Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Will the military?

This could be one of the biggest cases we’ve yet confronted. I wish I felt sure of how it’s going to go:

The Department of Defense on Monday said it is launching a “thorough review” into Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, citing “serious allegations of misconduct.”

The announcement comes days after President Donald Trump accused Kelly and other Democratic lawmakers of “seditious behavior” for a video in which they said that U.S. service members could refuse illegal orders.

In a statement posted to X, the Department of Defense said it “received serious allegations of misconduct” against Kelly, who is a retired U.S. Navy captain.

“In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. § 688, and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures. This matter will be handled in compliance with military law, ensuring due process and impartiality. Further official comments will be limited, to preserve the integrity of the proceedings,” the statement read.

“The Department of War reminds all individuals that military retirees remain subject to the UCMJ for applicable offenses, and federal laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 2387 prohibit actions intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces. Any violations will be addressed through appropriate legal channels,” the Pentagon said.

This is insane.

Here is the oath of enlistment:

I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God. (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

Here’s the explanation:

• Members of the military take an oath to the Constitution, not the president. They swear an oath of enlistment to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies” and “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me.” Military officers all swear the oath of commissioned officers, which is similar.
• The oath is also clear that they should be obeying orders “according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” The UCMJ makes clear that service members are required to obey “any lawful general order or regulation” or they could be “punished as a court-martial may direct.”
• The Manual for Courts-Martial states that the requirement to “obey orders does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.”

The Conversation did a poll of military members about following illegal orders. They clearly understand these rules:

Our poll, fielded between June 13 and June 30, 2025, shows that service members understand these rules. Of the 818 active-duty troops we surveyed, just 9% stated that they would “obey any order.” Only 9% “didn’t know,” and only 2% had “no comment.”

When asked to describe unlawful orders in their own words, about 25% of respondents wrote about their duty to disobey orders that were “obviously wrong,” “obviously criminal” or “obviously unconstitutional.”

Another 8% spoke of immoral orders. One respondent wrote that “orders that clearly break international law, such as targeting non-combatants, are not just illegal — they’re immoral. As military personnel, we have a duty to uphold the law and refuse commands that betray that duty.”

Just over 40% of respondents listed specific examples of orders they would feel compelled to disobey.

The most common unprompted response, cited by 26% of those surveyed, was “harming civilians,” while another 15% of respondents gave a variety of other examples of violations of duty and law, such as “torturing prisoners” and “harming U.S. troops.”

One wrote that “an order would be obviously unlawful if it involved harming civilians, using torture, targeting people based on identity, or punishing others without legal process.”

This whole thing is a patented Trump political brouhaha designed to get the rubes excited and change the subject.

Kelly said, you can refuse to obey an unlawful order. But it looks like it’s going to be some kind of “trumped up” charge about “interfering with morale” or some other bullshit.

Hegseth tweeted this:

I’m sure they’re looking forward to persecuting a decorated pilot and astronaut. It’s the kind of thing that sends a thrill down Whiskey Pete’s leg and gives Trump a monarchical tumescence. And maybe they’ve purged every JAG in the military who would tell them that this is ridiculous. But if there is any sanity left in the military this will go nowhere.

He still believes that foreign countries pay the tariffs even as he says right there that “buyers of goods and services“ stocked up to avoid paying the tariffs and now they’ll have to start paying them since their inventory is running low. Does he really not know that those buyers are American companies who will have to pass on the expense to their American customers? Is he truly that thick?

Can we really survive three more years of this?

One of the truisms of American politics over the past few decades has been that voters want their presidents to be someone you’d like to have a beer with, a regular guy — yes, it’s only guys —  you could relate to. Since politicians are very rarely regular guys, they often go to great lengths to create a persona designed to at least give that impression. Mostly that has meant pretending to be a Real American by riding horses, going hunting or driving around in a pick-up to prove they aren’t some effete city slicker. Sometimes they try to fake it by being a Rust Belt kind of fellow or a military man. But the most important thing is to not act like some wealthy nob, even though most of them are, lording your superiority over the common folk whose votes are necessary for victory.

In 2016, Donald Trump took that strategy and blew it to smithereens. He flaunted his wealth at every turn, refusing to do the standard meet-and-greets in diners and living rooms in favor of big rallies where he stood above the crowd and regaled them for hours on end. Instead of wandering around state fairs and talking to the locals, he would land in a field in his personal helicopter and take some kids up for a ride. And all those people who insisted that they couldn’t stand a city boy fell in love with the rich, braggadocious New Yorker.

But in a way, Trump did have the common touch. He liked fast food and sports and, most importantly, he shared all their gripes and complaints and articulated them in the same terms some used themselves. For all his crowing about his money and showing off, he really didn’t put on airs. He was just like them.

He wasn’t, of course, and he reportedly had nothing but contempt for his followers. But for all of Trump’s flashy displays of wealth, he was never really a member of the Billionaire Boys club either. He was a climber, always on the outside looking in. 

But since he won the presidency the second time, it’s different. He’s one of the Big Money Boys now, and that club loves him as much as any MAGA redhat. 

So far, the most indelible image of Trump’s second term is the line up of wealthy tech oligarchs standing right behind him at his inauguration: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, Amazon CEO and Washington Post publisher Jeff Bezos and his then-fiancée, Lauren Sánchez, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and, of course, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. All of them were there to demonstrate their fealty to the man who would be king. And why not? After fomenting an attempted coup, inspiring an insurrection and being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, and massive fraud, Trump’s ballsy reelection was the most impressive act of legerdemain they had ever seen, proving once again that rich men can do whatever they want. 

Trump spends a good deal of his time as president these days exhibiting his exemption from all accountability. He brazenly parades his corruption right out in the open now, caring nothing for the fact that the American people are angry about the economy and resent that their needs are going unmet. He is swallowing a firehose full of money for himself and his family, selling access to himself and the White House, blackmailing institutions and accepting “gifts” from foreign countries and individuals alike. 

And he’s more interested in entertaining Saudi princes and tech broligarchs than he is in holding the rallies that were a constant feature of his first term. Even in the middle of the longest government shutdown in history, Trump invited CEOs and billionaires to the White House for a lavish meal to thank them for their generous donations to his $300 million ballroom pet project. They dutifully bowed with great respect. 

Donald Trump can get away with anything — and so can they. 

The biggest scandal of his political career has unsurprisingly turned out to be a sex scandal. He has, after all, been dogged by them since his first wife Ivana confronted his then-mistress — and future second wife — Marla Maples on the ski slopes of Aspen in 1989. And in 2016, the Access Hollywood tape nearly ended his presidential campaign. From Stormy Daniels to E. Jean Carroll to all the women who have come forward to accuse him of sexual assault over a period of decades, it’s hardly surprising that his long friendship with deceased financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein would eventually result in some very close scrutiny by the public. Nothing could have been more predictable.

Aside from the horrors of Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell’s alleged underage sex trafficking operation, this scandal has revealed itself as yet another example of the culture of impunity the elite members of our society enjoy. In 2008, Epstein himself was given a sweetheart plea deal by federal prosecutors, and in retrospect it’s hard not to conclude that it was the result of his relationships with all these rich and powerful men. Trump was one of them, a close friend of Epstein’s for over 15 years, but he was hardly alone.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., told FBI Director Kash Patel that he’s been informed “there [is] one Hollywood producer worth a few $100 million, one royal prince, one high-profile individual in the music industry, one very prominent banker, one high-profile government official, one high-profile former politician, one owner of a car company in Italy, one rock star, one magician and at least six billionaires” that were part of Epstein’s orbit. That, one suspects, is just the tip of the iceberg.

As the fight over releasing the Epstein files — which the president opposed after having promised in 2024 to do so — played out, Trump’s followers were getting restive. Even after he flipped to endorse the release at the last possible minute and signed the bill into law, they know something’s wrong but they aren’t able to fully accept that their leader is one of those hated elites they’ve always loathed. Last week, even Mike Cernovich, one of the most hard-core MAGA influencers and purveyor of the Pizzagate pedophile conspiracy theory, wrote on X, “During a recent visit in DC, the talk of everyone was how overt the corruption was. It’s at levels you read about in history books. In nearly every department.” No kidding.

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We are living in a period of unimaginable wealth among the upper 1%, who are getting richer by the day. Elon Musk, despite how badly Tesla’s stock performs or how outrageous he behaves, was just given a trillion dollar payday by the company’s shareholders. As the world’s richest man, he does what he wants. In fact, according to a new report by Oxfam, the 10 richest people in the United States have seen their collective fortune grow by nearly $700 billion since Trump secured a second term. 

With all that money they can buy any number of lawyers, harass their enemies, reward their friends and elude any consequences for their criminal behavior. Just like Trump. He’s their leader now.

Salon

The madness of the MAGA elite and footsoldiers

“That which is above is like to that which is below, and that which is below is like to that which is above.”
— Hermes Trismegistus, The Emerald Tablet

As a bemused observer of the New Age movement in the 1990s, the mystics’ phrase “As above, so below” became familiar. It originates with the Emerald Tablet. (Wikipedia has an entry suitable for further explanation.) The phrase comes to mind this morning in the context of the madness of the Donald Trump elite (above) as well as that of MAGA footsoldiers (below).

Here is Chasten Buttigieg, spouse to former Biden Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, commenting on Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s (above) Sunday appearance on “Meet the Press”:

Take it from the billionaire! All you need to do to get ahead is sell your home or break your lease, quit your job, move your kids’ school, hire movers (across the country? come on, that’s only a few thousand dollars!), find a new job, find a new place to live (put first and last month plus security deposit down), and leave your family, friends, and community behind. It’s that easy!

My god, these people are so un-serious.

Bessent: "You know the best way to bring your inflation rate down? Move from a blue state to a red state. Blue state inflation is half a percent higher." pic.twitter.com/FVL9AMS2BE

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 23, 2025

Nicholas Kristoff scoffs, “You know the best way to bring your life expectancy down? Move from a blue state to a red state. Red states have a life expectancy 2.2 years shorter than blue states.”

MIAMI — picking up on the open racism Trump has unleashed, racist lady blocks brown Americans from leaving a garage and tries to wait for ICE to get there pic.twitter.com/50ncH68Sbm

— The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) November 24, 2025

Now for the below. A video posted Sunday and shot in a Delray Beach, Florida parking garage. Marissa explains how an older white woman blocked her exit and called ICE to come arrest her and her passenger:

This is the new America! I’m an American Citizen born and raised here. This women tried to open my car door and asked me what country I was from, and to go back home. I guess I’m not white enough for this country anymore!

#thisisamerica#ice#racialprofiling

Maybe I’ll go back to bed.

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Freedom is slavery, 2+2=5

The moral/political sins of which the right accuses the left are quite familiar. They annoy Frank Bruni as much as they do me. We recognize them as the very disingenuous and fact-averse behaviors that confound our own attempts to perfect the union here on Earth One. So when the right flings their own misbehaviors at our feet with such bold indignance, one wonders sometimes if there might be something to the accusations. Or if Alzheimer’s is setting in and we simply do not remember lefty sins that the right seems to recall so clearly.

Frank Bruni views the he who smelt it, dealt it asymmetry of bothsidesism as “equivalences not merely false but fantastical.” They arise from “the perverse moral arithmetic of more than a few Trump apologists.”

One matter in particular that’s dogged Bruni as it has me are the claims that the Biden administration “weaponized” the Justice Department against Republicans. The junior partners in Trump 2.0’s federal law firm justify their exacting revenge on his enemies with all the schoolyard authority of “He started it!”

Except Biden didn’t, Bruni writes:

That isn’t some random, cherry-picked absurdity. That’s practically every hour of Fox News. Trump’s supposed mimicry of Biden when it comes to politically motivated investigations and prosecutions is more than an article of faith on the right. It’s the dogma that washes Trump’s authoritarianism clean.

And it’s bunk. I don’t recall evidence that Biden ordered the prosecutors who filed charges against Trump to do so. In contrast, Trump’s commandments that Attorney General Pam Bondi and her unctuous underlings go after James Comey, Letitia James and others are a matter of Truth Social record.

Show me where, during Biden’s presidency, you find anything analogous to Trump’s purge of Justice Department lawyers who have failed or might fail to quench his thirst for vengeance. Anything like the series of events by which Erik S. Siebert, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, was pushed out of his job in September after he hadn’t produced the indictments against Comey and James that Trump so fervently desired.

I clearly recall the Bush II purge of U.S. attorneys for failing to prosecute voter fraud where none existed or for their prosecuting Republican officials. One of the fired attorneys, John McKay, reminded Vox in 2017 in the wake of Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey that the Bush firings were an “effort to turn law enforcement into an arm of the White House’s political wing.”

(Maybe my memory is not failing. Who started it?)

Trump replaced Siebert with Lindsey Halligan, a Florida insurance attorney lacking any prosecutorial experience. She had worked for Trump personally, appears unflinchingly loyal and, coincidentally, has that certain je ne sais quoi, that made-for-TV look that Trump routinely seeks out in lieu of genuine competence. Her performance to date, Bruni writes, has been “an embarrassment of errors and a mockery of jurisprudence.”

He adds, “Try to locate Halligan’s doppelgänger in the Biden administration. Best of luck.”

To explain Trump’s wholesale retooling the Department of Justice as a weapon of MAGA payback, one must “erase the photographs of classified documents keeping company with a commode at Mar-a-Lago…. delete the recording of Trump telling Brad Raffensperger, the top election official in Georgia, to figure out some way to reverse Biden’s victory there in 2020,” etc. Fortunately, MAGA Republicans can muster the magical thinking to manage that.

The rationalization that most infuriates Bruni is MAGA’s “Biden crime family” narrative. It’s not as if Hunter Biden was not “an unmitigated ethical calamity.” But to equate that with the most blatant self-dealing that nation has seen under any prior president is insane. The meme coins, the cryptocurrency, the Qatari jet, etc. What’s as infuriating is watching his supporters accept it as the price of a less-porous border, owning the libs, and punishing random brown people for not looking “American,” etc.

But then there are the voters who respond to Trump’s antics and outrages — whether those involve executive overreach, defiance of Congress, brazen pardons, suppression of dissent — as familiar transgressions in festive new attire. Hardly. They’re more and worse than that. But cynicism and tribal loyalty have a way of replacing discernment with delusion.

A few MAGAs (albeit too few) may be finding their way out of that delusion. During one of my rush hour sign protests last week (above), a youngish pedestrian waiting for the Walk signal told me that one of his MAGA acquaintances finally had begun to question his allegiance to Trump.

I replied with a line from Independence Day, “Welcome to Earth!”

* * * * *

Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?

No King’s One Million Rising movement 
50501 
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink 
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Friday:

That story:

Trump told Fox News on Friday that Ukraine had “got to give up some land that they have not lost in the war”. He added: “We are in it for one thing, we want the killing to stop . . . They lost 25,000 people last month, between the two countries . . . It’s out of control. It’s a bloodbath.”

Later on Friday Trump responded to Zelenskyy’s comments, saying the Ukrainian president would “have to like” the US plan.

“At some point, he’s going to have to accept something,” he added. The president also referred to his confrontation with Zelenskyy in the White House in February, when he and vice-president JD Vance berated the Ukrainian leader. “You remember not so long ago, right in the Oval Office, I said ‘you don’t have the cards’ . . . I thought he should have made a deal a year ago, two years ago.”

[…]

Trump told Fox that “we think [that Thursday] is an appropriate time” but suggested the deadline could be extended.

In a sign of the increasing pressure on Kyiv, the American side had “signalled” that vital US intelligence and weapons deliveries could be halted if Zelenskyy did not sign up to the proposal, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Zelenskyy’s administration has told allies that Kyiv felt it needed to engage with the proposal, but wanted European capitals to oppose it and attempt to convince Trump to change course, according to officials briefed on the discussions.

Following an hour-long phone call with Vance, Zelenskyy said they had discussed the plan and “we’re working to make the path forward dignified and truly effective for achieving a lasting peace”.

In a day of frantic diplomacy, Zelenskyy and the leaders of France, Germany and the UK insisted that the current front line between Ukrainian and Russian-controlled territories should be the “starting point for any understanding”.

They added that “the Ukrainian armed forces remain capable of effectively defending Ukraine’s sovereignty”.

The call between the leaders is set to be followed by in-person meetings at the G20 summit in Johannesburg. It came as European capitals reeled at the scale of US pressure on Ukraine to agree to it, according to people involved in the talks.

“We’re all still analysing it, but it’s moving much faster than we had realised,” one of the people said. “It basically means capitulation.”

A senior European official said: “We’re back to square one,” referring to widespread fears at the start of this year that Trump would force Kyiv to accept Russia’s peace demands or lose US military support.

The US cut off intelligence sharing and slowed weapons deliveries this year, but later provided intelligence to help guide Ukraine’s strikes on Russian energy sites.

The latest plan has alarmed European governments not just because of the proposed recognition of the Ukrainian territories of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk as “de facto Russian” but also because of a suggested ban on Nato forces in Ukraine.

Under the proposal, US sanctions would be lifted in stages and Moscow would be invited to rejoin the G8 group of highly industrialised nations — ending its years of international isolation after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and forced annexation of Crimea in 2014.

It would also deploy $100bn of frozen Russian sovereign assets in reconstruction projects profiting the US.

This is just amateurish buffoonery that confirms this Administration’s foreign policy is alternatively Russian-directed and totally directionless. Such an embarrassment. Our enemies delight. pic.twitter.com/m28uQYlH1q

— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 23, 2025

On Saturday, Marco Rubio called in to a meeting of national security Senators and confirmed that the plan was actually written by Russia. We later found out that it had been delivered to Jared Kushner and Steve Wikoff in a secret meeting in Miami in October and they didn’t tell Rubio or Trump. (I suspect Witkoff and Kushner were high on their great Gaza peace deal and decided to run their own foreign policy. And Trump was busy redecorating so he didn’t mind.)

Bloomberg:

GOP Senator Mike Rounds went before the cameras and said:

Secretary of State Rubio did make a phone call to us this afternoon. I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives. It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan. It is a proposal that was received. And as an intermediary, we have made arrangements to share it. And we did not release it. It was leaked. It was not released by our members or our representatives.

He said they’d present it to the Ukrainians for some input which was awfully generous.

He walked that back later that night, making it clear that he had been out of the loop and somebody told him to get with the program:

Who was really pulling the strings?

This is apparently a JD operation to usurp Rubio. And JD’s man in the Pentagon, Army Sec. Driscoll is usurping Hegseth. (He’s participating in the talks.)

JD’s been on the phone with various players and Marco wasn’t informed.

The fight for the 2028 nomination has begun. We’ll be lucky if it doesn’t result in nuclear war.

Meanwhile. the orange freak is still ranting about the 2020 election and trying to cover his ass for being unable to end the war with one phone call like he promised.

Stay tuned. This crazy story is still unfolding. I hope it goes well but it will be a miracle.

I assume “them members of Congress” was a typo not a fall back to Clem Caddidlehopper grammar, but the rest of it is just as ignorant — and dishonest. They did not tell the military to “defy the president” they reminded them that they are not allowed to follow illegal orders.

And the idea that what they said is “by definition illegal” is fatuous in the extreme. He went to Yale Law. They need to ask for the diploma back.

The more these people hang around with Trump the dumber they sound.

The reason that Republicans always say Democrats cheated when they win is because it’s what they do:

Former Republican state legislator Austin Smith pleaded guilty Monday to what he previously called “ludicrous” charges that he personally forged more than 100 signatures on his petitions for reelection last year. 

The Republican from Surprise was a member of the far-right Arizona Freedom Caucus, which has a history of spreading false claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election and pushed for election law changes in the state legislature. 

“As a part of his guilty plea today, Smith admitted signing the name of a deceased woman on one of his candidate nomination petitions in March of 2024,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. “He also admitted that he attempted to deceive the Secretary of State’s Office by knowingly filing petitions containing forged signatures of purported supporters of his nomination for the Republican primary for State Representative from LD 29.”

And check this out:

At the time he was indicted, Smith was strategic director of Turning Point Action, Turning Point USA’s advocacy arm. TPUSA is a far-right organization based in Phoenix that aims to mobilize young conservatives founded by Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed in September while speaking to a group of college students in Utah. 

Shhhh. Don’t even think anything rude about Turning Point Action or you’ll lose your job and be run out of town.

Bolts.com makes a point I don’t think many of us have fully grasped — if the Supreme Court does what we think it will do when it finally guts the Voting Rights Act, the consequences won’t just be for the loss of Black representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. The negative consequences will be much more profound on the state and local level.

Here’s just one example:

It has been nearly two years since Fayette County officials shuttered the Bernard Community Center, in rural West Tennessee. The closure has devastated the mostly Black residents who frequented the space to host after-school tutoring sessions for students, breakfasts for senior citizens, movie nights, knitting classes, and private events like birthdays and memorial services. “​​People used it for 20 years to help each other, to help themselves, and now that is just gone. It has had an emotional toll on people,” says Christine Woods, who served on the community center’s board and fought its closure. 

Since the center was shut down, Woods and other advocates have organized protests and pled at public meetings for Fayette County’s board of commissioners to reopen it. But Woods says nobody seems to be listening on the board, whose 19 members are all white despite the county’s large Black population.

“If we had different representation on the county commission board, we would have had someone to stand up and fight for us,” Woods told Bolts and MLK50. “They don’t have to be someone Black, just someone who cares about our community. Someone who can see things from our eyes and feel our pain. Someone who knows what this center means to us, who thinks we deserve to have it. Right now, I think no commissioner feels that way.”

The make-up of the Fayette County board is by design. The county in 2021 drew a map with no majority-Black district, even after the board’s own counsel advised that the plan illegally diluted the power of Black voters, who make up roughly a quarter of the population. 

Black residents won a reprieve this year, after Woods and other residents joined with the local NAACP to sue Fayette County, claiming the map violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Under the threat of their lawsuit, which followed another complaint filed by the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden, county officials relented in July and adopted a revised map for the 2026 elections that includes three majority Black districts. 

The new map could significantly boost Black representation in Fayette County next year, but those gains already feel fragile. The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to deliver a ruling in the coming months that could gut the VRA, threatening this county’s new districts and undermining similar challenges elsewhere. 

That is, of course, the point. The Republicans (not just MAGA by any means) simply cannot live with the fact that they have to share any power with racial minorities (and Democrats more broadly).

Read the whole thing. It will break your heart. But then, what doesn’t these days?

Welker: "Prices are going up."

Bessent: "No, no…Inflation hasn't gone up. And the one thing that we're not gonna do is do what the Biden administration did and tell the American people they don't know how they feel. They are traumatized." pic.twitter.com/TwDoPXqFmu

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) November 23, 2025

Trump yesterday: They have this new word called
"affordability" and [Republicans] don't talk about it enough. Democrats did.

Trump today: I don't want to hear about the affordability. pic.twitter.com/Zhsrz6YVA7

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) November 7, 2025

“I want for people to recognize a great job that I’ve done on pricing, on affordability, because we brought prices way down,” he said at an event billed as the McDonald’s Impact Summit on Monday.

Americans are traumatized alright. By him.