karen was incarcerated for a total of six weeks – even though she had been travelling with a valid visa.

Karen has no criminal record. She is a grandmother who spent eight years working as an admin assistant at a primary school before her retirement. “I don’t even have parking tickets in the background anywhere,” she says. “I am not a dangerous criminal. I didn’t enter the country illegally and I had everything I needed to be there.”

So why did ICE detain her, and keep her locked up for so long? A possible answer began to emerge over the weeks she was incarcerated. As Karen got to know the guards at the Northwest ICE Processing Center where she was held, she kept hearing the same thing from them: that ICE officers are paid a bonus every time they detain someone. “Individual ICE agents get money per head that they detain – the guards told me that,” Karen says.

This is not the first time I’ve heard this. Many of the tourists who’ve been held have said the same and they’ve been told that it’s because there is money being made by detaining them. We know for a fact that Stephen Miller has instituted quotas and there’s no doubt that the private prisons are being paid by the numbers. So of course they’re just shuffling bodies for profit.

This woman’s story is terrifying. She was held literally for no reason and kept there for 42 days. She didn’t know what to do — she isn’t a criminal or an American familiar with the legal system. The other people mentioned in the article have similar stories. One of them says:

“Don’t go – not with Trump in charge. It’s totally out of control over there. There’s no accountability. They don’t seem to need a reason for detaining you.”

But this year is set to be a big one for international travel to the US. As one of the hosts of the 2026 Fifa World Cup, the country is expecting to see tourists from across the globe. “I worry about young people going out there for the World Cup – I really do. I imagine a group of young guys getting drunk at a game, getting arrested. I could see them easily ending up in the same place as I did. They’d find some reason to detain them. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.”

I know most of us are just going about our lives, doing what we normally do, watching this from afar. But that doesn’t change the fact that we are living in a police state. I wish I felt confident that there will be some accountability for this atrocity down the road but it all depends on how far gone we really are and I just don’t know. Sometimes you can’t tell while you’re living through it.

So what if the Court said that the Constitution gives the power to Congress? He’s going to find whatever work-arounds he needs to keep doing it himself.

Meanwhile, his tariff scheme is a dismal failure and will continue to be one as he attempts to use it as a weapon and political took for his own, obscure purposes. Daniel Dale at CNN:

Two new pieces of economic data, one released Thursday and one released Friday, blew another hole in President Donald Trump’s triumphant narrative about the effects of his tariffs.

The figures released early Thursday showed Trump had wildly overstated the impact of the tariffs on the trade deficit. The figures released early Friday showed he also had wildly exaggerated economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2025.

[…]

Trump has for years highlighted the trade deficit – the difference between the value of US imports and exports – as a supposed example of how the US is being “ripped off” by other countries. (Many economists disagree with his characterization.) On Wednesday evening, he posted a celebratory message on social media.

“THE UNITED STATES TRADE DEFICIT HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 78% BECAUSE OF THE TARIFFS BEING CHARGED TO OTHER COMPANIES AND COUNTRIES,” the all-caps post began.

The next morning, though, the Bureau of Economic Analysis revealed the actual 2025 trade deficit in goods and services. It was nearly identical to the 2024 deficit, down just 0.2% — nowhere close to Trump’s professed “78%” decline. And the trade deficit in goods, the items subject to Trump’s sweeping global tariffs, was up 2.1% compared to 2024.

Th 78% number was for an anomaly for the one month of October, the result of some dramatic fluctuations in gold and pharmaceuticals. It’s a meaningless statistic. I would hope that businesses and Wall St. understand by now that his numbers are fantasies. And needless to say, the tariffs are not paid by foreign countries. They are paid by American companies and consumers.

5. A visual look at analyses of the impact of tariffs.

— How To Read This Chart (@howtoreadthisch.art) 2026-02-17T16:04:10.649Z

Economic growth?

Trump told the World Economic Forum in late January that “fourth-quarter growth is projected to be 5.4%, far greater than anybody other than myself and a few others had predicted.” He specified in a Cabinet meeting and a Wall Street Journal op-ed later in January that he was referring to a projection for the fourth quarter of 2025 from a model run by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Then, in an early-February interview with NBC, he made it sound like 5.6% growth had already been achieved, saying, “I’m very proud of it: 5.6%. You know, we have a GDP of 5.6 despite a shutdown.”

By the time of the op-ed, the Cabinet meeting and the interview, though, the Atlanta Fed’s model was down to a projection of 4.2% fourth-quarter 2025 growth. Various other forecasts were even lower than that. And contrary to Trump’s comment to NBC, forecasts aren’t reality.

The figures released Friday show just how far from reality his “5.6%” claim was. The economy actually grew at an annualized rate of just 1.4% in the fourth quarter of 2025, much slower than the 4.4% growth in the third quarter of 2025.

Aaaand:

The US economy grew at just 2.2% in 2025, new full-year figures showed — lower than in every year of the Biden administration and every year of the first Trump administration other than 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

The economy was on the rebound when Biden was in office. Trump made it worse. That’s the bottom line. And he plans to continue doing so.

“All of these things I know so well.”

I kept rewatching Donald Trump read from Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent yesterday in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, 607 U.S. _ (2026) for the laughs. We witnessed Trump in real time attempt to spin a crushing defeat into a stunning victory.

"We have learned what happened in the room when Trump found out about the SCOTUS tariff ruling. He became enraged, called the ruling a 'disgrace, these effing (actual expletive deleted) courts.' This could not be a bigger loss for him." pic.twitter.com/zofHKx9zi0

— Lesley Abravanel 🪩 (@lesleyabravanel) February 20, 2026

Trump — who is very good at reading language (just ask him) — quoted Kavanaugh (in italics):

Our country is the hottest country anywhere in the world right now. And it was a dead country one and a half years ago under an incompetent president. Now I’m going to go in a different direction. Probably the direction I should have gone the first time. But I read the language. I’m very good at reading langauge. And it went our way 100 percent. And now I will go the direction should have gone originally, which is even stronger than our original choice.

As Justice Kavanugh — his stock has gone so up, you have to see, I’m so proud of him — he wrote in his dissent,

Although I firmly disagree with the Court’s holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward.…

So, think of that.

the decision might not substantially constrain….

And it doesn’t. He is right. In fact, I could charge much more than I was charging.

Although I firmly disagree with the Court’s holding today, the decision might not substantially constrain a President’s ability to order tariffs going forward. That is because numerous other federal statutes….

Which is so true.

authorize the President to impose tariffs and might justify most (if not all) of the tariffs issued in this case ….

Even more tariffs, actually.

Those statutes include….

Think of that.

Those statutes include, for example, the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (Section 232)

All of these things I know so well.

[Pause for riotous laughter.]

This idiot perpetually sounds like a kid trying to bluff his way through an oral report on a book he didn’t read.