This week, the president canceled a planned attack on Iran intended to pressure the regime into making a deal. Donald Trump said he canceled, because a deal was already close at hand. It was the 39th time he said peace was imminent since the war started. CNN ran a super-cut:

The regime denied a deal, but it did leak to Iran's state-run media text of the demands that it said the president had agreed to. The Wall Street Journal's Yaroslav Trofimov said:

"It will keep the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian control, will promise Iran $300 billion in reconstruction money in addition to an immediate cash transfer of $24 billion, a suspension of sanctions and the withdrawal of US forces from the Middle East. Also a commitment not to bother Iran again about its missiles and proxies, and restraining Israel in Lebanon. The US gets in exchange a pinky promise to respect the [existing nonproliferation treaty]."

It's "like Hirohito’s surrender," journalist Bill Grueskin commented. (Trofimov added: "Let’s just say it would be very difficult for Trump or any US president to explain such a deal.")

In response to the suggestion that he was handing over the store and surrendering in humiliation, the president of the United States did what he does best: he threw a fit.

But reporting by Axios suggests the opposite.

Iran's foreign minister said today that a deal to "to extend the ceasefire, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and launch negotiations on Iran's nuclear program 'has never been closer.'" Trump told Axios that "he considered Araghchi's post 'very positive.'" Moreover, Axios said:

• "Trump said he'd demanded a public clarification over the state media reports, which claimed Iran stood to receive billions of dollars in frozen assets immediately after signing.

• "Trump also claimed Iran had privately "apologized for putting out false information."

• "The president said he still thinks a deal could be signed over the weekend or on Monday."

These are clearly face-saving demands.

Because when the president said that the leaked text had NOTHING to do with the terms he agreed to, he was actually saying that it had EVERYTHING to do with the terms he agreed to. Moreover, leaking that text seems to have been crucial to forcing him to commit to them.

As I'm writing this, Reuters is reporting that "while there were minor differences in the accounts [of the draft texts], all appeared ⁠to offer Tehran much of what it has demanded so far, with Trump appearing to win little of what he has sought beyond the reopening of the strait, which Iran shut after the US and Israel launched attacks in February."

Also from Reuters, draft terms include:

• "the US would immediately begin releasing billions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets and waive sanctions on its oil exports, in return for Iran opening the strait.

• "Iran's nuclear program would be addressed during a 60-day period of talks.

• "discussion of possible war reparations for Tehran and dropping longstanding US demands for limits on Iran's missile program."

• "Israel ... has not been part of the negotiations. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country would not be party to the agreement."

More details of peace terms are forthcoming, and those made public could be inaccurate, but I'm not the first to note that Trump is desperate to end this war. He thought he could roll over Iran's regime like he ran over Venezuela's. Instead, Iran's leadership turned more extreme and took over the strait by threatening ships passing through it. (No one underwrites insurance in a war zone.) Oil prices have soared, burning up the US economy. Trump is now -50 percent on inflation, per CNN. Eighty percent disapprove on gas prices.

"They better get their act together" he said of Iran.

Or what – burn up more of America?

Despite talk of tactics, there was never a way to end the war militarily. All Iran has to do is hit one tanker with one drone to bring shipping lanes to a halt. The only way to end the war was through deal-making. However, given that Trump is the world's worse deal-maker, despite a reputation to the contrary, we may end up seeing a deal that really is "like Hirohito’s surrender." That's why Shipwreck, a pseudonymous account run by a career intelligence analyst, said today: "I am betting we never see the full text of the deal from the White House."

"No other way to sell it beyond a US surrender," he said.

"Iran is the winner," Iran's foreign minister said on state TV, according to Reuters.

There is indeed no way to sell it, but Donald Trump will try.

His ego is too great, his feelings too fragile. He can't allow himself to be known as the president who took a knee before an insurmountable enemy. He and his allies will spin surrender so that it doesn't look like Iran got everything while America got nothing, except perhaps some relief from the pain of high gas prices. In the end, Trump is what he accuses his enemies of being: old, weak and ineffective. Given all the death, destruction and misery he has caused, with nothing to show for it, that alone should be worthy of impeachment.

Some progressive Democrats are of the opinion that Donald Trump has changed American politics so fundamentally – that the system is now so corrupt and the dangers to liberal democracy are now so severe – that questions of moral character no longer count like they used to. As one progressive Democrat recently told NOTUS, "I get really tired of Democrats being held to some lofty moral standard when Republicans are just ‘boys will be boys.'"

Therefore, for instance, if there's a chance for the Democratic Party to take back control of the United States Senate, it shouldn't matter that Maine's Democratic primary winner Graham Platner lied about being a "working-class Mainer"; lied about not knowing about the origins of his Nazi tattoo; cheated on his wife by sexting as many as a dozen women; allegedly abused and acted violently toward former girlfriends; among other scandals.

"I think when you look at politics in general, there are no saints in the United States Senate," US Senator Bernie Sanders, a progressive, told CBS News Monday. "People can argue about this aspect of Graham or another, but to my mind right now, we need allies in the United States Senate who have the guts to take on the big money that is dominating this country."

In other words, he may be a dirtbag, but he's not a fascist.

So it's OK to elect a dirtbag.

But it's not OK and we all know it.

That's why some progressive Democrats are spinning Platner's story so he doesn't look like a dirtbag but a man of integrity who struggled to overcome his past and redeem himself. California Congressman Ro Khanna appeared at a campaign rally in Maine the day after the Times reported on Platner’s toxic behavior toward numerous former girlfriends. One of them alleged that "this person does not respect women" while another alleged that he physically assaulted her and that he knew his tattoo was a Totenkopf, because he told her what it was.¹

"Khanna’s appearance [during last week's Platner rally] was an exercise in tightrope walking," according to Politico this morning, "simultaneously condemning Platner’s behavior while espousing faith in the former Marine’s redemption from troubled times in his past."

Khanna told the same redemption story on "Face the Nation": "His actions were misogynist. They were shameful. They were wrong," he said, "but ... he took accountability. He himself has said it was shameful and he had redemption. And now he’s running on a platform of national health insurance, while Susan Collins is voting to cut it. He’s talking about taxing billionaires. Susan Collins is for tax breaks to billionaires. And he’s opposed to this foreign war where Susan Collins supported the war in Iran. That’s why I’m still supporting him."

Khanna's redemption story sounds convincing, but it runs into the fact that Platner cheated on his wife throughout 2024, years after his "dark period" in the aftermath of the Iraq War. PTSD might have explained, for instance, Reddit posts blaming victims of rape for the crimes against them, but what explains his bad judgment and untrustworthy behavior now?

The redemption story also runs into the fact that Platner never accepted full responsibility for his Nazi tattoo. He claims he did not know what it was, only that it was a skull and crossbones. But even if he didn't know at the time he got it, in 2007, he knew by 2009. That year he tried to return to active duty service. The Marine Corps' anti-hate symbol policy would have meant that an enlistment officer explained what it was and why it prevented him from returning. (Importantly, he could have, at that point, chosen to cover it up, but did not.)

The Washington press corps often compares Graham Platner to the president. Platner won yesterday's Democratic Senate primary in Maine despite his baggage, much as Trump won the White House twice despite his. But the men are not comparable. Trump is a sadist who wants to hurt people whom he believes are weaker than him, as do allies like Ken Paxton in Texas. Their vision for themselves is an America that's structured from the top down, with rich white Christian men dominating everyone under them. They will use force if they get the chance. They don't wear Totenkopfs on their skin, but they are fascists to the bone.

There seems to be a broad disinclination to admit openly that "a dirtbag is better than a fascist," even though that's a pretty good argument in favor of voting for Platner.

Platner isn't of that ilk. He's a talker, a bull------- a man who failed at adulthood but found compensation in the pleasures of saying shocking things. (A former girlfriend told the Times that he once said "if anybody ever broke in here, I would rape them.” She recalled him adding "not in a gay way.” “He was like, I would rape them to show them that I’m dominant,” she said.)

I agree with this characterization from a Bluesky account I follow: "I don't think Graham Platner is a Nazi. I think he's a dumbass edgelord who fetishizes violence and 'dominance,' and on account of being a dumbass edgelord, [he] is critically vulnerable to slopulism and Hitler particles." I also agree with Public Notice's David Lurie, who said: "He is no Nazi ... He is, however, a dirtbag, and was proud of it until opportunity knocked. Then he became mendacious about it." He is, as the Times' Jamelle Bouie put it, more on "the John Fetterman continuum than he is on the Trump continuum, which is just, eh, kind of dirtbaggy."

It's worth asking why such candor is missing in progressive discourse about Platner. There seems to be a broad disinclination to admit openly that "a dirtbag is better than a fascist," even though that's a pretty good argument in favor of voting for Platner. (Susan Collins may not be a fascist, but she supports pogroms.) Instead, there are endless attempts to overlook the obvious in the hopes that he will bring change to the Democratic Party, therefore change to America. “His wife stands by him, and I don’t think we have any option but to trust that at this point,” one Democratic voter told NOTUS. "The tattoo, the sexting — which I thought was ridiculous as far as an issue — and a couple other things, they don’t look good, but he’s a realized man,” another said. "In a way it’s, ‘Do you believe in redemption?’” said another.

Of all people, Bernie Sanders comes off as the most sincere of Platner's progressive supporters. Instead of phony redemption stories, he suggested that the United States Senate is full of dirtbags and asked: Who cares about them when America needs the courage "to take on the big money that is dominating this country"? The problem, of course, is one of faith. If Mainers send Platner to the Senate, can they trust their dirtbag to fight the other dirtbags?

Platner's progressive supporters are right to chafe at comparisons between Platner and Trump, as they are morally distinct, but their man still benefits from the comparison, as it provides cover for questions of character and integrity that would otherwise dog him, and the questions of judgment and trustworthiness that are a consequence of that. Instead, they can shout "vote blue no matter who" without taking full responsibility for their goals. It's better to tell tall tales about redemption while blaming Trump for the overall degradation of politics. Fact is, however, character still counts, for a lot, but in pretending that it doesn't, Platner's progressives end up playing by the rules of fascism even as they claim to fight it.

You have probably heard the news about journalist Scott Pelley. This week, CBS News, under the leadership of Bari Weiss, fired the longtime anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent. What you may not know about is his parting shot. Here's the section that stood out to me.

New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism ... have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.

From a man of Pelley's standing, this is pretty much like a summary execution. In another time and place, it would be the end of Weiss's career, as her reputation would be irreparable. (Ditto for Nick Bilton, whom she hired to run 60 Minutes.) Forget about politics. Their team can't get the details right. Pelley is calling out a mortal sin with the authority of the pope.

And then, as if to confirm the allegations against him, Nick Bilton actually wrote to Pelley explaining his reasons for firing him. Of course, they are not good reasons, as you can see.

You hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt. I welcome a diversity of viewpoints and respectful debate among the team, but this was nothing of the sort. Yesterday's performative display of hostility enacted in front of the staff instead of in a civil, private conversation demonstrated that you have no interest in contributing to the future success of the show, or approaching my new tenure with a mind open to collaboration and progress. I am here to deliver first-in-class news programming, not to make headlines about newsroom drama. I am eager to work alongside those who share this goal. Despite yesterday's misconduct, I had hoped that in sitting down with you today we could find a path forward together. You made clear that you are not interested ...

You can read about the details of that meeting in the Times – Scott Pelley accused the "new management" of "murdering" 60 Minutes – and judge for yourself. From where I'm standing, however, Nick Bilton got mad that Pelley made him look like a putz, because, well, the truth is often painful. Nick Bilton is a p---. According to the Post, the newsroom literally laughed at Bilton and applauded after he left. There isn't enough room at CBS News for him and an award-winning journalist who commands the respect of millions. P--- stays. Pelley goes.

Bilton's letter to Scott Pelley got its own Times page yesterday (meaning, there's nothing on the page but a copy of the letter with a hed.) From that kind of exposure perhaps there will be broader public recognition that merit no longer matters in elite news media in the era of Donald Trump. Weiss isn't a hard news reporter, nor is Bilton. Neither has experience managing newsrooms of any size, much less those as big and consequential as CBS's. They went to the right schools. They schmoozed the right people. Those are their qualifications. Scott Pelley is their antipode. He is a model of high standards of excellence and professionalism. Naturally, he had to be eliminated. His mere presence was humiliating.

You might think this whole thing is so embarrassing that Weiss and Bilton can't recover. I regret to inform you they will be fine. Everyone working in elite news media knows the score: connections trump integrity. They know this, because they are, like Weiss and Bilton, products of elite schools where everyone is taught to think of themselves as members of a ruling class. There is a fast-track from Yale to the Times, for instance. You don't have to work your way up the ladder. There is no ladder. Weiss may be driving CBS News into the ground, but she is still touched by the hand of Larry Ellison. She may be a failure, but she's still a "winner." Elite journalists will still answer her calls. That Scott Pelley said she instructed him to "inject falsehoods and bias" into his reporting will make no difference at the White House Correspondents Dinner. The moral? Hard work and playing by the rules are a sucker's game.

The consequence of all this corruption is a softness of character that gets little attention. Elite newspeople cannot be challenged without falling to pieces. (The Post said Scott Pelley was fired because he "interrogated" his unqualified boss and "questioned his credentials and demanded answers about fired colleagues." In response, Nick Bilton said Pelley "hijacked my first meeting" with "a performative display of hostility.") And if they are, they get vindictive quick. (Bari Weiss leaked to the Post a recording of a newsroom meeting in which she accused Pelley of breaking the bonds of "trust and mutual respect," bonds that she herself undermined by leaking the recording to the Post.) Meanwhile, the truth is plain to see: they are soft because they did not earn their place, and they are vindictive because they are soft.

Merit doesn't matter, so neither does character. I think that explains the decrepit state of our media better than any other theory. When the Times' David Sanger asked a challenging question about the Iran war, Donald Trump accused him of treason. "You're a fake guy," the president said. "We had a total military victory. I actually think it's sort of treasonous what you write. You should be ashamed of yourself. I actually think it's treason." When CNN's Kaitlan Collins asked a hard question, Trump said: "Be quiet. You should be ashamed of yourself. You used to be conservative from Alabama. CNN does such false reporting, but now they have new ownership, so maybe it'll straighten it out. It’s hard to straighten garbage out."

Did Sanger stand up for himself? Did Collins? No. To be sure, they responded, but feebly, as if they had a snowball's chance of correcting Trump's assertions of fact. But that's not the same thing as standing up for oneself, is it? That would require a strength of character acted on in spite of the consequences, like what Scott Pelley did when he told off his nepo-baby boss. Sorry, but a man like the Times' Sanger, who doesn't respond to being called a traitor, is a coward who deserves what he gets, whether that's more insults from Trump or greater loss of credibility with the news-consuming public. I mean, forget about politics. (Liberals focus on that too much.) Why would anyone trust a weakling who refuses to defend himself?

As long as elite journalists stick together, however, they will never face the consequences of being soft. They can pretend collectively to be speaking truth to power when the actual truth is obvious and sad. And they will stick together, because merit doesn't matter. (David Sanger went from Harvard straight to the Times. Kaitlan Collins went from the University of Alabama to CNN after a brief stint at The Daily Caller.) Everyone knows connections trump integrity. With Scott Pelley gone to pasture, everyone also knows integrity has no future.

Either the nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump believes a cognitive test is an intelligence test or he's lying about his mental health. I don't think there's a gray zone here. If it's the first, he's demented. If it's the second, he's hiding something (probably dementia). Either way, it's bad.

It happens too frequently to ignore. The president brags about passing a cognitive test to the point where he seems to believe it's a measure of his IQ. In public remarks, he often puts special emphasis on the word "cognitive" as if to stress that it demonstrates his intelligence. Here's what he told the New York Post after a third trip in a year to Walter Reed. "I do physicals because I think I have an obligation to do it. I took a cognitive test and I got 100 percent on it. The doctors told me very, very few people can ace it. It's actually a tough test."

That's only the latest iteration. I went to the Bluesky feed of Aaron Rupar, founder of Public Notice. Aaron watches most of Trump's public appearances. I searched for "cognitive."

On May 22, during a rally, Trump said:

I said, how many presidents have taken [a cognitive test]? "None." I said, well, is it tough? "It’s a tough test. It starts off easy, then it gets very, very tough." I said well, you know what? I’m gonna take that test. ... This was in my first term. I took it and I aced it. ... So the first question was, you have a bear, a snake, an elephant and a horse. "Name the horse." That’s the horse. ... The New York Times story ... only use[s] the first question that you go into. The other questions they didn’t go into. ... It had a question like "pick a number, sir, any number." Okay, 203. "Multiple by 9. Divide by 2. Add on 1,324. Subtract 1,292. Sir, multiply it out one more time by 19. What is the answer, sir?" I got it right. And the one doctor said, "I've been doing this test for 20 years. I've never seen anybody ace it."

On May 4, during a presser, Trump said:

In my opinion, anybody running for president or vice president should take a cognitive test. No president has ever taken one, except me. I’ve taken three and I’ve aced each one. One in the first administration, two over here. And whenever they get a little sassy like, "Does he still have what it takes?" I say, all right I’ll take another one. They are hard. There are many people in this room I know that are smart. They’re not gonna ace them. The first question is very easy. You have a lion, a bear and alligator and a squirrel. "Which is the squirrel?" ... The first four or five questions, they get a little more difficult. By the time you get to the end, I don’t wanna be insulting, I’m not gonna do what Gavin Newsom [did] ...

On May 1, during a speech, Trump said:

I took three of them. Aced all of them. ... I’m the only president to take a cognitive test. I don’t think Obama could pass it. ... Well, Biden – give me a break. The first question is very easy. It’s a lion, a giraffe, a bear and a shark. Which one is the bear? It's a very standard test, but very tough around those 10 questions. ... I’m in a room of brilliant people, but a lot of you wouldn’t have been able to answer. When I got the score of the test, the doctor said "wow." ... I’ve had different phases. They’ve said "he’s a mad genius" and I didn't mind that too much. They said "he’s a horrible human being" and I didn't like that much. Then they said "he’s really not a smart person at all." I really hated that, so I took a cognitive test. ... Dr. Ronny ... had a whole team of doctors at Walter Reed. I said, should I do it? He said, "well, it’s a tough exam, actually. Those last 20 questions they get tough. A lot of people can’t do them." ... I said, I do well on things, so let’s do it. I got every one right.

On March 26, during a Cabinet meeting, Trump said:

I’m the only president that ever took a cognitive test. I took it three times. It’s actually a very hard test. It wasn’t hard for me, but it’s a cognitive test. It starts off with an easy question and by the time you get to the end ... very few people can answer those questions. They get very tough, mathematical equations and things. I took it three times. I aced it all three times. ... Doc Ronny told me ... "if you take it, it’s Walter Reed ... and if you do badly, it’s probably gonna get out." But I aced it. I got them all right. One doctor said "I’ve never seen anybody get them all right. I’ve been doing the test for 20 years." ... I would love to see anybody that’s a president or a vice president ... take a cognitive test.

On December 2, 2025, during a Cabinet meeting, Trump said:

They said, "would you like to take a cognitive test?" I said, is it hard? They said, "yes." ... I said, who is the last president to take one? "No president has ever agreed to take one." When you get into the mid questions, meaning, question No. 10, 11, 12, 28, 30, they get harder and harder. ... They said, "sir, the problem is this is Walter Reed Hospital, and that's a military hospital and that means that things are sort of open. You could do poorly." I said, I won't do poorly. I’m a smart person. I'm not stupid person. As the doctor will tell you, I aced it. I got every question right. These are questions that I would say 99 percent of the people that I’m talking to, meaning the people from the fake news, would not do well in this exams. But I’m the only one that took it. I got every single question right.

On October 9, 2025, a day before going to Walter Reed, Trump said:

I also did a cognitive exam, which is always very risky, because if I didn’t do well, you’d be the first to be blaring it. I had a perfect score and one of the doctors said he’s almost never seen a perfect score. ... When they asked, would I like to do one, I asked, did Obama do it "No." Did Bush do it? "No." Did Biden do it? Biden would’ve gotten the first three questions. ... I’m actually a person that believes that if you're president, you should do a cognitive exam, but last time I took a cognitive exam, and it was a perfect score. ... The first few questions are pretty easy. Once you get into the middle, it gets a little tricky. And there aren’t a lot of people in this room that we get every single question right.

On April 14, 2025, in the Oval Office, Trump said:

I took my cognitive exam and I got the highest mark. One of the doctors said "sir, I’ve never seen anybody get that kind of ... mark." I hope you’re happy with that, although they haven’t been bugging me too much to take a cognitive, but I did do my physical and it was released. I hope you’re all happy with it. But the cognitive. They said to me, "sir, would you like to take a cognitive test?" I said did Biden take one. "No." ... What about Obama? Let me be the only one to take one. I've actually taken them three times already."

There are only a few examples drawn from Aaron Rupar's vast archive, and I hasten to add here that I'm sorry for making you read the same story over and over. However, that's the point I'm trying to make. The sheer mass of repetition is itself a sign of age-related cognitive deterioration – or, to use a catch-all term, dementia. The president can't remember the last time he told the story and doesn't care, because the purpose of telling it is there's nothing wrong with him. Indeed, the purpose is more than that. It's proving his genetic superiority.

A cognitive test is not a test of intelligence and any man of modest intelligence would understand that from having taken a cognitive test. Trump, however, is not that man. He is famed for being stupid, a fact that he's exquisitely sensitive to. I suspect it literally causes him pain when his narcissism collides with the reality of other people's opinion of him. He believes he is superior by dint of his genes and if you disagree, you must be crushed. As his mind slips away, however, the gap widens between his view of himself and everyone else's. And the wider the gap gets, the more he must attempt to reassert dominance. As he said: "they said 'he’s really not a smart person at all.' I really hated that, so I took a cognitive test."

Think of it this way. By passing "the cognitive," Trump believes that:

1. nothing is wrong with him;
2. indeed, something is very right with him;
3. it's better than all other presidents combined;
4. his enemies are intellectually inferior and;
5. it's evidence beyond a shadow of doubt of his genetic superiority over lesser mortals, who in turn have no right to challenge him. Donald Trump is a Very Special Boy. He aced it three times! The doctors were wowed! Science proved it! Enemies can now shut up.

That's not just narcissism. That's dementia, too. They can't be separated. Indeed, as he grows more demented, he will grow more narcissistic (as hard as that it to believe). That he appears to have given up on being president illustrates the point. While the war against Iran burns up the American economy, Trump talks about reflecting pools being taller than the Empire State Building. He posts deranged images of enemies on social media. He falls asleep on live television. None of that matters. "The cognitive" affirms his right to rule unchallenged.

I didn't want to talk about this today. I had planned on writing a very clever and highly nuanced commentary on American patriarchy. But the man who runs the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the Affordable Care Act, forced my hand.

Mehmet Oz is a moron or a liar. It's unclear which. In any case, he's wrong. You cannot – literally cannot – commit Obamacare fraud. Anyone saying otherwise is scamming you.

Tuesday, Oz said:

We believe that 35 percent, roughly, of the people that are using the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, exchanges, because they’ve never used the program once, they never filed a claim, may not be legit. And that actual number may translate to benefit of 5, 6 million people, we could be paying premiums for, because they don’t have to contribute anything, so they don’t even know they’re getting it. These are people who are on Medicaid, and someone, often a broker, dishonestly enrolling them in the Affordable Care Act. They're in two states at once getting full insurance, paid for by us, in multiple states at once. So we have evaluated these numbers. They are extremely concerning. ... If you care about the ACA, then you want us to take the fraud out.

Virtually everything here is fiction, but I'll start with this. People who earn so little that "they don’t have to contribute anything" are on Medicaid, not Obamacare. They cannot be on both. If they are bumped down to Medicaid but still get Obamacare subsidies, they must pay them back. They cannot "not know they’re getting it," because the IRS won't let them not know.

Meanwhile, people on Obamacare contribute. Indeed, paying is the point. Otherwise we would be on Medicaid. During open enrollment, we estimate how much we are going to earn over the year. The subsidies are based on that estimate. If we earn less, we might get a refund at tax time. If we earn more, we might owe. We pay up front with monthly premiums. We pay on the back end if our estimates are off. Either way, we pay. Enrollees cannot "not be legit."

Moreover, the IRS gets its due. Rightwingers leave law enforcement out of their dystopian portrayals of Obamacare. They want you to believe that enrollees are getting government handouts while taxpayers are getting fleeced. They don't mention the fact that the IRS will come a-calling if your numbers are off. I know this personally. One year, I earned much more than expected, but failed to adjust my "premium tax credits." Trust me, the IRS got its due.

As for "they never filed a claim," I hesitate to explain for fear of insulting your intelligence, but here goes: If there are no claims, it's because your doctor didn't file one. If your doctor didn't file one, it's because you were healthy enough to skip seeing your doctor. Moreover, as a (former) Obamacare enrollee, I have never filed a claim, because I am not a doctor. That Oz cites this as evidence of fraud is so stupid that you have to wonder what's really going on.

What's really going on is the president and his party need plausible cover for what they want to do – what they are in fact doing – which is deliberately making the people of this country sicker, poorer and meaner, which in turn makes all of us, including healthy Americans, much easier to control. Of course, they can't just come out and say that softening resistance to social domination is their goal, so they say things like "the ACA’s dwindling enrollment is the result of necessary initiatives to cut waste and fraud after Democrats focused on growing the program but did too little to scrutinize who was signing up," according to the Post.

Last year, Trump and the Republicans chose to allow subsidies to expire. The immediate result was monthly premiums doubling, tripling and even quadrupling. Since then, millions have dropped out, not because they didn't belong, but because they couldn't afford it.

The president and his party want you to think the fraud is getting something for nothing. But in their minds, the fraud is something much more threatening to their goal of social domination: a government that honors and advances individual liberty. That sounds terrible to decent law-abiding people, especially with their own – red states use Obamacare more than blue states – so they claim that their treachery is actually a noble thing worth sacrificing for. As Oz said, "if you care about the ACA, then you want us to take the fraud out."

It's not noble. It's sadistic. They take pleasure in inflicting pain, an aspect of American politics that does not get the attention it deserves. The destruction of Obamacare is part of a larger project by which the elites of this country (the Epstein class, if you wish) have exacted their revenge on meritocracy. The democratic process, equal treatment under law, economic policies expanding the middle class – these and more conspired to not only elect the first Black president but empower generations of women to believe they control their fates. To the GOP's reactionary mind, such a consequence is a perversion of "the natural order." Sacrificing their own people – deep-red Kentucky is seeing the fastest rate of Obamacare dropouts – in the restoration of America as a white man's country is a small price to pay.

I am no longer on Obamacare and I can't decide which is worse: getting priced out of my health insurance or being lied to about why. Perhaps even more galling is the fact that few reporters seem to understand what's really going on, as if they are so immune to rightwing sadism that it doesn't occur to them whether to ask Mehmet Oz if he's a moron or a liar.

I have a pitcher full of ice water and I'm ready to use it on liberals and Democrats who are prematurely celebrating the Senate primary victory of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Yes, he's deeply immoral and corrupt. Yes, he's a cheat and a liar. (Liberal Currents' Alan Elrod said he's "a paragon of the Trumpian politician – a man whose fascism flows as much from his prejudices as his own adolescent, libidinal self-indulgence.") But Texas is still gonna Texas, and like Democrat Graham Platner's supporters in Maine, who are willing to overlook his Nazi tattoo in order to oust Republican Susan Collins, Paxton's supporters are willing to overlook a multitude of sins to stop Democrat James Talarico from going to the US Senate.

Within hours of Paxton's defeat of incumbent Senator John Cornyn, the right began attacking Talarico – and making it very personal. "Tala-freako is a creep and he thinks he’s a vegan," RNC chairman Joe Gruters said. "He thinks God is nonbinary. He wants to mutilate children. He wants to put boys in girls locker rooms. ... All those things and the fact that they are openly supporting communists and socialists." A GOP strategist called Talarico an "emasculated vegan dweeb." Stephen Miller said he was "first transgender Senate candidate."

The ad hominem attacks were so immediate, so intense and so insane that some observers took it as a sign of Talarico's advantage over Paxton. "Interesting, if not surprising, that rightwingers have collectively agreed that their line of attack against Talarico is that he's supposedly feminine," James Surowiecki wrote on Twitter. "Not a trace of substance, just culture war bull----. Because how, on substance, do you defend voting for Ken Paxton?"

In speculating about the reasons Talarico is suddenly and "directly confronting attacks on his masculinity," according to NOTUS, I think liberals and Democrats still give rightwingers too much credit. They are not smearing him because of his strengths (which are many) or Paxton's liabilities (also many). They are smearing him because that's what they do.

As was the case during Donald Trump's three campaigns, what matters to many voters isn't leadership or policy or character. What matters is the collective desire to punch down on people whom the mob believes are deserving of it. (In this case, Talarico is associated with LGBTQ folks.) GOP campaigns are now like Vegas: what's done there stays there. They are vacations from morality, excuses to indulge in deviance and depravity. That Texans would suffer by electing Paxton doesn't change the fact that slandering "Soy Boy" is going to be fun.

Sadism is the point. We should draw attention to that moral failing by defending Talarico, not only on ethical grounds but on unambiguously religious grounds. This is not an easy thing to ask of some of my liberal brethren, as religion to them is frequently the problem in American politics, not a solution. But if nothing else, let this convince you: the most extreme smears against Talarico are not explicitly gendered. They are explicitly religious. He represents more than a viable Senate candidate who might – might! – turn Texas purple. Talarico embodies a viable path toward breaking the right's monopoly on faith, especially the Christian faith.

On Wednesday, this is what US Senator Mike Lee posted on Twitter, quote-tweeting a post by the DNC that said: "Texas: James Talarico is the only candidate who will put you first."

To the most conservative Christian sects in the United States (Mike Lee is a Mormon), Moloch is probably second only to Satan (or maybe the Antichrist) among figures of evil in the Bible. Secular liberals see this comparison and shrug. (It's just more of the same kookiness.) Religious liberals, however, see it as bad faith designed to prevent Talarico from attacking his political opponents where it hurts most. If Talarico is allowed to explain himself and his theological views, free of the slander against him, the most conservative religious voter might come to the conclusion that despite being a Democrat, he's still a good Christian.

Hold that in your mind as I remind you of the time, three months ago, when the Trump administration threatened to punish late-night comedian Stephen Colbert for airing an interview with Talarico. (This threat came after CBS had caved to Trump's bullying and cancelled his show.) In effect, the government banned Talarico. (The interview was posted online.) But what did it ban? Two decent men discussing the corruption of faith by politics.

"For 50 years," Talarico said:

the religious right ... convinced a lot of our fellow Christians that the most important issues were abortion and gay marriage, two issues that aren’t mentioned in the Bible. Two issues that Jesus never talked about. Jesus in Matthew 25 tells us exactly how you and I and ... our fellow believers [are] going to be judged and how we’re going to be saved: by feeding the hungry, by healing the sick, by welcoming the stranger. Nothing about going to church. Nothing about voting Republican. It was all about how you treat other people.

He continued:

Don't tell me what you believe. Show me how you treat other people and I’ll tell you what you believe. And I think in our faith we’ve got to get back to those fundamentals. My granddad was a Baptist preacher in South Texas, and when I was little, he told me that Christianity is a simple religion, not an easy religion, he would always clarify, but a simple religion, because Jesus gave us two commandments: love God and love neighbor. And there was no exception of that second commandment. Love thy neighbor, regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or immigration status or religious affiliation.

I suspect Mike Lee was reacting to Talarico's biblical defense of abortion. He said God asked Mary for consent before impregnating her. Therefore, Talarico reasoned, a mother's life has privilege over that of an unborn child. While there is indeed a history of Protestants (though not Catholics) taking that view for granted, it's beside the point, as Talarico makes plain. Abortion is a modern concern, not a fundamental one. He pushes it out of the realm of religion and into the realm of politics. That, for the religious right, is deeply threatening.

Rightwingers want the public to believe that being a liberal and being a Christian are incompatible. Yet here's a man from inside the church (Talarico is a Presbyterian) speaking for a legitimate, though often ignored, theological tradition. Not only does that frustrate efforts to maintain the view that being a good Christian requires opposition to the variations of "race or gender or sexual orientation or immigration status or religious affiliation." It suggests that the Messiah himself might have been liberal. (He was, relatively speaking.)

No wonder Lee calls him Moloch.

This is why sadism is the end, not the means. Rightwingers must smear Talarico. They must make him seem like a perversion of Christian virtues, not an evangelist for them. He must not be allowed to speak for himself, only to react to the allegations against him. And that's why liberals – even secular godless liberals – should defend him, not only on ethical grounds but on unambiguously religious grounds. You don't have to care that a mob slandered Christ, too.

But Christians should.

Yesterday, the White House went to its favorite gullible reporter to once again create the false impression that the president's war of choice against Iran is going to end any minute now. "Negotiators have reached an agreement on a 60-day memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire and launch negotiations on Iran's nuclear program," Barak Ravid said.

Sounds fabulous, except for two premise-cancelling details: "President Trump has yet to give his final approval" and – oh, by the way – "Iran has also not confirmed its acceptance."

For those keeping track at home, this is pretty much the same story that Axios published three weeks ago, on May 6, when Ravid said "the White House believes it's getting close to an agreement with Iran on a one-page memorandum of understanding to end the war."

That story also sounded fabulous, except that Marco Rubio didn't believe the agreement was going to happen. After all, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were negotiating, not him. The details are a bit different, but the goal of each report is pretty much the same: to kick the can down the road and encourage everyone to believe everything's going back to normal soon.

There is no going back to normal. Iran has gained too much from Trump's folly. Forget nukes, the real prize is control of the Strait of Hormuz. Is Iran likely to give that up in peace talks? Never, a career intelligence analyst told me, who goes by the Bluesky handle Shipwreck. "This is the new norm. [Control of the strait is] almost a replacement for their nuclear deterrent."

This is Trump's Catch-22. He can't keep the war going. Iran is burning up the American economy, thus burning up his party's prospects in the coming congressional elections. But he can't stop either. He's deathly afraid of the humiliation of losing a war he started. He keeps chasing after Iran's nuclear program, as if it symbolized victory, but he's too vain to admit he's already given Iran something far more valuable. It now has such a good thing going that other countries want a piece of the action. Oman has said it wants to charge tolls, too.

Whatever our feckless president does, the consequences of his choices will land on us. If Iran throttles the strait, we will pay. If it charges tolls, we will pay. (The cost of paying tribute to Iran, as much as $2 million for each tanker, will be passed on to consumers.) It's so bad investors believe gas prices won't fall to their prewar levels until 2032. That is not a typo.

Trump has lost. He just won't admit it. He will not take his fingers out of his hoary ears long enough to hear anyone say otherwise. His people keep going to reporters like Barak Ravid to maintain the illusion of negotiations proceeding apace. Meanwhile, Iran is said to be able to outlast the US naval blockade for months. If it can hold out until August, a "looming summer oil shock" could threaten "a 2008-style recession," according to the Times of London.

In the end, what has been accomplished? Not much, according to Shipwreck.

The president will try to claim victory, but the real consequences of this war will be "a future in which Iran preserves the ability to build a bomb, its proxies continue harassing Israel, the United States and Gulf neighbors, and another round of fighting becomes inevitable."

"This is the scenario where we see repeated cycles of conflict until the current regime is gone. The problem is that the US has no interest in removing them, so the cycle continues."

What has America gained? Nothing but higher prices on everything.

Here's my interview with Shipwreck.

Is the president believable? Is this war ending?

No, he’s certainly not believable, and the war is not ending. I’d say we’re in a tactical pause, a lull that’s likely to stretch well into the summer and possibly into the fall, marked by short bursts of kinetic action followed by brief negotiation windows.

The Iranians are well‑known for dragging out talks; the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, aka Iran nuclear deal] negotiations alone took nearly nine months before they were finalized. I expect them to continue stretching this process for as long as possible, aiming to weaken US resolve and extract concessions along the way.

The Iranians are masters of this approach. They know how to play the long game, and they will keep at it as long as it serves their strategic interests.

Why do markets keep accepting his lies?

The markets are way too reactive and don’t spend the time to look beyond the immediate future. This is going to drag out. I also think the markets may know this and play the fluctuations to make money. All part of the game.

Will Iran give up control of the strait? It seems too valuable to give up now. What would they ask for in return for "reopening" it?

Never will. This is the new norm. It’s almost a replacement for their nuclear deterrent. The only way they give it up is if we take it by force and we clearly have no appetite for that.

If Iran won't give up its nuke program and won't give up control of the strait, what can be done? Is the naval blockade enough to force Iran to accept a deal? And what would that deal look like?

The naval blockade is impacting them. The longer it goes, the more damage will be done. They are not completely blockaded. Some stuff travels over land and through Caspian Sea, but it has limited their revenue.

Honestly, that’s the million-dollar question and explains the current stalemate. They won’t budge. Their plan is to hope the longterm economic pain softens the US and Trump bails with a bad deal. They are banking on US gas prices going up in the summer and upcoming midterms.

The deal will likely be bad. Trump wants out and will find a way to shape the deal to his constituents. We still may see another round of fighting, but the Iranians are dug in and prepared for that. This will likely drag out until one side blinks. Who that is remains to be seen.

What would the outcome of a bad deal be? Seems to me that Iran would want the price of oil to remain elevated. They would do that by squeezing the straits, charging higher tolls etc.

Likely outcome: some form of Iranian control or influence over the Strait of Hormuz, a nuclear program kept in a diluted or semi‑paused state, and no meaningful limits on proxies or missile forces.

The result is a future in which Iran preserves the ability to build a bomb, its proxies continue harassing Israel, the United States and Gulf neighbors, and another round of fighting becomes inevitable because Israel will not allow Iran to reach a nuclear weapon.

In effect, this is the scenario where we see repeated cycles of conflict until the current regime is gone. The problem is that the US has no interest in removing them, so the cycle continues. Think Gaza and Israel, but on a larger, regional scale going forward.

From the point of view of normal people the world over who are paying for gas, who are paying for things related to gas, this sounds like a future that's not sustainable, all things being equal.

Unfortunately, I think that the prices have been so high for a period of time that the average American has accepted the new norm.

The price is elevated but somewhat stable at its current level, if it goes up dramatically more then I agree, the anger will spill over, likely into the midterms.

On a personal note, this is why I have driven an EV since 2021. The Middle East is too unstable for my liking.

On Monday, I went to the Stop & Shop and had that old familiar feeling. I spent over $80 on a bag of groceries. Nothing fancy, just regular groceries, not even everything I need for the week. One bag. Eighty United States dollars. Something's gotta give. Maybe it already has.

The Times said last week that 61 percent of Americans are cutting back on food. Another 59 percent are cutting back on extra spending. Three-fourths have forgotten about Joe Biden and blame the current president for the disaster. Economic confidence hasn't been this low since 2022. A stunning 80 percent blame him for gas price spikes, according to a Fox poll.

Donald Trump was already burning us up with tariffs, but the burn rate has accelerated dramatically since the start of the war. He won't end it, because he can't. He's a terrible war president. His idea of a deal is "I get everything; you get nothing." Iran knows this about his nature, exploits it, and here we are: in war that could stretch into the summer and fall.

Yet Trump is not acting like he's in trouble. He yak-yak-yaks about ballrooms, about gas prices being "peanuts," about how the Democrats made up the word "affordability" to make him look bad. (He is hosting an ultimate fighting circus at the White House, for God's sake.) He created a nearly $1.8 billion slush fund to pay J6 insurrectionists for their service to him. His party is practically begging him to take the midterms seriously. "We need Republicans to do well in November," Thom Tillis told the Times, “but the stupid stuff is killing our chances.

"Stupid stuff" might be too generous. Trump will not end his illegal war. He will not end his illegal tariffs. He will not pretend to care about the hardship Americans are experiencing as a consequence of both. (Nor does he not care about the optics of asking taxpayers to pay for a ballroom when they can't pay for food.) On top of that, he's endorsing primary challengers to incumbent Republicans who would otherwise coast to victory in the coming midterms.

Reporters say he's "tightening grip on the GOP."

But it looks more like he's sabotaging it.

After all this time, we still interpret the president through a partisan lens that attempts to explain his behavior. Everyone assumes he wants his party to keep the House, at the very least to avoid impeachment. It's because of this assumption that Republicans are growing frustrated. “The president was elected to juice the economy, to bring down inflation, to stop illegal immigration and to get away from woke culture,” a GOP pollster told the Times. “If his highest goal were to maintain control of Congress, he would not be doing what he is doing.”

We should consider the alternative: that control of Congress is not his highest goal.

Anthony Scarammuci suggested as much in an interview with Bloomberg. He was the White House communications director during Trump's first term whose tenure famously lasted 10 days. He told Mishal Husain that we're misreading the president. His personality is such that he doesn't want the GOP to succeed. Success would mean there's life after Donald Trump.

And, according to Donald Trump, that's impossible.

"His personality is 'you guys were nothing before I got on the stage and I’ve carried you for the last 12 years, and the 2020 election was rigged and everyone knows it, and I should’ve won that election, and I’ve returned to the presidency carrying all the Republicans on my back, and when I leave ... you’re going back to nothing' ... that’s Donald Trump's personality."

Scarammuci added that "we try to normalize him, sane-wash him, and put him into a bucket. 'Oh, he’s a Republican, he'll want a Republican to succeed him or he’ll want JD Vance or Marco Rubio.' He doesn’t want those guys to succeed him. Let's say he has a successful remaining two years of his presidency, which seems unlikely, but let's say he did. He wouldn’t want those guys taking any credit for anything that happened in the administration.

"It’s an administration of one person and there’s one spotlight on," he said.

We assume Trump wants to end the war, because we assume he wants the Republicans to win in November. But what if he doesn't care about ending it any more than he cares about his party? It might even be in his interest to prolong it, as it boils the GOP down to its pure maga essence, making it even more dependent on him. Indeed, victory would suggest his party doesn't need him anymore. And that, according to Donald Trump, is impossible.

During today's made-for-TV cabinet meeting, the president claimed that he had the advantage in negotiations with Iran. "They thought they were gonna outwait me. You know, ‘We’ll outwait him. He’s got the midterms,'" Trump said. "I don’t care about the midterms.”

We all assume he's lying. We had better hope he is. If Donald Trump really doesn't care about losing the congressional elections, the last remaining partisan constraints have fallen away.

The war could go on indefinitely.

An $80 bag of groceries could soon look cheap.

This week, the president has hit the floor in his support. A new Reuters poll found that Donald Trump's approval is 35 percent. A new Q poll found that it's 33 percent. Nate Silver said it's lower than Joe Biden's was after the Disaster Debate. While there's hope his numbers will keep falling, they probably won't. A third of America is descended from the original confederates. Trump is burning up their lives and fortunes, but they're stand by their man.

I could be wrong, but whether his numbers keep falling may be beside the point. The real question is whether Trump's supporters show up in defense of his administration in the coming congressional elections. Tuesday's primaries suggest an answer in the affirmative, as they knocked off Republicans Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

However, their defeats might say more about them than about Trump. Cassidy voted to removed him after the J6 insurrection. Massie has been a vocal Trump critic. Both men were marked by maga. Anyway, the point of the movement was to be anti-Republican. They show up to punish Trump's adversaries, not necessarily to support Republicans. Polls suggest that maganites are hardcore partisans, but what made maga a movement is that many are not.

Trump took supporters on a decade-long moral vacation. He freed them from the ordinary constraints of decency. He vowed to punish their "enemies," especially uppity women. And he promised they would all get rich. In turn, they believed Trump would spare them from the consequences of their own desires.¹ In the end, he didn't. Their cost of living is soaring higher. The pain of tariffs and war is increasingly intolerable. And now they feel betrayed.

Some of them even feel like Joe Biden was better. A recent poll found that six in 10 Americans think the economy was better under the former Democratic president. They are right.

That said, the likelihood of a Trump voter picking a Democrat in November is very low, but the likelihood is very high of Trump voters returning to their natural state as nonvoters. Trump didn't woo swing voters. He amassed winning coalitions by adding people who did not vote prior to his entry onto the political scene. What they desired was Trump and everything he represented to them. That desire has backfired and now they lost hope.

"They’re s------- themselves because nobody is going to vote," a Trump voter told NOTUS. "You will have your boomer Republicans who watch [Sean] Hannity and all that stuff go out and vote. But people like me, normal people, dealing with the cost of living, we’re not voting."

The demoralization that's pushing maga back into nonvoter-hood is compounded by Donald Trump's other big problem – the activation of Americans who might otherwise be oriented toward the Democratic Party but who stayed home during the last presidential election. The couch can no longer hold them down, as gas prices are surging, food costs are soaring and health insurance is impossible. The magnitude is such that Mike Duggan ended his bid as an independent candidate for Michigan governor, because "our internal polling showed the intense anger over gas prices and Iran was boosting Democrats in every office nationally."

Maga is demoralized. Democrat-leaning nonvoters are energized.

There's room for independent candidates.

I don't know if we can trust nonvoters who say they're going to vote. (CNN's Harry Enten said they are "p----- off" and "absolutely" will, while noting that only 48 percent of them said they were "almost certain to vote.") The fact remains, however, that anger is highly motivating. Beyond other considerations, anger has probably determined the outcomes of all but one presidential election since Barack Obama's victory. That year's panic brought a ton of nonvoters to his side. (A Democrat has not won Indiana since.) Moody's says odds of a recession are reaching 50 percent. It's only mid-May. Voters are mad. Nonvoters are madder.

The Democrats talk a lot about how to win over Trump voters, but not about how to harness the compounding rage of nonvoters, and then turn them into Democrats. The presumption seems to be that Trump voters will stick around, but hardcore partisans, who make up his floor of support, will never vote Democratic. Trump was the reason many maganites surfaced in the first place. He's the reason they will likely go back underground. That leaves some swing voters to fight over, which is fine, but there are 90 million people in this country who did not vote in the last election. A bunch of them now say they will vote this year.

The Democrats act like there's only so many voters to go around, so they have to be careful about the kind of message they send. It can't be too "anti-Trump," whatever that means, and it can't be too "progressive," whatever that means. Apparently, there has to be a sweet spot between pro-democracy and pro-"working class," which may be the lesson of 2024, but 2026 is made profoundly different by the fact that Trump is burning up the economy. Inflation is expected to reach 4 percent next month. Chris Murphy said the key to winning over Trump voters is to "unrig the economy and unrig the democracy," but forget about Trump voters. Say it to the millions of new voters who are about to demonstrate how p----- off they are.

Donald Trump has never described himself so perfectly. At 10:52 last night, he posted this on his social media site: "Colbert is finally finished at CBS. Amazing that he lasted so long! No talent, no ratings, no life. He was like a dead person. You could take any person off of the street and they would be better than this total jerk. Thank goodness he's finally gone!"

He was talking about Stephen Colbert, of course.

But allegations are confessions when they come out of Donald Trump's mouth.

The celebrated comedian shuttered his show Thursday, a year after Paramount surrendered to the president's bullying. Trump got what he wanted from his corporate toadies, but unsurprisingly, that wasn't enough. No words are too shameful, or as screenwriter David Simon put it: "The smallest, most soulless creature to ever be over-stuffed into a human form has thoughts about quality television. With a world and nation in disarray and requiring remedy, the president of the United States feels the need to opine on this passionately.

"Our republic is so debased."

"The 'Late Show' crew, [Colbert] said, always referred to the program as the 'joy machine,'" according to the Times' James Poniewozik. "The daily grind means the production has to be a kind of machine, he said, 'but if you choose to do it with joy, it doesn’t hurt as much when your fingers get caught in the gears.'" That way of thinking, Poniewozik said, gave "an energy to Colbert’s satire that I think of as 'hopeful despair.' ... When you suffer a loss, you pull yourself out of the rubble, you dust off your clown suit, and you put on a show."

In an exchange about faith and grief, Dua Lipa once asked him if religion and comedy ever come in conflict. "Does one of them ever win out?" Colbert answered by referring to Belfast, a movie he said evoked his Catholicism. "It's funny and it’s sad and it’s funny about being sad in the same way that sadness is like a little bit of an emotional death, but not a defeat if you can find a way to laugh about it, because that laughter keeps you from having fear of it, and fear is the thing that keeps you from turning to evil devices to save you from the sadness."

The comedian went on to quote Robert Hayden's famous poem:

“We must not be frightened nor cajoled
into accepting evil as deliverance from evil.
We must go on struggling to be human,
though monsters of abstraction
police and threaten us."

Colbert concluded by saying: "So if there’s some relationship between my faith and my comedy, it’s that no matter what happens you are never defeated. You must understand and see this in the light of eternity and find some way to love and laugh with each other."

Does that sound "like a dead person" to you?

Of course not. Donald Trump was talking about himself.

Given that Trump's poll numbers are sinking and that even some Republicans are standing up to him, there's lots of enthusiasm right now. Even so, I don't have much confidence in justice being served in the end. I fear the Democrats, once they reclaim power, which seems likely, will take a few steps toward accountability, then move on. I will gladly accept being proven wrong. However, all things considered, I don't think I am. Justice won't likely come.

That said, I take comfort in knowing one thing.

Donald Trump is dead inside.

More than that, I take comfort in knowing that he knows it, and that also he knows everyone, including his family, will celebrate the day of his demise. "Amazing that he lasted so long!" people everywhere will say. "No talent, no ratings, no life. He was like a dead person. You could take any person off of the street and they would be better than this total jerk.

"Thank goodness he's finally gone!"

Such is the fate of tyrants. To illustrate, I'm going to quote from Stephen Greenblatt's brilliant 2018 book about them. I'm going to put Donald Trump where Richard III's name is.

What excites [the tyrant] is the joy of domination. He is a bully. Easily enraged, he strikes out at anyone who stands in his way. He enjoys seeing others cringe, tremble, or wince with pain. He is gifted at detecting weakness and deft at mockery and insult. These skills attract followers who are drawn to the same cruel delight, even if they cannot have it to his unmatched degree. Though they know that he is dangerous, the followers help him advance to his goal, which is the possession of supreme power.

His possession of power includes the domination of women, but he despises them far more than desires them. Sexual conquest excites him, but only for the endlessly reiterated proof that he can have anything he likes. He knows that those he grabs hate him. For that matter, once he has succeeded in seizing the control that so attracts him, in politics as in sex, he knows that virtually everyone hates him. At first that knowledge energizes him, making him feverishly alert to rivals and conspiracies. But it soon begins to eat away at him and exhaust him.

Sooner or later, he is brought down. He dies unloved and un-lamented. He leaves behind only wreckage. It would have been better had Donald Trump never been born.

Our tyrant has caused irreparable harm. Beyond the death and war, beyond the crimes against humanity and the Constitution, beyond him literally making all of us poorer, sicker and meaner, there's this – the end of those decades between the conclusion of the Second World War and last month, when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Acts, therefore bringing to a close the chapter in our history in which America failed multiracial democracy.

It isn't coming back in our lifetimes. Future elections alone can't revive it. But at least there's solace in knowing the man who destroyed multiracial democracy knows how much he's hated. In the end, he defeated himself. He's soulless. He's friendless. He's not even going to his own son's wedding. For all his power, he's the loneliest, most miserable man in America.

Some progressives believe "the people" don't know the truth. Since 2000, a Democratic president has handed off a pretty good or very good economy to a Republican, and that Republican has ruined it. It was a lie that Donald Trump was a successful businessman. It was a lie that tax cuts spur investment and growth. These progressives believe that once the lies are exposed, "the people" will reward the party that has a record of bringing prosperity to all.

It's a good story, but it says more about the (white) progressives telling it than anything else. They want it to be true that success and failure are understood in strictly economic terms. They want it to be true that "success" is rewarded, that "failure" is punished. They want it to be true that voters are a kind of "referee" who sits in judgment. The progressive story is deepened by the fact that Trump is polling badly. (Nate Silver said Monday that Trump's averages are worse than Joe Biden were after the debate.) The GOP seems headed for a wipeout. To some (white) progressives, that's proof that "the people" are seeing the truth.

The problem is the progressive story does not make room for an alternative possibility: that "the people" elect Republicans not in spite of the Democrat's success but because of it. In America, prosperity is inextricably linked to race. Policies that benefit the "undeserving," a label that always includes Black people, are always under threat. In time, a Republican is elected to restore "justice." The progressive story insists "the people" don't know, but truth is, they probably do, and they have acted on that knowledge three straight times since 2000.

This is not to say that Republican presidents are rewarded. Quite the opposite. The restoration of "the natural order" – in which the dominance of white people in America is preserved and protected – requires ruining the economy. That is what Donald Trump has done. A new Reuters poll shows a mere 35 percent approve of his job performance. He's burning up the country and Americans are rightly mad as hell. But the reaction is not rooted in economic policies per se. It's rooted in the complexities of whiteness. White majorities punish Democrats for helping everyone. Then they punish Republicans for hurting them.¹

You have probably heard of something political scientists call "thermostatic politics." It's the theory that policy and public opinion are at odds with each other. Parties can't go too far left or too far right without triggering a backlash. (When it's too hot, the public turns the thermostat down. When it's too cold, it turns it up.) "Thermostatic politics" explains why the president's party always loses the House in the first midterm after a presidential election.

But I think "thermostatic politics" as it's generally understood is missing the same thing the progressive story is missing: whiteness, especially its paradox. White majorities want the upsides, not the downsides. They want Republicans to make whiteness prosperous for them. They want Democrats to make whiteness stop backfiring on them. They want it both ways, though they have never had it both ways. Whiteness and prosperity are polar opposites.

To the extent that pendulum swings exist – when a majority gives one party control of the White House, then two years later gives the other party control of the House – I think it's because white majorities can't decide. They want Republican policies that hurt Black people but they also want Democratic policies to save them from the consequences of Republican policies that hurt Black people. We often talk about the electorate's tendency to resist extremes – not too far left or too far right – but it's not a kind of trans-partisan equilibrium. It's two sides of the same coin: desiring whiteness but hating the results of desiring it?

Some (white) progressives believe the way to break the cycle is by revealing the destructive nature of GOP economic policies. The economy falters, said Michael Tomasky, because "Republicans peddle an economic fairy tale. That cutting taxes increases revenue and spurs tremendous economic activity (sic). It’s a lie. A fantasy." The solution, Tomasky wrote, is a Democratic standard-bearer who will make the truth plain to "low-information swing voters."

But "low-information swing voters" don't mind destruction. That's what they have voted for since 2000.² That's what they got. What they minded was destruction reaching them. So the solution is not pounding "the truth" into the heads of low-information swing voters, as Tomasky said, because they already know. The more likely solution is breaking the consensus that permits them to believe they can have it both ways. That doesn't call for exposing the "fairy tale" of supply-side economics. It calls for exposing the "fairy tale" of whiteness.

Whiteness is the animating force that pushes the electorate back and forth, producing cycles of boom and bust that harm lives and decimate fortunes. There have been 11 recessions since 1945, all but one under GOP presidencies. Instead of facing the truth about "the people," however, some (white) progressives would rather hold onto the belief that voters are being lied to and that rational self-interest will kick in once the facts are convincingly laid bare. At that point, "the people" will reward the party that brings prosperity to all. Eleven recessions are not the exception. They are the rule. But you can't tell that to the willfully colorblind.

Whiteness always amounts to a pay cut. That should have been the conclusion from data released last week showing that inflation is so high that it wiped out wage gains over three years. A majority picked Donald Trump because he said implementing tariffs and deporting "illegals" would make whiteness great again. However, the result of those policies, in addition to his war against Iran, has been inflation climbing to nearly twice the target rate.

Some economists expect it to reach 4 percent next month and stay there for the rest of the year.

Again, the lesson should be clear: If you choose whiteness, you choose to cut your own pay (and the pay of everyone who did not choose whiteness). But that won't be the lesson most people draw, especially Democrats who are courting disillusioned Trump supporters. They won't believe whiteness backfired, because they believe that's not supposed to happen.

In America, whiteness (or proximity to whiteness) often yields real material results. Some deny that reality, but we all know it's true. Kamala Harris was right. Tariffs are taxes, deporting migrants is inflationary, and Trump was vulnerable to foreign entanglements. However, it didn't matter, and not only because it was a Black woman warning us. It didn't matter because the idea of whiteness as wealth is deeply ingrained in the American psyche.

Ironically, it's thanks in part to Joe Biden that the idea of making whiteness great again had mass appeal after 2020. The Democratic president and his party grew the economy from the bottom up and middle out. Wages rose. Unemployment fell. The policies of multiracial democracy put the government on the side of workers and consumers. That resulted in Black prosperity (as well as in prosperity for nonwhites generally) – and there's your problem.

If whiteness is wealth, Blackness is theft.

When some white people saw Black people doing well, they thought they were witnessing a crime. Trump's reelection restored "justice."

But now those same people are very, very confused. Instead of the restoration of glory, as advertised by the Trump campaign, gas prices are soaring, groceries are extortionate, health insurance is out of reach, and everyone is getting a pay cut, even as jobs are getting scarce. The president returned to their proper places the virtue of whiteness and the vice of Blackness, but it's not working!

Something is seriously wrong! Someone do something!

Whiteness has led the American economy to ruin every four to eight years for the last 50 years. If there's a Republican president, expect a crisis. Yet most political commentators won't put whiteness at the center of their thinking. It's as if doing so would violate a kind of unwritten agreement to believe collectively that everyone wants equality, no one has bad intentions, and anti-Black prejudice is a thing of the past. It's punditry that treats white people as if they were children who can't handle the truth about themselves or their country.

A minority of Democrats choose to play along with the myth of "the people" as pure and innocent. Playing along is less risky than taking the responsibility of slapping these voters into adulthood, for their own good. But the make-believe can run so thick that some Democrats make a serious mistake. They convince themselves that Trump supporters who are angry about whiteness backfiring on them are going to be open to Democrats. Fact is, they think Democrats stand for Blackness. These voters will most certainly stick to the devil they know. Their expressions of anger are not a sign of openness. It just means they're mad.

I may sound hopeless, but I'm not. Though their dream turned into a nightmare, they won't give up on it. However, they might stay home. Liberals and Democrats should spend less time asking themselves how to appeal to disillusioned Trump voters with this or that economic policy. They should spend more time asking themselves how to deepen the disillusionment. They are not going to trade whiteness for prosperity because, to them, whiteness is prosperity. That whiteness ruins prosperity does not change the fact that they want it both ways. They can't not want both, even though they have never had both, yet liberals and Democrats keep trying to change their minds. We should use their minds against them.

Let me put it like this. Whiteness is a drug. Only the addict can choose to be free of it. That doesn't mean everyone else in our political community doesn't have choices. It just means we should be careful with the choices we have. Among Democrats, the current trend is to accuse Donald Trump of breaking his promise to America. However, that doesn't help break the addiction. It affirms it. It suggests that if Trump were a better president, the whiteness he promised on the campaign trail would have increased pay. We should not enable addiction. We should treat each other like adults. Whiteness has never increased pay, but multiracial democracy has. If adults can't handle that truth, they should stay home.

In the absence of fundamental change, especially among Democratic leaders, I can't say I have a lot of hope these days. That's in spite of all the polling showing that Donald Trump is the most unpopular president ever. He was unpopular the first time. That he's unpopular the second time should not be surprising. What is surprising is he was elected again despite being unpopular. More surprising is we keep believing unpopularity will doom him.

Don't get me wrong.

It could be that Trump's policies burn up so much of the American electorate that voters storm the polls in November to put Democrats back in charge of the Congress. But what if they storm the polls and nothing changes? Not because Democratic leaders are squishes, though that's true enough, but because John Robert's US Supreme Court, and now state courts, legalized cheating. We all believe in our bones that you win when you're popular, lose when you're not. But white-power gerrymandering takes that foundational belief and perverts it.

Trump admitted this week that he doesn't care about the economic effects of his war against Iran. (Inflation hit 3.8 percent. In effect, that means we all got a pay cut.) To what extent are Americans' financial situations motivating him toward a peace deal? "Not even a little bit," the president said. "The only thing that matters is ... they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about Americans' financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's the only thing that motivates me."

That clip was shared widely by liberals and Democrats, as it seemed to be more evidence of the growing backlash against the president and his party. (Most Americans were not concerned about Iran's nuclear program before the war.) But what if it wasn't evidence so much as foreshadowing – of the kind of dystopian future we can expect to experience in which the American president has been fully liberated from the consequences of his choices, in which he can do virtually anything he wants without fear of democratic accountability.

I'm talking about immediate material stakes here, more than ideological stakes. Complaints about an executive branch acting like it's above the law are going to feel almost quaint in a context of food shortages. But the longer Trump's war goes on, the more likely we are to face such a crisis. Overseas markets have dried up. Fertilizer is scarce. The price of diesel is soaring. Crop-pickers are getting deported. And farms are going bankrupt at alarming rates. If we're lucky, saying he doesn't care will be a warning to future presidents to never, ever, ever say that. If we're unlucky, however, it won't be a warning. It will be an abomination.

Last week, Virginia's supreme court struck down a ballot measure that would have redrawn the state's congressional maps, giving Democrats an advantage. The referendum was lawful and legitimate, yet the court overturned the law in a blatant act of usurpation, following the lead of the US Supreme Court. The response by Virginia Democrats should have been a declaration of war against unelected legislators, knowing that a majority was behind them.

But instead of leading an effort to force out the judges (by lowering the retirement age) and bringing the law to a refreshed court, Virginia’s state Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell told Greg Sargent there were practical obstacles. But beyond that, Surovell said, "wiping out the entire supreme court is an incredibly extreme step to take over a decision you don’t like." He added that his party will appeal the decision to the US Supreme Court, but short of a favorable ruling there, he still expects voters to put Democrats in two of four lost seats.

In other words, don't worry.

"The people" will come through.

Praising "the people" is patriotic propaganda with a long history in America that feels good, but it's wrong, even dangerous. Joe Biden hoped the 2024 election would be a trial of sorts of a treasonous former president. He hoped that his administration would not have to take the risk of criminally prosecuting him. Look where that got us. The lesson should be to never ask "the people" to make sound moral judgments. They won't do it. Instead, they will give a traitor a second chance, then complain about the ruinous consequences of giving it to him.

Sadly, it seems some Democratic leaders still have not learned this lesson. They hope "the people" will do the work for them, saving them from the risk of doing what needs to be done. In the Virginia case, it would be good to remove anti-democratic judges anyway for the fact that they exposed themselves as anti-democratic judges. Indeed, the Virginia case is a microcosm. There no such thing as democratic progress if rogue courts go unpunished. As Jonathan Bernstein said today, even if the Democrats have a trifecta after 2028, "there’s just about nothing Congress could do to prop up healthy democracy in the US (or, for that matter, to pass any other policy agenda the Democrats might have) that is safe from the six Republicans on the Supreme Court. There’s simply no way to court-proof anything."

Like everyone else, I hope "the people" correct their error. (The Bulwark's Jonathan Last says don't worry, the "panicrats" are, well, panicking.) But despite what Democratic leaders say, electoral victory is not the same as saving the republic. That requires cold-blooded partisans using their legitimate authority to change the institutions that have corrupted democracy.

Donald Trump, the Republicans and their rightwing allies in the courts have rigged the system, through white-power gerrymandering, so that being a monumentally unpopular party might no longer be an impediment to rule. (Ordinary people could face food shortages, for God's sake, while Trump shrugs.) The Democrats cannot hope that "the people" can overcome a rigged system, because "the people" cannot overcome one. Indeed, they have proven capable of making things worse. Democrats like Virginia's Scott Surovell fear being too extreme. My hope is in Democrats who realize they haven't been extreme enough.

American politics is full of uncertainty, but one thing that the Democrats completely trust is this – eventually, a Republican president will wreck the economy. His failure paves the way for the Democrats' return to power. This pattern has been so regular as to be predictable over the last half century. An entire generation of Democratic leadership counts on it.

These pendulum swings may seem comforting, as they suggest a kind of equilibrium at the heart of the American electorate. They should not be comforting, as they enable America's worst instincts. The Democrats don't really need to present an ideal vision of the future. They don't really need to fight for it. To win back power, all they do is wait. At some point, the Republican will blow up the economy. The outcome will be a Democratic comeback.

The Democrats have sound policies. The problem is they collectively lack is a unifying moral view. They do not ask Americans to be better. They do not invest in infrastructure that rewards public virtue. They do not go to war for the greater good. Instead, they tend to privilege the victimhood of disillusioned voters, even when they are victims of themselves.

In the run up to the midterm elections, the Democrats accuse Donald Trump of broken promises. Among other examples, they cite rates of inflation that have wiped out wage gains. But the president kept his promise. A majority of voters wanted whiteness to be dominant again. That's what he's doing. The problem is that whiteness causes ruin, even for those who vote for it. You can't have one without the other, but they didn't believe it, because, to them, whiteness is prosperity. What they're mad about now is their own desire backfiring on them.

If the Democrats win in November, which seems likely, the leadership will have incentive to control everything rank-and-file Democrats say for the purpose of seeming reasonable to these voters, therefore retaining hopefully their support in advance of the 2028 election.

The problem is there's no way to seem reasonable to Americans who desire freedom from consequences. To use the old cliche, Trump voters wanted to touch the stove. What they didn't want was the first-degree burns. Appeals to their self-interest will have limited effect if they are not accompanied by an ethical reaction. The Democrats need to get evangelical on voters, not only with a unifying moral view but an information infrastructure to transmit it.

Can the Democratic Party do that?

Yes, according to Matthew Sheffield. The holdup isn't money. There's plenty. The holdup is lack of will. "I have come to the conclusion that the current highest level Democratic leaders would rather lose than change their approach fundamentally," Matthew told me last week.

An expert of political media, especially on the right, Matthew was a source in a Post report about Ashley St. Clair, a former maga personality who recently revealed the extent to which rightwing media is directly paid for by billionaire Republicans. Matthew is also a Republican apostate (he left on moral grounds), so I asked if he thinks St. Claire is being genuine.

"She seems to," he said. "Having walked away from the easy money, I can recognize that's what she's done. I'm going to have to do a crowd-funding campaign, because there's no one willing to pay for media on the left. And the audience mostly just wants doomerism."

The left wants doomerism? I asked.

Here's his reply and the rest of our conversation.

Can you expand on that? The left wants doomerism?

I think a lot of the audience genuinely believes in some sense that Trump is inevitably going to destroy democracy. They think that there is no money available on the left, and that is why Republicans have been strong when he's on the ballot.

This seems to be an easier conclusion to believe rather than the actual facts: that Democrats at the elite level have wasted their money on poor campaign strategies, and that they are not very good at what they do.

It's very discomforting to have to face the fact that Kamala Harris was not a very good candidate, and that neither were the people who ran her campaign at the highest levels and the affiliated super PACs.

I have come to the conclusion that the current highest level Democratic leaders would rather lose than change their approach fundamentally. They are so obsessed with controlling the message at all times that they don't want to direct money or influence to people who are not under their control. But that way of doing politics doesn't work in the age of social media, because everyone can see that the messages that are pushed in this way are obviously coordinated and inauthentic.

The party leaders are thoroughly bought into neoliberalism. Rather than talk about how they're going to tear down monopolies and tax the billionaires who have destroyed our society, they talk about relaxing zoning laws and new tax credits

Is there a consensus among leaders or is there competition?

Inside DC, there seems to be a consensus. There in the thrall of amateur commentators like Matt Yglesias who have punished no serious political science work, or even a work of political theory.

But it seems that some Obama alumni have begun to realize that the Clinton way of doing things has failed. I wrote about this recently.

The problem for Democratic longterm thinking has been that Republicans destroy things invariably when they get the White House and so Democrats can win almost regardless of what they do.

So instead of building a longterm generative vision, the party is dominated by small-minded amateurs who think that recapitulating Bill Clinton in 1992 is a great idea. Never mind that Clinton himself did not get a majority that year.

Having seen the inside of both parties, there's such a dramatic contrast in terms of vision. Republicans are planning for the next five, 10, and 30 years. Democrats are only thinking about the next election.

And the media that they encourage largely reflect that. Everything is about reacting to whatever happened in the news that day, rather than developing a coherent vision of how we got here and how to fix it.

That reactivity would explain their obsession with independent voters, no? As in: let's put all our energy into appearing reasonable to people who feel alienated. That plays by the GOP's rules, rather than they own.

Yes. Republicans have a larger vision, whereas Democrats are policymakers. They don't have a vision of the future or how to get there. To the extent there is one, it's "moar capitalism," which isn't how you win as a left party.

What do you think the Democratic vision should be? And should they pay influencers to help spread word of that visions?

I think that citizens should stop paying for candidates so much, because the money is wasted on ads.

As to the vision, it's not a simple question. We need political vision, philosophical vision, and metaphysical vision. I'm working on the latter two actually with a book manuscript in outline form if you want to look at it. Here's a very compressed overview of some of the political and philosophical parts.

Pretty much all "futurism" discourse is fascistic. And it's reflected in the films that get made and the cramped vision of "global class struggle" or "bean-counting capitalism" that get advanced.

We need to openly talk about beauty, love, knowledge and freedom. The rightwing talks of these things, and gets to own that discourse because we say nothing in response. As the Book of Proverbs puts it, "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

I boil it down by saying that we need a liberalism that aims to make lives better at every level. Everyone deserves to laugh easily, think clearly and love freely.

For almost a month, I have been limping around my apartment, thinking this has got to be a metaphor for something. It's from one of those household injuries. I missed a step going down the stairs, landed on my foot with all my weight, and popped a calf muscle*. The first thing I thought of was the pain. The second thing: Oh, Jesus, I don't have health insurance.

Like I said, a metaphor. Lots of people are like me. According to the Times, as much as 20 percent of Americans who were enrolled in their state's Obamacare exchanges have dropped out. The percentage is expected to get bigger by the end of the year, some analysts say. It's not because of anything we did. It's because of what the president and the Republicans did.

Or rather didn't do, which is to say, they didn't care. They knew last autumn that premiums were going to double, triple and even quadruple. They knew their own people would suffer. Still they did nothing. The result is going to be more than lost Obamacare enrollees. It's going to be higher insurance premiums for everyone, as the risk pool gets smaller and sicker.

Adding insult to injury (in my case, literally) are the endless allegations of healthcare fraud. Somehow, it's a good thing that me and 1.2 million other Americans have dropped out, because (I'm guessing here) we're scammers. The idea appears to be (again, guessing) that I was getting something for nothing. That tells you that the Republicans have no idea what they are talking about, and how detached they are from the lives of ordinary Americans.

Obamacare enrollees can't commit fraud. First, because we pay up front, out of our own pockets. Second, because we pay on the back end if we don't pay enough up front. We have to guess how much we are going to earn for the year. At tax time, the IRS crunches the numbers. The amount owed can be large if we miscalculate (if we earn more than expected). Believe me when I say the pain of that experience makes you obey every letter of the law.

The Republicans refused to renew federal subsidies under the Affordable Care Act that were expanded during the COVID pandemic. Those subsidies cushioned the blow of ever-rising health insurance premiums. Once they expired at the end of last year, premiums soared and more than a million people dropped out. However, that's only the most recent development.

Less well-known is the fact that the Republicans are responsible two times over. Once for failing to renew those subsidies. Twice for causing premiums to soar. In 2017, they repealed what was known as Obamacare's "individual mandate," a small tax intended to widen and deepen the risk pool. The tax was working. Costs were going down. From the moment the mandate was repealed, however, costs began rising again to reach their current levels.

Beyond the GOP's carelessness and gaslighting, I guess what bugs me most is their scapegoating. Donald Trump and the Republicans are complicit in the failing state of the American healthcare system yet they're always accusing some poor bastard who cleans toilets for a living. Despite federal law explicitly blocking non-citizens from receiving government assistance, they blame "illegals" for a crisis that they themselves created.

The Republicans do this wholesale. Name a current social problem in America and they will tell you the cause is "illegals." The whole truth, however, is almost certainly the opposite.

• "Illegals" didn't take away anyone's health insurance through their negligence.
• They didn't impose illegal taxes (i.e., tariffs).
• They didn't extract wealth and raise income taxes (i.e., the One Big Beautiful Bill Act).
• They didn't start an illegal war.
• They didn't send gas prices soaring.
• They didn't spike the cost of groceries.
• They didn't bring the American economy to the brink of recession.

The essential message beneath all the rhetoric used by Trump and the Republicans is that the "illegals" are taking something from you, especially your shot at the American dream.

They scapegoat because it works. In America, it often doesn't matter that the Republicans reveal their ignorance of healthcare policy. It often doesn't matter that they expose their detachment from the lives of ordinary Americans. What matters isn't leadership but more often a collective desire to punch down on people who are on the margins of society and who, they believe, deserve violence. Trump's campaigns were a consequence-free chance to indulge that desire. They were vacations from the normal moral constraints of society. That Trump supporters are now facing consequences doesn't change the fact that they had fun.

There is new debate among liberals and Democrats about the need for a new New Deal. In exchange for normal people working hard and playing by the rules, the government promises to create and maintain conditions so that anyone can manifest his or her destiny. That's a welcomed debate, but I think it's already too abstract. Liberals and Democrats spend a lot of time talking about the problems—low wages, high inflation, scarce housing, inaccessible health insurance—but not nearly equivalent time spelling out who is doing what to whom.

Me and 1.2 million former Obamacare enrollees were not priced out due to faceless economic forces. We were priced out systematically by a party whose goals are protecting insurance profits as well as the power of employers to control their workers. Obamacare aims to manifest the American dream. By sabotaging it, the Republicans sabotage the dream.

Trump and his party always spell out who is doing what to whom. They say "illegals" stop ordinary Americans from manifesting their destinies. Immigrants are doing no such thing, but it's not enough for liberals and Democrats to say so. We should tell the same story but in reverse. Everyone can see their dreams come true—if the Republicans get out of the way.

With poll after poll suggesting that the Democrats are going to win back the House and perhaps the Senate in the coming congressional elections, expect to see more discussion about the practical need to be nice to Americans who regret voting for Donald Trump.

The idea is that we live in a system that's either/or. If we're going to build a big tent, we need to bring as many people into it as we can, which means avoiding saying anything that might discourage them from coming in. For the Democrats to win, these voters have to switch allegiances. Let's not make that process harder by scolding them about their bad choices.

I think this idea is wrong, morally and politically.

Morally, because actions have consequences. Trump's policies hurt his voters, meaning they hurt themselves. Only they are liable for their choices. Only they can choose to make things right for their sake. No one made them choose Trump. No one can make them choose a Democrat. If what I say determines their choice, no amount of pain will change their minds.

Politically, because protecting people from the consequences of their choices encourages them to continue choosing badly. I think it's unwise for progressives to suggest that it's OK to vote for a Republican as long as the Democrats are around to clean up the mess they inevitably make. That's no way to build a big tent, because once the mess is cleaned up, they go back to the Republicans. Politically, it's better to say "you hurt yourself – don't do it again."

Still, it's very difficult for progressives to look Trump voters in the eye and say "I told you so." I think it comes down to fear, which is to say, they fear that Trump voters will double down on their bad choices. They fear that telling people who hurt themselves that they could have avoided hurting themselves will only encourage them to hurt themselves, imperiling us all.

To that, I say you are right to be afraid! So the question isn't whether my opinion of a Trump voter will alienate him but whether he will hurt himself in a delusional bid to hurt me for my opinion of him. If so, the conclusion should be that there is no such thing as democratic consensus or the common good or mutual self-interest with a person for whom masochism is optional. The masochist won't be obligated to himself. Why would he be obligated to me?

This conclusion runs against the grain of progressive myth, which is to say, against the belief in "the people" as pure and innocent victims of a system rigged by rapacious elites. If we could get money out of politics, if we could reform the media, if we could tame "polarization" – if we could clear the way for liberty and justice for all, that's what "the people" would choose. "The American people are progressive," Elizabeth Warren famously said, "and our day is coming. Our values are American values and America's values are progressive values."

Not only does this myth overlook the fact that "the people" chose Trump twice. It overlooks the complicated and corruptible character of "the people" that chose him. It asks us to presume that his voters had good intentions but were mistaken or duped or just forgot the reasons why he was voted out the first time. It holds Kamala Harris accountable – she'd be president if she were a better candidate – but holds Trump's voters blameless for his victory. It's not really their fault, this myth tells us, so we should not remind them of their mistake.

For all the talk of animosity between the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and its centrist establishment, both sides agree on this myth: "The people" can't fail; they can only be failed. To shame voters for their self-destructive choices is to fail them. The terms of this agreement allow progressives to indulge in a kind of colorblind fantasy in which Americans would be united if not for divisive elites. More importantly, it allows party leaders to skate.

As long as the progressive myth predominates, Democratic leaders don't have to do the hard work of creating a vision for a more just and equitable society for everyone in America, or invest in the manufacturing of an infrastructure that would realize that pluralist vision. Instead, as we have seen since at least the 1980s, a party establishment that does not want to change does not feel that it needs to change when it can wait around for the moment when the Republicans bring the country to ruin, then reap the benefits of a popular backlash. And the party establishment is rewarded for its inertia by the party's progressive wing when it celebrates that popular backlash as a restoration of "the true nature of the people."

But contrary to progressive thinking, "the true nature of the people" is not revealed during these periods of backlash against the Republicans. It was never hidden. It has been evident in every cycle of boom and bust since the 1960s. "The people" elect a Republican president who invariably wrecks the economy. They then elect a Democratic president to fix it. While that Democrat is busy trying to restore and even expand access to the American dream, the Republicans invariably arouse anti-Black hatred and other bigotries to such heights that "the people" believe they are witnessing a crime when a Black man moves up the social ladder, as he must have stepped on someone more "deserving" to get there.

By the time of the next election, "the people" are primed to "make America great again," thus restarting the cycle. To the extent that progressive thinking recognizes the complicated and corruptible character of "the people," it's in terms of material deprivation. It's said that when times are hard, (white) Americans become vulnerable to demagogues who peddle propaganda. That may be true, but given the above cycle of boom and bust, the other way around is clearly also true. When times are good, (white) Americans are vulnerable to demagogues, as their sense of justice is even more aroused by the sight of Black prosperity. And if that's the case, are they really vulnerable? Sounds to me like they are choosing a Republican for the express purpose of stopping the crime of "those people" getting what they don't "deserve."

When white Americans choose a Republican to stop "them," they end up hurting themselves. They feel so much pain that they elect Democrats. It's a regular and predictable cycle of self-harm that ultimately hurts everyone, but it's not recognized as self-harm, neither by the white Americans who are harming themselves nor by the progressives who are trying to bring them around. Progressives believe that by saying nothing about their self-destructive choices – by being nice – they clear the way for direct appeals to their material self-interests. Let's not talk about you hurting you and yours, they say. Let's talk about universal healthcare.

But what progressives are really doing is enabling self-harm. The cycle of boom and bust should demonstrate that there are no rewards for good behavior. Every Democratic president of the last 50 years has not only fixed the damage done by the previous Republican president but also grown the economy. Yet despite that success, "the people" end up punishing the Democrats. Progressives say that's because the party did too little. Equally valid is saying they did "too much," which is to say, the economic policies of Democratic presidencies empowered those whom "the people" believed should not be empowered.

I said at the top that it's impossible to make common cause with masochists. That's true, but most people who hurt themselves are not masochists. They don't have a complete understanding of the consequences of their choices. That's why progressives should shame them. It's not enough to speak to their higher instincts with popular policy. We have to speak to their base instincts, too. Oh, you thought only others would suffer? Well, I told you so.

The president's illegal and unpopular war against Iran is driving up the cost of gas so much that it seems all but certain that we're going to experience a inflationary recession. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, rose in March to its highest level in three years. I'm not an economist. I don't know when. I don't know how. But I do know that for 60 days, there has been a bubble of magical thinking around Wall Street. It seems ready to burst.

Marketplace aired a frightening story last night about the difference between the paper price of oil and the real price. The former is determined by investors speculating on future oil supplies. The latter is determined by traders bidding on existing oil supplies. With the Strait of Hormuz shuttered up, existing supply is getting tighter. As it tightens, prices go up.

This is what Joe DeLaura, a senior energy strategist at Netherlands-based Rabobank, told Marketplace: "The physical market is skyrocketing. We've seen delivery for physical Brent crude going, you know, like $144. ... It's a divergence of what people think versus reality."

Donald Trump has been playing a game. So far, Wall Street has played along. He says the war is coming to an end. Any minute now Iran is going to reopen the strait. Investors wanted a return to the status quo. The alternative would be ruinous. So they believed him. Even now, as I'm writing this, he said Iran has a new proposal to end the war. On cue, oil futures fell.

That's little comfort at the gas station, where Americans pay real prices. As of today, the national average for a gallon of regular gas is $4.42. It's $4.30 in Florida, $4.84 in Indiana and $4.88 in Ohio. "Explosive gas price jumps in the last week," wrote Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at Gas Buddy. "Biggest jumps in average price: Indiana up $1.09/gal, Ohio up 94c/gal, Michigan up 88c/gal, Illinois up 56c/gal, Colorado up 47c/gal, Kansas up 39c/gal, Kentucky up 36c/gal, Florida up 34c/gal, Wyoming up 34c/gal, [and] Wisconsin up 33c/gal." It bears noting that Donald Trump won all but two of these states in 2024.

Dan Pickering, of Pickering Energy Partners, told Marketplace that "the financial markets are essentially saying over a period of time, the expectation is, peace is going to break out and that prices will come down. So I think that's what the market's telling us. My view is they don't reflect the tightness of the current physical market." This week proved was right.

He added that the paper price of oil will have to increase to match the real price. "The Strait of Hormuz is not opening," Pickering told Marketplace. "Our inventories continue to draw down literally every single day. And I think where we're headed is that physical tightness in one part of the world is going to meld into physical tightness across the world,” he said.

Trump is playing games with the rest of us too, as in: Don't believe your lying eyes. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Congress last week that gas prices "peaked a week or so ago" prior to his testimony, which would have been mid-April. He also bragged. Gas was "a dollar a gallon cheaper than they peaked during the Biden administration." On Thursday, the national average, $4.30 per gallon, reached its highest since July 2022. So much for bragging.

We have not reached the highest average price during the Biden years, which was around $5 a gallon due to the war in Ukraine, but all things being equal, we are getting there, in a hurry, with the potential for surpassing that mark and sending the global economy into recession. One leading analyst is now willing to put a time table on that trajectory. Mohamed El-Erian was Pimco's CEO. He served in Barack Obama's White House. He told Fortune the world can “avoid a recession, provided ... the straits are reopened in the next four to eight weeks. If they’re not reopened in the next four to eight weeks, it will look very different.”

I can't predict the future, but I can predict that Trump is not going to change. He is who he is. That's why he can't win. Here's Paul Krugman: "Trump’s ego is so fragile that he can never admit losing. He cannot bear to face up to the reality that he, more or less single-handedly, led America to the greatest strategic defeat in its history. So he desperately wants to extract concessions from Iran that would lend him a fig leaf and allow him to claim victory."

But Iran isn't going to change either. Its leaders understand Donald Trump's weakness. They are not going to freely give up control of the strait. As Lindsay Beyerstein argued, control gives them more leverage over international rivals than even possession of a nuclear bomb would. ("Lots of countries have nukes," Lindsay wrote, "but only Iran has Hormuz.") Forget about self-defense. Iran will keep gas prices high – by throttling the Strait of Hormuz or extracting tribute – for as long as high prices give them a geopolitical advantage.Trump insisted today (ie, lied) that high gas prices will fall, but traders appear to be finally coming around to the fact that Iran has been a more reliable source of information that the American president has been. (He told Congress today that "hostilities" have "terminated" before the 60-day deadline. Also today, he said he was "not satisfied" with Iran's new proposal to end the war.) They believe Iran, but not Trump, a dynamic that has led investors to using the acronym "NACHO" in reference to him, as in: "Not a change Hormuz opens."

A return to normal in four to eight weeks? Optimistic.

Trump can't see the danger he's in, or he won't see. His ego is titanic. But his party can. Fifty-five percent of GOP voters blame Trump for the immiserating effects of high gas prices. Harry Enten said that's the highest percentage of people from within one's party to blame the president for the price of gas. Summer is coming. Prices will climb higher, as will the rate of disapproval. In the fall, the Republicans better brace for impact. Even that, however, might be the least of their problems. Trump is who he is. He's not going to change. There's another two years ahead of us. That's a long time for a growing majority to blame their president.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggested this week that the Republicans are a bunch of crybabies who hate it when the Democrats fight back. When asked about the GOP’s reaction to a successful gerrymandering effort in Virginia, which threaten to give the Democrats an edge in the coming midterm elections, the New York congresswoman responded:

“Wah wah wah.”

She continued:

“Democrats have … asked Republicans for 10 years to ban partisan gerrymandering, and for 10 years, Republicans have said no. … These are the rules that they have set. … They have been accustomed to a Democratic Party that rolls over, doesn’t fight and takes everything sitting down. What they’re mad at is that we are here in a new day.

“We have been asking the Democratic Party to stand up and fight, and now they have, the Republican Party doesn’t like [it]. If Republicans decide they would like to revisit a ban on partisan gerrymandering, I welcome them. We have the bill right here. We can end this all today. But they don’t want to, because they like continuing to enact an unfair electoral landscape. We have an obligation to defend ourselves.”

The decade has been educational. By the time of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, I think most members of the Democratic Party learned that there are no punishments for treachery. A criminal can mount an insurrection and still be president. Democrats learned that the inherent goodness of the American people is greatly exaggerated.

But what about the other side of that? As there are no punishments for vice, there are also no rewards for virtue. I’m not sure Democrats have learned that. Many are still holding on to the terms of the old deal. Some, like Ocasio-Cortez, seem to get it, though. They understand that they, and only they, can prevent the country from completely tipping into tyranny. The Democrats can’t stand above politics and expect the American people’s blessing. They must fight Donald Trump’s crimes against democracy. They must be his consequences.

Only then can there be a new deal.

For more, I bring you this second part of my interview with someone who goes by “The Angry Black Woman.” In the first part of our conversation, we focused on hope and the challenge of holding on to it. In today’s post, we focus on the Democrats and whether they have the guts to pursue retribution in the name of freedom and democracy.

“I want the US to do what Germany did after World War II. If you were part of the Nazi party, SS, or an enabler, you were banned from running for, or holding, public office. There should not be a single Republican that has supported what has been happening for the past 10 years that should be allowed to prosper in any way. No television panels, no talk shows, no podcasts, no books. They should be shunned from society, because they are complicit in everything that has happened. Part of the ‘new New Deal’ should include these things.”

What have the Democrats learned since last year and have they learned the right lesson? Chuck Schumer seems to have learned how to fight. Others have endorsed a Senate candidate with a Nazi tattoo?

Not a damn thing.

They haven’t learned that “traditional” politics no longer exists. You have to meet the moment. The current leadership is not up to the task.

Schumer learned how to fight on the issue of ICE funding? That was an easy battle to win. People have seen what ICE has been doing so the public sentiment was there for the Democrats to hold the line.

But I don’t think it was just them holding the line. Brian Baez (@MentallyDivine on TikTok) laid out that the Republicans voted with the Democrats because they were being personally affected (eg, Delta taking away their special status). It was impacting them and they didn’t want the public to know. I don’t know if that is what made them vote the funding bill through, but it is on-brand for the Republicans.

That said, I agree with what you wrote:

“But if there’s newfound strength in the Democrats, it’s because there’s newfound weakness in the Republicans, especially the president.”

The fact that the GOP is so incompetent at governing, coupled with having a maniacal man-child as their dear leader, made it easier for the Democrats to hold the line. Either way, it was a low bar and we shouldn’t be giving cookies for doing the bare minimum.

So only time will tell if they are truly up for the task.

We have to look at the totality of how the Democrats move. Praising them for holding the line while people are being murdered is one thing. Supporting a man [Graham Platner] who bears a Nazi symbol on his chest is a whole other issue. It’s emblematic of the party as a whole.

When I read your article on Platner, I started screaming! I had to read it a few times – still screaming! – before I could think about the implications. I posed a hypothetical to my husband: “I am thinking about getting a tattoo on my chest and I chose a design. It’s a Totenkopf. He looked at me like I was crazy and said: “Waffen SS is illegal here.”

For those that don’t know, my husband is German. I live in the country that Americans like to sensationalize the violence that happened here. These symbols and the distortion of history anger me to my core.

For Platner to dismiss this tattoo by claiming “half my family is Jewish” is akin to saying I have a Black friend so I can’t possibly be racist.

It’s also incredibly insulting and frustrating that anyone in the Democratic Party, progressive or not, would support this person.

And if Platner is not racist, then he is incredibly stupid for putting such a specific – and permanent – design on his body without knowing what it means, especially to half of his family.

But, as we have seen, stupidity is not a deal breaker.

This is not the first time a “progressive” has run into problems. Look at [Pennsylvania Senator] John Fetterman. He had a history of hunting down a Black man with a gun, but Democratic voters stood behind him because he was a progressive who should be part of the big tent.

See how that turned out.

Graham Platner refusing to apologize, and people wanting to forgive him, shows how white people ruin things. The Democratic Party, even if a small number, opening its arms to accept him shows how broken the party is. When people show you who they are, believe them.

There is a large effort online to reshape the Democratic Party so that it’s more welcoming (not my word) to “the working class.” This effort mostly comes from what I call the pod bros. I think they are trying to discredit the influence of Black people in order to take over the party. I’m making this sound simpler than it is. What’s your view?

Listen, the pod bros are the epitome of fragility. A number of these chads and kens have a platform because of a Black man providing for them the opportunity. They are feckless and the type of progressivism that MLK warned us about. They want to be the center of the universe and will burn the world down to get it. I don’t see them as different from the maga crowd – except for wanting universal healthcare.

The white working class will never be a part of the Democratic Party. These pod bros and corporate interests will never let that happen. That is why they consistently refuse to address the demands of Black voters. That is why they do everything they can to divide us.

Interestingly enough, they want to discredit Black voters but will be the first to blame us when they lose. They are saying that we should be glad they let us in the room, but how dare we want a seat at the table.

Last April, I told you that if we needed to depend on white people to save us, we were f-----. I was right (I am going to keep saying that). Not only with the presidential election but look at what just happened in Texas with Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. Numbers don’t lie.

Texan voters showed up for a primary between a Black woman and a white man. They chose the white man. Now he is working to reach that white working-class voters but will he? He touts the bible, is a nice white man with little experience whose arrogance wouldn’t let him do what was right for Texas. That is who the mostly white, Latino, and Asian voters chose to run against horrible Republican choices. [James Talarico] doesn’t have the temperament to go against Paxton or Cornyn but maybe those elusive voters will show up. I don’t know.

During the suffrage movement, Black women led the charge in helping all women gain the right to vote. When white women gained that right, Black women were still denied access. White women told them it wasn’t their time and to sit down. We had to keep fighting on our own.

When 21-year-old activist Fred Hampton was working to unite the groups, he had poor Black, white, Latin and Asian people who were paying attention. He was uniting these groups to show that our problems weren’t with each other, but with those who had the money and power. The response was for the FBI murdering him in 1969.

From resistance to the New Deal to withholding GI benefits to Black veterans, from denying healthcare to Black people (Dying of Whiteness is a book everyone should read) to the erasure of Black history and the minimization of chattel slavery as the foundation of the United States – whenever elusive white working-class voters have had a chance to stand up and say enough, they have always chosen their whiteness.

The pod bros are just repeating the same history.

They will use Black people, use their knowledge, abilities, know-how, and community-building skills to propel themselves, but when we look for them to stand behind us, they are nowhere to be found.

They tell us we don’t matter or that we are playing “identity politics” or that what’s good for them is good for everyone. DEI and affirmative action were controversial only because we were able to be a part of the system and excel. That is why they sought to destroy them. White women were the major benefactors of both of those initiatives, however, so their absence is going to be eye-opening for them.

White women actively participated in their own demise just as they have always done. When the wind shifts, as it will, they will come to us again for that solidarity shtick – and we will have another choice to make. That is how they use us and then expect us to be grateful.

So they can downplay our contributions all they want. But if we, collectively, decided to sit it out, those elusive voters won’t show up. And then the Democrats will come back to us with hat in hand.

In the end, all of this is pointless if fascism completes its takeover. We had a good run, but I believe the time of American exceptionalism is gone. The only question now is going to be how to remake the US.

It won’t be in the image of the pod bros, I can tell you that.

I think the Democrats can restore public faith in themselves and in American democracy if they pursue accountability to the greatest extent possible. We need a new New Deal, but we also need to see some serious consequences. What are your thoughts?

I feel like you always set me up for a major rant!

Seriously, though, I believe that Democrats can restore faith. The question is how long will it take and what will we have to go through? I don’t know if they are built for “accountability to the greatest extent.”

We shouldn’t even be having this conversation. January 6th should have been the absolute deal breaker. I have so much anger. Everybody involved, and I mean everybody, should be under the jail right now.

But the party failed us in doing that. Joe Biden, for all the good he did, was too much of an institutionalist when we needed him to be something else. Hell, he could have done both but his focus was on that elusive white working-class voter. Look how that turned out.

The Democrats keep wanting to “play by the rules” when the rule book has been burned. We no longer have the “norms” that we had before. The world order is a whole new animal and we are far behind. The Democrats have not shown they are willing to fight the way Republicans do. They keep showing up with flowers to a gunfight.

For me, accountability looks like this:

I would not start with impeaching Trump. Save the best for last. Get rid of all of his enablers first. Once they are gone, he has no one left to shield him. This means getting rid of Thomas and Alito for taking money from the billionaires to rule in their favor. Then get Judge Aileen Cannon out. Not just impeached but she should lose her license to practice law. The full Jack Smith report should be released.

I know they are fighting this now, but Cannon was put in place to do what she did and it led us to be where we are now. All of the Epstein files need to be released and everybody implicated needs to be held accountable. Republican, Democrat. Just put them under the jail.

Musk and Thiel need to be investigated, fined, jailed, and/or deported. Or both. Then go after that whole crime family. Start with Jared and work your way through. Seize their money, assets, every damn thing they have stolen. Then impeach (for a third time) and convict Trump. Put him in jail – for war crimes, treason, just being a horrible, vindictive man-child who has created so much destruction.

However, I know that I will never see any of that from the Democrats. There may be hearings and information will come out, but it will just fade away like all the rest, and real accountability will never happen.

Some folks may go to jail and we will never see justice. Democrats have too many purity tests and rules that stop them from being great.

I am pragmatic. I don’t need perfection, I need results.

Kamala Harris recently gave an interview where she said make your vote transactional and I agree. “Vote blue no matter who” doesn’t fly anymore, because we see that it does not work.

So I want to see a party that will put safeguards in place so that we never have to face this crisis again. I want to see term limits for the Congress and the courts. I want to see the John Lewis Voting Rights bill enacted and, in a perfect world, getting rid of the Electoral College. Make the rich pay taxes and put laws in place that put humanity above capitalism. Create pathways for universal child care, laws that constrain healthcare costs, and get religion out of our schools.

Most importantly, I want to see my rights, as a Black woman, to stop being up for debate. DEI, CRT, whatever you want to call it – I am a human being and I should have the same rights, freedoms, access, privileges and opportunities that a white person has. Periodt.

We should have dealt with America’s original sin after the Civil War. The fact that we didn’t is why we are at this point. In all honesty, if you are running for office and you cannot focus on this issue as being critical, you get nothing from me. Not my time, money, or my vote.

Lastly, I want the US to do what Germany did after World War II. If you were part of the Nazi party, SS, or an enabler, you were banned from running for, or holding, public office. There should not be a single Republican that has supported what has been happening for the past 10 years that should be allowed to prosper in any way. No television panels, no talk shows, no podcasts, no books. They should be shunned from society, because they are complicit in everything that has happened. Part of the “new New Deal” should include these things.

The bottom line is that we have an opportunity to create the country that we have always claimed to be. One that is fair, just and equal. One that has laws that apply to everyone, regardless of income or color of skin. The question is whether the Democratic Party has the courage.

I don’t know, but I guess we are going to find out.

The president has lost control of the Epstein narrative so much that congressional Democrats have turned it against him. For it to be successful, however, they must understand where one aspect of the narrative ends and where another aspect begins. If they do not focus on the facts of Epstein’s life, and instead play footsie with conspiracy theories about it, their gambit could backfire. They could find themselves where Donald Trump is.

Writing in Dissent last month, Lindsay Beyerstein wrote that there’s very little to suggest that Jeffrey Epstein was anything more than a rich deviant who committed a vast number of sex crimes in order to please himself – and only himself. “Perhaps more evidence will ultimately come to light,” Lindsay wrote, “but for now we’re left with copious evidence of Epstein trafficking to himself and no hard evidence that he trafficked to others.”

While that fact might seem to take the momentum out of “Epstein conspiracism [that] has now gone fully bipartisan,” Lindsay wrote, it shouldn’t. Congressional Democrats have “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hold the powerful to account,” she wrote, and they needn’t be “teetering on the edge of lunacy.”

“The real scandal of the Epstein saga is not that a billionaire cabal runs the world,” Lindsay said. “It’s that there is a billionaire class. The moral of the Epstein files is that nobody should be that rich.”

Lindsay Beyerstein is an investigative journalist who has not been seen in the pages of the Editorial Board lately, because she’s been working hard on a book about conspiracy theories as a political rejection of the Enlightenment. The working title is Against the Light: The Deep State Myth from the Illuminati to QAnon.

Here’s our conversation.

In your piece for Dissent, you establish that Epstein's sex crimes were his and his alone. That blows a hole in the conspiracy theories about him, from the right and the left.

It's only going to increase the level of paranoia. If this batch of files doesn't support their cherished conspiracy theories, true believers will insist the real secrets are still hidden. The truth is always just over the next hill. The circle of people who must be hiding the truth widens. You can hear grumbling on the forums about how politicians leading the charge for transparency are controlled opposition for the Epstein class, because they haven't produced the answers the conspiracists were looking for.

Pam Bondi was fired I think because she underestimated the power of the QAnon conspiracy theory that drove Trump back into office. If you’re right and Epstein did not pimp out to Trump, they’re still linked forever thanks to her. Whoops?

It's ironic, isn't it? Trump campaigned for the release of the Epstein files, which you wouldn't have expected him to do if he knew there was damning evidence against him therein. Maybe he figured his base was infinitely manipulable and that they'd believe Bondi's assurances. But he stoked a groundswell for accountability that he ultimately couldn't contain. The all-but unanimous passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act was the first true legislative revolt of his entire tenure as president.

There's no question Trump and Epstein did scummy stuff in the 1990s, like the time Trump threw a "pageant" of 28 girls that was just him and Epstein. I believe the claim by biographer Michael Wolff that he saw polaroids taken at Epstein's house of Trump and top---- women who were of what sex-crime investigators call "difficult age” (as in, difficult to tell how old they are.)

Trump is lucky that the Epstein files mostly cover events after 2004. That was the year that his friendship with Epstein ruptured over a mansion called La Maison de L'Amitié (aka the House of Friendship). Trump's also smart enough not to use email.

There may not be a QAnon conspiracy, but there is still a conspiracy. Your piece sketches one out. Billionaires could not exist without it. Epstein became Epstein by exploiting it.

Conspiracies are secret. In America, the accumulation of unlimited wealth is public gospel. We're supposed to admire these billionaires and defer to them. It's a national religion.

Thinking of this as a conspiracy of individuals makes it harder to think of the lawlessness of billionaires as a structural feature of our society. There are conspiracies, sure. But nobody has to scheme to achieve impunity for billionaires per se. If you have that much money you can paralyze the justice system, buy the media, dominate campaign spending, and do whatever you want.

Sorry to quote you at you but: "These are private companies that curate the lives and fortunes of the ultra-rich. They craft wills and trusts to dodge taxes. They invest the family’s money. They juggle their yachts, jets, and mansions. All their operations are cloaked in secrecy." Care to clarify?

Family offices are a great example of what happens when individual families control resources that rival those of small countries. Their operations are secret because their only client is the family. There are no shareholders, independent directors or regulators to answer to. And that money can buy anything from armed security to artistic treasures. As government has receded, they shape more of our lives by funding education, philanthropy, and even diplomacy and public policy through NGOs and think tanks. It's not one big conspiracy all pushing in one direction. The Kochs funded different stuff than Bill Gates did. But the billionaire class as a whole is shaping the world we all live in.

The Democrats are currently using language similar to what Trump used in 2024. "Massive cover up" is an example that comes to mind. What are the Democrats going to reveal when they gain power? That Epstein was merely a rich deviant? That takes the juice out of allegations against "the Epstein class."

If Democrats just echo the Trump rhetoric, the spiraling paranoia will discredit them the same way it discredited Trump. It's fine to call out the very real coverup that Trump and Bondi tried to execute, but there has to be more to it. Democrats need to propose measures to ensure greater accountability in the future, the way Senator Frank Church proposed sweeping reforms to the intelligence community in the 1970s. He didn't just expose the coverups, the boondoggles, and the atrocities. He helped usher in a whole package of reforms to rein in the American intelligence services. Democrats need to propose fixes to rein in the whole Epstein class so this doesn't happen again.

You suggest that the evil isn't a secret cabal. The evil is the existence of billionaires. (Evil is my word.) It would be great if that were the conclusion that most people came to, but as you say, that would run against the grain of our "national religion."

Supply-side crusaders have been preaching for decades that a rising tide lifts all boats and that people who are critical of massive socioeconomic inequality are just envious. A key premise of that argument is that a billionaire's wealth doesn't take anything away from anyone else. That's false. Massive inequalities in wealth create massive disparities in power, despite nominal legal equality. If you can afford to sink $100 million into a political campaign, your voice counts more than an ordinary voter's. We're not all equal before the law when some people can shrug off the heaviest fines like they're nothing or fight the legal system to a draw in the courts because money is no object.

It is not conspiratorial to suggest that the Washington press corps chose to help Donald Trump win the 2024 election by preventing most Americans from seeing the degree to which the former president had deteriorated mentally since leaving office.

Virtually all his public appearances and media interviews featured long stretches of incoherence as well as outright gibberish. That itself should have been the news, but it rarely was. Instead a gap formed between the real Trump and the Trump represented by the news media. That gap was so big it had a name: sanewashing.

We are now seeing the consequences of a cognitively impaired president – a democracy in tatters, a country at war, an economy on the brink – but that was the risk that the owners of the country’s most lucrative media properties were willing to take.

The decade leading up to the 2024 election featured social and political progress for women, Black people and people of color. The MeToo movement revealed the ugly reality of sexism. The country was rocked by a reckoning over institutional racism in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a white cop. The pandemic empowered workers in ways largely unknown. Above all that was a president, Joe Biden, who put the government on the side of labor and the consumers who drive 70 percent of the economy.

These days we might call it a revolution against the Epstein class.

Which is why America’s cultural elites struck a bargain. He might be unfit mentally, and he might be dangerous politically, but it was better to have a second term for Donald Trump than a second term for a liberal administration that threatened to deepen gains made in the pursuit of liberty and justice for all.

America’s cultural elites needed a tool to smash the left.

Sure, he was deranged. Sure, he was a criminal and traitor. But the consequences of his reelection were unlikely to touch the elites while the consequences of the alternative very much would. So his liabilities were sanewashed and after he won, the press corps manufactured a consensus in which everything was going to be fine. The economy was good. Wokeism was defeated.

But here’s the odd thing. America’s cultural elites seem to actually believe their own propaganda. They seem to believe the reelection of Donald Trump was a correction, not only for America but for the media as well. They seem to believe that there really is a bias against white people and that once this bias is corrected, the news business will reap a populist windfall.

They’re wrong. There is no bias – anyway, not in the way they believe. That should be evident in the attempts to correct the “error” by the Washington Post, under the ownership of Jeff Bezos, and CBS News, under the leadership of Bari Weiss. Each has conspicuously reoriented their outfit toward the political right. The result has been a veritable bloodbath in lost profits.

That they are wrong is not evident, however, especially not to them. This alone is worth pondering. Many on the political left presume Bezos and Weiss are intentionally sabotaging the Post and CBS News. But, as Noah Berlatsky wrote recently, that’s more conspiracy than fact. They really do want to make money. Weiss in particular, Noah said, isn’t a saboteur. She’s just a losing loser.

I got in touch with Noah to talk about this and more, because I like him and because his newsletter is so insightful. It’s called Everything Is Horrible. Here’s the rest of our conversation.

You say Bezos and the Ellisons believe remaking their outlets in the mold of Fox will make them profitable. Yet they still believe that even after they have failed. In your view, why is that?

I think very wealthy people are surrounded by yes-men and are dazzled by their own success. They think they're brilliant and if their schemes go awry, it's someone else's fault or it's a sign of their willingness to think big, take risks, etc. Admitting they screwed up and are stupid would mean questioning whether they actually deserve all that power. Obviously, they can't do that.

You suggest that Weiss and the billionaires she represents think of themselves as tribunes of an authentic America. Will business failure correct that categorical error or nah?

I think that the wealthy are very reluctant to reassess their screw-ups. However, I do think that others watching them screw up are likely to become more skeptical of the idea that Trump and his billionaire cheering squad are the voice of the people.

You've already seen this I think as institutions have become more willing to fight and less willing to knuckle under, as it's become clear that Trump is not very popular. Disney and Kimmel were one example. More universities have started to push back. Democrats have become more willing to fight, etc.

What’s happening at CBS and others reflects the growing gap between media elites and normal people. It’s to the point now where Trump can claim victory in his war against Iran, and the press corps might choose to believe him, while consumers of the news watch the war burn up their wages. Will there be a correction at some point, as there would be on Wall Street?

The press has actually been pretty skeptical about the Iran war. There's some egregious cheerleading from people like New York Times columnist Bret Stephens and other neoconservative hacks, but it's nothing like with the Iraq War. I don't think the press would just shrug and go along with it if Trump declares victory.

I think this is largely because the public is so against the war. Media elites can be disconnected, but they also do react to what their audience wants, especially when there's a lot of bipartisan consensus. A significant section of the Republican Party and right wing is very angry about the war, and that means that media outlets feel empowered to criticize it – which I think they have done, which makes the war less popular, which makes the media more willing to criticize it and so on. It's a virtuous circle.

After the election, there was a media consensus that believed that Joe Biden was the aberration, not Trump, and that Trump, in coming back, was a restoration of normalcy. That consensus depended on Biden’s economy becoming Trump’s. Now that Trump’s economy is cratering, will the consensus change?

I'm not sure that I agree that the return of Trump was exactly seen as normal. Trump's often seen as an exciting deviation from the norm, and I think a lot of the excitement in elite circles was created by the sense of a definitive break with the past — Trump, they all believed, would crush the left rabble once and for all.

I think that the sense of fascist optimism among the elites has obviously soured. I don't know that it's useful to think of Trump as abnormal or an aberration exactly, though. He's dominated US politics for 11 years. He is the status quo. He's what America has decided to be. I think that we need to grapple seriously with the fact that overturning that status quo is going to require some sweeping changes. We aren't just going to snap back to normal when Trump is gone. This is normal, god help us.

Why do some on the left see conspiracy when Weiss and the oligarchs’ business failures are more easily explained by greed, cowardice, incompetence and the abuse of power?

I take it you mean. Why do some on the left (and not just the left!) believe that Weiss wants CBS to fail? That is, why do they think she's destroying it out of malice rather than incompetence?

I think there's a couple of things. One is that Weiss, Bezos and so forth really do want to kneecap the ability of journalists to criticize the regime. So reducing capacity and immiserating good reporters is a plus from their perspective. They want to destroy the old version of the Washington Post and CBS News, and doing so has been at least a partial win.

Second, I think there's always kind of an impulse to see your enemies as more organized, more effective and more competent than your side is. Republicans do this too. They're always talking about how Democrats are laser-focused and ruthless, etc. It's just one way that negative partisanship works.

Finally, I think people are sometimes afraid to hope? I often think about Bill Paxton in Aliens where he shouts, "Game over, man! Game over!" You wish for the end because then you can check out and don't have to live the painful bits of the end with the aliens catching and eating you. Which is understandable that you would rather miss that part! But of course if you check out and just assume the enemy is unbeatable, you aren't exploiting their weaknesses or doing what you can to defeat them.

So, yeah, I do not think that the struggle for media is over at all. Bezos and CBS have had very significant humiliations and losses. NOTUS is expanding its Washington newsroom with a lot of ex-Post staff; ABC News and NBC News have benefited and their ratings are up. The dream of a popular maga mainstream media bonanza is pretty dead, which I think leaves space open for other dreams and other approaches.

Obviously we're still all living in a nightmare. But Weiss and Ellison getting humiliated is good. Take the win when you can.

United States Senator John Fetterman is not going to switch political parties. That’s not how politics works in America. While it’s true that the Democrat has seen his favorability rise among Pennsylvania Republicans, they are never going to vote for him. He’s a Democrat.

His fate will be decided by a Democratic primary in two years’ time. As of now, that fate looks increasingly bleak. According to CNN, Fetterman's net approval is negative 40 percent. That’s as low as any approval rating for any sitting senator that anyone has seen. Even former US Senator Kyrsten Sinema was more popular before Arizona Democrats hounded her out.

Fetterman believes the problem he is facing is “Trump Derangement Syndrome." Those are his words and by using them, he’s trying to get himself off the hook. While Pennsylvania Democrats expect him to vote with the Democratic Party, his record-low approval rating is not due to their hatred of Donald Trump, though I'm sure there’s no shortage of that.

It’s due to none other than John Fetterman. He campaigned in 2022 as the anti-moderate. He promised to be a reliable 51st vote. He mocked centrists for their mealymouthed excuses for caving to the Republicans. Yet here he is, voting with them in highly visible ways that are clearly intended to outrage Democrats who are in the mood to fight. His was the deciding vote to confirm Markwayne Mullin as the secretary of the Homeland Security Department.

Fetterman’s approval isn’t in the toilet because of the animosity of his supporters toward Trump. It’s in the toilet because he didn’t mean what he said. He sold himself as a man of principle who refused to engage in bad faith. He broke his promise, resulting in lost faith.

It’s tempting to attribute Fetterman's bad faith to the stroke he had in 2022, which was nearly fatal. But I think that also lets him off the hook. The signs were evident long ago in his decision to create for himself a regular-joe persona similar to those of his constituents in order to generate leverage over Republicans who were making inroads among working-class white voters. In reality, Fetterman’s background is one of considerable comfort and privilege.

That he shares more in common personally with Republican rivals than he does with actual working-class Pennsylvanians was invisible when he was Joe Biden’s surrogate in a critical swing state. But since 2024, when fellow Democrat and former US Senator Bob Casey lost reelection and Trump won Pennsylvania, Fetterman’s background has come back to the fore.

That he wore a suit and tie in order to greet Donald Trump before his State of the Union address in February, after succeeding in getting the Senate to change the rules of decorum so he could wear hoodies and shorts, can be seen as not a departure but a return to form.

Is that fair? Perhaps not, but the fact remains that John Fetterman’s case is a cautionary tale of sorts. There is a price to be paid by progressive Democratic candidates who do not keep their promises, or who turn out to be something that they said they would never be.

It’s the story of the price of bad faith.

Few know more about bad faith than Denny Carter. He’s the publisher of the Bad Faith Times, a newsletter I have profited from reading and encourage you to check out. In the following interview, we touch on Fetterman and the fighting mood that Democratic voters are in.

“People want vengeance. They want retribution. They want the DOGE boys to go to jail and they want Miller and Noem and Rubio and Hegseth and the rest to face severe consequences for their crimes. You're not getting any of that with the Schumer contingent in charge

I think Fetterman's days are numbered, but his shtick will endure, alas. When do you think Democrats will figure out that punching left is not going to accomplish what it used to?

You can't dismiss the effects of his stroke. His policy stances and his demeanor have changed dramatically since then. Profiles and insider accounts have painted the picture of a man who is no longer operating the way he did before his stroke.

I wrote about Fetterman's campaign in 2022, because it was one of the first campaigns to refuse to engage in the right's bad faith around abortion rights and gun control and taxes and other issues that sometimes prove disastrous for Democrats.

His current shtick – which mostly involves being obstinate for the sake of being obstinate, and triggering the libs just for the fun of it -- wasn't his shtick when he headed into his Senate term.

Fetterman reportedly cares a lot about what his father thinks (I think a lot of men can relate to that) and longs for his dad's approval. Fetterman's father, a rightwinger who mainlines Fox, reportedly praises him when he sides with Trump against Democrats. I think that explains a lot about what drives him to essentially function as a Republican in some instances. (Fetterman still votes with the Democratic Party at an 80 percent clip).

Punching left, I think, will become a lot less common among congressional Democrats in whatever comes after Trump. The Democratic base has been very clear about what it wants, and it has nothing to do with bipartisanship. Part of me thinks it's not so much punching left as it is punching those who want Democrats to fight the authoritarians tearing apart the country.

For now, it's not so much about where you stand on Medicare for All as it is about whether you will deliver justice against the monsters robbing the country and terrorizing Americans.

Fetterman has been clear that he will not be part of that Fight Caucus. Maybe because daddy would be disappointed.

Some progressives want to see more progressives in the Democratic Party while normie Democrats tend to see Fetterman as a wolf in sheep's clothing. The same thing is happening with Graham Platner in Maine. How do you see people on the left resolving this tension?

I'm not sure that tension will be resolved no matter how the midterms turn out. A big part of the appeal of guys like Fetterman and Platner is that they are physically imposing men who talk tough. The Democratic base – along with anyone paying even passing attention to the regime's crimes – is in the mood for fighting. It makes sense that big men capture their attention. Of course, this ignores a lot of determined women candidates who fight but don't look like they could step into a UFC cage.

I will point out that Governor Janet Mills, Platner's opponent, last year stood up to Trump in person and told him to f--- all the way off with his threats around defunding Maine schools if they did not abide by his regime's anti-trans executive orders.

We talk a lot about bad faith among Republicans, but perhaps not enough about it among progressives. Fetterman isn't working class, but his persona is based on the idea that he's authentic (ie working class). Thoughts?

I suppose politicians pretending they are working class is nothing new. Almost all of them come from extreme wealth. It's the only way one can run for office anymore. Fetterman and Platner have taken this art to a new level, though. You'd think they were punching a time clock between campaign appearances. They both look like absolute hell, which can be (very) appealing to actual working class folks. Politics is a game. It's theater. You dress the way you need to dress and say what you need to say to get elected. That's no different today than it was during the Obama years or the early 2000s or the Clinton era. A guy like Platner definitely understands the WWE aspect of politics, horrifying tattoos and all. That makes him formidable.

My feeling is that Platner is succeeding because he's the podcasters' idea of an authentic working-class American, even though Platner and the podcasters come from the same elite backgrounds: born into affluence, attended elite schools, etc. They all know it's a game, but I think the goal is real: taking over the Democrats. I welcome you pushing back on that.

That's not a bad theory. I don't know if the entire podcasting class comes from privilege, though. I think they find common ground in committing to the end of the Schumer era and all that entails. Again, I don't know if this necessarily has to do with so-called left policies as much as it does about empowering elected officials who won't hesitate to imprison their enemies when they commit crimes against the nation and its people.

Chuck Schumer and the current Democratic leadership have proven unwilling to breach that barrier, as we saw in the months after January 6. The thinking among the pro-Platner, faux-working class podcasting folks might be this: Secure power by any means necessary and remake the Democratic Party into a pro-democracy organization that will punish those who have run roughshod over constitutional governance.

People want vengeance. They want retribution. They want the DOGE boys to go to jail and they want Miller and Noem and Rubio and Hegseth and the rest to face severe consequences for their crimes. You're not getting any of that with the Schumer contingent in charge.

The president is out of control. The Iranians have the advantage. The Israelis are unleashed. Allies are outraged and alienated. The most Donald Trump can do right now is lie with everything he's got in the hopes that markets believe him and keep the price of oil down.

That appears to be the entire point of last night’s “update” – to quell any nascent feelings of panic. In the days leading up to the primetime address, he hinted hard that the end was coming. Indeed, at 3:28 pm eastern time, Politico ran this credulous but reassuring headline: “‘I came, I saw, I conquered’: Trump set to claim victory in Iran at primetime address.”

Then he didn’t. The war, he said, is “nearing completion” and would take another “two to three weeks.” In response this morning, stocks fell and oil prices soared, reaching $110 per barrel, on Trump’s vow “to escalate attacks on Iran,” in the words of the Associated Press.

By now, it should be a familiar pattern. Trump has been saying the war is winding down virtually since the beginning of it. He knows markets want it to. He knows that if he doesn’t end it soon, gas prices will keep rocketing. He knows rocketing gas prices will vaporize whatever advantage his party has in the run-up to this year’s congressional elections. He knows that if the Democrats take the House, he faces a world of endless, grinding exposure.

At the same time, Trump can’t end it. Israel is neither going to stop its imperialist agenda (it invaded southern Lebanon) nor is it going to stop attacking Iran for the purpose of killing its leadership. US allies in the Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, where Trump is heavily invested, want the war to continue. They prefer a US ground invasion to overthrow the regime.

Iran’s regime is also not going to stop. It will continue to choke off the supply of oil at the Strait of Hormuz to hurt Trump while boosting sales of its own oil to China. It has established a tribute system in which “friendly” countries can pay a toll or suffer the consequences. Tolling offers an incentive for insurers. They would rather see a $100 million tanker carrying $200 million in oil pay a 1 percent tax than see it sinking to the bottom of the Persian Gulf.

Even if the president were not a colossal moron surrounded by yes-men, he’d still be stuck. (If none of those things were true, he would not have gone to war.) The best thing he can do is kick the can down the road, which is to say, lie: extend the time frame by another two weeks, continuously imply that the war is ending, that Iran is defeated, that NATO is ungrateful, and so on, in a desperate hope that everyone will buy the “reality” he’s selling.

But Trump knows everyone won’t buy it. On Wednesday, Politico reported that the current price of oil (about $100 per barrel) is “a baseline” for the White House. They expect it to keep going up. Politico said they are not “ruling out the possibility of prices rising as high as $200 per barrel.” That would put the national average price of gas at around $8 (or diesel at $12).

Paul Krugman reminded us that gas prices are only half the story. The effect of the Strait of Hormuz under lockdown will be felt in the price of “diesel, jet fuel, fertilizer and plastics.” Who pays the cost? Producers at first, but it will “quickly be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices for shipping and, indirectly, almost everything you buy,” Krugman said.

What would the world look like with $200 a barrel? asked journalist Jesus Servulo Gonzalez. In that hypothetical scenario, he said, “the economy would enter a recession, triggering an inflationary crisis that would severely impact citizens’ finances and businesses’ bottom lines.

"The world would become poorer and economic activity would grind to a halt.”

Trump made an appeal last night. He said the war is part of a “future investment in your children’s and grandchildren’s future.” In his incoherent way, the president was offering a kind of bargain – a little personal economic security in exchange for national security.

That, however, flies in the face of the existing deal, which was trading democracy and the institutions of democracy in exchange for economic security. On MS Now this morning, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said that many people in the last election chose to swap their “discomfort in what he does to our national institutions for a better economy.

“A majority, or overwhelming majority, of Americans do not like the way he conducts himself in office,” he said. “They do not like what he’s done to our institutions, but they were willing to make a trade for their family’s economic security. When they’re not getting that, they’re gonna abandon ship and that’s what you see them doing in the poll numbers right now.”

A new CNN poll found that just 27 percent approve of Trump’s handling of inflation.

Donald Trump was never going to live up to his end of the bargain with the American people, just as he was never going to live up to the promises made by previous presidents to maintain order in the Middle East to ensure safe passage of the world’s supply of oil.

So far, the lies have been working. Markets have shown a stunning willingness to believe him when he says the end of the war is around the corner. But the lies may soon stop working.

While the average price of gas is currently $4.07, Gasbuddy’s Patrick De Haan told Reuters the pain will get worse soon. “US average retail gasoline prices are now set to climb to between $4.25 and $4.45 a gallon by next week after crossing $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022,” Reuters said. "If there is no viable plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the US average price of gasoline ⁠will likely cross $5 a gallon and hit record levels within a month.”

There is no plan, of course – not one that will actually reopen the strait and restore order. It's too late for that. All Iran has to do to spook insurers is sink one tanker a month and it can do that even if the president were to order ground forces to occupy key portions of that strait.

But the built-in failure of an invasion wouldn't be apparent for a long. Meanwhile, Trump could use the fog of war, especially troop casualties, as cover for stringing along markets, giving investors just enough hope to keep oil prices down until it becomes obvious to everyone that the mission could not from the start accomplish what Trump said it would.

But by then, Trump will have moved on to the next lie.

During a primetime address last night, the president provided an “update” on the state of his war against Iran. Oil prices fell and stock rose on the expectation that the conflict will end.

It’s not going to.

Yes, I know what Donald Trump says.

In an interview, he said, “we're going to be out pretty quickly." He said Iran “won't have a nuclear weapon because they are incapable of that ⁠now.” He said “we have had full regime change.” He said there’s “a very good chance that ⁠we'll make a deal.”

In fact, there is no regime change. Hardliners now have complete control. There won’t be a deal. Iran has shown no interest in one. It has denied Trump’s repeated claims of ongoing talks. US forces won’t leave, because they are entrenched in the region. The war will continue to rage no matter what the president says tonight.

Trump might declare victory, according to a Rapidan Energy Group brief (which I found via Carl Quintanilla), but he “will struggle.” Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz. It still controls highly enriched uranium. Israel will still continue its attacks. Iran will still retaliate against Israel and the surrounding Gulf states. “A clean US disengagement [is] structurally difficult,” it said.

As for nukes, the problem doesn’t end with Iran. Trump has opened a new chapter of nuclear proliferation, as small nations like Poland, South Korea and Saudi Arabia can no longer trust the US to act as a deterrent against Russia, North Korea and Iran.

The markets might be misreading the president, badly. This morning, I interviewed a career intelligence analyst who goes by the Bluesky handle Shipwreck. He thinks it’s unlikely that Trump will announce the war’s end. Instead, he thinks it’s more likely he will announce its escalation. The goal, he said, might be placing ground troops on islands in the strait to reopen it to shipping.

How long and bloody would that be? I asked.

“The operation wouldn’t be as bad as the holding period, where Iran would likely fire short-range ballistic missiles and drones at our forces.”

Sitting ducks? I asked.

“Kind of,” he said, “we would have air cover and would pound any sites that fired, but yeah, not good.”

Whatever happens, Shipwreck said, there is no walking away.

“We won’t walk and can’t,” he said. “It amazes me how bad the markets can be at reading some geopolitical things. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps runs the show. They are fanatics and don’t care about repercussions. They were founded and based on maximalist ideals. They will fight to the death and will not surrender. Even if Trump said ‘mission accomplished’ tonight and it’s over, which I doubt, Iran and Israel are not stopping.”

Here’s the rest of my interview with Shipwreck.

Is the Rapidan report right?

If we leave without control of the Strait of Hormuz, Iran will make it painful for everyone. And yes Israel will likely continue actions against Iran with or without the US.

How painful?

Painful, as in painful cost. They will charge a fee and restrict movement to try to keep oil at a high rate, largely with the intent of recouping some funds back from the war. They will likely only allow “friendly countries” to move. Iran’s whole goal is to enact an economic cost, because they can’t do it militarily.

For how long? How motivated are they?

Very motivated, as long as needed. To keep pressure on the Strait of Hormuz, a few drone hits on ships or small boat swarms will keep insurance high and likely keep ships away. Without being under pressure of attack by the US or Israel, they could keep it up for as long as they see fit. They would avoid angering China or other major exporters and just keep harassing US and western ships. Look at how the Houthis effectively closed the Bab al-Mandab Strait for months by just the threat and a few hits.

I imagine a situation where a strait that isn’t open and safe will slow traffic and raise prices. The insurance issue is a big one. Even a partially open strait causes problems. See the Houthis in the Red Sea. I don’t see energy prices coming down any time soon, so likely a long tail of pain even when this thing enters a calmer phase. The key is “phase.” The length of those will vary. Markets don’t like the unknown and we are heading for that.

Will Trump declare victory tonight? If so, is it a victory?

I don’t think he will declare victory. I’m leaning towards him announcing actions with US ground forces in the strait. It seems like two to three weeks more at minimum based on force movements. There will be no victory. The hardliners now run Iran. We are set up for years of periods of hostility with breaks for calm. Think pre-October 7 in Israel with the proxies.

To be clear, you think he's going to announce an invasion?

Maybe, but more likely he will announce the next phase, which could include ground operations. Again, I have no insight, just basing it on assessments and force movements. He is very difficult to judge. I brief every morning and it’s always an adventure in trying to understand US policy and actions.

What would the next phase look like?

US strikes followed by Iranian counter-action against Israel and the Gulf states, with sporadic closures of the strait. Then periods of calm with hybrid actions. Possibly proxy actions, depending on how long it takes Iran to get them running again. Honestly, the end state for Iran is developing a nuke and following the North Korean model. They know a nuke at this point is the only deterrent. They will do everything they can to achieve it.

The ground invasion will more likely occur in the strait, taking islands but not in Iran proper. It’s too risky but not impossible to carry out actions deep in Iran. We tried it once and it failed miserably, see Operation Eagle Claw. The ground invasion is the wildcard, but if it occurs, it will be to open the strait.

The markets seem to be expecting Trump to walk away.

We won’t walk and can’t. It amazes me how bad the markets can be at reading some geopolitical things, especially in Iran. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps runs the show. They are fanatics and don’t care about repercussions. They were founded and based on maximalist ideals. They will fight to the death and will not surrender. Even if he said “mission accomplished” tonight and it’s over, which I doubt, Iran and Israel are not stopping.

What about allies? Are the Gulf states going to keep trusting Trump given that Iran is going to throttle the strait?

The Gulf states were initially hesitant, but now they have hardened and are fully backing the destruction of the Iranian regime. They are another piece of all of this, and why we can’t just walk away. The Gulf states really have no choice but to stay with the US. They lack the military to do anything significant.

What about allies in Europe and Asia? Trump has triggered what looks to be a global recession. Are they going to continue trusting Trump to take care of Iran? Seems unlikely.

Europe clearly wants no part of this. They are likely trying to straddle the fence in order to be able to get oil out of the strait if Trump decides to bail. No one trusts Trump, but everyone needs the US over the long term. They’re walking a fine line.

It seems like nuclear proliferation is going to restart. Trump wants out of NATO. Iran is going to seek a bomb. Small countries can't trust the US to deter big countries. Even Poland is talking about making nukes. Is this Pandora's box opening?

Yes, and add Saudi Arabia to the list if Iran gets a nuke. Others in the region may also try. It’s the second- and third-order impacts that people fail to grasp in these large geopolitical events.

I think we have to accept the truth. We are going to pay, and we are going to continue to pay, for the president’s war of choice against Iran. Such are the consequences of politics. Maybe Americans will take their democracy seriously next time.

If Donald Trump walks away from this war, things won’t go back to normal. Over the weekend, the AP confirmed reporting from elsewhere that Iran has established a tribute system through the Strait of Hormuz. It is charging as much as $2 million for safe passage of each oil tanker, payable in Chinese currency (yuan). That “toll,” as it’s being called, will be passed on to consumers.

But if Donald Trump escalates the war, things will also not go back to normal. Reports suggest that he’s thinking about invading Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil depot. The idea may be to take it and use it to negotiate terms of a ceasefire, but no one really knows.

In any case, escalation will not restore the flow of oil through the strait. All Iran has to do is sink a few tankers, as former Secretary of Defense James Mattis said, with “anti-ship cruise missiles that could be fired off the back of a pickup truck that can go 100.”

Sink a few tankers that are worth about $100 million each and scare off anyone who’s willing to insure them. That means oil slows to a trickle, prices keep going up and we all look on in despair as our incomes are drained away. (Bloomberg reported over the weekend that the price of gas might be the least of our concerns as we may not be able to find any gas to pay more for.)

Walking away from the war would also do nothing to stop Israel from continuing to invade Iran’s allies or from attacking Iran. It would do nothing to stop Iran from attacking neighboring US-allied Gulf states in retaliation for Israel’s continued assault. As long as there’s conflict, insurers won’t insure, and if insurers won’t insure, expect to see oil climb to $200 a barrel, according to Bloomberg, which puts the average price of gas at around $8.

To recap, if Trump walks away, we pay. If he escalates, we pay. We pay for the toll or we pay for the scarcity. (Or we can’t find any gas to pay more for.) Again, Americans could have taken their democracy seriously when deciding whether to elect a convicted felon who already screwed up the first time he was president. But we as a people did not do that. The consequence is that we pay.

Meanwhile, the president we elected keeps lying about the end of the war in the hopes that traders will believe him and keep down the price of oil. He has done this repeatedly, and the question has been: how long are investors going to trust the gap between what Trump is saying about the war and what’s actually happening?

To find the answer to that and more, I got in touch with Patrick Watson, a senior economic analyst for Mauldin Economics. I have turned to him often whenever I need answers on the state of the economy. I asked Patrick if Trump’s war is reorganizing the world. He said yes – if the war does not come to an end soon.

That “requires re-opening the strait, which means Iran has to be either defeated or convinced to stop threatening ships,” he said.

What happens if this war doesn't end and the oil shipments do not return to normal? Five-dollars-a-gallon gas permanently?

“Permanently” is a strong word. Oil and oil-derived fuel prices will stay elevated until either the supply interruption eases or demand drops enough to restore balance. Those are both slow processes, but they will happen.

The problem is that the longer this war drags on, the longer it will take to repair the infrastructure that’s damaged or destroyed. The oil industry was already reluctant to invest in new drilling because it can see renewable energy growing so fast. With the rest of the world producing oil at close to full capacity, it could be a long time before we get much help on the supply side.

Demand is harder to assess. Recessions typically reduce fuel demand as people travel less, companies ship less stuff around and so on. To the extent this war reduces global economic growth, we could see supply and demand come back into balance over a year or two. But that would be doing it the hard way.

Donald Trump is lying to ease market fears. That’s very clear. But for how long will investors choose to believe the president?

I talk to Republican business owners and investors all the time. Off the record, many will say they don’t especially like Trump, nor do they believe everything he says, but they still choose him over any Democrat. The economic term for this is “ordinal preference.” You can call it “choose your poison.” They think Trump, for all his problems, is less poisonous than the alternative. So they keep supporting him even when they don’t believe him.

Of course, the problem with this is there’s no bottom. No matter what Trump does, the response is “the Democrats would do worse.” That means they can’t abandon him. They may grumble but that’s as far as it goes. It’s a permission structure to excuse anything. Maybe at some point, they’ll lose enough money to reconsider. But I don’t think we are near that point.

Inflation is already high due to Trump's tariffs. Some say the manufacturing and agriculture sectors are already in a recession. How long would it take for higher than normal gas prices to push the rest of the economy into a recession?

Inflation leads to recession when prices get high enough to reduce aggregate demand. In an energy shock, that would mean people are spending so much more on gasoline that they have to reduce other spending. They eat out less often, so restaurants lose business. They keep the old car a year longer instead of buying a new one. All those little decisions add up.

The wrinkle this time is that today’s economy is far less energy-intensive than it used to be. Gasoline is more expensive, yes, but as a percentage of the typical household’s spending, the higher price may not change their behavior. The danger will come when the fuel prices show up in other things.

Food production and distribution require a lot of fuel, for example. Airline tickets are another example. But the big companies hedge their expenses, locking in prices months or years in advance. So this is another slow process. It depends on how the war unfolds, but I think recession is still some time away.

Most attention is on gas prices, but fertilizer is another issue. Much of it goes through the Strait of Hormuz. What happens if supply is throttled? What can be done if the war continues?

The war is affecting more than oil and gas exports. The Gulf countries are also unable to ship things like sulfuric acid, which is necessary for refining copper, or the helium that’s used in microchip production and MRI machines. These are much smaller markets than oil, but they’re critical in certain sectors.

Fertilizer is a problem, because you need natural gas to produce ammonia. The Haber-Bosch process that enables this literally revolutionized global agriculture a century ago. This war is now incinerating our supply of the key component. Worse, a lot of the other capacity is in Russia and China. In time, fertilizer production could shift to places with more secure natural gas supplies. But fertilizer prices will probably rise a lot in the meanwhile, and it will flow through to food prices.

Trump has reorganized the world but doesn't know it, right?

It could turn out that way if Gulf shipping stays frozen. Other governments and businesses have to work around this disruption. If Trump forces them to adjust to new ways, they may not go back to the old ones. That will have effects far beyond energy. Averting this requires re-opening the strait, which means Iran has to be either defeated or convinced to stop threatening ships. That’s a very high standard because ships don’t sail without insurance, and insurers don’t write coverage in active war zones.

Maybe it’s not the best analogy but I compare this to the Vietnam War. Back then, all our carpet bombings didn’t compel surrender because the Viet Cong could simply retreat into their tunnels and pop up somewhere else. Similarly, the IRGC has little missile and drone units spread over thousands of square miles. They don’t have to sink any ships; occasional near misses are enough to stop the flow. Removing this threat will be tough. Also worth noting that most of those ships are going to Asia, not the US. That’s where the economy will suffer first. It will spread globally, though, unless this somehow ends soon.

The Democrats in the Congress held the line and won. So far, that’s the story of the fight over the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). They told the Republicans they can have funding for DHS but not Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Or they can have funding for all of DHS, including ICE, but with major reforms to ICE.

The Republicans said no to both proposals for weeks, during which time airports nationwide descended into chaos. Employees at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) were working without pay. Over time, they called out sick so much that lines were growing to five and six hours long. At least one plane crashed as a consequence of the shutdown.

The mess was getting so messy that last weekend, Senate Republicans went to the president with a deal. The Democrats would fund all of DHS but not ICE. Airports would return to normal. The GOP would get a chance to secure ICE funding later. But Donald Trump said no. He said he would agree if the Democrats supported unrelated legislation called the SAVE Act.

But the president didn’t stop there with his unrealistic demands. To create what he believed was leverage over the Democrats, he dispatched ICE agents to airports around the country. It was reported that they were “assisting” the TSA, but in reality, Trump was trying to bully the Democrats, especially Chuck Schumer, into giving him everything he wanted.

The Senate minority leader stood firm, though. Despite the implicit expectation by the Washington press corps that he would surrender to Trump's demands for the sake of the country, he outmaneuvered Trump by arranging a series of votes in which Senate Democrats made clear their intention to restore order at airports by funding all of DHS, except for ICE.

Meanwhile, pressure was building, especially on the president. His remedy of sending ICE agents to “assist” the TSA was transparently bogus as ICE agents stood around doing nothing in full view of people waiting in line for hours. Moreover, Connecticut Congresswoman Rose DeLauro (my representative) got the TSA's administrator to confirm that DHS had made the decision to pay ICE, Border Patrol, the Secret Service and Coast Guard but not TSA workers.

Until Thursday, the Senate Republicans could still plausibly blame Schumer and the Democrats, but all such plausibility went out the window last night after Trump claimed for himself imaginary emergency powers to fund the TSA without the Congress. He said he was going to sign an “executive order” to “immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation, and to quickly stop the Democrat Chaos at the Airports.”

No one seems to know what he was talking about. Executive orders claiming the authority to pay for things without an act of Congress would not only be illegal and unconstitutional but “anti-constitutional,” said Josh Chafetz, a law professor at Georgetown. “They strike at the core of one of the principles that allows our entire constitutional order to function.”

But before anyone had a chance to figure out what Trump was saying, or whether to debate it, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, in the wee hours of Friday morning, brought a bill to fund DHS, but not ICE. It passed by voice vote, according to the Post, “with only a handful of senators in the chamber.” Chuck Schumer stood firm and won. The bill is now in the House.

Schumer did not get the ICE reforms that the Democrats wanted, including a ban on agents wearing masks and a requirement that they follow warrants signed by a judge, not an official in the administration. But forcing the Senate Republicans to cave is a victory when Senate Democrats usually cave. It's arguably the best sign yet that the party establishment understands the need to fight. Even a squish like Schumer may have internalized that Trump's power comes from the willingness of his enemies to defeat themselves.

For over a year, Schumer has been the subject of intense scrutiny by the Democratic base. During the last shutdown, in November, he engineered a surrender before Thanksgiving. It was a situation similar to what we have seen this week in which air travelers were stressed. Because of that history, many liberals expected Schumer to surrender again. Yet he didn’t.

But if there’s newfound strength in the Democrats, it’s because there’s newfound weakness in the Republicans, especially the president. By deciding to go it alone – again – and declaring for himself the authority to pay TSA workers on his own, he was met immediately with the question of why, if he could do it by himself the whole time, he didn’t from the start.

In effect, he sabotaged his own party’s negotiating position. Thune could have kept blaming the Senate Democrats for the airport chaos. He might have worn Chuck Schumer down, and perhaps he would have succeeded. He will never know, however, because the leader of his party threw away what little leverage he had. And without it, the House Republican leadership can do little but complain about the fact that the Senate Democrats didn’t cave.

Indeed, the House Republicans are experiencing what can only be called disarray. Speaker Mike Johnson rejected the Senate bill, calling it “a joke.” He said the House would vote on its own DHS funding bill. He said there’s only one party that’s treating Americans like “pawns.”

An hour later, the AP reported that Trump signed the executive order claiming for himself the authority to pay TSA workers. While that is dubious, legally and constitutionally, it still raises the question: if Donald Trump has the power to do this now, why didn’t he use it back then? If he had the power, why make Thune and Johnson jump through hoops?

Someone is treating someone like pawns and those someones are Trump and the Republicans. (Whether TSA workers are actually paid appears to be an open question.)

But Trump’s weak bargaining power has deeper roots. As I mentioned in Tuesday’s edition, his decision to dispatch ICE agents to airports was a strongman’s decision – if the Congress can’t fix the problem, he’ll fix it himself. But doing so not only made the problem worse. It revealed the strongman’s impotence. ICE agents mostly stood around doing nothing.

At the same time, his decision made clear to a class of Americans that is not usually exposed to the consequences of politics – affluent white people – that they will feel the consequences of politics given enough time. Elect a man who believes that every problem requires him to “be strong” and get a president who is so incompetent that he sabotages his own party.

Donald Trump held another one of those televised meetings today during which the cabinet secretaries take turns pandering to him. It was obscene, per usual, but also oddly affirming.

Why? Because I think it demonstrated something that the Secretary of Defense Rock told me yesterday. (He’s the anonymous publisher of History Does You, a newsletter about the intersection of military and civilian life.) SODR told me that Trump may think he’s winning the Iran war, because “his briefings are essentially CENTCOM highlight-reels.” Watch enough stuff getting blown up, he said, and you too might think you’re winning a war you’re losing.

In today’s cabinet meeting, Trump referred repeatedly, as he often does, to the damage being done by US forces. He’s titanically self-centered and surrounded by yes-men. That might result in him believing that "the conflict is in its final stages," as the Wall Street Journal said.

Of course, it’s not in its final stages. The Iranians control the Strait of Hormuz. They are turning it into a tribute system. They said there will not be “any negotiations.” Hardliners are now demanding a restart to the nuclear bomb program. Trump can quit when they say so. Meanwhile, the price of gas in the US keeps going up, with a recession or worse in the offing.

There is, as one expert put it today, a conspicuous gap between what’s the president is saying about the war and what's actually happening, and the gap is getting wider by the day. “Are we deescalating? Or is this just an illusion? Or a ruse? If it is, for what? And even if there is some deal on the horizon, would President Trump actually take it? Would the regime?”

Whatever the case, investors who have kept their faith in the president lost it today. “Stocks had their worst day since the war with Iran started, as doubt took over again from hope on Wall Street about a possible end to the conflict,” according to the Associated Press.

The S&P 500 fell 1.7 percent. The index is headed for a fifth straight losing week, which would be the longest such losing streak in almost four years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1 percent, and the Nasdaq composite sank 2.4 percent. They’re the latest flip-flops for financial markets this week after Iran rejected a US offer for a ceasefire. Oil prices rose more than 4 percent, and Treasury yields climbed in the bond market.

But the problem is deeper than a moron easily impressed by CENTCOM videos. “At a more fundamental level, the problem appears to be the absence of a coherent strategy altogether,” the Secretary of Defense Rock said. From that, he added, arises “the illusion of coherence.”

I didn’t include the following interview material with the Secretary of Defense Rock in yesterday’s edition, because the edition was getting too long. I’m publishing it today, because it explains the organizational breakdown between where the war began and where it’s going.

The Secretary of Defense Rock said:

The individual responsible for defining political objectives [ie, the president] either has not articulated them clearly or lacks a settled conception of what success actually looks like. In that vacuum, the rest of the system is left to infer intent rather than execute it. Subordinates, whether planners, commanders, or staff, begin interpreting fragments, signals, and impulses, trying to reverse-engineer a strategy from ambiguous guidance.

The result is predictable. In the absence of clear political direction, organizations default to what they can control, which is tactics. Operations become ends in themselves rather than instruments of policy. Units execute strikes, maneuvers, or shaping actions not because they are tightly linked to a defined strategic objective, but because they are feasible, familiar, and measurable. Activity substitutes for purpose.

This dynamic creates the illusion of coherence. From the outside, it can look like a deliberate campaign with phased objectives when in reality it is a collection of loosely connected actions driven by local logic rather than overarching design. Tactical success in this environment risks becoming strategically meaningless or even counterproductive because there is no clear framework that ties battlefield outcomes to political effects.