What did Donald Trump do today?

He was very, very careful about who he threw a tantrum at.

Trump's budget bill, which has already passed the House of Representatives, faces three kinds of opposition. Democrats unanimously oppose it, on the grounds that it trades enormous cuts to virtually all of the public's top funding priorities—including Medicare and Medicaid, funding for scientific and medical research, and K-12 education—in exchange for tax breaks that will overwhelmingly benefit the ultra-wealthy and actually increase the cost of living for the poorest Americans. Many moderate Republicans—particularly those in vulnerable seats, and facing a 2026 election without Trump's name on the ballot—share those concerns.

There is also a contingent of Republican members of Congress who oppose the bill on grounds of fiscal conservativism. Notwithstanding Trump's absurd claims to the contrary, the bill as written would explode the budget deficit, increasing it by $4 trillion and potentially costing the United States its dominant position in the world economy by weakening the dollar and sending interest rates soaring.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is one such deficit hawk. Referencing several other senators who shared his stance, Paul said on social media today that he supported the tax cuts, but not at the cost of trillions of dollars in debt, adding, "We can and must do better."

Trump responded this way on his boutique microblogging site:

Rand Paul has very little understanding of the BBB, especially the tremendous GROWTH that is coming. He loves voting “NO” on everything, he thinks it’s good politics, but it’s not. The BBB is a big WINNER!!!

Rand votes NO on everything, but never has any practical or constructive ideas. His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can’t stand him. This is a BIG GROWTH BILL! 

Another prominent Republican also weighed in today: Trump's chief political patron, Elon Musk:

 

In a separate post, Musk threatened to use his money and influence to fund primary challenges to any Republican who voted for Trump's bill.

Trump, whose extreme sensitivity to perceived insults is almost legendary, did not respond at all to Musk calling his "Big Beautiful Bill" a "disgusting abomination." A White House spokesperson would say only that Trump "already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill."

Musk recently stepped away from a government position as the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency, in which he had a seemingly unlimited portfolio over the executive branch and an almost fawning regard from Trump. 

It seems to have dawned on Trump recently that Musk's use of his delegated authority might not have worked out as well as Musk had led Trump to believe, with year-on-year spending up sharply in spite of Musk's claims to have saved money through indiscriminate firings of federal workers. After months of headlines debunking Musk's lies about money saved, Trump reportedly asked aides recently, "Was it all bullshit?"

As of 11:00 P.M. in Washington, Trump still has not commented.

Why does this matter?

• It's not even clear why Trump, who can't legally be re-elected, is afraid of Musk—but it's very, very bad that he is.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He either forgot or didn't know about about his proposed Iran nuclear deal.

In 2015, the United States and five other countries entered into an agreement with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. It allowed for on-site inspection of Iranian nuclear energy plants and other sites to verify that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program. In exchange, Iran received relief from some of the strong economic sanctions that the United States and others had levied against it. 

The JCPOA allowed for some low-level enrichment of uranium for use as fuel in electricity-producing plants. This was significant, because allowing Iran to operate nuclear reactors for energy actually made it more transparent to inspection. Reports from American monitors confirmed that they had complete access to the Iranian nuclear infrastructure—including careful audits of the nuclear fuel coming and going from the plants— and that the enrichment program had been frozen.

In 2018, Trump pulled the United States out of the agreement, offering no explanation other than that it was a "bad deal"—which is to say, one negotiated by President Obama, whom he loathes. He also reimposed sanctions.

That move left Iran with the ability to begin enriching uranium again at will. Until recently, it was not clear whether it had, but a recent IAEA reports strongly suggests that Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium is approaching what would be necessary to begin assembling nuclear weapons—perhaps in as little as two weeks.

All of this was prologue to two announcements made over the last few days. The first was that on Saturday, Trump's real-estate-lawyer-turned-international-fixer, Steve Witkoff, had made a proposal to the Iranian government for a replacement to the JCPOA. The details suggest that, if anything, Trump's new "deal" would hold Iran to a weaker level of compliance than the JCPOA, and would it allow the enrichment of uranium for fuel.

The second was Trump's claim today that his proposal—contrary to previous reports that the White House didn't contest—would not allow for low-level enrichment of uranium for energy generation. Iran's government had rejected out of hand any proposal without such an allowance, meaning that Trump was essentially declaring the process dead before Iran had even had a chance to consider it—whether or not he knew it.

In other words, this is what appears to have happened: 

• The Trump administration seems to have realized at the last minute that Trump's 2018 destruction of the JCPOA had let Iran come within weeks of becoming a nuclear power. 
  
  
• Trump, or someone acting in his name, proposed to revive the JCPOA, though with concessions to reflect the fact that Iran now has a much stronger hand. 

• Trump's statement's today mean that he either didn't know what he was agreeing to before, or had forgotten it.

This is not the first time in recent weeks Trump has gotten confused about the Iran situation. When he announced his intention to open talks with Iran in April, a reporter asked the obvious question: how would his solution differ from the JCPOA? Trump didn't know what she was referring to, and ducked the question.

Why does this matter?

• Iran getting nuclear weapons is not something a president can afford to be confused about. 

• No matter how good it felt for Trump to undo an Obama administration accomplishment, it's not worth a hostile Middle Eastern dictatorship getting nuclear weapons. 

• This kind of thing is one reason presidents should be able to pay attention to their intelligence briefings even if they're not very entertaining to him.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He was kept out of the loop on a major development in the Russia-Ukraine war.

This morning, Ukraine launched a daring and meticulously-planned drone attack against five Russian military airfields. In a remarkable twist on this new form of aerial warfare, the drones were smuggled into Russia and launched from trucks, apparently without the knowledge of the drivers transporting them. The attack had been planned for over a year and Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is said to have personally overseen it.

Many of the targets were Russia's aging Soviet-era fleet of bombers, which the Putin regime has used to devastating effect against Ukraine. They are also the backbone of the aerial portion of Russia's nuclear triad, meaning that the attack has, at least to some extent, put the Putin regime on a more defensive posture with respect to its nuclear arsenal.

Initial reports assumed that the United States military—and hence Trump—had been informed in advance of the attack, as would normally be done for a major operation like this. However, the Ukrainian military said after the conclusion of the attacks that Trump had not been informed.

Given the substantial geopolitical implications of an attack on Russia's nuclear bomber fleet, the clear implication is that Ukraine did not trust Trump not to warn Putin, with whom he has a much warmer relationship—notwithstanding the fact that the United States is, at least in theory, still supporting Ukraine. 

The Trump administration has a terrible reputation for its ability to keep secrets. During his first term, Trump was captivated by the idea of a joint US-Russia cybersecurity program—or, in other words, giving the United States' main adversary in cyberwarfare a free look at American defenses. He carelessly burned an Israeli confidential source in a conversation with the Russian ambassador, infuriating Israel. Trump took dozens of boxes of highly classified information as souvenirs of his first term and leave them in an unsecured Mar-a-Lago bathroom. And, most recently, his National Security Advisor accidentally added a journalist to a group chat on a compromised commercial platform that was planning a military operation—and that was not the only time something like that happened.

It's not clear when Trump found out about the Ukrainian strike. He was once again completely out of the public eye at his private golf resort today and yesterday. The White House did not offer any comment on it, nor did it respond to requests for an explanation as to why Trump posted a conspiracy theory that former President Joe Biden was killed in 2020 and replaced by a robot (that then beat Trump in an election).

Why does this matter?

• It hurts American national security if the rest of the world thinks the President of the United States is an incompetent clown with his own agenda.