Trump 2.1 December 2025- 1 July 2026

Donald Trump to Voters: Look at This Disturbing Word Cloud
The former president hyped, without comment, a newspaper article which found that most voters view his possible second term as a “dictatorship.”
– New Republic, December 2023
The Bubble-Wrapped President
Trump surrounds himself with those who flatter him in places where he is comfortable.
By Jonathan Lemire – The Atlantic December 2025
15 July
How Trump Became ‘Grifter-in-Chief’: Let Us Count the Ways
Donald Trump and his family are setting a new standard for how to profit off a presidency.
By Timothy L. O’Brien -Bloomberg July 2026

1 July
Trump’s $1.2 Billion Crypto Windfall Sparks Conflict of Interest Questions (YouTube)
U.S. President Donald Trump has reported more than $1.4 billion in income from his family’s crypto ventures last year, according to his latest 2025 financial disclosure filed with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. The filings show nearly $800 million came from World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm co-founded by Trump and his sons. This included over $520 million from token sales and more than $250 million from selling stakes in the business.
Crypto Brought Trump a Huge Windfall, Even as Many Investors Lost Big
President Trump and his family reaped vast financial rewards from a memecoin that generated losses for hundreds of thousands of investors.
A large chunk of the $2 billion haul President Trump took in last year came as hundreds of thousands of his fans and other investors bet on a speculative cryptocurrency called $TRUMP, hoping its value would soar with his return to the White House.
But while Mr. Trump amassed an eye-popping $636 million from the cryptocurrency, known as a memecoin, many of his followers who heeded his call to purchase the coin came out losers.
That outcome, documented by an independent analysis of trades and fees paid out from $TRUMP token sales, is drawing renewed attention this week, as Mr. Trump for the first time has detailed the extraordinary $1.4 billion in revenue he secured just from the cryptocurrency industry since he returned to the White House.
(NPR) President Trump’s financial disclosures reveal that he and his family earned more than $1 billion through cryptocurrency ventures and other businesses last year, according to a 927-page report filed with the Office of Government Ethics. The report shows that more than $500 million came from the cryptocurrency venture “World Liberty Financial,” which was co-founded by Trump family members. The sale of souvenir “meme” coins featuring Trump’s image generated more than $600 million. Other income included more than $50 million from settlements with media companies and millions in profits from Trump-branded products like Bibles, sneakers and watches. These earnings, which have outpaced his real estate business, have sparked concerns about potential conflicts of interest. The White House released a statement denying any conflicts of interest, and spokesperson Anna Kelly applauded Trump for making the U.S. “the crypto capital of the world.”
Democrats have had a lot to say regarding the president’s earnings, NPR’s Linda Kenyon tells Up First. Sen. Adam Schiff of California suggested Trump has earned more money in the first year of his current term than in the rest of his life combined. Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado referred to the president’s cryptocurrency earnings as another example of what he described as “grift and corruption.” Crow also highlighted that the president took his first flight yesterday on a brand-new Air Force One, a gift from a foreign government valued at roughly $400 million.

25 June
The Meltdown
One day that captures how Trump has gone from unpredictable to chaotic
By Jonathan Lemire and Russell Berman
(The Atlantic) A desultory, grievance-filled speech on what should have been a joyous occasion. The last-minute cancellation of a rare bipartisan bill signing in favor of yet another push for doomed, unpopular legislation. A loud confrontation with members of his own party followed by sneering remarks about some of the nation’s oldest allies. And a nonsensical accusation that, if we have it right, blames the algae-filled Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool not on his rushed renovations but on knife-wielding vandals … and maybe Barack Obama.
And that was just yesterday.
At this time roughly a year ago, Trump had overwhelmed Washington. He had slashed taxes, launched trade wars, angered longtime international allies, cracked down on border crossings, and eviscerated the federal government. The Democrats struggled to slow him down; Trump, meanwhile, openly mused about defying the Constitution to run for a third presidential term in 2028. On July Fourth, he punctuated the frenzy by signing a far-reaching and expensive piece of legislation—which he dubbed, in typical Trumpian fashion, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act—at an outdoor White House ceremony complete with a flyover by the B-2 bomber that had just clobbered Iran’s nuclear facilities.
But as this Independence Day approaches—as the nation celebrates its semiquincentennial—Trump is unable to control the political narrative about a war that did not go the way he had hoped. A memorandum of understanding signed last week extended a shaky cease-fire and led to an initial round of negotiations involving Vice President Vance. A host of issues remains, including the fate of Iran’s uranium-enrichment program and its control over the Strait of Hormuz. Negotiations could take many months.

22 June
The Orange Bandit
Aziz Huq and Tom Ginsburg
According to the Roman Emperor Tiberius, a ruler can either “shear the sheep” for many years, by encouraging productive activity from which to generate tax revenues, or he can “skin them alive” just once. By brazenly using the US government to pillage the country, President Donald Trump has apparently chosen the knife.
(Project Syndicate) …there are obvious limits to any long-term project that lacks broad support. As these come into sharper focus, Trump has increasingly pivoted to pursuing short-term goals, namely by pillaging the republic to increase his and his allies’ wealth.
To be sure, the self-dealing was there from the beginning. According to one estimate, the Trump family has raked in more than $4 billion from shady deals leveraging this second presidency. Yet the scale of corruption is increasing in 2026. Consider the unprecedented, ongoing attempt to insulate Trump and his intimates from tax law in perpetuity (even as he has backed away from his $1.8 billion “weaponization” fund); or the increasing pay-to-play use of the pardon power; or the fact that the Trump Organization has ten overseas development deals underway—and 22 more in the pipeline—with strategic US partners such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

14 June
President Hosts U.F.C. Fights on White House Lawn
(NYT) The pagentry to open the show included a military flyover and Trump walking into the temporary arena with Dana White, the U.F.C. chief executive. People sitting near President Trump include White, the first lady Melania Trump and Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood agent and the chief executive of TKO Group, the parent company of the U.F.C.
For his birthday, Trump brings the fight to the White House lawn.
President Trump, who turned 80 today, will spend this evening hosting an Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the South Lawn of the White House. A mass media spectacle months in the making, it has transformed the White House grounds in ways that presidential historians say are unprecedented.
Late last month, construction began on the towering superstructure known as the “Claw” that now sits complete on the South Lawn, taller than the White House itself. White House staff members were told to work from home on Friday while the U.F.C. put finishing touches on the production, which it and its affiliates have spent more than $60 million to put on. Fighters are expected to be filmed walking through the Oval Office, out onto the lawn and into the claw, where some 4,000 people will be waiting to watch a total of seven fights.

12-14 June
At the Kennedy Center, a Name Change Shrouded in Uncertainty
President Trump’s name was removed from the arts institution’s facade overnight on Saturday. Many questions remain, including whether or not it stays off.
(NYT) At high noon on Saturday at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, one vigil gave way to another, as patrons and visitors pivoted from concerns over the center’s name to the fate of an institution mired in legal uncertainty.
About 150 people had gathered in front of the building under a blazing sun, having heard that the center had until noon to certify that President Trump’s name had indeed been removed from the facade, as a federal court had ordered.
The center filed the certification with the court before the deadline, but visitors looking to confirm the results with their own eyes were out of luck: The marble front remained shrouded in white- and blue-striped tarps, with no clear answer on when they would be removed.
Trump Faces New Kennedy Center Humiliation With $17M Lawsuit
Farrah Tomazin
(Yahoo! news) Donald Trump’s bruising battle over the Kennedy Center just got worse, with the institution being hit with a new multi-million-dollar lawsuit.
Days after a federal judge ordered Trump’s name stripped from the nation’s premier performing arts institution, the Washington National Opera is demanding more than $17 million that the organization says it is owed. … The latest legal headache lands at an especially awkward moment for Trump and his allies, who are already reeling from a string of setbacks involving the institution. Last month, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled that Trump and his handpicked board lacked the authority to rename the Kennedy Center after the president, finding that only Congress can alter the name of the federally chartered memorial.

10-12 June
Algae resurfaces in reflecting pool after multimillion-dollar fixes
The Interior Department said the algae is residual after supply lines sat dormant for weeks.
(Politico)The reflecting pool construction project started in April and work was completed last week…
Trump administration ordered to restore National Park changes at sites that ‘disparage’ Americans
A federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to restore sites changed under an executive order calling for the nation’s museums, parks and landmarks to not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
The preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts also orders a pause on any additional changes, writing that the plaintiffs have shown that these efforts are meant “to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen.”
“History cannot be faithfully told while excluding the experiences of communities whose contributions, struggles, and achievements form an important part of our Nation’s story,” the judge wrote.
The Reflecting Pool Is Shimmering Again. Will It Last?
President Trump has said that construction is complete. Now comes the real test. Will the longstanding problems finally be solved?
Mr. Trump is spending tens of millions to repair landmarks around Washington in advance of the nation’s 250th birthday next month. To repair the Reflecting Pool, the Trump administration bypassed normal procedures and awarded a no-bid contract directly to a Virginia company, Atlantic Industrial Coatings.
(NYT) Mr. Trump initially said he had personally chosen the company because it had worked on the swimming pool at his golf club in Sterling, Va. Mr. Trump also said that the work would cost $1.8 million.
In reality, the project cost more than seven times that figure — in part because the government agreed to pay the contractor a 20 percent profit margin, despite a National Park Service analysis that found that margin “inflated.” Mr. Trump also later reversed himself and said he did not know the contractor.

7 June
Trump walks out of interview with NBC’s Meet the Press after clash over election claims
Kristen Welker questioned Trump’s allegations that races for California governor and 2020 president were ‘rigged’

5 June
Trump Family’s Stablecoin Wealth Fueled by Binance Relationship
World Liberty Financial Inc., which was co-founded by US President Donald Trump and his sons, is on track to generate nearly $150 million this year from issuing USD1, a dollar-pegged token it launched in March 2025, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of financial filings.
Takeaways by Bloomberg AI
A Trump family crypto venture, World Liberty Financial Inc., is generating profits from its stablecoin USD1, thanks partly to a promotional arrangement with Binance Holdings Ltd.
World Liberty’s stablecoin business is now worth roughly $1.7 billion, with the Trump family credited with a $630 million stake, making it the family’s most valuable asset.
The relationship between World Liberty and Binance has drawn attention, with some observers criticizing it as a conflict of interest, while the Trump family and Binance say their arrangement is not unusual.

30 May
5 Takeaways From a Kennedy Center Ruling That Angered Trump
A federal judge ordered the Kennedy Center to take President Trump’s name off the building. What happens next?
(NYT) In his ruling on Friday, Judge Christopher R. Cooper of Federal District Court in Washington found that the president’s effort to rebrand the building after himself flew in the face of lawmakers’ original intent. He ordered that the 18 new letters added to the center’s white marble facade — which currently reads the “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts” — be removed. …
President Trump, the chairman of the Kennedy Center, wrote on social media that “we are going to be working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them.”

26 May
Full-Frontal Neofascism And What We Must Do
Robert Reich
America is slouching toward the 250th anniversary of our revolution against arbitrary power with a president who shamelessly exercises it. Never before have we witnessed this degree of self-dealing, bribe taking, usurpation of congressional authority, and open defiance of federal courts.
It’s an unconstitutional slippery slope. If Trump can get away with creating for himself a $1.8 billion slush fund that Congress never approved and courts cannot oversee, and wantonly trade the shares of companies his policies are favoring, what’s to stop him from creating a $10 billion or $10 trillion self-dealing slush fund?
If he can get away with preemptive pardoning himself and his family for any and all future financial wrongdoing, what’s to stop him from pardoning himself and family for any future criminal acts?
These are only a part of the slippery slope we’re on. If he can abduct a foreign president without Congress’s permission, what’s to stop him from abducting anyone? If he can order the U.S. military to kill a foreign head of state without even Congress declaring a war, what’s to stop him from ordering the military to kill anyone?
If he can target political enemies for criminal prosecution, what’s to stop him from jailing or murdering his opponents?
If he can unilaterally decide that someone on a boat in the high seas is an “enemy combatant” and summarily kill them, what’s to stop him from calling anyone he dislikes an enemy combatant and having them killed?
If he can put his name on buildings all over Washington and take a wrecking ball to the East Wing of the White House, what’s to stop him from taking a wrecking ball to the entire edifice and putting up a Trump tower?
He feels unstoppable because there’s no one around him to tell him no. …

Heather Cox Richardson May 14, 2026
… last month, Reed Shaw of Just Security noted that the administration’s claim to be rooting out fraud appears simply to be a new way to punish perceived political enemies that might have a better chance of getting through the courts than the administration’s previous attempts did.
Accusing Democrats of fraud will also accomplish the political goal of muddying the waters to make it harder for voters to see that the Trump administration is the most corrupt U.S. administration in history. And concern about voters’ perceptions of corruption must be uppermost in the minds of administration advisors right now, since new Hungarian prime minister Péter Magyar’s landslide victory over Trump ally Viktor Orbán was driven in large part by voters’ fury at Orbán’s corruption.
Muddying the waters for voters is the best the Trump administration can hope for because, for all the administration’s claims to be fighting fraud, Trump’s corruption is mind-boggling.
He has fired or demoted twenty inspectors general—the people key to oversight—and in 2024 alone the people he has since fired or sidelined identified more than $50 billion in waste and abuse. Matthew Purdy and Luke Broadwater of the New York Times noted in March that in both terms as of March 2026, Trump has also pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 70 donors or allies who were convicted of fraud. One, Philip Esformes, was convicted of stealing $1.3 billion from Medicare.
… Steven Greenhouse of The Guardian reminded readers today that in January, David D. Kirkpatrick of the New Yorker reported that the Trumps have pocketed about $4 billion, primarily through cryptocurrency enterprises. Greenhouse notes that Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr. have invested in a drone manufacturer that is trying to sell weapons to Gulf countries currently at risk from the war their father started in Iran, and that the Pentagon recently awarded a $24 million contract to a robotics startup for which Eric is the “chief strategy advisor.”
Even as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is acting as a chief negotiator for the U.S. in the Middle East, he has been trying to raise $5 billion from investors there for his investment firm. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund overseen by Saudi Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), has already invested $2 billion with Kushner.
And now Trump is in China on a state visit on which he took along seventeen CEOs of companies—many of which do business in China—including billionaires Elon Musk and Tim Cook of Apple. Together, the members of the delegation are worth more than a trillion dollars. Trump also took his son Eric, who runs the family business. As economist Paul Krugman said today, “He might as well have been walking around Beijing with a sign that says—in block capitals, of course, this is Trump—BRIBE ME.”
Steven Greenhouse: Trump didn’t drain the swamp. He turned it into a cesspool
Trump has used all the gold and glitz he can to cover up an increasingly putrid swamp – a morass filled with million-dollar donors scrambling for access, criminals seeking to buy pardons, corporate executives appointed to high-level government jobs and billionaire sycophants sucking up to Trump.
Making the swamp smell even worse, the president and his sons have somehow managed, through crypto and other means, to increase their wealth by an estimated $4bn since Trump won a second term. At this point, we should probably call Trump’s Washington not a swamp, but a colossal cesspool.

8 May
Trump’s looming defeat in Iran is a personal and political crisis
Robert Reich
Trump’s ego cannot accept a humiliating loss, and we are already seeing the effects of his failure playing out
We are witnessing what happens to a person who is consumed with the need to dominate, but cannot.
Iran is unlikely to give in. It can withstand the economic pressure of a blockade better than Donald Trump can withstand the political pressure that comes with rising gas prices (now nearly $4.50 a gallon, on average), soon followed by rising food prices.
His looming failure in Iran is not just a serious geopolitical defeat for the United States; it’s a personal crisis for Trump.
Those rising prices coupled with an increasingly unpopular war have increased the likelihood that Democrats will take back control of the House and even possibly the Senate in the upcoming midterms. …
He’s becoming ever more obsessed with monuments to himself – his ballroom, his arch, his so-called “garden of heroes”, his Trump-embossed passports, his image on 24k gold commemorative coins, and his name plastered or etched all over Washington. His plans for self-monuments are becoming larger by the day, more grotesque, more grandiose and more expensive. Senate Republicans just proposed $1bn more for Trump’s ballroom, which, recall, was supposed to “cost taxpayers nothing”. …

13-15 April
It’s Not Just Iran. Trump Is Flailing on Multiple Fronts.
The president is on a losing streak, and even some of his aides are dismayed by his choices.
By Jonathan Lemire
(The Atlantic) First Lady Melania Trump did bring the disgraced financier up, unprompted, late last week in an effort to distance herself from the scandal (in a move that, predictably, only shifted it back into the spotlight once again). Meanwhile, as negotiations with Iran stumble forward, the Strait of Hormuz is still in Tehran’s hands and now President Trump has authorized a risky naval blockade that will likely send prices soaring further. Moreover, Trump’s poll numbers have continued to fall, Republicans worry that both houses of Congress could be lost in November, and the president threw away a remarkable amount of geopolitical capital trying to support his now-defeated illiberal buddy Viktor Orbán of Hungary. Oh, and Trump deeply offended adherents of the world’s two largest religions in one week’s time. …
In private moments, most Republicans have been saying for months that holding the House is likely beyond their reach. The GOP’s margin is slim, and the party out of power tends to do well in midterm elections. But at least, Republicans thought, the Senate was safe. That’s no longer the case. Democrats are looking at the map and see possible pickups in North Carolina, Maine, and even Ohio, Iowa, and Alaska. Republicans’ poll numbers are falling while prices—particularly of gas—are rising. Trump has yet to make a real case for the necessity of the Iran conflict. And even if the war were to end soon, the economic pain is forecast to last for months, well into campaign season. Before the war erupted, the White House had planned for Trump to hammer home an economic message. But now the president is distracted—and he doesn’t have good economic news to share anyway. ..

This is what a Donald Trump with few friends and fewer options looks like
David Shribman, contributing writer for The Globe and Mail and Executive Editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In 1995, he won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of U.S. politics.
(Globe & Mail) Donald Trump − running out of options, running out of friends, maybe running out of time − is in a tight spot now.
The President’s opponents have customarily said that Mr. Trump is most dangerous when he is backed into a corner.
He is now in one − though this one, to extend the metaphor, is not so much a corner of a room but of a maze of his own making. No matter which way he turns, there are obstacles.
“He’s put himself in a position where there is no easy way out, and Americans and others will pay for the conundrum he has created,” said Jeffrey Taliaferro, a foreign-policy specialist at Tufts University. “He’s exacerbated things by making demands on the Iranians, who were reliably going to reject them. He’s probably not going to get the removal of the uranium that he wants. The best he can hope for is something like the Iranian agreement he walked away from.”

Trump’s incredible shrinking tent
(Axios) Donald Trump is torching the coalition that made him president, seemingly unaware of — or simply unconcerned by — the depth of discontent permeating his movement.
Why it matters: Trump won back the White House with the most eclectic alliance in modern politics — a blend of MAGA diehards, crypto evangelists, nonwhite men, podcast bros, anti-war populists and culture-war Christians.
What Republicans celebrated as a once-in-a-generation coalition may turn out to be exactly that, never to be reassembled.
Over the last two weeks, Trump has tested the loyalty of MAGA’s Christian base with a series of extraordinary provocations.
It began on Easter, when Trump threatened to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges in a profanity-laced Truth Social post, and signed off with “Praise be to Allah.”
Two days later, he warned Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight” — appalling some of his closest former allies, including Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones and Candace Owens.
On Sunday night, Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV — the first American-born pope — as “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,” furious that Leo had condemned his threats against the people of Iran. Catholics, who make up roughly a fifth of the U.S. population, are America’s most powerful swing religious bloc. Trump’s attacks on the pope — who is far more popular than he is — could prove self-destructive in the midterms. …
Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate
As the president threatens to wipe out Iran and attacks the pope, even some former allies and advisers are questioning whether he has grown increasingly unbalanced, describing him as “lunatic” and “clearly insane.”
(NYT) The dissent on the right has not extended to Congress, where Republican lawmakers remain publicly loyal to the president, nor has it reached the cabinet, which would have to approve any invocation of the 25th Amendment, rendering that idea moot. But it reflects growing unease among Americans who in recent surveys have increasingly questioned the fitness of Mr. Trump, already the oldest president ever inaugurated, as he approaches his 80th birthday.
Trump Attack on Pope and Posting of Jesus Image Draw Widespread Criticism
A prominent conservative bishop who serves on President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission was among those who called on the president to apologize.
President Trump faced a groundswell of criticism from Christians across the political spectrum on Monday for his social-media posts attacking Pope Leo XIV and depicting himself as a Jesus-like figure.
(NYT) The president’s tirade on Sunday night against Pope Leo, one week after Easter Sunday, accused him of being too liberal and “weak on crime,” and even falsely claimed credit for the pope’s election. …  Mr. Trump’s extraordinary eruption on Sunday night, the first major attack from the president against the pope, put on unavoidable display the starkly divergent moral visions of the two most powerful Americans in the world.

4 April
Paul Krugman: Donald Trump Isn’t Sounding Like Himself
And that’s terrifying
In some ways it sounded like Trump, always living in a fantasy world in which things are going his way. But if you thought about the outcome for the world, it seemed to be pointing towards the U.S. never admitting it openly, but implicitly basically giving up and leaving a stronger Iran, but with the Strait of Hormuz opening up — maybe with tolls collected by the regime in Iran, and just a diminished, weakened U.S., but better than some of the alternatives.
Today Trump put up a Truth Social post, which said that if Iran doesn’t open up the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours, “all hell will reign down on them.” That was how he put it. All hell will rain down. Misspelled rain, but OK. And then finished it up with glory be to God. GOD in caps.
I don’t think Trump has ever said “glory be to God.” That doesn’t sound like him. That sounds almost as if Pete Hegseth wrote this post, which maybe in some sense he did. The misspellings and all do look like Trump in his own hand, but it feels like this is the influence of our religious fanatic Secretary of War, or as people in the Pentagon apparently call him the Secretary of War Crimes.
This is really bad. It’s hard to see what happens in 48 hours. It’s clear that Trump, for all his pretense of, “I’m always winning,” is aware of how completely he screwed things up, that he’s aware that he has basically led America into an epic strategic defeat. I don’t think he cares about that from the point of view of America, but he is realizing what this has done to him — that he will probably quite rapidly lose his grip on U.S., politics, and certainly to the extent that he cares about his legacy, it’s not going to be his wonderful ballroom. It’s going to be that he’s the man who single-handedly led America to one of its greatest defeats ever. But now what?

2 April
Trump’s Media-Bashing Is Coming Back to Bite Him in Court
Judges have cited attacks on the press by the president and his appointees when ruling against the government in at least three court cases.
(NYT) President Trump in April 2025 posted some thoughts on Truth Social about public media, in all caps: “Republicans must defund and totally disassociate themselves from NPR & PBS, the radical left ‘monsters’ that so badly hurt our country!”
… In both his social media posts and his off-the-cuff comments to reporters, Mr. Trump’s broadsides against traditional news outlets have become the tap water of his political rhetoric.
But they’re now haunting him in court.
Judges have cited attacks on the press by Mr. Trump and his appointees when ruling against the government in at least three court cases involving news organizations. The latest came on Tuesday, when a federal judge invoked Mr. Trump’s attacks on NPR and PBS while ruling that the president’s executive order to cut funding to the organizations was unconstitutional.
(Federal judge finds Trump violated free speech by ordering NPR defunded)
Associated Press v. Taylor Budowich, Karoline C. Leavitt, and Susan Wiles is a pending court case before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concerning the decision by President Donald Trump’s White House staff to bar the Associated Press (AP) from certain press events until the AP agrees to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.

21 March
Trump’s Iran War Drive Exposes Limits of ‘Yes Sir’ Cabinet
(Bloomberg) Donald Trump’s decision to wage war on Iran was partly motivated by pressure from outside allies, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and media mogul Rupert Murdoch.
Some of Trump’s closest advisers, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, were more muted about the prospect of an armed conflict, with few telling him directly it was an ill-conceived idea.
The war has thrust Trump’s administration onto the precipice of an international and domestic crisis, shaking US alliances, driving up energy costs, and complicating Republicans’ chances in November’s midterm elections.
Donald Trump’s decision to wage war on Iran was partly motivated by pressure from outside allies while his own White House team stayed more muted – underscoring how in his second term, guardrails have been traded for a green light.

10 March
Trump’s disastrous incompetence exposed with 5 obvious questions he never answered
Steven Harper, Common Dreams
(Raw Story) Minimally competent leaders would have considered at least five obvious questions before launching the nation into war. President Donald Trump considered none of them.
1: What’s the objective?
2: How long will it last?
3: Who will lead Iran after its Supreme Leader is killed?
4: How would a war affect the Middle East?
5: Could the war lead to humanitarian, economic, or geopolitical crises?

24-25 February
6 Takeaways From Trump’s State of the Union
1- In an address that was heavy on theatrics, President Trump lashed out at Democrats as “crazy” and unpatriotic.
As Republicans gear up for the midterms, Mr. Trump was trying to bolster his party’s political prospects by painting the Democrats as extreme. Historical trends and recent polling suggest Republicans are at risk of losing control of at least one chamber of Congress — a result Mr. Trump is desperately trying to avoid — and so he spent much of the speech attacking Democrats.
2- The former reality TV star put on a show.
Mr. Trump is well-aware of the power of images, and he filled his speech with surprises and dramatic moments.
3- Trump struggled to acknowledge Americans’ economic pain.
…he dutifully ticked off a list of economic indicators — the stock market, price of gas, mortgage rates, job growth — as evidence of the “roaring economy.” But he appeared less willing to acknowledge that Americans were still struggling. …
6- Trump talked of others’ fraud, but not his own ethical issues.
Mr. Trump repeatedly railed against what he portrayed as widespread fraud in government programs around the country. And he suggested members of Congress were profiting off their offices through insider stock trading.
He claimed billions of dollars have been stolen through fraud in Minnesota, that “California, Massachusetts, Maine and many other states are even worse,” and tasked Vice President JD Vance to lead a “war on fraud.”
The State of Trump
Timothy Snyder
US President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address showed a man who is stuck, exhausted, and out of options. To move beyond the current system of competitive authoritarianism to full-blown fascism, he must give the country a war that it does not want, and then win – but that is out of his reach.
(Project Syndicate) Trump is unpopular, and the domestic economy is weak. When the government murdered US citizens, protesters were hardly deterred. To move beyond competitive authoritarianism to full-blown fascism, Trump needs another kind of conflict: a war that is bloody, popular, and victorious. And that is out of his reach.
Fascism demands a major foreign war to generate a reservoir of meaning that can be used to justify indefinite rule and further repression. By casting the world as an endless struggle, fascism uses war to make submission to hierarchy seem like the only choice. …
The foreign policy details Trump omitted
(GZERO Analysis) The Trump administration has been rapidly expanding US forces in the Middle East, and is reportedly considering strikes in the region that could escalate into a full-fledged war. Yet it took 90 minutes for US President Donald Trump to mention Iran during his one-hour-and-48-minute State of the Union address last night. With the midterm campaign effectively kicking off with the first primary elections next week, Trump instead focused on domestic issues like the economy, energy, and immigration. Foreign policy, no longer a top priority for US voters at the polls, was relegated to a kind of postscript.
Even though it was four years to the day that the former KGB agent ignited the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Trump spent a total of 20 seconds discussing the war there. He berated the significant death toll it has wrought, and reiterated a now-familiar refrain that it “would have never happened if I were president.” He made no reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump did reference the recent war between Israel and Hamas, touting his role in negotiating the return of all the hostages that the militant group seized during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. Clinching a ceasefire deal there has been one of his biggest foreign policy achievements.
Yet he skipped over what the future administration of Gaza looks like.

(Trump Claims a Historic Turnaround for the U.S. Here Are the Facts)

State of the Union Live Updates: Trump Heralds Economic and Border Policies While Deriding Democrats
(NYT) The president projected a version of the United States that is growing, safe and “winning.” In the Democratic response, Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia accused the president of sowing fear and lying about the economy.
Trump claims host of successes and attacks old foes in longest State of the Union
President hails ‘turnaround for the ages’ but offers few policy pledges and repeats jibes against ‘crazy’ Democrats
Trump uses State of the Union to claim economic success despite approval rating slipping even further in new poll – live
(The Guardian) President is dogged by low public approval ratings with November midterm elections on the horizon
Trump avoided self-harm in his State of the Union speech. He also missed self-help.
The president’s state of the union was notable for something his second term has largely lacked: restraint.
(Politico) There were the mistakes he avoided making: Trump did not attack the Supreme Court. He did not blitz members of his own party who have criticized him. He avoided rambling, angry digressions from the script.
Then there were the issues he avoided addressing: Trump offered no new ideas on housing or health care, two defining issues of the midterm campaign. He made no mention of the Jeffrey Epstein scandals consuming politics in Washington and far beyond. He did not clarify his policy toward Iran, even as he masses air and naval forces in the region.
It was, for better or worse, a speech not likely to change the political trajectory of Trump’s second term. The historically long address was, in some ways, nearly indistinguishable from Trump’s daily patter in the Oval Office, on Air Force One or in the White House driveway.
… Yet the status quo of the midterm campaign does not favor the GOP: Trump is on the defensive on many of the issues driving the election cycle so far. That, too, did not change.

16 February – Presidents’ Day 2026
All the President’s U-turns
By JACK BLANCHARD with DASHA BURNS
(Politico) …next week marks 400 days of Trump 2.0. You’ll remember the absolute whirlwind of the first phase — the DOGE “days of thunder,” the blizzard of executive orders, the Liberation Day tariffs, etc. Phase 2, in the latter half of 2025 (and arguably through Jan. 3) saw Trump go even bigger on his key priorities — immigration, law and order and pursuing perceived political enemies at home and abroad.
Phase 3 has felt a little rockier, as my POLITICO colleagues Eli Stokols, Aiden Reiter and Sophie Gardner set out in a just-published assessment. The key feature, they note, has been “a succession of whiplash-inducing policy swings, several of which have almost immediately withered in the face of Republican opposition and public outcry.”
Count the U-turns: We’ve had the big immigration pivot in Minnesota. The sudden backtrack on Greenland. The swiftly abandoned plan to cap credit card rates at 10 percent. The 50-year mortgages that came and went in the blink of an eye. There were threats aimed at Canadian bridges and airlines, never followed through. There was a pause on state funds for public health that lasted barely 24 hours.
It’s painfully obvious this is no longer a strategy — which is a serious issue as we head deeper into a vital election year. Trump’s approval ratings are “at his lowest point in the second term,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres tells POLITICO. “There’s a sense that this is a pretty chaotic administration, and seems to remind people of the pandemic period in the first term …

10-13 February
Trump administration tells judge it will release Gateway Tunnel funding
Federal funding of the $16 billion Gateway rail tunnel under the Hudson River will begin to flow again late on Friday, lawyers for the Trump administration told a federal judge, ending a four-month halt to work that had forced the project to lay off 1,000 workers. After New York and New Jersey sued, Judge Jeannette A. Vargas of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan ordered the money restored.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration shifted its explanation for the prolonged suspension of funds. In discussions with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, President Trump suggested that he would release the funds in exchange for support of the renaming of two transportation hubs — Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan — after him, people familiar with those talks said. Mr. Schumer said he rejected that idea.
Peter L.W. Osnos: Naming Rights
Parsing an Obsession
Having Trump’s name emblazoned everywhere has been a long-standing fixation. The shimmering Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan was built in 1983, followed by additional high-rises in New York and casinos in Atlantic City. Then he started licensing his name around the world, including to buildings he did not build
…the Washington Post is keeping track. Aside from the Trump imprimaturs already adopted, there is the projected class of Trump battleships and a Trump fighter jet called the F-47, for the number of his presidency.
And these being bruited: A Washington NFL stadium, a triumphal arch on the National Mall, the grandiose White House ballroom, and, it has been reported, the rebranding of Dulles Airport and the people movers there to be called “Direct Jet Transports” — DJT, get it? Just this past week, Trump tried to pressure Senator Chuck Schumer to rename Dulles Airport and New York’s Penn Station after himself, as a condition for freeing up federal funding for a rail tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey.
The coming question is what happens after he is, one way or another, gone from the scene. Whose role will it be to rename so many artifacts of his era?

9 February
Trump is going through a bad patch – but don’t expect him to change
By David Shribman
(Globe & Mail) … 55 per cent of Americans say they disapprove of his performance, according to the latest New York Times/Siena poll.
Mr. Trump is a lame-duck president with no fear of personal repudiation at the ballot box, which partly explains why he has not altered his political style despite the many challenges he has faced. And while presidents are often restrained or moderated by their party, Mr. Trump so controls the modern GOP that there are no moderating elements inside the Republican Party.
“This is not a normal administration,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a presidential scholar at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me. “Ordinarily presidents react to setbacks and change. Instead, President Trump doubles down and calls his critics ‘losers.’ And there are no forces within the administration or Congress to pull him back.”

7 February
Trump’s Obama Derangement Syndrome
Maureen Dowd
(NYT) It seems etymologically, metaphysically, geologically and ethically impossible that President Trump could reach a new low. But he has.
Every Friday, when I’m planning my column, I find fresh evidence that the president is unfit for his office. He taunts his foes in crude, creepy ways and tries to tattoo his name on everything.
Reaction to Trump’s Racist Post Shows He Is Not Always Immune to Politics
With the midterm elections nearing, President Trump has found himself in the uncomfortable position of backtracking, even if only by degrees, at key moments.
(NYT)… It’s undeniable that Mr. Trump often skates through controversies that would have sunk any other politician. He continues to lie about having won the 2020 election and even a criminal conviction didn’t keep him from winning the presidency for a second time. In recent weeks, his administration threatened to shut down a major infrastructure project if it didn’t have Mr. Trump’s name on it.
Still, with the midterm election in November, Mr. Trump has been forced to backtrack — even if only by degrees, and even if only temporarily — at key moments, including on Friday when the White House moved to contain a bipartisan backlash over the video clip portraying the Obamas as apes. In another case, after Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents in Minnesota, Mr. Trump first justified the killing yet after widespread criticism he toned down some of his language about Mr. Pretti’s death. …

In February 6, 2026 Heather Cox Richardson details actions -including racist messages and statements- by Trump and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. that have led to “the growing coalition of Americans from all walks of life standing against MAGA and defending American democracy is the United States of America at its best, and that coalition is absolutely a threat to the cabal trying to seize the assets of the nation for itself. And American history from Bacon’s Rebellion in the late 1600s forward has established a blueprint for breaking democratic coalitions that threaten those in power along racial lines.
Trump’s doubling down on racism reflects Americans’ growing disillusionment with him and his administration. … A Marist poll released yesterday shows that 65% of Americans think that ICE has gone too far in enforcing immigration laws. Even those who are not focused on that issue have increasing concerns about the Trump administration’s policies.” …

28 January
How to know when Trump will back down
“Trump always chickens out,” goes the popular anti-Trump slogan, often pithily abbreviated as “TACO” by the president’s detractors.
(Politico) The past week has supplied ample evidence to support this theory of Trumpian trepidation, with the president first backing away from his threats to forcibly claim Greenland as U.S. territory, and then gradually backpedaling on the more aggressive elements of the administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota after federal officers shot and killed a protester over the weekend.
But the president’s recent reversals also suggest that the “TACO” slogan doesn’t get it exactly right. For politicians and policymakers seeking to understand him, it’s important to recognize that Trump doesn’t always back down — but he often will under specific circumstances.
One year into Trump’s second term, clear patterns have begun to emerge. Four categories of feedback seem to be especially effective at convincing Trump to change course: Widespread pushback from MAGA Republicans and their allies; wobbly markets, and especially bond markets; opposition from adversaries who confront Trump with unity and strength rather than supplication; and, finally, skepticism from conservative media figures who penetrate Trump’s notoriously insular information bubble.
In circumstances where he encounters more than one of these varieties of resistance, Trump frequently wavers. Consider his recent about-face on Greenland: Trump’s initial refusal to rule out military force sent markets tumbling, prompted public head-scratching from self-proclaimed MAGA allies in Europe and was met with unusually forceful resistance from European leaders, who banded together to oppose the move. Those three forces came to a head at the Global Economic Forum in Davos, and Trump backed down from the threat of using force.
Or look at the lead-up to Trump’s pivot on the administration’s increasingly lethal immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota. After senior members of the Trump administration jumped on the opportunity to vilify Alex Pretti, the protester killed by Border Patrol agents, a handful of Republicans who typically avoid clashing with Trump began to subtly signal their disapproval with the administration’s aggressive tactics and sharp-edged rhetoric.
They were joined by prominent figures from Trump’s preferred media ecosystem, like Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, who raised pointed questions about the administration’s account of the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol Officers in Minneapolis. After hearing Bartiromo’s on-air criticisms of the administration’s immigration hard-liners, Trump softened his stance and deployed his “border czar” Tom Homan to take over command from Border Patrol officials.
Nervous Allies and Fox News: How Trump Realized He Had a Big Problem in Minneapolis
President Trump often blusters his way through a crisis, refusing to back down. Minneapolis tested the limits of that strategy.
(NYT) … And while there is no sign that Mr. Trump is repudiating the tactics used by the federal agents in Minnesota or the core tenets of his immigration policies, the moment was a rare example of the president moving to mitigate the harsh optics associated with a crackdown his administration has otherwise celebrated.
Mr. Trump has honed a survival tactic over many years facing criticism in the public eye: He creates diversions to barrel from one news cycle into the next. But in other moments, when he has faced particularly intense — and politically damaging — public outcry, he has taken stock of news coverage and decided to take a different tack, often temporarily.

25 January
Paul Krugman Monsters And their enablers are accessories to murder
(Substack) It has been clear for a long time, to anyone willing to see, that the people running the federal government — Trump, Miller, Noem, Bovino and more — are monsters. It has been equally obvious that ICE and the Border Patrol are now filled with sadistic thugs. Yet many people — almost the entire GOP, everyone serving in the Trump administration, some Democrats, a significant part of the media — were too cowardly to admit the obvious.
At this point, however, there are no more excuses. In a way the cowards and opportunists enabling Trump are more to blame for where we are than Trump and company themselves: monsters are monsters and can’t help themselves, but the enablers have a choice. And they have chosen, again and again, to accommodate and facilitate evil.

Yes, It’s Fascism
Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.
By Jonathan Rauch
(The Atlantic) Writing a year ago, I argued that Trump’s governing regime is a version of patrimonialism, in which the state is treated as the personal property and family business of the leader. That is still true. But, as I also noted then, patrimonialism is a style of governing, not a formal ideology or system. It can be layered atop all kinds of organizational structures, including not just national governments but also urban political machines such as Tammany Hall, criminal gangs such as the Mafia, and even religious cults. Because its only firm principle is personal loyalty to the boss, it has no specific agenda. Fascism, in contrast, is ideological, aggressive, and, at least in its early stages, revolutionary. It seeks to dominate politics, to crush resistance, and to rewrite the social contract.
Over Trump’s past year, what originally looked like an effort to make the government his personal plaything has drifted distinctly toward doctrinal and operational fascism. Trump’s appetite for lebensraum, his claim of unlimited power, his support for the global far right, his politicization of the justice system, his deployment of performative brutality, his ostentatious violation of rights, his creation of a national paramilitary police—all of those developments bespeak something more purposeful and sinister than run-of-the-mill greed or gangsterism.

19 January
How to Understand Trump’s Obsession With Greenland
Erratic though the president may sound, the Trumpian worldview is comprehensible.
By Eliot A. Cohen
(The Atlantic) This era will leave lasting foreign-policy damage. One Trump term could look like a fluke; two will certainly convince many abroad that the United States has become unreliable and even dangerous. But this emergence of a new, more transactional, and less peaceful world is unfortunately something that Trump has only accelerated, not created. His hopefully wiser and more sober successors will call the Gulf of Mexico by its name and pry Trump’s name off the United States Institute of Peace. More important, they will need to figure out how to restore a modicum of decency, good judgment, and international leadership once he is gone; rebuilding America’s reputation, unfortunately, will be the work of a generation. Such pivots have happened before—in the 1940s and the 1980s, for example. Let’s hope they will happen again.

13 January
Trump Unmasked
Thomas B. Edsall
(NYT) Trump may think his own morality and his own mind are the only constraints on his otherwise limitless power, but if we are dependent on either — not to mention Trump’s sense of empathy, compassion or sympathy for the underdog — we are in deep trouble. The nation, the Western Hemisphere and the world at large need to figure out how to place restraints on this ethically vacuous president, or we will all suffer continued and ever-worsening damage.

8 January
Trump Lays Out a Vision of Power Restrained Only by ‘My Own Morality’
On topic after topic, President Trump made clear that he would be the arbiter of any limits to his authorities, not international law or treaties.
By David E. Sanger; Tyler Pager; Katie Rogers;  and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, White House correspondents for The Times. They interviewed President Trump in the Oval Office.
President Trump declared on Wednesday evening that his power as commander in chief is constrained only by his “own morality,” brushing aside international law and other checks on his ability to use military might to strike, invade or coerce nations around the world.
Asked in a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times if there were any limits on his global powers, Mr. Trump said: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“I don’t need international law,” he added. “I’m not looking to hurt people.”
When pressed further about whether his administration needed to abide by international law, Mr. Trump said, “I do.” But he made clear he would be the arbiter when such constraints applied to the United States.
“It depends what your definition of international law is,” he said.
Mr. Trump’s assessment of his own freedom to use any instrument of military, economic or political power to cement American supremacy was the most blunt acknowledgment yet of his worldview. At its core is the concept that national strength, rather than laws, treaties and conventions, should be the deciding factor as powers collide.

2025

18 December

Shouting, Ranting, Insulting: Trump’s Uninhibited Second Term
By Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent
Many of President Trump’s supporters love his professional-wrestling style of leadership. But some of his recent attacks have sickened even some of his own political allies.
…a president who seems even less inhibited than ever in a way that has many in Washington and beyond shaking their heads or even wondering if the leader of the free world has lost it. The word often whispered by Republicans and shouted by Democrats and Never Trumpers is “unhinged.”
… Haranguing, raging and insulting, of course, have all been part of Mr. Trump’s larger-than-life personality for generations and are an element of his appeal to supporters who find it bracingly authentic in a world of cookie-cutter, talking points-reading politicians. They love his professional-wrestling style of leadership. He tells it like it is. He’s not afraid to mix it up. He takes down the elites and the “woke” liberals.
This is a presidency that celebrates nastiness and spite, not empathy or grace, a reflection, perhaps, of a coarser era in American life. It is not enough to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally; Mr. Trump and his administration make a point of releasing demeaning videos and photographs of them being arrested or imprisoned. He has spread A.I.-generated images of former President Barack Obama being arrested and of himself as a military pilot bombing anti-Trump protesters with excrement. He attacks female reporters for their looks.
… The naysayers would tell him that presidents do not traditionally name things after themselves the way a real estate developer does, but he would not hear that. Mr. Trump has been on something of a naming kick lately. Just on Thursday, the White House announced that the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts would be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center.
The Trump administration just renamed the Institute of Peace the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. It announced that Mr. Trump’s birthday, which is the same day as Flag Day, would be a free-admission holiday at national parks next year while ending free admission for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Park annual passes in 2026 will have Mr. Trump’s image on them alongside George Washington’s. So may commemorative Trump coins that the Treasury Department is considering for next year’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
— NYT 18 December 2025

This Is What Presidential Panic Looks Like
Donald Trump delivered a fear-drenched rant live from the White House.
By Tom Nichols
Trump says Susie Wiles made him do the prime-time address where he spent 18 minutes yelling about his ‘accomplishments’
GOP cracks show ahead of Trump speech
Ahead of President Donald Trump’s address to the nation at 9 p.m., cracks are showing in Republican Party loyalties in Congress and across the electorate.
(Politico) With Trump expected to talk about the economy in his address tonight, new polling is repeating an increasingly familiar pattern: the president’s approval is dipping alongside his handling of the economy. A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found just 36 percent of Americans feel that Trump is doing a good job as president — the lowest reported by the survey across both terms. And perhaps even more concerning for the White House: 57 percent of those surveyed say they disapprove of how Trump is handling the economy, while 45 percent say high prices are their largest economic concern.

Trump attacks Democratic foes in White House presidential portraits
New plaques on ‘Presidential Walk of Fame’ scorn ‘divisive’ Obama and ‘by far the worst’ Biden – but Reagan is praised
White House officials on Wednesday revised what they call the “Presidential Walk of Fame,” installing plaques beneath portraits of former presidents that reflect Donald Trump’s own views, including branding former president Joe Biden as “the worst president in American history”.
The changes are part of Trump’s broader effort to reshape the White House environment to match his preferences. Along the colonnade, portraits of past presidents now feature expanded text that permanently records Trump’s assessments of their records.

16-17 December
Susie Wiles, JD Vance, and the “Junkyard Dogs”: The White House Chief of Staff on Trump’s Second Term (Part 1 of 2)
Throughout the first year of Donald Trump’s second administration, Vanity Fair writer Chris Whipple has interviewed Wiles amid each moment of crisis. This insider’s account joins a portfolio of portraits for an unflinching, up-close look at power—and peril.
By Chris Whipple
over many on-the-record conversations, Wiles answered almost every question I put to her. …  Trump, she told me, “has an alcoholic’s personality.” Vance’s conversion from Never Trumper to MAGA acolyte, she said, has been “sort of political.” The vice president, she added, has been “a conspiracy theorist for a decade.” Russell Vought, architect of the notorious Project 2025 and head of the Office of Management and Budget, is “a right-wing absolute zealot.” When I asked her what she thought of Musk reposting a tweet about public sector workers killing millions under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, she replied: “I think that’s when he’s microdosing.” (She says she doesn’t have first-hand knowledge.)
The Vanity Fair photographer who disrupted Trumpworld’s polished image
Every line, spot, blemish and blood vessel was captured by Christopher Anderson’s lens. What was he thinking?
“I don’t know if it says something about the world we live in, the age of Photoshop, the age of AI filters on your Instagram, but the fact that the internet is freaking out because they’re seeing real photos and not retouched ones says something to me.”

16 December
Behold, it’s the Trump who stole Christmas
Robert Reich
The president continues to preach austerity and hate to people struggling to make ends meet. No wonder voters are turning on him
He was supposed to talk about affordability, but Trump’s narcissistic brain seemed incapable of the minimal empathy to recognize the public’s angst over the cost of living. So he veered far off the affordability script to attack Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota congresswoman, ridicule windmills, mock transgender people, and call Joe Biden a “son of a bitch”.
Small wonder that most voters have had it with Trump. Even the Maga faithful are starting to have second thoughts.
In Miami this past week, voters delivered the mayor’s office to a Democrat for the first time in nearly 30 years and rebuffed the Republican candidate, whom Trump endorsed – by a whopping 59% to 41%. Miami’s new mayor-elect, Eileen Higgins, said the city is “at the tip of the spear” of affordability concerns in America.
In Indiana this past week, Republican senators rejected a redistricting plan that Trump had tried to bully them into accepting. …
Even congressional Republicans are starting to desert him as they see that the wannabe emperor has no clothes: his ability to hurt or help them in next year’s midterms is rapidly diminishing.
They’ve rejected his demand to end the filibuster, rebuked his incipient healthcare plan, forced him to cave on the Epstein files, won’t approve his bonkers $2,000 tariff checks for Americans, fret about his boat strikes off the coasts of Central and South America, and are in open rebellion against his hand-picked speaker of the House.

15 December
Trump’s response to the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner says it all
First, this angry, partisan message is utterly inappropriate to the tragedy that has engulfed the Reiner family and the community of people who care about them.
Second, Trump has made it all about himself. It’s not the first time his malignant narcissism has put himself at the center of whatever is preoccupying the public at the moment, but this is one of the most extreme and disgusting examples I’ve seen.
Third, if anyone still harbors any doubt that Trump is losing it — that his mind is in the grip of dementia, also likely paranoia — this post should make it clear. No rational person would post this.

11 December
Trump Doesn’t Want to Talk About Affordability. Democrats Say That’s a Gift.
The president continues to brush off an issue that he said he would solve in his first months in office. Some Democrats say he is making the same mistake as his predecessor.