Frustration with House Speaker Mike Johnson was apparently one of the factors that drove Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to announce her resignation from Congress late last month. Now, Rep. Nancy Mace is considering doing the same. And Johnson is openly feuding with Rep. Elise Stefanik. Wtf we love Mike Johnson now? Happy Thursday.
What About Bob?
by Andrew Egger
Donald Trump, as a rule, hates Democrats. They’re radical left anti-American communists and domestic terrorists, after all. But every once in a while, Trump bumps into a Democrat that turns out to be a kindred spirit, someone he can really relate to.
Typically, they’re the ones who have been accused—and occasionally convicted—of corruption crimes.
Yesterday brought the latest such unexpected breakthrough of human feeling. In a Truth Social post Wednesday morning, Trump announced he would pardon “Highly Respected Congressman” Henry Cuellar of Texas, whom he said had been targeted by the Biden administration because he “bravely spoke out against Open Borders, and the Biden Border ‘Catastrophe.’”
Trump politely declined to mention the actual reason Cuellar was under federal indictment: because he allegedly had taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the government of Azerbaijan and a Mexico-based bank in exchange for promises to work to shift U.S. policy in a direction favorable to those entities. Cuellar, the indictment alleged, took pains to hide those payments from scrutiny—squirreling them away in accounts connected to shell companies under his wife Imelda Cuellar’s name.1
Semafor’s Dave Weigel wrote last year of Trump’s “giant soft spot for indicted Democrats,” which during his first term included pardons or commutations for former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Republicanshave had a good batting average landing Trump pardons for corruption charges too: Just ask former Reps. Duncan Hunter, Chris Collins, and George Santos.
But this year, Trump’s pardon habit has gone from an occasional indulgence to a full-blown lifestyle. Even as he fantasizes in public about police roughing up “criminals” and looks for pretexts to throw his political enemies in prison, the president’s blanket sympathy for anybody else accused of white collar criminality is reaching astonishing heights. He’s issuing pardons to congressmen without bothering to tip off the speaker of the House first. He’s even undoing indictments that his own Justice Department is issuing: Last night, as we were finishing up this newsletter, Trump pardoned a real estate developer who was facing charges of corruptly rigging an arena-building bidding process at the University of Texas to favor his own company. The president is on an epic binge.
Trump has issued pardons and clemency to January 6 rioters, to disgraced ex-congressman, and to anyone who seems willing to stuff the coffers of one of his political committees or family crypto businesses. His impulse to issue get-out-of-jail free cards has extended to global leaders: He’s actively encouraged Israel’s president to pardon its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and taken a hostile diplomatic and economic posture toward Brazil over its jailing of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Most recently, as we wrote this week, he pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, former president of Honduras, who was facing 45 years in U.S. federal prison over drug and corruption charges.
Ultimately, this impulse to give clemency to bad people—something that every other president at least had the shame to wait to do until their last day in office—is rooted in what Weigel called Trump’s monomyth: “that the justice system he’s tangled with throughout his business and political careers is crooked, picking favorites and treating its enemies unfairly.” Trump has remarkably few core beliefs, but this conviction is one, and one he holds deeply enough that corruption charges seem to improve his feelings about a politician rather than the opposite. If the system’s coming after them, they must be doing something right!
Which makes you wonder: How much longer is Trump going to make former senator and accused gold-bar aficionado Bob Menendez twist in the wind?
These days, Menendez is starting to stand out as the one prominent former member of Congress jailed on corruption charges who hasn’t been lucky enough to retrieve a Trump pardon. Menendez’s case, after all, mirrors Cuellar’s in striking ways: Both netted hundreds of thousands of dollars from entities connected to foreign governments—Egypt and Qatar, in Menendez’s case—in exchange for promises to steer U.S. policy in those governments’ favor. (Menendez was in a particularly useful perch from which to do so, as he formerly chaired the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee.) Like Cuellar, Menendez’s wife, Nadine, was sentenced alongside him; both are currently serving multi-year sentences in federal prison.
And it’s not like Menendez hasn’t been trying to land a pardon of his own. Scroll back through his most recent posts on X2 to find Menendez working overtime to catch Trump’s eye, tagging the president repeatedly and casting his prosecution as a “witch hunt” launched by their mutual enemies like Attorney General Merrick Garland and the U.S. attorney’s office of the Southern District of New York.
“President Trump is right,” he wrote back in January. “This process is political and has been corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores integrity to the system.”
Maybe Trump still hasn’t forgotten Menendez’s staunch opposition to him during his first term, including his votes to convict Trump in both of his impeachment trials. Maybe he just doesn’t have a good MAGA-pleasing policy excuse for pardoning Menendez like he does with Cuellar.
Or, hey—maybe he’s just warming up to the crown jewel pardon. Bob Menendez better start working that prison phone.
The Four Horsemen of the Trumpist Apocalypse
by William Kristol
The Departments of Defense, Justice, and Homeland Security, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are important agencies of the United States government. They’re currently being directed by individuals who were confirmed by the Senate despite being manifestly unqualified by either experience or character for those positions of serious responsibility. None of these individuals has, over the past year, shown any sign of growing into the job. None has shown any inclination to try to do so. None is acting a whit more responsibly today than one could have anticipated the day they assumed office.
Quite the contrary.
But this isn’t a failure on their part. They were meant to serve Donald Trump as authoritarian apparatchiks reshaping the power ministries of his government. They’re doing what they were appointed to do.
This week’s provided reminders of what that means. The following incidents aren’t the most important examples of what’s happening at those key agencies. But they’re perhaps a useful reminder of what authoritarian Trumpism in power really means.
Trumpism means lying.
At Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said to her boss, the president, “You told me to look into Minnesota and their fraud on visas and their programs—50 percent of them are fraudulent, which means that that wacko Governor Walz either is an idiot or he did it on purpose.”
As the CBS affiliate in Minnesota reported, “Noem did not provide evidence” in response to a request for data. No immigration expert thinks this figure is remotely plausible. Indeed, as CBS reported, in September U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services conducted an operation in Minneapolis-Saint Paul looking at 1,000 cases of potential immigration fraud. “Those investigations yielded 42 referrals to U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement and just four for arrest, which is roughly 0.5% of those cases.”
As for Noem’s accusation that Gov. Tim Walz was responsible for the alleged fraudulent visas, the governor’s office pointed out that states don’t handle immigration cases.
Trumpism means covering up.
Yesterday, five members of Congress from both parties and chambers, worried that Attorney General Pam Bondi is planning to avoid complying with the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed by Congress on Nov. 19 that requires the Justice Department to release the Epstein files within 30 days, wrote a letter to Bondi asking for a briefing and update by the end of this week on that legally mandated release.
We’ll see if they get that briefing by tomorrow. We’ll see if they get those files two weeks from now. We’ll see if the Epstein coverup ends. I was in touch with one of those lawmakers yesterday. That person is doubtful we’ll see all the files we should see.
Trumpism means politicizing.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reported yesterday that FBI Director Kash Patel “is pressuring the bureau’s career domestic terrorism agents to open a seditious conspiracy investigation into six Democratic lawmakers who pointed out that military officers are not supposed not obey illegal orders.” As Bloomberg puts it, this “would escalate the administration’s use of law enforcement to probe the president’s critics.”
Career leaders at the bureau’s Washington field office have so far resisted this effort, citing “a lack of legal and factual basis to initiate a criminal case against the senators and House members.” Patel said in late November that the decision to investigate would be up to career FBI agents and analysts. But the prior head of the Washington office, Steven Jensen, was fired in August, apparently in retaliation for insufficient loyalty to Trump. We’ll see if the professionals can succeed in resisting yet another step in the all-out politicization of law enforcement.
Trumpism means unquestioningly following orders.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journalreported that the admiral in charge of Southern Command, Alvin Holsey, whose sudden resignation after less than a year in command was announced two months ago, was in fact fired by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Shortly after his confirmation, Hegseth met with Holsey on a secure video conference and, according to notes from a participant in the call, told the admiral, “You’re either on the team or you’re not. When you get an order, you move out fast and don’t ask questions.”
Holsey apparently insisted on asking questions about military orders that might be unwise or illegal. Holsey’s departure ceremony after 37 years of military service will be next week.
And all of this is not to mention the big story of the week, Hegseth’s orders, reported by the New York Times, to bomb alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, “summarily executing people suspected of smuggling drugs as if they were combatants on a battlefield”—[a use of force that does not meet the standard of being a military conflict and is unauthorized by Congress.
These are mere hints and indications of what is happening at these four crucial agencies. They’re just glimpses of the larger Trumpist reshaping of our government, which is being effectuated by these obedient apparatchiks. They (or equally obedient replacements) will continue to carry forward this authoritarian agenda for the next three years.
And if you believe that these four Trumpists–Noem, Bondi, Patel, or Hegseth—or, for that matter, Trump himself—are committed at the end of these four years to allowing free and fair elections, and to a peaceful transfer to power to an opposition party that could investigate their tenure in government . . . I have some Trump meme coins to sell you.
AROUND THE BULWARK
A Bubble-Wrapped Trump… On the Flagship Pod, JONATHAN LEMIRE joins TIM MILLER to discuss Trump’s retreat from the campaign trail, warning signs inside the White House, and why Democrats are seeing a sudden opening.
The ‘Fog of War’ Is No Excuse… Mistakes are one thing; failures of moral judgment are another, argues MARK HERTLING.
Mike Johnson’s Speakership Is Hanging by Dental Floss… Live from Bulwark HQ, SARAH LONGWELL, JVL, and TIM MILLER get through a chaotic week in Trump’s Washington on The Next Level.
Dems to America: Touch Grass… Skepticism about AI and Big Tech is on the rise among party leaders and thinkers, reports LAUREN EGAN in The Opposition.
The Three Dumbest Republican Self-Owns on Health Care… JILL LAWRENCE documents how the party hurts itself, its voters, and the country.
Quick Hits
YOU CAN’T DO THAT, PETE: Remember Signalgate? Pete Hegseth and Co.’s accidental and hilarious inclusion of the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on a war-planning group chat has since been buried under about a thousand other White House and Defense Department scandals. But the wheels of accountability turn slow: The Pentagon only just wrapped its internal review of the failures that allowed for that remarkable breach. Reporting from multiple outlets suggests the Defense Department inspector general found that Hegseth had violated Pentagon regulations by sharing highly sensitive information about an ongoing mission with the “Houthi PC Small Group” group chat. (Who could have guessed!)
But because Hegseth, as the secretary, has the authority to declassify Pentagon information—and because Hegseth claims, implausibly but with no proof to the contrary, that he intended to declassify that information as he shared it—the report also suggests his ill-advised use of Signal may not have broken any criminal laws. The whole unclassified report is expected to be released today—so you can give it a read and decide for yourself.
MORE ECONOMIC STORM CLOUDS: Payroll-processing company ADP’s latest jobs report is out, and the numbers aren’t good. Private-sector employment fell by 32,000 jobs in November, ADP reported—the third decline in four months, with losses concentrated among America’s small businesses. If it’s accurate, it’s a cause for real economic alarm.
But is it accurate? This is the problem we’re all dealing with these days, both in the media and in the economy at large, as our own Catherine Rampell has noted. In the absence of the usual government jobs data—the collection of which ground to an extended halt during the government shutdown, and the reliability of which has been called into question by Trump’s political meddling at the Bureau of Labor Statistics—we’ve been deprived of a normal picture of the economy. In its place, we have been forced to piece together a mosaic from bits and pieces of private-sector data. These all have their uses, but they tend to be more limited and less reliable than the gold-standard BLS data we’ve had at our fingertips for the last century.
It’s difficult, in this moment, for well-meaning and knowledgeable people trying to read the economic tea leaves. But that pales in comparison to the difficulty of just being a person out there encountering economic news ambiently—where the confusing and incomplete data picture is swept utterly aside by various max-decibel economic-messaging machines, like the White House’s. Trump never tires of bragging about how America has entered its “golden age,” that the country is “HOT” again under his leadership, that this is “the richest, strongest, and most respected the USA has ever been.” Meanwhile, he has denounced the word “affordability” as “a Democrat scam.”
GETTING AROUND TO HEALTHCARE COSTS: It’s very, very, very, very, very late in the game, but Senate Republicans are suddenly sounding a bipartisan note when it comes to renewing or revising Obamacare subsidies that are now just weeks from expiring. At a hearing of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee yesterday, both Republicans and Democrats expressed hope they might still be able to swerve away from the year-end fiscal cliff. But they still seem miles apart on what exactly a solution might look like. Politico reports:
“If we don’t do something on this issue, if Congress does not take action, this will be a crisis for 24 million Americans and counting,” said Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).
But Hawley’s move Wednesday to make his own pitch for a far-reaching change to the country’s health policies—he offered a bill to allow people to deduct up to $25,000 in medical expenses—showed how GOP lawmakers aren’t willing to go with the simplest solution, a temporary extension of the subsidies Democrats prefer.
Read the whole thing, and you start to get the sense there’s nearly as many Republican plans as there are committee Republicans. A vote to renew the subsidies in their current form will take place in the Senate next week—but if that vote fails, as is pretty much guaranteed, the next step remains unclear.
Cheap Shots
Her inclusion in the indictment wrung another pang of lachrymose compassion out of Trump, who lamented that “Sleepy Joe” had gone after “even the Congressman’s wonderful wife, Imelda.”
All of which predate Menendez’s incarceration this summer.
Re Hawley - tax deductions are of no use to folks who pay little in income taxes. This is basically a ploy he can use in his next campaign.
Hawley is a hypocrite and a treasonous bastard. Oh yes, and a coward, too.