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A Soulless Piece Of Work

Published by digby on March 25, 2026

William Saletan at the Bulwark runs down all the grotesque statements Trump has made when one of his perceived enemies dies and it’s a doozy. There are some I’d forgotten about like this:

In 2020, Congressman John Lewis, a hero of the civil rights movement, died of cancer at 80. Trump groused that Lewis had slighted him (“He didn’t come to my inauguration. He didn’t come to my State of the Union speeches”), and he refused to say whether Lewis’s life had been impressive (“I can’t say one way or the other. I find a lot of people impressive. I find many people not impressive”). Instead, Trump boasted, “Nobody has done more for black Americans than I have.”

I was also reminded of this from Miles Taylor, the former DHS Chief of Staff:

[W]e flew on a trip to Australia, to meet with our “five eyes” intelligence community partners, and while we were there, in the middle of the night, I get a phone call from the White House. DHS just had the flag lowered around the country in honor of the late senator John McCain, which was right and appropriate, and no one thought anything of it. I was awoken in the night by the White House and our military aide frantically trying to get in touch with me and with the secretary to say the president is furious that the flags are lowered for John McCain and he wants you guys to order them raised back up.

They finally talked him out of it but it took hours.

So, so typical. I can’t even imagine what he’ll do if Clinton or Biden die while he’s in office.

As Saletan says:

THIS IS NOT THE BEHAVIOR of a normal human being. And Republicans, in accepting this behavior, have ceased to be a normal party.

He provides a lot of evidence but this one really gets me:

This past Sunday on Meet the Press, Kristen Welker pressed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about Trump’s gloating over Mueller’s corpse. “Do you think it’s appropriate,” she asked, “for the president of the United States to celebrate the death of an American citizen, someone who’s a Bronze Star, Purple Heart recipient and who served in Vietnam?”

Bessent defended Trump:

I was with the president in the green room at Davos, and there was a video playing of what may have been an illegal raid on his home at Mar-a-Lago. They are going through his wife’s wardrobe. And I watched the look in his eye. And I think that neither one of us can understand what has been done to the president and to his family.

Bessent was lying. The FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago was authorized by a court, and it uncovered evidence that Trump had grossly violated laws on retaining classified documents. Furthermore, as Welker reminded Bessent, “Robert Mueller didn’t order that raid.” The search took place in 2022, three years after Mueller’s time as special counsel had ended.

“Is it appropriate for the president to celebrate the death of any American citizen?” Welker then asked. Bessent repeated that Trump was the victim. “Given what has been done to President Trump and his family, it is impossible for either of us to understand what he has been through,” he insisted. “I think that we should all have a little empathy for what has been done to him and his family.”

The whining from all of them is deafening. Poor, poor Donald Trump. He constantly breaks the law, acts like an animal and treats over half the country and most of the world like they are his vassals and then when he’s taken to task for being the grotesque monster he is, he and his minions have a good old fashioned cry.

To borrow a MAGA phrase: fuck their feelings. They’ve inlflicted this chaotic catastrophe on us for over a decade now and it’s enough.

The Consent Of The Governed

Published by digby on March 25, 2026

William Galston writes in the Wall St. Journal:

“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything,” Abraham Lincoln declared. “With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed.”

Faced with negative public reaction to his latest attack on Iran, Donald Trump said, “I don’t care about polling. I have to do the right thing.”

Mr. Trump’s position sounds nobler. But America’s greatest president was making a deeper point: In a country whose government derives its legitimacy from the people, public support is necessary for success.

Lincoln didn’t mean that leaders must always consult the people before acting. As president, he didn’t when he suspended the writ of habeas corpus early in the Civil War. (He did submit his decision to the judgment of the people’s representatives once Congress convened in July 1861.)

Nor did he mean that the public must support the president’s decision at the moment it is made. Rather, he said, leaders in a republic must seek to “mold” public sentiment—to convince an often skeptical populace that a controversial course of action is justified. Persuasion, he rightly believed, isn’t an ornament but the heart of republican leadership.

Trump only cares about his base and I think he’s caring about them less and less. He’s playing for history now — it’s all about being remembered as the greatest president who ever lived. I suspect in the end he almost prefers it that most people hate him because he thinks he’ll be proven right in the long run and everyone in the future will hail him for his courage and genius for “doing the right thing.”

He will go to his grave believing that and since there seems to be no accountability for him in this life, he’ll die a happy man.

I know that’s dark but look at it this way. If that’s true it means we’ll have survived this.

The Trump Whisperer Is A Fan

Published by digby on March 25, 2026

I have always wondered if the NATO “Trump whisperer” Mark Rutte was actually just playing him as everyone assumed or if he was a true believer. He certainly seemed sincere in all of his public appearances with Trump and was extremely enthusiastic in his support. The affect and the body language certainly suggested “MAGA cultists” in a way that you rarely see among Europeans (other than the Orban and Nigel Farage types.)

It looks like that might be the case after all:

Mark Rutte, the secretary general of NATO, is often called a “Trump whisperer,” able to mix public flattery with private advice to an unpredictable and moody American president whose support is crucial to the alliance and to Ukraine’s war against Russia.

To that end, Mr. Rutte, who took the job in October 2024, has been willing to accept a degree of humiliation for his efforts to keep Mr. Trump sweet and onside, especially on intelligence support for Ukraine. He even called Mr. Trump the alliance’s “Daddy” before last year’s crucial NATO summit meeting.

But Mr. Rutte’s open support for Mr. Trump’s decision to go to war alongside Israel against Iran has brought new, sharper criticism.

The issue is not that he is flattering Mr. Trump. It is that Mr. Rutte is supporting a war of choice that most of the other 31 NATO allies regard as unnecessary and illegal under international law, as President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany called it on Tuesday.

By supporting the war, which does not involve NATO or collective defense, the critics say, Mr. Rutte has gone beyond his remit as secretary general of the whole alliance to become a cheerleader for an unpopular president and an unpopular war.

It really surprised me to hear him say that and apparently it surprised the Europeans as well as most other experts on NATO:

Mr. Rutte’s main task is to keep the 32-nation alliance together and Mr. Trump engaged, supportive and involved. As someone who does not need to face voters, Mr. Rutte appears prepared to swallow some pride in order to please the White House and maintain its willingness to provide crucial intelligence, and to sell vital arms, to Ukraine.

But Ivo Daalder, a former American ambassador to NATO, said that on Iran, “it makes no sense for the NATO secretary-general to support an argument and a war that 31 other countries think is stupid, illegal, unnecessary and deeply destructive of the main goal, to weaken Russia.”

“The number one goal for him,” Mr. Daalder added, “is to keep NATO secure, and right now the biggest threat to NATO is Trump.”

Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the European Policy Center, a Brussels research organization, said working to keep the United States involved in NATO was crucial. “But as a European leader with responsibility to other European NATO members, Rutte is over the top, leaning too much in one direction,” he said.

He was definitely over the top last week:

He’s said it before:

NATO’s Rutte on him calling Trump “daddy”: Here is my insufficient command of the English language – I said ‘yeah, daddy sometimes has to be tough.’ And… of course later realizing that the word ‘daddy’ has a lot of connotations. Then, what he did, and this is to his credit because he is a fun guy and he has a lot of humor, the American side then put this on T-shirts, there was a video when he came back from the Hague summit where he said ‘daddy is home.’ So there it was born. And it was never intentioned, but okay, I am now carrying it, living with it, it’s a fact of life.

There’s boot-licking and then there’s boot licking with gusto. I don’t think there’s any doubt that this guy likes him, he really likes him.

Who Cares What WE Think?

Published by digby on March 25, 2026

Meanwhile:

And the Republicans are busy brainwashing their cult, who have no idea how much the rest of the country loathes their Dear Leader, to believe that the only way Democrats can possibly win is by cheating:

It certainly can’t be because of this husk of a man:

The Winds Of War

Published by digby on March 25, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson noted this in her newsletter last night:

Trump’s vision of the U.S. is one tied to fossil fuels, leading the administration to declare war on renewable energy. On Monday it announced it will pay $928 million in taxpayer money to the large French energy company TotalEnergies to buy back leases it acquired under the Biden administration to build two wind farms, one off New York and the other off North Carolina. TotalEnergies will then invest that money in U.S. oil and gas projects, including one in Texas that will export liquefied natural gas.

“The era of taxpayers subsidizing unreliable, unaffordable and unsecure energy is officially over, and the era of affordable, reliable and secure energy is here to stay,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. North Carolina governor Josh Stein, a Democrat, told Maxine Joselow and Brad Plumer of the New York Times: “Our state has the offshore wind potential to power millions of homes with renewable American-made energy. It’s ludicrous and wasteful that the Trump Administration is spending $1 billion in taxpayer money to pay off a company to stop it from investing private dollars to create the clean energy we need.”

We are currently enmeshed in yet another war for oil and the whole world economy hangs in the balance. And this monster is doing absolutely instant things like this. It’s so min-boggling that sometimes I think I must be dreaming. It simply cannot be true that the United States is led by such a person. How could any country be so self-destructive?

And yet we are. Because of eggs.

King Of Chaos

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 25, 2026

“A fatal combination of ignorance and confidence”

Iran is now releasing cartoons that Trump can understand.

Paul Waldman this morning examines our Dunning-Kruger administration. (Hullabaloo readers don’t need the reference explained.) It’s an extension of his commentary on the Derp State, “a government led and staffed by morons who could only advance in an administration as dumb as this one.”

One of the most important things for anyone to know is what you don’t know. There are libraries and databases filled with what Donald Trump doesn’t know. But he doesn’t know that. He’s launched a Dunning-Kruger war in Iran.

Waldman writes:

While the Dunning-Kruger effect can be a product of ignorance itself — those who don’t know what they don’t know might imagine that their understanding is complete — Trump is also likely driven by insecurity about his intelligence. His “tell” is when he brings up his uncle who taught physics at MIT as proof of his brilliant genes, which he tends to do when in the presence of highly credentialed scientists or successful technologists.

When his ignorance is exposed, Trump claims that he couldn’t have known what he didn’t know, because nobody knew it. “Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” he said in amazement in 2017 when he realized how hard it would be to keep his promise of repealing and replacing Obamacare; in fact, everyone knew how complicated it was — everyone except him. Earlier this week he said the same thing about the fact that Iran responded to the war he started by attacking U.S. allies in the Gulf:

Trump: "Look at the way Iran attacked unexpectedly all of those countries surrounding them. That was not supposed to– nobody was even thinking about it."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-03-23T15:40:11.944Z

Yes, he’s a moron. A moron with a short attention span who thinks he’s a genius. Deep down, Trump knows he is not. But concealing it under bluster and brag (even to himself) is the reflex he’s built up over a lifetime.

Now that he’s started a war with Iran, U.S. military officials supply Trump with a daily update video assembled with his short attention span in mind. As NBC News describes it, “The daily montage typically runs for about two minutes, sometimes longer, the officials said. One described each daily video as a series of clips of ‘stuff blowing up.’”

Now that the war is dragging as much as Trump’s poll numbers are flagging, more insiders are putting distance between themselves and Trump, Waldman explains.

Especially in an administration so driven by the whims of one man, that man’s ignorance and unearned confidence can have a profound, even catastrophic effect. In the Iran war, we can see Trump’s ignorance operating at multiple levels from the general to the specific, each of which has its own consequences. It would help if he knew more about the history of Iran’s relationship to the United States, which influences the motivations of Iranians and the shape of the regime’s decisions. It would help if he understood the structure of the regime, which has enabled it to survive the kind of decapitation strikes Israel and the U.S. undertook. It would help if he understood internal Iranian politics and the particular nature of the government’s system of repression, which made it highly unlikely that the Iranian people would be willing and able to attempt to overthrow the government.

It would help if Trump considered the good name of the United States of America as an asset as valuable as the Trump brand he slaps on everything kitchy piece of merch in sight and licenses around the world. But no. Elements that do not accrue to his personal financial benefit have no value to him. That lack of concern for anyone but himself is trashing the U.S. brand. Killing off USAID was just a warmup.

His Dunning-Krugerness is wreaking havoc around the world (The Guardian opinion):

To shield ordinary Indians from the war in Iran, the government in Delhi redirected supplies of liquefied gas to Indian families, for which it is the main cooking fuel, limiting supplies to the plastics industry. The Nepalese government rationed gas and the Philippines trimmed the government workweek to four days. Bangladesh closed universities and rationed fuel.

They have been hardest hit by Iran’s closure of the strait of Hormuz. Economies in Asia import over a third of the energy they consume, on average. Korea imports four-fifths; Japan nine-tenths; Thailand 55%. Most of this comes from the Gulf. About 80% of oil and oil products transiting through the strait in 2025 was destined for Asia, according to the International Energy Agency. But traffic through its waters has collapsed by 90%.

Europe is less reliant on fuel from the Middle East. But it is intensely dependent on imported oil and, critically, natural gas, whose price has surged since US and Israeli bombardments began in Iran. This is reflected in equity markets. By 20 March the MSCI index of European stocks had fallen about 11% since the start of the war, more than the 9% fall of the MSCI Asia index.

Except equity markets don’t need natural gas for heating or cooking.

The King of Chaos, with his infatuation with 19th-century tariffs, his trashing of the postwar, rules-based international order, and the teetotaler’s power-drunk deployment of the U.S. military for bringing any government to its knees that doesn’t kiss his ass, is an epic, world-sized disaster. In New Jersey, it was just his casinos.

Who knows what justification he will make up next, for instance when he remembers he also wants to take over Greenland and the Panama canal. [Author: and Cuba.]

It is foolhardy to believe that this episode of wanton aggression is a freak occurrence, that US belligerence will end after the 2028 election, or maybe earlier if Democrats manage to take over Congress in November. Tens of millions of Americans in the Maga base are motivated by contempt for the rest of the world, which they perceive as treacherous and abusive and, well, “other”.

This political force will not soon go away. Alongside China taking Taiwan and Russia wanting the Baltics, “the US pulls an argument out of a hat to raise random hell” must be added to the world’s risk premium.

How much will the next U.S. administration have to invest in reputation repair for the entire country?

Next Stop: Persian Gulf

Published by Tom Sullivan on March 25, 2026

Yee-ha! says Secretary of WAR! Pete Hegseth

Paratroopers assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division walk to a C-17 Globemaster III before an airborne operation at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, March 13, 2025. The 82nd Airborne Division regularly conducts airborne operations as part of their Immediate Response Force training. (U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Nicole Miller) (Photo Credit: Spc. Nicole Miller)

During the oil embargo of the 1970s, a buddy was a cocky, M60-toting scout in the 82nd Airborne based in North Carolina. It’s a combat force capable of deployment on 18 hours of notice. He used to say that in a parachute assault his life expectancy upon hitting the ground in a combat zone was measured in seconds. He’d regale me with stories about being rousted out of bed, fitted out with full combat gear and ammunition, hustled onto a transport and flown around for hours before being ordered to bail out in the dark … over their own base, IIRC. It was a training. But during the 1970s oil crisis, my friend said, he wasn’t sure that if the 82nd bailed out over the Middle East exactly who the enemy would be or what they’d be asked to sacrifice their lives for. That, as they say, was above his pay grade.

Now they’re being sent to the Middle East for real (The Washington Post):

The Pentagon on Tuesday ordered a couple thousand paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division to deploy to the Middle East, U.S. officials said, as President Donald Trump weighs a significant escalation in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and declines to rule out putting U.S. troops on Iranian soil.

U.S. officials approved written orders for soldiers from the division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team and the 82nd’s headquarters at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, said two U.S. officials and a third person familiar with the move, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Verbal orders previously had been approved, two people said. It is not yet clear whether they will deploy to Iran itself, officials said.

And it’s one, two, three
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn
Next stop is Vietnam could be Iran

The Persian Horse

Published by digby on March 24, 2026

I think he’s just making stuff up or someone is whispering “good news” into his ears to buck him up since the war is going terribly. But here he is with the latest:

Sure:

President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Tehran had offered Washington a “very significant prize” related to oil and gas, expressing optimism that a deal to end the conflict could be possible.

Trump did not provide details about the offer he said Iran had made but described it as related to oil, gas and the Strait of Hormuz.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were among the officials leading the talks and were “dealing with the right people” in Iran.

Tehran has not publicly acknowledged any such proposal. Iranian officials, however, have been quoted by various outlets as saying that they have received proposals conveyed through intermediaries and are reviewing them.

It’s nothing but happy talk coming from these psychos — if you can call stuff like this happy:

Here’s what’s really on the table right now:

According to international media reports, including Bloomberg and Lloyd’s List Intelligence, Iran has begun charging oil tankers for safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian outlets such as the state-owned Mehr News Agency and Tabnak—affiliated with Mohsen Rezaei, senior military adviser to Iran’s new leader—had previously reported that Tehran was considering the strait as a potential source of revenue for the Islamic Republic.

News reports say Iran is charging around $2 million per tanker. However, because U.S. sanctions prevent Iran from conducting international banking, it remains unclear what currency is being used and who ultimately receives the payments.

Earlier, Iran’s Foreign Ministry announced that various countries and oil companies should contact Tehran directly to coordinate safe passage.

The idea of monetizing control of the strategic waterway has also been echoed in Iranian political commentary. The IRGC-linked daily Javan wrote that it was Iran’s new leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who first introduced the concept.

“He revived a forgotten historical truth in the geopolitics of the Persian Gulf,” the newspaper wrote on Tuesday, March 24.

In an editorial titled “The Strait of Hormuz: Iran’s Winning Card in the Post-War Order,” Javan argued that the waterway should become a strategic lever for the Islamic Republic and “the most important fund to compensate Iran’s losses in the war.”

Is this possible? I have no idea. But here’s former Defense Secretary James Mattis yesterday:

Former Defense Secretary James Mattis offered a sobering take Monday on the Strait of Hormuz, criticizing the Trump administration for what he saw as a failure to think strategically about Iran.

The CERAWeek conference here has been clouded by uncertainty over the future of a conflict that’s bringing historic supply disruptions — and upending industry planning in the process.

  • “We’re in a tough spot, ladies and gentlemen, and I can’t identify a lot of good options,” the retired Marine general told attendees at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference.

If President Trump declares victory and pulls back the U.S. military, Iran “would now say we own the Strait,” said Mattis, who served in the president’s first term before resigning in 2019 after the commander-in-chief reportedly rebuffed his advice on Syria.

  • “I think that you could see a tax for any ship going through — something completely unsustainable in the international market,” Mattis said.
  • The overall U.S. and Israeli strategic objectives for Iran remain “murky,” he said.
  • “The Americans are fighting in a markedly limited war, and I think that what we’re seeing is a situation where [airplane] targetry never makes up for a lack of strategy,” he said.
  •  Mattis also explained why naval protection of ships would prove a huge challenge and leave major vulnerabilities.
  • Even a degraded Iran retains the ability to attack ships from shore along a vast stretch of coastline in the wider region, he said.
  • “If you look at the Texas Gulf Coast, that’s about 367 miles, that gives you an idea of how difficult this will be for the U.S. Navy to try and protect ships in that shipping lane, 600 miles down the Gulf, 100 miles through the Straits and then out into the water,” Mattis said.
  • “And they’ve got anti-ship cruise missiles that could be fired off the back of a pickup truck that can go 100 miles. So there’s the problem.”

I’m pretty sure he does know what he’s talking about and this is grim.

At this point it’s best to assume that anything coming out of the administration is bullshit. There may be an element of truth in it but we have no way of knowing what parts of it might be. It’s possible that we’ll see a cease fire soon but how that changes the catastrophe we’re looking at for the foreseeable future is very unclear.

Yes, He’s A Real Brain Trust

Published by digby on March 24, 2026

I’m telling you, he makes Tommy Tuberville look like Daniel Patrick Moynihan by comparison.

They’ve scraped the bottom of the barrel with this one but since Stephen Miller is actually running DHS I don’t suppose it makes any difference except that they will look extremely stupid every time he opens his mouth. But then what else is new?

Speaking of Miller, here’s his latest:

They Can Never Take Yes For An Answer

Published by digby on March 24, 2026

The TSA crisis may be coming to a close (fingers crossed) but the wing nuts aren’t going to go down easy:

House conservatives are firing a warning shot at their Republican counterparts in the Senate as a deal begins to take shape on ending the six-week Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown. 

Senate Republicans are eyeing a second “big, beautiful bill” via the budget reconciliation process aimed at funding portions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that would likely get little to no Democratic support.

That bill would also include parts of the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE America) Act, legislation to require proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to cast ballots in federal elections.

But a growing contingent of House Republicans who are refusing to vote for any Senate-led legislation are crying foul on that portion of the plan. “Senate Republicans refused to force a talking filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act because it would have allowed Democrats to offer unlimited amendments. Now, Senate R’s claim they will pass SAVE America Act via reconciliation (which may not even be possible under the Senate’s arcane rules), which would… checks notes …allow Democrats to offer unlimited amendments,” the conservative House Freedom Caucus said in a statement posted to X on Tuesday.

“This is gaslighting. The American people are not stupid and will not accept more failure theater from Republicans in Congress.”

Lol. This is so typical. The GOP solves a political problem that’s killing them but these far-right wing nuts won’t take yes for an answer. They demand everything on their wish list or nothing.

I guess we’ll have to see if Trump has really been persuaded that he needs to do this and if so if he’s still got the clout he thinks he has to get these hard core types to do his bidding. If I had to guess, I’d think they’ll put up a fight and then relent, giving Trump the adulation he craves. But everything depends upon Mike Johnson allowing it to be passed with a bipartisan vote anyway. If Trump wants it, he’ll get that done.

It seems highly unlikely that Trump’s ridiculous insistence on the SAVE act, which many Republicans don’t want because it will actually hurt their own voters, will pass muster as a Reconciliation Bill which may be the off-ramp the GOP is looking for. (Reconciliation is supposed to only be for items related to the budget.) It’s unknown it Trump knows this or simply thinks he can order the Senate to overrule the parliamentarian if she decides it can’t be included.

Trump’s change of heart is basically a capitulation to the Democrats although nobody wants to say that — he’s a neurotic child whose psyche is so fragile that he cannot deal with any loss and will change his mind if he feels the slightest tingle of embarrassment. It’s obvious that this can’t go on so there’s a good chance this crisis will end this week. The Democrats won.

Update — looks like the deal’s on ice:

Key negotiators circulated a potential deal Tuesday to end a five-week standoff over Department of Homeland Security funding and, among other things, pay beleaguered transportation screeners as mounting security lines snarl airports.

Nobody in Washington, however, seems too excited about it.

The framework brokered by a handful of Senate Republicans and the White House Monday got a cool reception from Senate Democrats, who said it does nothing to rein in immigration enforcement abuses at the center of the DHS funding impasse.

Conservative Republicans pushed back on the idea that some Immigration and Customs Enforcement funds would be left out of the agreement and pursued separately under the party-line reconciliation process, calling it a capitulation to Democrats.

Even President Donald Trump, who has gone back and forth on the DHS shutdown talks but hosted the White House meeting Monday evening where the latest proposal was hatched, gave the plan only a tepid endorsement in his first public comments on it Tuesday.

“We’re going to take a good hard look at it,” he said in the Oval Office, later adding, “They are getting fairly close. But I think any deal they make, I’m pretty much not happy with it.”

I would not be surprised if the Dems opposed it as a way to get the Republicans to sign on. Or maybe they are just willing to let this go on to achieve something on the ICE front. They may see some hope for getting the body camera and mask issue.

But then you have Orange Julius Caesar saying he won’t be happy no matter what, so who knows?