Week 71
By
This week has been another round of “Iran: Groundhog Day.” It started with Trump teasing an agreement on social media last weekend and has ended with the usual nothing. But this is not an ending. The ending must include opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and there’s no indication that that is likely to happen. Among the assurances are that the agreement is 95% completed except for the Strait and the nuclear program and that it’s all set to go except for approval by Trump and the Iranian government.
Others have said it, but Trump is in a particularly terrible position for someone of his psychology. He has screwed up badly, and it is hurting other people enough that the problem isn’t going to go away. Nor will the other side, and even some of his allies, let him make a declaration of victory.
Most adults recognize that in a situation like this, you graciously apologize. That allows the humiliation to recede into the past. But “graciously apologize” is not part of the Trump emotional repetoire. So he continues his humiliation. Unfortunately, the situation is also devastating for the rest of the world.
And the humiliations continue to pile up. A court found that his plastering his name on the Kennedy Center was illegal. Seems like a good venue for demonstrations: Hey hey ho ho Trumpy letters got to go! Another judge took the advice of 35 other judges and re-opened the “lawsuit” that Trump used to conjure up his $1.8 billion slush fund for cop-beaters and pedophiles. Who are hollering for their share, but the payouts have been frozen.
In response, Trump is turning the White House grounds into the venue for an Ultimate Fighting Championship (or something) to be held to celebrate his birthday with the violence he so loves. Oh, and construction of his bunker and arch have been stopped too, I think. Hard to keep track. All the entertainers but two announced for his birthday celebration have withdrawn. Apparently they were recruited under false pretenses.
Trump has also issued Truth Social posts complaining about these decisions. I have to be honest, I was expecting an all-night posting binge again, but either he’s moderated or his third health checkup wasn’t as shining as the doctor reported.
Meanwhile, consumer confidence as measured by the University of Michigan has reached new lows not even seen during COVID. There’s been a fair bit of discussion about a “vibecession,” and my read is that having an abuser in the news all day, every day, gets people down. And the economic news outside the markets is none too good.
Overall, I’m optimistic. If Trump were as effective as Russell Vought and Stephen Miller, we would be in deep trouble. But he says things like he doesn’t care about the price of eggs or whether the voters like him while dumping potential allies like John Cornyn. Vought is busy destroying science; he has most recently put forth rules that would gut the peer review process for science funding and replace it with political commissars. You can comment here. Miller’s lackey Markwayne Mullin has been threatening to shut down major airports, which makes about as much sense as anything Trump does, proving that even Stephen Miller gets it wrong at times.
The Democrats working on what they’ve unoriginally called Project 2029 came up with a shopping list of good individual ideas, but they didn’t touch the larger issues we’re facing of the destruction of government that Trump has wrought. Asha Rangappa has a bigger idea. I’ve got some reservations about it, but it’s at the level we should be thinking.
Was this the week the Pope released his encyclical on AI? Here it is. I thought there was a lot of good in it, but I doubt I’ll get to writing more than this about it.
Here’s a gift link to M. Gessen’s very good (and long) article on how Orban was defeated. We can do all of this to Trump.
Follow the court-watchers for the details of the lawsuits. Chris Geidner (LawDork, Bluesky), Roger Parloff (Lawfare, Bluesky), and the Just Security tracker.
Let’s stay away from hypotheticals, as usual. Post your pets.
137 more weeks to go. What are you doing?
Previous weeks: Week 10, Week 20, Week 30, Week 40, Week 50, Week 60, Week 70