#but then he started going on about how he didn’t like biden

[wilwheaton]

The beautiful town of Asheville, North Carolina, one of my favorite places in the country. Spent time there. Amazing people. Devastated. Hundreds of people killed. President Biden and Vice President Harris were down there meeting with local officials and comforting families, asking how they could help. Donald Trump at a rally just started making up stories about the Biden administration withholding aid from Republican areas and siphoning off aid to give to undocumented immigrants. Just made the stuff up. Everybody knew it wasn’t true. Even local Republicans said it was not true. Now the people of Florida are dealing with another devastating storm, and I want you to watch what happens over the next few days, just like the last time. You’re going to have leaders who try to help, and then you have a guy who will just lie about it to score political points. This has consequences, because people are afraid, and they’ve lost everything, and now they’re trying to figure out, how do I apply for help? Some of them may be discouraged from getting the help they need. the idea of intentionally trying to deceive people in their most desperate and vulnerable moments. My question is: When did that become okay? I’m not looking for applause right now. I want to ask Republicans out there, people who are conservative, who didn’t vote for me, who didn’t agree with me. I had friends who disagreed with me on every issue. When did that become okay? Why would we go along with that? If your coworkers acted like that, they wouldn’t be your coworkers very long. If you’re in business and somebody you’re doing business with just outright lies and manipulates you, you stop doing business with them. Even if you had a family member who acted like that, you might still love them, but you’d tell them you got a problem and you wouldn’t put them in charge of anything. And yet, when Donald Trump lies, cheats, or shows utter disregard for our Constitution, when he calls POWs “losers,” or fellow citizens “vermin,” people make excuses for it. They think it’s okay. They think, well, at least he’s owning the libs. He’s really sticking it to ‘em. It’s okay as long as our side wins.

President Obama asks "When Did That Become Okay?"

[aceferatu]

When is Enough, Enough?

I normally don’t get political on social media because it’s just asking for an all-out war between people who can’t even see past their own biases. But honestly? I can’t stay quiet anymore. I’m pissed. I’m beyond pissed. This administration, in just two months, has done more damage than I thought humanly possible. It’s like they’re on a mission to dismantle everything that made America remotely decent. It’s not just mistakes—they’re actively tearing down people’s lives, and it’s disgusting.

They’ve made brutal cuts to essential departments, slashed jobs left and right, and appointed a bunch of unqualified, power-hungry, incompetent idiots to lead the most critical aspects of our government. It’s like they went out of their way to find the most clueless misfits possible and handed them the keys to the country. And then they have the audacity to bring in a non-elected puppet to do whatever the hell he wants. How is this even legal? Who approved this circus of corruption and chaos?

And don't get me started on the tariff wars—with CANADA and MEXICO, of all countries! OUR ALLIES! The very countries we’ve always worked with and traded with, and now this administration thinks it’s a great idea to piss them off and start a fight? Brilliant. Just brilliant. They’re making enemies out of friends while cozying up to dictators and lunatics who couldn’t care less about us.

Oh, and now they want to take over the Gaza Strip? Annex Greenland and CANADA? Are they out of their damn minds? What the actual hell are they thinking? Do they think it’s some kind of imperial game where they can just lay claim to whatever the hell they want? What’s next? Declaring the moon as the 52nd state? This isn’t leadership—it’s lunacy.

And meanwhile, back home, legal immigrants—PEOPLE who came here the right way—are being thrown into what amounts to concentration camps at our southern border. They’re ripping families apart and shoving people into overcrowded, inhumane conditions while smugly claiming they’re “protecting the nation.” Protecting it from what? People looking for a better life?

The cost of living is still a nightmare. Remember all those promises to make groceries more affordable? Eggs are still insanely priced. Gas is through the roof. Nothing has improved, and they’re acting like it’s a victory parade. And to top it all off, they’re ignoring a MASSIVE security breach involving Signal texts that could be a national security disaster. No one is stepping up to address it. They’re too busy lining their pockets and power-tripping to give a damn.

And the press secretary? An absolute trainwreck. The most condescending, vile, and arrogant spokesperson I’ve ever seen. She treats journalists and the American people like garbage, and yet somehow, she’s still there, holding that position like it’s her birthright. Every time she opens her mouth, it’s just more lies and twisted narratives. It’s exhausting.

I genuinely don’t know how MAGA supporters can look at this mess and feel pride. I don’t know how they can stand by this madness while real, hardworking Americans are losing jobs, losing hope, losing everything they worked for. I watch videos of people breaking down because they can’t afford to put food on the table, and it breaks my heart. It makes me so damn angry because none of this had to happen. This administration isn’t fixing anything—they’re wrecking it all and pretending it’s progress.

I used to have hope. I used to think my vote meant something. I voted for Obama because he inspired me. I voted for Bernie because he gave me hope for change. I voted for Hillary because I didn’t want to see America go down this path. I voted for Biden because I thought he could stabilize things. I even voted for Harris, hoping for progress. But now? It feels like none of it mattered. It feels like this was rigged from the start, and we’re just puppets in someone else’s twisted show.

Elon Musk practically bought this administration for his own personal gain. That’s why he’s got this orange puppet wrapped around his finger, doing whatever the hell he wants. We’ve got 46 more months of this nightmare, and it feels like an eternity. We’re just watching America burn while the ones responsible throw gasoline on the flames.

And where are the Democrats? Where are the leaders who are supposed to fight back? Why isn’t anyone stepping up and speaking out with passion and purpose? Why aren’t they rallying people, pushing back with real force? Are they too scared, or do they just not care anymore? Because I’m not seeing any fire, any fight, any damn urgency from anyone who should be standing up for the people.

Every day, I wake up hoping to hear that someone finally did what needed to be done and took one for the team to eliminate the threat. Sometimes, I go back to sleep just hoping I’ll wake up to good news—news that maybe someone finally stopped this madness. Because at this point, it feels like nobody is going to save us.

I’m tired. I’m angry. I’m losing hope. The America I believed in is slipping away, and it’s being replaced by this cruel, corrupt machine that doesn’t care about the people it’s supposed to serve. And I’m done pretending it’s okay. I don’t see myself voting anymore because it’s all so rigged and pointless.

America is a goddamn dumpster fire right now, and our allies are stepping back, watching us implode while the orange man keeps pushing for more power, more control, even talking about a third term. Martial law? Probably coming. And when it does, maybe people will finally wake the hell up and see what’s been right in front of them this whole time.

I’m just exhausted from feeling helpless while everything good about this country gets ripped apart. I don’t know how to keep caring when every day feels like another blow to our sanity and our souls.

[mariacallous]

The nonfiction best-seller list in early 2018 included “Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic” and “It’s Even Worse Than You Think: What the Trump Administration Is Doing to America.” The cover of the former was emergency-alert red; on the latter, a map of the United States was bursting into flames. By comparison, the cover of another book, “How Democracies Die,” was somewhat muted—white capital letters on a black background. The word “DIE,” though, did loom large.

The anti-Trump books were received the way most information about Donald Trump is received. Those who hated him felt apoplectic, or vindicated; those who liked him mostly tuned it out. But “How Democracies Die,” by two political scientists at Harvard, was about a global phenomenon that was bigger than Trump, and it became a touchstone, the sort of book whose title (“Manufacturing Consent,” “Bowling Alone”) is often invoked as a shorthand for an important but nebulous set of issues. When a book attains this status, the upside is that it can have a wide impact. (In 2018, according to the Washington Post, Joe Biden “became obsessed” with “How Democracies Die” and started carrying it around with him wherever he went.) The downside is that many people—including those who are aware of the book but haven’t quite got around to reading it—may hear a game-of-telephone version of the argument, not the argument itself.

Trump’s first term lasted four years—no more, no less. The sun rose every morning and set every evening. The President made some wildly unsettling statements; he allowed his relatives to exploit their power for profit; he badly mishandled a pandemic; he threatened to nuke North Korea, or (reportedly) a hurricane, but in the end he didn’t do either of those things. Nor did he declare martial law, barricade himself inside the White House, and refuse to leave. In his final days, he did gin up a fleeting attempt at a “self-coup,” but he never had the judges or the generals on his side. By the time he left, many casual observers found it absurd to imagine that American democracy was dying. What would that even mean?

When Trump ran again, in 2024, his autocratic rhetoric was more pitched. He promised retribution, a purge of ideological enemies, and mass deportations on flimsy legal pretexts. His opponents called him a fascist, but this only seemed to backfire. “Look, we can disagree with one another, we can debate one another, but we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist, and if he is elected it is going to be the end of American democracy,” his running mate, J. D. Vance, said at the time. Vance had previously compared Trump to Hitler and to heroin, but his views, along with those of most Americans, had softened over time. This vibe shift was enough to get Trump reëlected, but it didn’t change the underlying threat.

For decades, scientists argued that rising carbon levels would cause an increasingly unstable ecosystem, but most people got only the game-of-telephone version. “We keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record,” Senator James Inhofe said, holding up a snowball on the Senate floor. “It’s very, very cold out.” The climate Cassandras hadn’t actually predicted the immediate end of winter. The slow-motion emergency they had predicted—melting permafrost, once-in-a-century storms appearing once every few months—was in fact happening, right on schedule. Still, no matter how dire the situation got, it was possible to normalize the damage. “No one’s denying it is unpleasant,” Laura Ingraham, the Fox News anchor, said in 2023. “My eyes are pretty itchy and watery.” That day, the air in midtown Manhattan was choked with acrid wildfire smoke from Canada, and the sky was a macabre shade of orange. “There’s no health risk,” her guest, a former coal lobbyist, replied. “We have this kind of air in India and China all the time.”

In a Hollywood disaster movie, when the big one arrives, the characters don’t have to waste time debating whether it’s happening. There is an abrupt, cataclysmic tremor, a deafening roar; the survivors, suddenly transformed, stagger through a charred, unrecognizable landscape. In the real world, though, the cataclysm can come in on little cat feet. The tremors can be so muffled and distant that people continually adapt, explaining away the anomalies. You can live through the big one, it turns out, and still go on acting as if—still go on feeling as if—the big one is not yet here.

The authors of “How Democracies Die,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, were describing what political scientists call “democratic backsliding”—a potential descent into “competitive authoritarianism.” This is not what happened in nineteen-thirties Europe, when pluralistic republics suddenly collapsed into genocidal war machines. Nor is it what happened in late-twentieth-century Russia and China, which transitioned so quickly from totalitarian communism to autocratic capitalism that there was never much democracy to slide back from. It’s what happened in Turkey after 2013, in India after 2014, in Poland after 2015, in Brazil after 2019—countries that had gone through the long and difficult process of achieving a consolidated liberal democracy, then started unachieving it. “Blatant dictatorship—in the form of fascism, communism, or military rule—has disappeared across much of the world,” Levitsky and Ziblatt write. “Democracies still die, but by different means.” Some of this may happen under cover of darkness, but much of it happens in the open, under cover of arcane technocracy or boring bureaucracy. “Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts,” the authors write. “They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy.”

The first hundred days of Donald Trump’s second term have been enervating, bewildering, almost impossible to parse in real time. The Administration has used some degree of brute force to accomplish its aims, but it has relied more often on ambiguity, misdirection, and plausible deniability. Some of its actions have seemed comically paltry: coercing a government attorney to restore Mel Gibson’s right to a gun license; making the Kennedy Center “hot” again. Others may be haphazard power grabs, or may amount to something more. The Department of Government Efficiency, which is not a government department, declares that it will not allow condoms to be sent to Gaza, which actually means that it has cut off funding for health services in Mozambique. An eight-billion-dollar budget cut turns out to be an eight-million-dollar budget cut. Jeff Bezos smothers the editorial mission of the Washington Post, and Amazon commissions a forty-million-dollar documentary about the First Lady. Undercover agents arrest people for thought crimes. “We’ve had two perfect months,” the President says, moments after signing an executive order that reverses some of the signal achievements of the civil-rights movement. “Like, in the history of our country, no one’s ever seen anything like it.”

In their book, Levitsky and Ziblatt return many times to the example of Hungary. The first time Viktor Orbán was Prime Minister, from 1998 to 2002, he governed democratically. But by the time he won again, in 2010, he had recast himself as a hard-right skeptic of liberal democracy. Within a few months, mostly through legal means, his party, Fidesz, locked in its power and began reshaping the courts, the universities, and the private sector in its favor. Orbán is now the longest-serving Prime Minister in the European Union. Since 2011 or so, Hungary has been what is known as a “hybrid regime”—not a totalitarian dictatorship, but not a real democracy, either. There are no tanks in the streets; there are elections, and public protests, and judges in robes. But, the more closely you look at its core civic institutions, the more you see how they’ve been hollowed out from within. “The way they do it here, and the way they are starting to do it in your country as well, they don’t need to use too much open violence against us,” Péter Krekó, a Hungarian social scientist, told me in January, over lunch in central Budapest. “The new way is cheaper, easier, looks nicer on TV.”

We were in an Italian restaurant with white tablecloths, at a window overlooking a bustling side street—as picturesque as in any European capital. Krekó glanced over his shoulder once or twice, but only to make sure he wouldn’t be overheard gossiping about professional peers, not because he was afraid of being hauled off by secret police. “Before it starts, you say to yourself, ‘I will leave this country immediately if they ever do this or that horrible thing,’ ” he went on. “And then they do that thing, and you stay. Things that would have seemed impossible ten years ago, five years ago, you may not even notice.” He finished his gnocchi, considered a glass of wine, then opted for an espresso instead. “It’s embarrassing, almost, how comfortable you can be,” he said. “There are things you could do or say—as a person in academia, or in the media, or an N.G.O.—that would get them to come after you. But if you know where the lines are, and you don’t cross them, you can have a good life.”

Krekó has an office at the Budapest campus of Central European University, a couple of blocks away from the restaurant. It is a complex of multi-story buildings, sleek and strikingly modern. We passed through an angled glass foyer into a sunlit atrium full of blond wood and exposed brick. You didn’t have to be an architecture expert to get the message: openness and transparency. But, for a weekday afternoon, it was eerily quiet. “It’s sort of a ghost building,” Krekó said.

Soon after C.E.U. opened, in 1991, it became one of the most prestigious and well-funded liberal-arts universities in the post-Soviet world. The man who funded it, the Hungarian expat George Soros, was an ally of many young members of Hungary’s newly elected parliament, including a former pro-democracy activist named Viktor Orbán. The campus in Budapest was refurbished in 2016, in time for the university’s twenty-fifth anniversary. By then, though, Orbán was governing as a pugnacious ultranationalist. He had refashioned Soros as his archenemy, the personification of everything real Hungarians should reject: decadent globalism, open borders, “gender ideology,” a rootless cosmopolitan élite.

That same year, István Hegedűs, a former politician who had served in parliament alongside Orbán, read an article in a pro-Fidesz newspaper which implied that only the Party’s generosity enabled C.E.U. to stay in Budapest. A few days later, he attended a reception at the university, where, he recalled, he told an administrator, “ ‘You must interpret this to mean that you are in danger.’ But he said, ‘Who cares what they write in an article?’ ” C.E.U. was a private institution, accredited both in Hungary and in the U.S.; even if Orbán had wanted to meddle with it, he had no legal authority to do so. Still, Hegedűs told the administrator, “You are underestimating him.” Orbán’s populist rhetoric didn’t always line up with reality—while promising to uplift the working class, he and some of his closest friends seemed to have rapidly grown rich—and it was inconvenient when intellectuals pointed this out. Win or lose, a public spat with C.E.U. seemed to redound to his political benefit. An élite institution, full of foreigners and strange ideas, had taken root in his country’s biggest city, and he would not stand for it.

Like all semi-autocrats, Orbán picks more fights than he wins. For a few months, it seemed as though his broadsides against C.E.U. might be mere rhetoric. But, in 2017, Fidesz quietly passed an amendment to a law, placing new restrictions on international universities within Hungary. The amendment didn’t mention Soros or C.E.U. by name, but the school was widely perceived to be its sole target. The European Court of Justice ruled that this was a violation of E.U. law—three years later. But by then it was too late. C.E.U.’s academic operations had been transferred to Vienna, leaving a large number of students in limbo, and causing many of Hungary’s top scholars to leave the country. In the ensuing years, many of Hungary’s public universities came under the control of a set of private foundations—ostensibly a step toward modernization, but in practice a way for the foundations, which are said to be run by Orbán loyalists, to exert more influence over the country’s next generation of leaders. Beyond higher education, Fidesz used similar tactics in attempts to restrict international donations to N.G.O.s, and to force independent judges into early retirement. This year, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the competitive-authoritarian President of Turkey, took the unprecedented step of having his main political rival, the mayor of Istanbul, arrested. So far, Orbán has not resorted to such a move, but, then again, most of his reëlection campaigns haven’t been close.

Even now, there is still some plausible deniability. I had read about C.E.U. being banished from Budapest, and yet here I was, standing inside the building. A few American college students were passing through on a study-abroad tour. A display case was filled with recently published books; a polished-stone plaque was engraved with a quote (“Thinking can never quite catch up with reality”) attributed to C.E.U.’s founder and honorary chairman, George Soros.

The more I poked around, though, the more I saw indications that the institution had, in fact, been hollowed out—a Potemkin university with a sleek façade. A laminated sign, dated months prior, was taped to a locked door: “The PhD labs at the Budapest site will be closed.” An inviting rooftop terrace stood empty, except for some newly planted trees bending in a stiff wind. Inside, though there were still department markers on the walls (Gender Studies, Historical Studies, International Relations), many of the offices were either empty or littered with debris. I passed an office with a light on, and a young man at a computer looked up, clearly startled to see anyone. He politely explained that he worked for a video-editing startup, which was renting the office by the month.

At a café on the ground floor, where “Hotel California” was playing in the background, I sat with Zoltan Miklósi, a political philosopher who now commutes to C.E.U.’s campus in Vienna. “In the social sciences, they talk about the ‘just-world bias,’ ” he told me. “People want to believe that the world they live in, the system they live under, is mostly fair.” In 2015, one of his colleagues “made the case, very meticulously, that we no longer live in a democracy. I felt, ‘I cannot go there’—it seemed too extreme. But I had to admit that I couldn’t think of good counter-arguments.” This sort of discrepancy—the lag between intellectual acknowledgment and emotional acceptance—relates to one of Miklósi’s areas of research. “If I admit that I live in an autocracy, especially a ‘hybrid autocracy’ that functions by unpredictable rules, this raises a lot of other inconvenient questions,” he said. Many of a citizen’s fundamental decisions—whether to vote, whether to follow the law—presuppose a democratically legitimate state. “If that’s gone, then how am I supposed to live?”

I agreed that the hybridity was confusing. I could hardly make sense of the building I was in. If Orbán was so single-minded in his opposition to C.E.U. Budapest, then why not raid the building and put a “For Sale” sign on the door? If Hungary was an autocracy, then why were its critics still allowed to sit in the middle of the capital and say so? Miklósi suggested that this ambiguity was part of the point. Maybe, he said, if government ministers started to fear that his peer-reviewed articles were about to spark a revolution, “they would find a way to make my life unpleasant.” They probably wouldn’t jail him, but in theory they could subject him to smears in the state-aligned media, or make it difficult for anyone in his family to get a government job. He added, “For now, I guess, they don’t think I’m worth the effort.”

You hear the word “playbook” a lot these days. (The Guardian: “Trump’s weird obsession with the arts is part of the authoritarian playbook.” MSNBC: “Is the chaos that we have seen since Inauguration Day part of the playbook?”) Trump has never made a secret of his admiration for tyrants, and he frequently mentions Orbán as a model statesman. “These guys do seem to learn from one another,” Julia Sonnevend, a communications scholar at the New School who grew up in Hungary, told me. Trump’s son Don, Jr., went to El Salvador last June to attend the inauguration of that country’s despot, Nayib Bukele. Eduardo Bolsonaro, the son of the Brazilian semi-autocrat Jair Bolsonaro, was in Washington for Trump’s Inauguration in January (and was also there four years before, on January 6th).

If you’re looking for one master playbook, though, you may end up overemphasizing resemblances and downplaying distinctions. “One difference between Orbán and Trump is between suborning the state and blowing it up,” Anna Grzymala-Busse, a political scientist at Stanford, told me. Moreover, some parts of Trump’s program are escalations of preëxisting trends, not fundamental discontinuities. The corruption, the xenophobic nationalism, the ambient threat of decentralized violence—these may be more glaring now, but, whether we like to admit it or not, they have been present throughout American history. George W. Bush stretched Presidential powers well beyond their previous limits; Barack Obama expanded them even further. In the first hundred days of this term, Trump has issued the most executive orders of any modern President. There’s nothing inherently illegitimate about that. Some of these orders—declassifying documents related to the J.F.K. assassination, declaring English the country’s official language—have been divisive but have not obviously exceeded the President’s legal authority. Others, such as a ban on paper straws, have been mostly for show.

In other respects, though, this term already represents a sharp and menacing break. Executive orders such as the ones titled “Addressing Risks from Paul Weiss” and “Addressing Risks from Jenner & Block” are self-evidently cudgels for Trump to wield against his enemies—in this case white-shoe lawyers who have worked for his political opposition. (The orders could be read as prohibiting employees at these firms from entering federal buildings, including courthouses.) When the Bush Administration gave no-bid military contracts to Halliburton, of which Vice-President Dick Cheney had recently been the C.E.O.—or when the current Administration awarded contracts to SpaceX, whose current C.E.O., Elon Musk, is one of Trump’s top advisers—it certainly seemed like favoritism, but it was impossible to prove that any strings had been pulled. In Trump’s orders against the law firms, though, he is explicit that he is punishing them because of his antipathy to their employees (“the unethical Andrew Weissmann”) or their clients (“failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton”)—which appears to be a textbook violation of the First and Sixth Amendments. Turkuler Isiksel, a political theorist at Columbia, told me, “The sovereign openly picking winners and losers in the market—forget Orbán or Erdoğan. That’s something a seventeenth-century king would do.”

The Biden Administration, and even the first Trump Administration, justified deportations with arguments that had a chance of holding up in court. But this Administration has swept up putative gang members, some reportedly for nothing more than having a tattoo, and disappeared them to foreign prisons. Instead of bringing prosecutions, it has simply sent undercover officers to snatch legal residents—accused of nothing but disfavored political speech—off the street. “Dear marxist judges,” Trump’s homeland-security adviser, Stephen Miller, wrote. “If an illegal alien criminal breaks into our country,” the only due process “he is entitled to is deportation.” But this isn’t how the law works, even for non-citizens. As one expert put it, in 2014, “Anybody who’s present in the United States has protections under the United States Constitution.” The Marxist judge who said that was Justice Antonin Scalia.

Previous American Presidents signed orders knowing that they would be challenged in court. But some of Trump’s orders—one radically curtailing birthright citizenship, one banning transgender people from the military, and several more—seem facially unconstitutional. In the early days of this term, there was a lot of speculation about whether the executive branch might defy a direct order from a federal judge, and, if so, whether this would comprise a constitutional crisis. Then it happened, several times. In February, a federal judge ordered immigration officials to turn planes around, but the officials preferred not to. (“I don’t care what the judges think,” Trump’s border czar said. Trump agreed, posting, “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”) In March, one district judge ordered the release of emergency-management funds that were being withheld from nearly two dozen states run by Democrats; in April, another judge ordered the government to halt its plan to decimate the staff of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In written rulings, both judges expressed concern that the government was not complying with their orders. (“There is reason to believe,” one judge wrote, that Administration officials were “thumbing their nose at . . . this Court.”) Last week, the F.B.I. arrested a judge in Wisconsin and charged her with two felonies. Still, no matter how dire the situation got, some commentators kept saying that we were on the brink of a constitutional crisis, not already in one. Once you admit that you are in a constitutional crisis, it raises a lot of other inconvenient questions.

One morning in January, I took a car high into the Buda Hills to meet with David Pressman, who was then serving out his final days as the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary. We sat on settees in his official residence, next to a grand piano and a painting called “Sisyphus Smiling,” while the staff served us coffee in fine china. Pressman, previously a human-rights lawyer and the director of George Clooney’s Foundation for Justice, had done stints in Mogadishu and Khartoum before he was sent to Budapest. “I wanted to go somewhere, candidly, where democracy was in crisis,” he said. What he couldn’t anticipate was that he would be subject to unrelenting attacks in the state-aligned media, turning him into a nationally famous pariah. Before he arrived, in 2022, with his husband and their two children, someone rolled out a welcome banner on the Danube: a skull and crossbones, with the message “Mr. Pressman, don’t colonize Hungary with your cult of death”; during his stay, the pro-regime media mocked him constantly as an “L.G.B.T. activist” and a “full-time provocateur.”

“When you’re dealing with a state that has clearly dispensed with the traditional norms, it doesn’t work to just stick to the old ways,” Pressman told me. He was trying to break from the staid habits of diplomacy, but the impact remained unclear. The previous night, he’d announced that the U.S. Treasury had sanctioned one of Orbán’s top ministers, freezing his American assets. This was an unprecedented step—similar sanctions had been issued against government ministers in Russia, but not against officials in countries that are putative U.S. allies, such as Hungary—yet it was hardly a death blow to Orbán’s kleptocracy. The government treated it as more evidence of American animus, and the minister in question denied wrongdoing and shrugged it off. When I Googled his name, Antal Rogán, there were a few stories about the sanctions in the international press, but many more about “The Joe Rogan Experience.” (A few weeks after Trump was inaugurated, the sanctions were repealed.)

In an armored S.U.V. with a tiny American flag on the hood, we were driven to the American Embassy. Pressman met with civil-society leaders, saying his goodbyes. The Hungarian government had unveiled a mysterious new department called the Sovereignty Protection Office. “We don’t know yet if it’s just a publicity tactic, or if they are being given new surveillance powers,” Miklós Ligeti, from a nonprofit called Transparency International Hungary, said. “But our organization is under investigation by this office, so maybe we will find out.”

“I heard one of the ministers on TV this morning, stating, ‘After Ambassador Pressman leaves, he should avoid Hungary in the future,’ ” a representative from Human Rights Watch said.

“I won’t be following that recommendation,” Pressman said, with a wry smile.

“Well, bring a burner phone,” Szabolcs Panyi, an investigative journalist, said. It was gallows humor, but also good advice.

Each June in Budapest, Pressman hosted a Pride celebration on his lawn. The Hungarian government seemed to hate this, but there didn’t appear to be much it could do—there had been a large Pride parade in the streets of Budapest every year since 1997. Yet nothing in politics is static. Last month, the Hungarian parliament passed a law banning all Pride celebrations. Anyone disobeying the ban this June could be identified by the police with facial-recognition software.

Pressman recently moved back to New York and resumed his work as a partner at Jenner & Block, one of the law firms Trump has targeted with an executive order. (Unlike other firms, which cut deals with the Administration, Jenner & Block is fighting the order in court.) “Most Americans haven’t lived through a situation like this, so they have no idea what it means for powerful institutions to be captured by the state,” Pressman told me earlier this month. “They may assume they can keep their heads down for four years, make concessions, and then regain their independence on the back end. But history shows—and the Hungarian experience shows—that they would be mistaken.”

Castle Hill, on the west bank of the Danube River, is full of fortresses built during the Middle Ages. Tucked among them is a slender building constructed to include a five-hundred-year-old stone fortification. It houses the Danube Institute, a right-wing think tank funded indirectly by the Orbán government. In January, István Kiss, the director, invited me into his office, which was tastefully crammed with Impressionist-style paintings and leather-bound books. It was a busy time for him: he had been in Palm Beach for one of Trump’s Election Night victory parties, and he was invited back to Washington for the Inauguration, but he probably wouldn’t be able to go, because his wife was about to give birth. The government offers generous tax breaks to families with more than two children, a policy aimed at increasing the Hungarian birth rate, and this would be Kiss’s third. “Honestly, we might have stopped at two otherwise,” he told me. “But the incentives were quite appealing.” When he was a university student, he spent a week at the Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank in Alabama. “I discovered that I have some libertarian leanings, but my social conservatism is stronger,” he said. “The left is using the state for its purposes, so why shouldn’t we?”

In April, 2023, in a dungeon-like theatre space in the building’s basement, Kiss introduced an onstage Q. & A. with Christopher Rufo, a right-wing American activist who was in Hungary for a six-week Danube Institute fellowship. For years, Rufo had been pushing for an ideological overhaul of the entire American education system—a proposal that had once struck most politicians, even most MAGA Republicans, as a non-starter. But Rufo said that a version of this program was taking shape in Florida, where he was an adviser to Governor Ron DeSantis. It could be accomplished most directly at state-run institutions such as New College, where DeSantis had installed Rufo as a trustee. (Within months, the trustees had dismantled the gender-studies program and replaced the school’s president, a feminist English professor, with a former Republican politician.) Even when it came to private institutions, where DeSantis had less formal power, he still found ways to gain leverage—for example, by announcing that he would rescind tax breaks from Disney and, by extension, perhaps other “woke” corporations. “It’s essential to have someone that understands how to change institutions,” Rufo said, onstage in Budapest. He added that, during Trump’s first term, “the reality is that the institutions submerged Trump more than Trump reformed the institutions.”

When Trump returned to office, in 2025, he seemed determined to prove such skeptics wrong. Rufo, whose posts on X had caught Musk’s attention, went to Washington in early February, posting a photo from the Department of Education headquarters with the caption “Entering the inner sanctum.” (Rufo recently told me that he was an informal adviser to the Department of Education. A spokesperson for the department, when reached for comment, replied, “He does not advise DOE in any official capacity and should not be referred to as an advisor.”) Rufo told the Times that he hoped the government would withhold money from universities “in a way that puts them in an existential terror.” He didn’t have to wait long. On March 7th, shortly after Linda McMahon, the former C.E.O. of World Wrestling Entertainment, was confirmed as Trump’s new Secretary of Education, the Administration threatened to cut off four hundred million dollars in federal funds to Columbia University, citing campus demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza. Trump may have been eager to pick a fight with Columbia because it was the only Ivy League school in his home town, or because it was the school he most associated with anti-Israel protests, perhaps having seen so many of them on TV. In any case, if there is one thing the President understands, it’s how to seed a compelling media narrative: an élite institution, full of foreigners and strange ideas, had taken root in his country’s biggest city, and he would not stand for it.

On March 13th, the Trump Administration sent Columbia a letter that might as well have been a ransom note. Before the university could even discuss getting its money back, it had to implement nine new policies, including banning face masks and empowering campus security guards to make arrests. On March 21st, it acceded to nearly all the government’s demands. “Columbia is folding—and the other universities will follow suit,” Rufo wrote on X. He told me recently, “It has been happening, honestly, way more quickly than I anticipated. It’s beautiful to see.”

Previous Presidents have used incentives to goad private institutions, but no modern President has so openly used executive spending as an extortion racket. Eighteen of the country’s top constitutional-law scholars, both liberals and conservatives, wrote an open letter: “The government may not threaten funding cuts as a tool to pressure recipients into suppressing First Amendment-protected speech.” Yet the government has continued to do exactly that. (“President Trump is working to Make Higher Education Great Again,” a White House spokesperson told The New Yorker, in part. “Any institution that wishes to violate Title VI is, by law, not eligible for federal funding.”) Given how quickly some universities have capitulated, why wouldn’t the Administration use similar tactics to bully state governments, or Hollywood studios, or other entities that rely on federal money? Last year, Vance gave an interview to the European Conservative, a glossy print journal published in Budapest, in which he praised Orbán’s dominance of cultural institutions. By altering “incentives” and “funding decisions,” Vance added, “you really can use politics to influence culture.”

It will take a lot more than this to turn Columbia into a Potemkin university, or to drive it out of the country. C.E.U. was founded in the nineteen-nineties; Columbia was founded before the Declaration of Independence was written, and still has an endowment of more than fourteen billion dollars. In the coming months, though, smaller universities will surely be targeted, and some will presumably go bankrupt. (In February, with the stroke of a pen, Trump slashed the staff at two colleges run by the Bureau of Indian Education, and it barely made the news.) I visited Columbia earlier this month. Instead of passing through the main gate as usual, I had to stop at a checkpoint, where, between a couple of classical sculptures representing Science and Letters, some uniformed security guards waited to check my I.D. Two professors met me on campus. “They keep adding more of this Orwellian shit,” one told me, gesturing at a bulbous security camera above our heads. The other added, “After a while, unfortunately, you stop noticing.” One of them had studied democratic collapse in Europe and Latin America; the other was from India, where, under the competitive authoritarian Narendra Modi, academic freedom was under constant assault. Neither would say more, even off the record, until we walked away from campus to the edge of the Hudson River, where they would be less likely to be overheard or recorded. “It may seem paranoid,” one of them said. “But not if you’ve seen this movie before.”

The most influential independent media outlet in Hungary is a YouTube channel called Partizán, a name that evokes both advocacy journalism and anti-authoritarian resistance. It does its work not in the pine forests of Belarus but on the outskirts of Budapest, where it broadcasts from a soundstage in an unmarked warehouse. To get there one night, I walked past dilapidated brick buildings in an industrial area without sidewalks or street lights. My American street sense told me that I was about to get mugged, but in Central Europe it can be hard to tell the difference between imminent danger and shabby chic. Márton Gulyás emerged from the shadows and smiled, shaking my hand. “They filmed part of ‘The Brutalist’ in this parking lot,” he said, and led me upstairs.

In the studio, the mood was much warmer. Gulyás, Partizán’s founder and main anchor, took his place on set, wearing a hoodie, in front of a bank of vintage TVs. He had just finished moderating the channel’s flagship daily show—a two-hour live roundtable, analyzing the day’s news from a leftist perspective—and he was about to tape an interview with Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top foreign-policy advisers. I sat in a control room, where a few long-haired, effortlessly well-dressed employees made instant coffee. Partizán receives small donations from all over Hungary, and the control room was stocked with high-end equipment (a five-thousand-dollar video router, a cabinet labelled “HUMÁN-ROBOT INTERFÉSZ”).

Since 2010, the Hungarian media has been thoroughly compromised. There are a few news sites in Budapest that still do valiant investigative work, but most TV channels and newspapers with national reach essentially function as privately owned state propaganda. Again, though, the regime is careful to preserve plausible deniability. Unlike in Mexico or the Philippines, government agents in Hungary don’t kill or arrest hostile journalists. “They don’t walk into a newsroom and announce, ‘We are shutting you down because you published tough stories about us,’ ” Gábor Miklósi, a veteran investigative journalist (and the brother of Zoltan, the C.E.U. academic), told me. “They say, ‘This is the new owner, and the new owner has some ideas about how to improve the business.’ And the part they don’t have to say, but everybody knows, is that this new owner is an oligarch who happens to be very close to the Prime Minister.” For a decade, Gábor worked at Index, which used to be one of Hungary’s most reliable news outlets. After Orbán came to power, Gábor started to worry about editorial independence. But there wasn’t much meddling at first, he said, “so I convinced myself I should stay.” When he did start to notice some editorial interference, “it was mostly minor things”—a headline softened at the last minute, a story spiked for ambiguous reasons—“so you can never be sure. Maybe this particular case was a misunderstanding. Maybe I’m imagining things.” Around 2018, a company affiliated with Index was acquired by new owners, “lesser-known businesspeople tied to Fidesz oligarchs.” After this, the editor-in-chief was fired, and most of the editorial staff, including Gábor, resigned in protest. Now he works at Partizán.

Gulyás started Partizán in 2015, when he was an avant-garde theatre director in his mid-twenties. He spoke directly to the camera, aiming for “satire mixed with activism—‘People, wake up! They’re taking our rights away, can’t you see that?’ ” He now considers this style cringeworthy and ineffective. “You can’t just raise awareness, every day, every hour, about some new fucking emergency,” he continued. “Maybe it is an emergency, but if you keep saying only that then people stop listening.” The director of the Hungarian National Theatre, an outspoken critic of the government, was replaced, which became front-page news. (In Hungary, the director of the national theatre is a celebrity.) Gulyás led a series of protests. In 2017, he went to Castle Hill with a bucket of paint, prepared to throw it on the Presidential palace, and was arrested. But, when the government put him on trial as a threat to national security, Gulyás became a cause célèbre on social media. “They did not make that mistake again,” he said. “Now, when they want to put pressure on us, they do not do it so publicly.”

Tax officials have inspected Partizán’s financial records more than once, ostensibly for routine reasons. “We just tell them, ‘Here are our books, we have kept them very carefully for you,’ ” Gulyás said. He is gay, and government-aligned tabloids often spread baseless rumors attempting to associate gay people with such things as pedophilia. “I am a boring person, actually,” he told me. “But they could use anything—a picture of me sitting in a restaurant near someone who later turns out to be a bad guy—and make it look like a conspiracy.”

The fact that Partizán broadcasts online limits its reach, but also limits the government’s leverage over it. Its videos often get hundreds of thousands of views—a big deal in a country of some ten million people. In the last election, when Orbán’s main challenger couldn’t get airtime on TV, he put his message out on Partizán; the current opposition candidate gained widespread attention through an interview with Gulyás. The anchor now occupies a unique status—something like Hungary’s Rachel Maddow, Amy Goodman, and John Oliver rolled into one. The American media is far more robust than the Hungarian press, but there have been early signs of trouble. The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times pulled their Presidential endorsements last year; Trump filed frivolous lawsuits against ABC News, which quickly settled, and CBS News, which initially vowed to fight but now seems poised to settle. The First Amendment still offers broad protections, but, even if you have the law on your side, there are plenty of incentives to avoid a confrontation with the President. This is especially true when the President seems willing to engage in extralegal tactics, such as selective audits, retributive regulation, and harassment campaigns carried out in the parts of the media that are already loyal to him.

Gulyás lives in an upscale bohemian neighborhood of Budapest, and one night he had me over for a long dinner. His boyfriend made osso buco and risotto; Gulyás put on a John Coltrane record and poured red wine, then made Negronis. Gulyás is considering a move to the countryside, where most Orbán supporters live; he can’t really understand his country, he feels, without spending time outside Budapest. But, for now, he is living the urban dream. “They say that Hungary is the poster child for the failure of the Enlightenment project,” Gulyás said. “But I will stay in this country until the last possible moment.”

Some people, of course, see Trumpism not as a democratic emergency but as a triumph of democracy. Recently, when Vance told a Politico reporter that the President may end up defying the Supreme Court, he portrayed this as an effort not to subvert democracy but to improve it: “If the elected President says, ‘I get to control the staff of my own government,’ and the Supreme Court steps in and says, ‘You’re not allowed to do that’—like, that is the constitutional crisis.” David Reaboi, a right-wing operative who has been an adviser to American and Hungarian politicians, told me, “The Venn diagram of the people who think Orbán is Hitler and Trump is Hitler is a circle, and it’s made up entirely of people who are out of their minds. Saying ‘Hungary is for Hungarians’ or ‘America is for Americans’ is a tautology. Who else would it be for? I don’t understand why anyone would have a mental breakdown over it.”

Some constitutional scholars still maintain that hair-on-fire rhetoric about the demise of the republic is counterproductive. “Look, Trump was elected democratically, and I don’t see anything that suggests that future elections will not be as democratic as previous ones,” Michael McConnell, a professor of constitutional law at Stanford, told me. “Some of what he’s attempting to do is unlawful, and he exaggerates it to make it sound even scarier than it is, but the likely end result is that he will be checked by the courts.” Andrew Jackson, McConnell went on, also had “authoritarian instincts.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt fired civil servants for ideological reasons, attempted to pack the Supreme Court, and—violating precedent, though not the Constitution—won a third term, and then a fourth. The Biden Administration also overreached, McConnell told me; it just did so more quietly. One thought experiment McConnell likes to float: if a President were bending the rules on behalf of policies you liked instead of policies you deplored, how much would it bother you? “It’s just a talking point of the left,” Tom Fitton, the head of a right-wing group called Judicial Watch, told me. “If they’re not getting their way, democracy’s at risk.”

The exact steps from the Hungarian playbook cannot be replicated here. They started with Orbán’s party winning a legislative super-majority, which it used to rewrite the Hungarian constitution. In our sclerotic two-party system, it’s become nearly impossible for either party to sustain a long-standing majority; and, even if Trumpists held super-majorities in both houses of Congress, this wouldn’t be enough to amend the Constitution. “All those veto points in our system, by making it so hard to get anything done, may have helped bring about this autocratic moment,” Jake Grumbach, a public-policy professor at U.C. Berkeley, told me. “Now that there is an autocratic threat in the executive branch, though, I have to say, I’m glad those checks exist.” For years, Samuel Moyn, a historian at Yale, argued that liberals should stop inflating Trump into an all-powerful cartoon villain—that he was a weak President, not an imminent fascist threat. But in March, after the disappearance of the Columbia student activist Mahmoud Khalil, Moyn applied the F-word to Trump for the first time. Still, he insisted, “Even at the most alarming and dangerous moments, politics is still politics.” All talk of playbooks aside, an autocratic breakthrough is not something that any leader can order up at will, by following the same ten easy steps.

In 2002, Levitsky and another co-author, the political scientist Lucan Way, wrote a paper called “Elections Without Democracy: The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism.” Way recently told me, “When people would predict, ‘America will turn into Hungary,’ I would roll my eyes. But, boy, have I been humbled.” This February, Way and Levitsky published a piece in Foreign Affairs. “Democracy survived Trump’s first term because he had no experience, plan, or team,” they wrote. “U.S. democracy will likely break down during the second Trump administration, in the sense that it will cease to meet standard criteria for liberal democracy.” What Americans are living through now may feel basically normal, Levitsky told me—“Trump hasn’t brought out the tanks. Schumer’s not in prison”—but, he said, this is the way it often feels, even after things have already spun out of control. When I spoke to Way, he mentioned the capitulation of top law firms (“disastrous”), and the shambolic response from Democratic Party leaders (“utterly depressing”). Trump recently told NBC News that he was considering staying in office for more than four years, then clarified that he was “not joking.” Way wouldn’t even rule out the possibility that he might succeed. “Right now,” he said, “I think the U.S. is no longer a democracy.” He meant that we were seeing democratic backsliding, not a totalitarian dystopia. Still, when he said those words, I felt the way Zoltan Miklósi must have felt a decade ago. The conclusion sounded extreme, even if I couldn’t entirely refute it.

One paradox of strongmen like Bukele and Modi is that their anti-democratic maneuvers have made them genuinely popular. Break enough bureaucratic logjams, through either ingenuity or thuggish intimidation, and people may celebrate you as a man of action. It’s too early to tell whether Trump’s frenetic approach will be good or bad for his approval rating, but it is impossible to deny that he has been a man of action. The central tenet of competitive authoritarianism, though, is that an autocrat, even one who has already stacked the deck, can still lose. In Poland, the Law and Justice party entrenched its power, following the Hungarian model—but it pushed too far, notably with a series of unpopular anti-abortion measures, and, in 2023, lost its majority. In Brazil, in 2022, Jair Bolsonaro, the “Trump of the tropics,” tried to rig his own reëlection, but all his efforts failed, and he will soon stand trial for conspiracy to overthrow the government. Rodrigo Duterte, of the Philippines, who once seemed invincible, was arrested in March and brought to The Hague. There will be elections in Hungary next year, and Orbán, for the first time in decades, is facing a formidable challenger. Right now, the polls are tied.

Nothing in politics is permanent, and nothing is inevitable. The scholar Timothy Snyder warns against “anticipatory obedience” to tyranny, and fatalism can be its own form of capitulation. Even a gutted democracy can always come back from the dead. “In that sense, ‘How Democracies Die’ is actually a terrible metaphor,” Levitsky told me. “Everything is reversible.” In these frantic days, he sounds like both a Cassandra and a Pollyanna, sometimes simultaneously. “We are not El Salvador, and we are not Hungary,” he said. “We spent centuries, as a society, building up democratic muscle, and we still have a lot of that muscle left. I just keep waiting for someone to use it.”

When a graduate student whom I’ll call Noémi moved to the U.S., in 2018, she thought it would be a refuge from what was happening in her native Hungary. She had read enough history to understand that America wasn’t perfect. “I knew about the McCarthy era, and the tensions after 9/11,” she said. “But all the things you hear about the First Amendment and the legal protections for speech—somehow I still thought that meant something.” She is a Ph.D. student living in New York. Although she has a green card, she asked me not to use her name; if the State Department tries to kick students out, university officals may not be able to protect them. Her grandfather has late-stage cancer, and she isn’t sure she’ll be able to visit him in Hungary before he dies. “I told my partner, ‘I’m not a criminal, I’m not even an activist—why shouldn’t I go?’ ” But her partner sent her news article after news article: a German green-card holder arrested at Logan Airport and sent to a detention facility; a French scientist denied entry after anti-Trump messages were discovered on his phone. For now, Noémi is “frozen in place. Scared here, but also scared to leave.” She’s already considering where she will go next, if she has to go.

Last month, when a newspaper published a photo of a campus protest, an international student appeared in the background. She wasn’t there as a protester—she was just walking by—but knowing that her face was visible in the photo caused her to go into hiding for two weeks. I heard about another student, a Palestinian with a green card, who hadn’t left his apartment since March 8th, the night Mahmoud Khalil was taken; his friends were bringing him food, and he was using light-therapy lamps to regulate his sleep. A Ph.D. student whom I’ll call Divya told me that she left India in part because of academic repression under the Modi government, and she now lives in New York on an F-1 visa. Some of her friends, she said, “won’t use credit cards, in case they’re being tracked.” Among her friends who teach undergraduates, she added, “the new fear is that if you have a student who’s a citizen, and they don’t like what you say in class, maybe they’ll report you and get you deported.” Meanwhile, her neighbors go about their lives—shopping at Whole Foods, picking up the dry cleaning, then going home to catch up on the news and curse the latest Trump outrage, as if it were all happening somewhere else. For most of us, the sun still rises in the morning and sets in the evening, even as some of us now have to use L.E.D. lamps to substitute for natural light.

Turkuler Isiksel, the political theorist at Columbia, met me in her office, where the Declaration of the Rights of Man was framed on a wall. On her desk was a plush dog adapted from a meme (the one where the dog sits in a burning room saying, “This is fine”). Isiksel grew up in Turkey, then left to study in the U.K., the U.S., and Italy before becoming a tenured professor and a naturalized American citizen. She told me, “I really thought, as a constitutional theorist, that no place has fully solved the problem of checking power and letting the people rule, but at least America has it figured out better than anywhere else. But maybe Madison was right—maybe constitutions really are just parchment barriers.” She considered saying something more pointed, but held her tongue—she had an upcoming flight to Istanbul, and she didn’t want to cause unnecessary trouble for herself or her family. I asked whether she meant trouble in Turkey, or trouble back in the U.S. “I don’t even know at this point,” she said. 

[davidtennantgenderenvy]

A Letter From An Ex-Conservative To Her Parents On November 6th, 2024

Mom and Dad,

     When Trump got shot this summer, I remember you saying that this was all because the Left wouldn’t stop calling him Hitler. How we needed to “turn down the temperature” and stop “inciting violence.” I don’t think you understand that when people compare Trump to Hitler, it is not, in fact, just because they do not like him, but because he uses Hitlerian rhetoric on a regular basis. Obsessing over an imagined past version of a country that never truly existed. Saying that (insert frequently dehumanized other) is “poisoning the blood of the nation.” Before Hitler began the Final Solution against Jews, what did he say he planned to do? Deport them, until he realized it was too costly. I don’t think you understand that Hitler did not start putting people in death camps the second he came to power. Trump is currently in about the same position Hitler was in in the 1930s. Is it going to take him putting undocumented people in gas chambers for you to believe me? 

     You might think that I’ve only come to my current conclusions about Trump because of the lies of “the mainstream media”, which, as I’ve said numerous times, I don’t even watch. But it’s actually been largely due to the things Trump himself has said. I understand that you don’t like Biden calling Trump’s voters “garbage”, but the language Trump uses to describe his political opponents is at least as disturbing. He’s disparaged fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers.” He’s proudly boasted about being the president who got Roe V Wade appealed, regardless of the estimated thousands of women who are dying because the medical treatments they need fall too close to the legal definition of abortion. A massive portion of his campaign advertisements are explicitly anti-trans. He thinks Palestinians should be moved off their land because it would make “great beachfront property.” He regularly speaks positively of and rubs elbows with the most disturbing members of the alt-right, such as Laura Loomer and Nick Fuentes. He’s a bully. (you voted for a bully. Remember when I was bullied?) And if Kamala’s plans are incoherent, which admittedly some of them are, Trump’s are even more so. He doesn't have a plan. America is just another failed business to him. 

     I don’t think you’re bad people. But I do think your party is bad. This is far more than just one guy. My journey has been less one of changing any of my beliefs than realizing that the Republican Party never represented those beliefs to begin with. It is the party of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, of stripping the oppressed of their means to succeed and then asking them to “pull themselves up by the bootstraps.” Your precious Reagan was a racist. There’s recorded evidence. His policies were racist. He enabled denial and misinformation about AIDS until it was too little too late and millions had died. And you proudly display his book on your shelf, right next to Rush Limbaugh and Pat fucking Buchanan. Your son is a gay man. How could you. 

     Being a conservative, whether you think so or not, is inherently about preserving the status quo, about making sure things stay the way they are, that the people who are down stay down, and crushing anyone who tries to make things better. I didn’t vote Democrat because I am one. I voted Democrat because it would be easier under one such administration to push this country in the direction of equity and liberty. Project 2025 was intended for the next conservative administration. Trump may deny involvement, but the foreword of one of the sections was written by none other than his own vice president. And with the House, Senate and Supreme Court all red now, it’s going to be easier than ever for him to pass any portions of it he likes. 

     I’m writing you this letter so that you know that if a nationwide abortion ban gets put in place, if schools and parents who support their children’s gender affirming care (which does NOT mean surgery) start getting investigated (which some already are), if Israel continues bombing Gaza until there’s nothing left, if billionaires continue to take up larger and larger percentages of the nation’s wealth, if immigrants who’ve lived and worked in this country for years start getting deported in droves because they couldn’t get the right paperwork, that it’s on you and people like you, even as you continue deny the very real damage done in Trump’s first presidency, the awful, awful people who felt empowered because of him. I tried for a while this summer to see if I could change your minds, but all it did was screw up my mental health and make me realize something truly painful: that you aren’t the people I thought you were. Not when your reaction to police shooting students the same age as your own daughter with rubber bullets because they don’t want their university to be complicit in a genocide is “well, what are they supposed to do? They’re the police.” Not when a man can say immigrants are poisoning the blood of the nation and you still vote for him. 

     It breaks my heart that you and so many people I love have been so deeply conditioned to vote against their own best interests, to think that a government that actually helps its people without actively harming others is a childish, fanciful expectation. I think I truly believed to the depths of my soul until last night that this wouldn’t happen. That we were better than this. That we wouldn’t reelect someone who objectively ran a terrible campaign, who conducts himself with boorishness and indignity, who genuinely, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, represents everything that made me scream "Fuck America" out Laura’s car window this summer. But why should I be surprised America likes fascists? My own parents certainly seem to.

     But I hope you’re happy with your lower grocery prices, I guess. Which we probably won’t be getting anyway, because that’s not actually what Trump’s policies are going to do. 

     You sold out my friends, and entire marginalized communities, for cheaper groceries. I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you for that.

Lauren

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Olivia Julianna at A New Perspective:

When you study history long enough, you start to recognize the patterns in real time—especially the patterns of right-wing, power-hungry authoritarians. Donald Trump has now entered the first hundred days of his second term as President—a defining period for any administration. But we’ve seen this before. After the chaos of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte rose through the rubble, capitalizing on public fear and political exhaustion. Backed by key power players and the military, he seized control of the government in a bloodless coup and named himself First Consul. It was swift. It was strategic. And it paved the way for his self-coronation as Emperor. Sound familiar? In 2016, Donald Trump won the presidency. Why? The pendulum swung. After eight years of President Obama—an administration full of hope and promise—many Americans still felt left behind. Not because progress hadn’t been made (the Affordable Care Act was monumental), but because the scale and urgency of change didn’t match what they believed the moment required. Just like Barack Obama rode a wave of frustration and a hunger for change in 2008, so did Trump in 2016.

In 2008, Americans chose the charismatic outsider over the seasoned insider. In 2016, they did it again. But in 2020, that same dynamic turned on Trump. The pandemic devastated the country. Over a million lives lost. Mass unemployment. Medical systems pushed to the brink. Americans said goodbye to loved ones through FaceTime, behind plastic curtains—while Trump played golf at private clubs with the elite. “Let them eat cake.” Or, as Trump said, “It is what it is.” And so, he was ousted. Replaced by the safe, institutional choice: Joe Biden. Napoleon, too, was exiled. After launching a disastrous campaign into Russia—600,000 troops sent, only 100,000 returned—he was defeated at Leipzig and sent away. For a moment, peace seemed possible. But tyrants rarely vanish forever.

Before Trump began his second hundred days, Napoleon had his. He returned from exile, regained power, and tried once more to rebuild his empire. But Europe had seen enough. The Sixth Coalition struck quickly, met him at Waterloo, and defeated him for good. Trump has now returned—and so have we arrived at the second hundred days. And he’s wasted no time showing us how he plans to rule. He’s defying court rulings. Disregarding the Constitution. Filling his cabinet with loyalists bent on revenge and suppression. He’s eroding public institutions, gutting essential programs, and using executive authority to shred the social fabric of this country, seam by seam, until the nation is unrecognizable. But like Napoleon, Trump will go too far. Maybe it will be a reckless trade war. Maybe an attack on a powerful institution like Harvard. Maybe a whiplash shift in foreign policy that rattles the world. Whatever it is—his 600,000-troop moment is coming. And we must be ready.

[...]

Accountability is non-negotiable.

There is no “return to normal.” No cushy contributor contracts for Trump’s enablers. No polite re-entry into society for the architects of sedition. Make consequences visible and unavoidable. Because even after Napoleon fell, he remained a myth to some. Romanticized. Revered. And his nephew used that legacy to rise again—declaring himself Emperor and repeating the cycle of destruction. History doesn’t end when you win once. Defeating Trump—and Trumpism—isn’t about one election or one candidate. It’s about suffocating the myth before it can be reborn. Tear it out at the root. Bury it deep. And never let it grow again. Because if we don’t—someone else will pick up the banner. And next time, we may not have the tools to win.

Olivia Julianna coming in with the heat on how Americans should defeat the authoritarian menace of Donald Trump and prevent someone similar from taking root again.

[dappersappho]

I was almost 16 (like my birthday was literally two weeks away) on Election Day in 2008. Not old enough vote yet, I could only hold my breath. After the disaster that was the Bush administration, all I wanted was to see if a Democrat, any of them, could sort things out.

I was terrified that I wouldn’t see that happen because, of all people, the Democrats chose a barely known senator from Illinois, who just so happened to be a black man. Even my own friend group was saying pretty heinous and disparaging things about him. When I called them out, they would say, “Look, he’s just not experienced enough.” Or they were calling him a socialist even though they definitely didn’t know what that meant.

Even then I knew they were a product of their upbringing. In other words, their southern white parents who could vote. My mother and grandmother, both black, were the only people I knew who were openly supporting Obama. Well, them and my English teacher, who was white and a single mother. Nothing gave me hope that it would be enough.

Since Election Day is held on a Tuesday, I would’ve had school the next day and needed some sleep. But it was almost 11pm and a decision still wasn’t made. I tried to turn off the TV and go to bed, but I couldn’t. I just had to know. I had to see it for myself. I turned the TV back on. Five minutes later, Barack Obama surpassed the number of electoral votes needed to win. I looked around my room then back at the TV. This was real. I just witnessed something huge.

Suddenly, I heard my mom screaming from her bedroom across the house; I guess she couldn’t sleep and kept her eyeballs on the TV as well. I ran to her and we hugged, jumped, screamed, and cried. I don’t think we’ve ever seen each other so emotional before. She pointed to the TV, which was showing Obama’s electoral votes continue to rise, and said, “Look at this! 16! You were 16 when you saw this!”

The next 8 years were met with ups and downs. But I never turned on the news or opened social media and dreaded what I was about to see. I was open to learning new things and keeping up with what was going on. It was easy to care about others because I felt at ease with myself and my country. Was I proud to be an American? Debatable. But I wasn’t really ashamed either.

Then 2016 happened. I voted third party because I naively believed that I could make a statement in doing so (I deleted my tumblr account at the time because I kept getting into fights with people who tried to convince me it was a bad idea). That and I thought Hillary Clinton would win anyway.

I felt sick to my stomach. Once again, I couldn’t sleep, but for a different reason this time. I was almost 24, a super senior in college. A friend of mine and my roommate’s spent the night with us. They got more sleep than I did. The next day, all three of us skipped class. We spent the morning together in our dorm with cookies and hot cider. The rest of the day, we tried to avoid any place on campus that had a TV since the news would be on.

The next day, I had an afternoon class. We spent almost the entire hour discussing just how much of an epic disaster a Trump administration will be for our country. I didn’t say anything. I would’ve started screaming incoherently in the face of anyone who minimized my concerns if I did. I could feel it in my chest. At the same time, I was feeling guilty. Why didn’t I just grit my teeth and vote for Hillary? Why?! Would it have made a difference if I did?

My mind has been in the dark since, made even worse during everything that happened in 2020. Sure Joe won - I even voted for the guy - but at what costs? I still didn’t feel relieved. I felt no hope. An oncoming Biden administration felt like the storm would continue, but hey, at least it isn’t flooding anymore.

Now, at almost 32 and bound to witness a historical election once more, I see a light again. We’re not out of the woods yet. Even if Kamala wins, we won’t be. But, just like I did 16 years ago, I feel hope. I’m once again able to believe that things will get better. I’m scared of being optimistic, but I can’t help it. I need this. I need to believe we’re closer to a leader who can and will do right by us, who will listen to us, and represent us in the best way. If it’s not Kamala, she sure as hell will be one giant step in the right direction.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

An executive order issued in the early days of the Trump administration hit pause on at least $4 billion set aside to protect the flow of the Colorado River. The funds from the Inflation Reduction Act were offered to protect the flow of the water supply for about 40 million people and a massive agricultural economy. With the money on hold, Colorado River users are worried about the future of the dwindling water supply.

The river is shrinking due to climate change. The nation’s two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, created by dams on the Colorado River, have reached record low levels in recent years amid a megadrought spanning more than two decades. If water levels fall much lower, they could lose the ability to generate hydropower within the massive dams that hold them back, or even lose the ability to pass water downstream.

The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act allowed Biden to designate $4 billion for Colorado River programs, funding farmers, cities and Native American tribes to conserve Colorado River water by leaving it in those reservoirs. The payments are compensation for lost income.

A lot of the IRA money has already been delivered, but Bart Fisher, who sits on the board of the Palo Verde Irrigation District in California, is worried about what will happen if it goes away.

“If there’s no funding,” he said, “there will be no conservation.”

Farmers in Palo Verde use Colorado River water to grow cattle feed and vegetables in the desert along the Arizona border. Fisher said they want to be active participants in protecting the river, but they stand to lose money if they use less water and grow fewer crops.

“You won’t see any ag producer in any district willing to sacrifice revenue from their normal ag production for nothing,” he said.

In the current funding cycle, landowners in Fisher’s irrigation district alone are getting about $40 million in exchange for cutting back on their water use. No one knows how much, if any, will be delivered in the next cycle, which starts in August. Fisher said farmers are already thinking about their budgets for the next growing season.

“At the moment, it’s unnerving to think that maybe come August the first, all of our plans will need to suddenly change,” he said.

When President Donald Trump signed his first executive order, “Unleashing American Energy,” it didn’t seem to have a direct impact on how much water is in the Colorado River, at least in the short term.

The order, signed the first day Trump took office, aims to, “unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources,” by ending “burdensome and ideologically motivated regulations.”

But the order also says, “All agencies shall immediately pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.”

“These are not woke environmental programs,” said Anne Castle, who held federal water policy roles during the Biden and Obama administrations. “These are essential to continued ability to divert water.”

Water users whose grants have been paused said they are asking the federal government for more information and getting little in the way of answers. The federal agencies in charge of Western water did not respond to NPR’s requests for comment.

Conservation programs like the one sending money to California farmers have been key in boosting water supplies in major reservoirs. That is no small feat, as leaders of the states that use Colorado River water are caught in a legal standoff about how to share it going forward. They appear to be making little progress as they meet behind closed doors ahead of a 2026 deadline.

“Having this appropriated funding suddenly taken away undoes years and years of very careful collaboration among the states in the Colorado River Basin,” Castle said. “And threatens the sustainability of the entire system.”

[yourreddancer]

Today in Politics, Bulletin 73. 2/17/25

Today in Politics, Bulletin 73. 2/17/25 Ron Filipkowski Feb 18 ∙ … The President of the NYU Young Republicans was forced to resign after calling Barron Trump “an oddity on campus.” The College Republicans: “We have been made aware of a statement made by the NYU chapter president that does not align with the values and principles of our organization. Though Vanity Fair unfairly framed what was said, we still found it to be inappropriate.”

… The CRs then invited Barron to have a social life: “Barron Trump represents the future of the conservative movement, and we would be honored to have him join College Republicans of America. Strong leadership is built on resilience, courage, and the humility to rise above petty hostility - qualities that Barron has demonstrated.”

… None of these people have ever even heard Barron speak, or seen him accomplish anything at all, but they already have him as the next George Washington. A weird cult. … Musk reposted a random account today that showed a picture purporting to show migrants storming a hospital with axes and knives. The photo turned out to a screen shot from the movie The Dark Knight Rises.

… Musk also reposted a QAnon account today that said Tom Hanks is a pedophile.

… Free Speech Absolutist Musk was upset about the 60 Minutes segment about him wiping out USAID: “60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They deserve a long prison sentence.” … Maybe he was upset about this line in the 60 Minutes segment: “The world’s richest man cut off aid for the world’s poorest people.”

… Rep. Mike Haridopolos on Fox: “I really applaud the president for creating the DOGE and using a mastermind like Elon Musk, who understands computers and technology to root out this corruption.”

… AP reports that criminal charges have been filed by attorneys against Trump-loving Argentine President Javier Melei, who is now being investigated by a judge for a crypto scam. Melei promoted a crypto coin on his good friend Elon Musk’s platform, which caused many investors to go in big. Then he withdrew his support hours later in a classic “rug pull”, which caused the coin to plummet in value with investors losing $4 billion in just hours.

… Breitbart’s editor reports that the Trump admin is now ready to work on lowering egg prices: “USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins told me regarding record high egg prices that she and Trump and other top White House officials have spoken about it. ROLLINS: “We’re on it.’”

… After every disaster - whether it was a train derailment or storm - Trump and right-wing media immediately hammered Joe Biden on why he didn’t immediately rush into the scene and “do something” or showed how much he cared. Then Trump would typically visit the site a week later and soak up all the optics while continuing to denounce Biden and lie that FEMA wasn’t helping.

… With the major storm hitting TN, KY and other states this weekend resulting in at least 9 fatalities with thousands of homes and businesses devastated, Trump attended the Daytona 500 on Sunday and played golf in Florida on Monday. He also made dozens of posts on Truth Social about himself. He did not say a single word about the disaster. … But with a few stray exceptions, Democrats didn’t say anything about Trump ignoring it because they choose not to play the game that way, or maybe they were busy or something. I kept checking and waiting. It was crickets.

As Joe Walsh once sang, “Lucky I’m sane after all I’ve been through … I can’t complain but sometimes I still do.

… Trump arrived early before the race started, then did his little ride around the track, while his photo op stunt ended up delaying the start of the race, which then pushed the race into a storm causing it to be stopped until it blew over, and he left before the race started and didn’t watch any of it.

… Commerce Secretary Doug Burgum on Fox & Friends: "Watching President Trump in the Beast, leading the pace car, leading the field of the most talented drivers in the world, kicking off the entire NASCAR season for America, when he was doing that it reminded me of how he's actually leading the world right now. He was courageous during his first term, but this time he's fearless. He's operating at a next level. He's at a different gear. His ideas are brilliant, and they're powerful, and they're simple."

… It’s a cult.

… Rep. Clay Higgins had a meltdown last night, posting a deranged video where he was fuming at the Postal Service. MailboxGate started because Clay’s custom mailbox that looks like a brick pizza oven didn’t have a door: “They’re not gonna deliver my mail anymore because my box don’t have a door. I grew up in the country. This is the nicest mailbox I’ve ever had. If they’re not gonna deliver mail to this mailbox, what are they gonna do to country folk!”

… Rand Paul told Fox he would like to “audit” the gold in Ft Knox: “I've been trying to go down and see the gold and make sure it's all there for about 10 years. During the first Trump admin, I got permission. You have to get permission all the way up to the Sec of Treasury. And then he said, ‘well, I want to go down there, too. I want to go down there when the eclipse is coming through KY, too, so I can see the eclipse and the gold at the same time.’ But they came when I wasn't there, so I didn't get to go down, but the Sec of the Treasury and McConnell did go down and attest that they believe they saw the gold down there.”

… This, of course, got the right-wing conspiracy theorists cranked up into high gear. Elon Musk: “Who is confirming that gold wasn’t stolen from Ft. Knox? Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s not. That gold is owned by the American public! We want to know if it’s still there. It would be cool to do a live video walkthrough of Fort Knox!”

… Then the big storm hit Kentucky, which them got the “Dems control the weather” people going. One right-winger posted: “All this talk of auditing Fort Knox and all of a sudden that area is completely FLOODED. IF only I were a conspiracy theorist …”

… Georgia GOP elected official and flat-earther Kandiss Taylor said the Deep Staters who tried to cover up the Fort Knox gold audit who caused this storm are responsible for the deaths: “Whoever did this has the blood of a 7 year old child on their hands.”

… The FAA has fired hundreds of employees that help with the installation, maintenance, and inspection of air traffic control communications and computer systems in the US. … Pete Buttigieg: “The flying public needs answers. How many FAA personnel were just fired? What positions? And why?”

… Trump lawyer Alina Habba claimed on Fox that the conservative Republican federal prosecutors handing the Eric Adams public corruption case were only going after him because Adams opposed sanctuary cities: “This man was prosecuted because he was anti-sanctuary city policies. He wanted NY to be safe. And then all of the sudden, ‘Wow, he’s prosecuted!’”

… Not the bribes Adams solicited from foreign entities. It was sanctuary cities thing.

… Habba, who said on a podcast during the campaign, “I’d rather be pretty than smart,” also posted photos of herself on IG getting prepped backstage for her big Fox appearance.

… Trump nominated crazy ‘Stop The Steal’ leader Ed Martin, who also represented multiple J6 defendants, to serve as DC US Attorney. Martin was appointed on an interim basis when Trump took office, but obviously his threats to prosecute anyone who bothers Musk’s DOGE team members got him the gig full-time.

… Rep. Claudia Tenney has introduced a bill to make Trump’s birthday a national holiday: “No modern president has been more pivotal for our country than Donald J. Trump. Today, I introduced legislation to designate Trump's Birthday as a federal holiday, ensuring President Trump's contributions to American greatness are forever enshrined into law.”

IT'S A CULT!!!!

… WaPo’s Josh Rogin reports that JD Vance’s support of the far-right AfD during his visit to Germany may have actually hurt the party a week before their election: “In Munich, a minority of officials and experts posited that anti-Americanism in Germany was high enough that Vance’s endorsement might hurt AfD more than help them. Early data seems to support this theory. Let’s see where the numbers end up.”

… A bizarre report from Financial Times that Trump Special Envoy Ric Grenell met with and pressured Romania’s foreign minister Emil Hurezeanu to ease travel restrictions on Andrew Tate, who is charged with human trafficking, trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor, and money laundering.

… If there’s really weird stuff going on behind the scene in Trump World, there’s a pretty good chance Grenell is involved somehow.

Today was a RELATIVELY quiet day because of the holiday. Trump spent the day playing golf (shocking), Congress wasn’t in session, and Dems didn’t have much going on. I expect that will change tomorrow, though. See you tomorrow night!

… Trump was asked about the deadline he gave for noon on Saturday for Hamas to return all the hostages or else “all hell” will rain down on them, which they ignored: “I told him, Bibi, you do whatever you want.” Student protestors might be missing ...

[uirukii]

Harris could have chosen to win but she simply chose to lose. It's not hard to beat Trump, it's comically easy, actually. You can convince yourself that it wasn't her choice to lose, but the fact of the matter is that she deliberately lost voters in key swing states. Trump's vote amounts remained mostly the same. Harris lost 10-15 million votes from Biden. Black women voted for her in less amounts than they did Biden or Hillary.

Had she not done genocide, she would've won. No matter how much you try and convince yourself otherwise. Now you have Trump. You can learn from this or just give up and die i guess.

This will be the last time I address you, because I worry for your immaturity and obvious chronic online addiction that has you repeating far-right talking points, Zionist misinformation and overall anti-democratic propaganda.

Both Israel, Trump and Russia relied on people like you and of course, Trump’s base to win. If you went on right-wing media, they celebrated folks like you because they knew your base was a key to their victory. They worked hard to tie Harris to Biden so all you saw was a Biden doppelganger, ready to move your own hatred of Biden onto her, just like they did.

As much as you like to make fun of the Nazis, MAGA and fascists for being uninformed idiots, you have joined their ranks. You act as if Harris herself sat in Israel smashing buttons for long-range missiles. When in reality, the Vice President has absolutely no say and no power to do anything, diplomatically or within our own government. Her only job is to be a back-up in case the president dies and a tie-breaker for the Senate. You might as well call your state governor a genocidal maniac for not stopping Israel.

Where are your protests against Netanyahu? Where is your rage at AIPAC? How come you aren’t storming Israeli consulates to tell them to stop? How come you aren’t holding your Congressmen accountable? Where’s your ire against Europe and Canada, the rest of our allies that also fund this?

You show your ass with how uninformed you are with our government. The presidential seat has no bearing on whether or not we send arms to Israel. It’s not within his constitutional right as the head of the executive branch. If it was, we’d have a dictator. It falls under the purview of Congress. Only Congress can pass bills and allocate government money. Did you watch and read how conservatives in both chambers drafted, voted on and approved of the arms to Israel? Where they essentially blackmailed and withheld funding our government if we didn’t approve of more weapons to Israel? Of course not. You just ate up the Big Bad Biden nonsense that spewed from the right. Ate it up like the best feast to whatever problem you have going on in your life to focus your anger toward.

I always wondered about this. If you’re old enough, how come you didn’t care about Palestine during Trump’s or Obama’s term when they were also getting bombed? How come other genocides aren’t worth your ire such as the Yemeni, Uighers or countless ones happening in Africa?

We know why. Because this is performative. If it wasn’t, you’d have known Biden listened, changed his course and worked to try and get a cease-fire. Is still trying. If you have even an inkling of how even the world works, Biden can’t go to Israel, take over and stop them like some American anti-war takeover superhero. Like it or not, that dictator runs his country, not America. Unless Congress declares war on Israel as several groups have done so far, then the US can’t physically do anything beyond diplomatic relations.

Both Hamas and Israel have said no to peace negotiations multiple times since the war started. So what do you want Biden and the US to do? Snipe out Netanyahu in an assassination? Usurp control from Congress and take that power for himself like Hitler did so he can stop the arms, destroying a foundation of our government in the process? Bash Netanyahu over the head until he agrees to stop?

All I see from you folks on the far left and far right is a wish for more dictatorial control for the president or a belief he already has it, and a mirror image of a belief system from what I’ve witnessed both in leftist and right wing specific spaces. There is also a serious showcase of willful ignorance and lack of civic engagement on either side as well because they don’t want to critique their own beliefs and have to face the complexities of situations and events that aren’t black and white. And you’re anecdotal proof of that.

[mariacallous]

“This is going to be great television, I’ll tell you that.”

Those may have been the truest words uttered by U.S. President Donald Trump in the course of a dramatic and completely undiplomatic meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump knows a thing or two about television. A former reality TV star, he charted his path to power with a keen awareness of how to retain people’s attention. The more shocking, the more outlandish, the more boorish, the more unprecedented—the more ratings would tick up. Trump tracked this obsessively. He was known to dial TV executives willing to take his calls, dishing on the numbers every morning. If the ratings hadn’t inched up, he would try something else. Rinse and repeat. More ratings, more coverage, more attention. Attention must be paid.

The formula worked on the presidential campaign trail starting in 2015, in a country where politicians are forever soliciting attention and cable channels constantly gaming out the next political cycle (fueled, in part, by the sugar high of ratings and political advertising). It worked again in 2024, at least as defined by electoral success, and even as video consumption shifted to smaller screens and bite-sized clips—a transition Trump also seemed to quickly master. But does the shock strategy work as well while you’re in office? What are the metrics of success when you no longer need to win an election?

This past week, Trump pushed the boundaries of press attention—without needing to travel or organize a major rally. On Monday, Thursday, and then Friday, Trump received the leaders of France, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine in the White House, each time making sure a freewheeling discussion was aired out in front of the world’s cameras. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer presenting a letter from King Charles III inviting him for a second state visit? Check. Bonhomie with French President Emmanuel Macron? Check. Telling off Zelensky? Check. Actual accomplishments or diplomatic advances? TBD. Stay tuned for more. Perhaps after the commercial break. Watch this space.

Of all Trump’s televised meetings this week, the one with Zelensky was the most shocking. After CNN played out what is known in TV parlance as the tape turn—the recording, since the pool video didn’t air live—the network’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour was shown with her hands holding her face, stunned. “I have never seen anything like this in my life,” she said, still digesting the video. That image mirrored another emerging from the White House, of Ukrainian ambassador Oksana Markarova, who has lobbied for U.S. support in Washington ever since the start of Russia’s 2022 invasion of her country: head in hand, a shake of the forehead as if to ask “is this really happening?”

More ominously, perhaps: “What will this mean for the future of our country?”

OK, as a former TV producer, I now know that this is all enough of a tease. Here’s what happened (you should also read FP’s transcript of the key moments here).

It began as these sorts of things often go. “I want to see if we can get this thing done,” Trump said, of a potential cease-fire and peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. “You want me to be tough? I can be tougher than any human being you’ve ever seen … but you’re never going to get a deal that way.”

Normal, so far. Then U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance chimed in. “For four years, in the United States of America, we had a president who stood up in press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin … We tried the pathway of Joe Biden, of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States’ words mattered more than the president of the United States’ actions.” Zelensky asked to respond. Speaking in English—he normally uses an interpreter—he described how Russian President Vladimir Putin had occupied various parts of Ukraine since 2014. “We had a lot of conversations with him … he broke the cease-fire. He killed our people. … What kind of diplomacy, J.D., are you speaking about?”

This didn’t go down well.

“I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country. Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come to the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media,” Vance said.

Zelensky upped the ante. “Have you ever been to Ukraine to see what problems we have? Come once,” he said. And later, of Putin’s aggression taking place far from American shores, he said: “You have a nice ocean and don’t feel [the problems] now. But you will feel it in the future.”

Around this point, it all went steeply downhill. Trump jumped back in. “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel,” he said. “We’re trying to solve a problem. You’re in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel. We’re going to feel very good. We’re going to feel very good and very strong.”

Trump then began to raise his voice. “You’re right now not in a very good position. You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position. You don’t have the cards right now with us. You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III. You’re gambling with World War III, and what you’re doing is very disrespectful to this country that’s backed you far more than a lot of people say they should have.”

The clips will go viral. The transcript will be pored over. Even Trump, ever aware of the drama of the moment, took to his Truth Social account and wrote, “We had a very meaningful meeting in the White House Today. Much was learned that could never be understood without conversation under fire and pressure. It’s amazing what comes out through emotion. … [Zelensky] disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.”

And so it was that a scheduled second press conference, after lunch, never came to be. Stay tuned for the next visit.

World leaders have seen this show before. Many of them understand Trump’s love for the cameras, his zero-sum need to win every deal, his love for pomp and circumstance. Starmer, prepped for exactly this moment by his TV-savvy new ambassador in Washington, Peter Mandelson, came armed with flattery, flowery words, and an invitation for a state visit, signed by King Charles III. When Trump proudly displayed it for the cameras, Starmer was clever enough to point out that Trump hadn’t yet accepted—at which point he did, happily playing up the moment for the cameras.

Zelensky’s fatal flaw, in his now viral exchange with Vance and Trump, was that he dared to upend the script, which even drew Vance’s ire for “trying to litigate this in front of the American media.” (Ignore for a minute that it was the White House that had invited the media in the first place.) Zelensky forgot that Trump wanted to be treated not like a fellow leader, but as an all-powerful monarch, for the benefit of the cameras. “Have you ever said thank you?” Vance said at one point. For a former comedian used to the cameras, it was strange that Zelensky got the script wrong.

[kittypatraxd]

Here’s why.

It doesn’t matter how many women Trump raped. It doesn’t matter how many lies he tells. It doesn’t matter how many pandemics he tries to cover up the severity of. It doesn’t matter how many American citizens he threatens to execute. It doesn’t matter how many times he threatens to take away social security and food stamps. It doesn’t matter how many fundamental rights he takes away.

The key voting demographic was young men.

And Trump is a “man”, biologically speaking.

They’ll vote for Barack and they’ll vote for Biden. But they won’t vote for Hillary and they won’t vote for Kamala, because it is fundamental to the core of almost every American man that it is their mission to—at all costs—keep women from reaching that glass ceiling and shattering it to pieces.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I refuse to be kept down. I refuse to wash my hands of everything women all over the world and all through time have fought and died for. I refuse to say, “Welp, Kamala didn’t win, so I guess I’ll just give up and let myself become property of the government.”

Don’t get your panties in a bunch, MAGA losers. I’m better than you. I’m not going to go crazy and storm the Capitol to try and kill police officers and destroy government property.

But when I’m looking down the barrel of a nation-wide abortion ban, I’m not just going to sit there and take that. I don’t think you should, either.

Now, more than ever, is the time for every American woman to be brave. It’s time to start making signs. It’s time to recruit your friends and family. It’s time to “fight like hell” for our fourteenth amendment.

So when they start coming for my human rights, I know what I’M going to do. I’m going to form protests. I’m going to organize marches. I’m going to give speeches. I’m not going to adapt. I’m going to overcome.

How about you? Are you going to sit quiet in your long red dress and your white bonnet like a good little piece of property, or are you going to join me and be a thorn in Trump’s fat side until we are humans once again?

Don’t get discouraged. We lost this battle, but the government isn’t the president. The government is “We the people of the United Staes of America”, and we the people will NOT lose this war.

- Kittypatra

[disciplesofjehovah]

Todd Coconato 

I have to tell you, some of the comments I see online shock me and sometimes make me feel sick.

I cannot believe the similarities to when the children of Israel got freed from slavery and released to the freedom to head to the Promised Land, yet many wanted to murmur and complain and go back to Egypt instead.

God gave us the greatest opportunity and victory as a Christian community and nation that I have ever seen in my lifetime in the election win in 2024. It was a miracle—night and day difference.

We had two choices: one was a globalist WEF puppet, and the other a populist businessman. Many people I have seen online rarely even posted when Biden and Obama were in, yet started to get vocal about their disdain for some of Trump’s posts/actions, etc., after President Trump’s inauguration.

I am going to say this in the most Godly and respectful way I can: If the Christian community murmurs and complains about who God used, how God did it, and this amazing period and opportunity God has given us, we will lose this blessing. Let that sink in.

It will be taken away from us, and we will be allowed to get what we actually deserve—not the grace we have been given right now as an answer to prayer.

These “Christians” online attacking one another—STOP IT. This public “concern” about Trump’s social media posts, etc.—listen, I understand, trust me, I do, but in the big picture, this is not what we need to focus on. A social media post is not even comparable to what the leftist communists have planned for you and me. And if they regain control, to be frank, America is over.

We all know who President Trump is. God anointed and used this man for some reason. That’s it. We didn’t choose who God would use. We know he isn’t a pastor. We know his personality—like him or not—but I think many are taking a massive blessing and answer to prayer for granted. Please be careful with that.

Here is what will happen if we don’t put this into perspective: If Christians keep murmuring and complaining, God will take this blessing away from America. If the Democrats regain control of the House or Senate in the midterms, it will greatly affect Trump’s ability to do many of the things he needs to do. And America is still in very bad shape. A lot needs to be changed and undone. These people were trying to destroy this country, and they were far along in doing it.

If Democrats win again in 2028 (the next presidential election), they will be absolutely ruthless in how they go after Trump supporters and CHRISTIANS. That’s because this has always been a spiritual battle for the future and soul of this nation. Most have no idea the level of darkness we will see unleashed on us if this happens.

Most people have no clue the depth and level of corruption this administration is trying to undo right now. It’s far worse than most could imagine.

So I would highly recommend we stop complaining. Stop complaining about every Truth Social post or whatever it is that some are concerned about today. Because this is a season of grace, and God is watching and hearing how we respond. So is the world.

Let’s pray for President Trump and America. He is not an idol at all. I just want to honor GOD for another chance and more time. It’s His grace that has got us here.

Let’s focus our energy on being about the Lord’s business as we don’t know how long this grace will even last.

[schraubd]

The Day After Hamas

The New York Times reports increasing "daylight" (to use an old term) between President Biden and Netanyahu regarding what the aftermath of the Gaza campaign will look like -- specifically, regarding the role that the Palestinian Authority might have in governing Gaza once (knock on wood) Hamas is defeated.  Paul Campos thinks this is reflective of the worries regarding "the administration’s up until now very muted response to the siege of Gaza, and the gathering human rights and public health catastrophe that it represents." I'm not sure that's quite right, though it's perhaps lurking in the background. The more prominent instinct, I think, is that Biden fundamentally agrees with Israel regarding the merits and necessity of destroying Hamas, but fundamentally disagrees with Bibi regarding "the day after". The more "the day after" becomes salient in our minds and we start thinking not in terms of the war's prosecution but its aftermath, the more we're going to see latent but always-present disagreements between Bibi and Biden come to a fore. One sees this dynamic particularly in how Biden relates his response to Bibi's claim that the allies "carpet bombed Germany" -- "I said, 'Yeah, that’s why all these institutions were set up after World War II, to see to it that it didn’t happen again.'" The former point is about prosecution of the war, the latter point is about how we handled the aftermath. For Biden, destroying Hamas has to be followed by aggressive state-building efforts meant to provide a real future (economically, socially, and politically) for the Palestinian people. The allusion to the Marshall Plan after World War II is clearly part of this, and other relevant players are also insisting that any plans for rebuilding Gaza credibly commit to a realistic pathway for Palestinian statehood. For Bibi -- well, I really have no idea what Bibi's "day after" plan is. I don't think he actually wants to fully reoccupy Gaza; but he also doesn't want the PA involved; or international involvement; and certainly Hamas is out the question; so ... where are we left? He seems much more interested in what he'll say "no" to than what he can plausibly say "yes" to, because at this stage in the game reality has become Bibi's unconquerable enemy. And Biden, in turn, isn't going to have a lot of patience for Israel post-war simply refusing to let Gaza rebuild itself or have any sort of self-governance structure whatsoever just because Bibi can no longer square the circle of "no formal occupation" and "no Palestinian independence" by building a castle around Gaza and then never thinking about it again.. Even if one accepts that Israel is pot committed to destroying Hamas, that doesn't obviate but rather accentuates the need to have a serious answer to the "day after" question. Anyone remotely serious figure understands that the war in Gaza is the middle of the story, not the end, which makes it unsurprising that Bibi wants to treat it as an end and just close his eyes to what happens in the aftermath. Biden is a more serious person, and so he's actually contemplating these questions.  via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/FUY0IK1

[misfitwashere]

Donald Trump has crushed his rivals in the Iowa caucuses. Should they drop out and let him take on Biden?

From Quora:

Let’s be honest, we all knew this was going to happen and the entire country and by extension the world were bracing themselves for it. However, the biggest news were the exit polls, 2/3 say they feel Trump won the 2020 election and the Biden Presidency is illegitimate, 44% said they were MAGAS and they would vote for Trump even if he was convicted of a crime.

DeSantis and Haley are road kill at this point. They had their chances, Haley could make it a little closer, DeSantis will stay in only for the inevitable losses to come and drop out within a month, 2 at the most.

The real issue is this one:

Joy Reid accuses White Christian Iowans of wanting to have people of color 'bow down' to them

Reid argued that evangelicals support Trump because they believe 'immigrants' and 'brown people' are 'illegitimate Americans'

Ok so what is it going to be folks. Trump has a 90% probability that he is going to win the Republican nomination, what are the Democrats going to do about it. Trump owns the evangelicals, all the mocking about him not being a Christian, the anti-Christ, none of them give a damn. He is their guy, their Jesus and he can say and do anything that he wants.

The General election effectively began last night.

The Republicans have made their agenda clear. Biden stole the election, doesn’t matter that everyone knows he did not, doesn’t matter how well he has led the country, doesn’t matter that Trump inspired and led an insurrection against the USA, what matters is what they believe.

Now what do the Democrats believe. Don’t even bother trying to convince evangelicals who have their Jesus martyr victim grifting them for money. Don’t think about those MAGA hatted folks, they want Trump.

There are 40% who are now ‘independents’ in the USA, they hold the balance of power. The Iowa caucuses have very few people but they have spoken for the Republicans, they want Trump, they worship and adore Trump. Trump could shoot them all on 5th avenue and they would gladly bow down. That is the GOP today.

Democrats, start your engines. No more whinging about Biden didn’t manage to overturn the Supreme Court decision to get your student loans cut, sorry kids you will have to pay, not as much as he did get you $50 billion back but not enough for you perfect kids. Millennials ditto, your raises were only 20% this year in your nice cushy jobs. Same for you African Americans, you are complaining the loudest, we hear you, you want more but you won’t get more if you don’t get up and vote for Biden, you will get nothing as Joy Reid has pointed out, you are illegitimate Americans to Trump supporters.

Same for you Latinos, you want to ‘bow down’ to Christian evangelicals. How about you classic Liberals, you like that Christian theocracy because if Trump wins it is surely coming. Oh and you Israel supporters bitching and moaning about Biden who is the strongest Presidential supporter of Israel ever, you don’t like him? Think about what Trump will give away.

Ditto to Ukraine and European supporters, you don’t want Trump, then you better wake up. How about those transatlantic Brits, you and the Aussies who are so dependent and deep in on AUKUS and everything else Biden has done for you, time to step up and support Biden.

I could go on but on the other side, the Saudis will clearly screw around with oil to raise the price of gas to push for Trump who will give them everything. They hate it that Biden is focused on renewables and the lies of Trump on Biden and oil? Hahaha what a joke, Biden is pumping more than Saudi the most oil pumped in the history of the world.

Putin is dancing in the street, he feels he just won the war in Ukraine. Make no doubt about it, Putin wants Trump as does Xi Jin Ping and every other authoritarian including Netanyahu. You like war, you like death you like the end of democracy on a global level, vote for Trump. He will take you down with him.

Oh and yes; Lies, lies and more damn lies you can see them coming. Daily, hourly ever more outlandish than the last ones.

This is the beginning of a 10 month campaign, buckle up, it is going to be the wildest and most important one in US history. Not hyperbole, reality.

Let’s get to work and make sure Trump gets crushed right back in November, 2024.

Henry R. Greenfield ·

Former Senior Consultant Global Digital Twin Technology at Integrated Facility Management (2019–2023)

[cyarskj1899]

Joe Biden's tragic presidency

He accomplished a lot — except the most important thing.

STEPHEN ROBINSON

JAN 16, 2025

330

3364Biden on Wednesday. (Mandel Ngan/Getty)

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On January 6 of this year, the Washington Post ran an op-ed from President Joe Biden, who wrote that “four years ago, our democracy was put to the test — and prevailed.” This feels like a declaration from another reality, one where Donald Trump was held accountable for his assault on democracy. Instead, he’s returning to power next week. 

Biden didn’t mention Trump by name in the Post piece. It was similar to his inauguration speech, when he alluded to the Capitol attack but didn’t personally identify its ringleader. Biden tried to ignore Trump after defeating him in 2020, which is normal behavior for a new president, but Trump was never a normal defeated president. Biden claimed he sought the presidency “to restore the soul of America,” but American voters seemingly traded that soul for the idea of cheaper eggs. 

Joe Biden's underrated presidency

DAVID R. LURIE

·

DECEMBER 15, 2023

Read full story

We can quibble over the specific policy choices that might’ve led to this dire moment, but it’s worth examining why Americans soured so completely on the Biden administration. Here at Public Notice, we observed in late 2023 that Biden had “achieved a lot — with the notable exception of popularity.” But as Glinda reminds us in Wicked, popularity is “everything that really counts.” Political success is less about aptitude than the way you’re viewed.

Unfortunately, Biden never sold voters on his admirable record, and given the grave threat Trump poses, he probably shouldn’t have gambled democracy on what in hindsight was clearly a long-shot reelection bid. But it’s worth remembering that his administration got off to a strong start.

How did it go wrong so quickly?

Biden entered the White House with the nation in almost as fractious a state as it was in 1861. (Secret Service preparations for his inauguration were the most extensive in modern history.) Yet he resolved to govern like it was 1999 by reaching across the aisle to pass bipartisan legislation that would benefit all Americans. He wanted to put Trump firmly in the past, but the former president’s coup was ongoing.

For example, many prominent Republicans initially refused to even call Biden “president” — using only his last name while reserving the title of honor for Trump. Republican leaders went as far as to outright refuse to admit Biden had legitimately won the election. (Watch GOP whip Steve Scalise dance around the issue below in a Sunday show hit from February 2021.)

Biden took the high road and still sought to work with Republicans, even those who insinuated that he’d cheated his way into office. However, in retrospect, the GOP’s election denial was about more than just appeasing Trump’s wounded pride. It was a coordinated and successful effort to diminish Biden in the public eye. 

A Monmouth University poll from September 2022 showed that 61 percent of Republicans still believed the 2020 election was stolen. If a significant segment of voters believe your presidency is illegitimate, not even the best legislation will win them over. 

Barack Obama enjoyed an approval rating above 60 percent during the first seven months of his presidency. This honeymoon period was the result of high support from Democrats, obviously, but also solid numbers from independents and even Republicans. (Obama had 29 percent approval from GOP voters in May 2009.) 

Biden, however, dropped from his high of 57 percent approval in January 2021 to a dismal 40 percent within a year. In January 2022, his approval among Republicans was just five percent, down from 11 percent when he took office, and his approval among independents was only 33 percent — just over half of what it was at the start of his term. He was also managing just 82 percent approval among his own party.

Biden carried 53 percent of the popular vote in 2020, so his underwater approval wasn’t just from diehard MAGA cultists and Fox News viewers. The numbers showed that he’d quickly lost ground with former supporters. He never really regained it.

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So, what happened in 2021 to tank Biden’s standing? Some have blamed his sudden decline in popularity on the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was chaotic and cost 13 American soldiers their lives. That certainly played a large role, but the slide actually started before then.

Biden’s approval fell from 53 percent at the start of June to 43 percent by Labor Day. In May, Biden announced that fully vaccinated Americans no longer needed to wear masks, but the delta variant soon put the brakes on the White House’s promised “summer of joy.” The CDC quickly reversed its public guidance and recommended indoor mask wearing for everyone, including the vaccinated. 

Meanwhile, as the economy steadily recovered from the pandemic thanks in part to Biden’s American Rescue Plan, prices increased across the board and inflation surged past the Federal Reserve’s two percent target. Although Biden assured Americans that inflation was temporary, Republicans quickly blamed rising costs on Biden and Democratic policies. 

Unlike Afghanistan, these weren’t issues that faded from public consciousness with the next news cycle. In fact, they cemented the tone for the rest of the Biden administration. 

Biden had promised an end to the pandemic, and initially delivered and then some, but a return to mask mandates felt like a traumatic regression. And just as Americans were able to freely travel and gather indoors, they were hit with higher prices on basic necessities. On the legislative front, Dems had a trifecta, but Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema proved almost unmovable obstacles for major legislation that other Democrats were eager to support. (The robust 2021 child tax credit expired in December of that year, thanks to Manchin.) Worse for Biden and Democrats, benefits from the more impressive measures in the bipartisan infrastructure deal would take far too long to be felt by voters.

According to a 2024 CNN presidential exit poll, a whopping 68 percent of voters thought the economy was “not good” or “poor.” This wasn’t just Republicans refusing to acknowledge a booming economy under a Democratic president. No, a good number of Democrats and independents contributed to that devastating figure. Consumers certainly weren’t behaving like they were in a recession, and real wages had outpaced inflation for most working Americans. Unfortunately, the grim reality for Democrats is that voters are more likely to blame the government for rising prices while taking all the credit for their own wage increases. 

The term “vibecession” was coined back in 2022 to describe public discontent with the economy despite overtly positive trends. However, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wadewith the Dobbs decision in June of that year, many Democrats thought the blow to reproductive freedom would mobilize women against Republicans and make it difficult for them to win back the presidency in 2024. This turned out not to be the case.

The fateful decision to run again

The prevailing wisdom was that Dobbsbacklash would counteract Biden’s low approval, and certainly Democratic performance during the 2022 midterms bolstered that theory. Despite the GOP’s media-enabled hopes for a “red wave,” Democrats held the Senate (even adding a seat) and avoided massive losses in the House. 

It’s clear now, however, that Democrats did so in spite of Biden, who wasn’t on the ballot. (Democrats in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, and North Carolina also performed better than the presidential candidate last November.)

The other massive elephant in the room that perhaps wasn’t fully understood by Biden-supporting Democrats coming out of the midterms is Trump’s established record of turning out irregular voters. As the Democratic coalition has come to include more high-information, college-educated suburban voters, Democratic strength in off year elections has become less predictive of their performance in presidential cycles. Trump has flipped the usual script.

Nonetheless, Biden viewed the midterm results — the best for an incumbent president in decades — as a strong signal that he could win reelection, especially against Trump, who he’d already defeated and whose handpicked MAGA candidates had cost Republicans control of the Senate by bungling several winnable races. So Democrats dismissed the many calls in the media for Biden to step aside, including Michelle Goldberg at the New York Times in February 2023 (“Biden’s a Great President. He Should Not Run Again”) and David Ignatius at The Washington Post in September 2023 (“President Biden should not run again”). 

But those calls were coming from inside the house, as well: Polls consistently showed an overwhelming majority of voters didn’t want Biden to run again, including a majority of Democrats.

The idea of Biden serving two terms and being president until he’s 86 years old was always going to be a very tough sell, especially considering that questions about his mental and physical decline were already swirling by late 2022. By February 2024, a whopping 86 percent of Americans thought he was too old to serve a second term. This was obviously an issue that it was beyond Biden’s power to resolve, so Democrats simply hoped voters would overlook it given the alternative, especially given that Trump is just a few years younger.

If Biden hoped that the positive 2022 midterms result would put some wind in his sails, it quickly became clear he didn’t really have momentum after all. The loss of the House meant that his days of signing meaningful legislation were largely over, and he spent large chunks of 2023 with an approval rating below 40. (Biden’s inability to do more to stop the violence in Gaza following Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel also played a role in fracturing his 2020 coalition.)Biden’s approval rating was below 50 percent from July 2021 onward. (Gallup)

The Biden campaign insisted up until the very end that as the election grew closer, voters would realize that Trump was wholly unfit to serve as commander in chief. Biden defenders pointed to the Democratic primary he’d won decisively, although it was mostly ceremonial and he didn’t face serious challengers at the level of Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis. 

Even worse, Trump’s approval started to improve in 2023 and the public impression of his catastrophic presidency grew more favorable — an indictment of the media and perhaps of a Biden administration that a majority of Americans found wanting. As Democratic influencer Will Stancil recently put it on social media, “Biden talked about his policy wins — especially the kitchen-table, infrastructure stuff — almost incessantly. The problem was that the media system was completely poisoned against him. It seems like the policy wins may not matter at all, even — it's just the media stuff.”

Stancil’s frustration is understandable, if somewhat defeatist. Yes, the mainstream media held Biden and Kamala Harris to a higher standard than Trump, but voters who received their news through traditional sources ultimately broke for Harris. The problem is more that there was a communication vacuum, particularly in social media and the so-called “manosphere,” where Democrats disengaged from key segments of their coalition — young people in general and POC specifically. Pete Buttigieg scoring quick hits on Fox News is impressive but doesn’t move the needle where it counts. Also, Buttigieg isn’t the president, and his youthful eloquence arguably helped reinforce the GOP’s narrative that Biden was mentally diminished. 

How a right-coded media environment boosts Trump

STEPHEN ROBINSON

·

NOVEMBER 14, 2024

Read full story

The emerging new media environment was evident back in 2016, when Trump steamrolled over his Republican primary opponents with an unconventionally crude communication style and social media strategy. It was an approach that mainstream Republicans soon adopted. Biden’s decades of political experience might’ve served him well behind closed doors with the nuts and bolts of legislation, but he was ill-suited to lead the party in the messaging war that proved decisive last year. 

Democrats sneered at Trump’s often shameless self-promotion, like putting his name on covid stimulus checks, but Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t assume his New Deal policies would speak for themselves. He leveraged the media of the day to actively sell them, and he didn’t rely on surrogates. He was his administration’s most “visible” spokesman, while simultaneously hiding his own infirmity. The Ivy League-educated FDR came from a wealthy, old money New York family, but as president during the Great Depression, he presented himself as a plain-spoken man of the people through his carefully scripted “fireside chats” — the radio version of a modern podcast. 

As vice president, Kamala Harris’s approval rating usually matched Biden’s. She’s undoubtedly a better communicator than the president, and it’s possible she could’ve done better last November had she worked harder to distance herself from her administration — her inability or refusal to articulate a policy difference with Biden on The View has gone down as one of the more memorable mistakes of the 2024 campaign. 

Had Biden stepped aside after the midterms, primary voters might have chosen a nominee who wasn’t directly tied to an unpopular administration. But once he made the fateful decision to seek a second term and the media became fixated on his age, all the ingredients were in place for Trump’s return to power — even if Harris’s ascendancy to the top of the ticket in July of last year did provide Dems with a temporary jolt.

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Beating Trump was everything

Hindsight, of course, is 20/20. But had you been told in January 2021 that over the next four years President Biden would organize an orderly vaccination rollout that brought the country out of the pandemic, preside over a historically strong jobs market and stock market, guide the economy out of post-covid inflation and into a “soft landing,” andsign a sweeping array of legislation into law, you would’ve thought for sure he cruised to a second term. And yet.

The tragic irony is that Trump is set to inherit a thriving economy, which he’ll claim he restored to its pre-2020 greatness through sheer force of will, and unfortunately, neither the mainstream media nor even his fellow Democrats are likely to spend the next four years defending Biden’s record. 

There’s an old saying that a first-term president’s most important task is to get reelected — everything else is secondary. To that end, quite bluntly, Biden came up short. And his failure is especially disastrous given that next week he’ll have to hand the White House keys back to the guy he portrayed in 2020 as an existential threat to the republic. (A portrayal Trump promptly validated with the January 6 coup attempt.)

And yet all hope isn’t lost. Biden delivered a moving farewell speech Wednesday evening, signing off by saying, “After 50 years of public service, I give you my word: I still believe in the idea for which this nation stands. A nation where the strength of our institutions and the character of our people matter. They must endure. Now it's your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keeper of the flame. May you keep the faith. I love America. You love it too.” (Watch below.)

We’re no doubt in for some tough times. But if Joe Biden taught us anything, it’s that we should never, ever, give up.

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[yourreddancer]

By Ben Meiselas

MeidasMighty,

What we just witnessed was nothing short of a total betrayal of America’s national security and our allies. Donald Trump stood on the world stage and gave Putin everything he wanted—abandoning Ukraine, tearing apart NATO, and making it clear that his administration is nothing more than a puppet regime for the Kremlin.

I wish I were exaggerating, but I’m not.

Trump literally questioned whether Ukraine should even be an equal negotiating partner in its own war—a war that Russia unlawfully started. He didn’t blame Putin’s brutal invasion. No, he blamed Ukraine for “going into a war.” Let’s be clear—Ukraine didn’t choose this war. Putin launched an unprovoked invasion. And Trump is out here acting like Ukraine should just roll over and surrender.

It gets worse. Trump echoed his own Defense Secretary, former Fox News morning show host Pete Hegseth, by saying that Ukraine should not return to its pre-2014 borders—essentially endorsing Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and the Donbas region.

That’s not how international law works. But in Trump’s world, where he’s already openly threatened to annex Canada and invade Greenland, I guess he thinks stealing land is fair game.

When reporters pushed him, asking whether refusing Ukraine NATO membership and forcing them to give up territory was handing Russia everything, Trump shrugged it off. His response? “I just want peace.”

No, you want Putin to win.

Then came the real bombshell. When asked whether he’d support forcing Zelensky to cede territory to end the war, Trump falsely claimed that Zelensky has low poll numbers (straight from Russian propaganda) and then hinted at his real plan—forcing elections in Ukraine. Why?

Because Trump and Putin want to install a Kremlin-backed puppet in Kyiv. This is literally Putin’s demand for a peace deal: get rid of Zelensky and replace him with a Russian stooge. And Trump is now parroting it word for word.

This is outright collaboration with a hostile foreign power. And just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, Trump started bragging about his “lengthy and productive” call with Putin earlier in the day. He even suggested that Putin “wants peace” now that Biden is gone.

Gee, I wonder why?

Because Trump is giving him everything he wants—no NATO for Ukraine, no aid, no resistance. Just complete capitulation.

Then, Trump casually dropped this disgraceful revelation: he expects to meet with Putin soon—not just here in the U.S., but in Russia or Saudi Arabia.

Yes, you read that right. Trump is gearing up for a full-blown Moscow surrender tour.

While all of this was happening, Republicans in Congress confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence—a huge win for Russia.

Now, let’s be clear about what this means:

No allied intelligence agency will ever trust the U.S. again.

And guess what? This was all coordinated—Trump’s call with Putin, Hegseth’s statement about Ukraine, and Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation.

Putin isn’t just winning. Trump is handing him the victory on a silver platter. This isn’t normal. This isn’t policy disagreement. This is treason in real time.

And while all of this is happening, Trump is bragging about appointing himself chairman of…the Kennedy Center?

Seriously.

While the world watches America crumble under his spineless, treasonous leadership, he’s out here crowning himself king of an arts foundation.

To everyone who enabled this disaster—to the spineless Republicans who rubber-stamped every one of Trump’s authoritarian moves—history will remember your names. And to everyone who voted for this man—you bear responsibility for this betrayal.

But for the rest of us, the pro-democracy majority, this is not the time to give up. This is the time to fight like hell.

We still have power. We still have a voice. We will not let this stand