Donald Trump, still vibrating from the joys of his UFCstravaganza at the White House last night, is feeling himself this morning, and has apparently decided to make the Fourth of July America 250 Party even Trumpier than before: “On July 4th, at the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, we are going to host the most spectacular TRUMP RALLY of them all,” he wrote on Truth Social this morning. The event would feature “more than 300 Members of our strong and talented Military Bands, Orchestras, and Ceremonial Units” who will “perform Patriotic Melodies and American Classics, and my Playlist (We will have none of those people that put you to sleep and constantly complain!)”. And, of course, “I will deliver keynote remarks that you will not want to miss.”
Hey, man, glad you’re having fun. Happy Monday.
Join Sam Stein and Will Sommer live on Substack and YouTube at 10 a.m. EDT today for MAGA Mondays.
Bread and Capitulation
by William Kristol
It would have been nice to write this morning about the remarkable and inspiring Knicks and the joyful scenes of celebration in New York City that followed their championship. I would have relished a word about the happy removal of our current president’s name from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in D.C.
But the stern siren of duty calls. There is an Iran deal to discuss, and discuss it I shall, even if writing about a defeat for our country is genuinely painful.
Fortunately our friend Tom Nichols of the Atlantic is made of sterner stuff. He stepped up last night to perform the distressing task of analyzing the deal that will apparently bring to an end Donald Trump’s misbegotten war against Iran:
The United States has little to celebrate: Trump and his team, in record time, just lost a war to a militarily mediocre—but nonetheless extremely dangerous—adversary. . . . It is clear that Trump has failed to achieve every one of the goals he put forward for this war of choice, and now he is determined to sign, seal, and deliver America’s capitulation as quickly as possible. . . .
The reality is that the war will close with the regime in Tehran intact and in the grip of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; the Strait of Hormuz will remain under the threat of Iranian attacks; Iran will continue to possess significant drone and missile stocks; the regime will maintain the capability to be a state sponsor of terror; and many sanctions will be lifted and billions of dollars in unfrozen assets will flow to Iran. In other words, the Iranians have achieved their key strategic aims—regime survival above all—while the Americans have achieved none of their own.
Indeed, the United States has perhaps done worse than gaining nothing. Iran, while temporarily weakened, is now an even more powerful political actor: The regime in Tehran stood up to a massive U.S. onslaught, survived, and then inflicted pain on various states in the Gulf as punishment for going along with Trump’s war. . . .
The war leaves Iran battered, but more powerful and with more cash at its disposal, while it leaves America weaker.
I’m sad to say that Tom has it right. And I’ll mention one point in particular that seems not to be getting the attention it deserves. The memorandum of understanding to be signed Friday reportedly says that Iran will not impose tolls in the strait of Hormuz for the next sixty days. This is presumably the basis of Trump’s claim that the strait will be “toll-free.” But the government of Iran says that the strait will operate in the longer run “under Iranian arrangements.” This seems likely to be true, since Iran has established the principle that it can close the strait, has paid no price, hasn’t repudiated a right to do so in the future, and will be more interested and able to enforce its will in the months and years to come than we’ll be able to stop them.
So Iran comes out a winner. But Iran’s victory isn’t the most important outcome of Trump’s foolish war. The most important outcome is our defeat. Trump’s failure in Iran has confirmed and accelerated the broader retreat during his second term from our standing as the linchpin and guardian of an American-friendly international order. We were a great power—the greatest world power—from 1941 to 2025. Now we appear to be one power among many, even one bully among many, perhaps the preeminent one, but one without much credibility among either allies or enemies.
Our allies at the G7 meeting in France over the next couple days will have no interest in highlighting the fact of our decline, as they want to buy time to make their adjustments. But everyone with eyes to see understands what Trump has wrought. This failed war will leave us both less feared and less respected than before, and will leave the world more dangerous and its future less hopeful than before.
The coincidence yesterday of the announcement of an agreement on a deal and the cage match at the White House has led to much discussion of imperial decadence, and of our entering an age of bread and circuses. The phrase comes from the Roman poet Juvenal, writing around 100 A.D.: The people “shed their sense of responsibility long ago . . . the mob . . . reveals its anxiety for two things only, bread and circuses.”
But the Roman Empire remained great for quite a while after Juvenal’s lament. In his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon identified the subsequent eighty years or so as the peak of the Empire in size and power, the height of the Pax Romana, and also as a golden age of peace, prosperity, and human happiness. So a taste for bread and circuses didn’t mean imminent Roman collapse.
But things seem to move faster these days. Our decline shows every likelihood of being far quicker and more thorough than Rome’s.
Or not? Could the humiliating loss to Iran—along with the embarrassment of our 250th anniversary celebration—be a kind of blessing? Could it provide a spur for us to arrest and reverse our decline in national power and also our slide into imperial decadence? Indeed, the American people don’t seem to have been too impressed by Trump’s White House cage circus. Perhaps here, unlike in imperial Rome, it may not be too late to revive the spirit of republican virtue?
After all, the Knicks pulled off a remarkable comeback. Who’s to say America can’t, too?
The Real Real America
by Andrew Egger
Although last night’s UFC extravaganza on the White House lawn seemed in danger early on of losing the biggest, most important fight on the card—the fight against the weather—the good Lord in his mysterious judgment apparently decided we wouldn’t get off so easy. The thunderstorms that had menaced the melee turned aside, delaying the start of the event but ultimately robbing me of what would have been the most interesting viewing of the evening: watching them try to figure out the logistical challenge of how to pack the fight’s audience into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in a downpour. (See, folks: we need that BALLROOM!)
Instead, the saturnalia of bad taste went ahead as planned. Maybe some of you enjoyed the spectacle of grizzled men, having spent the weigh-in the day before pushing and shit-talking each other and pretending (?) to vomit on themselves, beat each other silly on the White House lawn in a cage spangled with ads for prediction markets and Saudi Arabia and Donald Trump’s crypto businesses. Not for me, personally! Two moments seemed to sum up the whole thing: UFC promoter Daniel Cormier tweeting and then deleting apparent DMs from Eric Trump asking him whether any of the fights were rigged,1 and fighter Josh Hokit capping his win by hollering into a microphone: “Michelle Obama is a man! Am I right, America?”
It was the whole Trump moment in miniature. Some of the worst people alive, the biggest fetishists for pointless brute violence and the dumbest conspiracy theories the internet has to offer, luxuriating in the illusion MAGA has built for them: that their proximity to power has given them the opportunity to tell themselves and each other that they speak for the country. This is real America, and if you don’t like it, you’re the unpatriotic one.
Amusingly, some of the loudest proponents for this idea were some of the longtime Beltway elites who have lately taken to wearing MAGA credentials as if they’re a talisman that will ward off any Real Americans who might otherwise want to stuff them in a locker. Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, who has spent his entire life on the Acela corridor but apparently went to a monster truck rally in Maine once, was emblematic: “Most of those bemoaning what Trump is doing to the ‘people’s house’ are elites who have utter contempt for the ‘people’ (who love motocross and UFC),” he scolded on X. “If you’re going to sniff your nose at the proletariat don’t invoke the sanctity of the ‘people’s house’—you look ridiculous.”
Well, I don’t know. I grew up in Missouri and Iowa and I hope my “real America” credentials are good enough to say that the proletariat likes some dumb shit, too. (If you want actual data on the matter, a Reuters poll last week found that just 16 percent of Americans, including a third of Republicans, approved of the MMA-on-the-lawn plan.) But this too is the Trump moment in miniature: A bunch of conservative-media types sternly telling you that this or that objectively terrible thing is real America, and that you’re the out-of-touch one for thinking it’s bad.
Here’s something I think is actually beautiful, however: At exactly the same moment all this has been playing out, we’ve been getting a wonderful reminder that this silly spectacle isn’t “real America”—or not, at least, the whole thing. If you’ve been following the stories around the World Cup, which is playing out across Canada, Mexico, and the United States right now, you’ve been treated to a number of incredible storylines that bring a whole different “real America” into focus. There’s the silly, fun spectacle of the international tourists coming to the states for the first time and going repeatedly viral as they’re blown away by some of the biggest and best of what our country has to offer—the majesty of our college sports stadiums and our Buc-ees. And there’s the host of oddly touching human stories that have bubbled up, too, like the way the locals of Lawrence, Kansas have thrown themselves into enthusiastic support for the Algerian national squad, which has pitched their World Cup base camp there.
“I want to say thank you to Team Algeria for choosing our home town, Lawrence, Kansas, to come here,” one local told an Algerian broadcaster in a now-viral clip. “I came mainly because I was so happy that they chose our town for their base camp. And we just know Algeria is on the Mediterranean Sea, and then the south part is on the Sahara Desert. And we know that you gained independence from France kind of around the time I was born. We don’t know too much, but we want to welcome you here.”
Don’t get me wrong: I’m certainly not saying all the chest-thumping and bloodlust and crypto trading and gambling-scamming isn’t American to its core. But all the good stuff from the World Cup is in our DNA too: the willingness to throw our door open and welcome people in, the pride in seeing others wowed by the stuff that surrounds us that we take for granted, the pleasures of meeting new people—even outsiders!—and approaching them with simple generosity of spirit. You didn’t see that stuff at the UFC fight last night; it isn’t in Trump’s stage-managed picture of “real America.” Out there in the sticks, you still see it plenty.
AROUND THE BULWARK
Sentinels at the Bacchanal… Military participation in the spectacle in D.C. is a reminder that trust in our armed forces depends on them standing apart, writes MARK HERTLING.
The Iranian Regime Isn’t Going Anywhere….With Eric on vacation, ELIOT COHEN welcomes KENNETH POLLACK, vice president for policy at the Middle East Institute, to discuss Iran’s future.
After Trump: Proposals for a Post-Authoritarian America… How Democrats can lead the charge for a new Reconstruction—if they can avoid becoming what they defeat, write SHIKHA DALMIA and ANDY CRAIG.
John Avlon’s Final Warning… As How to Fix It wraps up its run here, JOHN AVLON is joined by RYE BARCOTT to discuss why political courage has become so rare in Washington.
Quick Hits
THE PETTIEST MAN ALIVE: If you thought Donald Trump would comply with the court-ordered removal of his name from the Kennedy Center with a little dignity, think again. The White House had been given a deadline of noon Friday to take the president’s name off the building facade, but pushed that timing later with an eleventh-hour flurry of legal appeals and protestations.2 The courts having failed to rule against them, the White House presumably went ahead with removing Trump’s name—but even that remains unclear, as workers raised tarps to block the view before beginning work, and the tarps have yet to come down.
Even more obscene is a poison pill apparently created by the Kennedy Center’s board of Trump toadies. The emergency motion Trump filed last week made reference to an astonishing and apparently new Kennedy Center bylaw: All new private donations, it suggested, have been conditioned “upon the name of the Center remaining unchanged as the ‘Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.’” If the name were ever changed, the bylaw apparently states, the Center would be obliged to return all such donations.
The suit’s justification for this bylaw is “that people and companies, who have given, or will be giving, millions of dollars to the Center were only willing to do so with the name ‘Trump’ on the building.” And if you believe that is why the Center’s board baked a bomb into its own bylaws, we’ve got a bridge across the Potomac to sell you. What’s actually happening is that the board—at Trump’s behest—is throwing a remarkable tantrum: If Trump’s name can’t be on the Center, there won’t be a Center at all.
This is how Trump sees things, too: “So now,” he wrote after a judge ruled his name had to come down last month, “the Kennedy Center will collapse, both structurally and financially.” No skin off his back—he’s more of a UFC guy, after all.
FISA AROUND AND FIND OUT: Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expired Friday, meaning that for the first time since 2008, the government is unable to pull information on foreigners abroad from domestic service providers without a warrant. While civil-liberties focused lawmakers have long opposed the program, arguing it can sweep too broadly through Americans’ communications, this was the first time Democrats have opposed reauthorization en masse, in protest over Bill Pulte’s appointment as acting director of national intelligence.
Trump, however, isn’t in much of a hurry to get FISA reauthorized. “I’m against FISA,” he wrote on Truth Social yesterday, “if it doesn’t come with the Save America Act (Full version!) firmly attached to it. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! Thank you for your attention to this matter.” Whether Trump actually intends to oppose FISA when Congress agrees to reauthorize it, or whether this is just his latest blunderous attempt to browbeat Congress into passing his DOA voting bill, remains to be seen.
Cheap Shots
Obviously I have no idea whether these DMs were legit, but Eric Trump’s denial was pretty funny: “We are aware of the fake, AI-generated screenshots being circulated online. I have never spoken to Daniel. He has since deleted his post, which confirms it was clearly fabricated.” I guess the claim is that Cormier used AI to generate them himself?
The emergency motion that failed Friday was written nearly entirely in sophomoric Trumpspeak: “The district court doesn’t want it to close so that complex, high level construction can be completed (which cannot be done without the Building being closed). Therefore, we would also like approval to immediately start spending the money, not only from an aesthetic point of view, but also from a structural and safety standpoint.”
Hello Friends:
Long time, no chat. I’ve missed you – hopefully the feeling is mutual. No, Stephen Miller did not come for me in the night and do his full Dracula imitation upon my person. I simply have had some extended travel time, first in a while, and taken advantage of the opportunity to get out of our pressure cooker. I recommend it. Try it if you can.
I’m largely off-topic today (please don’t ban me, moderators) but would like to share some random observations that came to me while abroad, in a more objective climate than we live in here anymore. I’ll stick to highlights for brevity and welcome the thoughts of others who have been outside the country recently for additional context.
1) It takes such travel, on an extended basis and around people willing to talk openly and honestly, to gauge how much our current regime is despised by others elsewhere. I heard literally not a single voice supporting our President and our government. It is pretty much that one-sided. On the former in particular, the kindest word I heard uttered is that he is a clown. (There also was worse. Much worse. I’ll let you use your imagination to fill in that gap.) Generally there is an outright befuddlement as to how so many supposedly smart people could elect the single most ignorant and lazy person we could find to the most important elected office in the world. They do not understand. I was forced to tell them that many to most of us do not understand either. Yet here we are.
2) These same people do not hate us as Americans. They hate what America is doing now, but they understand the fundamental difference between the average citizen and the power brokers who hold the power and the control. They do not wish to punish us individually for what is happening on a macro level. But they do question why we allowed it in the first place, and why we did not take into account them and others who also have to live with the outcomes as a branch of the tree of choices and consequences. They still love us and want to be friends with us. We simply have to stop acting like teenagers and be the adults in the room again that they were accustomed to.
3) Pope Leo is amazing, and he is the face of America that they seek to embrace – if we can find our way (back) there. I saw first-hand the love and the admiration that the Spanish people have for him, and what he stands for in his messages of fundamental decency and kindness, acceptance of others, and his support of equality and inclusivity. The feelings are real, and it was a moment of deep personal pride for me to see this American Pope representing what is best about us when too often what appears in the news reflects the worst of us. We should not underestimate his importance as a goodwill ambassador as he travels the world, speaks truth to power, and, at least indirectly, reminds the world anew of our better selves even while we struggle to find it here, on our home turf.
4) Lastly for now, a confession, derived at least partially from staying up way too late for NBA Finals games that started around 2:30 a.m. local time and ended around 5:30: the Knicks are the better team. As a San Antonio Spurs fan, it stings to admit that, and to see New Yorkers celebrate a title that we actually were justthisclose to winning ourselves had the ball bounced slightly differently in two or three of those very tight and suspenseful games. Yes, the two teams were that evenly matched. But as a rule the deeper, more experienced team usually finds a way to win most of those nail-biters in a seven-game series. And they did this time too. Congratulations, Knicks fans. Just tell others that, despite 4-1, our team belonged in the Finals with you and that we were the toughest competition you faced along the way. From there we’re all good, and hope to renew the duel next year.
Per The Hill website, here's Lindsey Graham commenting on the Iran war agreement:
“I look forward to reviewing the final product and I believe it is imperative that the architect of the deal, Vice President Vance and his negotiating partners, be part of the process in presenting the final deal to Congress."
No mention of Trump. This sounds to me like Vance is being set up as the fall guy in case the dear leader's "peace deal" proves to be less artful and more doubtful.