The latest inflation numbers are in, and the war in Iran has them looking alarming. Consumer prices rose 3.8 percent year-over-year in April, with 0.6 percent inflation last month alone—a large increase from the 2.4 percent year-over-year bump we saw in February, the last month before the war started. Unsurprisingly, the increase was driven overwhelmingly by the spike in energy prices—a spike that will persist at least as long as the bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz, which nobody seems to have any plans to solve.
The news will only intensify pressure on Trump to figure something out in the strait—but so far this morning he’s been focused on other things, like posting about how “Dumacrats Love Sewage” and how Barack Obama should be prosecuted for treason. Happy Tuesday.
Join Bill and Andrew on Substack and YouTube at 10 a.m. EDT for Morning Shots Live!
I’ve Got a Bridge to Cell You
by Andrew Egger
Last year, you may recall, Donald Trump’s sons decided to try to break into the right-wing mobile phone market. At their June announcement event, Donald Trump Jr. pitched their new offering, Trump Mobile, as a cellular service for the forgotten MAGA man: “We’ve been working for a long time trying to deliver for the American people, doing something unique for people who had been underserved,” he said. “We’ve partnered with some of the greatest people in the industry to make sure that real Americans can get true value from their mobile carriers.”
Nearly a year on, though, the whole thing is starting to look like—stop us if you’ve heard this one—a scam. Customers who wanted to sign up were encouraged to plunk down a $100 “deposit” to preorder the group’s bespoke, made-in-America, Trump-branded $499 smartphone, the T1, which was supposedly right around the corner. In June, the company was promising to ship phones by August. According to International Business Times, more than half a million people ponied up, pouring an estimated $59 million into Trump Mobile’s coffers.
But no phones have arrived, the “made in America” promises have vanished, the launch date keeps sliding back, and this week, Moneywise.com reported on a quiet change made last month to the company’s terms of service:
A preorder deposit provides only a conditional opportunity if Trump Mobile later elects, in its sole discretion, to offer the Device for sale. A deposit is not a purchase, does not constitute acceptance of an order, does not create a contract for sale, does not transfer ownership or title interest, does not allocate or reserve specific inventory, and does not guarantee that a Device will be produced or made available for purchase.
That’s right, MAGA Patriot! You might have thought, when you sent the president’s sons your hard-earned $100, that you were preordering a phone that they’d soon be sending you—since that’s how preorders work and what they led you to believe. But that’s just because you don’t know business. In reality, what you were ordering was just a conditional opportunity to buy a Trump phone later, should they ever get around to making them, which to be clear they are in no way promising that they’ll ever do.
Reading about this swindle, I found myself wondering why it rankled me so much. After all, this is hardly the first time Trump and his family have cashed in on his cult of personality to part his superfans from their cash. Indeed, for many MAGA superfans, being endlessly shaken down for cash via a blizzard of unbelievably sleazy campaign-solicitation texts and emails has become a defining feature of their digital lives. And that’s to say nothing of Trump’s crypto projects, Trump’s NFTs, Trump’s guitars, Trump’s sneakers, Trump’s watches—I could go on.
Maybe some of it is that ludicrous forgotten-man shtick. It’s such a classic huckster move, the same one on which Trump’s entire political project is built. In reality, the mobile market is a hypercompetitive one, with many companies jonesing for consumers’ business and fighting to offer the best value to get it. But Trump Mobile isn’t actually trying to compete in that market. It’s trying to trick people into opting out of it because they love the president and like hearing a bunch of stuff from him about how they’re “real Americans.”
Maybe it’s the ludicrousness of his gang continuing to run these two-bit scams at all. Scalping $100 a head from hundreds of thousands of people who are enthused by Trump Mobile’s pitch that “Trump will proudly be displayed in the status bar as your network” isn’t bad money if you can get it, but it’s chump change compared to the bigger self-dealing projects Trump is running these days. At least when Arab sheikhs and oil barons choose to pour billions into the Trump family’s pockets, they’re doing it with their eyes wide open: It’s simple corruption to buy more favorable presidential treatment for their nations, and no one can deny they’ve been getting what they paid for. These Trump Mobile saps, by contrast, just want a new phone—and they’re not even getting that.
Or maybe it just strikes me as so sordid because of the political landscape in which it’s unfolding. Donald Trump, who swept back into office last year with approval ratings in the 50s and an unprecedented political coalition at his back, has been hemorrhaging voters ever since. His second-term approval has never been lower—in fact, it hit another new low just today. Pretty much every voter outside his cult has already headed for the hills. And yet that stubborn 35ish percent of the electorate remains, eyes screwed shut, fingers wedged in their ears, unhappy with the state of the economy, unhappy with the state of the country, unhappy with the state of the world—but still convinced beyond all reason or persuasion that their political messiah, Donald Trump, is about to turn it all around.
This is remarkable, unprecedented political loyalty. Without it, Trump could never have gotten back to where he is today—and he’d certainly be in no position to shake down the sheikhs. And how does his family repay this loyalty? By selling his poor dumb true believers a vaporware phone.
The South and the Fury
by William Kristol
“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
—William Faulkner
This week, the South Carolina legislature is debating whether to redraw its congressional map to try to carve up the district and eliminate the seat of its one black congressman, James Clyburn.
Why, you might ask, is this necessary? After all, South Carolina’s delegation now consists of six white people and one black person. You might think that the 63 percent of the state’s population who are white1 are amply represented. You might think it reasonable that the 26 percent of the population who are black should have at least one representative.
No. Six out of seven is not enough. One out of seven is too much.
Let Rep. Ralph Norman, who’s also running for governor, explain: “Jim Clyburn, I like him personally, but he does not represent the rest of South Carolina, which is conservative. His district is . . . close to 47 percent African American.”
Those 47 percent African Americans in Clyburn’s district? They aren’t real South Carolinians, you see. It’s the rest of South Carolina that deserves all the representation.
Donald Trump agrees.
The president began his real estate career by assuring white New Yorkers that they wouldn’t have to mix with black New Yorkers in his apartment buildings. In 1973, the Nixon Justice Department filed a major civil rights lawsuit against Trump Management alleging systematic racial discrimination against black applicants in renting apartments. The Trump organization refused to rent to blacks, falsely informing them that apartments were unavailable, and imposing different rental terms based on race. The case was settled in 1975 by a consent decree that required the Trump organization to implement procedures to prevent future discrimination.
Five decades later, Trump couldn’t resist weighing in yesterday on South Carolina:
The South Carolina State Senate has a big vote tomorrow on Redistricting. I’m watching closely, along with all Republicans across the Country who are counting on their Elected Leaders to use every Legal and Constitutional authority they have to stop the Radical Left Democrats from destroying our Country, including leveling the playing field against their decades of egregious Gerrymandering and Census Rigging. South Carolina Republicans: BE BOLD AND COURAGEOUS, just like the Republicans of the Great State of Tennessee were last week! Move the U.S. House Primaries to August, leave the rest on the same schedule. Everything will be fine. GET IT DONE! President DONALD J. TRUMP
In Trump’s America, having an all-white delegation for a state that is 25 percent black means that “everything will be fine.” Getting rid of the one black member of Congress out of seven from South Carolina is “leveling the playing field.”
Some naïve Trump defenders think—or some faux-naïve Trump defenders pretend to think—that what Trump and his movement are about is getting rid of the woke excesses of the last decade or so. But James Clyburn has been in Congress since 1993. He was the first black representative from South Carolina since 1897.
It is the America of 1897 that Trump, and Norman, and their Republican party yearn for.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Let’s Re-Do the Math on Ukraine… The deadly arithmetic of Russian casualties may add up to Putin’s defeat, argues BRYNN TANNEHILL.
What a Bunch of Jackasses… On the Flagship Pod, BILL KRISTOL joins TIM MILLER to discuss Trump’s cabinet of jackasses, his out-of-control vanity projects, and the unraveling of the postwar order.
Pastor Insists Giant Gold Trump Statue Is NOT a “Golden Calf”... WILL SOMMER joins SAM STEIN for MAGA Mondays.
Just announced! San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and our own MAGA culture expert, Will Sommer, will join the gang on stage at Bulwark Live: San Diego on May 20 at the Balboa Theatre.
On May 21 at Bulwark Live: LA our friends Jane Coaston, Jon Favreau, Erin Ryan from Crooked Media, the Ringer’s Van Lathan, and progressive commentator Brian Tyler Cohen will join Sarah, Tim, and Sam on stage at the Novo. Grab your seats today at TheBulwark.com/Events.
Quick Hits
REPUBLICANS IN DISARRAY: Congressional Republicans are hoping to pass quite a bit of legislation over the next few weeks, including a sprawling funding bill for ICE and CBP and a bill to renew federal surveillance authorities under FISA Section 702. Other legislative priorities loom as well, including a bipartisan housing bill and the president’s “election integrity”–focused SAVE America Act.
The big problem? The GOP House and the GOP Senate are struggling to get on the same page about any of it. Politico reports:
Intraparty tensions between House and Senate Republicans have boiled over in recent weeks. It has spilled into public view in the form of finger-pointing, shade-throwing and warnings that Republicans either need to figure out how to play nice or risk paying a price in what is already shaping up to be a rough election year.
“We control Washington. When … we don’t get things done, we’re making a huge mistake,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said about his House counterparts. “We’ve got to deliver.”
Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) also lamented the recent divisions within the GOP’s ranks: “You can either be part of a functional majority and get almost everything or you can hold out and get nothing and be in the minority next time.”
“I guess we can all vote ‘no’ together—that’ll be exciting,” the House Appropriations chair added.
Don’t threaten us with a good time, congressman! Read the whole thing.
HEADING FOR WARMER CLIMES: Running for office as a MAGA stop-the-steal dead-ender isn’t so good for winning statewide races in purple states. But it turns out it can open doors after you lose. Donald Trump yesterday nominated two of his biggest failed allies from 2022—Doug Mastriano and Kari Lake, who lost governor’s races in Pennsylvania and Arizona, respectively—for ambassadorships: Mastriano to Slovakia, Lake to Jamaica.
Lake’s transfer appointment appears to bring an end once and for all to her shambolic stint as Trump’s appointee to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which produces the international broadcasters Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and others. Lake has been in limbo there ever since a judge ruled in March that she had been illegally appointed; as recently as last week, however, she was insisting to Vanity Fair that she was still working in that role. She certainly managed to foul things up during her stay, as the Atlantic reported in February:
Lake has done profound damage to America’s foreign broadcasters, and to America’s ability to communicate with the world. USAGM runs Voice of America and gives grants to, among others, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and the Open Technology Fund, which helps people access information in places including Russia and Iran. During her tenure, Lake has ceded influence to Chinese and Russian state media all over the world, as their broadcasters have taken over slots from canceled U.S. programs. She has hampered the U.S. government’s ability to inform foreign audiences in times of crisis. She blocked RFE/RL from using USAGM’s transmission equipment, which meant that during mass street protests and an internet blackout in Iran recently, the broadcasters’ Persian-language service, Radio Farda, had to rent from commercial contractors. Voice of America’s Spanish-language service, which once reached tens of millions of people in Latin America, was unavailable during the U.S. military’s intervention in Venezuela because it had been shut down months earlier.
Seems unlikely she’ll be able to do as much harm from Jamaica—although we’re sure it won’t be for lack of trying.
Cheap Shots
That is, white alone, not Hispanic or Latino, per 2024 census estimates.
Just waiting to see the "I'd rather be fleeced by a Republican than represented by a Democrat!" t-shirts at CPAC
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me 891,785 times, I’m a MAGAT.