Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

In fairness, you have to be old to remember when inflation was very high before 2022 when it spiked due to the post pandemic economic upheaval. I do. And I also remember people were still talking about it eight years later even though it had abated years before. There’s something about inflation that just sears into people’s minds and it takes a long time for them to get used to seeing those prices and for wages to feel as if they’ve caught up.

Trump is out there saying outright that it’s a hoax and a scam. And while Biden is hit for trying to take credit for a vastly improved economy and big jobs numbers (which was true) I don’t remember him ever saying that inflation was a hoax. Nonetheless, it was instrumental in taking down Harris because people were , and still are, incredibly agitated over the cost of living which has only gotten worse since Trump took office.

G. Elliott Morris has some thoughts:

Economic malaise is a serious problem for Trump. He won in 2024 because economic anxiety conditioned lots of voters to pull the lever against the incumbent. But now, he is the target of their ire. Losing economy-focused swing voters would cause a bloodbath for Republicans in the 2026 midterms. The 2025 statewide elections and special election in Tennessee’s Seventh District on Tuesday confirm the party is in trouble.

But, in quantitative terms, how bad is this problem for Trump, really? Are we talking about Bush 2008 levels of disapproval? Worse than Trump’s first-term ratings after Jan. 6, 2021? Today’s Chart of the Week: How low could Trump’s approval go?

[…]

The core question we are interested in is the following: What would Donald Trump’s approval rating be if current supporters abandoned him because of economic anxiety?

To start with, here are Trump’s job approval and disapproval ratings from my average for SIN sister site FiftyPlusOne. Today, we estimate that 39.7% of adults approve of the job Trump is doing as president, while 56.1% disapprove of his job.

For context, this is a pretty bad number. With a -16 net rating, Trump is as unpopular as he was at this point in his first term, and more unpopular at this point than any president who came before him.

So Trump is starting in a pretty bad place. But even at a 39% approval rating, things could be worse. That’s because his approval rating is currently being shored up by Republicans who do not think he is doing a good job on the economy.

He goes on to run a number of complicated simulations that show how low Trump’s approval rating could go if the economy stays the same or gets worse. This would happen if more Republicans who are upset about the economy finally turn on him. He says this could reduce his floor by 1-4 points. But there’s more:

For a final simulation, we can reduce Trump’s approval rating among all Republicans by 10 percentage points. Per YouGov, that is roughly the same decline in support the president has seen since taking office (so it’s not an unreasonable simulation).

Dropping Trump’s approval rating by another 10 points among Republicans puts him at a 33% approval overall. Of course, in that scenario, political independents might also move against the president. Decrease their approval of Trump (from an already terrible 27%), and he ends up at 31.7% overall.

That would be almost as bad as his approval rating after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol (29%, according to the Pew Research Center).

[…]

[A] larger drop in Trump’s approval (to the mid-30s) would require broader political problems, or a sustained decrease in his rating among Republicans — regardless of how they feel about the president’s performance on the economy. Another 10-point drop in Trump’s approval with GOP voters would put him at a 33% rating — near his all-time low.

The implications of this piece for Democratic strategy are two-fold. First, considering campaigning on affordability and Trump’s economic mismanagement is a high-leverage way to reach hesitant Trump approvers inside the Republican Party.

[…]

But second, campaigning on affordability won’t be enough in isolation to drive Trump’s approval down to its previous lows. That will require sustained opposition to the president’s policies in general. And on that subject, there are plenty of unpopular policies to point to.

Trump began his presidency with talk of a broad mandate for change and popular will at his back. But over the last year, we have gotten a lot of data about how small his core constituency truly is. If economic anxiety keeps rising, it’s going to get even smaller.

So, affordability is key as we know. Trump is incapable of admitting that the economy isn’t getting better or taking any responsibility for it and the toadies around him will sing the same tune. It’s clear that people are not buying it and frankly, I think it’s too late to turn it around even if the economy rebounds. As I said, inflation scares the hell out of people and it takes a long time to wring that “vibe” out of the culture. It’s not like recessions, which people are more accustomed to.

But the Democrats can’t just myopically talk about that and nothing else. The country is is an existential crisis with the assault on the constitution and the change in the world order. It’s making everyone feel like they are living on the edge. People may attribute it to the price of eggs but it isn’t and unless the Democrats make it clear that all of this is the result of the white nationalist oligarchy Trump and the Republicans have finally institutionalized they’re going to be held responsible for the chaos right along with them once they win power.

The Republicans need to be utterly repudiated before there is even a slim hope of our liberal order somehow being salvaged enough to rebuild after the carnage of this hideous experiment in reality show politics. They need to walk, chew gum, stand on their heads and sing “The Battle Hymn Of The Republic” all at the same time.

Donald Trump needs to put the phone down at night and get some sleep. After spending three hours Monday night manically sharing more than 160 bizarre posts on Truth Social, he spent most of Tuesday’s televised cabinet meeting struggling to stay awake — and he lost the battle more than once. This was just the most recent example of his flagging energy and focus. But he woke right up when it came time for him to rant about immigrants. 

It’s hard to know if Trump is simply ratcheting up his deportation policy to distract from his low poll numbers and a foreign policy that seems increasingly beyond his comprehension, or if this escalation is a specific policy push by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. What’s clear is that the administration has entered a new phase in its plan to rid the nation of immigrants. 

What started out as a campaign promise to deport the “worst of the worse” gang members like MS-13 and Tren de Aragua has progressed to a full scale purge of any non-white, non-citizen. Trump is now even talking about “denaturalization” and “re-migration,” two terms that are right out of the Great Replacement Theory playbook. 

After the shooting of two National Guard soldiers on Nov. 26 in Washington, D.C., allegedly by an Afghan national who worked for a CIA-run counterterrorism team, Trump seized on the crime as an excuse to target Afghan refugees, particularly those who had come into the country following the American withdrawal in 2021.

At the time, many Republicans were highly critical of Joe Biden’s administration for not allowing more Afghans to emigrate and using the alleged failure as yet another cudgel with which to batter Biden for fulfilling the agreement that Trump had signed before he left office. The shooting by what appears to be a mentally ill refugee opened the door for more criticism of Biden and a pledge to send Afghan refugees back to where they came from.

This isn’t the first time Trump has targeted legal immigrants for removal… There’s no reason for it.

This isn’t the first time Trump has targeted legal immigrants for removal. The administration has already withdrawn Temporary Protected Status from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela, and are in the process of deporting those who are already here under that program, although there is still litigation pending. There’s no reason for it.

Like so many of the immigrants who are being harassed and abducted on the streets by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, along with Customs and Border Patrol, every day, they have been working and contributing to our society. But Trump has arbitrarily decided they have to go. 

When speaking to reporters at Mar-a-Lago on Thanksgiving — the day after the shooting — he pivoted from his attacks on Afghan immigration to railing against Somalians as well. They are “ripping off our country,” he said, pledging “we’re not going to put up with these kind of assaults on law and order by people who shouldn’t even be in our country.” When a confused reporter asked what Somalians had to do with the Afghan suspect, the president blithely replied, “nothing, but Somalians have caused a lot of trouble,” and then insulted Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. He continued that theme in his crude, late-night Thanksgiving “message” on Truth Social that characterized Somalians in Minnesota as roving gangs “looking for prey as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone.”

The president had apparently been exposed to an article by Christopher Rufo, one of the right’s most celebrated propagandists, who co-wrote an hysterical article claiming that Somalians had been committing welfare fraud and sending the proceeds to the terrorist group Al-Shabaab, which has not been confirmed. That’s exactly the kind of charge that makes Trump automatically reach for collective punishment. 

Unsurprisingly, in the aftermath of Trump’s comments, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has jumped on the most recent xenophobic bandwagon head first, calling for a “full travel ban on every damn country that’s been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.” The country’s founders and forefathers, she said, “built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS. WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE.” 

On Monday, the administration announced it had paused all immigration applications from 19 countries it has already restricted from travel to the U.S., and is now halting citizenship and green card processing for all of them. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the administration is halting all refugee admissions — except for white South Africans whom they have deemed to be the victims of racial discrimination. Trump also banned the country from the 2026 G20 summit due to its alleged oppression of white citizens.

Trump’s comments at the cabinet meeting on Tuesday put his racism and xenophobia on full, incontrovertible display. “We keep taking in garbage into our country,” he said. “Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage…when they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but b***h, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it.” 

Vice President JD Vance pounded the table and the Cabinet burst into applause. Noem pledged to deploy ICE to Minnesota to root out the Somali- Americans she claims fraudulently obtained their citizenship. 

Imagine what it’s like to be a Somali-American today. Your president is calling you “garbage” on national television and his Cabinet applauds the sentiment. The government is sending masked thugs into your neighborhood to hunt you down. You thought this was your country and now you’re being told it isn’t. Imagine what it’s like to be any immigrant in America right now.

Salon

It’s a service, not a business

This report is a few weeks old, but I nominate the narrative as one of Paul Krugman’s zombie lies (Reuters):

WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) – The U.S. Postal Service said on Friday it was seeking new administrative and legislative reforms as it reported a $9 billion yearly loss, down slightly from the prior fiscal year results.

New Postmaster General David Steiner said USPS must be more efficient and that it still has a “significant systemic annual revenue and cost imbalance.” He added: “To correct our financial imbalances, we must explore new revenue opportunities and public policy changes to improve our business model.”

Someone named The Comfy Dude complains this morning about an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government being judged by private marketplace standards:

After President Joe Biden signed the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, USA Today reported (emphasis mine):

When the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 became law, it required the postal service to serve all Americans while also breaking even. 

“It basically introduced an identity crisis that had very real consequences for USPS’s operations ever since: is it a business or is it a service?” said Porter McConnell, co-founder of the Save the Post Office Coalition.

Decades later, in 2006, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was passed, which required the USPS to put money aside for future retiree health benefits and restricted the services the agency could offer in the future to only the ones it already offered.

Yeah, well, that didn’t work out too well. Hence the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022. But USPS is still not allowed to operate as a government-mandated, universal service. It’s what conservatives require when they want to kill any government service they consider a crime against capitalism. Especially against competing capitalist ventures represented by high-paid lobbyists.

Anyone who uses the language of business when talking about government is, at this point, a dishonest looter and should be loudly and repeatedly mocked

— James Felix Black (@tft.io) 2025-12-05T13:44:19.409Z

I’m going to check Dude’s math here. USPS “lost” $9.5 billion in fiscal 2024 on operating expenses of $89.5 billion. There were an estimated 340.1 million persons in America in 2024. If taxpayers had to make up the “loss,” it would in theory cost $27.93 per person. If USPS were simply a no-fee, taxpayer-supported service (anyone who’s bought stamps knows it never has been), that would be $263.16 per person.

Now let’s look at the Pentagon’s budget: $883.7 billion in fiscal 2024. The Pentagon is a no-fee, taxpayer-supported service. That would be $2598.35 per person, or over 90 times the 2024 USPS “loss” per person.

I await the cries of horror from free-marketeers on the right about the Pentagon’s $883.7 billion loss in 2024 the way Fox News described the “whopping” $6.5 billion loss from USPS two years ago.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

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Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Yes, Bovino’s stormtroopers are that incompetent

Your eyes do not deceive you. The thugs Kristi Noem is hiring to harass citizens and non-citizens, in its drive to round up and deport “violent” non-white people for Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing program are as dumb and brutish as hundreds of cell phone videos reveal.

In the Department of Homeland Security’s rush to hire 10,000 deportation officers by year’s end, Customs and Border Patrol’s (CBP) hiring and training standards have gone to hell. Recent hires include “recent high school graduates and applicants who can ‘barely read or write’ as well as those who lack basic physical fitness and even have pending criminal charges.” It’s the Daily Mail, but an unusually long report (emphasis mine):

Most of the new hires in the $30 billion initiative are retired law enforcement who are receiving virtual training and being repurposed for desk duty.

I’ve written since July, “If like me you have wondered if ICE is finding its masked agents on Craigslist and taking them unvetted, and if it seems that they must be getting their training in law enforcement over Zoom or over the weekend,” there’s your confirmation.

Meanwhile, total novices are being fast-tracked into the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia, where instructors have been left astounded at the levels of incompetence.

‘We have people failing open-book tests and we have folks that can barely read or write English,’ one Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official told the Daily Mail. 

‘We even had a 469-lb man sent to the academy whose own doctor certified him not at all fit for any physical activity.’

Insiders say the vetting process has been so rushed that officials didn’t even wait for drug test results to come back before hiring recruits and flying them off to Georgia, only to discover afterward that tests came back positive. 

Washington, D.C.-based DHS spokesliars like Tricia McLaughlin insist the department maintains the highest training and physical standards. Unnamed staff at the Brunswick, Georgia home of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC) tell The Mail otherwise:

In one shocking incident, they were left shaking their heads when one student asked to be excused from class so he could attend a court date on a gun charge.

Other recruits were even discovered to have tattoos associated with gangs and white supremacists when they stripped off their shirts during workouts. 

Reports from FLETC include incidents of violence, disruptive behavior, and allegations of sexual misconduct on campus, most handled internally.

One recruit, 29-year-old Darien Coleman, was arrested by county police for allegedly exploding at a FLETC bus driver and smashing his phone, according to records obtained by the Daily Mail. He was described as a ‘known problem’ on campus who had just resigned when he demanded a ride from the driver.

Sources say another male recruit, after hitting the bars, was caught barging into a female dorm and hitting on the occupants. Another groped a woman in class.

DHS has widened its age brackets to help reach its goal. It’s raised its maximum age from 40 to 65 and lowered its minimum age from 21 to 18. That $50,000 signing bonus and starting salaries as high as $80,000 per year must sound pretty attractive. How far do recruits think those signing bonuses will carry them once no other employer will hire them with CBP/ICE in their work histories?

A former instructor tells the Mail:

‘Stephen Miller and Corey Lewandowski want what they want and are going to do whatever they have to do to get people through,’ the father said, referring, respectively, to the DHS adviser and Noem’s ‘de-facto’ chief of staff.

‘But once you’ve prostituted your hiring standard, you’ve prostituted everything,’ he added. 

‘Everyone from ICE sees what’s coming into the field and they’re f**king petrified.’

The DHS official sounded a similar alarm.

‘We do have some new recruits that are fantastic, but we’re now bringing people in who shouldn’t be hired at all into any federal government job, definitely not one that has a badge and a gun,’ the official said.

We’ve already seen agents trained to threaten protesters with arrest for “impeding” federal officers based on 18 USC 111 just for standing too close and filming their arrests. If that’s more than an empty threat, I’ve yet to see a video of them actually doing it. (Maybe a reader will update me.) If it were me, I’d remind agents that if they actually arrested me they’d have to explain, sans mask, before a federal judge just how filming them “forcibly” impeded or interfered with “the performance of official duties” per subsection 1. If it were me, I’d remind agents that after that pissed-off judge throws their case out of court, they’d personally face a lawsuit for violating my civil rights.

Marimar Martinez should file one against the agent who shot her. Makinge him an example would be a public service.

The Mail’s unnamed DHS official laments:

‘This isn’t the department of baking cookies,’ the source said. ‘This is the Department of Homeland Security, where you can be deported from the country. 

‘And we’re now employing people who are not equipped to tie their own shoelaces. 

‘This whole thing is a complete disaster from beginning to end.’

Now CBP’s Comandante Gregory Bovino and his thugs are concentrating on New Orleans. Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch reported from there on Thursday (gift link):

By the end of the day, observers tallied around 12 to 14 apparent arrests. There was no evidence that any of these people were on the list of 10 most-wanted actual criminals Homeland Security pictured along with Wednesday’s launch — catnip for the Fox News audience clinging to the delusional Big Lie that Team Bovino is only targeting bad guys.

Instead, his secret police just swarmed wherever they could find the most brown-skinned people — the Home Depot lot, a white van filled with contractors, Mexican restaurants — and acted like the gun-toting officer in the recent movie Civil War who famously asked, “What kind of American are you?”

In Bovino’s past operations, only a fraction of those arrested and facing deportation had criminal records — just 44 out of 370 in last month’s Charlotte op — and there was no evidence that Louisiana’s “Catahoula Crunch” would be any different.

DHS has turned on its head the old maxim, “You get what you pay for.”

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
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Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Patel on J6 arrest: "When you attack American citizens, when you attack our institutions of legislation, when you attack our nation's Capitol, you attack the very being of our way of life."

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-12-04T18:44:00.833Z

The utter lack of self-awareness among these people is astonishing. They seem to be barely sentient.

If you are old enough to remember the days before the clean air act and you lived in or visited a big city like New York or L.A. you’ll remember how it was when you had “bad air days” and the sky was a yellowish brown and your eyes would water when you went outside. Those are the days Trump wants to return to, back when America was great:

President Trump on Wednesday threw the weight of the federal government behind vehicles that burn gasoline rather than electric cars, gutting one of the country’s most significant efforts to address climate change and thrusting the automobile industry into greater uncertainty.

Flanked by executives from major automakers in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said the Transportation Department would significantly weaken fuel efficiency requirements for tens of millions of new cars and light trucks. The administration claimed the changes would save Americans $109 billion over five years and shave $1,000 off the average cost of a new car.

The Biden administration’s stricter efficiency standards were designed to get more Americans to go electric. But Mr. Trump said they “forced automakers to build cars using expensive technologies that drove up costs, drove up prices, and made the car much worse. This is a green new scam, and people were paying too much for a car that didn’t work as well.”

[…]

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States, and Mr. Biden had adopted a carrot-and-stick approach to reducing these emissions. He offered tax credits to encourage motorists to buy electric cars while requiring that automakers meet stringent fuel efficiency standards to pressure them to sell more nonpolluting models.

Mr. Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress got rid of the tax credits earlier this year. They also eliminated fines for automakers who violate the fuel efficiency standards. And now the standards themselves will be watered down.

The automakers said they were happy but privately they aren’t happy about having re-tooled to accommodate the new technology only to be told they should go back to the 1960s. Not to mention that the tariffs have cost them billions and people aren’t buying new cars because of Trump’s shit economic policies. But they were there with him at the announcement clapping their flappers like a bunch of trained seals.

And I’m sure the housing and insurance industries are thrilled that we are no longer concerned about climate change. Apparently, houses are becoming uninsurable in places like Florida, California, parts of the Midwest where the changing weather patterns are causing massive liability. But that’s cool. Trump promises that climate change will create more beachfront property (what?) so everyone will soon be living on the ocean. Or something.

But it’s all good. The transportation Secretary, who has been recently concentrating on getting people to dress up in fancy clothes for their plane travel for some reason had this to say about the new rules:

Sean Duffy on slashing fuel economy standards: "This rule will actually allow you to bring back the 1970s station wagon. Maybe a little wood paneling on the side. We can bring back choice to consumers." pic.twitter.com/5BlaJxlQyQ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 4, 2025

Jesus H. Christ. This guy has truly bought the idea that everyone is yearning to live in the Brady Bunch.

Everyone is 12.

I think what’s most galling about this is that they are just so blatant about it after spending four years torturing Hunter Biden. They even said he should not be allowed to sell his paintings because of the conflict of interest with his father in the White House.

This? Crickets.

A little-known start-up backed by Donald Trump Jr. just landed a multi-million dollar deal with his father’s administration to increase the domestic industrial supply of magnets.

Vulcan Elements, a tiny rare-earths start-up that received investments from Trump Jr.’s 1789 Capital venture firm in August, is slated for a roughly $620 million Defense Department loan under the deal, the Financial Times reports.

There is so much graft going on in this White house that I don’t think even years of Democratic majorities would ever be able to unravel it all. But Don Jr. should be at the top of the list for investigations. And every time MAGA screams like a banshee, the Democrats should just say , “Hunter Biden” and carry on. I know the cycle of retribution is a bad thing but Trump’s monstrous spawn simply cannot be allowed to get away with this.

Yes, Trump’s White House re-design is an abomination

Trump begins his cabinet meeting by bragging about his White House renovations:

"The Capitol Room looks beautiful, like it should now. The Oval Office looks beautiful, like it should. It was not, it was like the rest of the country. It was in disrepair." pic.twitter.com/eCmGAlMQHo

— FactPost (@factpostnews) December 2, 2025

It was not in disrepair. Now it looks like a bordello:

HAVE YOU SEEN THE ENTIRE OVAL OFFICE?

Here you have it – What do you think? pic.twitter.com/zPXRugJyGZ

— BelannF (@BelannF) November 23, 2025

Huffington Post spoke with some designers about Trump’s big redecoration project:

“My first impression was that the redesign completely ignored the architecture it sits inside,” said interior designer Sarah Boardman. “The White House is a blend of Palladian and Georgian neoclassical design, with beautifully restrained Irish influences, soft curves, elegant proportions and detailed plasterwork that already provide all the ornament the room needs.”

She noted that past presidents have generally honored that foundation, even if they opted for slightly bolder carpets or richer fabrics.

“This redesign goes in the opposite direction,” Boardman said. “The gold isn’t integrated into the architecture ― it’s layered on top of it. The appliqués and ornaments look like they were purchased in bulk and installed everywhere instead of being thoughtfully selected. It has far more in common with French Baroque and Rococo, the Versailles ‘let them eat cake’ era, than anything in the White House’s actual design lineage.”

Trump knows nothing of American history and cares even less. This is about him and what it shows is his terrible taste.

Interior designer Kelley Wagner ― who has posted many TikTok critiques of the current president’s design choices ― also drew comparisons to Louis XIV’s Versailles and even the lavish interiors shown in images of Vladimir Putin’s purported residence.

“Both the Sun King’s Versailles and Putin’s home are ‘palaces,’ and were not designed to be public spaces,” she said. “It’s my belief that President Trump has a personal affinity for these motifs because he believes they convey opulence and power.”

They’re being polite here:

What makes the Versailles-esque approach particularly jarring, designers said, is how sharply it contrasts with the building it occupies, both symbolically and visually. Wagner noted that the Rococo-style gold appliqués now covering the space feel fundamentally mismatched.

“The sinewy motifs are at odds with the neoclassical style, which focuses more on geometric shapes,” she said. “Additionally, the direct application of these pieces onto the wallpaper, marble fireplace surround and the gold leafing of existing elements is a bit unconventional.”

No it’s not. Cheney our the McMansions on the Real Housewives of New Jersey and you’ll see that same hideous, busy gold and mirrors crapola all over the walls and the floors. I’m sure there are many homes just like it in Palm Beach as well. (One of the designers actually compares it to the grotesque tastelessness of the “Queen of Versailles” Jackie Siegel which is pretty apt.)

Fine. But this house doesn’t belong to this asshole and he has no right to do any of it. In fact, the whole thing should be taken over by a historical society and the president should only be allowed to redecorate the residence. It’s a public building.

Interior designer Diana Lombard believes Trump’s use of ornate, high-shine gold ultimately creates the opposite effect of what he likely intended. “Gold in a plated, high-shine finish tinges much more yellow than a true antique brass and ends up looking showy as opposed to distinguished,” she said. “Real brass, on the other hand, has depth, variation and subtlety. It’s a more nuanced, sophisticated gold that develops a natural patina over time and, in my opinion, more accurately represents craftsmanship and true luxury, and by extension signifies wealth much more than plated gold.”

Several experts noted that the gold in Trump’s Oval Office appears to skew almost green in photos, likely because of the lighting choices. That, too, makes the specific shade and finish feel out of place in the White House’s architectural context.

“When it sits next to the authentic gold-leaf frames of portraits like Washington or Franklin, the contrast is stark,” Boardman added. “One is historic craft ― the other is imitation. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for that aesthetic in certain settings. But this room and this architecture is not it. Because he left the existing wallpaper from his first administration, the gold clashes and the TV set lighting ramps up the canned gold.”

[…]

“As some have pointed out, some of the gold decals look mighty similar to cheap polyurethane decorations you can buy for as little as $1 on Chinese e-commerce website Alibaba,” Segalovich said.

And that says everything about the design, doesn’t it?

I think this does illustrate something important about Trump’s appeal, however. He was born rich and never knew a moment of want. He’s anything but a self-made man. But the fact is that the way he lives in this over-the-top baroque style that hasn’t been in fashion since the 19th century is exactly how his voters think rich people live. If they came into money most of them would decorate exactly the same way. It’s why “The Apprentice” was so popular.

He’s basically a cartoon and he’s turned the White House into a cartoon as well.

Here’s a more tasteful, genuinely American approach:

“Welcome to the Oval Office, come on in!” President Biden gives a very personal tour of the Oval Office, his private office, private dining room, and the Cabinet Room at the White House. (Video: Architectural Digest) pic.twitter.com/9mMCwxLOHZ

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) December 23, 2023

When American public buildings are named after a leader or other notable person it’s usually done by other people to honor their legacy and accomplishments.

Not anymore. Trump’s just doing it himself now:

A dormant government building in the nation’s capital may seem like an unlikely setting for the signing of a peace deal. But nearly nine months after the Trump administration seized control of the U.S. Institute of Peace headquarters in an extraordinary public showdown and all but shuttered it, the center has re-emerged, newly named for President Trump.

The morning before Mr. Trump was scheduled to host a signing ceremony at the institute with the presidents of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, workers arrived at the building on the National Mall to install Mr. Trump’s name in large, silver letters to two sides of the exterior of the building, positioning his name to the left of where the institute’s name was already engraved into the facade.

The result was a re-dubbing of the building as the “Donald J. Trump United States Institute of Peace.”

The White House confirmed on Wednesday evening that the institute had been renamed for the president “as a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability,” Anna Kelly, a spokeswoman, said. “Congratulations, world!” she added.

The fact that he’s done that at the very moment he’s murdering people on the high seas and preparing to bomb another country to depose its leader and steal its oil is just

Q: On affordability, are the American people getting impatient with the reforms that you're making?

Trump: I think they're getting fake news from guys like you. Affordability is a hoax that was started by Democrats. pic.twitter.com/uefurLzEsu

— FactPost (@factpostnews) December 2, 2025

Keep saying that, Trump:

The poll underscores just how pervasive the affordability crisis cuts across Americans’ everyday lives. A 45 percent plurality list grocery costs as the most challenging things to afford, followed by 38 percent who say housing costs and 34 percent who say health care. (Respondents could select multiple responses.)

Forty-three percent of Americans — including 31 percent of Trump voters — say there is less economic opportunity in the U.S. now than there has been in the past.

Other indicators present a similarly bleak view: Consumer sentiment fell in November to one of its lowest levels on record, according to the University of Michigan.

And while Trump frequently points to his predecessor to deflect blame for inflation and high prices, the survey reveals that defense is starting to crack.

More Americans say Trump holds most or all responsibility for the economy (46 percent) than say Biden does (29 percent).

Trump: "I think affordability is the greatest con job." pic.twitter.com/qGeTyzUZGN

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 3, 2025

The ads just write themselves.

Trump is so verbally incontinent these days that I doubt this is going to help. And he is completely incapable of saying anything close to “I feel you pain.” He’s going to gaslight the voters with his usual bragging and complaining but I think his schtick is finally getting old:

President Trump, staring down criticism that he’s prioritized global issues over pocketbook worries, next week will kick off a year of heavy stateside travel that’s focused on selling his economic agenda ahead of the midterms. Trump’s approval rating has sunk as he has pursued peace deals around the globe and “narco-terrorists” in the Caribbean, while Americans have become more pessimistic about affording a better life.

With Republicans in danger of losing control of the House next November, Trump needs to be a lift — not a drag — in tough districts if the GOP is to defy powerful historic trends and keep its majority.

Trump’s new push begins Tuesday in the vital battleground of northeastern Pennsylvania. We’re told the president will aggressively push back against criticism over the cost of everyday essentials — an issue that helped propel him to victory over Kamala Harris last year.

The president’s growing irritation over how voters view his economic agenda has been bubbling over in his public remarks. He has repeatedly insisted prices are coming down, and has called Democrats’ focus on affordability a “hoax” and “con job.”

He’s floated several proposals to try to address cost-of-living concerns, including $2,000 tariff rebate checks and 50-year mortgages.

White House aides see Trump as the Republican Party’s best salesman — and its best chance to reverse falling poll numbers for both the president and his party. Trump is expected to use Tuesday’s event to highlight what he’s done to help the economy during his second term in office.

Yeah, that’ll work.

Trump: "The word 'affordability' is a Democrat scam" pic.twitter.com/pYhG5leVi3

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 2, 2025