Donald Trump has been back in office for less than one month, and he, Elon Musk, and his senior administration officials have already plunged the nation into an ongoing constitutional crisis and openly performed various brazen acts of lawlessness and gleeful corruption, while threatening to “look at” judges who object to his onslaught against the U.S. Constitution and legal limits on his power.
On Saturday afternoon, during Presidents Day weekend, the twice-impeached president and convicted felon was, to his credit, honest about it: He believes he’s allowed to break any law he wants.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump posted online — not just once, but twice. The president felt strongly enough about the sentiment (which several observers pointed out appeared to be based on an apparently fake quote from Napoleon) that he blasted it out on his own Truth Social site as well as his account on Musk’s platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.
The hosts of Fox & Friends Weekend drew parallels between Jesus Christ’s suffering on the cross and President Donald Trump’s decision to hang his mugshot outside the Oval Office on Saturday.
“It’s not the first time you’ve seen something that was supposed to humiliate him, he’s turned into a triumph,” co-host Rachel Campos Duffy said.
“I’m not making the comparison to Jesus,” she said before promptly making the comparison: “The cross was meant as a humiliation, and the cross was turned into a sign of triumph.”
“In the same way Donald Trump has said, ‘I’m not going to let you humiliate me, I’m gonna look in the camera and show my anger, and now I’m gonna hang it in the Oval Office where you tried to keep me out,‘” Campos Duffy added, driving home the analogy home.
A few “Democrats concede they are losing an asymmetrical battle with the president and his MAGA allies,” Politico reports. But there is no agreement on how to mount an effective, attention-getting rapid-response:
“Republicans are running circles around Democrats for how to connect to the culture today,” said John Della Volpe, director of Harvard University’s youth poll and an expert on Gen Z. “People are still asking me in these post-election meetings, ‘Who is Theo Von?’ Even if they had the best message, you can’t connect if you’re not part of modern American culture, if you’re not injecting yourself into these spaces where people already are.”
It’s not just the leadership’s overdependence on traditional media, although that’s part of it. A majority of “swing voters” identified by Navigator Research got their political news “primarily from social media and alternative sources, like podcasts,” while Kamala Harris voters relied on broadcast TV.
The GOP is winning the fight for attention.
There are some exceptions among Democrats who are piercing through, including Ocasio-Cortez, who regularly goes viral with her Instagram live videos and posts on X. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the first Gen Z member of Congress, frequently spars with Republicans online, as do Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).
[…]
“They should be creating bait of their own. Be more aggressive, be more outlandish,” said Tim Miller, a former GOP strategist who now hosts a podcast on The Bulwark, a site founded by anti-Trump Republicans. “I think they should be doing 700X of what they’re doing, in terms of output, volume, platforms, speed.”
Some Democrats have gotten the message and are doing more podcasts, Politico observes, but as I’ve said, it’s clear many are bringing 20th-century knives to a 21st-century gunfight. Getting booked and appearing on podcasts is not the same as having the right skill-sets for the medium.
A 20-something friend asked yesterday about Democrats’ new DNC chair.
“Functional,” I said (or something close).
He thought that non-ringing endorsement pithy. He would have preferred Wisconsin Dems’ state party chair, Ben Wikler. Why? Because the younger Wikler has more presence, more social media savvy, and brings more energy and passion to his appearances than the merely “functional” leader the DNC elected. Or many prominent elected Dems now trying their hands at appealing to the “kids,” and whoe efforts are “too slow and too tepid and not meeting the moment.”
Update: Rick Wikson’s on the same page.
Yes. They are.Maybe a rapid response team under the age of 75 would be a start.www.politico.com/news/2025/02…
A commentator the other day said that there are only two guardrails left against Musk-Trump’s predations, meaning Congress and the courts. He was wrong. There is a third: Americans in the streets.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance offers some analysis on the status of the many of court cases filed to slow Musk-Trump’s rolling coup. It’s just that right now what we have are a series of temporary restraining orders (TROs) Musk-Trump will resist, ignore, and surely appeal, as is Trump’s wont.
“There are limits to how much the courts can or will do, even at the TRO stage,” Vance cautions before confirming what I wrote on Friday:
That’s not to say I don’t have confidence in the courts, because I do, and I think some progress will be made there, although as we know far too well, it may be very slow. But the courts aren’t the calvary. We are. We have to be in this fight for ourselves. We can’t get complacent. These early victories are important, but they are not ballgame. Just because it doesn’t feel like we’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis—Trump isn’t dramatically crossing out broad swaths of the Constitution with his sharpie marker in a made-for-television moment—doesn’t mean we aren’t there.
“Ultimately, we’re the check on power run amuck,” she writes and offers some direction a lot of us need right now:
If you need some ideas for getting started, the good folks at Choose Democracy have some advice. They suggest getting started with a local group and figuring out where there are weak links in MAGA support you can pressure. They suggest devoting yourself to a longterm project you can support. Other groups are organizing a variety of public protests and blackouts. Different ways of speaking up will work for different people. Pick yours. Make sure your voice counts. Start exercising your democracy muscles!
Vance suggests something obvious that made me rethink what I’m doing .She wrote Alabama Senator Katie Britt (R, of the infamous SOTU response) to ask that she not vote for RFK Jr. Britt did anyway, of course, but sent back a form letter.
I’ve been contacting my North Carolina senators Thom Tillis and Tedd Budd regularly. Tillis by e-fax and Budd by web form (he doesn’t have a fax no.). But on Budd’s web form there are check boxes.
I’ve been checking No, because I know I’ll get a stupid form letter like Vance did. But you know what? I’m checking Yes from now on. Make his staff deal with sending that form letter. Add to their workload. It’s a little thing, but it’s measurable.
Make calls instead, if that works for you and your schedule (and if you can get through). This from Feb. 7:
Senators’ phone systems have been overloaded, lawmakers said, with some voters unable to get through to leave a message. The outpouring of complaints and confusion has put pressure on lawmakers to find out more about Musk’s project, heightening tensions between the billionaire tech mogul and the government.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said the Senate’s phones were receiving 1,600 calls each minute, compared with the usual 40 calls per minute. Many of the calls she’s been receiving are from people concerned about U.S. DOGE Service employees having broad access to government systems and sensitive information. The callers are asking whether their information is compromised and about why there isn’t more transparency about what is happening, she said.
In March 2017, Republicans pulled a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act under their own American Health Care Act. The phones lit up then too. Grassroots groups got their act together before congressional Democrats could, The Washington Post reported. Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) told the Post:
“I thought this repeal bill would sail through,” he said. “It was the president’s number one priority. And what was incredible about this process was the phone calls — we had 1,959 phone calls in opposition to the American Health Care Act. We had 30 for it.”
[…]
Democrats watched as a roiling, well-organized “resistance” bombarded Republicans with calls and filled their town hall meetings with skeptics. The Indivisible coalition, founded after the 2016 election by former congressional aides who knew how to lobby their old bosses, was the newest and flashiest. But it was joined by MoveOn, which reported 40,000 calls to congressional offices from its members; by Planned Parenthood, directly under the AHCA’s gun; by the Democratic National Committee, fresh off a divisive leadership race; and by the AARP, which branded the bill as an “age tax” before Democrats had come up with a counterattack.
Few MOCs have physical fax machines today. So the days when you could slam an office with paper are largely over, but here’s how I got sold on “fax jamming“:
On March 21, 2010, the House was preparing to vote on the Affordable Care Act passed by the Senate. The vote would be close. A 2008 Obama campaign veteran I know was planning to blast his large email list and encourage people to phone Heath Shuler’s office in support of passage. But it was Sunday. No one would answer and his voicemail in Washington was already full. It would be pointless to ask people to waste their time on a call without even a chance to leave a message.
[…]
We drafted a sample letter in support of the ACA and emailed it to my friend’s list. We suggested if people replied giving their assent, plus adding their name, address, phone number, and perhaps a customized message of their own, we would gladly fax it to the congressman on their behalf.
Minutes later, Paul shouted, “Oh my God, I just got 15 emails!” And they kept coming, some with notes, others without, for hours. Paul bundled them into sets of five, one letter per page, and created a PDF I sent electronically through my fax machine to Shuler’s Washington, D.C. office. If that line was busy, we sent to his district office. A veteran union organizer friend calls this tactic fax jamming.
We sent 600 individual faxes.
We broke the congressman’s fax machine, a staffer told me, and added something lame about Democrats killing trees. Shuler voted against the ACA anyway, but people who would not have gotten through had their voices heard. The staff never forgot having to physically deal with 600 pieces of paper.
We have to find ways to do this because if all MAGA hears are self-congratulatory voices proclaiming their success, it’s a lot easier for them to kowtow to Trump’s every demand. It becomes more difficult—because these folks are politicians who are dedicated to staying in power whatever the cost—if they’re getting pounded by thousands of voices of sanity about their obligations as elected representatives. Let’s make them understand that we are here, we are engaged, and we are not going away. It would have only taken a few senators getting cold feet about Kennedy to make a difference. It’s worth pulling out all the stops and contacting your senators with the vote on Kash Patel looming ahead this week.
I know …Valentine’s Day was yesterday. But at least I remembered. OK, I’m on the couch.
Anyway. I’ve combed through my review archives of the last decade or so and assembled a “top 10 list” of romantic comedies that may not have set the box office on fire, but are definitely worth seeking out. You may even fall in love with a few of these. Alphabetically:
Blind Date – Is there a level of humor below “deadpan”? If so, I’d say that this film from Georgian director Levan Koguashvili has it in spades. A minimalist meditation on the state of modern love in Tbilisi (in case you’d been wondering), the story focuses on the romantic travails of a sad sack Everyman named Sandro (Andro Sakhvarelidze), a 40-ish schoolteacher who still lives with his parents. Sandro and his best bud (Archil Kikodze) spend their spare time arranging double dates via singles websites, with underwhelming results. Then it happens…Sandro meets his dream woman (Ia Sukhitashvili). There’s a mutual attraction, but one catch. Her husband’s getting out of jail…very soon. This is one of those films that sneaks up on you; archly funny, and surprisingly poetic. (Full Review)
Emma Peters – As she careens toward her 35th birthday, wannabe thespian Emma (Monia Chakri, in a winning performance) decides that she’s had it with failed auditions and slogging through a humiliating day job. She’s convinced herself that 35 is the “expiry” date for actresses anyway. So, she prepares for a major change…into the afterlife. Unexpectedly lightened by her decision, she cheerfully begins to check off her bucket list, giving away possessions, and making her own funeral arrangements. However, when she develops an unforeseen relationship with a lonely young funeral director, her future is uncertain, and the end may not be near. A funny-sad romantic romp in the vein of Harold and Maude, from Belgian-American writer-director Nicole Palo. (Full Review)
Hot Mess – Comedian-playwright Sarah Gaul does an endearing turn in writer-director Lucy Coleman’s mumblecore comedy about a 25 year-old budding playwright and college dropout who suffers from a lack of focus in her artistic and amorous pursuits. She expends an inordinate amount of her creative juice composing songs about Toxic Shock Syndrome. She becomes obsessed with a divorced guy who seems “nice” but treats her with increasing indifference once they’ve slept together. And so on. The narrative meanders at times, but when it’s funny, it’s very funny. (Full Review)
Let the Sunshine In – The best actors are…nothing; a blank canvas. But give them a character and some proper lighting-and they’ll give back something that becomes part of us, and does us good: a reflection of our own shared humanity. Nature that looks like nature. Consider Julilette Binoche, an actor of such subtlety and depth that she could infuse a cold reading of McDonald’s $1 $2 $3 menu with the existential ennui of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 123. She isn’t required to recite any sonnets in this film (co-written by director Claire Denis and Christine Angot), but her character speaks copiously about love…in all of its guises. And you may think you know how this tale of a divorcee on the rebound will play out, but Denis’ film, like love itself, is at once seductive and flighty. (Full Review)
Liza, the Fox Fairy – If David Lynch had directed Amelie, it might be akin to this dark and whimsical romantic comedy from Hungary (inspired by a Japanese folk tale). The story centers on Liza (Monika Balsa), an insular young woman who works as an assisted care nurse. Liza is a lonely heart, but tries to stay positive, bolstered by her cheerleader…a Japanese pop singer’s ghost. Poor Liza has a problem sustaining relationships, because every man she dates dies suddenly…and under strange circumstances. It could be coincidence, but Liza suspects she is a “fox fairy”, who sucks the souls from her paramours (and you think you’ve got problems?). Director Karoly Ujj-Meszaros saturates his film in a 70s palette of harvest gold, avocado green and sunflower orange. It’s off-the-wall; but it’s also droll, inventive, and surprisingly sweet. (Full Review)
A Matter of Size – When you think “star athlete”, it invariably conjures up an image of a man or a woman with zero body fat and abs of steel. Then there’s Herzl (Itzak Cohen), the unlikely sports hero of this delightful comedy from Israel. Sweet, puppy-eyed and tipping the scales at 340 pounds, he lives with his overbearing mother, Mona (Levana Finkelstein) and works at a restaurant. After being cruelly fired for (essentially) his overweight appearance, Herzl falls into gloom. But when he experiences a mutual spark of attraction with a woman in his weight watchers group (Irit Kaplan) and finds a new job at a Japanese restaurant, managed by an ex-pro sumo coach (Togo Igawa)-his life takes unexpected turns. It would have been easy for directors Sharon Maymon and Erez Tadmor to wring cheap laughs from their predominantly corpulent cast, but to their credit (and Danny Cohen-Solal, who co-scripted with Maymon) the characters emerge from their trials and tribulations with dignity and humanity intact. (Full Review)
Mutual Friends – I’ve always found dinner parties to be a fascinating microcosm of human behavior; ditto genre films like The Anniversary Party, The Boys in the Band, and my all-time favorite Don’s Party. Sort of an indie take on Love, Actually, director Matthew Watts’ no-budget charmer centers on a group of neurotic New Yorkers (is that redundant?) converging for a surprise party. In accordance with the Strict Rules of Dinner Party Narratives, logistics go awry, misunderstandings abound, unexpected romance ensues, and friendships are sorely tested. Despite formulaic trappings, the film is buoyed by clever writing, an engaging ensemble, and cheerful reassurance that your soul mate really is out there…somewhere. (Full Review)
A Summer’s Tale – It’s nearly 8 minutes into this delightful 1996 Eric Rohmer film (which had a belated U.S. first-run in 2014) before anyone speaks; and it’s a young man calling a waitress over so he can order a chocolate crepe. But not to worry, because things are about to get interesting. In fact, our young man, an introverted maths grad named Gaspar (Melvil Poupaud) will soon find himself in a dizzying girl whirl. It begins when he meets the bubbly Margo (Amanda Langlet) an ethnologist major who is spending the summer working as a waitress at her aunt’s seaside crepery. In a way, this is a textbook “Rohmer film”, which I define as “a movie where the characters spend more screen time dissecting the complexities of male-female relationships than actually experiencing them”. Don’t despair; it won’t be like watching paint dry; even first-time Rohmer viewers will surely glean the late French director’s ongoing influence (particularly if you’ve seen Once,When Harry Met Sally, or Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy). (Full Review)
2 Days in New York– Writer-director-star Julie Delpy’s 2012 sequel to her 2007 comedy 2 Days in Paris catches up with her character Marion, who now has a son and a new man in her life, a long-time friend turned lover Mingus (Chris Rock) who has added his tween daughter to the mix. The four live together in a cozy Manhattan loft. Marion and Mingus are the quintessential NY urban hipster couple; she’s a photo-journalist and conceptual artist; he’s a radio talk show host who also writes for the VillageVoice. Marion is on edge. She has an important gallery show coming up, and her eccentric family has just flown in from France for a visit and to get acquainted with her new Significant Other. The buttoned-down Mingus is in for a bit of culture shock. And yes-Franco-American culture-clash mayhem ensues. Smart, funny and engaging throughout. (Full Review)
Your Sister’s Sister – This offering from Humpday writer-director Lynn Shelton is a romantic “love triangle” dramedy reminiscent of Chasing Amy. It’s a talky but thoroughly engaging look at the complexities of modern relationships, centering on a slacker man-child (Mark Duplass) his deceased brother’s girlfriend (Emily Blunt) and her sister (Rosemarie Dewitt), who all bumble into a sort of unplanned “encounter weekend” together at a remote family cabin. Funny, insightful and well-acted. (Full Review)
Hours after being confirmed as Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. issued a statement that laid out sweeping plans for his first 100 days in office. Chief among his goals, he wrote, was to combat what he called a “growing health crisis” of chronic disease. The document called for the federal government to investigate the “root causes” of a broad range of conditions, including autism, ADHD, asthma, obesity, multiple sclerosis, and psoriasis. Conspicuously absent was any explicit mention of childhood vaccines, which Kennedy has long railed against as the head of the anti-vaccine advocacy group Children’s Health Defense.
But the document did zero in on another one of his fixations: a class of widely prescribed drugs that treat depression, anxiety, and mood disorders. The government, he said, would “assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, [and] mood stabilizers.”
He is not a doctor and knows absolutely nothing about any of this. He’s a conspiracy theorist and a crank who has said that most school shooters are on antidepressants which is a lie. (I wonder when someone’s going to ask Kennedy about his obvious steroid abuse? )
He may not have mentioned vaccines (he’ll get to that I’m sure) but the anti-depressant thing has long been one of his issues. But don’t worry, he has a plan: re-education camps:
Kennedy said he planned to dedicate money generated from a sales tax on cannabis products to “creating wellness farms—drug rehabilitation farms, in rural areas all over this country.” He added, “I’m going to create these wellness farms where they can go to get off of illegal drugs, off of opiates, but also illegal drugs, other psychiatric drugs, if they want to, to get off of SSRIs, to get off of benzos, to get off of Adderall, and to spend time as much time as they need—three or four years if they need it—to learn to get reparented, to reconnect with communities.” The farm residents would grow their own organic food because, he suggested, many of their underlying problems could be “food-related.”
This is some serious woo-woo bullshit which proves that the conspiracy theory industry of both the left and right has now fully merged.
Half of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemic Intelligence Service officers — a group known as the CDC’s “disease detectives” — were among the cuts made Friday by the Trump administration, multiple health officials tell CBS News.
The cuts are among the thousands of probationary workers being let go this week across the federal government as part of efforts to shrink the federal workforce overseen by President Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, task force headed by billionaire Elon Musk.
The CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service or EIS officers are hired in annual classes through a competitive process. As part of the fellowship, they serve for two years around the CDC or deployed to health departments across the country, often on the front lines of public health responses. Many go on to rise through the ranks at the agency after being selected for the program. All of the most recent class of hires to serve in the EIS were told Friday they were among the cuts, officials told CBS News.
Grocery prices are going up, we may be dealing with another pandemic, Trump is threatening draconian tariffs and we’re on the verge of deporting the vast majority of the agriculture workforce. So the economy is getting more fragile by the day.
One of Trump’s answer to all that is “drill, baby, drill.” Krugman takes a look at that in his newsletter today:
Basically, any large decline in energy prices would lead to a fall in production, driving prices right back up. In today’s world, U.S. shale oil drillers are the marginal producers — the producers whose decisions set both a floor and a ceiling on overall oil prices. As I write this, the benchmark price of U.S. crude oil — the West Texas Intermediate price — is just over $70 a barrel.
And here’s the thing: any substantial decline in prices from this point would make drilling new wells unprofitable in many U.S. oilfields:
This doesn’t mean that production would stagnate; it would decline, as older fields get exhausted.
So even if you believe, wrongly, that regulation is a major barrier to energy production, there’s no way Trump can engineer a major decline in prices.
Meanwhile Trump is demanding a reduction in interest rates which won’t happen if inflation persists. At least if the system we now have is still functional. Krugman again:
Right now the Fed is a quasi-independent institution run by technocrats, who set interest rates based on their assessment of what the economy needs rather than taking instructions from the executive branch. But Fed independence rests on political norms rather than any strong legal foundation. Given the fact that Trump has already shut down USAID, a blatantly illegal move, and effectively shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which also looks illegal, it’s surely possible that he can find a way to force the Fed to cut interest rates even in the face of rising inflation.
Critics will point to the example of Turkey, whose authoritarian leader, like Trump, insisted that rates should go down, not up, in the face of rising inflation; the Erdogan regime didn’t reverse course until inflation was above 80 percent. But Trump surely won’t listen.
There’s also another thing populist regimes do when inflation runs hot: lie about it. While Trump isn’t a “populist” in the sense of caring about the working class, he does have a populist-style disdain for expertise. And one way to deal with bad economic numbers is to order the statistical agencies to produce better numbers. Most famously, in 2014 Argentina admitted that it had been deliberately understating inflation for the past 7 years.
Anyone who says “But they wouldn’t do that!” has clearly been living under a rock the past few weeks. We’re already seeing efforts to suppress bad news about infectious disease. Why assume that the same can’t happen to bad news about inflation? I’m just waiting for the day when Elon Musk declares that everyone who works at the Bureau of Labor Statistics is a Marxist who hates America.
I’d guess that’ll happen within the month. Trump said a couple of weeks ago:
“I think I know interest rates much better than they do, and I think I know it certainly much better than the one who’s primarily in charge of making that decision,” Trump said, in an apparent reference to Powell, while speaking to reporters from the Oval Office Thursday.
He took over the Kennedy Center, why not the Fed? He’s a real renaissance man.
I would have thought that the Big Money Boyz would be just a little bit skeptical of anything like that since their own businesses and the markets depend upon accurate information. But so far they’re so excited that they don’t have to think about hiring black people and they can say “pussy” again that they’re fine with whatever Trump is doing.
“We knew they were going to do this. They get the one starving kid in Sudan that isn’t going to have a USAID bottle, and they make everything DOGE has done about the starving kid in Sudan.”
He seems nice. And frankly, it’s clear they don’t give a damn about starving kids in Scranton or Birmingham either. In fact, I think they’re getting off on it.
Trump said last week that he campaigned on this. He did not. He would mention “waste and fraud in passing but his pitch was all about “growth” and tariffs taking care of deficits. He ostentatiously ran away from Project 2025 which is the exact blueprint they are following for firing massive numbers of federal workers.
It was a bait and switch. So far it doesn’t seem to be bothering the non-MAGA cult members who voted for Trump and the Republicans too much. I guess nothing’s happened to them personally yet. If it’s just some starving kid in Sudan it’s no biggie, amirite?
I’m trying to imagine what I would have thought if I’d looked into the future and saw this happening even a decade ago. I think I would have assumed it was some kind of dark joke:
Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on Saturday accused Vice President JD Vance of unacceptably interfering in his country’s imminent elections on behalf of a party that has played down the atrocities committed by the Nazis 80 years ago.
A day after Mr. Vance stunned the Munich Security Conference by telling German leaders to drop their so-called firewall and allow the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, to enter their federal government, Mr. Scholz accused Mr. Vance of effectively violating a commitment to never again allow Germany to be led by fascists who could repeat the horrors of the Holocaust.
“A commitment to ‘never again’ is not reconcilable with support for the AfD,” Mr. Scholz said at the conference on Saturday morning, in an address opening the gathering’s second day.
Mr. Scholz said the AfD had trivialized Nazi atrocities like the concentration camp at Dachau, which Mr. Vance visited on Friday. The chancellor said Germany “would not accept” suggestions from outsiders about how to run its democracy — or directives to work with such a party.
“That is not done, certainly not among friends and allies,” Mr. Scholz said. “Where our democracy goes from here is for us to decide.”
And that pig Vance had the nerve to go to Dachau and pretend to be moved. What a sick piece of work he is.
People keep telling me that I shouldn’t despair because Trump probably going to pass away in his sleep before the end of his term. If we didn’t know before we certainly know now that his dying won’t solve a thing. Look at what’s waiting in the wings.
The new generation of MAGA leaders, Hegseth and Vance, just went over to Europe and set the stage for WWIII. And we’re the bad guys in this one.
I know you don’t like X posts on here and neither do I. But Bluesky still doesn’t have the capability of rendering videos in the blog so there’s not much I can do about it.
I would never expect you to sit through a full JD Vance speech but it’s important to at least see some of the clips. It’s just shocking , even for him:
Vance at the Munich Security Conference: "The threat that I worry that most about vis a vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within." pic.twitter.com/CmTFsRlTWz
He’s saying this in Europe, not Arkansas. Apparently, he really wants to reassure China and Russia that we are with them and encouraging them to do whatever’s necessary to keep them in power in case Americans or Europeans might have other ideas.
You really should watch this one:
JD Vance in Munich: "Speaking up and expressing opinions isn't election interference, even when people express views outside your own country and even when those people are very influential … you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk."
The Trump administration is demanding that everyone in the government say that the 2020 election was stolen and firing people who held the J6 insurrectionists to account. I know hypocrisy has been retired as a concept but this is too much.
There’s more unfortunately:
JD Vance's speech in Munich sounds like it was literally written by the Kremlin pic.twitter.com/YV1hJlyS48
REPORTER: You have focused on what Ukraine is giving up. What concessions will Putin be asked to make?
HEGSETH: Um. I would start by saying the arguments that have been made that somehow coming to the table right now is making concessions to Vladimir Putin, I just reject that at… pic.twitter.com/8KqMe7ohG3
Trump on Canada: "I spoke to Governor Trudeau … they don't have military protection, and you take a look at what's going on out there … people are in danger … they need our protection." pic.twitter.com/MdlJ4zJe2s
Trump likes them intimidated. They eagerly comply.
Eggs are not the only thing in short supply. So is self-respect.
Me and my sharpie are signing a ‘zecutive order changing the name of Donald Trump to Donald Toadstool. You will henceforth use my preferred designation.
His Insecure Highness has enacted several measures since reentering the Oval Office as non-joking tests of fealty. By your bending the knee to his mighty will he shall know you either as loser or foe. It’s Toadstool’s way of getting you to blurt out, “Thank you, sir! May I have another.”
Like loyalty oaths and insisting followers publicly declaring that he won the 2020 election, it’s about getting people to submit to his dominance moves. Or as I picture it, getting littler dogs to roll over on their backs and pee in the air in submission.
Toadstool’s mind is so far gone that it’s not clear if he really gives a rat’s ass if the world accepts that with a few strokes of his sharpie he’s changed the 400-year-old name of the Gulf of Mexico. What matters is whether he can compel your obedience by uttering “Gulf of America.” For that, he doesn’t need to think. It’s all instinct.
Noah Berlatsky takes up the White House banning the Associated Press from the Press Room because the private business won’t “knuckle under” on cartographic matters:
The organization’s stand provides a model for resistance to tyranny, and a model for free speech, that much of American media needs right now.
The dispute over the name of the Gulf of Mexico seems trivial, especially compared to a range of other horrors Trump is currently perpetrating. But tyrants are tyrants in part because they insist on asserting control over even trivial matters.
Toadstool knows from trivial.
Trump wants to make the AP fall in line to show his dominance, and to show other outlets he’s willing to vindictively target them over any show of independence at all. The AP, for its part, is providing a rallying point for press freedom organizations and drawing a line in the sand for its colleagues and competitors.
If Trump is denying access to outlets that refuse to lick his boots, then any media outlet that has access is compromised. Journalists who want to be worthy of the name have a moral obligation to follow the AP’s example in enraging the toddler in chief.
What’s disturbing is just how many private businesses are obeying in advance the whims of His Royal Shroomness “out of an abundance of caution“:
The works in Gwen Henderson’s Tampa bookstore are emancipated, but organizations that want to highlight the councilwoman’s shop apparently don’t enjoy the same freedom.
This week on social media, Henderson, a retired educator, said that “a pretty prominent marketing firm” decided to take down a video showcasing her Black English Bookstore after the company received pressure from a government client.
[…]
She did not name the firm that produced the video, but a separate post on Henderson’s personal page says the “Black Moves” clip was created by PPK Advertising & Production.
The government in question among PPK’s clients seems to be the state of Florida. They seem to have done a lot of work promoting the state lottery. They are wary, therefore, about sponsoring content that might be construed as DEI-related. But Garrett Garcia, the firm’s president, pointed a finger at government more distant than Tallahassee, and at the attorney general Toadstool plucked out of Florida (emphasis mine):
“This decision was made entirely out of an abundance of caution based on articles like this one published last week in Bloomberg,” Garcia added. “We felt it was in the best interest of our business and our employees to pause these initiatives until we have time to review it in greater detail and to understand the nuances of all rapidly changing policies of the DOJ and US Attorney General.”
Forbes has also reported that Trump’s new Attorney General, Tampa-woman Pam Bondi, “directed the Justice Department to ‘investigate, eliminate, and penalize’ private companies and universities that have “illegal” diversity, equity and inclusion programs.”
But a video promoting Henderson’s private bookstore is not a hiring program conceivably covered under Trump 2.0’s interpretation of federal civil rights laws. But her ad agency is running scared enough that they yanked it. And that’s just the way Toadstool and his white backlash cult like it.
“This is the bullshit that’s happening in our country right now,” says Henderson. “Even a little tiny bookstore can be impacted.”
