I get fidgety when critics insist on interpreting Trump’s behavior in terms of deliberate strategy. He’s not a historian, lord knows. He’s not even an ideologue: Insofar as he appears to be following some script, I suspect he’s simply intuiting how the “scenes” should logically proceed as one goes about trying to consolidate power. He’s a Caesar by instinct, not by tutelage.

What he really is at heart, though, is a sh-tposter.

That’s the second way to understand his first month. Forget the authoritarian playbook: Day by day we’re finding out what it would look like if we handed the federal government over to the same slimy alt-right blowhards who have colonized Twitter and let them have their run of the place.

Nick Catoggio

“If Barack Obama or any other prominent black participant in the big leagues of American politics had 13 CHILDREN OUT OF WEDLOCK with 4 DIFFERENT WOMEN, it would be all anyone could ever talk about. Most conservatives seem not even to know this about Musk,” - Thomas Chatterton Williams.

Via Andrew Sullivan

“It’s interesting that the biggest actual fraud DOGE has stumbled upon is that of people (likely illegal immigrants) using someone else’s SSN to pay $8.5 billion INTO Social Security,” - Stuart Buck. Musk remains oblivious.

Andrew Sullivan

Yup. That’s right. Illegal immigrants using the Social Security Numbers of dead people so their employers can deposit their Social Security contributions and the employer match for benefits they’ll never collect.

Vance’s speech and Trump’s remarks make it clear that the US is no longer in alliance with Europe at all, but with Russia against Europe, and Europe’s liberal elites. The goal now is to replace those elites with Moscow-friendly governments, bent on repatriation of illegal migrants. Hence the stunning endorsement of the AfD by Elon Musk — the second most powerful man in the Trump administration.

After what the president and vice president have said this week, it’s fair to say, I think, that NATO is effectively over. No one can even faintly believe that the US under Trump would abide by Article 5 to defend another member state. Trump has just told the Baltic states: you’re on your own now. If you resist Russian control, you’ll deserve what you get.

Andrew Sullivan

Free speech king suggests free speech jail: Elon Musk attacked 60 Minutes for its segment on DOGE and USAID—in which they featured a Republican former administrator of the agency who said that USAID “is the most accountable aid agency in the world.” Now, you can say the reporting was flawed or whatnot, but Musk didn’t say that. He said this: “60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They engaged in deliberate deception to interfere with the last election. They deserve a long prison sentence.” Prison! Elon, you’re not just a random poster anymore. You really could put people in prison. Put the phone away and go into the sauna and then take a cold plunge and a psychedelic journey like a normal billionaire, please.

Nellie Bowles

All Pence wanted was to stop premarital sex, and he accidentally helped elect the most premarital sex-positive president we’ve ever had. He thought, Yeah, Trump’s a little much but if I can make mixed dancing illegal and adorn every stop sign with some subtle scripture, it will be worth it, right?

Nellie Bowles

Isaac Saul:

I asked @grok (Elon Musk’s AI company) to analyze the last 1,000 posts from Elon Musk for truth and veracity. More than half of what Elon posts on X is false or misleading, while most of the “true” posts are simply updates about his companies. (Source: x.com)

Via John Ellis

Every American knows what it’s like to be governed by a regime whose agenda is foolish and whose ambitions are hubristic. What’s new is being governed by a regime whose intentions are, transparently, malign.

Case in point: News broke this weekend that the White House is leaning on Romania’s government to lift travel restrictions on Andrew and Tristan Tate.

The Tate brothers are “manosphere” influencers with a following on the American right, and no wonder. Andrew preaches remorseless dominance, particularly over women, and relishes flaunting his wealth; he’s a younger, surlier Donald Trump, essentially, just as immoral and twice as boorish. Unsurprisingly, and also like Trump, his degeneracy has landed him in criminal trouble: He and his brother are facing charges in Romania related to human trafficking, sexual misconduct, money laundering, and organized crime.

Evil stuff. Yet not only have Trump’s deputies gone to bat for the Tates, they’ve done so surely realizing that if the two are allowed to leave Romania, they’ll never return to face the consequences. Pressuring Bucharest to let them flee is as close as the White House can get to issuing the two a presidential pardon for human trafficking.

Nick Catoggio

Online, new/dissident/far-right influencers are treating it as childish and ridiculous to care that people are probably dead because of the rushed and disorganized and incompetent and in-many-cases-illegal efforts at “cost-cutting” spearheaded by Musk.1 It’s “emotional manipulation,” they keep saying. Plus: Isn’t it also bad that some of these places are so reliant on U.S. aid? Isn’t that the real crime, that we let them become dependent?

I’m not going to quote these influencers directly. What they’re saying is callous and idiotic and I’m trying to simply make a point here, not stoke the endless online beef that makes it harder for people to take all this seriously.

One of the most frustrating things about this crop of midwits is that they seem to be completely new to politics. For example, disputes about the efficacy of international aid aren’t new. They couldn’t be less new. Talk to anyone who has done international aid and, while they don’t all agree, they will likely have some critique of how it’s delivered, if not the overall project. “We should suddenly and without announcement pull healthcare access from vulnerable people around the world” is not a meaningful approach unless you are either callous or a truly hardened sociopath.

… the Trumpians thoroughly trounce everyone, control everything, and still are intent on breaking things rather than passing legislation. That’s partly because neither Donald Trump nor Elon Musk has the attention span to actually understand federal agencies and spending, and it’s partially because their movement is 90% animated by resentment, and resentment tends to break things rather than shrink or reform them.

Jesse Singal, who vows that “Singal-Minded is not going to be a #Resistance publication, but I just want to pause a beat on what’s happening right now.”

… Planned Parenthood is synonymous with abortion …

Katie Benner. A telling segué into a story about financial woes at PP.

• Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia … posted on X, “Stop deadnaming the Gulf of America.”
• Am I the most naive person in the world that I didn’t know so many nonprofits were actually totally funded by the government? That the government uses them to do things that technically the government can’t do? I truly believed our nonprofit ecosystem was entirely supported by the pissed-off ex-wives club (Melinda Gates, MacKenzie Scott not Bezos), who sell their shares and spend it on nonprofits that protest their ex-husbands (which I support). But I was wrong. It turns out the American taxpayers are the ultimate nonprofit wife. Turns out, I’m funding those groups.
• All 18 of Biden’s appointees to the Kennedy Center board were removed and replaced with new Trump appointees, including Usha Vance, Susie Wiles, and Dan Scavino, artistes all. The board then fired the Center’s longtime president and appointed as interim president Richard Grenell, a diplomat whose qualification for running a major arts organization is that he’s gay (I mean that seriously—straight men and lesbians cannot and should not get involved in arts).
• A Pakistani man jailed on charges of sex offenses against children avoided deportation after a judge found it would be “unduly harsh” for his children “to be without their father.” The children need to be. . . near their dad. . . a pedophile.
• Trump cut aid to South Africa due to “unjust racial discrimination” against Afrikaners—mainly descendants of Dutch settlers—and granted those Dutchmen refugee status in the U.S. And here I thought we weren’t taking any more immigrants. Now you’re telling me you want to let some tall, politically incorrect Dutchmen from the bush into America? I do not think they’re going to be down to harvest melons and stuff. And I thought the right was against immigrants stealing their tradwives. A bunch of white identity politics podcasters with soft, flabby hands are about to learn some hard lessons. Nothing drives a tradwife crazier than Dutch settlers with one of those vaguely French, vaguely British-sounding Cape Town accents. This is not fair to American men.
• Speaking of MAGA behaving badly, during a session on the House floor, Rep. Mary Miller introduced Rep. Sarah McBride as the “Gentleman from Delaware, Mr. McBride.” You’ll remember that Sarah McBride was the first openly trans person elected to Congress (openly being the key word there). I don’t think misgendering someone should be illegal, but I do think it’s just rude. It takes so little effort to be polite to a colleague. TGIF rules: Keep it professional, Mary.

Nellie Bowles

The Myth of Unending Consumption now takes the place of belief in life everlasting.

Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society

Trump really seems not to give a crap about the working class. Trump is not a populist. He campaigns as a populist, but once he has power, he is the betrayer of populism.

What’s going on here is not a working-class revolt against the elites. All I see is one section of the educated elite going after another section of the educated elite. This is like a civil war in a fancy prep school in which the sleazy kids are going after the pretentious kids.

…

Conservatives believe in constant and incremental change. Nihilists believe in sudden and chaotic disruption. Conservatism came into being opposing the arrogant radicalism of the French Revolution. The Trump people are basically the French revolutionaries in red hats — there are the same crude distinctions between good and evil, the same contempt for existing arrangements, the same descent into fanaticism, the same tendency to let the revolution devour its own.

David Brooks (unlocked)

Presented Without Comment

New York Times: State Dept. Plans $400 Million Order for Armored Trucks From Musk’s Tesla

Also Presented Without Comment

Axios: GOP Bill Would Rename Greenland To “Red, White and Blueland”

Also Also Presented Without Comment

Associated Press: A Joke Petition Seeks To Help Denmark Buy California as Donald Trump Eyes Greenland

(TMD)

I spent much of last week screaming into the internet void, trying—with limited results—to correct this obvious misinformation. I got so impassioned that one follower asked me earnestly why this issue mattered so much to me.

My answer: It epitomizes everything that’s wrong with our current media environment. Unreliable or phony information, and the internet mobs they feed, spreads fast. But it feels impossible to keep up or correct the record—even when the black-letter facts are on your side.

If you correct the record that the millions spent came from all federal agencies, not one, the goalposts immediately move to the government “funneling” money to a news organization for favorable coverage. If you can explain that the money was used to pay for valuable subscriptions to a valuable tool, not to influence coverage at a news organization, you might be able to have a reasonable debate about whether this is the way the government should spend their money. And then, just as you’re getting somewhere, a new absurd lie like USAID sending money to the deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein will pop up. And the whole process begins anew.

Isaac Saul, Beware the Internet Mob—on USAID and Everything Else

When Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) posted that Musk was “exposing [Politico’s] grift,” the post was amended with a Community Note: Boebert’s own office had several Politico Pro subscriptions.)

Isaac Saul, Beware the Internet Mob—on USAID and Everything Else

If you are waiting for the media to stop calling surgical mutilation of young people “gender-affirming care,” don’t hold your breath.

The reasons why these lunacies persist have to do less with politics than with profound shifts in how we think about right and wrong, life and death, truth and falsehood — about God and man, men and women, adults and children — and about the nature of our bonds with each other.

These shifts have been going on for a long, long time, and the dirty secret is this: Milder versions of the lunacies of which progressives are so fond are widely accepted among conservatives too. They want to embrace lunatic premises, without coming to lunatic conclusions. They want the poison apple, without the worm.

J Budziszewski

My cyberfriend John Brady has been reading and offers these thoughts.

Chaos Monkey floods California

Trump ordered the Army Corps of Engineers in California’s Tulare County to begin releasing vast amounts of water from two dams, apparently to show Americans how boldly he’s moving to cut through progressive red tape and address the local wildfires. Problem one: None of the water released is flowing to affected areas. Problem two: Locals were unprepared, risking flooding. Problem three: Farmers rely on that water during the dry summer months to irrigate their crops. Trump did get a nice Twitter post out of the episode, though.

Nick Catoggio

“[T]his Jurassic Park has room for only one T-Rex (Frank Bruni)