Trump: We have a border, strong, and we have a shape. And that shape doesn't just go straight up. That shape is amorphous when it comes to the atmosphere. pic.twitter.com/MbuBqvCU1N
Hannity on escalator/teleprompter: The president was undeterred by the setbacks and proceeded to deliver what I actually believe was the best speech on the world stage I've ever seen him give. It was deep, it was impactful, it was profound pic.twitter.com/wdtQgqBf4Y
In a Truth Social post published an hour before [Jimmy Kimmel Live!] returned to air Tuesday, Trump decried ABC’s decision to reverse its cancellation, accusing the network of being too favorable to his political opponents, and threatened to again go “after them.”
Kimmel quipped, “That backfired bigly. He might have to release the Epstein files to distract us from this now.”
“I can’t believe ABC Fake News gave Jimmy Kimmel his job back. The White House was told by ABC that his Show was cancelled!” the president wrote, later adding, “Why would they want someone back who does so poorly, who’s not funny, and who puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE. He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution.
“I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do. Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 Million Dollars. This one sounds even more lucrative,” he continued, referring to a $15 million settlement ABC News paid to Trump’s presidential library last year to settle a defamation suit.
Has ABC learned its $15 million lesson? TBD.
When will some judge fine Trump and/or sanction his lawyers for filing frivolouslawsuits to harass his critics? His behavior is intolerable yet courts continue to tolerate it.
Robert McCoy observes, “In 136 words, the president blew all MAGA rationalizations out of the water: Trump just wants to punish media figures he deems guilty of lèse-majesté against him.”
“A government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American.”
“This show is not important: What is important is that we get to live in a country that allows us to have a show like this,” Jimmy Kimmel told his audience Tuesday night. Under a flood of public pressure, ABC put his show back into production after suspending it last Wednesday night over conservative reaction to comments related to the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
“It was never my intention to make light of the murder of a young man,” Kimmel said, tearing up, but admitting that he was unlikely to change any critics’ minds.
“I don’t think there’s anything funny about it,” he asserted. “I posted a message on Instagram on the day he was killed, sending love to his family and asking for compassion, and I meant it. And I still do. Nor was it my intention to blame any specific group for the actions. It was a deeply disturbed individual. That was really the opposite of the point I was trying to make, but to some, that felt ill-timed or unclear or maybe both, and for those who think I did point a finger, I get why you’re upset. If the situation was reversed, there’s a good chance I would have felt the same way. I have many friends and family members on the other side who I love and remain close to, even though we don’t agree on politics at all. I don’t think the murderer who shot Charlie Kirk represents anyone; this was a sick person who believed violence was a solution, and it isn’t.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened last week to have Kimmel suspended “the easy way or the hard way.” His comments pushed ABC executives into a hasty decision to take Kimmel’s show off the air, alarming free-speech supporters across the political landscape.
But in rising up to defend free speech, the public and the press paid too little attention to the fact that the Donald Trump administration had once again flouted the law. And a unanimous Supreme Court ruling from May 2024:
The case — National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo — has striking similarities to the current debate.
The National Rifle Association had sued the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) alleging its superintendent, Maria Vullo, had violated the First Amendment by coercing DFS-regulated insurance companies and banks from doing business with the NRA in a bid to punish or suppress the group’s gun rights advocacy.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the court, said: “Six decades ago, this Court held that a government entity’s “threat of invoking legal sanctions and other means of coercion” against a third party “to achieve the suppression” of disfavored speech violates the First Amendment. Today, the Court reaffirms what it said then: Government officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.
As we see in the NRA case, suppression of free speech cuts both ways. Except the Trump administration makes plain again that it only deigns to obey only the laws it wants to.
Kimmel told his audience:
“[Freedom of speech is] something I’m embarrassed to say I took for granted until they pulled my friend Stephen [Colbert] off the air and tried to coerce the affiliates who run our show in the cities that you live in to take my show off the air,” he said. “That’s not legal, that’s not American. That is un-American. And it’s so dangerous.”
Kimmel might be back, but the autocrats never went away. Kimmel noted that the Pentagon just implemented a policy for reporters that they will need Chinese- and Russian-style “minders” to access parts of the building open to them under previous administrations. Plus, reporters will need “to sign a pledge not to obtain or use unauthorized material.”
One thing he learned from Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and Howard Stern, Kimmel said, “is that a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American.”
But I want to replay Kimmel’s slam last week against Trump regarding his “grieving” over Charlie Kirk.
Trump’s comments last week recall another president’s deep concerns expressed after a tragic event.
– Egypt–Ethiopia dispute was over an Ethiopian dam (there was no raging war with thousands killed) – There is no Serbia–Kosovo active war to stop – Congo–Rwanda is not resolved and hostilities continue – India denies Trump mediated… pic.twitter.com/240FvYduxu
Egypt–Ethiopia dispute was over an Ethiopian dam (there was no raging war with thousands killed) – There is no Serbia–Kosovo active war to stop – Congo–Rwanda is not resolved and hostilities continue – India denies Trump mediated any ceasefire – Inflation is not defeated and rising, 2.9% from 2.7% – Grocery prices are up due to tariffs – US electricity costs are up 6.2% year-over-year – There is no $17 trillion in US investment. His own press secretary cited ~$9 trillion (and even that is dubious) – China is the world leader in wind power usage
I would just add that no, Trump is not “good at this” and he has certainly not been “right about everything” which he also said. Also the Brits are not adopting sharia law and … oh, god. It was just all bullshit, every word.
“We’re not spending any money on the war. You know, we’re being paid for everything we send, unlike Biden. He gave them $350 billion and it was just shocking. We’re not spending any money on the war. The war is being funded by NATO. NATO is buying our equipment.
In fact, we’re making … I don’t want to make money on the war. I don’t want to . But we are actually making money on that war because they’re buying our equipment.”
He’s very frustrated that he can’t brag about American weapons makers making huge profits from the suckers in Europe who are now completely funding the war.
By the way, the last I heard, the US is part of NATO. Also “NATO” doesn’t have a wallet or a bank account from which they’re paying for these weapons. Individual countries — our allies — are footing the bill. Trump is very proud that he isn’t contributing and even prouder that “we’re” making money off of Ukraine’s fear and suffering.
That’s not accountability, Karoline. That’s revenge. “Accountability” would be to either defeat them at the ballot box or charge them for malicious prosecution or something along those lines. Having your henchmen go out and find something to charge them with so you can punish them is just tin-pot dictator garbage.
They just say this stuff out loud now and nobody really calls them on it. “Yeah, Trump’s a tyrant! What else is new?”
The Financial Times’ Edward Luce runs down the litany of Trump’s crimes (so far) with startling clarity and then he asks a question that I think we all need to take seriously:
That his economic ratings are in freefall should be a source of alarm not complacency. Less than a year after Trump was elected, the separation of powers is not working. Congress is irrelevant. The Supreme Court is quiescent. The media is punch drunk. Democrats are fragmented. Independent federal agencies are losing autonomy. The markets are high on the AI gold rush, crypto deregulation and the prospect of a return to easy money. Stephen Miller, Trump’s most influential domestic adviser — prime minister to Trump’s king — calls the Democratic party a domestic extremist organisation and wants to suspend America’s constitutional habeas corpus right to due process. He is a true American autocrat.
It has been widely observed that the speed of America’s democratic slide surpasses that of other “elective autocracies” such as Narendra Modi’s India and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey. But that understates Trump’s impatience. Others have shifted to authoritarianism with relatively fast-growing economies, which makes it easier to sustain public support. Trump’s trade war and his “big beautiful [budget] bill” will rob most Americans of income growth. The idea that the disaffected middle will therefore clip Trump’s wings in next year’s midterm elections is quixotic.
Having silenced most institutional dissent within his first nine months, what could Trump accomplish in the next 14?
This isn’t a rhetorical question and I think we need to start thinking about it. Their shock and awe has succeeded beyond their wildest expectations and the entire society from top to bottom is stunned. (His observations about why the financial markets continue to just carry on is important too.)
What have they got left?
Well, it seems that Trump is now fully engaged on vengeance and domination. He and Miller believe they are untouchable and they aren’t trying to hide it. Trump is bent on revenge against his personal enemies. Miller is seriously committed to completely destroying all political opposition. The establishment Republicans are fine with that and the Supreme Court seems poised to let them do it. And then there’s the fact that Trump seems to be provoking the world into some kind of war. I think we know what that looks like.
This isn’t hysteria or doom saying. Nothing says that this has to happen. There are any number of scenarios that could thwart it. But it could. They have already made much, much more progress than we could ever have dreamed possible.
Until very recently the consensus among historians and political observers was that President Richard M. Nixon was the most corrupt president in American history. There were other scandals, of course, many of them quite serious. But none of them featured the same crude, gangster quality of the Watergate scandal, the details of which shocked and appalled the American people when they were uncovered. The public learned that the president of the United States acted like a common thug in private, issuing orders to his enforcers in language closer to that used by the mobsters featured in the recent hit movie “The Godfather” than the dignified leader of the free world.
He was an amateur compared to Donald Trump.
Everyone knew that Nixon was a sour type, who liked to whine that he had always been treated unfairly but people obviously overlooked that personality flaw. He had, after all, just won one of the biggest landslide victories in electoral history and had more or less succeeded in ending America’s involvement in the Vietnam war, the most important issue of the time. Nixon, however, was consumed with resentment at his perceived enemies about whom he nurtured a long list of grievances. He was obsessed with punishing them and perceived the presidency as his vehicle for doing so.
In June of 1973, John Dean, the former White House Counsel, testified before the Senate Watergate Committee for a solid week. And he revealed the existence of a formal Enemies List, that included reporters, actors, business leaders, political rivals, Democratic donors and more. which he had compiled for the president the purpose of which was explicitly “to use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”
He saw no limits on presidential power. He wiretapped reporters, weaponized the IRS and infiltrated groups like the student movement and the Black Panthers. At one point he’d even wiretapped his own National Security Council to find leakers and as everyone later learned he had even formed a secret group called “the Plumbers” that was tasked to do criminal wet work like burglaries, members of which were among those caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate setting in motion his eventual downfall.
Much as President Trump was stopped by the proverbial “guardrails” in his first term, Nixon was thwarted in some of his worst nefarious plans by career bureaucrats and members of his administration who refused to follow through on his orders. Attorney General Elliott Richardson along with his deputy William Ruckelshaus ended up resigning when Nixon ordered them to fire the Special Prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who was investigating the Watergate cover-up. In another pivotal moment it had been revealed in testimony that Nixon had been taping his conversations and Cox demanded that Nixon turn them over. The president eventually found someone who would fire him, but the die was cast.
Another Nixon administration scandal had unfolded during this period that would have been huge if it weren’t for the fact that the president was enmeshed in an even bigger one. The Vice President, Spiro Agnew, had been found to have been taking bribes for government contracts in the form of envelopes full of cash as Vice President of the United States. He was forced to resign and was let off with a minor fine despite the fact that such clear cut criminal behavior would have cost anyone else jail time.
The corruption and abuse of power was overwhelming. Nixon had started out his second term with an impressive electoral mandate and a 68% approval rating. But as the scandal deepened and at each of those pivot points it sank dramatically, dropping all the way to 24% on the day he left office. The American people were shocked by Nixon and his accomplices’ behavior and they wanted him out.
This is an old familiar story but it’s worth looking at it again as we contemplate a couple of events that unfolded over the weekend. We all know the litany of President Trump’s abuse of power in this second term, much of which is still being litigated. It is pervasive across virtually every aspect of American society at this point and even more blatant than Nixon’s who at least had the good graces to try to keep it under wraps.
On Saturday Trump published a very odd post on Truth Social. It was addressed specifically to “Pam”, as if it was meant to be a text or a direct message to Attorney General Pam Bondi that he had mistakenly posted publicly. (He’s done that before.) His own staff wasn’t sure if he had meant it to be published. It was quickly deleted and then promptly reposted, likely because they realized it had already been distributed all over the internet because it was essentially an order to get cracking on prosecuting the enemies on his list. “They’re all guilty as hell but nothing is going to be done,” he proclaimed.
He complained about the Virginia US Attorney who said he couldn’t find the evidence to get a conviction against Trump’s arch enemy NY York Attorney General Letitia James, declaring “There is a GREAT CASE,” and “I fired him, he didn’t quit.” His intentions could be clearer:
“We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility, they impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT.”
Nixon may have been paranoid but at least he didn’t sound like a petulant teenager.
Also on Saturday MSNBC’s Carol Leonig and Ken Dilanian reported that “Deportation Czar” Tom Homan was caught red handed by FBI agents accepting a paper bag filled with a $50,000 cash bribe in exchange for contracts, exactly the same crime that sent Spiro Agnew packing. They even have it on tape. But instead of prosecuting him or even forcing him to resign, Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel dropped the case and Homan is evidently completely secure in his job.
When people heard about Nixon’s crimes the Republicans in Congress abandoned him and the courts ruled against him. He was forced to resign. But Trump went farther than Nixon ever contemplated when he incited an insurrection to overturn the election he lost in 2020, and he was rewarded with a triumphant return to the White House four years later. Now he’s literally committing the same crimes and his people are gladly carrying them out with the full support of his party.
One of the big questions has always been whether President Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon did more harm than good. Its seems clear today that it did. It opened the door to what was possible if only you could maintain partisan political support in the Congress and had a compliant media. Today we know that despite the efforts of some reformers in the Congress to rein in future presidents after Watergate they relied on good faith adherence to norms and rules and it clearly wasn’t enough. That open door was just waiting for someone like Donald Trump to walk through it and this time it’s just business as usual.
Trump: I ended seven wars and never even received a phone call from the UN…All I got from the UN was an escalator that on the way up stopped right in the middle and a teleprompter that didn’t work. Thank you very much. 🤡 pic.twitter.com/oJaZEE4igb
Trump: The United States is now thriving like never before. We're getting rid of the falsely named renewables. They are a joke. They don't work. The wind doesn't blow. Windmills are so pathetic and so bad.
Trump: "I'm really good at predicting things. During the campaign they had a hat — a best-selling hat — 'Trump was right about everything.' And I don't say that in a braggadocios way, but it's true. I've been right about everything." pic.twitter.com/yfpPaLcOpU
lmao — Harris Faulkner wasted no time trying to shine orange turds immediately after Trump's speech, claiming he "unfurled raw truth to countries in attendance there and to the rest of the world" pic.twitter.com/JDnUT4Z4C1
Meanwhile, Trump refuses to negotiate to keep the government open:
I’m sorry. Until we get transgender for everyone there’s simply nothing to talk about.
He’s fine folks. Nothing to worry about just because this person has lost his mind and has control of the world’s most powerful military. It’s all good.
