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Dispatch columnist Nick Catoggio says President Donald Trump has plopped such a noxious odor on right-wing ideology that even ideological diehards are leaping out of windows to avoid him.

“After 10 years of degrading bootlicking obeisance by the president’s many courtiers, it was startling to see someone who needs a relationship with Trump assert her dignity against his insults,” said Catoggio, speaking of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s epic takedown and denial of Trump’s claim that she “begged” him to “take a picture with him.”

In reaction Meloni exploded onto the news cycle, declaring that neither she nor Italy begs for anything.

Of course Trump said it, suspects Catoggio: “Casually demeaning someone because he bears them a grudge is as instinctive to Donald Trump as applying bronzer or bloviating about ‘strength.’”

“But those who need to stay on his good side — like, say, every Republican official in the country — are doomed to follow the Ted Cruz career arc between 2016 and 2021, broadly speaking,” Catoggio added. “That is, if Trump insults your wife, you find a way to let it slide and salute when he asks you to help him stage a coup.”

Additionally, if you’re a European leader trying to cobble NATO together and keep Trump from siding with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Catoggio said “the cowardice of the American leadership class” leaves you with few allies within the U.S. willing to support your resistance to Trump.

“And so the prudent, if pathetic, thing to do when an imperious postliberal goblin insulted you was to bite your tongue,” said Catoggio. “Not Meloni, though. She’s had enough.”

Still, Catoggio suspects Trump’s character and behavior on other matters is driving the Italian leader's anger.

“She’s a right-wing nationalist, like the president himself. She promotes Christian values and the traditional family model, and presumably she’d like to see that vision make inroads across the continent,” Catoggio said. But “Trump is killing her chances.”

“The more right-wing politics becomes associated with fat orange clownery, the less European voters will want any part of it,” said Catoggio — and she’s not the only right wing leader fearing for the stain Trump leaves on their argument.

Far-right European leaders, he said, have been running away from the president for months, in fact. Anger at the Iran war’s global impact on energy costs is a start, but Trump’s behavior is also to blame.

Jordan Bardella, the head of France’s leading nationalist party summed up Trump’s antics as, “not only erratic but also extremely unsteady and constantly shifting. … [We need to] allow powers that are a bit bewildered by the United States — and who no longer understand the comings and goings of the American president, particularly on defense — to be able to find in the French defense industry a backup option.”

“The incident with Meloni is simply another bewildering episode involving the American president that can only hurt the United States and make the global right he unofficially leads look petty, tactless, impetuous, and stupid,” said Catoggio. “Maybe Meloni’s irritation is less a product of her pride being wounded than her resentment at being saddled with a prominent ideological ally who’s discrediting their mutual cause. She’s doing what she can to re-dignify it.”

Catoggio added that congressional Republicans should meditate on Meloni’s streak of independence, but he added “we’re waaaaaaay past the point of salvaging the respectability of right-wing politics in the U.S.”

“So enjoy the Giorgian rebellion abroad,” he concluded. “It’s the closest to dignity from a conservative official that you and I will witness in 2026.”

Zeteo writers Asawin Suebsaeng and Prem Thakker say Trump is so desperate to finally be rid of the war he unilaterally began in February that he is wandering around the White House, bawling in panic that Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu is scheming to drag him back in.

“He’s swearing a lot about it,” one close Trump adviser told Zeteo. Another Trump administration official said: “[R]ight now, he’s definitely madder at the Israelis than the Iranians.”

The sources who’ve spoken to Trump over the past several days say Israel’s “continued attacks in Lebanon and Israeli leaders’ efforts to pressure the Americans into abandoning the memorandum of understanding with Iran have, in fact, further driven Trump in the opposite direction,” according to Zeteo, adding that “the president keeps venting to advisers how angry he is at Netanyahu and other political and media figures – in the U.S. and in Israel – for transparently trying to drag him back into war, or for suggesting that Trump is surrendering to Iran.”

But Trump is surrendering wholly to Iran, according to critics on both the Republican and Democratic side of the political spectrum.

As rising gas prices and inflation threatened to blast Republicans’ midterm chances Trump grabbed desperately for a memorandum of understanding that puts the Iranian regime in a stronger position than it was before Trump took it upon himself to invade. This includes even more reparations money, massive sanctions relief, and Iran's continued economic control over the Strait of Hormuz and the ability to extort fees from passing oil tankers.

Worse, the deal also helps “solidify [Iran's] international bragging rights for fighting off the mighty war machine of the world’s undisputed superpower,” wrote Suebsaeng and Thakker.

Despite his embarrassing MOU, however, Trump remains terrified of the alternative.

“What we have today is a quarrel between two like-minded, allied warmongers – it’s just that the American warmonger now seems to instinctively realize how badly his warmongering is politically destroying him and his party at home,” said the Zeteo authors.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment, but Suebsaeng and Thakker say Trump’s reticence has nothing to do with mercy and a fresh appreciation for peace.

“Trump, of course, is not mad at Israeli leadership out of any moral urgency or compunction. Trump, the ‘lazy warmonger,’ illegally started a regional bloodbath, and he and his administration own the carnage and the coming years of fallout forever,” the write.

Excerpts from Regime Change, a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, reveal President Donald Trump’s private residence is filled with damp carpets and junk food trash, reports Jezebel writer Wren Woodson.

Donald and Melania Trump famously maintain separate bedrooms, but Trump’s quarters are exactly the mold-threatened mess-pile some critics might expect from a man who stays up all night snacking and posting demented rants on the social media.

“As if the mold hazard weren’t enough, staffers also had to babysit the president’s late-night snacking habits,” wrote Woodson.

Trump is a compulsive all-night social media crawler, as indicated by his outlandish, hours-long chain posts and his perpetual narcolepsy during meetings and press engagements — despite the fact that he himself often plans and sets the meetings before falling unconscious in them. The president’s late night binging is so regular that he even fell asleep after blocking traffic at the NBA Finals and locking genuine fans out of seats.

But Haberman and Swan say all that overnight lip-boxing comes complete with a long string of food.

“A nighttime snacker, the President would frequently leave an array of empty potato chip bags, Starbucks wrappers, and ice cream cartons in the trash, or on the floor,” say the authors, according to Woodson.

But it wasn’t just trash, said Woodson. Staffers now must monitor Trump’s rising pile of garbage for valuables after they discovered the president was apparently throwing out actual White House sterling silver utensils (paid for by taxpayers) “along with his empty Häagen-Dazs containers.”

And then there’s the bathroom, say the authors.

“Trump insisted on having carpet in his private bathroom — an interior design crime dating back to his first term,” said Woodson. “Naturally, the laws of physics and absorption ensued.”

“The portion nearest the shower would often be soaked through; the staff was never quite sure why, but they worried about mold growing underneath,” Haberman and Swan write. “The solution was to lay a small piece of the same carpet — never an actual bath mat — over the larger one.”

“Instead of, you know, buying a $10 bath mat like a normal human being, the solution was to keep ‘several of these pieces’ of regular carpet in rotation, constantly swapping them out to dry,” complained Woodson. “Whatever you do for a living, take comfort in the fact that you aren’t currently blow-drying the president’s soggy bathroom rug.”

According to the authors, Trump also has a habit of scarpering off with White House decorations and items to re-arrange in his private quarters, apparently “on a whim.”

“Yes, picture it: the Commander-in-Chief, scurrying down the hallway like a raccoon in the night, stealing lamps and throw pillows,” said Woodson.

Law and Crime reports the top contender in the field to win the Republican primary for Minnesota governor is currently fleeing his court costs.

"Four years have passed since this Court determined Lindell owes monetary sanctions to Smartmatic," claim lawyers for Smartmatic, but the candidate "has yet to make any payment […] pursuant to the sanction order."

That candidate is none other than MAGA maven and President Donald Trump ally Mike Lindell, who a federal judge subjected to a daily civil contempt fine for not paying a cent in sanctions owed to voting machine company Smartmatic over a period of several years.

After all that time, Law and Crime reports the company’s lawyers have tallied the damage of Lindell’s neglect and are asking for even more.

“In a brief notice filed before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, Smartmatic said it has been 72 days since the Donald Trump-appointed jurist ordered a $500 ‘daily penalty’ in an attempt to force the 2020 election conspiracy theorist and detractor of all electronic voting machines to pay $56,369 in sanctions in full,” reports Law and Crime. “Nichols' sanctions order goes back to 2022, when Lindell was found to have filed ‘frivolous’ counterclaims against Smartmatic.”

The company now reports that Lindell still hasn't paid "any" sanctions — meaning the daily fine is failing to coerce his compliance. According to Smartmatic, Lindell has racked up $36,000 in contempt fines since April, which brings his new grand total to $92,369.

Frustrated company lawyers are also now insisting the judge agree to raise "civil contempt penalties to a greater amount" to encourage the gubernatorial candidate to stop being a deadbeat.

Lindell recently tried to convince the court that he has a "negative $18.7 million" net worth due to his liabilities. But Smartmatic was quick to point out that Lindell clearly has cash because he spent more than $187K of his own Minnesota gubernatorial campaign funds just to buy copies of his own book and give them away.

The court’s Trump-appointed judge consequently declared that Lindell was misstating his claims and in fact had enough assets and access to funds to pay his sanctions — but was simply refusing to do so.

Republicans in the state are leery of Lindell’s race, and they fear the controversial Republican propaganda channel owner will ruin their plan to take the Minnesota governor’s office if he wins the primary.

“We’d be cooked,” said Dustin Grage, a Minnesota Republican strategist. “I’d be moving to Florida very shortly. We would lose pretty badly if Mike Lindell were to get the nomination.”

Nevertheless, Lindell is on the top of the Republican primary, according to a June survey by KSTP/SurveyUSA, revealing he has 27 percent of Republican respondents backing him.

President Donald Trump was lauding his newly renovated but controversial luxury plane gifted him by the Qatari royal family on Friday. The president presented the plane as the new Air Force One, despite allegations of corruption surrounding the gift, and the fact that Trump treats the plane as a personal gift and has no plan to leave it in the possession of the president who replaces him. But he added that he intends to paint all of the planes in the fleet air force to look just like the new Qatari donation, making this just one more attempt by Trump to mark everything around him with his personal stamp or influence.

However, John Heilemann, Chief Political Columnist for the media company Puck says there is a reason Trump is desperate to mark every taxpayer-funded thing around him as his personal [property.

“He's obviously … into the notion of trying to build monuments to himself in various ways and to leave marks that he thinks will not be will not be able to go away, like to kind of build the arch to Trump, you know, change the reflecting pool, change the [White House] east wing, install the claw and leave it there over the White House forever,” Heilemann told MS NOW anchor Nicole Wallace. “I mean, Trump is pretty dumb sometimes, but I think he knows some of these things are more transitory than others, easier to tear down. But I think all of it reflects a sense that he recognizes, on some basic level, that that project of exorcising Donald Trump … getting rid of the [stain] of Donald Trump is going to be a big project for the Democrat who gets back in the White House.”

Heilemann said this labor will doubtless be in addition to the work require to restore American democracy and rebuild national institutions.

“You saw it when they took the Trump name down from the Kennedy center. That was a big moment for people. I think you're going to see a lot of that — and Trump knows that,” Heilemann said. “So … if he changes a whole lot of stuff, he probably thinks some aspects of him, some markings that he leaves, some bird droppings of his, will somehow survive the purge to come.”

Wallace said she predicted that, other than rebuilding the east wing, the next administration to “wash away the [Trum] spot pretty darn quickly. “

“I think it's going to be a giant national steam cleaning of everything he's touched,” confirmed Heilemann. “So it's going to be like, ‘okay, let's get in here, clean it all, scrub it all out.’

“And the gold,” quipped Wallace, referring to Trump’s overwrought White House slapped with gold paint. “I mean, I don't know who's going to be in charge of prying all that stuff off the walls.”

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The Trump White House is attacking one of its loyal media figures after she berated Vice President JD Vance over President Donald Trump’s Iran deal.

“The problem is, that it’s an absolutely disastrous deal that has brought us to our knees, weeks before our 250th birthday,” NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargon said in a clip she posted to social media, which Mediaite reported.

“This is an utter humiliation of the United States, and everybody knows it,” she continued. “Everybody knows it, but especially Iran knows it. They are celebrating this. They are still calling us the enemy.”

“And while Iran celebrates this and sneers at us for totally capitulating when we had complete military superiority over them,” she said, “JD Vance is out there criticizing Israel, making up fantasies about how it is Israel’s fault, and Israel wants Iran to be a failed state. And if only Israel would lay down its arms and allow Hezbollah to keep attacking it, there would be peace in the Middle East.”

Ungar-Sargon called Vance’s remarks “disgusting,” “utterly deplorable,” and a “complete Tucker Carlsonification of the Vice President of the United States.”

She warned, “if this was a dry run for Vance 2028,” for president, “we sure learned a lot.”

On social media, Ungar-Sargon added: “VP JD Vance just brought the US to its knees with a humiliating deal weeks before our 250th birthday and he has the audacity to blame … Israel! … for the terrible situation we’re in.”

The White House’s Rapid Response team blasted Ungar-Sargon.

“The only humiliation here is Batya desperately begging for an additional brain cell because her failing TV … show is even more irrelevant than the likes of Kaitlan Collins and Fake Tapper,” the White House declared. “Only a moron of her caliber could still doubt President Trump’s leadership.”

In 2024, Ungar-Sargon wrote, “American Jews should vote for Trump because he is the candidate who stands most clearly for the things that have defined us for centuries.”

Former MAGA congressman Joe Walsh spun abruptly from President Donald Trump and his MAGA crew years ago after seeing Trump’s damage, and now he is surprised the rest of the nation hasn’t managed to catch on and throw out the Trump poison. Walsh expressed even more surprise at the nation’s failure to wise up after 10 years of Trump’s toxin, particularly after former president Obama’s eloquent speech in Chicago at the opening of his presidential library and community learning center.

“People have been telling me, ‘Oh my god, Joe, how the heck did we get from there to here,’” Walsh said on his “Social Contract” podcast with guest host former Chicago City councilman Edwin Eisendrath. “And I want to tell my lovable liberal elitist friends we're all there are a lot of reasons for that it's not just because Trump and half the country are bats—— crazy.”

“I said, ‘Obama helped,’” said Walsh. “Sure, I helped, too, and the Tea Party helped, but Edwin, you know this because when you were active politically, you were a reformer. You were a reform minded outsider. … And Obama was part of a political establishment class that did not understand the anger that middle working-class people in this country had. And there was an elite. It's not just Obama. I mean, Hillary, they all were like this, and a lot of Republicans. And that kind of dismissiveness of the elites Led to the demagogue that Trump is.”

“What a contrast, right?” Walsh complained. “And I guess before everybody hates me altogether, what I'm trying to say is … Donald Trump is in my starting five for the absolute worst human beings who's ever lived. Now, how did that guy get in the White House? And if we as a people can't honestly really reflect upon that, I mean, how did this good, great, decent country elect one of the worst human beings who's ever lived? That's a complicated answer.”

Walsh admitted Obama is an intelligent man who causes longing for a president who does not speak like a demented toddler, but he said some of the Democratic Party's lagging ideals ultimately got the nation where it is.

"How nice is it to listen to a president speak in complete sentences and all the rest, and I get it,” said Walsh. “I appreciate that, but I don't want all these good folks to go down that same f—— elitist road and not understand why this madman's in the White House. I don't want my new party … to go down this road where we think the answer, again, is to nominate some elite establishment f——. That's not what the Democratic Party needs Because most Americans, Edwin, as you know right now, cannot stand either party.”

Eisendrath pointed out that the Democratic Party is in place of transitioning, at least, and the new blood is outpacing the establishment old guard in primaries.

“The Republicans are almost finished with their transformation to become simply the party of Trump. The Democrats are involved in a double transformation,” Eisendrath said. “There is the ‘let's make a deal party’ that worked for a long time versus the ‘get s—— done party.’ And the ‘get s—— done party’ is beating the ‘make a deal party in primaries.’

“And there's a generational change, too,” Eisendrath added. “And the younger guys are not interested in what are the limits on the power. We have to get things done. They're going to be tougher than that.”

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and other members of President Donald Trump's administration have refused to file the statement Judge Leonie M. Brinkema demanded in her judicial order last week.

AlterNet reported that last Friday, Judge Brinkema said she wanted to "avoid any further litigation in this civil action," and asked Blanche along with Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward, Jr. and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to submit a declaration they wouldn't take any further action to create Trump's slush fund.

The deadline for that was June 19.

Judge Brinkema had demanded that the filing be submitted "under the penalty of perjury."

But instead, something else was submitted, according to legal reporter Chris Geidner. The Justice Department didn't merely ignore the requirement; it submitted another filing

"The acting attorney general has testified before Congress that the Fund is 'not going forward, period,'" the DOJ filing claims. "Undersigned counsel have twice signed briefs reaffirming that 'the Fund is not going forward.' And counsel for Defendants has twice said substantially the same thing in open court. All these statements were made against the backdrop of serious penalties for falsity."

Demanding that the Cabinet officials, in particular, be burdened with signing a document for a court is simply too far, the filing argues.

According to the DOJ, these facts mean "there is no reason why declarations should affect the Court's mootness analysis." They also say that having such officials sign such a declaration is a "separation of powers." The inverse could also be argued that if so many statements have been previously made, then a declaration shouldn't be a problem.

The filing goes on to attempt to relitigate an argument already lost, Geidner commented.

"Accordingly, the Court's demands are unnecessary. And it's presumption that mootness can arise only by compelling testimony from three senior government officials 'implicate[s] separation of powers concerns.' As stated multiple times, the Fund is not moving forward. The transcript of the Acting Attorney General's equivocal testimony to Congress is attached," the DOJ says.

The filing was signed by both Woodward and Andrew Block, senior counsel to the associate attorney general.

The judge said last week, "If such a declaration is not filed by June 19, 2026, the Court will issue a Scheduling Order and require defendants to file a responsive pleading ..."

The Trump administration's defiance of Judge Brinkema's order reflects a broader pattern of executive resistance to judicial oversight.

Legal experts have noted that the DOJ's response—citing prior statements and separation of powers concerns—amounts to an end-run around the judge's explicit authority to compel sworn testimony. The administration's argument that previous congressional testimony and court statements suffice contradicts the judge's determination that a formal declaration under penalty of perjury was necessary to resolve the case and prevent further litigation.

Judge Brinkema now faces a critical decision: whether to enforce her order through contempt proceedings or accept the administration's reframing of mootness. The case underscores ongoing tensions between executive accountability and claims of constitutional separation of powers, with significant implications for judicial authority to oversee government compliance with court orders.

The "madman theory" of politics argues that when a leader comes across as unhinged and volatile, adversaries will back down — as they don't know what the person will do. That theory was applied to U.S. President Donald Trump during the Iran war, with some of his supporters arguing that he would come out on top because Iranian leaders would be genuinely afraid of him. But according to NOTUS reporters Akbar Shahid Ahmed and Jasmine Wright, Trump's ceasefire agreement with Iran underscores the fatal flaws of the "madman theory."

"President Donald Trump has handled his war on Iran with his signature brand of unpredictability, veering from threatening 'a whole civilization will die' to cheering diplomacy and Iranian freedom," Ahmed and Wright explain in a NOTUS article. "It's not clear how much he'll have to show for it. The U.S. and Iran are expected to begin talks soon toward a permanent end to the war. They have 59 days to agree on contentious issues, including Iran's nuclear program, economic sanctions and a new regional arrangement governing the Strait of Hormuz."

The NOTUS reporters add, "It's a particularly delicate period, but Trump remains deeply volatile. The negotiations will test the 'madman theory' of foreign policy the president leans on: assuming adversaries will cave because they don’t know how far he will go. They will also test whether U.S. officials can reach mutually agreeable terms when their boss might shift the goalposts at any time — an especially significant task given how massive the global cost of resuming conflict with Iran has become."

Alan Eyre, a former diplomat, recalls that President Richard Nixon articulated the "madman theory" during the Vietnam War. And Eyre told NOTUS that Trump "is doing what he does because he can't do otherwise, and that's the biggest threat."

Eyre added, "He has no strategic messaging.… He's going to sabotage negotiations, not just by moving red lines, which I think he probably will do, but by saying stuff in the media that's going to have an effect."

Wendy Sherman, who helped negotiate former President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran, believes that Iranian leaders will "go into this thinking they have the upper hand." And she argues that the "madman theory" is proving "toothless" with Trump and Iran.

Sherman told NOTUS, "Initially, there was belief by some that the madman approach might work, but it has been shown to be toothless. At the end of the day. Trump has agreed to a bad deal because the war didn't turn out the way he wanted it to."

Veteran journalist Jonathan Alter has published a fictitious yet “all-too-plausible” scenario whereby President Donald Trump attempts to overturn the results of the 2026 election — especially in the Senate — which could narrowly move to Democratic control in November. He suggests that it will take two sets of citizens: the general public and former U.S. presidents, among others, to defeat what he sees as the current president’s “slow-motion rolling coup attempt,” which he says is “already underway.”

Writing at Washington Monthly, Alter acknowledges that Democratic control of the House after the November election is likely, while control of the Senate is possible but not the “big blue wave” or “tsunami” he sees in the House.

Calling him a “chaos agent,” Alter explains that Trump’s “fear of impeachment and a Senate trial are making him desperate and more dangerous.”

“It’s easy to miss that a slow-motion rolling coup attempt is already underway, staged by Stephen Miller and, of course, Trump himself,” Alter writes. “When Trump told The New York Times early this year that he regretted not seizing voting machines in 2020, that was a clear signal that he will likely try to do so after the midterms.”

Ultimately, Alter predicts in his war-gamed scenario that democracy will prevail but not before a months-long constitutional crisis.

“The resolution of the crisis came after more than two months of efforts by President Trump to overturn the results of the midterm elections with unfounded accusations of vote fraud,” Alter writes, as if it were January 2027. “His efforts sparked mass protests, which gave him a pretext to invoke emergency powers and interfere in elections that, under the U.S. Constitution, are handled by the states.”

Alter points to several critical events when Trump telegraphed his intentions.

January 6, 2026: “You gotta win the midterms, because if we don’t win the midterms, they’ll find a reason to impeach me,” Trump told Republicans on the fifth anniversary of what some have called his coup attempt.

That same month: “There is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me, and that’s very good,” Trump told The New York Times.

Also that month, he told Reuters, “When you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”

Alter also points to two critical documents that presumably could give Trump broad emergency powers.

One, the National Presidential Security Memorandum (NPSM-7) that, Alter writes, “grants the president broad wartime powers to designate Americans as possible terrorists if the federal government considers them or their sponsors ‘anti-American,’ ‘anti-capitalist,’ ‘anti-Christian’ or ‘hostile to traditional American views on family, religion and morality.'”

The second, Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs), “which were developed during the Eisenhower Administration as a single instructional book in case of a nuclear attack on Washington.”

Alter continues his war-gamed scenario: “With Mr. Trump now running a police state, former presidents, vice presidents, and Supreme Court justices finally came off the sidelines. On December 22, a hastily-organized Committee on Election Integrity issued an open letter in support of certification of the legitimate winners and filed an amicus brief in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the president’s use of NPSM-7 and PEAD powers—intended for nuclear war—was unconstitutional in domestic politics.”

Read the entire article here.