Donald Trump claimed an Iran deal was coming—for literally the 40th time—on the weekend of his 80th birthday as he turned the White House lawn into a circus of rage and vulgarity all backed with ads for crypto companies and Trump coins.

He hoped the UFC fights would overshadow how bad the so-called deal was, as he was heading to Europe to claim a victory over Iran while not having an actual copy of anything with details of it. He would just tell the G7 leaders at the summit how great it is—as if they’re going to believe him after all he’s put them through from tariffs to Greenland—while the written details conveniently wouldn’t be ready until the end of the week.

But those details of the “memorandum of understanding” (hardly a deal) have been coming out, and it’s pretty simple: Trump settled for getting the Strait of Hormuz possibly opened in return for Iran getting 300 billion dollars. On my SiriusXM program, retired U.S. Army General Randy Manner told me this was an “unconditional surrender” and will go down in history as a terrible military defeat.

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Trump tried to kick the details down the road, hoping against all hope that people will forget. There’s nothing concrete being stated about the nuclear material being secured and Trump is already preparing for that, actually pondering at the G7 summit, “Why even bother” to get it? His reasoning is that his bombing of the nuclear facility last year has so buried the material that it’s not usable.

Then why did we need to go to war and cost lives?

Trump says the strait will be “permanently toll-free,” but Iran says it will have “fees.”

There is a technical, legal difference, which Trump is trying to hide behind, but there’s no tangible difference between the two. Iran’s foreign ministry said that Iran was “not seeking to levy transit tolls; however, fees will be charged in exchange for the services that are provided.”

In other words, Trump is getting snookered.

Trump and JD Vance have also been adamant that the $300 billion to rebuild Iran is not coming from U.S. dollars but from a fund set up by the Gulf states—the very nations Iran attacked throughout the war.

But, as retired general Jack Keane said on Fox, “The $300 billion is real. Who cares where it comes from? The Iranians are still in charge. They’re going to take that money and recover everything.”

Keane compared it to allowing Nazi Germany access to billions for reconstruction while the Nazis were still in charge, no matter who’s giving them the money.

And with the Gulf states themselves looking for bailouts from the US for the damage they incurred—and the Trump administration indicated back in April that it was open to it—it’s not clear to me that US dollars are not going to Iran.

It’s also been reported, however, that the money won’t come from governments of the Gulf states but from “investors,” and not just from the Gulf.

Reuters reports:

“The new fund is a private investment vehicle, not a reconstruction or reparations program and will not include any ⁠government money or grants, the source said, adding that companies based in the U.S., the Gulf Arab states, Asia, South America and Africa have agreed to commit financing.” Investments ​pledged span energy, logistics, manufacturing and transport, the source said.

So this looks like another way for global corporations and real estate development companies—including those owned by the Trump family and their buddies—to make a lot of money. You better believe Trump is getting the oil companies all revved up, as he tried to do with Venezuela.

Plus, the U.S. will be unfreezing $24 billion in Iranian assets. This is the same crowd that criticized President Obama for unfreezing far less and getting far more in the Iran deal he negotiated. At least it was clear under Obama’s deal there would be—and were—inspections. But that’s not clear in anything Trump has said. And if he doesn’t get a way, way better deal than Obama did, why were the lives of American soldiers and thousands of civilians in Iran and throughout the region sacrificed?

Let’s not forget that this began as “regime change,” in which Trump spent weeks telling the protesters in Iran he was going to save them—then told them to come out and take power after the bombing began. When that delusional plan—cooked up by Benjamin Netenyahu and sold to a gullible Trump even as people in the White House thought it was not going to happen—fell apart, Trump claimed the war was about getting the nuclear material.

But now he’s saying that’s a goal down the road, if even that, because “Why bother?”

Iran is declaring full victory. And though it has suffered terrible losses of its military infrastructure and leadership, it has won in terms of the geopolitics of this war, simply by surviving and now having a huge weapon. It controls the strait and can get ransom for it. Iran is blaring on state media that it is victorious. Acknowledging Iran’s loses, the Financial Times puts it in context:

Within the highest ranks of the Islamic republic, nobody would deny Iran is nursing devastating losses. US and Israeli strikes destroyed crucial infrastructure, took the lives of about 3,500 civilians, and killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several senior military commanders.

But regime insiders, Iranian analysts and western diplomats in Tehran agree on one thing: the war failed to bring the radical transformation sought by Iran’s enemies. In fact, the regime, which at the start of the year appeared to be at its most vulnerable, seems more confident than before the war began in February.

“The US made a big mistake. It awakened the sleeping dragon,” said a regime insider. “We paid a huge price, but we activated capacities that we had previously hesitated to use.”

The extremist religious leaders in Tehran are feeling omnipotent, and they will repress the Iranian people even further. Prominent Republicans are already speaking out, and more will follow once the details are public.

Marc Thiessen, the odious former George W. Bush aide who reportedly advised Trump, warned on Fox News that this deal was “no better” than Obama’s.

After Vance confirmed the $300 billion payout, Thiessen called the deal a “disaster.”

The far-right Wall Street Journal editorial page states, “There’s no denying that Mr. Trump is retreating from his main goals as political pressure has built at home, and finishing the job requires greater military risk.”

“The deal also includes no Iranian commitments on its missiles and terror proxies,” the WSJ stated. “These will be put off to ‘regional discussions’ from which no one expects much.”

In other words, Trump caused thousands of deaths, including those of American service members; cost U.S. taxpayers billions; depleted munitions; and sent gas prices soaring, which in turn had inflation on all other goods surging. And in the end he completely caved to the Iranian regime.

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Crowds gathered last night to watch the removal of Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center by midnight per a judicial order. But the DOJ filed for an extension, claiming it was slowed by thunderstorms, and the letters didn’t begin coming down until early morning—and only after a tarp was laughably brought out to try to hide what was happening. The MAGA board of the center, handpicked by Trump, tried to get a stay of the judge’s removal order. He denied the board, and so did an appeals court. It was an important win, challenging Trump’s belief in his own omnipotence and letting him know we’ll rip down every undeserved, illegal monument he’s erected to himself.

Equally important was a judge’s ruling yesterday that Trump cannot change historical descriptions at national parks. In an attempt to erase history and infuse a white supremacist agenda, Trump had signed an executive order that had plaques about slavery and other historical events removed because they “disparaged Americans.” The ruling slammed Trump for this censorship. The judge referenced the Stonewall National Monument and the retreating of ice at Glacier National Park in Alaska, noting that you can’t delete history if you don’t like it.

Republican senators blocked an effort by Democrats to strengthen laws preventing the military from seizing ballots and voting machines and interfering in elections. There is no question that this empowers Trump in his efforts to interfere in elections. Trump has made it clear he wants to have the federal government exerting power in states’ elections for the House and Senate, and Republicans are either too afraid to stop him or want to help him.

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But except for Mark in Texas in early May (who defended Trump on immigration) and Lisa in Michigan in mid-April (who praised Trump on Iran and defended him on the Jesus meme), they’ve pretty much disappeared.

But now here comes John in Arizona, and you have to watch this to get the full sense of the fantasyland he is living in.

He wondered if I’ll be praising Trump when inflation comes down, defending Trump on his comments this week in which he astoundingly said, “I love the inflation,” giving a huge gift to the Democrats. I said that’s likely not going to be happening—certainly with gas prices—for at least a couple of years, and Trump will be on his way out. And people will still have suffered and lost a lot of money.

But why, I asked, are we talking about some hypothetical situation in the future and not the here and now? Trump could launch a bomb or might die in the future. Anything could happen. What do you think about what Trump has done so far and right now?

Did John give Joe Biden that kind of leeway, wondering about the future when inflation eventually comes down rather than focusing on the present? He didn’t want to answer those questions, of course, and then, when I finally, just for the sake of it, gave him his hypothetical—and focused on all the horrible actions Trump has engaged in other than causing a surge in inflation—he veered into other stuff.

By the way, John actually claims he didn’t vote for Trump—I’ll let you be the decider of that—and that he listens to my show “every day.”

But he couldn’t give me any details what I talk about every day, just spouting out a word salad of kookiness. Listen in and let me know your thoughts!

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Update: Just after I published this, right on cue the U.S. began military strikes on Iran.

It was absolutely wonderful to see Donald Trump booed by thousands of New York Knicks fans on Tuesday night.

That was especially true of those of us who live in New York and saw the city turned upside down. No subway trains allowed to stop under Madison Square Garden (the system brought to a halt), as all traffic was stopped in and around the arena. I was on the street at the time, watching the traffic chaos on 8th Avenue and 23rd Street as a woman next to me said, “Why doesn’t he just stay out of town? This is for us, not him,” referring to the NBA Finals.

There wasn’t a “mixed” reaction to Trump by fans, as much of the media likes to say when Trump is booed, so that they could placate him; they couldn’t sugar-coat it. As the massive screen zoomed in on Trump during the national anthem, the jeers and boos were thunderous.

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Trump tried to ignore it, giving a salute—which is not what you do when the national anthem is played if you are not a soldier or a veteran, which Trump is not—and grinning and trying to bear it. He was with the Knicks owner Jim Dolan in his box, along with a bunch of administration officials, who included Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.

If Trump didn’t know he’d be booed, he’s truly in full mental decline. He later claimed it was mostly cheers, which is completely delusional. You know that he heard the boos—if there’s anything left of his brain, it’s the ability to feel accolades and defeat, such as when he melted down when Kristen Welker very gingerly exposed his lies just a few days before on “Meet the Press.”

Media exploded immediately with stories of Trump’s treatment by fans. But then, to add to his humiliation, he fell asleep, dozing during the game that he forced people to move heaven and earth for him to get to see.

On top of that, the Knicks lost the game, breaking their amazing streak, and the “Trump Curse” went viral. It was all a metaphor for Trump’s entire existence—everything he touches dies.

Again, I’m not sure what Trump expected. Perhaps, like his sudden embrace of Zohran Mamdani after his win or like his backing of Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate primary when it was clear Paxton was going to win anyway, Trump thought the Knicks would win and he could claim that he helped it happen. A complete loser who’s always trying to glom onto someone else’s win.

But they didn’t win. And he fell asleep. And he was booed.

The media coverage had to have made Trump more furious than he was when he walked off the “Meet the Press” set.

The next day Trump announced he had to retaliate against Iran because it had shot down a U.S. helicopter whose crew was rescued and thankfully is okay. That happened at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday night. But Trump didn’t announce the U.S. would have to respond until Wednesday afternoon. In fact, on Tuesday night he talked about how useless it would be to continue bombing and that people would die, which he said would not be good.

But by the middle of the next day the headlines and the humiliation of the game obviously set in. He wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday afternoon that the U.S. “must, out of necessity,” respond to the attack.

So much for the “ceasefire” and the umpteenth announcement on Monday that a deal with Iran was very close. Trump was now angry, mocked, and humiliated, and he needed something, someone, or some country to take it out on.

This is what happens when you have the temper tantrum presidency of an authoritarian.

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As votes continue to be counted in California’s jungle primary for governor, the Department of Justice, under Donald Trump’s orders, has now launched a scurrilous investigation to find election fraud. This as Trump’s favored choice, Steve Hilton, who was leading in earlier counting, has fallen behind former Biden administration Health Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and may not make the runoff as more votes come in, and as leftist billionaire Tom Steyer advances. But this is really about Trump wanting to take control of California’s elections.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is claiming that the undocumented immigrants being held the ICE prison Delaney Hall in Newark—which has been faced with protests because of its horribly inhumane conditions—are “the worst of the worst.” But the government’s own data shows that, in fact, only a fraction of those being kept at the facility, where there are allegations of starvation, little medical care and horrendous psychological abuse, have been convicted of crimes. The prison has received intense attention in recent days as protestors have been subjected to violence by federal agents.

Is Senator Lindsey Graham’s constant and nauseating embrace of Trump—which he seems to have wratcheted to new levels in recent months—due to his fear of political trouble as the South Carolina primary comes upon us next week? His spending and some polling certainly seem to suggest it, as he seeks a fifth term in Congress.

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This year at least five red states are trying to erase Pride month, renaming June to celebrate the heterosexual family—as if it’s not celebrated every day in American life.

The homophobic MAGA GOP Congressman Andy Ogles of Tennessee—one of the aforementioned red states—this week posted on X that “homosexuality has no place in America,” wishing his followers a “Happy Nuclear Family Month.” After much outrage he deleted it, blaming it on a “staffer,” though we’ve heard no news of the staffer facing dismissal or any punishment. Ogles, let’s not forget, is a hardcore bigot, who also posted earlier this year that “Muslims have no place in American society.”

Gallup released a poll this week showing a sharp drop in support for marriage equality, as anti-LGBTQ sentiment rose dramatically within the Republican Party.

And attacks on trans rights have escalated in states across the country as Donald Trump has grotesquely vilified trans people, including kids, pushing to make them invisible—literally removing their gender markers from passports and replacing them with those of their “biological sex”—and putting their lives in danger as he promotes the kind of rhetoric that fosters violence.

This is where we stand in 2026 as we mark Pride month, and it’s important to see that MAGA, which has itself taken over the GOP, has enacted a full-blown assault on LGBTQ rights, meant to strip those rights entirely.

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According to Economist/YouGov polling, in 2022 only 38% of the GOP identified as MAGA. Today 62% of the party identifies as MAGA, a nearly two-thirds takeover of the party within a few short years. (In the larger population, Americans who identify as MAGA rose from 11% to 19%.)

The new Gallup poll on marriage equality eerily mirrors this shift. Support for same-sex marriage is down a whopping 18 percentage points within the Republican Party since 2022—from a 55% majority supporting marriage equality to a minority, at 37%. This brings support for same-sex marriage down 6% among all Americans, the lowest in years, to 65% from its peak of 71% in 2022.

Christian nationalists, in addition to the increasingly visible white supremacist extremists within the MAGA base, see ending marriage equality within reach: Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion in the 2022 Dobbs decision, infamously pointed to both the Obergefell marriage equality decision and Lawrence v. Texas—which banned sodomy laws—as needing to be revisited now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.

Red states, as always, are leading the charge. MAGAified Tennessee, which has been among the states passing bathroom bills and bans on gender-affirming care for youth, passed a bill last year that began a trend, rebranding June as “Nuclear Family Month.” Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas this year issued a proclamation naming June “Fidelity Month,” attempting to blunt Pride and celebrate “fidelity to God, family, community, and country.” (The absurdity of the former press secretary to the adulterous Donald Trump equating heterosexuality with fidelity should not be lost on any of us).

Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox followed suit this week, proclaiming June “Fidelity Month,” while Indiana’s Governor Mike Braun joined Tennessee on “Nuclear Family Month.” Governor Kay Ivey of Alabama went with “Strong Families Month.”

The Gallup poll also showed a startling drop in support for trans rights, as gender identity is generally more misunderstood by Americans than sexual orientation, which has been part of the public discussion for a much longer time. And again, the drop appears to have been driven by the MAGA movement within the GOP. Only 5% of Republicans say transitioning as a trans person is acceptable, while 42% of independents find it acceptable, as do 60% of Democrats. Gallup first asked the question in 2022, when 22% of Republicans accepted gender transition. Democrats’ and independents’ support stayed relatively stable while Republicans’ support plummeted.

This comes as we’ve seen anti-trans laws passed across the country by the GOP, as Trump and the Republicans have cruelly targeted trans kids. A well-funded anti-LGBTQ legal movement led by Christian nationalist groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom has made progress at the far-right Supreme Court, which has increasingly allowed states to discriminate against trans people, including trans youth.

Some gay, lesbian, and bisexual people might be tempted to believe that the backlash against their rights is because of the animus toward trans rights, something they might call a spillover effect. And we’ve seen the small band of GOP Republicans—gay MAGA—scurrilously join in the demonization of trans people, with some even calling for taking the “T” out of LGBTQ. But recent research debunks the notion that negative attitudes about trans rights somehow caused a drop in support for the rights of the rest of the community.

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Earlier in the year I interviewed Tessa E.S. Charlesworth, a research psychologist at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, who studies implicit bias. She and her colleague, Eli J. Finkel, also a psychology professor at Northwestern, had written that they were “stunned” by the reversal of support for the rights of gay and lesbian people. And again, 2022 appears to be the high-water mark, after which we see a decline—as MAGA identity rose quickly in the Republican Party.

In 2022, Charlesworth published a study she’d led that detailed the decline of implicit bias against gay people—the kind of bias that is not overt and is often unconscious—drawing upon 7.1 million responses from Americans that began being collected in 2007 and ended in 2020. Her forecasting models predicted that anti-gay bias might be at zero by 2022, the year she published the study. But analysis of millions more responses between 2021 and 2024 showed a striking reversal, with anti-gay bias rising by 10% in four years. More worrying, the trends showed anti-gay bias increasing at the fastest rate among young people, those under 25.

Writing in The New York Times, the researchers hypothesized that there wasn’t a correlation with anti-transgender bias as much as there was, oddly, a correlation with “anti-establishment” bias.

The sustained social disruption since 2020 has fueled resentment and a loss of confidence in institutions perceived to have failed — governments, corporations, the broader establishment. By 2020, support for gay and lesbian equality had become an establishment position. Corporate America, for example, demonstrated a concrete commitment to gay rights, with companies donating hundreds of thousands of dollars for Pride celebrations and other efforts at gay and lesbian inclusion.

In other words, gays and lesbians were “collateral damage,” they theorized, amid a larger revolt against established institutions. The MAGA movement and Trump drove this resentment of the establishment right into the ballot box, both nationally and in states across the country. The anti-DEI purge was very much about taking on institutions that were falsely-framed as having privileged the rights of women and minorities, including LGBTQ people.

The bottom line: MAGA has been successful at making not only trans people but also gay, lesbian, and bisexual people into the enemy, in addition to people of color and women. And that’s why all LGBTQ rights are under assault by a GOP that is feeding a movement that has taken over its party. This is a GOP more radicalized than ever before, where even logic and reason are ignored, as they hurtle toward a possible mid-term disaster, often unable to pull back on their positions and certainly their loyalty to Trump.

The good news is that the vast majority of Americans—non-MAGA Americans—support basic rights for LGBTQ people. There may be varying degrees of support on some issues, such as trans athletes on team sports or gender-affirming care for youth, but these are not issues the majority of voters see as important to them. And when it comes to anti-discrimination laws, trans people, like gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, have the support of the great majority in just about every poll.

We are also seeing MAGA fracturing and crumbling, as various factions attack Trump on the war in Iran, inflation, and other issues. Democrats are taking advantage of that, driving the point home that Trump betrayed his own base. And Republican leaders, worried about the midterms, are beginning to push back ever so slightly.

Beating back MAGA, a radicalized force now dominating the GOP but representing only 19% of Americans, is key to disempowering the backlash against queer people and protecting equality and freedom. And so far we’ve seen big wins at the ballot box in special election after special election—even when the GOP has used anti-LGBTQ political ads to engage its base—and in the polling heading into the midterms. We just have to stay focused, work hard, and keep all of this front of mind as we celebrate Pride 2026.

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The corporate media is brimming with headlines after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was rushed to Capitol Hill to claim that the Trump administration will not move forward with a terrorist slush fund—$1.8 billion for January 6th insurrectionists and others.

“We’re not moving forward with the fund, period,” Blanche said to the House Appropriations Committee. But there are few details of how this will play out. And unlike the announcement of the so-called “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” Blanche refused to put it in writing, nor does its demise appear on the DOJ website.

“You started it; you established it in writing, so it just makes sense to rescind it in writing,” New York Democratic Rep.Grace Meng told Blanche.

“I’m not committing to put anything in writing,” Blanche replied.

Are we really supposed to believe these people?

On top of that, Blanche confirmed that the part of the “settlement” in which Trump and his family get immunity from tax audits for dropping the $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS, is staying. Let me remind you that none of the others among many wealthy people whose returns were leaked when Trump’s were leaked by an IRS contractor—during Trump’s first administration—got anything. Hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin sued the IRS and settled—for an apology, that’s it.

“Nothing has changed with that,” Blanche sad at the hearing regarding the Trump family’s immunity from audits for the rest of their lives, which is insane. Presidents are routinely audited each year by the IRS. Trump is estimated to owe $100 million under an ongoing audit. Now it disappears, even as his administration claims they’re not paying out the $1.8 billion to the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol and bludgeoned police officers.

It makes you wonder if that had been the plan all along. But I doubt it. Trump wanted this slush fund to create his own armed militia, looking toward the elections. And he’s going to have to find another way to do it. Don’t think he won’t try.

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Still, it’s true that those of us opposed to the authoritarian regime had a big win, helping to raise the temperature enough on Trump’s terrorist slush fund to the point at which Republicans in the Senate came to see it as a liability.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he went to Trump and “made clear” that the $72 billion budget reconciliation package to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol through 2029 wasn’t going to pass unless Trump dropped the slush fund. Getting the ICE funding, even though ICE has lots of money from the big, bad bill, has been a priority, and keeping the agency shut down was hurting the regime’s efforts.

And when unnamed sources in the White House fed the media the story that Trump was dropping the slush fund, it wasn’t enough for Republicans in the Senate, knowing Democrats would still have impact in forcing the issue. So Blanche was hauled up to the House to say it publicly—even though he wouldn’t put it in writing—while Trump still hasn’t addressed it.

The Democrats executed a great strategy on the ICE funding bill. They blocked funding, forcing the GOP to try to pass the funding bill under budget reconciliation, a process that would only require 51 votes. And after Trump demanded his billion-dollar ballroom be added into the bill, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that Trump’s ballroom couldn’t be added. There weren’t enough votes for the ballroom anyway.

Democrats had planned to introduce amendments on the ballroom, but when that was dropped, they switched to the slush fund. It caused the GOP to go home for the holiday without taking the ICE funding vote, fearful of the amendments.

After two rulings by judges that dealt blows to the fund late last week, and after the blowback from the GOP, the White House began to cave. But Chuck Schumer said Democrats will still add amendments to the ICE funding bill. And they’re right to do so.

Those amendments need to say that the slush fund can never be brought back in any way, shape, or form. We can’t trust the word of this administration.

The New York Times reported before Blanche went to the hill that “some administration officials privately expressed relief” at the judicial rulings but then added, “As with all things involving Mr. Trump, he could still decide to reverse course, especially as he tracks media coverage of his decision.”

That’s an indication that Trump won’t let it be. And after getting the headlines they wanted—Slush Fund is Dropped”—they’ll put it aside until the uproar goes away and come back later.

The Florida judge who reopened the lawsuit against the IRS that Trump claimed to have dropped, creating the “settlement” for the slush fund, will, however, keep this in the news for a while as she seeks to determine if the administration engaged in “fraud.”

And the decision to keep the part of the deal that prevents Trump and his family from being audited is another massive disaster for the GOP heading into the midterms. And it needs to be hit on over and over again. Even if the courts stop it, Democrats will be able to use this against the GOP, showing that Trump is executing his power to protect himself and enrich himself, while everyday Americans are suffering.

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Donald Trump’s terrorist slush fund is possibly crumbling. First came a judge’s ruling early yesterday in a lawsuit by those who say they’ve been victimized by Trump himself, putting the fund, any transfer of money to it, or payments out of it on hold. Then came an extraordinary order from the judge who oversaw Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, reopening the case and alluding to possible “fraud” in setting up the fund as a “settlement” in that lawsuit. And we learned last night that before those actions there’s been panic and alarm inside the White House, with some close to Trump calling for killing the fund.

Friday was a really bad day in courts for Trump, and he showed it on Truth Social in a long rampage. On top of the slush fund decisions, a judge ruled that Trump’s name must come off the Kennedy Center, that only Congress can decide on changing the name because Congress created it and named it in the first place. The judge also ordered the Kennedy Center reopened after it was closed “for renovations” by Trump who was trying to save face after performers dropped out and ticket sales plummeted after he put his name on it.

And one of Trump’s former lieutenants, one-time attorney general Pam Bondi, refused to answer questions about Trump in a closed-door House hearing on the Epstein files, likely still wanting to stay loyal if she needs a pardon at some point, but did deflect blame to fellow MAGA supplicants, acting attorney general Todd Blanche and FBI director Kash Patel.

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You may have thought the dog-killing Kristi Noem was the worst that the Trump administration could get for Homeland Security Secretary.

But here is former Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin and current DHS secretary, who doubled down last night on Fox on a threat to shut down Customs and Border Patrol processing of flights at major international airports located in “sanctuary cities”—in other words, cities that direct their local law enforcement not to engage in immigration and detention efforts by working with federal agents.

It’s not, however, just about working with local law enforcement on immigration. Mullen—and Trump—want cities and states to agree with them completely on mass deportation to the point of shutting down protest. We’ve been here before, when federal agents tried to shut down protests in Minneapolis and executed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in the streets.

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Now they’re putting a gun to the heads of entire cities and states. Mullen was angry about a protest in New Jersey at a detention facility in Newark, where dozens of demonstrators—including U.S. Senator Andy Kim—were cruelly pepper-sprayed. Basically, Mullen wants the protests stopped, and if they’re not, he’ll stop the processing of travelers on flights into cities that don’t collaborate with Trump’s fascistic actions.

Though Mullen says CBP agents “process immigration,” CBP’s job at airports is actually to make sure only U.S. citizens or foreign visitors with visas—tourist visas, work visas, or permanent residency visas—are entering the country. They’re not “processing” anyone’s “immigration” but rather processing travelers arriving on international flights.

This could all be a lot of bluster, or the Trump regime may just be stupid enough to believe that by not processing visitors on international flights to certain cities—causing chaos and sending many flights to other cities while canceling many others—it will only economically harm blue cities in the blue states they’re targeting. That would be a gross misunderstanding of the global economic ecosystem. But then again, Trump and his aides didn’t think about that when it came to tariffs, so maybe they are in fact that stupid.

Airlines would be canceling flights, and havoc would play out all across America, affecting everyone in every red state as much as anyone in any blue state. An economy that is already teetering would come crashing down into a recession.

The U.S. Travel Association told PBS News that Mullin warned the group in a meeting that he is considering withdrawing CBP officers at the airports in question. The group immediately condemned this crazy scheme, as did all of the major airlines.

Even Trump’s own transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, wasn’t on the same page:

Duffy told a Congressional hearing earlier this week that…it would be a bad idea to start restricting travel based on political views. After all, at some point Democrats will be in charge and “you will all switch spots at one point — hopefully not too soon Mr. Chairman,” Duffy said.

“We have people from around the world and around the country that need to be able to fly into all different kinds of places. We shouldn’t shut down air travel in a state that doesn’t agree with our politics,” Duffy said.

This wouldn’t be the first time, however, that the Trump Transportation Department would be in conflict with Homeland Security. Back in February, the El Paso airport was shut down briefly after a dispute between the FAA (which is part of the Transportation Department) and DHS (and the Pentagon) when DHS and the Pentagon went ahead with testing high-energy, anti-drone laser technology at nearby Fort Bliss against the FAA’s warnings, leading to the shutdown of the airport.

Airline trade groups warn that if Mullen moved forward, there would be a devastating economic impact, including disrupting billions of dollars in cargo shipments. We’d be back to the supply chain disruption of the pandemic—which drove inflation to 9%.

As Nick Miroff at The Atlantic reports, millions of passengers would also be stranded, and there would be a ripple effect all through the country, to airports in deeply red states.

Mullin’s proposal appears to reflect a thin grasp of global-travel logistics, as well as an inflated sense of the government’s ability to impose economic pain on specific cities, according to industry executives and former DHS officials I spoke with.

The U.S. airports where international travelers and cargo first arrive are often not their final destination. A German business traveler flying into JFK may be en route to a meeting in Cincinnati.

A Korean family landing at Los Angeles International Airport could be headed for Disney World. The proportion of economic pain imposed on sanctuary cities might be relatively small compared with the wider ripple effects on the U.S. travel industry.

A massive economic hit for the country—and global travel—but also for the GOP, as if the party doesn’t have enough problems heading into the midterms. On top of everything else, disrupting air travel domestically and internationally, upending cargo and deliveries in addition to vacations and business travel, would enrage voters. And then we could see the economy plummet as inflation spikes way higher than it has in recent months under Trump.

But this administration has done so much to harm itself and the GOP while thinking they’re only hurting their opponents that none of us should immediately assume it’s all a bluff.

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photo: Tyler Merbler

The Department of Justice deleted news releases about criminal cases related to January 6th from government websites and is boasting about it in the wake of the promotion of the $1.8 billion slush fund, which is getting pushback from the GOP. The DOJ called the online records of that terrible day in history and the information about the prosecutions of criminals “partisan propaganda,” all as the Trump administration is intent on rewriting history.

That pushback on the slush fund, which caused the GOP in the Senate to collapse, going home without voting on ICE funding, fearful of Democratic amendments on the slush fund, may be tied to a stunning Fox poll. Fox has been reporting on the poll, described as the most devastating of his presidency, in which Fox reported Trump is underwater with working-class white men and rural voters and has a majority disapproving even on border security.

As Republicans tore themselves apart this weekend, eight Democrats in the House did something disappointing, wrong-headed, unnecessary, and harmful, voting with the GOP on a “don’t say trans” bill that would require schools nationwide to out trans students to their parents and others, even if doing so would put them in physical danger. The group included some surprising House members. This comes as we’ve seen some calls among Democratic centrists to pull back on trans rights when in fact all the data shows that Democratic voters, and most Americans, support equality for trans people.

A Weekend Report on a holiday weekend kicking off summer. Read up on the news and join the discussion if you like…

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Could we really be at the point where Republicans have had enough? Or will they regroup after the holiday, after getting fresh threats from Donald Trump—and perhaps violent warnings from his thugs—and once again bow to him?

That remains to be seen. But this week we saw something we’ve yet to see in Trump’s second term: The GOP completely melting down, canceling votes, going home, angry at one another and at Trump, all tearing one another apart. Senate Majority Leader John Thune and other leaders stood there bewildered, trying but failing to explain this mess to the press.

We like them tearing one another apart, for sure. The outrageous, unprecedented $1.8 billion terrorist slush fund, coming right after the billion dollar ballroom, was enough to throw Senate Republicans into chaos and recriminations, with Sen. Mitch McConnell, to offer just one example, attacking Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche—who’d stunningly accused critics of just not understanding how normal all of this is—charging that Blanche was engaging in “utterly stupid, morally wrong” behavior.

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Given a June 1 deadline by Trump to re-open the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration agencies, Senate Republicans crashed and burned, leaving town and blowing through that deadline. Democrats have been enormously successful at stopping funding of ICE and DHS’s immigration enforcement agencies, keeping them shut down (even as ICE has plenty of money from the big bad bill).

The GOP has been forced to try to pass the ICE funding via budget reconciliation, which only requires 51 votes. But then Trump made them add the ballroom with a price tag of a billion dollars—previously supposedly being paid by private donors—into the bill. The Senate parliamentarian ruled the ballroom couldn’t pass in reconcilation. In the meantime, on his revenge tour, Trump destroyed the careers of both Louisiana GOP Senator Bill Cassidy and GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky who now appear to be going on their own revenge tours against Trump until the end of their terms.

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Trump always does himself in. Cassidy, fresh off losing in his primary last week to a Trump-backed MAGA candidate—as Trump was determined to slay Cassidy after he’d voted to impeach him for inciting an insurrection back in 2021—voted for the war powers resolution in the Senate, this week becoming the deciding vote to finally pass the measure that would mandate Congress decide on the war in Iran.

And Senate Republicans became livid with Trump on Tuesday for endorsing Ken Paxton in next Tuesday’s Senate primary runoff in Texas, after they’d spent millions trying to help Senator John Cornyn keep his seat. As I wrote earlier, some Senate Republicans think the GOP could lose Texas because of Trump’s endorsement. Even if they win they will have to spend tons of money in Texas, at a time when the Senate is now in play and they need that money elsewhere. Why the hell should they help Trump, they surely were asking themselves, if he wasn’t going to help him?

Cassidy, unchained, then made it clear he was not about to fund any ballroom for Trump. (By the way, politicians like Cassidy are not to be lauded now; they went along with it all when they thought they’d be saved, and ultimately they’re cowards.) So did several other Republicans in the Senate. The ballroom was pretty much doomed. Democrats had been ready to add a ton of amendments to the ICE funding bill about the ballroom and make Republicans vote on it.

But once that was out of the way, Democrats had something else about which they could add amendments to the ICE funding bill: the terrorist slush fund, taxpayer dollars stolen by Trump and his crooked acting attorney general in a bogus “settlement” on a bogus “lawsuit.” The idea that money would be going to people who committed all kinds of crimes—the Orwellian “Anti-Weaponization Fund”—including violent criminals who’d attacked the Capitol and bludgeoned cops, landed like an atom bomb on Capitol Hill. The story blew up across the country—people were outraged—and you know the congressional switchboard was jammed.

Again, how stupid is Trump? You would think that as inflation continues to soar and gas prices are skyrocketing as a result of his badly managed war of choice, he’d at least wait on establishing this “fund” for a few days, until the DHS vote was passed. Sure, it would still be an issue moving forward and cause a blowup among the GOP anyway—and is another disaster for them for the midterms—but you’d at the very least get DHS opened up and have Republicans going home with some sort of accomplishment.

But no, they go home instead to an uproar from their constituents about this “fund” in addition to the war and gas prices.

But wait, it gets worse. After the Senate passed a war powers resolution—thanks to Cassidy, who Trump could have counted on sticking with him if he’d not backed a primary against him—more Republicans in the House got some balls. Just before the House was to vote on a war powers resolution on Thursday, bumbling House Speaker Mike Johnson pulled it because he didn’t have the votes to defeat it, and, like the Senate leader, sent everyone home. This was beyond embarrassing and just contributed to the GOP meltdown. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania—a Republican who was going to vote for it—said the votes won’t be any different when they come back, so they should have just voted.

Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan rightly called the GOP “chickenhawk motherfuckers.”

This is beyond a shit show. The GOP seems to be coming apart at the seams, under the weight of Trump, who has no clue about what he’s doing.

Apparently, the anger among GOP senators over the slush fund—and the fear of taking votes—was compounded by Todd Blanche privately meeting with them Thursday, in what was described as a contentious meeting that became a disaster.

This is how we know the White House is freaking out too, unable to manage Trump or the Congressional GOP. By sending Blanche to answer questions before senators earlier in the week in a public hearing—at the last minute canceling a trip he’d planned—they clearly weren’t expecting the uproar over the slush fund to be so big. As with the war in Iran, they were completely unprepared. The private meeting with GOP senators didn’t change anything, and seemed to make it worse.

All of this shows that while Trump is simply out of his mind—nothing surprising—the White House is in a bubble, as most Republicans have been. But Senate and House Republicans are starting to experience reality outside the bubble. It’s all becoming too intense for them. Again, we’ll have to wait to see if this is a real breaking point, but so far it’s looking like their turmoil will continue. And Democrats just need to keep stoking it.

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Donald Trump has once again screwed over Republican leaders in Congress—and possibly himself—even as they bow to him daily, giving him everything he wants.

Backing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s faced several criminal investigations and is hated by many Texans, over the incumbent John Cornyn (also not well-liked but not with the baggage Paxton has in a general election) in next week’s runoff primary election was a slap in the face to the GOP Senate leadership, which includes Cornyn himself. And if Trump pushes Paxton over the top, it’s the much riskier bet going up against the popular, young, dynamic and well-funded Democratic candidate James Talarico in the general election in November, as Democrats think this could be the favorable environment to turn Texas blue, as formidable a task as it is.

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But Trump doesn’t care about loyalty or politics. He just wants to wield power, helping thugs like Paxton who, like him, have been indicted and impeached and hypocritically engaged in marital infidelity but are still atop the GOP’s corrupt heap.

In just the last few days, there’s been little heard out of the GOP leadership in Congress as Trump is planning to engage in an unprecedented heist, setting up a “compensation fund” of $1.8 billion—taxpayer dollars billed as a “settlement” for Trump dropping his bogus lawsuit against the IRS—so that he’ll have a slush fund for January 6th insurrectionists he pardoned and all of his buddies who committed crimes.

And the Senate leadership has been ready to give Trump a billion dollars for his ballroom, again taxpayer dollars, even as he said it would all be paid for by private donors. As the project got snagged by the Senate parliamentarian ruling that it can’t pass under budget reconciliation (and thus with only 51 votes), a lot of cowardly Republicans quietly breathed a sigh of relief, even as Trump demanded Senate Majority Leader John Thune fire the parliamentarian and as some Republicans scraped around, looking for ways to make changes to include the money.

But Trump couldn’t care less even if they pull it off. Trump is on a massive high, intoxicated by his revenge tour, after he took out Indiana GOP legislators who wouldn’t redistrict the state’s congressional maps, backing their MAGA challengers in the primary who defeated most of them. And then, on Saturday, Trump successfully took down Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who voted to impeach Trump, as the Trump-backed candidate won the primary. Trump then crushed Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, ousted in a primary on Tuesday with millions of dollars from MAGA billionaires backing his opponent.

It’s kind of like the Venezuela invasion, which Trump held up as a massive success after installing a puppet regime that is still repressing people while giving over oil to Trump. He was on a high and then thought he could conquer Iran, only to dig himself into a ditch. The same dynamics are in play.

Trump had reportedly earlier been planning to back Cornyn. He knew what was the best thing for the GOP—and himself, if he didn’t want investigations by Democrats should Republicans lose the Senate—and likely was talked into it even though Paxton was his thuggish kindred spirit.

But then it was leaked to the media. And Paxton came out saying he’d drop out of the race if the Senate passed the Save Act, the voter suppression bill requiring a birth certificate to vote. And he urged Thune to get it passed by killing the filibuster, something Trump has long demanded of Thune. This was seen by Trump as a bold, powerful MAGA moment—and by White House aides as a “genius” move on Paxton’s part—and it got Trump moving over to endorsing Paxton.

It’s always like that with Trump. Even when he knows something’s bad—and has enough people around him showing him the proof—he goes with his “gut” in the end, which is really just his narcissism talking. And more often than not, he screws himself.

Talarico, make no mistake, has an uphill battle in a red state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since the 1980s. The polls, however, have shown him competitive against either Paxton or Cornyn, but better against Paxton. And he has higher favorability ratings too. He likely has the best shot any Democrat has had in many years, including Beto O’Rourke who came close to taking down Ted Cruz in 2018.

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Reporters covering Capitol Hill said Republican leaders were freaked out after Trump’s endorsement of Paxton. Andrew Desiderio from Punchbowl News wrote on X that Senator Susan Collins is concerned: she “doesn’t understand,” he wrote, how Trump could back Paxton, who she said is “ethically challenged.” (Hahaha!) Thune apparently just threw his hands up in the air. Senator Lisa Murkowski said Texas is “all but lost.”

All of this is delicious to see, as Republicans have spent $90 million trying to help Cornyn through this runoff next Tuesday, and would have to help the odious Paxton if he wins the primary. Of course, there’s always the chance Paxton loses—polls have him and Cornyn tied—and Trump is then deflated as his endorsement fizzles. And there’s also, of course, the very real possibility that Paxton wins the primary and then prevails over Talerico, in which case we have another criminal-minded, scandal-plagued, sleazy GOP senator.

But for Democrats, a scenario in which Trump is doing things that could undermine the GOP is the best scenario. And it is yet more proof of how Trump’s own megalomania drives him, even when it’s clear it might not end well for him.

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It doesn’t get more corrupt than this: Donald Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion over his tax returns being leaked, and a judge had already questioned the dubiousness—the outright grift—of the current president suing his own government and the American people. So the Justice Department has been working on a “settlement” in which $1.7 billion will be paid, and it will all go to the supposed “victims” of Biden-era prosecutions, including January 6th thugs Trump pardoned. This is a slush fund for those who will engage in violence on Trump’s behalf, and it must be stopped.

An imprisoned January 6th election denier, meanwhile, is being released from prison by Democratic Governor Jared Polis of Colorado, who defended it on CNN last night. Tina Peters was given clemency after being convicted of tampering with election machines, driven by Trump’s conspiracies. The governor is arguing that she’s served some time and the penalty was excessive—a nine-year sentence—and that her crime was about the 2021 election, not 2020. But the only thing that drove this woman to commit a crime was Trump and his 2020 election fraud, and Trump has been pressuring Polis to release her.

In California dozens of federal agents banged on the doors of the homes of immigrant rights volunteers at 3 a.m. on Wednesday, targeting members of a peaceful, non-violent group of volunteers who support immigrants in the community and engage in patrols of immigration enforcement operations, all of which is legal. This is a stunning breach of civil rights and another example of how far the Trump administration will go.

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You know Donald Trump is feeling very small when he goes on a tirade against a reporter.

Afraid to stand up to President Xi Jinping, who warned him during their China summit that Trump had better tread carefully on U.S. ally Taiwan or there could be “conflict,” Trump later let loose on New York Times reporter David Sanger on the way back from China, calling him “treasonous” for his reporting on Iran.

It’s a familiar pattern. Trump regularly attacks the media, Democrats, and millions of other Americans as the enemy of the people while bowing to our adversaries and dictators around the world.

Trump went on a blitz on Truth Social the night before he left for China, attacking President Obama as a “traitor” who should be arrested and also accusing Hillary Clinton and James Comey of “treason.” It was a 55-post vicious tirade of empty accusations.

But when Trump got to China, he told Xi, “You’re a great leader. I say it to everybody: you’re a great leader. Sometimes, people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway because it’s true. I only say the truth.”

He gushed and gushed: “It’s an honor to be with you. It’s an honor to be your friend.”

The Chinese leader didn’t return the accolades.

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At no time did Xi call Trump a great president or even acknowledge any positive personal qualities about him. Xi was not about to lie on the world stage nor let his people see him bowing to Trump with phony commendations. Chinese citizens had been mocking Trump in memes that went viral as he arrived, sarcastically using the nickname Chuan Jianguo, “nation builder,” for Trump—meaning his reckless policies in the US and with regard to European allies help build the nation of China.

Xi knew that he could easily play Trump without verbally complimenting him by simply making Trump feel special, feeding his narcissism with other gestures—while maintaining dominance over him. There was a welcoming parade, with the Chinese military and crowds of children holding flowers and American flags. There was a 21-gun salute and a band played the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

It worked like a charm, as Trump sucked it up. “That was an honor like few I’ve ever seen before,” he said.

So Xi, like other authoritarians who’ve been able to work Trump—from Benjamin Netanyahu to Mohammed bin Salman—knew how to manipulate Trump by feeding his unending need for adoration while getting precisely what he wanted from Trump.

Once the talks started, Xi made it clear who was in charge. In what foreign policy experts said was striking language, Xi warned Trump regarding Taiwan.

Xinhua, China’s official news agency, released a readout of the meeting: “Handled well, the two countries can maintain stability. If handled poorly, the two countries will collide or even clash, putting the entire U.S.-China relationship in an extremely dangerous situation.”

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Trump bowed to Xi completely, a supplicant to the clearly stronger authoritarian, offering no response at all to this statement, per the Washington Post:

In the meeting, Trump did not respond to Xi’s comments about Taiwan and moved on to the next topic without acknowledging them at all, according to a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive closed-door meeting.

This was pathetic, and the optics of the trip for the American people heading into the mid-terms were bad from the start. Trump brought tech company CEOs, including Tim Cook, Elon Musk, and Jensen Huang of Nvidia, so they could get deals. He also brought his son Eric Trump—as one of the 30 business leaders Trump said were there with him—to cut deals for the Trump family, making the self-dealing front and center.

Some of these tech leaders want deals on precious minerals and AI. But Trump didn’t even get that. He, in fact, left China without a breakthrough on AI, Iran, or Taiwan. As The Guardian explains:

The US president had gone into the two-day talks with China’s Xi Jinping weakened by his prolonged war in Iran, and did little to change the perception that he and his nation are diminished on the global stage.

Instead it was Xi who delivered the sharpest rhetoric of the meeting – over the future status of the self-governing island of Taiwan, with Trump notably failing to push back.

In his final remarks in Beijing on Friday, Trump did claim that the US and China struck “fantastic trade deals”, although details were scarce, and that he and Xi settled “a lot of different problems”.

Trump continued giving Xi more of what the Chinese leader wants, saying on Air Force One he hadn’t decided if the U.S. will move ahead with a major arms package for Taiwan that had been planned for this year. He also said he was considering lifting sanctions on Chinese companies buying Iranian oil, telling Sean Hannity that Xi promised him China won’t give Iran military equipment—even though Chinese companies are planning to sell Iran arms, something that, in a communist dictatorship, can only be discussed with Xi’s permission.

But Trump did get one thing out of the visit: more inspiration and encouragement for his billion-dollar ballroom that Republicans are getting cold feet about funding, posting on Truth Social as he was leaving China: “China has a Ballroom, and so should the U.S.A.!”

What a complete embarrassment. Once again the U.S. is a laughingstock on the world stage. But this time it underscored how Trump is making the U.S. weak and making our adversary, China, strong. And that has serious ramifications.

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The fact that it was in the discussion at all, however, means we’re at least getting them to consider just what this fight means. But we have to keep pushing. Joe and I talked about all that and much more.

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The purchase of Warner Brothers, parent company of CNN, by Skydance—which bought Paramount and CBS—is all being shepherded through by the Trump administration, which made it clear from the beginning that Warner’s rival Netflix wouldn’t get approval for a merger, while Skydance, owned by the MAGA Ellison family, would. But Skydance faces lawsuits, including by Paramount+ subscribers. And two press freedom groups now allege that David Ellison has promised Trump he would fire CNN anchors Trump despises and remake the coverage at CNN.

Tennessee Republicans passed a new map eliminating the only Democratic House seat in the state, carving up the Black-majority district in Shelby County, home to Memphis. This followed the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court, and to see it acted out in Memphis, a city at the forefront of the civil rights movement, was wrenching. Republicans—full-on white supremacists—actually denied knowing Memphis is a city with a majority of Black residents, refusing to admit they were carving the maps on the basis of race. Activists are organizing and fighting.

The Virginia secretary of state, meanwhile, is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court after the Virginia Supreme Court threw out a vote of the people—the ballot measure that passed in which would redistrict maps. The 4-3 decision was based on a technical reading of what constitutes Election Day—the day itself or the beginning of early voting, which is what the majority decided, thus saying the measure didn’t meet the requirements of the statute. The U.S. Supreme Court will likely show its hypocrisy, as it recently heard arguments on mail-in ballots coming after Election Day, and the conservatives telegraphed that the “election” on Election Day—not after, and, conceivably, not before.

A Weekend Report after an enraging week, for you to read up on the news and join the discussion if you like…

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In the middle of the most unpopular war in over 75 years—one that has created a political disaster for the Trump administration—the White House had to use the precious time of its Secretary of State to send him to the Vatican yesterday to do damage control.

Think about that. The Vatican isn’t a country with a military, nor is it some massive trading partner with the U.S. It’s a tiny nation-state.

But its leader nonetheless has influence on people around the world and on millions of Americans, and is currently very popular. He’s not someone you want to mess with, even if he criticizes your policies—you just politely, very respectfully ignore him as presidents have done for generations—because he’s a global spiritual leader and you’re out of your league.

But Donald Trump created a massive self-inflicted wound by attacking Pope Leo to the point where Marco Rubio begged for an audience with the pope to try to smooth it over while at the same time trying not to anger Trump by caving to Leo’s message of peace. As I’ve written, the rift goes back a long time, and included Trump first using the Pentagon to threaten the Vatican, before he ultimately began attacking Leo outright on Truth Social.

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Rubio had a lot of mending to do. And it didn’t work. By seeking to meet the pope, the administration was already admitting defeat. Trump’s polling is tanking, including among evangelical Christians, and the GOP, already weighed down by all of Trump’s other reckless and unpopular actions, cannot afford even minor slippage among the radical Christian base. But they are beginning to hemorrhage.

We’ve believed for a long time that Trump and the Christian nationalist base—which includes evangelicals and conservative MAGA Catholics—had an impenetrable bond. The evangelical leaders are a band of Christian hypocrites who’d made a deal with the devil in their obsessive quest to stop abortion and strip the rights of LGBTQ people. The religious extremists had no problem with the adulterer-in-chief saying he grabs women “by the pussy,” nor being accused of sexual assault and found liable for rape. They stayed loyal as he assaulted the poor and pushed vicious racism.

No, none of that mattered. But it took an image of Trump as Jesus—which he posted after attacking Pope Leo, the Vicar of Christ—to jolt them suddenly.

Trump’s approval has dropped 15% among evangelical Christians and equally significantly among Catholics. And an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll this week landed like a bomb, as Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump holding himself up as Jesus and Pete Hegseth using Christianity to promote the war in Iran:

Eighty-seven percent of Americans have a negative view of Trump’s social media post appearing to depict himself as Jesus, according to the poll. Sixty-nine percent dislike Hegseth praying at the Pentagon for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Both expressions drew criticism even from Republicans and Trump voters, unusual at a time of deep political tribalism. Eighty percent of 2024 Trump voters had a negative reaction to Trump’s Jesus post, as did 79 percent of Republicans. On Hegseth’s prayer, more than 40 percent of both groups reacted negatively.

And Leo is very popular, unlike Trump, with a 25-point net favorable margin among Americans overall, which grows to 47 points among Catholics.

So the White House has a big problem, and they thought sending Rubio, who was raised a Catholic until age eight, then baptized a Mormon, only to return to the Catholic church at 12 or 13, but who also attends a Baptist church, to the Vatican. Not exactly a stellar example of a consistent and loyal Catholic, but the Catholic convert JD Vance is now damaged goods, because he’d joined in on Trump’s attacks on the pope while Rubio remained relatively silent. And Rubio had visited Leo twice before, so maybe they thought he had the magic.

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But the pope was not about to be smoothed over—or silenced. As Christopher Hale at Letters from Leo writes: “The Vatican’s 120-word readout described what passed between Leo and Rubio as an exchange of views — the formula Rome reaches for when a meeting failed to find common ground.” Leo apparently repeated his stance on the war in Iran, immigration, Gaza, and other issues on which he’s criticized the U.S. government.

Rubio’s gift to the pope also backfired, a crystal football paperweight with the state department’s insignia which Rubio apparently gives everyone on trips—cold and impersonal. (The pope literally give a Rubio an olive branch—encased in wood, with an inscription describing it as “the plant of peace.”)

Again, Rubio’s task was to repair a rift while not bowing in any way and sticking with Trump’s message. That is impossible, and Rubio and the administration likely know that. The best they could get was a good photo-op that gave the appearance of having patched things up.

Fox dutifully covered the meeting and then had the MAGA right-wing Cardinal Dolan—pushed out by Leo as New York’s archbishop and now co-chief chaplain of the New York City Police Department—on to talk about what a great job Rubio did.

But as far as the non-MAGA media, the coverage just brought more attention to Trump’s attacks on the pope, which had continued just hours before Rubio got to Rome, when he told radio host Hugh Hewitt that the pope was “endangering” Catholics by not supporting his war in Iran.

Trump cannot help himself. And just as on every other issue, he’s tearing down a GOP that is deathly afraid of standing up to him, while helping build the Democrats’ wave for the midterms.

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That was how Mark from Texas began in a call to my SiriusXM program as I was discussing the so-called “Save Act” and the GOP’s bogus claim of “voter fraud. “

It’s the usual passive-aggressive MAGA approach. They don’t want you to think they care what you have to say—but they care about what you have to say.

This one, unlike most, was polite enough, though he did accuse me of “cherry picking” facts when it came to Trump’s brutality. Even just one act of brutally is bad enough, of course. But if we were cherry-picking all the terrible things Donald Trump has done, we’d have over 1000 bushels of cherries!

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First Mark tried to imply that Democrats want undocumented people to come into the country so that they would vote for Democrats. This, of course, is a variation of the racist Great Replacement Theory. But you can’t vote unless you’re a citizen—by law—yet Mark seemed to be implying these people were, when there’s no evidence, and wanted a law against it (though one exists) and then wanted people to promise not to vote for 20 years. It made no sense!

I believe I gently wiped the floor with him in my response, and he then said he just had one thing to add and would get off the phone and “let” me “go.” In fact, he said this more than once, yet just stayed and kept asking questions, all of which I hit back at with truth in my answers.

Twice he called me “intellectually dishonest.” I’ll let you be the judge of which of us met the definition of that. Watch and let me know your thoughts!

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The fallout from the Supreme Court’s abominable ruling eviscerating the Voting Rights Act has been enormous. Red states are rushing to do what they can this year, while planning for 2028, to disenfranchise millions of voters. But Democrats can beat Republicans at their grotesque game. One analysis states that if New York and California alone just got rid of all Republican districts, Democrats would come out ahead. Blue states are gearing up for sweeping changes, as Democrats who were previously tepid on redistricting are now moving fast.

A report by the Trump Justice Department’s “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias” charges that protecting LGBTQ people from discrimination, policies promoted by President Biden, are an attack on the rights of Christians. The report lays the groundwork to strip all policies defending queer people and install a Christian nationalist government.

Donald Trump’s judicial nominees have consistently refused to state that Biden won the 2020 election when questioned by senators. Some have even refused to say that Trump cannot run for a third term in 2028. These are constitutional matters that should disqualify any nominee from being seated on a federal bench. But three Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee just voted to give an election-denying nominee who refused even to condemn the January 6th insurrection a lifetime appointment.

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We’ve now watched Donald Trump survive three assassination attempts, and in all three situations, Trump didn’t respond as would the great majority of human beings whose lives are threatened nor, certainly, like the many other presidents who survived such attempts.

Trump’s first instinct is self-promotion and opportunity. As a narcissist, he doesn’t experience emotions in the same way as others. After surviving assassination attempts, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and other presidents in recent decades rallied the American people, largely united against political violence.

Unlike Trump, Reagan, for example—who survived a serious bullet wound—refuted the idea that the attempt against him was evidence of a “sick society“ and instead focused on the support he received that came from Americans no matter their beliefs and political parties: “The society we heard from is made up of millions of compassionate Americans.”

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That was of course the right thing as well as the politically smart thing to do. It shows a leader with empathy, in that moment, for a public grappling with its own fears about the event. The us vs. them dynamic was about all of us against extremists of any kind who’d engage in violent attacks rather than about the targeted president against his opponents in the other party.

Not Trump. At the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July of 2024, Trump’s first thought as a gunman shot at him was to get a photo-op with his fist in the air, even as Secret Service agents were trying to pull him down to take cover. And Trump—who’d actually called for the execution of the chairman of the joint chiefs just a year before—blamed Democrats and his opponents for supposed violent rhetoric when no Democrat has said anything close to what Trump has in conjuring up violence against his opponents.

After a man with an semi-automatic rifle was caught having entered Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound in September of 2024 attempting to shoot Trump while he was playing golf, Trump’s first thoughts were to rail against Joe Biden and his then-opponent, Kamala Harris in a post on Truth Social, for being “obsessed with ‘Getting Trump’ for so long” as well as vilifying all Democrats, calling them “the enemy from within.” He galvanized his supporters around that ugly message.

And less than two hours after the shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner last Saturday, Trump gave a press conference using the attack to push for building a $400 million ballroom with taxpayer dollars after saying last year that it would be paid for privately, using the event to try to get the American people behind forking over money for his outrageous, illegal destruction and rebuilding of a part of the White House.

There was a lot of disbelief about the attack on Saturday, as conspiracy theories exploded, and “staged” trended on social media (as happened after the attack in Butler). But this time, there were also a lot of yawns, with many people tuning out of yet another day of insanity in Trump’s America. It’s looks like that included at least some of Trump’s own exhausted supporters.

That may seem callous, no matter one’s political beliefs or party. A president and his cabinet were targeted at a large public event, and we should all want to pay attention to such horror. But to many people, if Trump wasn’t going to take it seriously—instead of promoting his obsessive vanity project in the middle of a war he started for no reason—why should they?

And there was also a lot of outrage, as Trump took an event that should garner sympathy even from those who don’t support him—we in the opposition do not condone political violence, no matter what we think of Trump or MAGA—and turned it into an opportunity.

The White House immediately sent the talking points out to Republicans, right-wing media outlets, and online sycophants, all of whom were on-message, claiming that a new ballroom will prevent these kinds of attacks. Put aside the fact that the White House Correspondents Dinner, hosted by a private organization, would never be held at the White House; this ludicrous claim presupposes presidents will never speak outside the White House again, including at rallies while campaigning.

None of this was to be taken seriously, and it’s not shocking that people believe the assassination attempt was faked. For the record, I’m not among those people. The 31-year-old alleged shooter traveled to Washington with the intent of doing harm to Trump and others. The last thing Trump would have put in the manifesto, after all, is a claim that he’s a “rapist” and “pedophile,” bringing his sex crimes and the Epstein files back into the media.

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Trump viciously attacked journalist Norah O’Donnell for reading those words in the “60 Minutes” interview on Sunday—calling her “a disgrace”—and putting to bed the preposterous notion floated by some that he’d bonded with the White House press on the traumatic event they shared.

Trump has been very aware that the ballroom project is in trouble, hitting opposition in court and seeing that only 20% of Americans support it in polls. But this lame effort to use attempted murder to garner support for it has already backfired. Democrats rightly slammed it out of the gate, and much of the public, struggling under soaring gas prices and groceries, doesn’t appear to be rallying around the idea of spending money on a corrupt president’s obsessions.

Similarly, Trump tried to use the shooting to go after Jimmy Kimmel once again, backing a call on social media by Melania Trump for Kimmel to be fired for joking—four days earlier—that she looked like “an expectant widow.” Of course Kimmel was referring to Trump’s health clearly being in great decline as he’s turning 80.

But again, it flopped. This time there were no affiliates dropping the airing of Kimmel’s show, nor did ABC bat an eyelid. Kimmel wasn’t suspended; he was on the air the next night, slamming Melania again.

The administration doesn’t realize it lost that war, and again, they’re squandering whatever sympathy the public might give them on the shooting to go after Trump’s perceived enemies again. The FCC is moving to “review” ABC’s license, but this will only galvanize Americans, as happened the last time Trump threatened the first Amendment by moving to pull Kimmel off the air.

Without missing a beat, the Department of Justice was on to indicting former FBI director James Comey again this week too, in a case that will be thrown out by a jury, if it gets that far. Even Fox’s own partisan legal analyst Jonathan Turley called it. “weak.” And this shows Trump and the DOJ are more preoccupied with going after Trump’s perceived enemies than keeping attention on the shooting.

America has moved on from yet another assassination attempt against a despised president. It’s not, however, because people support political violence. Far from it, it’s because we take political violence seriously and not as an opportunity to gaslight the public, attempt to strip free speech rights, and squander the American people’s money. Trump has only himself to blame for the collective ambivalence.

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