Nasty, rude, divisive, and as always, full of lies

Brother comes for a visit tomorrow. I probably won’t post again until the middle of next week. The nasty guy gave his State of the Union speech Tuesday night. Of course, I didn’t watch or listen. He set the record for the longest of such speeches, another reason not to listen. Daily Kos has several articles about the speech. Go find them there or at your favorite news source if you really need more information. I’ll stick to just three articles. The first is by Kos of Kos. His major point is Republicans really need to have something to run on for the November midterm election. And the nasty guy very much did not give them that. Kos took a few paragraphs to highlight why the nasty guy’s approval rating is so low – voters definitely do not agree that now is “the golden age of America,” the phrase the nasty guy used to open his marathon speech.

But Trump didn’t just fail to connect with voters’ economic anxiety. He was nasty, rude, divisive, and as always, full of lies. At a time when the nation is still basking in the warm sportsmanship of American athletes at the Olympic Games in Italy, Trump lashed out at his perceived enemies, taking repeated and nasty shots at the Democrats, blue states and cities, and various ethnic groups. ... If anything, Trump’s overall message was, “The country has never been better, but WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!”

In the second article Lisa Needham of Kos noted the nasty guy did not mention Minneapolis and his “success” in removing the “worst of the worst.” Could it be because the effort was so massively unpopular? He did mention Minnesota, as in accusing massive fraud by Somali-Americans in child care subsidies for low income families. Of course, he used numbers ridiculously high. I heard about this in the morning news with NPR host A Martínez talking to reporter Matt Sepic. It again left me puzzled. When Republicans accuse federal programs of fraud they move to stop the funding, not to offer help in combating the fraud. In this case Gov. Tim Walz says they are already working to minimize the fraud. But they are having difficulty because most of the experts in combating fraud in the FBI have left in protest over the nasty guy’s actions after the killing of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. In the last article I’ll bother with, Oliver Willis of Kos discussed the sanewashing perpetrated by mainstream media. They excused his behavior by saying he “put on a show” and had a “showman’s theatricality.” His blatant lies were described as a “reframe.” The low approval rating showed voters were merely “dissatisfied.” Republicans were said to be “breathing a sigh of relief” – well, they did praise the speech. Willis described the speech, saying, “When he wasn’t lying he was being racist.”

Since 2015, the mainstream press has worked overtime to present an image of Trump that doesn’t match up with reality. They simply omit his worst offenses or summarize his statements and actions without providing context to their audiences. When he makes disastrous mistakes, they are morphed into mere “blunders” and at moments like the State of the Union this drive to clean up after Trump goes into overdrive. Fortunately, this strategy isn’t really working among the public at large.

Needham looked at the Supreme Court decision that overturned some of the nasty guy’s tariffs. The whole thing was 170 pages, though the actual ruling was rather short, no more than 44 pages. It was the side commentary and dissents that added to the page count. Needham described those extra pages. Kavanaugh took 62 pages to show how smart he is, to flatter the nasty guy, and to offer a guide on how to keep tariffs going after the rest of the justices called them unconstitutional. Gorsuch, though in the majority, wrote a concurrence that “is pure whine and snarl, lashing out at everyone for not being as amazing and smart as he is. For 46 pages.” Part of it was complaining that Congress needs to “get off their butts” as Needham paraphrased it. Odd, coming from a guy who has been giving the nasty guy all he wants so that Congress isn’t necessary. Thomas, in a brief 18 pages, explained how the nasty guy could institute tariffs without Congress. That was some mangling of definitions so Congress could give away its power. “That’s horrifying, ahistorical, and too weird even for Alito.” Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that we know the FBI and Justice Department haven’t released all the Epstein files. We know that through reporting by NPR and confirmed by MS Now. We know it because one witness, who accused the nasty guy of sexual assault when she was 15 or younger, was reportedly interviewed by the FBI four times in 2019. However, only one of those interviews appears in the files that have been released. No surprise that the one that was released doesn’t mention the nasty guy. Einenkel provided a link to the NPR story, which is here. The audio is 3 minutes (I didn’t listen), though the associated article appears to be much longer. From the article:

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have already been investigating this allegation against the president and will now open a parallel investigation into the DOJ's decision not to release these particular documents. ... In a Feb. 14 letter to members of Congress first reported by Politico, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche insist that no records were withheld or redacted "on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity, including to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary."

Kos of Kos discussed the latest from the Make America Healthy Again movement headed by Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, Jr. They want support from the full Republican Party and to do that MAHA Action president Tony Lyons is trying to find the right message to turn “a toxic brew of wellness culture and institutional distrust” into an actual winnable coalition. So far they seem to relying on polls built on...

That’s “message testing.” You write a paragraph that makes your side sound like common sense and the opponent sound reckless, strip away party labels and governing records, and then treat the results like a revelation. ... If MAHA was truly a transformative political force, Republicans wouldn’t need to tiptoe around its core message—they’d be running on it. Instead, the memo urges nuance and careful phrasing, because they know the raw version doesn’t sell. Ultimately, the things MAHA claims to champion—safer drugs, healthier food, fewer environmental toxins—aren’t partisan tenets. This is generic stuff everyone cares about. The real divide shows up when it comes to science, regulation, and who actually confronts industry power in the real world.

In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jennifer Weiss-Wolff of The Contrarian. The quote is long so here’s my summary: When pregnant children are apprehended by immigration enforcement they are being sent to a facility in San Benito, Texas. Pregnant children were likely raped and likely have sexually transmitted diseases that make pregnancy dangerous. At San Benito they are less likely to get the care they need. Why San Benito? According to the Project 2025 playbook it is because Texas has banned abortion. Here’s another summary of a quote by Timothy Snyder writing in his “Thinking About…” Substack. “Fascism demands a chosen enemy, and victims.” But, the current attack on immigrants has produced stasis, not the jump from “competitive authoritarianism” to outright fascism. It has also produced sustained protest. So the nasty guy needs more:

To complete the fascist transition, Trump has to give the country a war it does not want, and win it, and transform the society. He has brought us to the doorstep of a major war with Iran: but in the State of the Union, speaking about war preparations, he was looking around hopelessly and waving his hands. He is happy to talk about war with Iran, and hope somehow that others will deliver it. But he cannot do it himself. Americans do not want such a war. But that is not exactly Trump’s problem. Germans did not want a war with Poland in 1939, either. But Hitler fought one anyway, and won it quickly. Trump’s problem is that he does not know how to fight a war. And he flounders.

Snyder says the nasty guy must win that war. Snyder also says he doesn’t know how to fight one. That suggests if he does start one he’s likely to lose. I guess that’s a blessing? In the comments kurious linked to two news articles about the corruption in the nasty guy administration. One is from Bloomberg, the other from Daily News. Then he has a quote box, though doesn’t say which article he is quoting. Perhaps both. The box does list the corruption and crimes and some of them have links to sources. Murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti, slandered them, and allowed their killers to go free. Violated the rights of citizens and non-citizens. Killed dozens on the high seas. Released the hundreds of Jan. 6 felons. Threatened to seize Greenland, a NATO ally. Called for the execution of members of Congress for telling military personnel of their duty to disobey illegal orders. Repeatedly violated court orders. Shaken down large universities.

Viewing the Trump administration as a massive crime syndicate allows us to be clear-eyed about what is coming down the road, and to plan accordingly. To take the most urgent example, there ought to be no question as to whether Trump will try to steal the midterm elections. Of course he will try to steal them. Criminals gonna crime. It is every patriotic American’s duty to oppose the coming effort to nullify the will of the voters.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, listed the winners of the Minnesota Department of Transportation contest to name its snowplows. Some of this year’s winning names:

Oh, for Sleet’s Sake Flurrious George K Pop Blizzard Hunter. O Brother, Where Art Plow? Minne-Snow-ta

A banner looking quite similar to Big Brother

I watched the Olympic figure skating gala, well about 30 minutes of it and mostly just the Americans because that’s all NBC showed (a disappointment). The skaters didn’t have to conform to any standards – no prescribed spins or jumps, no list of things they couldn’t do, no rules on costumes, just create whatever they want. And what they gave us was beautiful and much more heartfelt. Interesting that for this program the cameraman was also on the ice, able to give us a much closer experience. Ilia Maninin, the guy proclaimed the Quad God yet who finished 8th, did a marvelous routine. He dressed in jeans and a hoodie and portrayed his frustration with the expectations placed on him. Afterward Malinin said his purpose in skating now is to bring joy to himself and those who want to watch him. Sounds good. Alyssa Liu did the same thing and ended up with gold. So, yeah, these skaters can do a beautiful job, a meaningful job, and do it more creatively, when they’re not worrying about pressure, exactness, scores, and ranking. I also watched and enjoyed the closing ceremony, especially the references to Italian opera. I was puzzled because announcers occasionally mentioned Verona, which I thought was odd for the Milan Cortina Games. So this evening I checked out a map with street view. Yes, the closing ceremony was not held in Milan or Cortina, but in Verona, two hours east of Milan. The attraction was Arena di Verona, a renovated Roman Amphitheater that has actual seats installed and hosts a summer opera program. Quite a venue choice! Max Burns of Daily Kos reported on what the nasty guy said on Fox Business where he claimed he doesn’t need anything from Congress for the remaining three years of his term.

“In theory, we’ve gotten everything passed that we need,” Trump told Fox host and former economic adviser Larry Kudlow. “Now we just have to manage it, but we’ve gotten everything passed that we need for four years.”

Burns wrote this implies the nasty guy will do nothing for the next three years, in spite of the many problems facing Americans with the economy at the top of the list. I’ll agree that the nasty guy has done nothing for Americans in his first year except to make their lives worse and will do nothing more. But I don’t think Burns has it quite right. If the nasty guy doesn’t need anything from Congress he is implying he will rule as a dictator who no longer needs Congress to pass laws. He (or his aides) will just write them. Of course, Congress, at least while it remains under Republican control, doesn’t look like it will do anything anyway. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos quoted GOP strategist Susan del Percio on MSNOW discussing the Supreme Court overturning the nasty guy’s tariffs and his rant against them afterward.

I'm just reminded of the old saying, you never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. So if you fast forward it to 2026, it's why would he pick this fight with the Supreme Court when there's so many other cases in front of it? And frankly, I think it gives the Supreme Court now more chance to, more freedom, to feel less beholden to Donald Trump because this is upsetting. This upsets all nine of them. No one likes to see the president do this.

In Sunday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Jonathan Last of The Bulwark describing something that many people expected.

The latest trick of the regime has been to pretend that the occupation of Minnesota is over. Greg Bovino was removed from command and the new head of operations, Tom Homan, announced that DHS was pulling out of Minnesota. But this has not happened. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told us, point blank, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” The observers I spoke to at Whipple said they have seen no reduction in the number of DHS vehicles going in and out on a daily basis, or detainees being released ... or street abductions. Another adaptation has been for DHS to push its theater of operations outward from the cities and into the suburbs and exurbs, where the lower population density makes it harder for a critical mass of citizens to observe them.

Dean Obeidalla tweeted a comparison of the banner the nasty guy installed at his Department of Justice, which features his face, to the film 1984 showing a banner of Big Brother. Obeidallah added, “The resemblance between these two is NOT a coincidence.” Other people offered similar images: Rome’s Palazzo Braschi, 1934. Banners of Putin and Stalin. And, of course, Hitler. Lisa Needham of Kos writes a column titled Injustice for All in which she reviews the latest rulings on the nasty guy’s court cases. In this column she wrote: Two courts have now ruled that university students peacefully expressing their pro-Palestinian views does not threaten national security. There is a Religious Freedom Restoration Act that bars the government from inhibiting people from freely exercising their religion. Conservatives love it because it was used to say Hobby Lobby’s health insurance doesn’t have to cover female contraception because it denies the evangelical owners their free exercise of religion. It is now used to say that ICE and government agents can’t go into churches to abduct people because that makes people scared to go to church and freely exercise their religion. Of course, this administration will fight it. No, the administration can’t re-detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia. I had written about the six Democrats, including Sens. Mark Kelly and Elissa Slotkin, who created a video telling military service members they must disobey illegal orders. The case against them went to a grand jury where not a single jury member voted to indict. Now we know why. Jeanine Pirro, Attorney for the District of Washington, DC, has had a very bad record of getting people indicted. In this case the reasons was simple: Pirro could not identify a law those six had violated. A year ago the Department of Education to every school in the country saying a school that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion would lose its federal funding. The National Education Association sued, saying this was a violation of free speech, impossibly vague, and destroyed academic freedom. Last April a lower court blocked it. Recently a district court issued a final ruling saying the government was barred from enforcing its directive and from reviving it. So the DoE finally said it was ending the directive. Needham responded: “DEI is BACK, baby! Woke Mob Rise Up!” Scott Detrow of NPR spoke to Kelsey Piper, a staff writer at The Argument, and Martha Gimbel at the Yale Budget Lab discussing the scary thought that AI will soon (as within a decade or maybe much less than that) replace huge swaths of the workforce. This fear has come out of the tech world and into mainstream because people are quite anxious about the economy and a potential of a massive loss of jobs makes the anxiety worse. Another reason is AI is now able to do things that it couldn’t do (or couldn’t do well) just six months ago. Examples include writing computer code and doing scientific analysis a grad student used to do. But so far AI-related job loss is minimal and labor market disruption is not instantaneous. Yes, a labor disruption (see also the Industrial Revolution) is really hard on people, but, as Gimbel said, “at the end of technological change, living standards are higher, we are always better off.” Piper discussed the worries of job loss. How would a person feel if in 2028 there were 100 million students entering the workforce willing to work for free. The economy may end up being wealthier but if you are competing against those 100 million students – AI bots – you’re not going to like it and have good reason to be scared. In a crisis, such as COVID, Congress can act fast. But if the job loss is a lot slower Congress may not act at all. Gimbel said people don’t understand what is involved in AI taking over the tasks of a job and how long a company needs to figure it out. There is also how much consumers will allow AI to handle – we’re not going to turn child raising over to a robot. Piper said be wary of the promises and hysteria over AI. They’re likely trying to sell you something or to get you to gamble on AI. Don’t believe those who say you have only a few years to be a millionaire or end up in permanent poverty. There’s a ton of nonsense out there.

It challenged his self-conception as an all-powerful ruler

Alysa Liu won the gold medal in women’s figure skating at the Olympics. This is the first Olympic medal for women of the US in 20 years. The talk isn’t so much that she did it, more on how she did it. Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to Chris Schleichter, a former figure skater, who wrote about it. Schleichter said that much of competitive figure skating is about fear. The stakes are high. The judges are there to record every mistake. The skater has invested years of training a lots of money (coaches and ice time are expensive). One misstep can end one’s dreams, as happened to Amber Glenn in the short program. The result is skating not to lose rather than skating to win. But Liu says she has no nerves. She is joyful. She just wants to skate to show people her art. This level of mental health is rare and refreshing. This allows her to be more relaxed and her jumps are bigger and landings more beautiful. She portrayed a party on ice and the crowd was with her. Liu had retired from skating. But she missed it and came back just for the fun. She had done a quadruple jump, but on her return she decided that was too hard on her body. She was not there to earn a medal (though she got the big one). She was there for the fun. Kelly figured out what the lesson is:

Stop worrying about all these achievement yardsticks that we are constantly always measuring ourselves by. Just go out and have some fun.

Schleichter agreed:

I think, yeah. And it's healthy for so many skaters in the sport. Like, every four years, we're only going to send three women to the Olympics. Does that mean that every other girl skating out there is somehow a failure? Shoot for that Olympic goal, but have other measures of success that are healthier and achievable, and you might actually end up getting those along the way. It's really so refreshing to see someone reframe what success in the sport looks like.

I watched Liu’s performance. It was indeed joyful – she had a broad smile the whole time – and wonderful. This is quite the contrast to Ilia Malinin, the “Quad God” who tumbled in his long program. The one who was expected to win gold placed 8th. There were signs the pressure got to him. I’ve mentioned this before. What if athletes did it for the fun and not for the judging, scores, and ranking? I’m not sure how that would affect hockey. For figure skating that would definitely lessen the stress and heighten the beauty. Which will be the case in the Olympic figure skating gala tonight (I keep waiting for that to appear as I stream both NBC and Canada’s CBC – 75 minutes of prime time left). Would people come if there wasn’t a winner? For several years (perhaps 30 years ago) the prominent figure skaters from the World and Olympic competitions would go on tour as a group and put on well attended (as in filling ice arenas) displays. No pressure, fun encouraged. I attended as many as I could and enjoyed them very much. I had written that I thought the first meeting of the nasty guy’s Board of Peace might have been secret. But it wasn’t. Now that I think about it, of course it wasn’t. The nasty guy wanted as much press coverage as possible to demonstrate how wonderful he is. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos wrote about the meeting. The nasty guy’s pals were there, including a few autocrats. France and Britain were not. Cardinal Pietro Parolin of the Vatican said the topic of the meeting – Gaza – should be discussed at the United Nations. Beyond that Willis had little to say, though he concluded:

The “Board of Peace” is a vehicle for Trump to avoid the United Nations, where he has consistently given poorly received speeches that failed to rally international support to his positions. Trump’s most notable U.N.-related moments have had more to do with ranting about malfunctioning escalators than achieving international cooperation. Trump cannot even work alongside regional partners like Canada and Mexico—but he thinks his joke of a “Board of Peace” can supplant the U.N.

The nasty guy’s tariffs – well, one category of tariffs – were struck down by the Supreme Court. I don’t have a full news article about it, though I do have excerpts and some commentary from today’s pundit roundup by Greg Dworkin for Kos. From the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s far-reaching global tariffs on Friday, handing him a significant loss on an issue crucial to his economic agenda. The 6-3 decision centers on tariffs imposed under an emergency powers law, including the sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs he levied on nearly every other country. The high court ruled his use of an emergency powers law to set import duties without Congress was illegal. It’s the first major piece of Trump’s broad agenda to come squarely before the nation’s highest court, which he helped shape with the appointments of three conservative jurists in his first term.

From the Wall Street Journal editorial board:

This is ugly even by Mr. Trump’s standards. He’s accusing them of betraying the U.S. at the behest of nefarious interests he didn’t identify, no doubt because they don’t exist. Asked about Justices Gorsuch and Barrett, whom he appointed, Mr. Trump called them “an embarrassment to their families.” This is rhetoric that could cause some deranged Trump acolyte to turn to violence against a Justice.

A tweet by Jonathan Karl:

Wow. President Trump just accused the Supreme Court majority in the tariffs case as "fools and lapdogs" to "RINOs" and the "radical left" and calls the Justices "very unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution." He suggests "foreign" influences drove the decision

A tweet by Dan Pfeiffer:

I keep seeing people say that the SCOTUS ruling on tariffs will help Trump by taking economic matches from the baby. That's wrong. It's almost certainly going to make his political problems worse, because the ruling shines a light on the tariffs, and he is going to use other authorities to raise people's prices.

A tweet by Kyle Cheney highlighted a section of Gorsuch’s concurrence:

...our system of separate powers and checks-and-balances threatens to give way to the continual and permanent accretion of power in the hands of one man. That is no recipe for a republic.

And Cheney added:

It's hard to imagine a ruling that cuts more deeply to the heart of Trump's identity in public life — he has linked his presidency to the ability to use tariffs as a deal-making cudgel and bend other global powers to his will.

In the comments a tweet from David Frum:

Trump could have written and submitted a tariff bill for enactment by Congress. It happened often in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He didn't do that, because the point of the exercise was arbitrary presidential power - and the corruption possibilities that flow from arbitrary power. I suspect the above point is the reason Trump erupted so ferociously today. The Supreme Court did not merely strike down Trump's lawless tariffs. It challenged Trump's self-conception as an all-powerful ruler, who can do as he pleases, answerable to no one.

A tweet by Tim Miller:

It brings me no joy to say this but given the presidents shocking announcement that the Supreme Court is compromised by foreign interests, the next president will have no choice but to replace all 9 members with new justices who have no foreign entanglements.

The news today is the nasty guy imposed a 10% tariff for every country using a different law, which means they can last only five months. Then, because he was still angry, he bumped it to 15%. A cartoon posted by Wolfpack and created by MacKinnon shows Andrew sitting in prison writing a note that says, “Dear Donald, Wish you were here. – Andrew” A cartoon by John Auchter shows a conversation between an elephant and a woman:

Elephant: Good news! As part of $38.3 billion in new federal spending, your government is going to develop a detention center in Romulus, Michigan! Woman: Wait, wait, wait, wait. You’ve been telling me for years there’s no money for heealthcare, education, transportation, energy infrastructure, food – but now there’s plenty for a concentration camp?! Elephant: Look, you gotta understand – government spending is good! It creates jobs! It stimulates the economy! Deficit spending helps pick winners in the marketplace of ... of the ... Woman: Who are you anymore?! Elephant: I ... I don’t know...”

The New York Post tweeted a video of dancers at the Lincoln Memorial protesting by enacting the shootings by ICE of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The video is less than 2 minutes.