Won't it be ironic if the crimes that finally bring down the House of Trump are insider trading around the Iran war?
Not pedophilia, not tariffs, not DOGE, not "It's Going to be Wild" RFK Jr, not a big pile of Constitutional violations, not his in your face graft, not ICE murders, not the murder of alleged drug runners in boats and so forth.
It's like mobsters of yore who never paid for their murders but went to prison for tax evasion.
Whatever it takes, the American People are abandoning Trump/MAGA in droves. Retribution is coming.
You know what, I'm using that for all of them now. Charles, Kate, the whole gang. Throw that tea in the harbor. I don't believe in the divine right of a special family over the rest of humanity.
If that is what it takes, so be it. That might take out several wealthy people in his orbit as well. I would still like to know what the treasury department has on Epstein as that might go some ways to reordering our high and mighty.
Anything that works is what I say. My hope is if one thing breaks through, the dam will break. I will gleefully watch the whole clown cabinet wash away with him.
Wouldn't it be even more ironic if they ended up converting one of the ICE Detention Camps into a "Trump-affiliated Correction Camp"? I'm not sure 7,500 is big enough for all those involved over the past 10+ years.
And there is USD1, the stablecoin owned by Trump and Witkoff. Trump gets 75% of net profit, and Witkoff, Trump's emissary for pretty much every damned thing, gets the rest.Currently, the USD's held, what stabilizes the tokens or coins, is earning 3-4% on $5 billion-plus worth. The company has existed for just about a year.
“The Untouchables” is one of my favorite movies. And Capone was put away and eventually died of syphilis in… Miami! So there is a track. But mobsters didn’t leave Chicago. And I’m afraid people who are truly committed aren’t jumping off. At best they are preparing for the power vacuum. Hope I’m wrong.
Bill: "So we now have a major war, well into its fourth week, which Trump is threatening to expand to a ground war, all being done without congressional approval, and all the sole responsibility of Donald Trump and his Republican party."
No. The sole responsibility lies with the 77 million people who voted for Trump and his Republican party. For years, there's been solid evidence that the modern GOP is incapable of governing, but because the electorate has the memory of a goldfish, they don't punish the GOP for their ineptitude. *Everything* that is happening right now -- unauthorized wars, spiraling gas prices, long lines at airports, general chaos and confusion -- is happening because 77 million abdicated their civic duty and elected these motherfuckers. The United States is getting its comeuppance, and its about time.
Yes...I have a "favorite" memory of a college student in 2024 at some campus being interviewed about the Biden administration's support of the Israeli response to the October surprise attack.
He responded to the reporter so defiantly with something along the lines of "If the Biden administration doesn't change their position...they're not getting my vote. They'll discover what it costs to support Israel!"
All of us who follow politics closely were shaking our heads in disbelief as the "Trump's going to be far worse for the Palestinians and the world" thought/truth was so damn obvious, but apparently not to so many of our fellow citizens unfortunately.
I had that same argument with my own 29-year-old daughter. She's still mad at me because I occasionally buy a Starbucks because... Well, I'm not 100% sure, but it has something to do with Israel.
The student's youthful inexperience and ignorance may have interfered with his ability to think. Thousands of Arab-American Trump voters didn't have that excuse.
Indeed, the couch won more votes than either Kamala or the other candidate:
85.9 million eligible voters did not vote in the 2024 general election, far surpassing the 76.8 million ballots cast for Donald Trump or the 74.3 million for Kamala Harris.
This makes steam come out of my ears. Trump’s “mandate” consisted of a little more than a third of eligible voters who voted for him over a little bit less than a third of eligible voters who voted for Harris. If we had mandatory voting in this country like in some other countries, maybe he still would have been elected given the thinking skills of many Americans, but we’ll never know. Take a minute to imagine what things would be here as well as in the rest of the world if Harris had been elected.
Although I understand the wish for mandatory voting, until/unless they allow no-excuse absentee voting, free voting-only IDs for every US citizen when they turn 18, judicial support of laws which encourage instead of discourage one-vote one person instead of herding people into gerrymandered districts, the acceptance of a postmark dated on Election Day as a benchmark for ballot validity/counting (like the IRS), and a Postal System which is mandated to prioritize the efficient and accurate processing of ballots, mandatory voting will just become a poll tax for those who do NOT vote and have no means of doing so.
I used to be in favor in mandatory voting, but the Trump era has been a key indicator to me that if people don't feel the need to vote, they shouldn't be forced to. A lot of Trump's voters are low information voters who are supremely confident about things they know less than nothing about.
Yes, but many of those people voted for both Obama and Biden. They are people who respond to the conditions of their lives. Many are realizing that Trump is everything that Harris said he is: greedy, selfish, corrupt, and unstable. They, like us, are frightened at how quickly things have become terrible. I just got my revised heating oil bill for the next 12 months. It has gone up from $189 a month to $398!! All of that is due to Trump trying to make people forget he is a pedophile.
The people you describe don't get a pass, Oldandintheway. In fact, I may have more contempt for them than the median Red Hat, and that's because if they're voting based on the "conditions of their lives", that means they've chosen to overlook Trump attempted a coup, was convicted of 34 felonies in New York, was found civilly liable for sexual assault, and stole classified documents related to his business interest. Such a voter is an unserious, morally vacuous person.
I don’t think that’s a fair assessment, although I certainly understand the sentiment. But a huge number of American voters don’t have time or interest to read Substacks or even watch Fox News. They are working in Amazon warehouses, or other exhausting jobs, or living in communities in Nebraska that haven’t voted for a Democrat in 30 years. They vote based upon how easy or difficult their lives are. Trump promised to make everything better on day one. Now they realize he’s a fraud.
That does not count as a good excuse, it's just another bad excuse for people who are also a bad excuse for citizens of a democracy. To paraphrase Chuchill, those who voted for Trump because they wanted no war and a good economy, now have a war and will soon have a bad economy. It's hard for me to accept that magats and lazy non-voters aren't getting what they deserve. Let them pretend to love destroying the United States, which is the sum total result of what they have done.
1/6 was the 9/11 moment of the past decade. If you lived under a rock you were aware of both events. If the price of eggs was more dire to you then the President attempting to overthrow the Govt. You deserve my contempt for not voting.
This is where we leave politics and enter into discussion of the human condition, specifically Trump's. Based on everything in the public record dating back 50+ years, what evidence is there that Trump is a man of his word when it comes to making promises?
I would have been in agreement in 2016. I might even have agreed in 2020. It's been over a decade. If you haven't heard Trump is a bad person by now, you might be legally dead.
I don't think Oldandintheway is inaccurate so I assume the verbal punching is more at the non-voters than Oldandintheway. You can say he/she is making excuses for these people but he/she isn't, they are just stating the facts of the way a number of people are. I just think there is a shitload of politically ignorant people out there and that's something we get to deal with.
True, Oldandintheway (although I don't think you're in the way), but the problem is that these people get their information explaining why their lives are difficult from somewhere, or likely someone, like the guy next to them in the Amazon warehouse who does listen to Fox or reads MAGA social media, all of which gave false information. As JVL has hammered on for a while, the American economy, while still not totally recovered from what the pandemic did to it, was still doing a lot better than the economies of the rest of the world due to what Biden's administration put in place. Yes, their eggs were still expensive (remember the bird flu?) but they had jobs and things were looking up. But the people in their communities, as you said, have always voted for Republicans, so they were willing dupes to the misinformation. This is a big problem in a country where a supposedly well informed citizenry decides who will be in power.
Oh, they realize that Trump is worse than they thought, but they still think Harris would be worse yet. However badly Trump performs, the bar will then continually slide down with respect to the "potential" performance of Harris.
Sure, Trump started the war with Iran and has sewed global chaos. Had Harris been president, then the status of the world today with respect to Iran would be much worse!
I can’t listen to the focus groups. My blood pressure rises far above acceptable parameters. Even worse, my neural net begins to experience a cascade failure that requires a hella long nap.
Translation: "she's a brown woman politically to the left of me so she needs to prove for 20 years that she's not a threat and then maybe I'll think about voting for her but I probably won't."
He’s been telling us who he is since the 80s. My chortle when he and Melanie rode down that elevator in 2015 quickly turned sour, but I have watched him bloviate on late night talk shows most of my life. Idiot then, addled idiot now.
"The memory of a goldfish". I do not know about goldfish and their memory but I suspect that you are maligning goldfish. "Object permanence" is an underrated concept, but correctly identifies early brain development and frontal lobe growth. More studies need to be conducted about how an apparent selective reversal is occurring in some portion of the electorate. Peek a boo!
For whatever reason, the Devo song of the same name just popped into my head. That song explores the darker side of human nature and therefore is an appropriate point-of-reference for this thread.
But it reflects a "natural" pattern of millions of followers of authoritarians. To call it cultish is to psychologize it, as if it were a pathology. Could it be that humans possess an innate attraction to charismatic authority, which gives many people a sense of stability and ego gratification? And some choose not to follow this inclination. Does this make them saints or mystics? No. It just represents the diversity of human experiences. Many of Hitler's acolytes were hanged for their complicity. I believe this acknowledges accountability.
Also, none of them displayed any remorse for their alliance with Hitler. That goes for ex-SS and ex-Nazis who went about their lives after the fact as if nothing had happened.
Tim, you make the same point I have been making for several years: This iteration of the Republican Party is incapable of governing. At the same, they believe (call it their doctrine) that their party is the only party that is qualified to govern. The facts don't seem to bear that out.
Concur, the problem, if one can call it that, is that the more than 77 million who did NOT vote for the Felon (Kamala + third parties) are getting it, too. Napoleon and his omlette comment comes to mind. I just hope the resulting omlette is signifcantly better than the rotten, all-scrambled-up eggs the Felon is serving.
And I am proud to say I did NOT vote for Trump- twice. Along with his idiot VP Vance who is still somehow claiming that gas prices and other increases are the fault of the Biden adminstration a year and more after this administration has been in charge. How far will they go? And how much longer will the MAGA base believe?
I think folks get crossways as they talk about these events. What are their stated goals? What progress have they made to the stated goals? IMHO: No Kings on Saturday is a "Yes, And..." situation. Yes, we should do No Kings on Saturday, and we should also hold other protests on weekdays and do other things to (register, vote, contribute, volunteer, run for office, mutual aid, etc.)
I am involved with Indivisible in my community, and so I can confirm at least form our local group, Indivisible goes way out of their way to make sure that the protest is law abiding and not disruptive. Disruption is not the goal. They have to my mind two goals, and I think they deliver on them each time with No Kings 1.0 and 2.0, and I think 3.0 will be even more successful.
(1) They're trying to organize and activate people. If you walk around one of these protests, you'll see folks registering people to vote, signing petitions, sharing information. You'll see speakers talk about ways to get involved. Not all normies can accelerate straight to direct or disruptive action, but the barrier to entry is way lower to show up to a weekend festival or bake sale type vibe. There will be a lot of kids and dogs out on Saturday. It will be fun. Some people will come out for the first time, and then will come out again for other things in the future.
(2) They're also trying to win an optics battle. The size and coordination are part of winning a narrative battle in the media and in public discourse. If 15 million people come out on Saturday, it is very hard to argue that they're all paid by antifa and George Soros. It also forces the news to acknowledge Trump's lack of support and unfitness for office (versus chasing Trumpian distractions like a cat chasing a laser pointer). They also signal to the world that we do not support the actions of the government. And if the protests are extremely orderly and peaceful and Trump gives into his worse inner voices and tries to crack down, the scenes of grandmas waving the American flag getting tear gassed will become a damning and powerful cultural tableau.
Now all that said, plenty of folks don't agree entirely with this approach, or even agree that this work is worthwhile. They want to get to the direct action and disruption part. They want to tap the potential energy of a large crowd to do something more directly powerful.
Myself: I am a pragmatist. I think we need a lot of different tools in our tool belt, and we should use all of them. No Kings on a weekend is just one thing I am doing. If it's the first thing you are doing, then welcome aboard.
If/when Trump truly crosses the line (military inflicting mass casualties on unarmed civilians, blatantly overturning election results, etc.), we need to have built the muscle memory for mass protests. No Kings is doing that. It would be too much to ask 3.5% of the population to go directly from their couch to the streets.
Thank you for your post, Kotzsu. I want to reiterate one of your many astute points: a massive protest will convey the important message to the rest of the world that a critical mass of Americans despises the vile acts that Dumpty tRumpy is carrying out in our name.
Please stay with us, world: to paraphrase Churchill, you can count on us to do the right thing after we’ve tried everything else (which, in the case of the Imbecile in Chief, “everything” is turning out to be a lot of really f**king insane garbage).
I get the need to do all kinds of strategery, but that's not my job. I want to add my presence to that of my fellow citizens to physically demonstrate to the government that I ain't happy.
Will it make a difference? Individually, not at all, but, collectively, getting (maybe) 10 million people to show up and do something together ain't nothing.
At some point it is inevitable that the President will call the protesters evil antifa terrorists who must be put down. Yet millions will have seen nice families with dogs, inflated dinosaur suits, and funny signs. The anti-terrorist blowback becomes much harder when you've seen how friendly the protests are with your own eyes.
We should all be in the streets every single day, honestly. The mass mobilization has to begin nationally, but be sustained locally. Minnesota has given us the playbook. We should use it.
That being said, I’ll certainly be out on Saturday (currently thinking of what I want my sign to say this time), and I’ve recruited two new friends who are absolutely sick and tired of what is happening to join, too. I am also helping to get them to start door knocking, because that is where the real fun happens!
But the more important work I’ve been doing is having conversations at work every day with people who are not “political” and when I say that the mood has shifted on the ground, whoo boy has it.
It’s really fun. I was a first timer at NK 1.0, and the diversity, the good humor, and the agreement amongst so many different people will make you want to go back. Good for you!
But don't shoot the message because of the messenger. The quote from Brooks makes an important point about MAGA that few anti-Trump folks really appreciate: how it functions as a culture with rewards of belonging that are absent from normie politics. There are all kinds of contradictions/weirdness in this, but c'est la vie these days. We think MAGA's are totally focused on and in thrall to Trump, but they're equally, or even more, connected to each other. They inhabit bubbles, not just in cyberspace but in the meatspace rural communities that run Red, where 'everybody' backs Trump, and to change your stance would be betraying your friends and neighbors. And for all the hate coming in the words, the interactions themselves are affirming and even 'fun'.
I'm not sure a No Kings opposition can or should foster a mirror image culture. But as far as my (born 1953) own stories of political involvement go, in the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era, and then in an educators union a decade later, those social relationships with 'comrades' was what gave the principles depth, energy and commitment.
A similar "culture with rewards of belonging" becomes visible with every No Kings protest that takes place in Trump country. A lot of us live in those rural communities you describe. We are definitely seen as traitors for gathering as we do. It's scary, standing in the open with your contrary belief on display. But doing the scary thing is the only way to see and feel that you're not alone.
Is that the douchebag that bitched about the cost of lunch at an airport restaurant? Yeah, it’s always expensive at an airport restaurant, imbecile. Especially when 80% of the $78.00 bill is for booze. What a bozo. I avoid anything that entitled creep writes, or appears in. He looks soft. Been countin money all his life.
It takes a counterculture to best the culture that Donald Trump is leading. And so far, the Democrats don’t have that. They have a bunch of tax credits. And so far, the No Kings movement doesn’t have that."
To me, there’s a light rhyme here with the recent attempt elsewhere to identify the Kinks with Veit Harlan.
And Trump hasn't blathered about "the elites" in a very long time. It's all about him, and sometimes his buddies, getting richer. Try to keep up, David.
None of you will be surprised to hear that, while Trump is considering sending more American men and women into harm’s way in the Middle East, Trump himself (perhaps accompanied by Kushner and Witkoff?) will be spending Friday giving a speech at a Saudi-sponsored investment conference at a Miami Beach hotel partly owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Says it all.
I wish The Bulwark and everyone else would stop using the term "boots on the ground". Those boots are worn by soldiers, sailors and Marines, some of whom will bleed and die for Trump's insanity. "Boots on the ground" is an abstraction that attempts to hide that reality.
I get your sentiment but BOG has been in use by the military since the 80's...where the people using the term knew exactly what came with placing troops on land where the battle is being waged. I don't see it the way you do...and struggle with why they shouldn't be using the common vernacular to describe this action.
I see it differently. I had my feet printed for a flight physical in the USAF. That was before DNA had fully hit the scene. Why print the feet? Because in an air crash the feet in the boots are often intact, while the rest of the body is extremely disassociated.
Man, I thought I was the only one riled up by that. I served. I wasn’t a boot. I’m a person with one life to live.
The English language sometimes flummoxes me. The word awesome for instance. It is used for everything now. I thought awesome was reserved for things like a nuclear explosion, or Godzilla. Don’t get me started on literally.
The No Kings rally is great. It will show that a majority of Americans don’t want corrupt, sadistic, greedy, racist people running our government.
We must sustain that energy for 8 months and make sure everyone gets registered and votes. There are going to be many crazy, illegal, intimidating obstacles that we need to prepare for. Send lawyers and money. NO guns.
I worry about the celebratory tones. To me the most profound vulnerability of the American republic at this hour is not the execution of a sophisticated authoritarian blueprint, but the weaponization of a pathologically fragile ego operating entirely unbound by congressional oversight.
We are, and we are going to be subjected to the erratic thrashings of an incompetent narcissist who views the machinery of state exclusively through the prism of personal grievance. As public sentiment demonstrably turns against the Rotting Orange, the danger compounds with every single day remaining in his term. Over the ensuing years of this administration, the federal apparatus will inevitably devolve further into a blunt weapon for lashing out at perceived slights, ensuring an era defined by pure vindictiveness rather than coherent vision.
An executive defined by absolute solipsism cannot process public rejection through introspection or strategic recalibration. We need to anticipate a relentless reflex of scorched-earth retaliation. The inherent peril lies in Trump's absolute indifference to structural collateral damage; his compulsion to inflict exponential pain upon the American populace will override all other considerations, so long as his immediate psychological imperative to punish his detractors is sated.
The terrifying reality is that the clock is no longer merely counting down to an electoral transition; it is measuring the remaining structural tolerance of a republic under siege from within. We are facing a leader who would readily reduce the foundational architecture of the nation to ash, provided the flames sufficiently illuminate his own grievances. The true, unmitigated danger of the remaining term is not a calculated autocracy, but a cornered ego willing to weaponize its own collapse to ensure the rest of the country falls with it.
Another reality is the (unfounded on fact) loyalty shown by the MAGA voters. Saw a FB post this morning where a MAGA was dismissing any possibility that Trump was leaking insider info about his war announcements, but reminded all of us that Hunter Biden was selling his paintings for exorbitant prices.
I attempted to shine a light on one case being the manipulation of news during a war that Trump started and impacts the entire world and the other is a son making some bucks off his dad's last name.
I'm sure that difference won't matter. It never does. It's a one-way check valve with them and their biased opinions.
Jeff, the great precision of the "one-way check valve" metaphor captures the phenomenon perfectly. Engaging with this demographic frequently devolves into an exercise in asymmetrical reality-testing, where bad-faith deflections instantly neutralize objective facts. It's one of the more mind-melting experiences in modern times. One thing I learned speaking with voters before the election you cannot reason individuals out of positions they did not reason themselves into. I so deeply appreciate this insight.
Spot on. The foundation of my understanding of the MAGA "arguments" comes from literally 8 years of debating with them starting in 2017 on the Fox News website.
To give you an inkling of how impactful this period was to me...I literally started off a GOP supporter and ended up an independent. The combination of the GOP lawmakers defending him no matter what and the bad-faith arguments by the Fox News viewers was more than I could take.
I honestly cannot understand how it still continues to this day. Unbelievable.
I think the principle mistake is assuming they have the ability to reason at all. I have thought about how we (for over a decade) have granted them an assumed level of intellect and logical reasoning ability that hasn't been apparent since the escalator ride.
It pains me to know that a large portion of the electorate are incapable of "thinking". They are capable of "believing", just not thinking.
My other comment below shows you my background in arguing with MAGAs, but after watching closely how Fox News "reported" on the Trump administration...I can tell you that they get a highly and intentionally manipulated version of the news. Does that excuse them? No. Does your point about them having issues with logic and reasoning make sense? Yes.
It's like they've chosen to consume cake for their news intake because it's so easy and it tastes good. Not to mention that millions of others are doing the same thing....so it must right, right?
There has always been an element of partisanship in whether people will indulge or condemn someone's action. But Trumpism made its moral relativism explicit. Trump's apologists openly declared that he should not be judged by normal standards of morality (or intelligence).
It's core MAGA doctrine that Trump always gets a pass, no matter what - but Trump devotees still imagine themselves to be moral people, so they're merciless in attacking lapses among anti-Trumpers.
Yep. Unfortunately...if one decides something like that...it becomes almost addictive because it's so easy after that decision. Everything is black & white. You're right; everyone else is wrong.
You can see the alluring/evil nature of that way of thinking.
They have equated him with Jesus/a savior to their cause, which is just mind boggling. So no matter what he does, to those in the cult it must be for the right reasons and to save us all. I truly do not understand it, but they will never see it any other way.
"The true, unmitigated danger of the remaining term is not a calculated autocracy, but a cornered ego willing to weaponize its own collapse to ensure the rest of the country falls with it."
Bingo. And the "His numbers are tanking" hits are all one off polls, and the aggregate is pretty rock solid at 41% (+/- 1) and has been for a long time.
It seems that his support is unbelievably durable, and regardless of the financial and political shockwaves, his base is ride-or-die, and that seems to be enough to keep him afloat (even if the Dems are sweeping the specials).
I worry that the predicted blue wave/republican wipeout that everyone is predicting this fall will be a much smaller shift that expected, and that the election jiu-jitsu that the R's are planning all be enough to blunt turnout sufficiently to soften the blow, allowing Trump and the MAGA congress to declare a victory.
I am getting a "counting chickens" vibe that makes me as nervous as I was in September 2024. That turned out prescient, and I fear that we are headed back there.
Your apprehension, Geoff feels not merely justified, but a vital corrective to the dangerous optimism currently anesthetizing the political opposition.
You are entirely correct to note that fixating on an isolated poll demonstrating a 36 percent approval rating is a lethal exercise in confirmation bias. The aggregate floor almost certainly remains an immovable 41 percent precisely because this base does not evaluate policy outcomes, international crises, or financial shockwaves. They operate as a fortified demographic structurally inoculated against empirical evidence; their allegiance is an entrenched identity marker rather than a fluid political metric.
My primary existential concern is that both the republic and the global order are now forced to rely upon a populace that fundamentally failed to discern the difference between competence and profound ineptitude, between the rule of law and blatant lawlessness, and between objective reality and clinical delusion. That staggering cognitive failure, the collective inability of the electorate to reject glaring, systemic absurdity, is a structural fracture in our democratic experiment that I will never forget, and one that will haunt us decades after the immediate crisis has passed.
Even if the Republicans lose the House and possibly the Senate this fall, the MAGA base isn't going to leave 47, regardless of their internal disagreements and feuds. The vast right-wing noise machine has spent 30+ years indoctrinating its audience in the existential threat of Democrats to everything that these people hold dear, rationally or not. That will not go away. The indoctrinated are far more likely to take up arms to maintain their present dominance than are the No Kings protesters. It's unlikely to be a civil state of affairs, as 47 continues the only activity he's mastered - destruction.
How will newly-elected Democrats get seated in the Senate? The VP swears them in. If the VP is directed to not swear in "fraudulent" members, then it's months of fighting, not legislating.
I have been a Democrat my entire adult life (61 this year), and I have learned to never underestimate their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
By the end of 2015, I recognized that Trump's most defining feature is an exceptionally self-centered worldview, and I foresaw that such a person would be shamelessly selfish in the exercise of power and disdainful of any rules higher than self-interest. That, to me, outweighed all debates over what policies he or his opponent was promising. A relative of mine who had been lifelong GOP says the same: "He only cares about himself!"
It's puzzling that so many people - not all of them stupid --somehow didn't see what was so obvious to me. They claim that their "anti-Trump" former allies are swayed by an effete intolerance of his unpolished "style." But that is just one manifestation of a deep sociopathy.
And always, always forgiving of anything he does. These are intelligent, accomplished people, among them members of my family. I have a couple that we just do not talk about any major political or current events as it might cause conflict. It is a sad way to live right now.
To this revelation we must add the threat posed by the sycophants and poseurs that dominate positions of authority within the administration of the Felonious Menace. They're all ride-or-die believers who will do much to enable whatever machinations and flailing is emitted by Dear Leader. And they're capable of initiating their own mayhem, to impress and benefit The Greatest President Ever (tm).
You have identified a crucial and terrifying force multiplier within this administration. The inherent danger of a pathologically fragile executive is exponentially compounded when the structural apparatus of government is systematically purged of expertise and repopulated entirely by loyalists. These functionaries do not merely execute the erratic directives of their leader; they operate within a perverse incentive structure where performative cruelty and institutional sabotage serve as the sole metrics for proximity to power.
This dynamic transforms the executive branch into an autonomous engine of chaos. As you astutely note, these sycophants are not passive instruments; they actively initiate their own decentralized mayhem to curry favor and preemptively satisfy the executive’s desire for retribution. When advancement requires mirroring the president’s vindictiveness, we are no longer facing a single point of failure. Instead, we are confronting a metastatic network of empowered opportunists who are eagerly dismantling the republic from the inside out to appease a singular, insatiable ego.
I agree... there are these great small victories, but they further inflame the person with such a fragile ego, who has no conscience, and only anger and retribution in his system... He is now desperate and a man such as this will resort to desperate actions... akin to a toddler tossing or breaking a toy because he's angry someone upset him... These are, indeed, dangerous times and mostly because tRump is a malignant narcissist without a sense of morality. :(
"Is it possible things are getting better and worse at the same time? Tell us what you think."
Truly. Because as things get worse, Trump's approval declines, and as Trump's approval declines, one is hopeful that's adding to the pile of rain checks to be cashed in November, assuming regular elections (I don't love that that is now an obligatory caveat whenever discussing future elections). Plus, in much the same way MAGAs get erogenous glee out of politicians hurting the people they hate, my mood gets a bit of a lift to see them suffering too for their petty and petulant voting behavior. But, if things are ever going to get good, they will have to get bad first, and hopefully we can get to something approaching the status quo ante once the good party resumes power and works on fixing this disaster.
And, let's take a second to praise the Democrats. Very frequently their political savvy is disparaged by Bulwark writers, but they must be doing something right, even if it's just laying low so Republicans can repeatedly step on rakes. As acknowledged at the top of Shots, Democrats keep slaying Republicans at the ballot box, granted in lower turnout, oddly-timed elections. And how they have navigated this shutdown, just like the last one, has been pretty damned good. They've got Republicans themselves (Senator Kennedy) laying the blame on Trump, and it looks like when this does end, which I think will be soon, Democrats will have voted to end the shutdown without having voted for anything to do with ICE or the SAVE Act. If those things do get passed they will be unpopular and have only GOP votes, and this whole drama will all end with an unpopular president unfairly bashing Democrats at the end of the process, which is probably good for them, actually. They're not doing too badly right now.
I find the whole, "well, it doesn't count because they are special elections on weird days" argument a little confusing in the cases, like this, when it was a Republican governor who chose the timing of the election.
There's no reason to get paranoid over routers made in China. All we need to do to counter any surveillance hardware is install security software from Kaspersky.
I think you guys miss 2 key points about the No Kings protests: 1) they build community relationships that translate into other pro-democracy actions and 2) they steel the spines of Dem leaders (or scare them into action)
Both valuable regardless of turnout.
As a person organizing a local NK event, I can tell you that they function almost like a club that invites like-minded people together. Once there, they often come up with other actions like pushing local and state legislators on bills, primarying DINOS and taking community welfare action together. This reknits the social fabric in a lasting way.
No Kings coalesces around the preservation of our Constitution, culturally better than coalescing around racism, graft and incompetence, and certainly a movement worth joining in our 250th year. I’ll be out there reminding my congressman to polish his resume - he’ll need it in a few months.
"Donald Trump has a vision. Donald Trump is a culture." No. Donald Trump is a cult. A cult that falls somewhere between Jonestown or Branch Davidian and a real political party. Cults are well known for their ability to take pain, including pain till death. Rational or critical thinking is useless in understanding cults, they emerge from a place beyond the rational mind. Some with lesser devotion find the ability to leave the cult as it descends into the pure dark (lower approval polling), but most will take that ride to the end.
And, does anyone still believe that the lovely Melania is secretly voting against maga? I do not.
Huge OG Bulwark fan here. And valid point regarding infighting; I totally agree.
But with (minimal) respect to Mr. Brooks, whose career has consisted of making the obvious explicit, King George III and his ministers said much the same regarding American colonists and their lack of “vision.”
It didn’t work out for King George, and if we hang together, as ultimately we did in the 1770s/early ‘80s, it won’t work out for this wannabe king either.
David Brooks was a Trump enabler and fluffer from the beginning. He knew better but did not have the courage of the never Trumpers. He has made a career of finding any reason to criticize Democrats and liberals while making excuses for Trump. And now apparently we’re not protesting to his satisfaction. Spare me.
He's not as bad as Ross Douthat (who hides his MAGA erections behind $20 words) and once in a great while has an editorial worth reading, but my complaint about him is that most of his editorials are tone deaf and out in left field.
Won't it be ironic if the crimes that finally bring down the House of Trump are insider trading around the Iran war?
Not pedophilia, not tariffs, not DOGE, not "It's Going to be Wild" RFK Jr, not a big pile of Constitutional violations, not his in your face graft, not ICE murders, not the murder of alleged drug runners in boats and so forth.
It's like mobsters of yore who never paid for their murders but went to prison for tax evasion.
Whatever it takes, the American People are abandoning Trump/MAGA in droves. Retribution is coming.
Like Prince Andrew arrested for giving away state secrets.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
You know what, I'm using that for all of them now. Charles, Kate, the whole gang. Throw that tea in the harbor. I don't believe in the divine right of a special family over the rest of humanity.
Let’s start a country.
If that is what it takes, so be it. That might take out several wealthy people in his orbit as well. I would still like to know what the treasury department has on Epstein as that might go some ways to reordering our high and mighty.
It’d be awesome, but I’m not holding my breath.
Anything that works is what I say. My hope is if one thing breaks through, the dam will break. I will gleefully watch the whole clown cabinet wash away with him.
Bet on it!
Here s lookin at you Al Capone.
Your words in the voters ears and minds.
Wouldn't it be even more ironic if they ended up converting one of the ICE Detention Camps into a "Trump-affiliated Correction Camp"? I'm not sure 7,500 is big enough for all those involved over the past 10+ years.
And there is USD1, the stablecoin owned by Trump and Witkoff. Trump gets 75% of net profit, and Witkoff, Trump's emissary for pretty much every damned thing, gets the rest.Currently, the USD's held, what stabilizes the tokens or coins, is earning 3-4% on $5 billion-plus worth. The company has existed for just about a year.
“The Untouchables” is one of my favorite movies. And Capone was put away and eventually died of syphilis in… Miami! So there is a track. But mobsters didn’t leave Chicago. And I’m afraid people who are truly committed aren’t jumping off. At best they are preparing for the power vacuum. Hope I’m wrong.
Thanks for your post
Bill: "So we now have a major war, well into its fourth week, which Trump is threatening to expand to a ground war, all being done without congressional approval, and all the sole responsibility of Donald Trump and his Republican party."
No. The sole responsibility lies with the 77 million people who voted for Trump and his Republican party. For years, there's been solid evidence that the modern GOP is incapable of governing, but because the electorate has the memory of a goldfish, they don't punish the GOP for their ineptitude. *Everything* that is happening right now -- unauthorized wars, spiraling gas prices, long lines at airports, general chaos and confusion -- is happening because 77 million abdicated their civic duty and elected these motherfuckers. The United States is getting its comeuppance, and its about time.
And the millions who choose to stay home and not vote.
Particularly those who said: Why vote? Harris and Trump are equally bad.
I am sure many of them regret that now.
Nah. In their mind this war and all of the problems is actually Biden/Harris' fault.
Yes...I have a "favorite" memory of a college student in 2024 at some campus being interviewed about the Biden administration's support of the Israeli response to the October surprise attack.
He responded to the reporter so defiantly with something along the lines of "If the Biden administration doesn't change their position...they're not getting my vote. They'll discover what it costs to support Israel!"
All of us who follow politics closely were shaking our heads in disbelief as the "Trump's going to be far worse for the Palestinians and the world" thought/truth was so damn obvious, but apparently not to so many of our fellow citizens unfortunately.
I had that same argument with my own 29-year-old daughter. She's still mad at me because I occasionally buy a Starbucks because... Well, I'm not 100% sure, but it has something to do with Israel.
I hope my kids don't have the same beef with me someday for working on something plastic related that gets used in Starbucks items. lol
Oh, and the price of eggs!
The student's youthful inexperience and ignorance may have interfered with his ability to think. Thousands of Arab-American Trump voters didn't have that excuse.
Indeed, the couch won more votes than either Kamala or the other candidate:
85.9 million eligible voters did not vote in the 2024 general election, far surpassing the 76.8 million ballots cast for Donald Trump or the 74.3 million for Kamala Harris.
This makes steam come out of my ears. Trump’s “mandate” consisted of a little more than a third of eligible voters who voted for him over a little bit less than a third of eligible voters who voted for Harris. If we had mandatory voting in this country like in some other countries, maybe he still would have been elected given the thinking skills of many Americans, but we’ll never know. Take a minute to imagine what things would be here as well as in the rest of the world if Harris had been elected.
Although I understand the wish for mandatory voting, until/unless they allow no-excuse absentee voting, free voting-only IDs for every US citizen when they turn 18, judicial support of laws which encourage instead of discourage one-vote one person instead of herding people into gerrymandered districts, the acceptance of a postmark dated on Election Day as a benchmark for ballot validity/counting (like the IRS), and a Postal System which is mandated to prioritize the efficient and accurate processing of ballots, mandatory voting will just become a poll tax for those who do NOT vote and have no means of doing so.
I used to be in favor in mandatory voting, but the Trump era has been a key indicator to me that if people don't feel the need to vote, they shouldn't be forced to. A lot of Trump's voters are low information voters who are supremely confident about things they know less than nothing about.
I've been convinced that if more people had actually voted Trump would have done better and crossed the 50% popular vote margin.
That is certainly a possibility, awful as it is.
Yes, I think you're right.
An ugly, but likely true statement.
Damn right.
Or decided that Dems were too kind to Israel. How's that going?
So true!
86 million, to be exact.
Yes, but many of those people voted for both Obama and Biden. They are people who respond to the conditions of their lives. Many are realizing that Trump is everything that Harris said he is: greedy, selfish, corrupt, and unstable. They, like us, are frightened at how quickly things have become terrible. I just got my revised heating oil bill for the next 12 months. It has gone up from $189 a month to $398!! All of that is due to Trump trying to make people forget he is a pedophile.
The people you describe don't get a pass, Oldandintheway. In fact, I may have more contempt for them than the median Red Hat, and that's because if they're voting based on the "conditions of their lives", that means they've chosen to overlook Trump attempted a coup, was convicted of 34 felonies in New York, was found civilly liable for sexual assault, and stole classified documents related to his business interest. Such a voter is an unserious, morally vacuous person.
See my forthcoming line of bumperstickers, "I'm unserious, morally vacuous, and I vote!"
I don’t think that’s a fair assessment, although I certainly understand the sentiment. But a huge number of American voters don’t have time or interest to read Substacks or even watch Fox News. They are working in Amazon warehouses, or other exhausting jobs, or living in communities in Nebraska that haven’t voted for a Democrat in 30 years. They vote based upon how easy or difficult their lives are. Trump promised to make everything better on day one. Now they realize he’s a fraud.
Enough with the excuses. Actually giving a damn about human decency should have been more than enough for people to cast a ballot for Harris.
That does not count as a good excuse, it's just another bad excuse for people who are also a bad excuse for citizens of a democracy. To paraphrase Chuchill, those who voted for Trump because they wanted no war and a good economy, now have a war and will soon have a bad economy. It's hard for me to accept that magats and lazy non-voters aren't getting what they deserve. Let them pretend to love destroying the United States, which is the sum total result of what they have done.
1/6 was the 9/11 moment of the past decade. If you lived under a rock you were aware of both events. If the price of eggs was more dire to you then the President attempting to overthrow the Govt. You deserve my contempt for not voting.
No doubt! 1/6 has been in the news for on a constant basis since 1/6!
This is where we leave politics and enter into discussion of the human condition, specifically Trump's. Based on everything in the public record dating back 50+ years, what evidence is there that Trump is a man of his word when it comes to making promises?
I would have been in agreement in 2016. I might even have agreed in 2020. It's been over a decade. If you haven't heard Trump is a bad person by now, you might be legally dead.
I don't think Oldandintheway is inaccurate so I assume the verbal punching is more at the non-voters than Oldandintheway. You can say he/she is making excuses for these people but he/she isn't, they are just stating the facts of the way a number of people are. I just think there is a shitload of politically ignorant people out there and that's something we get to deal with.
True, Oldandintheway (although I don't think you're in the way), but the problem is that these people get their information explaining why their lives are difficult from somewhere, or likely someone, like the guy next to them in the Amazon warehouse who does listen to Fox or reads MAGA social media, all of which gave false information. As JVL has hammered on for a while, the American economy, while still not totally recovered from what the pandemic did to it, was still doing a lot better than the economies of the rest of the world due to what Biden's administration put in place. Yes, their eggs were still expensive (remember the bird flu?) but they had jobs and things were looking up. But the people in their communities, as you said, have always voted for Republicans, so they were willing dupes to the misinformation. This is a big problem in a country where a supposedly well informed citizenry decides who will be in power.
Please read JVL‘s recent post about “touching the stove.”
Time to bring back the "Misery index" for 2026 and 2028 campaigns.
Oh, they realize that Trump is worse than they thought, but they still think Harris would be worse yet. However badly Trump performs, the bar will then continually slide down with respect to the "potential" performance of Harris.
Sure, Trump started the war with Iran and has sewed global chaos. Had Harris been president, then the status of the world today with respect to Iran would be much worse!
But the war in Ukraine would be over and Ukraine would be free. And really, Israel would have dealt with Iran without Trump.
Exactly! I hear these people tell Sarah's focus groups, "I just didn't know HER!" But did you know HIM? Maybe huh?
I can’t listen to the focus groups. My blood pressure rises far above acceptable parameters. Even worse, my neural net begins to experience a cascade failure that requires a hella long nap.
I'm really hoping Sarah sells enough copies of her book to allow JVL to moderate one of her focus groups.
Translation: "she's a brown woman politically to the left of me so she needs to prove for 20 years that she's not a threat and then maybe I'll think about voting for her but I probably won't."
She told us who she was, but more importantly HE has been telling us exactly who he is since 2015 if we just listened.
He’s been telling us who he is since the 80s. My chortle when he and Melanie rode down that elevator in 2015 quickly turned sour, but I have watched him bloviate on late night talk shows most of my life. Idiot then, addled idiot now.
"The memory of a goldfish". I do not know about goldfish and their memory but I suspect that you are maligning goldfish. "Object permanence" is an underrated concept, but correctly identifies early brain development and frontal lobe growth. More studies need to be conducted about how an apparent selective reversal is occurring in some portion of the electorate. Peek a boo!
"Peek a boo!"
For whatever reason, the Devo song of the same name just popped into my head. That song explores the darker side of human nature and therefore is an appropriate point-of-reference for this thread.
MAGA represents a cult. They can't change easily. Elements of a cult (ChatGPT)- many of which apply to MAGA are:
• Authoritarian leadership
A single leader (or small elite group) is treated as unquestionable or uniquely enlightened.
• Control over members’ lives
This can include controlling behavior, relationships, finances, or even information people are allowed to see.
• Suppression of dissent
Questioning or criticizing the group or leader is discouraged or punished.
• Us-vs-them worldview
The group presents itself as uniquely right or special, and outsiders as wrong, dangerous, or inferior.
• Isolation
Members may be encouraged (or pressured) to distance themselves from friends, family, or mainstream society.
• Emotional or psychological pressure
Guilt, fear, or manipulation may be used to maintain loyalty.
• Difficulty leaving
People who try to leave may face social shunning, threats, or emotional coercion.
No argument here, Joseph, but they are still responsible for their choices.
But it reflects a "natural" pattern of millions of followers of authoritarians. To call it cultish is to psychologize it, as if it were a pathology. Could it be that humans possess an innate attraction to charismatic authority, which gives many people a sense of stability and ego gratification? And some choose not to follow this inclination. Does this make them saints or mystics? No. It just represents the diversity of human experiences. Many of Hitler's acolytes were hanged for their complicity. I believe this acknowledges accountability.
Otherwise, I plead, "The devil made me do it!"
Also, none of them displayed any remorse for their alliance with Hitler. That goes for ex-SS and ex-Nazis who went about their lives after the fact as if nothing had happened.
Tim, you make the same point I have been making for several years: This iteration of the Republican Party is incapable of governing. At the same, they believe (call it their doctrine) that their party is the only party that is qualified to govern. The facts don't seem to bear that out.
Their "governing" philosophy is private splendor, public squalor.
I'm not sure "qualified" is the word I would use, Charles, but I agree with your sentiment.
Fitting that the fish are gold.
And not the cheap gold leaf.
don't insult goldfish
Concur, the problem, if one can call it that, is that the more than 77 million who did NOT vote for the Felon (Kamala + third parties) are getting it, too. Napoleon and his omlette comment comes to mind. I just hope the resulting omlette is signifcantly better than the rotten, all-scrambled-up eggs the Felon is serving.
Life isn't fair, David. Yes, good people are getting hurt that don't deserve it. But unfortunately, it can't be avoided.
Tim, that is what I meant by refering to Napoleon. I just called it a problem, would conundrum suit you better?
"Conundrum" is more applicable here, I think.
Note my wording: "the problem, if one can call it that,"
I'm with you.
At Dennys Mara Lago
The Felon "serving" anyone other than himself anywhere in the world? You have the right to remain silent, but WHAT have you been smoking?
I also blame the millions that didn’t even bother to vote.
I completely agree. It also makes me happy that I have most of what I need (occupation, food, shopping, etc.) within a 5 minute drive of where I live.
Totally agree! But republicans will be blamed bigly in Nov 2026 and 2028.
Cruel...but fair.
Yup. No notes.
And I am proud to say I did NOT vote for Trump- twice. Along with his idiot VP Vance who is still somehow claiming that gas prices and other increases are the fault of the Biden adminstration a year and more after this administration has been in charge. How far will they go? And how much longer will the MAGA base believe?
Could not have said it better, Tim.
So: No Kings on Saturday -
I think folks get crossways as they talk about these events. What are their stated goals? What progress have they made to the stated goals? IMHO: No Kings on Saturday is a "Yes, And..." situation. Yes, we should do No Kings on Saturday, and we should also hold other protests on weekdays and do other things to (register, vote, contribute, volunteer, run for office, mutual aid, etc.)
I am involved with Indivisible in my community, and so I can confirm at least form our local group, Indivisible goes way out of their way to make sure that the protest is law abiding and not disruptive. Disruption is not the goal. They have to my mind two goals, and I think they deliver on them each time with No Kings 1.0 and 2.0, and I think 3.0 will be even more successful.
(1) They're trying to organize and activate people. If you walk around one of these protests, you'll see folks registering people to vote, signing petitions, sharing information. You'll see speakers talk about ways to get involved. Not all normies can accelerate straight to direct or disruptive action, but the barrier to entry is way lower to show up to a weekend festival or bake sale type vibe. There will be a lot of kids and dogs out on Saturday. It will be fun. Some people will come out for the first time, and then will come out again for other things in the future.
(2) They're also trying to win an optics battle. The size and coordination are part of winning a narrative battle in the media and in public discourse. If 15 million people come out on Saturday, it is very hard to argue that they're all paid by antifa and George Soros. It also forces the news to acknowledge Trump's lack of support and unfitness for office (versus chasing Trumpian distractions like a cat chasing a laser pointer). They also signal to the world that we do not support the actions of the government. And if the protests are extremely orderly and peaceful and Trump gives into his worse inner voices and tries to crack down, the scenes of grandmas waving the American flag getting tear gassed will become a damning and powerful cultural tableau.
Now all that said, plenty of folks don't agree entirely with this approach, or even agree that this work is worthwhile. They want to get to the direct action and disruption part. They want to tap the potential energy of a large crowd to do something more directly powerful.
Myself: I am a pragmatist. I think we need a lot of different tools in our tool belt, and we should use all of them. No Kings on a weekend is just one thing I am doing. If it's the first thing you are doing, then welcome aboard.
If/when Trump truly crosses the line (military inflicting mass casualties on unarmed civilians, blatantly overturning election results, etc.), we need to have built the muscle memory for mass protests. No Kings is doing that. It would be too much to ask 3.5% of the population to go directly from their couch to the streets.
Thank you for your post, Kotzsu. I want to reiterate one of your many astute points: a massive protest will convey the important message to the rest of the world that a critical mass of Americans despises the vile acts that Dumpty tRumpy is carrying out in our name.
Please stay with us, world: to paraphrase Churchill, you can count on us to do the right thing after we’ve tried everything else (which, in the case of the Imbecile in Chief, “everything” is turning out to be a lot of really f**king insane garbage).
💯
I'll be out there on Saturday in Chicago.
I get the need to do all kinds of strategery, but that's not my job. I want to add my presence to that of my fellow citizens to physically demonstrate to the government that I ain't happy.
Will it make a difference? Individually, not at all, but, collectively, getting (maybe) 10 million people to show up and do something together ain't nothing.
This is excellent. TB should apologize for Hannah's piece and get you to write perhaps an expanded version of this as a guest piece.
At some point it is inevitable that the President will call the protesters evil antifa terrorists who must be put down. Yet millions will have seen nice families with dogs, inflated dinosaur suits, and funny signs. The anti-terrorist blowback becomes much harder when you've seen how friendly the protests are with your own eyes.
We should all be in the streets every single day, honestly. The mass mobilization has to begin nationally, but be sustained locally. Minnesota has given us the playbook. We should use it.
That being said, I’ll certainly be out on Saturday (currently thinking of what I want my sign to say this time), and I’ve recruited two new friends who are absolutely sick and tired of what is happening to join, too. I am also helping to get them to start door knocking, because that is where the real fun happens!
But the more important work I’ve been doing is having conversations at work every day with people who are not “political” and when I say that the mood has shifted on the ground, whoo boy has it.
So keep it up, everyone! We are doing this.
Going to No Kings this Saturday along with several friends - the first time any of us are attending a protest/demonstration of any kind.
This is so incredible to hear!! Yay!! You will have an amazing time and will feel so empowered when you leave!
Take a poster. Going to protest without a poster is like going to a costume party without a costume. You can do it, but it's not as fun.
Or bring a flag. Protesters love America too.
Woah, watch out or you'll be reading Captain Billy's Whiz Bang!
Excellent, Suzanne!
Excellent, Suzanne!
It’s really fun. I was a first timer at NK 1.0, and the diversity, the good humor, and the agreement amongst so many different people will make you want to go back. Good for you!
I hope I see you there!
I think you speak for lots of us who have never protested but feel compelled to do so.
I've got a "Turn the Epstein Files into Epstein Trials!" sign queued up for Saturday.
As Kimmel has trademarked it: The Trump/Epstein files. "The Truth is out there".
LOVE!!!!
If David Brooks is unhappy with the No Kings movement then they must be doing something right.
But don't shoot the message because of the messenger. The quote from Brooks makes an important point about MAGA that few anti-Trump folks really appreciate: how it functions as a culture with rewards of belonging that are absent from normie politics. There are all kinds of contradictions/weirdness in this, but c'est la vie these days. We think MAGA's are totally focused on and in thrall to Trump, but they're equally, or even more, connected to each other. They inhabit bubbles, not just in cyberspace but in the meatspace rural communities that run Red, where 'everybody' backs Trump, and to change your stance would be betraying your friends and neighbors. And for all the hate coming in the words, the interactions themselves are affirming and even 'fun'.
I'm not sure a No Kings opposition can or should foster a mirror image culture. But as far as my (born 1953) own stories of political involvement go, in the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era, and then in an educators union a decade later, those social relationships with 'comrades' was what gave the principles depth, energy and commitment.
A similar "culture with rewards of belonging" becomes visible with every No Kings protest that takes place in Trump country. A lot of us live in those rural communities you describe. We are definitely seen as traitors for gathering as we do. It's scary, standing in the open with your contrary belief on display. But doing the scary thing is the only way to see and feel that you're not alone.
My thoughts exactly
Who cares what Brooks thinks
Huh, David Brooks doesn't have street cred! Has the world gone that mad? I have always loated thuis smug butt hole.
He’s a twerp. That wimp couldn’t win in a fight with an anthill.
I think he's wrong about everyone needing what MAGA has. But I think he's right that MAGA needs that clubby chummy feel.
Is that the douchebag that bitched about the cost of lunch at an airport restaurant? Yeah, it’s always expensive at an airport restaurant, imbecile. Especially when 80% of the $78.00 bill is for booze. What a bozo. I avoid anything that entitled creep writes, or appears in. He looks soft. Been countin money all his life.
Brooks bashing is a social club. I can tolerate disagreeing with him. This is Fetterman and Maher territory.
But I get it. As uneasy as it can often be, I try to keep my disagreements to pet peeve and not inflame to infuriation.
Brooks said this in October last year: "
It takes a counterculture to best the culture that Donald Trump is leading. And so far, the Democrats don’t have that. They have a bunch of tax credits. And so far, the No Kings movement doesn’t have that."
To me, there’s a light rhyme here with the recent attempt elsewhere to identify the Kinks with Veit Harlan.
And Trump hasn't blathered about "the elites" in a very long time. It's all about him, and sometimes his buddies, getting richer. Try to keep up, David.
None of you will be surprised to hear that, while Trump is considering sending more American men and women into harm’s way in the Middle East, Trump himself (perhaps accompanied by Kushner and Witkoff?) will be spending Friday giving a speech at a Saudi-sponsored investment conference at a Miami Beach hotel partly owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Says it all.
I wish The Bulwark and everyone else would stop using the term "boots on the ground". Those boots are worn by soldiers, sailors and Marines, some of whom will bleed and die for Trump's insanity. "Boots on the ground" is an abstraction that attempts to hide that reality.
I get your sentiment but BOG has been in use by the military since the 80's...where the people using the term knew exactly what came with placing troops on land where the battle is being waged. I don't see it the way you do...and struggle with why they shouldn't be using the common vernacular to describe this action.
Military Retiree
Thanks for your service Jeff!
I see it differently. I had my feet printed for a flight physical in the USAF. That was before DNA had fully hit the scene. Why print the feet? Because in an air crash the feet in the boots are often intact, while the rest of the body is extremely disassociated.
Yah...that gives a whole different visual for "boots on ground" for sure.
I agree and am in no way associated with the military, or a vert, but I do immediately understand that terminology. As do most people.
Man, I thought I was the only one riled up by that. I served. I wasn’t a boot. I’m a person with one life to live.
The English language sometimes flummoxes me. The word awesome for instance. It is used for everything now. I thought awesome was reserved for things like a nuclear explosion, or Godzilla. Don’t get me started on literally.
Cliché. I'm with you. A familiar bird, overusing a word and expecting it to do more and more work for you. It becomes a nothing. Weak.
Dems will do well to recognize their own and avoid them. DM me for a list.
Thank you. We need to show that we care because Trump and many Republicans surely don’t.
The No Kings rally is great. It will show that a majority of Americans don’t want corrupt, sadistic, greedy, racist people running our government.
We must sustain that energy for 8 months and make sure everyone gets registered and votes. There are going to be many crazy, illegal, intimidating obstacles that we need to prepare for. Send lawyers and money. NO guns.
Increasing numbers at the No Kings rallies will be visual refutation of Trump’s stating that 99% of the country is with him.
But that will not alter DJT s thinking.
His is not the thinking that needs to change so much as the gullible people who hang on his every word.
"There is a sucker born every minute".
But it will annoy the heck out of him!
Excellent reason to do them!
I worry about the celebratory tones. To me the most profound vulnerability of the American republic at this hour is not the execution of a sophisticated authoritarian blueprint, but the weaponization of a pathologically fragile ego operating entirely unbound by congressional oversight.
We are, and we are going to be subjected to the erratic thrashings of an incompetent narcissist who views the machinery of state exclusively through the prism of personal grievance. As public sentiment demonstrably turns against the Rotting Orange, the danger compounds with every single day remaining in his term. Over the ensuing years of this administration, the federal apparatus will inevitably devolve further into a blunt weapon for lashing out at perceived slights, ensuring an era defined by pure vindictiveness rather than coherent vision.
An executive defined by absolute solipsism cannot process public rejection through introspection or strategic recalibration. We need to anticipate a relentless reflex of scorched-earth retaliation. The inherent peril lies in Trump's absolute indifference to structural collateral damage; his compulsion to inflict exponential pain upon the American populace will override all other considerations, so long as his immediate psychological imperative to punish his detractors is sated.
The terrifying reality is that the clock is no longer merely counting down to an electoral transition; it is measuring the remaining structural tolerance of a republic under siege from within. We are facing a leader who would readily reduce the foundational architecture of the nation to ash, provided the flames sufficiently illuminate his own grievances. The true, unmitigated danger of the remaining term is not a calculated autocracy, but a cornered ego willing to weaponize its own collapse to ensure the rest of the country falls with it.
Another reality is the (unfounded on fact) loyalty shown by the MAGA voters. Saw a FB post this morning where a MAGA was dismissing any possibility that Trump was leaking insider info about his war announcements, but reminded all of us that Hunter Biden was selling his paintings for exorbitant prices.
I attempted to shine a light on one case being the manipulation of news during a war that Trump started and impacts the entire world and the other is a son making some bucks off his dad's last name.
I'm sure that difference won't matter. It never does. It's a one-way check valve with them and their biased opinions.
Jeff, the great precision of the "one-way check valve" metaphor captures the phenomenon perfectly. Engaging with this demographic frequently devolves into an exercise in asymmetrical reality-testing, where bad-faith deflections instantly neutralize objective facts. It's one of the more mind-melting experiences in modern times. One thing I learned speaking with voters before the election you cannot reason individuals out of positions they did not reason themselves into. I so deeply appreciate this insight.
Spot on. The foundation of my understanding of the MAGA "arguments" comes from literally 8 years of debating with them starting in 2017 on the Fox News website.
To give you an inkling of how impactful this period was to me...I literally started off a GOP supporter and ended up an independent. The combination of the GOP lawmakers defending him no matter what and the bad-faith arguments by the Fox News viewers was more than I could take.
I honestly cannot understand how it still continues to this day. Unbelievable.
I think the principle mistake is assuming they have the ability to reason at all. I have thought about how we (for over a decade) have granted them an assumed level of intellect and logical reasoning ability that hasn't been apparent since the escalator ride.
It pains me to know that a large portion of the electorate are incapable of "thinking". They are capable of "believing", just not thinking.
My other comment below shows you my background in arguing with MAGAs, but after watching closely how Fox News "reported" on the Trump administration...I can tell you that they get a highly and intentionally manipulated version of the news. Does that excuse them? No. Does your point about them having issues with logic and reasoning make sense? Yes.
It's like they've chosen to consume cake for their news intake because it's so easy and it tastes good. Not to mention that millions of others are doing the same thing....so it must right, right?
There has always been an element of partisanship in whether people will indulge or condemn someone's action. But Trumpism made its moral relativism explicit. Trump's apologists openly declared that he should not be judged by normal standards of morality (or intelligence).
It's core MAGA doctrine that Trump always gets a pass, no matter what - but Trump devotees still imagine themselves to be moral people, so they're merciless in attacking lapses among anti-Trumpers.
Yep. Unfortunately...if one decides something like that...it becomes almost addictive because it's so easy after that decision. Everything is black & white. You're right; everyone else is wrong.
You can see the alluring/evil nature of that way of thinking.
They have equated him with Jesus/a savior to their cause, which is just mind boggling. So no matter what he does, to those in the cult it must be for the right reasons and to save us all. I truly do not understand it, but they will never see it any other way.
They are hopeless.
"The true, unmitigated danger of the remaining term is not a calculated autocracy, but a cornered ego willing to weaponize its own collapse to ensure the rest of the country falls with it."
Truer words have never been written.
Agree
Bingo. And the "His numbers are tanking" hits are all one off polls, and the aggregate is pretty rock solid at 41% (+/- 1) and has been for a long time.
It seems that his support is unbelievably durable, and regardless of the financial and political shockwaves, his base is ride-or-die, and that seems to be enough to keep him afloat (even if the Dems are sweeping the specials).
I worry that the predicted blue wave/republican wipeout that everyone is predicting this fall will be a much smaller shift that expected, and that the election jiu-jitsu that the R's are planning all be enough to blunt turnout sufficiently to soften the blow, allowing Trump and the MAGA congress to declare a victory.
I am getting a "counting chickens" vibe that makes me as nervous as I was in September 2024. That turned out prescient, and I fear that we are headed back there.
Your apprehension, Geoff feels not merely justified, but a vital corrective to the dangerous optimism currently anesthetizing the political opposition.
You are entirely correct to note that fixating on an isolated poll demonstrating a 36 percent approval rating is a lethal exercise in confirmation bias. The aggregate floor almost certainly remains an immovable 41 percent precisely because this base does not evaluate policy outcomes, international crises, or financial shockwaves. They operate as a fortified demographic structurally inoculated against empirical evidence; their allegiance is an entrenched identity marker rather than a fluid political metric.
My primary existential concern is that both the republic and the global order are now forced to rely upon a populace that fundamentally failed to discern the difference between competence and profound ineptitude, between the rule of law and blatant lawlessness, and between objective reality and clinical delusion. That staggering cognitive failure, the collective inability of the electorate to reject glaring, systemic absurdity, is a structural fracture in our democratic experiment that I will never forget, and one that will haunt us decades after the immediate crisis has passed.
Even if the Republicans lose the House and possibly the Senate this fall, the MAGA base isn't going to leave 47, regardless of their internal disagreements and feuds. The vast right-wing noise machine has spent 30+ years indoctrinating its audience in the existential threat of Democrats to everything that these people hold dear, rationally or not. That will not go away. The indoctrinated are far more likely to take up arms to maintain their present dominance than are the No Kings protesters. It's unlikely to be a civil state of affairs, as 47 continues the only activity he's mastered - destruction.
How will newly-elected Democrats get seated in the Senate? The VP swears them in. If the VP is directed to not swear in "fraudulent" members, then it's months of fighting, not legislating.
I don't. A Democrat winning in DJT own district is a canary in a cool mine. Can you name a Republican who has won an election recently?
I have been a Democrat my entire adult life (61 this year), and I have learned to never underestimate their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
By the end of 2015, I recognized that Trump's most defining feature is an exceptionally self-centered worldview, and I foresaw that such a person would be shamelessly selfish in the exercise of power and disdainful of any rules higher than self-interest. That, to me, outweighed all debates over what policies he or his opponent was promising. A relative of mine who had been lifelong GOP says the same: "He only cares about himself!"
It's puzzling that so many people - not all of them stupid --somehow didn't see what was so obvious to me. They claim that their "anti-Trump" former allies are swayed by an effete intolerance of his unpolished "style." But that is just one manifestation of a deep sociopathy.
And always, always forgiving of anything he does. These are intelligent, accomplished people, among them members of my family. I have a couple that we just do not talk about any major political or current events as it might cause conflict. It is a sad way to live right now.
To this revelation we must add the threat posed by the sycophants and poseurs that dominate positions of authority within the administration of the Felonious Menace. They're all ride-or-die believers who will do much to enable whatever machinations and flailing is emitted by Dear Leader. And they're capable of initiating their own mayhem, to impress and benefit The Greatest President Ever (tm).
You have identified a crucial and terrifying force multiplier within this administration. The inherent danger of a pathologically fragile executive is exponentially compounded when the structural apparatus of government is systematically purged of expertise and repopulated entirely by loyalists. These functionaries do not merely execute the erratic directives of their leader; they operate within a perverse incentive structure where performative cruelty and institutional sabotage serve as the sole metrics for proximity to power.
This dynamic transforms the executive branch into an autonomous engine of chaos. As you astutely note, these sycophants are not passive instruments; they actively initiate their own decentralized mayhem to curry favor and preemptively satisfy the executive’s desire for retribution. When advancement requires mirroring the president’s vindictiveness, we are no longer facing a single point of failure. Instead, we are confronting a metastatic network of empowered opportunists who are eagerly dismantling the republic from the inside out to appease a singular, insatiable ego.
Reminds me of a fella from about 81 years ago. When he goes, he doesn’t care if we all burn.
I agree... there are these great small victories, but they further inflame the person with such a fragile ego, who has no conscience, and only anger and retribution in his system... He is now desperate and a man such as this will resort to desperate actions... akin to a toddler tossing or breaking a toy because he's angry someone upset him... These are, indeed, dangerous times and mostly because tRump is a malignant narcissist without a sense of morality. :(
"Is it possible things are getting better and worse at the same time? Tell us what you think."
Truly. Because as things get worse, Trump's approval declines, and as Trump's approval declines, one is hopeful that's adding to the pile of rain checks to be cashed in November, assuming regular elections (I don't love that that is now an obligatory caveat whenever discussing future elections). Plus, in much the same way MAGAs get erogenous glee out of politicians hurting the people they hate, my mood gets a bit of a lift to see them suffering too for their petty and petulant voting behavior. But, if things are ever going to get good, they will have to get bad first, and hopefully we can get to something approaching the status quo ante once the good party resumes power and works on fixing this disaster.
And, let's take a second to praise the Democrats. Very frequently their political savvy is disparaged by Bulwark writers, but they must be doing something right, even if it's just laying low so Republicans can repeatedly step on rakes. As acknowledged at the top of Shots, Democrats keep slaying Republicans at the ballot box, granted in lower turnout, oddly-timed elections. And how they have navigated this shutdown, just like the last one, has been pretty damned good. They've got Republicans themselves (Senator Kennedy) laying the blame on Trump, and it looks like when this does end, which I think will be soon, Democrats will have voted to end the shutdown without having voted for anything to do with ICE or the SAVE Act. If those things do get passed they will be unpopular and have only GOP votes, and this whole drama will all end with an unpopular president unfairly bashing Democrats at the end of the process, which is probably good for them, actually. They're not doing too badly right now.
I think maybe consciously or not, the Democrats are following a maxim from Napoleon:
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”
I find the whole, "well, it doesn't count because they are special elections on weird days" argument a little confusing in the cases, like this, when it was a Republican governor who chose the timing of the election.
Love this!
So what’s the difference between a Chinese made router and a Chinese made IPhone? Asking for a friend.
There's no reason to get paranoid over routers made in China. All we need to do to counter any surveillance hardware is install security software from Kaspersky.
[Heart me if you get the joke.]
From one smart ass to another! :)
Better dead than red. Wolverines!!!
Indeed. How many Americans use their smartphones as WiFi hotspots and how often, bypassing home routers?
You mean like the smartphone the President of the United States uses to conduct all his business instead of the secure government issued phone he has?
MARA: Make American Routers Again.
🤣🤣🤣
I think you guys miss 2 key points about the No Kings protests: 1) they build community relationships that translate into other pro-democracy actions and 2) they steel the spines of Dem leaders (or scare them into action)
Both valuable regardless of turnout.
As a person organizing a local NK event, I can tell you that they function almost like a club that invites like-minded people together. Once there, they often come up with other actions like pushing local and state legislators on bills, primarying DINOS and taking community welfare action together. This reknits the social fabric in a lasting way.
No Kings coalesces around the preservation of our Constitution, culturally better than coalescing around racism, graft and incompetence, and certainly a movement worth joining in our 250th year. I’ll be out there reminding my congressman to polish his resume - he’ll need it in a few months.
In the piece...it was mentioned that some people believe the movement just provides "collective coping".
Well...like Paul McCartney's lyrics expressed in his highly successful song about people who like Silly Love Songs...
"What's wrong with that?"
"I'd like know"?
LOL...well played!
Wars in Trump world end with the enemy offering a "very significant prize"? Something sounds very special about that, but it's not the prize...
Iran is sending him a shiny gold oil drum to add to that clutter on the mantelpiece.
I'm kind of hoping it falls in the "Trojan Horse" category of prizes.
Maybe he will win a second FIFA peace prize.
"Donald Trump has a vision. Donald Trump is a culture." No. Donald Trump is a cult. A cult that falls somewhere between Jonestown or Branch Davidian and a real political party. Cults are well known for their ability to take pain, including pain till death. Rational or critical thinking is useless in understanding cults, they emerge from a place beyond the rational mind. Some with lesser devotion find the ability to leave the cult as it descends into the pure dark (lower approval polling), but most will take that ride to the end.
And, does anyone still believe that the lovely Melania is secretly voting against maga? I do not.
And who cares what David Brooks has to say anyway?
Melania only has room in her 687 year old vampiric heart for Melania. What an odious entity.
he IS A CHILD
Huge OG Bulwark fan here. And valid point regarding infighting; I totally agree.
But with (minimal) respect to Mr. Brooks, whose career has consisted of making the obvious explicit, King George III and his ministers said much the same regarding American colonists and their lack of “vision.”
It didn’t work out for King George, and if we hang together, as ultimately we did in the 1770s/early ‘80s, it won’t work out for this wannabe king either.
Once Brooks was quoted as expert opinion, I stopped reading.
Garbage in garbage out.
David Brooks was a Trump enabler and fluffer from the beginning. He knew better but did not have the courage of the never Trumpers. He has made a career of finding any reason to criticize Democrats and liberals while making excuses for Trump. And now apparently we’re not protesting to his satisfaction. Spare me.
He's not as bad as Ross Douthat (who hides his MAGA erections behind $20 words) and once in a great while has an editorial worth reading, but my complaint about him is that most of his editorials are tone deaf and out in left field.
Totally agree about Douthat!