Trump

President Donald Trump recently fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on the grounds that doing so will improve her department — but a Republican national security expert argued Sunday that the problems are much deeper than that.

“The switch is cosmetic: The problem with DHS isn’t Noem or [Trump’s nominee GOP Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne] Mullin or whoever else will run it,” explained Paul Rosenzweig, who served as deputy assistant secretary for policy of the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush (2005-2009) and currently cybersecurity at the George Washington University Law School. “The problem is with the agency itself.”

While some of the problems are longstanding, such as issues with FEMA or the TSA, Trump has made them worse, Rosenzweig opined.

“Under Donald Trump, ICE and Border Patrol have become rogue agencies, accused of unnecessary violence and disregard for the rule of law,” Rosenzweig argued. “In January alone, ICE violated more court orders than most federal agencies violate in their entire existence, according to a federal judge in Minnesota. ICE has also adopted what appears to be a blatantly unconstitutional search policy.”

He added, “Meanwhile, more than 40 people have died in ICE custody since the start of Trump’s second term. The answer to such abuses is not reform; it is wholesale disassembly and restructuring.”

From there Rosenzweig suggested several new policies to overhaul the Homeland Security Department. These include returning “its focus to the original objective—foreign counterterrorism—which remains a serious concern. Retain those portions of DHS that serve a counterterrorism function—CBP officers at ports of entry, TSA screeners at airports, Border Patrol agents at the nation’s land borders—and return the other components to more appropriate federal departments.”

From there, “most of the rest of DHS should be disaggregated. Terrorist attacks on U.S. soil are so infrequent that FEMA can, and should, go back to being an independent agency. Likewise, immigration adjudication (currently housed in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services) can be returned to the Department of Justice. The home of the few agencies whose functions are decidedly mixed—such as the Coast Guard—should be decided on a case-by-case basis, but whatever the outcome, joint task forces that coordinate response activities should be developed.”

Rosenzweig argued that the “most important” change would be to “eliminate the possibility of the creation of a federalized interior police force. Border Patrol can be limited to the border, and Homeland Security Investigations can be retargeted toward their traditional function of sophisticated transnational commercial crimes. Meanwhile, the single gravest militarized threat—ICE—should be reined in and restructured under new leadership, so that it focuses on its core mission of genuine civil-process interior enforcement.”

As Rosenzweig noted, the Senate did not seriously propose any reforms along these lines, instead treating the problems with Homeland Security as an issue primarily of Noem’s bad leadership. For example, Trump’s decision to fire Noem was based on the ex-Cabinet officer inaccurately claiming the president authorized her $220 million ad campaign.

“I was stunned when Noem answered categorically that the president approved every single bit of it,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) told Fox News at the time. “Later that day, I got a call from President Trump. He was mad as a mamma wasp. He said, ‘Kennedy, I hope you understand that I had nothing to do with this.’ I said, ‘I do believe you, Mr. President.'”

He added, “He was not happy. It was clear to me after that conversation that the secretary’s time at the department was limited. To be blunt, she was dead as fried chicken.”

Noem was also grilled by House members for her alleged affair with a special government employee she hired to work for her, former lobbyist Corey Lewandowski.

"Secretary Noem, at any time during your tenure…have you had sexual relations with Corey Lewandowski?" U.S. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA) asked Noem during a hearing earlier this month.

Noem told Sydney Kamlager-Dove, "That is garbage and it is offensive that you have brought that up.”

Kamlager-Dove replied, "It is about your judgment and decision-making.”

President Donald Trump and his top officials seem to glory in the violence they inflict as leaders of the American military-industrial complex — and a Marine Corps veteran claims this behavior is fundamentally un-American.

“I have plenty of complaints about the war I served in two decades ago: the Iraq war was ill-conceived, hubristic and marred by poor leadership at the highest level,” wrote Phil Klay, a novelist and Marine Corps veteran from President George W. Bush’s Iraq War, in a Sunday editorial for The New York Times. “But I did know why I was there. What exactly do our service members think we’re trying to do in Iran?”

Describing the Trump administration’s myriad and oft-contradictory explanations as “stunningly incoherent,” Klay explained that servicemembers have no idea if the war is being fought to change the Iranian regime, destroy its nuclear program, degrade their other sophisticated weapons capabilities, help Israel survive or simply engage in an “excursion that will keep us out of a war.”

“In President Trump’s America, there may be only two genders, but our military adventures can identify however they please,” Klay observed regarding the Trump administration’s innumerable explanatory transitions. At the same time, he also picked up on a theme in Trump’s warmongering that does not receive as much attention — the desire to declare war for its own sake.

“The bowling video is one of many sizzle reels posted on White House social media accounts celebrating the war by mixing images of death and destruction with footage from video games or sports highlights,” Klay wrote. “The president declared that military officials told him ‘it’s more fun to sink’ ships than to capture them, and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth exulted, ‘We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.’ The Trump aide Stephen Miller proclaimed that the Iran war showcased a military ‘that isn’t fighting with its hands tied behind its back.’ At another news conference, Mr. Hegseth made the macho posturing even clearer: ‘No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars.’”

Klay contrasted this cavalier attitude toward war with the ideals on which America was founded. Although he analyzed presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Bush Jr. himself, the words of America’s first president and most iconic military leader were the most directly relevant to his thesis.

“In his addresses to the troops, George Washington would bring up the imagery of violence not as a spectacle to be enjoyed but as horrors to be endured — from ‘mercenary hirelings fighting in the cause of lawless ambition, rapine and devastation’ to those who wished to keep revolutionary America in ‘bondage and misery,’” Klay wrote. “And when news of British atrocities reached him, Washington wrote that ‘their wanton cruelty injures rather than benefits their cause; that, with our forbearance, justly secures to us the attachment of all good men.’”

Writing for Salon Magazine in 2021, this journalist explained that Washington also would have abhorred Trump’s refusal to concede after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, as Washington prioritized the peaceful transfer of power and abhorred the partisanship Trump tapped into to attempt his coup.

“The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual,” Washington wrote in his 1796 Farewell Address about the dangers of partisanship in the hands of power-hungry demagogues, “and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

To ensure that democracy remains secure, Washington said that those in power must abide by the rule of law even when it contradicts their own political ambitions or policy desires.

“The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government,” Washington argued. “But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.”

Later he added, “All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency.”

In terms of Trump’s refusal to follow the law after he lost the 2020 election, conservative columnist George F. Will wrote in February that eight Republicans who studied all of Trump’s election fraud claims found that “all 187 counts in the 64 court challenges filed in multiple states by Trump and his supporters. Twenty cases were dismissed before hearings on their merits, 14 were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before hearings. Of the 30 that reached hearings on the merits, Trump’s side prevailed in only one, Pennsylvania, involving far too few votes to change the state’s result.”

He concluded, “Trump’s batting average? .016. In Arizona, the most exhaustively scrutinized state, a private firm selected by Trump’s advocates confirmed Trump’s loss, finding 99 additional Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump votes.”

In terms of Trump’s waging war against Iran without legal authorization from Congress (as required by the Constitution) and without explicitly stating the cause, conservative columnist David French wrote in The New York Times last week that he has boxed himself and America in.

“Here is the present situation, in a nutshell: The United States and Israel have established absolute air dominance over the nation of Iran,” French explained. “In a few short days, our combined forces have destroyed Iran’s ability to protect its own airspace, have killed much of Iran’s senior military and civilian leadership, and have sunk much of Iran’s navy.”

The problem is that Iran manages to get America to withdraw after closing the Strait of Hormuz, they will declare victory because of the optics of the West withdrawing due to that economic pressure.

“That’s the logic that leads to a quagmire,” French pointed out. “If America declares victory now, when the Iranian regime is still in power and the strait is closed, then Iran perversely can claim that it won. It took a huge punch, absorbed the blow, and still forced America to climb down. It employed its ultimate weapon — closing the strait — and America had no effective answer.”

He added, “Commit to opening the strait (and keeping it open) by force, and the U.S. may well find itself in yet another open-ended, costly conflict with at least some American soldiers on Iranian soil. This would be war on our enemy’s terms and terrain, with the potential of slowly but surely inflicting casualties and costs on the American military until we grow tired of the conflict and leave.” To prevent either outcome from occurring, the US needs a “military miracle,” which seems very unlikely.

President Donald Trump has a plan he says will help ordinary homeowners sell and buy their properties — but a publication that specializes in finances says things are not that simple.

“Americans thinking about selling their homes may decide to stay put when they look at today’s interest rates, especially if they’re currently locked in at a low rate” explained an editorial published by Moneywise and syndicated by Yahoo Finance.

Moneywise then quoted Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director William Pulte, who posted on X that the agency is “actively evaluating” portable mortgages, with a portable mortgage being defined as a mortgage that “lets you transfer your mortgage and your existing rate to a new home instead of taking out a new loan when you move.” Although this plan could work in theory, Moneywise noted, there are also “critics” who are “raising concerns” about this plan that, even at its best, would require homeowners who purchase a place more expensive than their current property “to either cover the difference in cash or take out a separate loan for it.”

“The New York Times reports that portable mortgages exist in other countries for shorter-term loans, but introducing them in the U.S. could shake up the economy,” Moneywise wrote. “U.S. mortgages are bundled and sold as investments called mortgage-backed securities.”

They added, “CNN noted that portable mortgages could ‘disrupt the engine powering the U.S. housing market,’ because mortgage-backed securities give banks the cash they need to issue new loans and keep the ‘mortgage market flowing.’” The publication also quoted 9i Capital Group CEO Kevin Thompson, who told Newsweek earlier in March that “if the market opens up and people can carry those low rates with them, demand jumps overnight. Prices move higher. No question about it. This does nothing to solve affordability.”

Similarly Realtor.com senior economist Jake Krimmel wrote that portable mortgages could help “in theory” but the so-called “lock-in effect” only accounts for roughly half of the recent drop in mobility and portable mortgages would primarily help homeowners who already have low rates.

This is not the Trump administration’s first controversy involving housing. In February Washington Post financial advice columnist Michelle Singletary surmised that the conditions which caused the 2008 housing crisis — one that culminated in the Great Recession — are “creeping back” now.

“Again, like the 2008 ruination, this new brewing crisis is ensnaring moderate- and low-income homeowners first,” Singletary wrote. “The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data reports that mortgage delinquency rates for lower-income households are surging, according to the recently released Household Debt and Credit report for the fourth quarter of 2025.”

She added, “According to New York Fed data, the 90-plus-day mortgage delinquency rate for families in the lowest-income bracket jumped from 0.5 percent in 2021 to nearly 3 percent by the end of 2025.” All of this further demonstrates that “financial storm clouds are gathering over those who can least afford a rainy day. As the New York Fed points out, ‘financial distress appears to be deepening for households in lower-income areas.’”

Also in February, Politico reported that Trump pressured Congress to amend a housing affordability bill to block investors from benefiting from the new policies. Even some in Trump's own party pushed back against that proposed amendment.

“I don’t think banning institutional investors is a good idea,” Rep. Troy Downing (R-Mont.), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, told Politico at the time. “I need to see exactly what language they were talking about if they’re being specific about some certain practice.”

President Donald Trump’s belligerent foreign policy can be understood by his “abusive, impulsive narcissist relations with women,” says the associate editor of a prominent Washington DC magazine.

Describing Trump’s statement last week that he plans on “taking Cuba in some form” because he can “do anything I want with it,” the bottom line is that “Trump’s megalomania continues to grow because he is so rarely punished for it,” wrote Washington Monthly associate editor Gillen Tener Martin in a Sunday editorial.

From winning the 2016 presidential election despite the "Access Hollywood” tape leaking (in that tape he bragged about sexually assaulting women) to getting reelected in 2024 even though he was found liable by a civil jury for the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll, Trump has learned that he can harm others with impunity — and that translates into his policy choices.

“But, of course, ‘I can do anything’ isn’t just Trump’s modus operandi with women,” Martin wrote. “It’s his mantra—how he moves through life: selfishly, chaotically, with little forethought and no expectation of consequences. And we’ve seen how that translates into policy; from tariffs to vaccines to DOGE, from Minneapolis to Venezuela to Iran.”

Martin added, “Turns out, if you’re an abusive, impulsive narcissist in your relations with women, you tend to be one in other areas of life, too. Who would’ve thought?”

There is good news for anti-Trumpers in that Trump’s attitude of invincibility does not translate into actual invincibility, Martin pointed out. He failed to repeal Obamacare, contain the COVID-19 pandemic, steal the 2020 presidential election or convince America’s former allies to back his reckless military venture in Iran.

“Even a military superpower needs allies in war, and allies are hard to find when war is waged on specious grounds without a diplomatic endgame,” Martin concluded regarding the last point. “Under different circumstances, the president being forced to reckon with the consequences of his actions may have brought solace—even glee—to some. Alas, the repercussions of this mess will come for us all.”

Martin’s concern over a possible US invasion of Cuba is based on Trump’s recent fixation on the Caribbean island country. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents are Cuban immigrants and who is a staunch opponent of that nation’s longstanding Communist regime, has long called for the island to be democratized.

"There is a very personal and corrupt agenda that he is carrying out, which seems to be sacrificing the national interests of the U.S. in order to advance this very extremist approach," Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla told the AP in October about Rubio.

In response to additional Trump threats in January, Cuba's President Miguel Diaz-Canel told Reuters that "Cuba is a free, independent, and sovereign nation. Nobody dictates what we do. Cuba does not attack; it has been attacked by the U.S. for 66 years, and it does not threaten; it prepares, ready to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood."

Maybe Donald Trump can publish another bestseller, an updated rewrite of Dale Carnegie's 1936 "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

After all, since his years as the "You're Fired" guy on "The Apprentice" television show, Trump has managed to bamboozle, cheat, directly insult and generally offend even his own Art of the Deal ways into a remarkable series of off-putting strategies that are consistent only in the result of throwing pretty much everyone with whom he has dealt under the nearest bus.

It's bad enough that he hates his enemies, yesterday rudely cheering the death of former FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller for deigning to investigate him, but Trump regularly now turns on his allies.

Just as Trump rewrote dealmaking as an artform based on cleverness in finding mutually agreeable trades for belligerence and threats, perhaps his new rewrite of friendships could exploit economic blackmail and military dominance as courtships to lasting relationships.

In this year back in the White House alone, Trump has managed single-handedly and without pressure ruined decades of personal and official ties to European allies and set off a hemispheric panic. He has breathed new life into failing enemies like Russia's Vladimir Putin and set off chasms within his own domestic political alliances.

This week, Trump managed to offend G-7 and NATO partners whose help he simultaneously was demanding to re-open the Strait of Hormuz — despite being unable himself to have avoided the predicted Iranian response to preemptive war. He called them "cowards," even while demanding they commit warships to a fight he decided to start alone, shunning their advice. He said clearing the Strait was "easy," wanting them to do it, but threatened to withdraw from attacking Iran without the U.S. doing the clearing work itself.

Whether the target is Ukraine's leader or the Japanese Prime Minister sitting in that Oval Office chair while Trump preens, the visitor waits expectantly now for a Trump remark that makes clear that "diplomacy" with an ally involved insult.

Apart from all else, Trump has confused friends of the U.S. with constantly changing policies and justifications for the war. By week's end, he even was showing discord with his one seemingly true international friend, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, over whether there is a way out of this war. Netanyahu clearly sees a continuing war as helping him domestically.

Trump Cracked Base Remains

Yet, despite disagreements even within his base of supporters, Trump still owns Republican legislators who fear his reelection wrath for themselves. And Trump was still holding approvals from a third or more of the polled public who seem willing to swallow anything in the name of breaking government and making anti-trans and anti-immigrant sloganeering the nation's highest priorities.

For whatever reasons, his supporters continue to find his words, however contradictory, more comforting than his deeds, willing to overlook attitudes that touch racism, divisiveness, dictatorial power and now even war as justifiable towards some larger goal of breaking the status quo.

Millions of words have been spilled over the Trump magic of holding supporters close during one of his "transactional deals," only to stab them in the back soon thereafter.

The skeletons of former Vice President Mike Pence, former attorney generals, chiefs of staff, defense figures, generals and such rigid Republican senators as Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy line the entry way into the Oval Office.

Apparently, the only thing worse than having Trump as a sworn enemy is to have him as a vocal friend – only to find the enemy is a scratch comment away.

The idea that Trump stands for nothing other than an image of strength, for ideals that last only long enough to complete an impatient transaction, are now cemented into the Trump legacy. In his name, Americans who do not kneel to him get hurt, and even political or international "friends" are always on trial with him.

Trump has insisted for decades now that only he alone can recognize and solve problems, that he needs no advice and counsel, and that, in fact, he hates systems of rules and traditions – including from the Constitution — that might block acting on his often-uninformed gut. In recent weeks, this isolationist decision-making has been on display with a series of nasty congressional hearings that feature his Cabinet members unable to explain even the most basic contradictions in Trump's utterances and departmental policies affecting national security, immigration, justice, health or environment.

Trump has embraced personal, national, even moral uncertainty as a weapon in winning friends and seeking global influence. It's not what we have taught our kids.

This week, Trump said that he’d do whatever is necessary to ease the oil crisis. He also assured America that the crisis “will be over soon.”

Bull----.

The problem isn’t just that Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz. It’s also that Iran, Israel, and the United States have all inflicted — and continue to inflict — serious damage to the oil and gas infrastructure of the Middle East. This damage will take months if not years to repair.

At one point on Thursday oil prices jumped to $119 a barrel before falling back to around $111 a barrel — all but guaranteeing that the price of gas at the pump will continue to rise, as will the prices of many other products and services indirectly affected by oil prices.

What we are now witnessing is one of the grossest military and political blunders in modern history.

It’s not hard to understand why Trump is trapped in Iran. He doesn’t listen to anyone outside his small circle of sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear.

But there’s something else. Iran has adopted an asymmetric war strategy that’s working.

I’m indebted to Marty Manley for uncovering a fascinating historical fact that sheds light on what Iran is doing. During the Korean War, U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd came up with a theory of competitive decision-making that shaped American military doctrine for a generation. He called it the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

Boyd found that victory doesn’t go to the side with more firepower. It goes to the side that cycles through the OODA loop faster — observing what’s changing, orienting to its meaning, deciding what to do, and acting before its adversary does.

Get inside your opponent’s loop, Boyd reasoned, and you don’t just outpace him. You break his ability to form a coherent picture of the war he’s fighting.

Manley observes that Iran has adopted Boyd’s approach. Iran hasn’t needed to match American firepower; it’s needed only to generate economic and political problems for Washington that outrun Washington’s ability to orient, decide, and act.

Iran has gotten inside Trump’s OODA loop because Iran has responded to U.S. airstrikes by widening the war horizontally — attacking tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, launching drones and missiles at Gulf state oil and gas infrastructure, provoking the U.S. and Israel to destroy even more of that infrastructure, hitting Amazon data centers in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain (causing regional outages for banking, e-commerce, and cloud services), and squeezing other choke points that the global economy depends on.

Iran’s leaders — veterans of asymmetric wars in Iraq and Syria — are applying the same asymmetric logic to Trump’s war. Inexpensive drones, short-range missiles, and sea mines can have the same effect that IEDs had in Iraq — only with far greater strategic impact, because they disrupt global supply chains.

What has Washington done? Dropped more bombs and launched more missiles.

On Wednesday Israel struck at the crown jewel of Iran’s energy industry — the giant South Pars gas field that Iran shares with Qatar and is by far the largest in the world. (Israel says Trump gave the attack his blessing; Trump says he didn’t.) Iran quickly retaliated with an attack on Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility.

The attacks have sent the global oil benchmark soaring and prompted a mad scramble in Washington. Trump threatens “to blow up the entirety” of Iran’s South Pars gas holdings if Iran attacks Qatar again. His treasury secretary says the U.S. will consider lifting sanctions on millions of barrels of Iranian oil.

Since he and Israel began bombing Iran, Trump’s strategy has been entirely reactive. Iran is generating problems for Washington faster than Washington can contain them — a clear sign that Iran is inside Trump’s OODA loop.

Trump and Israel assumed that overwhelming airpower would either compel Iran to surrender or trigger regime change. But neither has happened. The regime seems more entrenched and bellicose than ever.

As Iran continues to block the Strait of Hormuz and attacks its Gulf neighbors’ oil and gas infrastructure, the cost-benefit ratio continues to shift against Trump: Economic and political pressures are mounting on Washington faster than they are on Tehran.

Sure, Iran is hurting — but, as Manley argues, Iran can sustain its counteroffensive more easily and longer than the U.S. can sustain economic damage to Iran. An Iranian Shahed drone made of styrofoam and powered by a motorcycle engine, for example, costs orders of magnitude less than the precision missiles sent to intercept it or the economic havoc it causes when it ignites a tanker, data center, or desalination plant.

In addition, the longer Trump’s OODA loop stays broken, the more bad consequences occur that no one in the Trump regime anticipated. Trump’s war in Iran is now being led by Israel rather than the other way around, and Trump has no easy way to alter this power imbalance.

The war has also shifted the power balance between Russia and Ukraine, with Russian oil revenues potentially doubling as U.S. weapons stocks become depleted.

So what’s next for the U.S.? Is there any way out for Trump?

He could put “boots on the ground” in Iran and attempt to seize Iran’s stockpile of approximately 970 pounds of 60 percent enriched uranium — enough to produce multiple nuclear weapons if further enriched. If he could pull this off, a major feat.

But this would be a particularly dangerous move in terms of American lives lost. It could even risk an accidental nuclear explosion.

Moreover, no one knows where the enriched uranium is being stored. In the wake of U.S. and Israeli strikes last June, it’s likely in deep underground tunnels near Isfahan and other secure locations, but the International Atomic Energy Agency can’t verify the exact locations or status of the stockpile due to lack of access to bombed sites.

What about returning to the diplomatic table? As Richard Haass points out, Trump hardly gave diplomacy a chance before launching his war. U.S. envoys Witkoff and Kushner blended maximal positions — effectively demanding an end to Iran’s nuclear program, ballistic missile force, and support for proxies — with minimal time for negotiation.

Haass notes the stark contrast between this process and the administration’s apparently endless willingness to give Russia the benefit of the doubt and compromise Ukraine’s interests.

If Trump returned to negotiations now, from a position of demonstrated military capability rather than exhaustion, Iran might be forced to reorient and respond to an adversary that did something unpredictable.

The problem is that the Trump regime has repeatedly reneged on his promises to Iran, so Tehran has no reason to believe any offer Trump makes.

So, presumably for the foreseeable future, Iran will remain in Trump’s OODA loop, Trump will remain trapped in Iran, and American consumers will be trapped by soaring energy prices.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.

Former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who led the high-profile investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Moscow, passed away Saturday, prompting an immediate and inflammatory response from President Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform.

Mueller, 79, had served as the FBI's director from 2001 to 2013 under both Republican and Democratic administrations. He was appointed special counsel in May 2017 to investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election and potential obstruction of justice by Trump. The investigation lasted nearly two years and resulted in the Mueller Report, which detailed extensive Russian interference efforts and numerous contacts between Trump campaign officials and Russian operatives, though it stopped short of making a prosecutorial judgment on obstruction charges.

Mueller was born in New York City and graduated from Princeton University, where he studied science and mathematics. After college, he volunteered for the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam War, serving as an officer and spending a year recovering from a knee injury before deploying to combat. He was wounded in action and received a Bronze Star for his service. After leaving the Marines, Mueller attended law school and built a distinguished career in law enforcement, serving as a federal prosecutor and later as head of the FBI's Criminal Division before becoming director.

The Mueller Investigation

Mueller's special counsel investigation, formally titled the "Investigation into Russian Government Efforts to Interfere in the 2016 United States Presidential Election," examined whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russian interference efforts and whether Trump obstructed justice by interfering with the investigation. The probe resulted in multiple indictments, including those of Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort, national security advisor Michael Flynn, and Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

The 448-page Mueller Report, released in April 2019 with significant redactions, found that Russia conducted a "sweeping and systematic" interference campaign aimed at helping Trump's candidacy. It documented over 100 contacts between Trump campaign officials and individuals with ties to the Russian government. However, Mueller stated that while his investigation "did not establish" that members of the Trump campaign "conspired or coordinated" with the Russian government, it also did not exonerate Trump on obstruction charges. Mueller noted that while the evidence did not compel an outright prosecution, it presented difficult questions about whether Trump had obstructed justice through his actions, including firing FBI Director James Comey and attempting to limit the scope of the investigation.

Mueller's decision not to make a prosecutorial judgment on obstruction—leaving the matter to Congress and future legal proceedings—became a point of intense political debate. Critics argued Mueller should have been more decisive, while Trump and his allies pointed to the report as exoneration.

Within minutes of news breaking of Mueller's death on Saturday, Trump posted on Truth Social: "Robert Mueller just died. Good, I'm glad he's dead." The inflammatory remarks immediately drew sharp criticism from across the political spectrum.

Ed Krassenstein, a prominent liberal political commentator with over 1 million followers on X, responded swiftly to Trump's post. "This is disgusting and despicable," Krassenstein wrote. "Trump literally just celebrated Robert Mueller dying. Mueller did so much good for America."

Ken Dilanian, a justice and intelligence correspondent for MS NOW, highlighted the contrast between Mueller's military service and Trump's Vietnam War history. "In an era when many young men – including President Trump – were trying to avoid serving in Vietnam, Mueller not only volunteered for the Marines after graduating from Princeton – he spent a year waiting for an injured knee to heal so he could serve," Dilanian wrote on X. "I have always found that [to] be the most compelling fact about him."

Trump received a medical deferment from military conscription in 1968, citing bone spurs in his heels. The deferment was issued by a podiatrist who rented office space from Trump's father, leading The New York Times to suggest the diagnosis may have been granted as a professional courtesy to the elder Trump.

Fox sports analyst Ryan Satin pointed to what critics characterized as a double standard in Trump's administration. "Remember when they made a database of people who said anything slightly deemed as negative about Charlie Kirk?" Satin wrote on X, referencing Trump's stated intention to revoke visas and deport individuals who make negative comments about right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.

The grand jury subpoena earlier this month that led the Arizona Senate to give the U.S. Department of Justice terabytes of data, including images of ballots, related to the legislative chamber’s partisan review of the 2020 election shows that federal investigators sought virtually all of the records from that “audit.”

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona sent the request to Senate President Warren Petersen on March 5, just over two weeks after former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited the state, spreading election fraud claims while stumping for Republican voting legislation that would disenfranchise millions of Americans.

The subpoena states that the documents are sought as part of a “criminal investigation.” The email to Petersen came from the FBI Phoenix Field Office’s Fraud Investigations unit.

The subpoena sought:

• Reports produced by the Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based firm hired to conduct the “audit,” summarizing the forensic findings
• “Any original electronic media devices in the possession of the Arizona State Senate provided by Maricopa County” including “external hard drives, thumb drives, USB drives, memory cards, SD cards, PCMIA cards, compact flash, CD/DVD, with accompanying chain of custody documentation”
• Any other electronic media provided to the Cyber Ninjas or its subcontractors or “clones of the Maricopa County Election Department’s elections equipment software and data, with accompanying chain of custody documentation”
• Any documentation on “forensic tools used, forensic software versions used, forensic procedures used, and all documentation related to the imaging, cloning, extraction, and analysis of the Maricopa County Elections Department electronic systems”
• Any “official records depicting communications between the Arizona Senate and public officials from Maricopa County, to include members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office, and the Maricopa County Elections Department”

The “audit,” conducted by Donald Trump allies with no background or knowledge of election administration, found no evidence of widespread voter fraud and, in fact, concluded that Joe Biden defeated Trump by more votes than the official tally found.

Included in the documents provided to the Mirror is a receipt for property that details what the Arizona Senate handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigations.

Those items include:

• Multiple 6-terabyte hard drives with “forensic images,” likely of ballots, all of which were photographed during the election review
• Backup servers that include video footage from the “audit” itself
• Eight USB drives
• “Misc documents”

It is not certain what all is stored on the drives, though most of the drives given over to the FBI are attributed to CyFir, one of the subcontractors that the Cyber Ninjas hired.

CyFir’s CEO, Ben Cotton, had to walk back bombastic claims made during the election review, and at one point took the data from the “audit” to a “lab” in Montana.

Trump and his allies have long made Arizona a key priority, especially after his 2020 loss, and the president has called to “nationalize” elections while rumors have circulated of possible executive action fueled by election conspiracy theories.

The Grand Canyon State has been at the forefront of those conspiracy theories and efforts since 2020, despite no evidence to substantiate those claims ever coming forward.

The “audit” conducted by the Cyber Ninjas included many falsehoods, some of which have persisted till this day such as the claim of 74,000 phantom voters which has been thoroughly debunked.

States were on notice from the U.S. Department of Justice that if they didn’t fall in line, the federal government would force them into compliance.

It wasn’t President Donald Trump’s administration applying pressure. It was the early 1990s, and President Bill Clinton had signed the “motor voter” law requiring states to offer voter registration when someone applies for a driver’s license.

Idaho, with its fiercely independent streak, didn’t want to participate. So instead of going along with the federal government’s new National Voter Registration Act, state legislators followed the recommendation of Idaho’s top election officials and scrambled for a way out. Because the federal voter law said states with same-day voter registration could be exempt, Idaho lawmakers passed a bill almost unanimously, with full support from Republicans, to adopt same-day registration.

Idaho’s chief deputy secretary of state at the time, Ben Ysursa, described the move as an almost existential response to “an insidious federal intrusion into state election procedures.”

The Clinton Justice Department eventually sued three states for not complying with its demands. By then, Idaho’s had a shield against litigation due to its exemption.

Three decades later, the exemption and the philosophy that led to it are at the heart of Idaho’s refusal to comply with a very different demand by the Trump Justice Department. The state’s top election official cites the exemption as one reason he will not sign a deal to give the Trump administration all the voter data his office holds, including sensitive personal information like partial Social Security and driver’s license numbers.

Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane is one of about a dozen Republicans nationally to resist the administration’s efforts to gather sensitive voter data ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, in the face of litigation threats from the Justice Department.

In a state that Trump won in 2024 by one of the largest margins in the country, an effort that the administration touts as essential to weeding out noncitizen voters has tested the limits of what a committed Trump stronghold will tolerate when it comes to privacy and federal power.

Lists of voter addresses and party affiliations are often available to the public through an open records request. McGrane provided the government with this version. But state election administrators also keep more sensitive information such as a person’s exact date of birth and partial Social Security number. In Idaho, the law says this information can’t be given out — and that’s what the Trump administration is still after.

Among the other five states exempt from the law, three have refused to give up their voters’ sensitive information and have since been sued by the Justice Department. Wyoming handed over its data without a lawsuit. Other states that are not exempt have also been sued.

McGrane, who is an attorney, told the Justice Department in letters that he doesn’t see any legal reason why he should honor the government’s request — and that, given the administration’s recent admissions over its handling of sensitive data, he couldn’t be sure the department would keep it safe, which is his duty under state law.

The trimmed-down version of voter info he’d already handed over should be enough for “any legitimate inquiry” by the government into how effectively Idaho maintains its voter lists, McGrane wrote.

Through a spokesperson, McGrane declined an interview request from ProPublica, citing the possibility of an impending lawsuit from the Justice Department. A spokesperson for the Justice Department also declined to comment.

A Justice Department attorney threatened to sue Idaho in December, in a halting voicemail with McGrane’s office that was obtained by ProPublica and previously reported on by the Idaho Capital Sun.

“I need to get some clarification as to what you’re going to be doing. Or not doing. So, again, I need a response from you,” the lawyer says in the recording. “You may have seen in the news that we have sued six states earlier this week for refusing to provide their voter registration lists, and we’re preparing additional lawsuits.”

The lawyer then tells the secretary of state’s office he would “like to keep everyone out of that as possible — as much as possible, but I haven’t heard anything back from you.”

Ysursa, who served three terms as secretary of state until 2015, said McGrane is “in a much more politically volatile situation than I ever was.”

“Going against Trump in Idaho on certain things, that’s a fine line,” Ysursa said. “And I think he’s doing a good job. He’s doing the right thing.”

Public policy surveys in Idaho conducted since the 1990s have surfaced a current of “distrust or wariness towards federal control or national control,” said Matthew May, survey research director at the Boise State University School of Public Service.

The polling over time has revealed Idahoans’ strong belief in independence, May said.

In the months since McGrane’s refusal, more than 130 constituents have called, emailed and sent handwritten cards and letters to his office. Of those, just one person said they wanted McGrane to provide information to the Trump administration. The others were supportive, appreciative or, in some cases, seemingly panicked by the prospect of their private information being released.

Although the senders skewed more Democratic than Idaho’s electorate, just over half the messages came from Republicans and unaffiliated voters, based on a review of voter registration data for commenters who left their names.

“Mr McGrane has done a masterful job of dancing around the US Justice Dept request for the full voter records of Idaho voters,” wrote one registered Republican. “When the dancing no longer works, I expect Mr McGrane to give them a big fat NO!

“Voting is our one sacred right in this country,” the person continued. “DOJ has no legitimate business receiving our PRIVATE voter information. They may threaten to sue, but so will the voters of Idaho if you grant their request. Do not give them our personal voter information. Thank you.”

Ysursa told ProPublica that he has urged McGrane to “hold the line,” even amid threats of repercussions. Ysursa is one of nine former secretaries of state who filed an amicus brief in federal court, arguing against the administration’s demands for full voter information.

The Trump administration’s creep toward nationalizing elections runs counter to the ethos of “keep your federal hands off Idaho,” Ysursa said.

McGrane is a self-described election nerd who worked his way up through elections offices, as opposed to cultivating a resume as a professional politician. He served as a county elections chief and gained a reputation for approaching voting day with a Super Bowl level of enthusiasm. He also became known for his ability to resist the political winds.

McGrane was one of seven people featured on the cover of Time magazine in 2022 as “the defenders” of America’s elections. That year, McGrane was the only Idaho Republican candidate for secretary of state who did not back the false claim that fraud was responsible for Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.

In perhaps the strongest sign that Trump’s base in Idaho has not been inflamed by McGrane’s pushback on the administration’s demand for voter rolls — which received plenty of media attention locally — he drew no challenger by last month’s deadline to enter the Idaho Republican primary for his position.

While the Constitution gives states the authority to run elections, the National Voter Registration Act gives the federal government an oversight role when it comes to ensuring voter lists are properly maintained. The law says election officials must make a “reasonable effort” to keep ineligible voters off of the rolls, and typical oversight comes in the form of lawsuits claiming that states aren’t doing a good enough job.

Under Trump, the Justice Department has gone a step further. The department claims it has the right to seize states’ unredacted voter rolls without proving its case in court, citing in lawsuits the powers that agency officials say they have under the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Act.

The Justice Department has privately told states more about its intentions, according to emails obtained by ProPublica through public records requests.

In Montana, a federal lawyer told the secretary of state’s legal counsel that the department was requesting voter rolls to “facilitate a review for noncitizens and dead voters,” adding that federal officials would be able to assess whether there are duplicate registrations as well.

The demands come as part of the Trump administration’s focus on hunting down noncitizens on the voter rolls, a long-standing preoccupation for the president. He has long claimed, without evidence, that noncitizens have infiltrated the rolls to influence elections.

Three judges who have considered the government’s lawsuits fully so far have dismissed them, saying that the federal laws the Trump administration cites as the basis for its demands do not apply — especially not where voters’ private information is concerned.

In Oregon, U.S. District Judge Mustafa Kasubhai wrote that the Justice Department’s claims were “troubling,” representing federal overreach.

In California, U.S. District Judge David Carter said the centralization of the information would have a chilling effect on voter registration, leading to decreased turnout as people worry their data could be used for an “inappropriate or unlawful purpose.”

“This risk threatens the right to vote which is the cornerstone of American democracy,” Carter wrote.

In Michigan, U.S. District Judge Hala Y. Jarbou echoed that interpretation, writing that “the risk of having one’s personal information misused will deter people from registering to vote.”

The Justice Department has appealed all of the courts’ decisions.

Leaders in Republican-led states that have held back their voter rolls, meanwhile, have taken pains to show they are making other efforts to keep noncitizens from voting.

Idaho started looking for evidence of problems well before the Trump administration’s request. McGrane said in a letter to the Justice Department that his office worked with federal agencies to check the citizenship status of all registered Idaho voters in the lead-up to the 2024 general election.

Given what Idaho has already done and the processes already in place, the federal government has “no legal or practical rationale for duplicative review,” McGrane wrote.

The tools Idaho employed, he said, included a Department of Homeland Security program known as the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements.

Idaho’s search found 11 cases of noncitizens registered to vote — none of whom actually cast votes in 2024 — and state police referred those cases to the Justice Department’s chief prosecutor in Idaho for review.

McGrane told the Justice Department that he hadn’t heard anything about those cases since.

George Conway, once a leading Never-Trump Republican and now a Democratic congressional candidate, has issued a stark warning, saying that Americans remain perilously unprepared for President Donald Trump’s potential interference in November’s election.

Conway, who founded the Anti-Psychopath PAC, said in a video posted on Friday that Trump’s “brain is mush, and he says, with conviction, things that he said the opposite of five minutes before or five days before.”

He says that Trump “has the capacity to declare that the polls are fake — and that if an election goes the same way that the polls do, well, that’s fake, too, and that’s why we need to ignore an election, and that’s why we need the voter rolls.”

But Conway warns that despite what happened on January 6, 2021, the American public is not ready for what Trump could do to the 2026 election.

“I don’t think people are sufficiently prepared, notwithstanding what happened in 2021, for the possibility that he will try to f — — with this election. And he will.”

“I mean, he’s already basically telling us that’s what he’s gonna do, just the same way he told us he would do that in 2020.”

Conway warns, “I don’t think truth means anything to him.”

Trump, he adds, “doesn’t care about the distinction between truth and lies. And so, does he know he’s lying? It doesn’t matter to him. Truth has no meaning to him. All that has any meaning to him in any given moment is whether or not he’s receiving praise or adulation, or some kind of a reward — like money, or a peace prize.”

“And what comes out of his mouth is whatever is in his head at the moment that he wants to believe or he wants other people to believe,” Conway says. “He’s divorcing himself from reality because he thinks he can create his own reality and the great megalomaniacs of history have always done that.”

Trump is in a “very dangerous place psychologically,” says Conway,”and he is a man, don’t forget — he talked about nuclear weapons the other day — he’s got 5,500 nuclear weapons.”

“He’s gonna trash everything once and for all,” Conway warns.

New threats to the global energy supply chain are emerging from Iran at the joint military assault by the U.S. and Israel wears on, according to a new analysis from The Bulwark, and they have President Donald Trump "completely freaked out," and rightfully so.

In a piece published Friday, Andrew Egger, The Bulwark's White House correspondent, wrote that "damage to the region’s actual energy production infrastructure had been minimal" this past week, despite threats from Iran. That was, until Israel struck an Iranian oil field, prompting the Middle Eastern nation to launch counterstrikes against energy infrastructure around the region.

"One Iranian missile managed to strike an oil refinery in northern Israel, although Israeli officials said the facility had escaped significant damage," Egger wrote. "Qatar wasn’t so lucky. Iranian strikes pummeled its liquefied natural gas infrastructure. Shell-shocked QatarEnergy officials emerged yesterday to quantify the damage: an estimated 17 percent of the country’s export capacity was knocked out, an estimated $20 billion in lost annual revenue until $26 billion in repairs can be made."

These escalating threats to major energy production sites have put Trump in "an extremely strange place," as he remains the "key driver" of the conflict that appears no closer to accomplishing its unclear goals, making him the direct cause of spiking energy prices worldwide. As Egger observed, the president is "is plainly growing more and more preoccupied with the war’s toll in spiking energy prices," expressing concerns about prices when pressed about sending troops to Iran in the Oval Office on Thursday.

“No, I’m not putting troops anywhere... And we will do whatever is necessary to keep the price low.” Trump said. “Everything was going great. The economy was great. Oil prices were very low. Gasoline was dropping... And I saw what was happening in Iran, and I said, ‘I hate to make this excursion, but we’re gonna have to do it.’”

"Trump is right to be worried. And he’s right in particular to be completely freaked out by the possibility of more attacks from either side on the region’s energy infrastructure," Egger wrote. "Putting [liquified natural gas] and oil production facilities on the legitimate-targets list would mean heavy long-term damage to the energy economy."

He continued: "Trump knows how little buy-in the American public has for this war even on its own merits, and how little pain people will be willing to suffer on its behalf. For him, the single most important thing he needs to accomplish in this conflict is a crisp end date—preferably very soon. Pretty much his worst-case scenario would be higher energy prices for the rest of his term because the Middle East’s energy infrastructure had been reduced to rubble. "

Under federal law, only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections. And individual states have their checks as well, requiring people who register to vote to declare, under penalty of criminal prosecution, that they are citizens. This means that residents of the United States who are legally living and working in the country but haven't become naturalized citizens cannot vote.

President Donald Trump claims, without evidence, that people who are in the country illegally are voting in big numbers. And he is pressuring Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act or SAVE America Act), a controversial bill that, if passed by Congress and signed into law by Trump, would require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

Critics of the bill consider its requirements onerous. Under SAVE, a regular driver's license would not prove citizenship — one would also need another form of identification such as a U.S. passport or a birth certificate.

The Atlantic's Russell Berman examine objections to the SAVE Act in an article published on March 20. Some of them are coming from voting rights experts like Protect Democracy's Alexandra Chandler, who views SAVE as an attempt at voter suppression ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Chandler told The Atlantic, "It's a pretext for the next authoritarian escalation…. When his allies lose elections, it's a talking point: 'You didn't pass the legislation that would have solved this fake problem, and therefore the election results are not valid.'"

Trump, Berman notes, is calling for elections to be "nationalized" even though the U.S. Constitution clearly states that individual states must handle administration of elections.

"Chandler and others we interviewed see the Senate's high-profile debate as one episode in a broad, sustained, coordinated effort by the White House to seed doubt in American elections ahead of what Republicans believe could be steep losses this November," Berman reports. "This, she said, would follow a pattern that Trump set both before and after his 2020 loss: before the election, manufacture a crisis upon which he can then blame defeat…. Both Trump and the bill’s Democratic critics have characterized the proposal as an overt attempt to swing future elections in the GOP's favor."

Berman notes that the SAVE Act, under the rules of the filibuster, is facing an uphill battle in the U.S. Senate. But Chandler told The Atlantic that regardless of the bill's ultimate fate, "We're taking it seriously for what it is, which is not necessarily just an effort to pass a bill."

President Donald Trump recently ramped up his push for Congress' Republican majorities to get the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE Act) — a controversial voting bill — passed when he vowed to not sign any more bills into law until SAVE passes. And he insisted that there would be no exceptions.

But according to CNN reporter Aaron Blake, Trump is already breaking that promise.

In a Friday morning, March 20 post on X, formerly Twitter, Blake highlighted a social media post from Trump — noting, "Just two weeks ago, Trump said be wouldn’t sign other legislation until the SAVE Act passes. Now he's demanding the Farm Bill, even though the SAVE Act hasn't passed."

Trump, in his post, wrote, "CONGRESS, PASS THE FARM BILL, NOW! President DJT."

The SAVE Act is drawing a great deal of criticism from Democratic lawmakers as well as from MS NOW's Joe Scarbourgh and other Never Trump conservatives.

The bill calls for proof of citizenship in order to vote, and under its requirements, a regular state-issued driver's license would not be enough. One would need to present additional proof, which could be a U.S. passport or a birth certificate. But critics of SAVE are pointing out that many Americans don't own passports and arguing that birth certificates wouldn't help married women, as the names they are now going by don't match the names on their birth certificates.

During George W. Bush's presidency, some paleoconservative and America First critics of the Iraq War blamed "overeducated intellectuals" and "pseudo-intellectuals" for the many problems that post-Saddam Hussein Iraq was having. Bush, as they saw it, pursued a disastrous foreign policy because he listened to neocons who had a lot of education but not a lot of common sense.

But The New Republic's Jason Linkins has a much different type of war-related argument in an article published on March 20. Linkins is highly critical of President Donald Trump's war against Iran, and he argues that a lack of intellectual depth is the problem.

"So maybe this is the best time to assert the obvious, using my favored rubric of Trump analysis: Imagine if the dumbest person in the world and humanity's biggest a–– were the same person, and that guy was president," Linkins writes. "Then imagine he started a war with Iran. Now check the news. One look, and here's what you should be thinking: 'Yep, that tracks.' As with all of Trump's presidential exploits, success is always constrained by two factors: the aforementioned sharp limitations of his intellectual capabilities and the fact that he is perpetually surrounded by an inner circle made up of clowns somewhere on the spectrum between 'rampantly evil' and 'thoroughgoing d––.'"

Linkins predicts that with the Iran war not going well, there will be a lot of "think pieces purporting to explain how this happened." But according to the New Republic journalist, the main factor in Trump's bad foreign policy decisions — including alienating longtime European allies — is his lack of intellectual depth.

"Trump is really going through it with the nations that were once, putatively, our allies before Trump launched a trade war with all of them and threatened to seize Greenland in an act of colonial conquest," Linkins argues. "In the space of days, Trump has gone from begging for European naval support to free the Strait of Hormuz to having those requests punted back in his face to spiraling out on Truth Social about how he didn't actually need anyone's help in the first place. Since then, he's petulantly suggested that he might wreck the whole shop and leave the nations that rebuffed him to clean up the mess."

Linkins adds, "Meanwhile, countries like France and Italy are simply working on side deals with Iran to be allowed to use the Strait (of Hormuz)."

According to i Paper video comparisons between President Donald Trump’s first campaign a decade ago and his appearances today, there is evidence of “significant decline” in his mental capabilities.

In a new Netflix docuseries Dynasty: The Murdochs, footage of Trump’s political ascension features prominently. It shows, for example, his first Republican primary debate, in which — from the vantage of today — he comes off as coherent and offensive, the combination of which proved highly effective at defeating his political opponents.

But watched side-by-side with his recent performances, and it becomes clear that there has been a noticeable “cognitive decline.”

“A lot of people are increasingly concerned about Trump’s mental acuity right now,” says Dr. David Andersen, associate professor in US Politics at Durham University. “His public appearances are clearly growing less focused, more rambling, and less clear about what he is trying to communicate.”

As evidence of this, look at the relative clarity with which Trump spoke 10 years ago versus how he speaks today.

In the debates of 2015 and 2016, says i Paper, Trump was clearly the dominant force on the stage, tearing down his opponents while raising issues that resonated with his then-growing base. He proved to be particularly adept at turning the tables on his attackers.

In the Netflix documentary, for example, it shows a clip in which host Megyn Kelly points out that Trump had “called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.” Trump’s quick retort — “Only Rosie O’Donnell” — delighted his audience.

Through this and other examples, it becomes clear that while Trump may have frequently spoken in an offensive manner, he at least tended to be coherent and effective in his rhetoric. But that is no longer the case a decade and two administrations later, as there is now “growing concern about his physical and mental capacity.”

In January, Trump became the oldest American president ever inaugurated. Since then, he has repeatedly ranted about his “aced” cognitive exams and “perfect health,” but there is ample evidence to suggest his decline.

There were several examples in a single day this week. First, Trump confused his signature motto “drill, baby, drill” for a 1950s energy company’s slogan “dig we must.” He then claimed that he’d spoken to a previous U.S. president who told him “I wish I did what you did” in regards to Iran, an assertion denied by all living presidents. Then he capped things off by forgetting the identity of the interim president of Venezuela — a country his invaded just three months ago — saying, “The president has done a really good job, we get along with him really well," forgetting that said president was in fact a woman, before referring to the Irish president, who is also a woman, as a man.

All of that happened within a single day, and there seem to be new examples of Trump’s diminishing mental faculties daily. Previously he has called his tendency to ramble between subjects with limited coherence “the Weave,” but this hardly explains the increasing frequency of nonsense.

And Americans are noticing. After rambling his way through his latest State of the Union — the longest in history — polls showed that 61 percent of viewers thought Trump had “become erratic with age,” and that included one third of Republicans, and that the percentage of Americans who believed the president was “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges” had plummeted from 54 percent to 45. A later poll showed a stark increase in those who felt Trump had neither the mental sharpness nor physical health to serve effectively, with over half of Americans agreeing that he isn’t up to the challenge.

Even those from Trump’s inner circle see it.

As former Trump attorney Ty Cobb said, “He’s always been driven by narcissism. But I think the dementia and the cognitive decline are, you know, palpable, as do many experts, including many physicians.”