Lol. I’ve certainly blamed the media for a lot of things in my day and it’s often true. But saying that we’re winning the war in Iran and the media is just lying about it is completely absurd.
Trump’s credibility gap endangers our national security. His hyperbolic rants are so absurd — and his policy flip-flops so extreme — that our foreign allies and adversaries don’t believe much of what he says and no longer take him seriously. It’s as if the proverbial boy who cried wolf moved into the Oval Office.
Trump has alienated our allies with his lies, insults, temper tantrums, tariffs, aid cuts to Ukraine and other nations, and threats to withdraw from NATO and annex Canada and Greenland. Our adversaries don’t fear his threats because he often fails to carry them out. This has generated the insult of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out).
Growing numbers of people now view Trump’s absurd claims as calculated lies at best — or the delusions of a 79-year-old man with declining mental health at worst.
Too true.
This is the kind of situation that can lead to mistakes being made that lead to catastrophe. I hate to put my hopes in the Iranians to keep their heads but I think we have to.
Hegseth: I have to say for the lawyers—I'm here in my personal capacity as a private citizen, a fellow American, and a fellow combat veteran, here to support Ed Gallrein pic.twitter.com/tHt1Rgrrby
That’s fine. He’s only the Secretary of Defense. It’s not like there’s much going on with his job at the moment.
I’m not sure why anyone thinks this is a good idea but ok:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth campaigned in Kentucky on Monday as part of a concerted effort by President Trump and his allies to punish Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican critic of Mr. Trump, for his perceived disloyalty by backing his primary opponent.
Speaking at a campaign event for Ed Gallrein, Mr. Massie’s rival in the Republican primary, Mr. Hegseth attacked Mr. Massie as an obstructionist, accusing the seven-term libertarian known for bucking the party line of betraying his fellow Republicans — in particular Mr. Trump, who has often raged against Mr. Massie in public statements.
They don’t want independent thinkers or anyone who dares to defy Dear Leader. That’s not how things are done.
Hegseth on Thomas Massie: "President Trump does not need more people in Washington who are trying to make a point, especially from his own party. He needs people willing to help him win, to vote with him." pic.twitter.com/Y5x5U4lqc1
It would be so much better if Trump could just get rid of the congress altogether. They’re all obstructionists. Trump’s word should be law — he won three elections in the greatest landslide in human history. 98% of Americans voted for him but the other 2% rigged to game to make it look like he’s never won a popular majority and outright lost the 2020 election. It’s undemocratic I tell you. Something’s got to be done!
On March 11, President Trump took a tour of a manufacturing facility in Reading, Ohio, owned by Thermo Fisher Scientific, a medical supply company. During the tour, Trump lavished praise on Thermo Fisher which uses the facility to manufacture prescription drugs on a contract basis. “It’s a great honor being here. It’s a great company,” Trump said, appearing alongside CEO Marc Casper. “You have done a fantastic job and I’d like to congratulate you.”
Later, Trump asked another Thermo Fisher executive to share “some great information about this incredible company.” The executive talked about how Thermo Fisher is producing drugs for Merck and others at the facility. Trump then explicitly encouraged other pharmaceutical companies to contract with Thermo Fisher to “on-shore” more jobs. He claimed that some pharmaceutical companies were building their own U.S. manufacturing facilities but said “they can get here a lot faster by using this great company.”
Trump did not mention that, the same day of the tour, March 11, he purchased between $15,000 and $50,000 of Thermo Fisher stock. (Federal disclosure rules only require filers to list their transactions in broad ranges.) Trump did not publicly disclose the purchase until May 14. It was listed on page 38 of a 113-page document cataloging Trump’s stock purchases in 2026.
He’d also bought a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of this specific stock in the month before.
The disclosures reveal that Trump has been a highly active trader in 2026, executing thousands of transactions — many in individual stocks impacted by his administration’s policies. In response to criticism, a spokesperson for the Trump Organization claimed that the trades were completely separate from Trump’s official duties and managed by an independent outside financial advisor. “President Trump’s investment holdings are maintained exclusively through fully discretionary accounts independently managed by third-party financial institutions with sole and exclusive authority over all investment decisions,” the spokesperson said. “Trades are executed and portfolios are balanced through automated investment processes and systems administered by those institutions.”
Well that’s a relief. It would be very bad if he was out there promoting companies as president that he’s actively investing in.
Oh wait:
The fact that Trump purchased stock in Thermo Fisher the same day that he toured its facility undercuts this claim. Further, the March 11 purchase of Thermo Fisher stock was marked “UNSOLICITED” in the document. An “unsolicited” trade is one that is not recommended by a broker, but initiated by the customer.
According to Notus, he also “bought and sold millions of dollars worth of stock in tech companies and government contractors including Nvidia and Palantir. Some of those trades overlapped with regulatory decisions that were favorable to these companies.”
Come on. We know Trump and we know that he thinks this is just “smart.” He told the NY Times in January that he’s not bothering with all that ethics folderol in the second term because nobody cares about it. He’s doing it and daring anyone to try to stop him.
Yep, the New York Times-Sienna poll, the gold standard that everyone quotes as the only poll that matters, is not looking good for Trump.
His approval rating is still higher in this poll than most others but that’s not saying much. He’s down to 37%. And the rest?
Trump’s made it clear that he could not care less because of some gobblydygook about Iran’s nuclear weapons which he already claimed to have obliterated. Nobody’s buying it.
Here’s the kicker:
In a hypothetical question about this year’s midterm elections, Democrats held an advantage of 10 percentage points among registered voters, with 50 percent saying they would back the party’s candidate if the elections were held today and 39 percent saying they would support the Republican. The Democratic edge among independent voters was 18 points, though 16 percent declined to choose a preferred party.
That looks more like 11 points to me but who’s counting? The point is that the Democrats have enough of a lead in the generic poll to win the House even with the gerrymandering and they have a very good chance at the Senate.
These numbers are very bad for Trump. But it seems the worse they get the more defiant he becomes and he just keeps doing whatever he’s doing, assured in his own mind that he’s right and everyone else is wrong.
He even has a hat to prove it:
The American people beg to differ.
Only 18% rate it good while 4% call it excellent. Trump says we have the “hottest” economy in the world and were in a “golden age.” Apparently, only 22% of the people believe him and a good portion of those are criminals and billionaires.
The Republicans are in big trouble. But instead of doing something to right the ship or even distancing themselves from this dumpster fire they’re going to double down. That’s what Trump expects them to do.
I would bet money that despite the fact that the parliamentarian said “no go” to the billion dollars for the ballroom, they’re going to find a way to do it. Anything for their Dear Leader.
The gerrymandering “Twilight Zone” the U.S. Supreme Court’s Callais decision spawned has Democrats considering imaginative possible fixes. Some of them are legislative long shots. Others seem Rube Goldberg. Then again, a Rube Goldberg device, done right, does what it is supposed to. Eventually.
Ed Kilgore considers a way to take gerrymandering out of the biennial U.S. House elections equation. The gerrymandering arms race might be defused by moving to multi-member districts:
The idea, as laid out by longtime advocate Lee Drutman of New America, is a system of multimember districts elected by proportional representation, as is the practice in approximately 130 countries, including most of Europe. Drutman explained how it would work at The New Republic, using Kentucky as an example:
Kentucky would be roughly two-thirds Republican, one-third Democrat. So in a proportional system, that would be two Democrats and four Republicans. But because of the way that the district lines are drawn, Democrats are all pushed into one district, more or less—one safe district for Democrats and five safe districts for Republicans.
Now, what makes that possible? The fact that there are a bunch of different lines that you can draw. Now, imagine an alternative world—perhaps our future—in which Kentucky is just one six-member district. Everybody votes in the same election as you do for Senate, and parties put forward lists of candidates. So Republicans put forward a list of candidates, Democrats put forward a list of candidates. Democrats get 33 percent of the seats—the two most popular Democratic candidates on that list go to Congress. Republicans put forward a list of candidates—the four most popular Republicans go to Congress.
So that’s proportional. That’s what we think of as fairness. You don’t have to draw any district lines, and candidates run on party lists, and parties get representation in Congress in proportion to the share of votes that they get—which is a very intuitive sense of fairness.
This assumes Americans actually want a system that’s fair. MAGA Republicans clearly do not. Southern-state Republicans, especially, do not. They’ve made that abundantly clear. But let’s entertain Kilgore and Drutman a little while longer.
Nothing in the U.S. Constitution, Kilgore argues, “mandates either single-member congressional district or first-past-the-post balloting.” In fact:
A 1967 congressional statute requires single-member districts. Legislation to repeal or replace it would arguably be easier to enact that some blatantly partisan Court-packing scheme or a ban on partisan gerrymandering that might not pass judicial muster.
It’s possible that Callais’s impact is so dire that it would make such radical reforms suddenly possible and perhaps even palatable across party lines. When it comes to gerrymandering, we are clearly entering the “hyper-partisan doom loop of escalating division and polarization” that led Drutman and others to embrace proportional representation and fusion voting. Donald Trump is the perfect expression of the prevailing style of politics, and Democrats who fear and despise him should think hard and think big about how to escape the poison.
I’m open. With my deadline swiftly approaching, I’ve only had time to skim “Single-Member Districts Are Not Constitutionally Required.” But it shows promise. Should Democrats ever again control the House, Senate, and Executive Branch, they’d best have a laundry list of bold proposals to pass as swiftly as the DFL did in Minnesota. This might be one of them.
When are Americans going to learn that Republicans exist to pillage the economy and leave Democrats to clean up the mess so Republicans can do it again? That’s Michael Tomasky’s thesis this morning at The New Republic.
Likely never. Proving the alleged P.T. Barnum maxim, Americans reelected to the presidency the Seven Deadly Sins on two legs, a twice-impeached, convicted felon with a catalogue of personality defects thick enough to hold open doors to the Library of Congress. But should Americans experience a political Great Awakening, perhaps, Tomasky offers, they’ll question the “idea that the party of big business must surely be more trustworthy on economic policy.”
Tomasky walks readers through the wreckage Donald Trump has made of an economy “in pretty good shape” that he inherited from Joe Biden. Ahead of the 2024 election, The Economist called it “The envy of the world.” The suckers reelected Trump anyway.
George H.W. Bush, Tomasky recounts, oversaw the savings and loan crisis, a massive bailout, and a double-dip recession:
Clinton still created the boomingest economy of the last 60 years (yes, more than Reagan) and turned those deficits into a surplus. Then, in came George W. Bush, who reduced taxes and started an expensive war and cut regulations such that no one was guarding the hen house when mortgage lenders created the housing bubble that eventually led to the Great Meltdown.
Barack Obama was left to clean up the mess Bush II left. Yes, his recovery plan was too undersized, and he didn’t hold Wall Street to account. Nevertheless, “he left office with 75 months of consecutive job growth and having substantially reduced the deficit.” Trump took over and, while he increased the deficit, “didn’t make a hash of it for a while.” Until the pandemic did.
Then Biden came in. The economy struggled, there’s no denying that. But by mid-2024, things were in decent shape. Granted, people weren’t feeling it. But the numbers, as I showed above, were much better than they are today. So, again, a Republican president, Trump 2.0, has come into office and made things worse. It’s what they do.
Why is this? Is it just bad luck? To some extent, the timing of the pandemic was bad luck for Trump, sure. But that isn’t the reason. The reason is that Republicans peddle an economic fairy tale. That cutting taxes increases revenue and spurs tremendous economic activity. It’s a lie. A fantasy. They wreck the economy. The modern United States has experienced 11 recessions. Ten have happened under Republican presidents. This isn’t a coincidence. They screw things up because they try to impose a fairy tale on the country.
The economic system we created — invented, honed, and nurtured — was designed by and for the people who use money to make money. It is working very well for them, and they have no interest in helping those lower on the economic ladder climb it. Matt Taibbi wrote of two Americas in “Griftopia,” one for the grifter class and one for everybody else. In everybody-else land … the government is something to be avoided.” For the grifter class, government is “a tool for making money.” Exhibit A: our Grifter-in-Chief.
Exhibit B: the entire Republican Party. The GOP sells the fairy tale. The rubes buy it once again. The GOP removes the governor from the economic engine, the moneyed class stuffs its pockets with reckless abandon, and when the engine flies apart, Democrats are left to rebuild the thing. Again.
It’s because they don’t want to govern. They want to rule. To that end, they sabotage Democrats even at the state level, as I wrote in 2017:
GOP-led legislatures are implementing changes to governance and revenue streams, strategically starving cities of revenue, leaving city leaders with no choice but to raise taxes and/or cut services and piss off voters. It’s happening in North Carolina and elsewhere:
After a couple of cycles, Republicans will be running candidates who blame North Carolina cities’ financial woes on “mismanagement and waste” by Democrats, and counting on voters to forget by then who precipitated the crisis in the first place. They’ll succeed if we don’t remind voters at every opportunity that it’s their strategy. It is deliberate.
Tomasky’s prescription:
The Democrats need a 2028 standard-bearer who will say these things over and over until they get pounded into the heads of those famous low-information swing voters they end up relentlessly chasing after every fourth November. The lie has persisted long enough. If it takes $7 gas for people to realize it, I’ll happily pay it. Democrats—and reality—must bury this myth once and for all.
But it won’t stay buried. It’s one of Paul Krugman’s zombie lies.
Against the backdrop of the Washington Monument, worship music blared from a stage that made clear the event’s Christian focus. Arched stained-glass windows, set underneath grand columns resembling a federal building, depicted the nation’s founders alongside a white cross.
The White House-backed event has drawn broad criticism for blurring the lines between church and state, as prominent Republican officials appeared to speak alongside a slate of mostly evangelical speakers.
Only one name on the Rededicate 250 program, Orthodox rabbi Meir Soloveichik, was not Christian. Most were among Trump’s longtime evangelical supporters, including Paula White-Cain of the White House faith office and evangelist Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse.
An evangelical revival sponsored by the White House. Cool, cool.
I asked on Bluesky if there are in numbers for this gathering and was more than one person replied “666”
Every election there’s some kind of silly scandal about a candidates food choices proving they aren’t “authentic” Real Americans. The “wit whiz” scandal was John Kerry having the temerity to order his Philly cheese steak with swiss cheese instead of cheese whiz which everyone insisted is what true Philly people eat. (It’s not true, the most common order is for provolone, which is much closer to swiss than cheese whiz.) There’s always someone eating pizza wrong or asking for green tea or some other super woke, dirty hippie, gay thing that totally disqualifies them for office.
This election has James Talerico, running for senate in Texas, who appeared with Barack Obama at a taco joint and ordered breakfast tacos with eggs, cheese and potatoes which they are all saying makes him some sort of commie vegan. Of course they are stupid because that’s not vegan and Talerico isn’t even a vegetarian. He just like egg, cheese and potato tacos which sound delicious to me and I’m not a vegetarian either.
As for the stupid article posted above, the media suggests that Talerico ordered the dish as a middle-of-road choice to appease “both sides” in the vegetarian debate. And the way we know it’s ridiculous is that Talerico goes to this place so often that they asked him if he wanted his usual order. Unless he’s been planning this clever ploy for years, it’s pretty clear that he just likes these tacos. And I don’t blame him.
Bill DeBlasio was on MsNow talking about his own bout with this dumb campaign trope, when he was photographed eating pizza with a fork and all of New York had a collective aneurysm. His advice was for Talerico to lean into the controversy with good humor and go to a famous bar-b-que place and order every meat they have on the menu. (He does eat meat) and make a joke out of it. That’s not bad advice. You can’t win with this nonsense. You might as well have some fun with it.
A rising Texas Democrat facing an unexpected controversy over his taco order. Trump even trying to use it to drag him down. @tomforemancnn breaks down Talarico’s tacogate. pic.twitter.com/hixD2a0TQg
— Erin Burnett OutFront (@OutFrontCNN) May 16, 2026
The Bulwark’s Jonathan Cohn looks at the new Trump initiative to make women have more “Trump babies” (as Dr. Oz called them.) I’m kind of revolted at the idea of the government telling women they need to breed so we can have more superior ‘Murican stock but maybe that’s just me. Certainly if women want to have children, and most do, it would be nice if the government actually supported them in that choice instead of making it more difficult.
DONALD TRUMP ON MONDAY hosted a forty-minute Oval Office event focusing on maternal health, and mostly it got attention because he seemed to nod off in the middle of it. But the president and his invited guests also got somenewscoverage for the intended message, which was about a series of initiatives like reducing the cost of some fertility drugs, and launching an informational website called Moms.gov. These are supposed to demonstrate, as one attendee put it, that “President Trump wants to make America the best place to have a baby.”
That’s a laudable goal, though it would require an awful lot of policy work.
Both the maternal and infant mortality rates in the United States are the highest among economically advanced countries, according to analyses by the Commonwealth Fund. And when UNICEF last year rated several dozen nations for child well-being, the scores for the United States were terrible, way behind the world leaders: the Netherlands, Denmark, and France.
Those facts may come as a shock to anyone used to hearing about those other countries as socialist hellholes. But spend time in the countries of Northern and Western Europe and you’ll see all the ways people living there benefit from universal health care, cash support for newborns, guaranteed paid leave for new parents, and heavily subsidized childcare.
He talks about the policies that some presidents have enacted which really have helped, but it’s always been a battle every step of the way to get that done. The American right is simply hostile to the government doing anything that might actually help people. Trump is a perfect example:
Trump is well on his way to creating his own legacy when it comes to maternal and child well-being. But it’s not the kind his predecessors left. Whatever the modest contributions of the initiatives he was touting in the Oval Office last week—and “modest” is a generous description—they aren’t the real story about what the president has done for young families with children. No, the real story is about what Trump has done to young families with children, by downsizing or undermining some of the most important programs on which many of them rely.
The Big Beautiful Bill slashed Medicaid and forces work requirements. The subsidies for Obamacare are evaporating before our eyes and people have no choice but to drop their insurance. And families, even those with beautiful ‘Trump babies” are feeling the squeeze from cuts in programs that help keep food on the table.
Enrollment in SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, has fallen by more than 10 percent since a year ago, according to newly released federal figures. That works out to more than 4 million people, with nearly 700,000 losing benefits in just the latest month captured by the data.
Enrollment has already plunged by nearly 50 percent in Arizona, where—as a recent ProPublica article reported—implementation appears to be farthest along.
Why? The paperwork and various requirements. And that’s a feature not a bug. They want people to not be able to obtain food stamps.
In an appearance on Newsmax, Secretary Brooke Rollins celebrated cuts: “is that in just one year alone, we've already moved four and-a-half million people off of SNAP. "So we're going to be pulling more and more people off." To add to the hypocrisy, she invokes Christianity. pic.twitter.com/MqDx6sMllk
Yesterday she said that they have found 14,000 food stamp recipients driving Lamborghinis and Ferraris. Sure they did…
And there’s more, including this:
And it’s not just the food-assistance cuts already in law that could affect infants. It’s the cuts that could still become law in the future. Trump’s budget for 2027 calls for reducing spending on an initiative that covers produce for people in the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food program.2
“WIC is targeted at the youngest children, when their brains are developing,” Schanzenbach said. “I’m just kind of speechless to think about cuts there.”
Read the whole thing for the details. It’s long but it’s worth it.
These people want women to have more babies but they apparently want the mothers to go out in the streets and beg for food to feed them. And if they get sick, well that’s too bad for all of them.
None of this makes any sense. Sadly, from what I’m seeing of the right wing in this country, which at best has veto power over the creation of anything good and at worst power to destroy whatever is already good, they getting more and more cruel by the day. They’ve lost all sense of empathy and decency (and they didn’t have a surplus of that to begin with.)
