Coming from Iowa and the land of Hoover, I would like to point out that another instructional thing Donald and Herbert have in common is that they were popular businessmen who did not know how to be presidents. They and their voters discovered too late that it is an entirely different skill set, and government can never successfully be run like a business.
This always kills me. Almost no one is just a generically successful business man, instead they are successful in A business or a type of business. Trump is (or was) a very skilled brander or marketer, could he run a restaurant? I doubt it.
The idea that government should be run like a business is always defined SO vaguely and with such little knowledge of WHAT the business of government is. It's definitely true that some skill sets are going to be transferrable... but you would need to be a curious, humble and well-intentioned person for this to work. DOGE ought to have showed everyone that if you aren't, it's going to fail. Mr. Trump is many things, but curious he is not and he's about as humble and well intentioned as Uriah Heep.
Anyone who wants to "run the country like a business" needs to have someone sit them down and explain that the government doesn't need to turn a profit, and they're there to service the people, NOT the board room.
Haha thanks. In fairness to me I did JUST finish reading David Copperfield and Demon Copperhead in parallel.
I think generally people, when they talk about this businessman thing, tend to be expressing that they are frustrated with inefficiency. And that's totally fair! The problem is that you can't make things more efficient unless you actually take time to look and listen at the existing systems and understand what they are there for and why. Sometimes it is good not to be maximally efficient if it serves a larger purpose.
Getting your driver's license renewed does feel like a typical customer transaction, but it's way less pleasant. I think part of this mindset comes from wanting smoother routine transactions.
Of course, try to explain the legal reasons why the DMV is so clunky (avoiding fraud, etc) and eyes glaze over.
Here in NC, the DMV is clunky also because of criminal understaffing. The employees themselves really try to make the process as painless as possible, even though they know they're paddling against the current.
Exactly, and again... wanting smoother routine transactions is perfectly fine! There's probably even a way to make that happen, but you aren't going to do it by just showing up and decreeing things higgledy-piggledy with no prior knowledge of how things work currently.
But the thing is, the DMV needs you to have multiple documents to prevent the issuance of fake ids. In the wake of 9/11, this was a big deal. These requirements make the process cumbersome. Some of the government's responsibilities are at direct odds with a smooth "customer" experience.
I was saying the same thing about the DOGE debacle, when people were saying Elon was taking a Silicon Valley start-up approach to the government. Here's the difference: there's no issue if Elon's first 99 rockets blow up on the pad before he succeeds on the 100th try, but you can't take the same approach with critical government programs.
Steven, taken a step further, “Anyone who wants to ‘run the country like a (Trump) business’ needs to have someone sit them down and explain that the government doesn’t need to” be run into the ground in deficit any further than it already is!
This guy has been a crank from the get-go. And, now he’s just an old crank raving at the end of the bar. “Bartender, cut that guy off and call a cab to take him home, please?”
Agreed, but Trump isn’t a great brander—he’s a great “pitch man.” He’s pure sales, and the epitome of the phrase “cheap snake oil salesman.”
It’s guys like Marc Burnett who started The Apprentice who are the branders. He turned a terrible and horrible businessman into a make believe billionaire when Trump was broke and lost all of his and almost all of his family’s wealth—that takes genius!…:)
This administration is filled with nothing but sales and marketing folks trying to run the largest and most complex government in the world. Voters, please elect some boring operations folks.
He’s actually a Trump supporter; both he and his wife.
I fact, Burnett diligently worked on Trump’s inauguration and described Trump as his “soul mate” at the National Prayer Breakfast.
And sadly, a former employee of Burnett said they always knew Trump was fake but Burnett told them “to make Trump out to be the most important person in the world—turning the court jester the king.”
Fair enough! I confess I'm not the best at differentiating all the business concepts. You're describing better what I was trying to describe. The point stands that Trump does have some real skills and abilities that one COULD use to do something good that might improve government. He just can't actually do that in the real world because he also has a personality disorder and is essentially amoral.
In my career in business, I reported to several CEO’s and none of them acted completely independently. Even in the financial world, they recognized that different people had different strengths and were expected to give value to the firm. Most Chairmen reported to a Board of Directors. Even as we watch Silicon Valley grow immensely successful, we reject the idea of a Unified Executive running the immensely complicated USA.
Spot on! I worked in local government for 30 years-and every time someone would tell me “Gob’mint should be run like a BUSINESS!” I’d ask them to name one business that must provide services for people before they are born to after their death AND never be allowed to deny service along the way.
MEC - excellent! I always ask, like the airline that lost your luggage? …the cable company? The insurance company that denied your claim but raised your rates? Please be specific about what bizness the government should emulate 🤣
I am continually confused at why people think that the government should be run like as business or why successful businessmen would make for good government leadership. It betrays a lack of understanding about both business and government--and the proper spheres of each.
Government exists, in simple terms, to create the order/structure that enables everything else to take place--to create an environment of (reasonable) trust and security and to provide common goods that would otherwise be unaffordable by many people and that many businesses would be unwilling to invest in. It is, by its very nature unprofitable.
Business exists to create profit. Business is not the same as government--it both relies on what government provides and, in a liberal society, is in many senses an antithesis to business and in a somewhat adversarial relationship. At least until business captures government.
The two spheres need to be kept distinct.
Government is also, by its nature in a liberal society, inefficient. Ours was DELIBERATELY designed to be inefficient. It is that inefficiency which helps to protect both the people and business from government.
It would be nice (as others have mentioned) if aspects of government were more "consumer friendly." But that is problematic.
Hoover’s presidency may have been a disaster as he wouldn’t use the federal government as the backstop for a financial crash in the private sector, but he became famous for his humanitarian work in Europe following WW1. Hr ran the American Relief Administration which supplied massive amounts of relief both food and clothing to millions affected by the war — the term ‘Hoover lunches’ was used to describe the food aid. in 1921 he worked to supply food for famine in the Soviet Union even though he despised communism, stating that ‘whatever their politics they shall be fed’. Ironically for how we see him now he was referred to as ‘The Great Humanitarian’ for his work after WW1. Hoover didn’t adjust or adapt his policies to the needs of the great depression, but he did a lot of good in bis life something Trump has never done.
Herbert Hoover has a complicated history. His humanitarian work was indeed enormously helpful, and it inspired others to continue in later decades. But when the Great Depression crushed the country, Hoover need someone to blame, and he decided to blame Mexicans. He initiated the Mexican Repatriation, a mass deportation of Mexicans and Americans of Mexican ancestry. He hired hundreds of immigration agents to conduct sweeps through Hispanic neighborhoods and put people on trains to Mexico. There was no due process, and only some of the people were resident aliens. Roughly 60% were birthright citizens. They didn't keep records, so historians have a hard time determining how many people were deported. The low estimates are more than 400,000. The high estimates are several times that.
Anyone who listens to Trump would recognize the rhetoric of the time. The Saturday Evening Post called their presence a "Mexican Invasion." Editorials call Mexicans "unassimilable aliens" and the "most undesirable ethnic stock for the melting pot." Iowa had Steve Kings decades before the real Steve King. Herbert Hoover was the ringleader, just like Donald Trump is today. So Herbert and Donald share something besides economic incompetence: hatred and cruelty toward immigrants.
This boomeranged on the US a decade later in WW-II. With Japanese Americans in internment camps and millions of others in the military, the West Coast had a crucial labor shortage. A desperate US negotiated with Mexico to create the Bracero Program to bring Mexicans into the US to work. Mexico refused to include Texas in the program because of the annoying habit of Texans to lynch Mexicans.
Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, "Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s" (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995)
Kevin R. Johnson, “The Forgotten ‘Repatriation’ of Persons of Mexican Ancestry and Lessons for the ‘War on Terror,’” Pace Law Review 26:1 (Davis, California: Fall 2005)
Neil Betten and Raymond A. Mohl, “From Discrimination to Repatriation: Mexican Life in Gary, Indiana, During the Great Depression,” Pacific Historical Review 42:3 (August 1, 1973) 377-78
Roy L. Garis, “The Mexican Invasion,” Saturday Evening Post (April 19, 1930) 44
I don’t think you’re being entirely fair . . . to Hoover. While he had been a successful mining engineer and financier, by the time he was elected president he was best-known for his humanitarian work during and after WWI, and (oddly enough) as Commerce Secretary, where he was put in charge of relief efforts after the disastrous Mississippi River floods on 1927. In contrast, Trump was best known for starring in a long-running reality TV show where he pretended to be an executive who fired people.
I must admit I am not a huge fan of the Hoover bashing he was nothing like Trump. Before becoming president he was personally responsible for saving europe from famine during WW I operating on both sides of conflict to do so.
Not only that he didn't go away in shame after his failures as president he was called back into action by Truman after WW II to feed the masses in europe again and he did so. He is very much still considered a hero overseas.
Hoover was a world class humanitarian but that made him uniquely unsuited to the presidency he truly believed his policies would work because private wealth and industry would step in to fill the gaps. And of course he would think that after all its what he would do and did over and over again.
The elite class let him down and his name has been muddied by their greed ever since.
He truly was a great man. I think about Hoover alot like I think about Carter. Good people, incapable presidents.
It seems a good person cannot be president without disaster anymore than a bad person can. Takes a bit of both to make a good leader for our fallen country.
I think.it probably takes a balanced blend. I know it takes relevant experience (Obama lacked) but even that can fail you (Biden relied on too long ). Clinton was a very successful president but not a "good" man. Amoral. But empathetic. And very smart politician. Of the three I'd take Clinton again for the oval though he's my least favorite.
I don't know how you can say that Trump doesn't know how to run a business. He's run more businesses than most people can even dream of. Sure, he ran them into the ground, but he ran them, good and hard, straight into bankruptcy. He may yet succeed in his ultimate goal of running the US into the ground.
Two major flaws with the idea that Trump is qualified to be President because he's "a business man."
1. His business was essentially a small business with only his family in control. He didn't have to deal with anyone who could resist his ideas or provide him with new ideas; he could just get rid of them. (Anyone who thinks the hallmark of a great business leader is to say "you're fired" to people doesn't know anything about running a business.) Many great business leaders have to deal with boards of directors, which makes them better at listening to and learning from other people's ideas, and sharpens their ability to think about the possible effects of a decision. Trump never had to listen to anyone or be forced to think about the effects of his decisions. (The Iran war is a great example of how Trump doesn't plan for contingencies and becomes incompetent when having to deal with people who don't do what he wants.) The Federal government is simply too large and complex for one person's ideas to control everything, despite what the fantasists or grifters say, even if that person's uncle was a smart professor at MIT.
2. He never developed anybody. Great business leaders develop other leaders, who often go on to lead other great businesses. It's proof that what the leader does is replicable. At Trump companies, nobody other than family or sycophants ever grew their careers, and nobody ever went on to greater fame by running a non-Trump business.
The mental picture of the man on the white horse as our salvation has morphed into the man in the stretch limo.
Walk into any bookstore and within a few steps of entering you can see a whole section of biographies, memoirs and various self-improvement tomes by and about various business titans and their conquests. You can almost hear the shelves groaning under the weight of works with titles and content aimed at all the aspiring Elon Musks and Peter Thiels out there currently toiling away in their branch office cubicles.
I'm waiting for somebody with a flair for parody and satire to produce something with a title like "Leadership Secrets of Captain Ahab and Col. Custer." Now that's a book I would read.
I don't think rank-and-file MAGAs have learned much from Trump's mistakes. I regularly see them blast local and state Democrats because they don't run government like a business. What's curious is that there tends to be no nuance to their argument, such as that different types of services may be better organized through nonprofits or even for-profit entities contracted by a government.
The idea that government should be run more like a business has so permeated our political culture that even Democratic governors in my relatively blue state have often appointed business people to lead agencies.
For example, I worked under a guy from Microsoft. He came into the job with the usual private-sector arrogance that he would show us bureaucrats how to do our jobs better. Over time he realized that running a government agency was much more complicated than a privately held corporation. For one thing, he couldn't just impose his iron-fisted will on an agency whose actions were significantly determined by a variety of statutes that he couldn't change without legislative approval -- which could be difficult. In addition, his best-laid plans could be easily thwarted by some low-level bureaucrat who makes well-placed phone calls to powerful stakeholders.
The thing I found most interesting about these business types was that they were not more efficient with money. Quite the opposite. They were easily wowed by high-priced consultants even though they lacked the knowledge needed to complete a project that agency staff possessed. In other words, they wasted a lot of money due to their own arrogance.
Yeah...the government should be run like a business is BS. Government is NOT-FOR-PROFIT, like businesses are. Obviously Grifter Donald doesn't think that way, so this is the end result.
I was walking through an arrivals terminal in Bristol (UK) Airport watching screens of Trump giving his speech on Sky News. There was no sound on so I couldn’t hear what he was saying but you could tell from the way his shoulders were hunched and his hands were accordion-ing he was extremely pissed off and defensive. Sad!
Couldn't have happened to a more deserving ignoramous who believes in baffling them with bulls--- because he has never dazzled anyone with his "brilliance".
"“The one thing I didn’t want to see was economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened,” Trump said."
< Tim falls off his chair laughing his arse off >
If only the president had advisors that would have warned him about the economic consequences of launching a war against Iran back in January/February.
Wait. He did have advisors? He just ignored them and launched a war against Iran anyway.
< Tim starts laughing his arse off again >
Congrats, MAGA. Orange Caligula got played like a two dollar banjo and he betrayed the lot of you. Again.
Churchill's definitive six-volume account of WWII vividly presents how war is simply about math. The purest expression of Churchill’s mathematical view of the war happened on the night of December 7, 1941. When he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he didn't panic about a new, global front opening up—instead, he wrote that he "slept the sleep of the saved."
Churchill realized that once the United States was fully committed alongside the British Empire and the Soviet Union, the combined GDP, population, steel production, and access to raw materials of the "Grand Alliance" vastly dwarfed those of the Axis powers. The ultimate outcome was no longer a question of tactical brilliance, but of inescapable arithmetic.
Trump and his entire team of misfits failed this simple test.
Iran had the math right, and they remain in control of the world's economies, save China, which remains carefully free of imminent crisis, with massive reserves and a full-steam commitment to changing its energy paradigm, with booming industries in renewables, super-critical CO2, and nuclear. As of May 2026, EVs accounted for a record 62.9% of the Chinese retail auto market share and now account for over 60% of all EVs sold globally.
While we've clearly lost this battle, Trump sealed our fate; we've lost our future place in the world, and every MAGA-voting idiot has delivered this tragic outcome.
Whether you liked his politics or not, you have to admit that Churchill was a man who was an expert at reading the "political room". trump on the other hand, can't read at all.
Trouble is that the people around him are capable of reading him and getting him to do what they want. Look at those two men behind him. Rubio is clearly in pain. Lutnick on the other hand is smirking - he's getting everything he wants.
I am not the biggest fan of Churchill (my kids were educated in the UK and I heard enough) however, it does need to be mentioned that he was personally courageous and willing to serve his nation. Bones Spurs not so much! He also had fixed principles, but knew when to compromise. He also was willing to partner with Attle.
Trump said yesterday that we don't need to do anything about the nuclear material yesterday so I really can't wait to see Senator Graham swallow that 1.
“Trump had really been one of them all along: willing to get the bit in his teeth and really get after Iran in a way no other president had been willing to do. As it turns out, Trump was more willing to push the big red “Bomb Iran” button on the Resolute Desk not because he was more fearless than past presidents but because he’d given less thought to the obvious costs that would follow.”
Nothing more to be said! Excellent newsletter and analysis.
Although what do you expect when your entire cabinet is made up of unserious and unqualified people, including a guy who isn’t even in the cabinet or holding a senior administration position—Kushner!
Or when this administration has purged our best and brightest military and intelligence officials. Some fired through tweets—or at the request of social media influencers like Laura Loomer, who may or may not be on one of several foreign government payrolls.
My point, how can anyone take this administration seriously? Trump has left us, and our allies less safe—dismantling ally relationships, as well as being unprepared to thwart terrorist plots attacks; they have focused their resources on purging non-loyal technocrats in government and arresting Democrats, and critics of this administration and finding voter fraud (a solution in search of a problem). IMHO..:)
Great point. It should be interesting watching them sell this monstrosity. Although, if oil prices come down (already started—the energy companies know where their bread is buttered), and the MSM continues to carry water (billionaires and corps in cahoots, or neutered)—you never know.
As Mark Twain once said, “it’s easier to fool a man, than to convince him he’s been fooled.”
And let’s face it, as much as the voters who voted for the guy and believed in him feel betrayed—they hate having people say they told you so; even more…:)
I have an idea given that Trump unilaterally started and then lost this war how about he and his tech friends pay the $300 billion to Iran themselves?
Seems only fair given that the American people had fuck all to do with this war. In fact I know of one trillionaire that had more to do with relecting Trump than anyone else. And it just so happens this trillionaire could fork over 300 billion and still be a comfortable 700 billionaire afterward.
Something to think about.
In other news Trump is clearly dying good riddance.
In some ways...you could say that Iran's getting $300B while the US taxpayer is paying $500B if we pass the DOD budget that increased 50% due to the war.
Nixon reportedly wandered around The White House, martini in hand, and talked to portraits on the wall during the height of Watergate. What do you call it when someone is doing similar things without being under the influence of drugs? When it is done in public, on TV, recorded for all to see, review, and analyze? Another day in Trump 2.0? Make it stop. Please make it stop.
Delirium or psychosis, probably. But I'm sure Trump wouldn't ever ask his predecessors (or their ghosts) for advice, since he already knows everything.
Well, someone must have directed him to the Herbert Hoover portrait. The conversation is one sided, as expected. Wait.....Is there a HH portrait hanging in The White House? AI says.... "Yes, a portrait of the 31st President, Herbert Hoover, permanently hangs in the White House. Painted in 1956 by artist Elmer Wesley Greene, it hangs as his official presidential portrait in the collection. You can frequently find it on display in the Red Room, and you can view the official painting directly in the White House Historical Association Digital Archives."
My immediate thought when Trump said "I study former Presidents" is that he's lying and it actually was someone telling him he might end up like Hoover upon which Trump responded "Like the vacuum?"
The orange idiot had to have someone he could one-up. he couldn't handle the title of worst president ever. *spoiler* he is. In his shallow thinking Hoover = Great Depression and that's it. Because he doesn't read or study anything he wouldn't know about Hoover's finer moments.
And because he didn't read or study about all the ways this stupid war could go south, he lost so much.
Maybe there's one thing he learned - Bibi Netanyahu ain't your friend.
Dementia mixed with malignant narcissism, which does have it's dose of BPD. It also presents with cruelty, sadism, and paranoia that distinguish malignant narcissism from narcissistic personality disorders. Trump does have the 'I hate you, don't leave me' yoyo aspect of BPD.
There really can be no surprise that America is in this position with regard to the Iran conflict, for our leadership has positioned us for this result from the outset. Iran has played the long game while we opted for the short one, waging war impetuously and without an adequate plan for measurable success and a suitable exit strategy. Inevitably we have strengthened their hand and even managed to achieve the seemingly impossible, of making others around the world side emotionally with a despotic regime from the moment we bombed a school full of Iranian girls into oblivion and wouldn't even admit to doing so.
We are the bad guys in this conflict because we have immature, inadequately experienced, and overly impetuous leadership that excels only in alienating us from others and making us look like teenagers in mature adult situations. The bigger problem remains that this has become standard procedure, as the image of America continues to atrophy around the world and other nations realize that doing business with us, on any level, is increasingly a bad bet. Every day must feel like a holiday to China, which will eagerly move forward as a world leader without us, and even Russia, knowing that our feckless leaders take the attention and the heat away from their own poor management and leave them less accountable than they would be under normal circumstances.
Our European allies may be making nice with our President now, but it is as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny when they know that the next round of conflict and controversy and underachievement from our side is mere moments away. Sadly, everybody seems to know it but him, and almost nobody of influence is willing to speak truth to power and tell him, and the rest of the world, that our emperor has no clothes on, and that it is an ugly, disturbing sight. Pope Leo for President 2028? If only ...
He is the ugly mean predatory uncle always invited always avoided and still allowed in with a helping hand on the stairs. Humans are a strange species ...
The bottom line is this: the Trump Brigade has made a lot of $money!! He’s doing great! Not really concerned about the rest of us except to keep us from voting. Trump, his sons, Jared, the Trump oligarchs - they are doing well. While we can hardly pay for gas, Trump is doing just fine.
There is a little part of me that hopes Israel manages to nuke this deal, that gas prices start to climb again, and that inflation rises. Am I a bad person? (Maybe not a little but a big part of me, I know I know)
No, what is happening is that the three ruthless leaders, Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu, have misjudged the effectiveness of brute power. In the 21st Century, it is not possible to kill a country or a people with bombs unless you kill everyone. All three are terrible diplomats.
If Trump wasn't such a fan of Putin, he could have ended the war in Ukraine with one big shipment of weapons as soon as he took power. Instead, Trump followed Putin's example of thinking that having a great army means you have all the cards. Now they have played all their cards and are left poorer, weaker, and losers.
Lol...I don't think you're a bad person and, actually, Israel is very likely not to go along with this plan. There are a ton of ways this whole thing could go sideways. I think the only thing that's clear is that Trump wants to get the heck out of dodge.
Since his normal way of getting out of dodge doesn’t work here - bankruptcy! - just sell out our country, sure! Clearly my thoughts and prayers are stay stuck!
The MOU is a perfect answer to the question of why we need professional diplomats. Where are they? How long did it take to come up with the details of the of the JCPOA? We have become a nation of spoiled infants governed by incompetents. I am just trying to brace for the next whiplash inducing turn around.
In their defense...a little bit anyway...it didn't help having Trump spouting his mouth and changing his mind every other day...
Reminded me of the "Comey wasn't fired because of the Russia investigation" thing where the administration choreographed this whole alternative world about Trump's "real" motivations for firing Comey only for Trump to go on national TV and blow the whole narrative up by admitting to it.
I think that sort of behavior contributes to Rubio's thousand mile stare standing behind Trump as he explained the MOU to the world.
I actually used to like Rubio but OMG...he sold his soul just like so many others.
I was really enjoying experiencing this morning what we hope is the beginning of the end of our war with Iran...but now you brought up Cuba. Please God...don't let them be thinking "Now...we really need a win...what about Cuba?"
This time, Trump was aiming that at the MAGA folks, especially on Fox News, or thought that Iran would look like Gaza. They probably represent about 1/3 of his base.
Now, Trump's view of who falls into the category of stupid and bad people includes everyone but Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth. The rest of the world is saying those words about Trump, and he knows it.
Half of the world is also using the word "pedophile."
Actually, I'm sure he thinks Rubio is stupid - look at Rubio's face at nearly every place where the snake and he are present. Rubio looks like an abused puppy.
Who could have thought that grifter types with no moral compass or loyalty might throw each other under the bus. Trump has ever only shown loyalty when it benefitted him, did the MAGA Iran hawks really believe there wasn’t a bus waiting to drive over them? I may give Trump a little more slack as he truly does seem clueless, but no bud these people were never your friends and only saw you as a useful idiot. These are all geniuses meant for each other. Who knew MAGA tears came in different flavors and tasted this sweet.
Coming from Iowa and the land of Hoover, I would like to point out that another instructional thing Donald and Herbert have in common is that they were popular businessmen who did not know how to be presidents. They and their voters discovered too late that it is an entirely different skill set, and government can never successfully be run like a business.
This always kills me. Almost no one is just a generically successful business man, instead they are successful in A business or a type of business. Trump is (or was) a very skilled brander or marketer, could he run a restaurant? I doubt it.
The idea that government should be run like a business is always defined SO vaguely and with such little knowledge of WHAT the business of government is. It's definitely true that some skill sets are going to be transferrable... but you would need to be a curious, humble and well-intentioned person for this to work. DOGE ought to have showed everyone that if you aren't, it's going to fail. Mr. Trump is many things, but curious he is not and he's about as humble and well intentioned as Uriah Heep.
Nice Dickens pull at the end, there.
Anyone who wants to "run the country like a business" needs to have someone sit them down and explain that the government doesn't need to turn a profit, and they're there to service the people, NOT the board room.
Haha thanks. In fairness to me I did JUST finish reading David Copperfield and Demon Copperhead in parallel.
I think generally people, when they talk about this businessman thing, tend to be expressing that they are frustrated with inefficiency. And that's totally fair! The problem is that you can't make things more efficient unless you actually take time to look and listen at the existing systems and understand what they are there for and why. Sometimes it is good not to be maximally efficient if it serves a larger purpose.
Getting your driver's license renewed does feel like a typical customer transaction, but it's way less pleasant. I think part of this mindset comes from wanting smoother routine transactions.
Of course, try to explain the legal reasons why the DMV is so clunky (avoiding fraud, etc) and eyes glaze over.
Here in NC, the DMV is clunky also because of criminal understaffing. The employees themselves really try to make the process as painless as possible, even though they know they're paddling against the current.
Exactly, and again... wanting smoother routine transactions is perfectly fine! There's probably even a way to make that happen, but you aren't going to do it by just showing up and decreeing things higgledy-piggledy with no prior knowledge of how things work currently.
But the thing is, the DMV needs you to have multiple documents to prevent the issuance of fake ids. In the wake of 9/11, this was a big deal. These requirements make the process cumbersome. Some of the government's responsibilities are at direct odds with a smooth "customer" experience.
10 points for House Dickens there, Smike - plus another 3 points for your online moniker.
Agree 100 percent .
I was saying the same thing about the DOGE debacle, when people were saying Elon was taking a Silicon Valley start-up approach to the government. Here's the difference: there's no issue if Elon's first 99 rockets blow up on the pad before he succeeds on the 100th try, but you can't take the same approach with critical government programs.
Also those people who say that conveniently forget how many Silicon Valley start ups fail.
Steven, taken a step further, “Anyone who wants to ‘run the country like a (Trump) business’ needs to have someone sit them down and explain that the government doesn’t need to” be run into the ground in deficit any further than it already is!
This guy has been a crank from the get-go. And, now he’s just an old crank raving at the end of the bar. “Bartender, cut that guy off and call a cab to take him home, please?”
Agreed, but Trump isn’t a great brander—he’s a great “pitch man.” He’s pure sales, and the epitome of the phrase “cheap snake oil salesman.”
It’s guys like Marc Burnett who started The Apprentice who are the branders. He turned a terrible and horrible businessman into a make believe billionaire when Trump was broke and lost all of his and almost all of his family’s wealth—that takes genius!…:)
This administration is filled with nothing but sales and marketing folks trying to run the largest and most complex government in the world. Voters, please elect some boring operations folks.
Like Jerome Powell
Exactly….:)👍They don’t even have to be that boring, just competent…:)
Tony Schwartz's ghost written Art of the Deal helped as well. Without that tome there would have been no Apprentice featuring Trump.
Excellent point. Very true and 100% agree👏
Indeed. Has anyone seen or heard from Mr. Burnett about why he chose to create false image of Trump as a successful businessman?
Nice gig for DJT: Show up just to say, You're fired!
Exactly, he didn’t even have to work at it…:)
He’s actually a Trump supporter; both he and his wife.
I fact, Burnett diligently worked on Trump’s inauguration and described Trump as his “soul mate” at the National Prayer Breakfast.
And sadly, a former employee of Burnett said they always knew Trump was fake but Burnett told them “to make Trump out to be the most important person in the world—turning the court jester the king.”
So what does this make of Burnett?…:)
His "soul mate "? That is nauseating.
You’ll get no argument from me…:)
Complicit and responsible for the results.
👍100%
"Fluffer"
LMAO..:)
Wormtongue .
Fair enough! I confess I'm not the best at differentiating all the business concepts. You're describing better what I was trying to describe. The point stands that Trump does have some real skills and abilities that one COULD use to do something good that might improve government. He just can't actually do that in the real world because he also has a personality disorder and is essentially amoral.
No doubt. Excellent comment BTW…:)
"Con man"
In my career in business, I reported to several CEO’s and none of them acted completely independently. Even in the financial world, they recognized that different people had different strengths and were expected to give value to the firm. Most Chairmen reported to a Board of Directors. Even as we watch Silicon Valley grow immensely successful, we reject the idea of a Unified Executive running the immensely complicated USA.
Well said, and 100% agree👏
Spot on! I worked in local government for 30 years-and every time someone would tell me “Gob’mint should be run like a BUSINESS!” I’d ask them to name one business that must provide services for people before they are born to after their death AND never be allowed to deny service along the way.
I never got an answer to that. 🧐
MEC - excellent! I always ask, like the airline that lost your luggage? …the cable company? The insurance company that denied your claim but raised your rates? Please be specific about what bizness the government should emulate 🤣
Could he run a casino?
Yes, multiple ones, straight into the ground.
Like in Jersey?
A CEO gives orders and direction and doesn’t have to depend on a large mixed body like Congress to ok it.
Governing requires finesse in bargaining, compromising, and good ol backslapping and etc.
I don’t want a CEO form of government- we have that now… albeit a fake and disaster everywhere.
Also don’t want governing like a family manages their household..,
It should be obvious...
My dad at family meetings always ended with "this is not a democracy"!
Agreed. areas this. https://grassrootsconnector.substack.com/p/the-true-story-behind-wollman-trump?r=9976n&utm_medium=ios
I am continually confused at why people think that the government should be run like as business or why successful businessmen would make for good government leadership. It betrays a lack of understanding about both business and government--and the proper spheres of each.
Government exists, in simple terms, to create the order/structure that enables everything else to take place--to create an environment of (reasonable) trust and security and to provide common goods that would otherwise be unaffordable by many people and that many businesses would be unwilling to invest in. It is, by its very nature unprofitable.
Business exists to create profit. Business is not the same as government--it both relies on what government provides and, in a liberal society, is in many senses an antithesis to business and in a somewhat adversarial relationship. At least until business captures government.
The two spheres need to be kept distinct.
Government is also, by its nature in a liberal society, inefficient. Ours was DELIBERATELY designed to be inefficient. It is that inefficiency which helps to protect both the people and business from government.
It would be nice (as others have mentioned) if aspects of government were more "consumer friendly." But that is problematic.
Hoover’s presidency may have been a disaster as he wouldn’t use the federal government as the backstop for a financial crash in the private sector, but he became famous for his humanitarian work in Europe following WW1. Hr ran the American Relief Administration which supplied massive amounts of relief both food and clothing to millions affected by the war — the term ‘Hoover lunches’ was used to describe the food aid. in 1921 he worked to supply food for famine in the Soviet Union even though he despised communism, stating that ‘whatever their politics they shall be fed’. Ironically for how we see him now he was referred to as ‘The Great Humanitarian’ for his work after WW1. Hoover didn’t adjust or adapt his policies to the needs of the great depression, but he did a lot of good in bis life something Trump has never done.
Herbert Hoover has a complicated history. His humanitarian work was indeed enormously helpful, and it inspired others to continue in later decades. But when the Great Depression crushed the country, Hoover need someone to blame, and he decided to blame Mexicans. He initiated the Mexican Repatriation, a mass deportation of Mexicans and Americans of Mexican ancestry. He hired hundreds of immigration agents to conduct sweeps through Hispanic neighborhoods and put people on trains to Mexico. There was no due process, and only some of the people were resident aliens. Roughly 60% were birthright citizens. They didn't keep records, so historians have a hard time determining how many people were deported. The low estimates are more than 400,000. The high estimates are several times that.
Anyone who listens to Trump would recognize the rhetoric of the time. The Saturday Evening Post called their presence a "Mexican Invasion." Editorials call Mexicans "unassimilable aliens" and the "most undesirable ethnic stock for the melting pot." Iowa had Steve Kings decades before the real Steve King. Herbert Hoover was the ringleader, just like Donald Trump is today. So Herbert and Donald share something besides economic incompetence: hatred and cruelty toward immigrants.
This boomeranged on the US a decade later in WW-II. With Japanese Americans in internment camps and millions of others in the military, the West Coast had a crucial labor shortage. A desperate US negotiated with Mexico to create the Bracero Program to bring Mexicans into the US to work. Mexico refused to include Texas in the program because of the annoying habit of Texans to lynch Mexicans.
I never knew any of this. Do you have a book or other source to recommend? Would be interested in reading up.
Francisco E. Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, "Decade of Betrayal: Mexican Repatriation in the 1930s" (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995)
Kevin R. Johnson, “The Forgotten ‘Repatriation’ of Persons of Mexican Ancestry and Lessons for the ‘War on Terror,’” Pace Law Review 26:1 (Davis, California: Fall 2005)
Neil Betten and Raymond A. Mohl, “From Discrimination to Repatriation: Mexican Life in Gary, Indiana, During the Great Depression,” Pacific Historical Review 42:3 (August 1, 1973) 377-78
Roy L. Garis, “The Mexican Invasion,” Saturday Evening Post (April 19, 1930) 44
Thanks for that perspective
I don’t think you’re being entirely fair . . . to Hoover. While he had been a successful mining engineer and financier, by the time he was elected president he was best-known for his humanitarian work during and after WWI, and (oddly enough) as Commerce Secretary, where he was put in charge of relief efforts after the disastrous Mississippi River floods on 1927. In contrast, Trump was best known for starring in a long-running reality TV show where he pretended to be an executive who fired people.
Yep. He was successful in showing up to simply say: you're fired!
I must admit I am not a huge fan of the Hoover bashing he was nothing like Trump. Before becoming president he was personally responsible for saving europe from famine during WW I operating on both sides of conflict to do so.
Not only that he didn't go away in shame after his failures as president he was called back into action by Truman after WW II to feed the masses in europe again and he did so. He is very much still considered a hero overseas.
Hoover was a world class humanitarian but that made him uniquely unsuited to the presidency he truly believed his policies would work because private wealth and industry would step in to fill the gaps. And of course he would think that after all its what he would do and did over and over again.
The elite class let him down and his name has been muddied by their greed ever since.
And his work after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was also lauded. I only found that out after reading the book Rising Tide by John Barry.
He truly was a great man. I think about Hoover alot like I think about Carter. Good people, incapable presidents.
It seems a good person cannot be president without disaster anymore than a bad person can. Takes a bit of both to make a good leader for our fallen country.
I think.it probably takes a balanced blend. I know it takes relevant experience (Obama lacked) but even that can fail you (Biden relied on too long ). Clinton was a very successful president but not a "good" man. Amoral. But empathetic. And very smart politician. Of the three I'd take Clinton again for the oval though he's my least favorite.
So why is he considered a bad president? Or weak one?
I don't know how you can say that Trump doesn't know how to run a business. He's run more businesses than most people can even dream of. Sure, he ran them into the ground, but he ran them, good and hard, straight into bankruptcy. He may yet succeed in his ultimate goal of running the US into the ground.
What's that saying? "Go with what you know".
Hoover led the US's relief of Europe following the Great War. The guy did have legitimate accomplishments on his resume.
Overshadowed by a depression
Two major flaws with the idea that Trump is qualified to be President because he's "a business man."
1. His business was essentially a small business with only his family in control. He didn't have to deal with anyone who could resist his ideas or provide him with new ideas; he could just get rid of them. (Anyone who thinks the hallmark of a great business leader is to say "you're fired" to people doesn't know anything about running a business.) Many great business leaders have to deal with boards of directors, which makes them better at listening to and learning from other people's ideas, and sharpens their ability to think about the possible effects of a decision. Trump never had to listen to anyone or be forced to think about the effects of his decisions. (The Iran war is a great example of how Trump doesn't plan for contingencies and becomes incompetent when having to deal with people who don't do what he wants.) The Federal government is simply too large and complex for one person's ideas to control everything, despite what the fantasists or grifters say, even if that person's uncle was a smart professor at MIT.
2. He never developed anybody. Great business leaders develop other leaders, who often go on to lead other great businesses. It's proof that what the leader does is replicable. At Trump companies, nobody other than family or sycophants ever grew their careers, and nobody ever went on to greater fame by running a non-Trump business.
Yes!!! Always my argument against Romney as well. Govt is HARD in this world and requires a skill set!!!!
I think everyone needs a laugh this morning. Because there is nothing much to laugh about. 😣 From one of my fave Substacks: https://www.thegodshow.com/p/this-moron-makes-everything-worse
One of them seems to have had good intentions!
The mental picture of the man on the white horse as our salvation has morphed into the man in the stretch limo.
Walk into any bookstore and within a few steps of entering you can see a whole section of biographies, memoirs and various self-improvement tomes by and about various business titans and their conquests. You can almost hear the shelves groaning under the weight of works with titles and content aimed at all the aspiring Elon Musks and Peter Thiels out there currently toiling away in their branch office cubicles.
I'm waiting for somebody with a flair for parody and satire to produce something with a title like "Leadership Secrets of Captain Ahab and Col. Custer." Now that's a book I would read.
I don't think rank-and-file MAGAs have learned much from Trump's mistakes. I regularly see them blast local and state Democrats because they don't run government like a business. What's curious is that there tends to be no nuance to their argument, such as that different types of services may be better organized through nonprofits or even for-profit entities contracted by a government.
The idea that government should be run more like a business has so permeated our political culture that even Democratic governors in my relatively blue state have often appointed business people to lead agencies.
For example, I worked under a guy from Microsoft. He came into the job with the usual private-sector arrogance that he would show us bureaucrats how to do our jobs better. Over time he realized that running a government agency was much more complicated than a privately held corporation. For one thing, he couldn't just impose his iron-fisted will on an agency whose actions were significantly determined by a variety of statutes that he couldn't change without legislative approval -- which could be difficult. In addition, his best-laid plans could be easily thwarted by some low-level bureaucrat who makes well-placed phone calls to powerful stakeholders.
The thing I found most interesting about these business types was that they were not more efficient with money. Quite the opposite. They were easily wowed by high-priced consultants even though they lacked the knowledge needed to complete a project that agency staff possessed. In other words, they wasted a lot of money due to their own arrogance.
Yes - although Hoover didn't run casinos into the ground.
Casinos! In Atlantic City! That's essentially printing money isn't it? How do you fail so miserably at that?
Yeah...the government should be run like a business is BS. Government is NOT-FOR-PROFIT, like businesses are. Obviously Grifter Donald doesn't think that way, so this is the end result.
Well it stands to reason that if you are a really successful car salesman that you will also be a marvelous neurosurgeon .
I was walking through an arrivals terminal in Bristol (UK) Airport watching screens of Trump giving his speech on Sky News. There was no sound on so I couldn’t hear what he was saying but you could tell from the way his shoulders were hunched and his hands were accordion-ing he was extremely pissed off and defensive. Sad!
Could you see sad little Marco wilting and longing to be dead in hell rather than there?
Yes 🤣
That was his soul leaving his body.
I think that happened a while ago when he made his Faustian bargain.
Marco looked liked a little boy with a full bladder.
Rubio is miserable because he is sentient. Lutnick is neither.
Lutnick may have been smiling over the big money-making operation in the slush fund for Iranian reconstruction.
I tend to agree about Rubio - but why won't he get out or do something about it? How sentient is he really?
Couldn't have happened to a more deserving ignoramous who believes in baffling them with bulls--- because he has never dazzled anyone with his "brilliance".
While drinking water
The air-accordion is his favorite instrument 😅
Probably the reason his hands are so bruised 🙄
It’s such a body-language tell.
"“The one thing I didn’t want to see was economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened,” Trump said."
< Tim falls off his chair laughing his arse off >
If only the president had advisors that would have warned him about the economic consequences of launching a war against Iran back in January/February.
Wait. He did have advisors? He just ignored them and launched a war against Iran anyway.
< Tim starts laughing his arse off again >
Congrats, MAGA. Orange Caligula got played like a two dollar banjo and he betrayed the lot of you. Again.
He doesn't have advisors. He has sycophants and cheerleaders.
and they are his advisors
Why would he need advisors? He knows more off the top of his head than anyone alive.
Churchill's definitive six-volume account of WWII vividly presents how war is simply about math. The purest expression of Churchill’s mathematical view of the war happened on the night of December 7, 1941. When he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he didn't panic about a new, global front opening up—instead, he wrote that he "slept the sleep of the saved."
Churchill realized that once the United States was fully committed alongside the British Empire and the Soviet Union, the combined GDP, population, steel production, and access to raw materials of the "Grand Alliance" vastly dwarfed those of the Axis powers. The ultimate outcome was no longer a question of tactical brilliance, but of inescapable arithmetic.
Trump and his entire team of misfits failed this simple test.
Iran had the math right, and they remain in control of the world's economies, save China, which remains carefully free of imminent crisis, with massive reserves and a full-steam commitment to changing its energy paradigm, with booming industries in renewables, super-critical CO2, and nuclear. As of May 2026, EVs accounted for a record 62.9% of the Chinese retail auto market share and now account for over 60% of all EVs sold globally.
While we've clearly lost this battle, Trump sealed our fate; we've lost our future place in the world, and every MAGA-voting idiot has delivered this tragic outcome.
Whether you liked his politics or not, you have to admit that Churchill was a man who was an expert at reading the "political room". trump on the other hand, can't read at all.
Trouble is that the people around him are capable of reading him and getting him to do what they want. Look at those two men behind him. Rubio is clearly in pain. Lutnick on the other hand is smirking - he's getting everything he wants.
Lutnick is a full blown sycophant.
A base parasite on the decaying body of DJT.
And a numbskull who is driving us hard aground.
So noticeable!
So true!
But he has the best words!
I am not the biggest fan of Churchill (my kids were educated in the UK and I heard enough) however, it does need to be mentioned that he was personally courageous and willing to serve his nation. Bones Spurs not so much! He also had fixed principles, but knew when to compromise. He also was willing to partner with Attle.
"In the end, despite America’s unquestioned military supremacy, it was Iran that held all the cards."
(Andrew Egger)
Well, in his defense, The Don wasn't playing with a full deck.
Only Uno cards
Trump said yesterday that we don't need to do anything about the nuclear material yesterday so I really can't wait to see Senator Graham swallow that 1.
Does he swallow?
For trump, he's swallowing everything....
Oh he swallows! He may not like the taste, but he always smiles and comes back for more.
He's learned to love orange.
Not touching that 1 lol
Sorry that was puerile
But, oh so true about the confirmed "bachelor".
I always see Graham in the likeness of SNL's Kate McKinnon's over-the-top impersonation of him.
Speaking of swallowing, I am eternally grateful that I had just swallowed my last sip of hot coffee before reading your comment!
So you didn't want to do a Jon Stewart on Steven Colbert?
IKR?
He will. He swallows everything DJT puts there.
“Trump had really been one of them all along: willing to get the bit in his teeth and really get after Iran in a way no other president had been willing to do. As it turns out, Trump was more willing to push the big red “Bomb Iran” button on the Resolute Desk not because he was more fearless than past presidents but because he’d given less thought to the obvious costs that would follow.”
Nothing more to be said! Excellent newsletter and analysis.
Although what do you expect when your entire cabinet is made up of unserious and unqualified people, including a guy who isn’t even in the cabinet or holding a senior administration position—Kushner!
Or when this administration has purged our best and brightest military and intelligence officials. Some fired through tweets—or at the request of social media influencers like Laura Loomer, who may or may not be on one of several foreign government payrolls.
My point, how can anyone take this administration seriously? Trump has left us, and our allies less safe—dismantling ally relationships, as well as being unprepared to thwart terrorist plots attacks; they have focused their resources on purging non-loyal technocrats in government and arresting Democrats, and critics of this administration and finding voter fraud (a solution in search of a problem). IMHO..:)
I'm very curious to watch the furious war hawks over the next couple of months to see how they come around to Trump's thinking on this.
We all know that despite this huge disaster that Trump's better than any Dem, right?
Great point. It should be interesting watching them sell this monstrosity. Although, if oil prices come down (already started—the energy companies know where their bread is buttered), and the MSM continues to carry water (billionaires and corps in cahoots, or neutered)—you never know.
As Mark Twain once said, “it’s easier to fool a man, than to convince him he’s been fooled.”
And let’s face it, as much as the voters who voted for the guy and believed in him feel betrayed—they hate having people say they told you so; even more…:)
Agreed. Your analysis is also spot on.
Thanks…:)
I have an idea given that Trump unilaterally started and then lost this war how about he and his tech friends pay the $300 billion to Iran themselves?
Seems only fair given that the American people had fuck all to do with this war. In fact I know of one trillionaire that had more to do with relecting Trump than anyone else. And it just so happens this trillionaire could fork over 300 billion and still be a comfortable 700 billionaire afterward.
Something to think about.
In other news Trump is clearly dying good riddance.
Actually, if I got the terms of his recent IPO correct, he could fork over the $300B and still be a trillionaire.
All the more reason to institute a special 'thanks for cursing us with this again you trillionaire fuck head' tax.
We've all got to come together and pay those reparations to Iran right?
In some ways...you could say that Iran's getting $300B while the US taxpayer is paying $500B if we pass the DOD budget that increased 50% due to the war.
Nixon reportedly wandered around The White House, martini in hand, and talked to portraits on the wall during the height of Watergate. What do you call it when someone is doing similar things without being under the influence of drugs? When it is done in public, on TV, recorded for all to see, review, and analyze? Another day in Trump 2.0? Make it stop. Please make it stop.
Delirium or psychosis, probably. But I'm sure Trump wouldn't ever ask his predecessors (or their ghosts) for advice, since he already knows everything.
Well, someone must have directed him to the Herbert Hoover portrait. The conversation is one sided, as expected. Wait.....Is there a HH portrait hanging in The White House? AI says.... "Yes, a portrait of the 31st President, Herbert Hoover, permanently hangs in the White House. Painted in 1956 by artist Elmer Wesley Greene, it hangs as his official presidential portrait in the collection. You can frequently find it on display in the Red Room, and you can view the official painting directly in the White House Historical Association Digital Archives."
My immediate thought when Trump said "I study former Presidents" is that he's lying and it actually was someone telling him he might end up like Hoover upon which Trump responded "Like the vacuum?"
The orange idiot had to have someone he could one-up. he couldn't handle the title of worst president ever. *spoiler* he is. In his shallow thinking Hoover = Great Depression and that's it. Because he doesn't read or study anything he wouldn't know about Hoover's finer moments.
And because he didn't read or study about all the ways this stupid war could go south, he lost so much.
Maybe there's one thing he learned - Bibi Netanyahu ain't your friend.
Dementia mixed with borderline personality disorder?
Dementia mixed with malignant narcissism, which does have it's dose of BPD. It also presents with cruelty, sadism, and paranoia that distinguish malignant narcissism from narcissistic personality disorders. Trump does have the 'I hate you, don't leave me' yoyo aspect of BPD.
Don't forget the Adderall.
Interactions with whatever the anti-ALZ plaque fighter is being infused. No, not my head! I passed a "cognitive test"!
Some tv doc said this is what dementia looks like in a malignant narcissist.
Nixon apparently drank to excess and also had a conscience.
Comparing this MOU to the JCPOA makes me think that Obama should retroactively get a 2nd Nobel Peace Prize
There really can be no surprise that America is in this position with regard to the Iran conflict, for our leadership has positioned us for this result from the outset. Iran has played the long game while we opted for the short one, waging war impetuously and without an adequate plan for measurable success and a suitable exit strategy. Inevitably we have strengthened their hand and even managed to achieve the seemingly impossible, of making others around the world side emotionally with a despotic regime from the moment we bombed a school full of Iranian girls into oblivion and wouldn't even admit to doing so.
We are the bad guys in this conflict because we have immature, inadequately experienced, and overly impetuous leadership that excels only in alienating us from others and making us look like teenagers in mature adult situations. The bigger problem remains that this has become standard procedure, as the image of America continues to atrophy around the world and other nations realize that doing business with us, on any level, is increasingly a bad bet. Every day must feel like a holiday to China, which will eagerly move forward as a world leader without us, and even Russia, knowing that our feckless leaders take the attention and the heat away from their own poor management and leave them less accountable than they would be under normal circumstances.
Our European allies may be making nice with our President now, but it is as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny when they know that the next round of conflict and controversy and underachievement from our side is mere moments away. Sadly, everybody seems to know it but him, and almost nobody of influence is willing to speak truth to power and tell him, and the rest of the world, that our emperor has no clothes on, and that it is an ugly, disturbing sight. Pope Leo for President 2028? If only ...
He is the ugly mean predatory uncle always invited always avoided and still allowed in with a helping hand on the stairs. Humans are a strange species ...
"...Iran has played the long game while we opted for the short one,.."
The US is the political version of Short Attention Span Theater.
The bottom line is this: the Trump Brigade has made a lot of $money!! He’s doing great! Not really concerned about the rest of us except to keep us from voting. Trump, his sons, Jared, the Trump oligarchs - they are doing well. While we can hardly pay for gas, Trump is doing just fine.
But Trump's crypto site Liberty is failing. After a year of taking bribes, the company is tanking as Trump loses power.
Good!
Plenty of other sources Check Gloria Maloney and others.
But Trump will still be rich. He never pays the piper.
Check out Gloria J Maloney. Plenty of other sources.
There is a little part of me that hopes Israel manages to nuke this deal, that gas prices start to climb again, and that inflation rises. Am I a bad person? (Maybe not a little but a big part of me, I know I know)
No, what is happening is that the three ruthless leaders, Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu, have misjudged the effectiveness of brute power. In the 21st Century, it is not possible to kill a country or a people with bombs unless you kill everyone. All three are terrible diplomats.
If Trump wasn't such a fan of Putin, he could have ended the war in Ukraine with one big shipment of weapons as soon as he took power. Instead, Trump followed Putin's example of thinking that having a great army means you have all the cards. Now they have played all their cards and are left poorer, weaker, and losers.
Lol...I don't think you're a bad person and, actually, Israel is very likely not to go along with this plan. There are a ton of ways this whole thing could go sideways. I think the only thing that's clear is that Trump wants to get the heck out of dodge.
Since his normal way of getting out of dodge doesn’t work here - bankruptcy! - just sell out our country, sure! Clearly my thoughts and prayers are stay stuck!
I think many of us feel the same way.
Certainly it is JVL’s hot stove touching, so we can’t be that bad.
JVL is always right! I'm firmly in the JVL Hot Stove camp.
The MOU is a perfect answer to the question of why we need professional diplomats. Where are they? How long did it take to come up with the details of the of the JCPOA? We have become a nation of spoiled infants governed by incompetents. I am just trying to brace for the next whiplash inducing turn around.
This round of negotiators had the benefit of just cribbing off the JCPOA. They're also incredibly stupid, so they even botched that, however.
In their defense...a little bit anyway...it didn't help having Trump spouting his mouth and changing his mind every other day...
Reminded me of the "Comey wasn't fired because of the Russia investigation" thing where the administration choreographed this whole alternative world about Trump's "real" motivations for firing Comey only for Trump to go on national TV and blow the whole narrative up by admitting to it.
I think that sort of behavior contributes to Rubio's thousand mile stare standing behind Trump as he explained the MOU to the world.
Jeff,
Rubio looks more like he's at the funeral of one of his parents...
...who left Cuba when ruled by Batista, not "having escaped the Castro regime," as Li'l Marco intimates.
I actually used to like Rubio but OMG...he sold his soul just like so many others.
I was really enjoying experiencing this morning what we hope is the beginning of the end of our war with Iran...but now you brought up Cuba. Please God...don't let them be thinking "Now...we really need a win...what about Cuba?"
They are..."the Boss needs a win"
"Those people are either stupid or bad people."
This time, Trump was aiming that at the MAGA folks, especially on Fox News, or thought that Iran would look like Gaza. They probably represent about 1/3 of his base.
Now, Trump's view of who falls into the category of stupid and bad people includes everyone but Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth. The rest of the world is saying those words about Trump, and he knows it.
Half of the world is also using the word "pedophile."
Actually, I'm sure he thinks Rubio is stupid - look at Rubio's face at nearly every place where the snake and he are present. Rubio looks like an abused puppy.
Who could have thought that grifter types with no moral compass or loyalty might throw each other under the bus. Trump has ever only shown loyalty when it benefitted him, did the MAGA Iran hawks really believe there wasn’t a bus waiting to drive over them? I may give Trump a little more slack as he truly does seem clueless, but no bud these people were never your friends and only saw you as a useful idiot. These are all geniuses meant for each other. Who knew MAGA tears came in different flavors and tasted this sweet.
It's amazing the number of people in Trump's orbit that still believe that THEY are the ones who can control Frankenstein's monster.
"This time is different!" 😀