What did Donald Trump do today?

He declared amnesty for millions of undocumented workers, whether or not he knows he did.

Trump has always understood the benefits to American companies of illegally employing undocumented immigrants: he's done it himself many times, including while he was serving as president. 

In some sectors, like the hospitality and leisure industry Trump dabbled in, paying undocumented workers under the table is mostly a cost-cutting measure, and a way of making sure that people who can work legally don't ask for too much—something else Trump has experience with. But in other sectors, like agriculture, undocumented migrant workers are absolutely critical to businesses and the food security of the nation itself.

Today, for reasons that remain unclear, Trump suddenly noticed that, and announced that his program of "mass deportations" would not include undocumented immigrants working in agriculture or hospitality.

REPORTER: First, on immigration. What made you change your mind about targeting, in California, farmers and people in the hotel and leisure business?

TRUMP: Well we're not targeting, in fact, if you look today I put out a statement [blog post] today about farmers, uh, farmers are being hurt badly by — you know they have very good workers, they work for them for twenty years, they — they're not citizens, but they turned out to be, you know, great. And we have to do something about that, we can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have — maybe what they're supposed to have, maybe not. And you know what's going to happen, and what is happening, they get rid of some of the people, cause, you know, you go into a farm, and you look, and — people don't — they've been there for twenty, twenty-five years, and they worked great, and the owner of the farm loves 'em, and everything else, and then — you're supposed to throw them out, and you know what happens? They end up hiring the people, the criminals that have come in, the murderers from prisons and everything else. 

Via @acyn.bsky.social on Twitter - Trump says he's going to make an exception on deporting farm and hotel workers because farmers and hoteliers are mad that great people are being taken away. Watch for the way he dances around so he doesn't have to take any blame for this.

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— Helen Kennedy (@helenkennedy.bsky.social) June 12, 2025 at 12:23 PM

In other words, Trump is admitting that farmers—and anyone who eats food grown on farms—are being "hurt badly by" Trump's own immigration policies, which do in fact dictate that "you're supposed to throw them out." (He also threw in the industry he personally profits from.)

Trump also apparently believes that "murderers from prisons" are seeking out jobs in the hospitality and agriculture sectors and that American employers are, for some reason, preferentially replacing "great people" with those murderers.

For context, ICE was conducting showy televised raids using helicopters against immigrant farm workers in California yesterday. 

Trump promised "an order" this week codifying his statements today. A presidential order allowing undocumented immigrants to stay in the country and work legally is called an "amnesty."

Why does this matter? 

• Lurching from one policy extreme to another is a pretty good sign that a president has no clue as to what he's doing. 

• Admitting that your policy isn't working is less embarrassing than whatever this was. 

• There's no reason to think he'll remember this tomorrow.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He did a lot of tap-dancing around tariffs.

Trump began the day with a post to his boutique microblogging site falsely claiming that a court had ruled in his favor in a case challenging his authority to decree taxes on American consumers on a whim:

A Federal Appeals Court has just ruled that the United States can use TARIFFS to protect itself against other countries. A great and important win for the U.S.

In reality, what happened is that an appeals court left in place a stay of the actual ruling by the Court of International Trade pending an expedited appeal. The original court found that there was no basis in law for Trump to use a power that the Constitution gives to Congress, and that the so-called "emergency" Trump was invoking did not exist.

The extension of the stay will not have much of an effect in practice, because Trump himself rolled back most of his blanket tariffs on goods imported from the rest of the world when markets and consumers rebelled, and other countries mostly refused to negotiate.

Trump also touted a "deal" today with China in which China would "allow" a 55% tax paid by American buyers on its rare earth mineral exports, in exchange for American universities remaining open to Chinese students. No firm details were available, the Chinese government did not confirm it, and the plan was not final or official when Trump announced it. But from Trump's description the "deal" involves American companies paying higher prices for raw materials that they cannot get in sufficient numbers from any country but China.

The number of Chinese students in American universities has been declining in recent years, and as the majority of them are in science and engineering programs that are being decimated by Trump's unilateral cancellation of research contracts, it's not clear how significant Trump "allowing" them to continue enrolling will be in the years to come.

Trump has been desperate for anything that will let him seem like he is making progress on his promise to do "90 deals in 90 days." The only other "deal" is a tentative agreement on certain products with the U.K.—a country the United States already has a trade surplus with—and that "deal" has, for unspecified reasons, not yet gone into effect.

With the self-imposed July 9th deadline for "deals" looming and no real progress in sight, Trump did one other thing today on tariffs: he announced via staff that he was doing such a good job making "deals" that he would likely "pause" the re-imposition of tariffs even longer.
 

Why does this matter?

• Presidents that are getting literally anything done could simply point to the results. 

• American trade policy and economic security is more important than getting fake wins for Donald Trump's ego.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said that the First Amendment doesn't apply on his birthday.

As of Tuesday evening, Trump had deployed about 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines against Americans protesting ICE tactics in Los Angeles. The protests themselves have been small, confined to a small section of downtown Los Angeles. 

Trump himself has appeared very confused about what is actually happening, and not just because he's been spreading lies about the situation on the ground. Two days ago he congratulated the National Guard for quashing the protests before the Guard had actually been deployed. And today he said that he'd spoken with California Governor Gavin Newsom yesterday, which came as a surprise to Newsom.

 

Neither Trump nor his staff have been willing to comment about why he remembered a conversation that never happened about ordering troops into an American city.

There is a larger context that is important here. The general consensus is that Trump (or whoever is using his authority) is trying to provoke a confrontation in order to have an excuse to put military pressure against his political enemies, like Newsom—or simply against Americans who resist him. Trump is already talking about expanding the deployment of troops against citizens in other American cities, in spite of the fact that there is no unrest for the military to suppress.

This Sunday, Trump's birthday, is—not coincidentally—the date he has demanded for a Soviet-style military parade, with tanks and artillery pieces rolling down the streets of the nation's capital. Nationwide protests are planned on that day for cities and towns all across the nation, but by design, not in Washington D.C. As the organizers of the No Kings movement explained:

In Oval Office comments today, Trump ignored the lack of organized protest plans and declared that anyone who did protest his birthday military parade would "be met with very heavy force."

In reality, it is not illegal to demonstrate against the government of the United States, and it is not lawful to use the military or law enforcement to suppress Americans' First Amendment rights.
 

Why does this matter?

• The American people are not the enemy of the American state, no matter how the president feels about them. 

•  Presidents who can't remember the details of sending the military to pick fights with protestors (or who lie about it) aren't fit for office. 

• This is what a "protest" that could have benefited from a National Guard callup looks like:

 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He had some ideas about how to make sure American children were prospering.

Today, Trump did a product rollout for a provision in his budget bill: "Trump accounts" for newborns that would come with $1,000 in seed money invested in a stock market fund. The press release said that it would help teach children the "miracle of compounded growth and set them on a course for prosperity from the very beginning."

As is the case with many provisions in that bill—most notably, the tax rate itself, which will be changed to massively benefit the wealthiest Americans—it won't actually help any family below a certain income. 

Nevertheless, the plan makes for an interesting contrast with Trump's own upbringing. He has claimed—falsely—that his father had given him only a "very small loan" of $1 million, or 1,000 times as much money with which to seek his fortune. In reality, between his actual inheritance and various tax evasion schemes, Trump had been given about $413 million by the time his father died—not counting the value of Fred Trump's real estate business itself, which was a guaranteed income stream for Donald.

Ironically, Trump himself would have benefited from a lesson in the "miracle of compounded growth" in the stock market. Even as the value of the buildings he inherited skyrocketed thanks to the New York real estate boom, his own business ventures repeatedly failed or underperformed, to the point where his own net worth would indisputably be higher if he'd just invested his 413,000 "Trump accounts" worth of inheritance in an S&P index fund and let qualified business experts it.

If the "Trump account" plan sounds similar, it's because it's a watered-down and redundant version of an existing and superior program, the 529 Savings Plan. Those are established by parents to save tax-free for children's future educational needs, and are much more flexible. Even if a child chooses not to use the accumulated funds for education, up to $35,000 can be put in a Roth IRA, which is another kind of tax-free investment account. 529s and Roth IRAs can be used with almost any form of investment (not just a single index fund), and Roth IRAs can be tapped without penalty to pay for expenses many Americans encounter, like buying a first home, tuition, or medical emergencies.

Of course, they would also contain the seed money of $1,000. That is 5.3% the average cost of giving birth in a hospital ($18,835) for a parent whose Medicaid coverage was cut, as the same budget bill calls for. 

41% of Americans rely on Medicaid to pay for the cost of each delivery (not counting prenatal checkups), and about 3.5 million babies are born in the United States each year. If only half of those parents lost their coverage due to Trump's budget bill, then the net cost to parents would be about just over ten billion dollars: 

On the other hand, "Trump accounts," would, as a matter of law, have the name "Trump" in them.

Why does this matter?

• There are ways to build Trump's brand that don't involve taxpayer money. 

• There are many ways to improve the financial prospects of America's children that don't involve worrying about Trump's brand.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He imagined that deploying the National Guard against protestors went very well.

Angelenos have been protesting the aggressive and militarized tactics used by ICE in raids this weekend, and police have responded with force. The LAPD has used tear gas and so-called "less-lethal" munitions gainst protestors and, according to widespread eyewitness reports, innocent bystanders.

The scale of the disturbances are relatively small, but yesterday Trump—or someone acting with his authority—seized on the opportunity to order the California National Guard to be federalized. That led to Trump posting this to his boutique microblogging website at 2:34 A.M. Washington time:

Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles after two days of violence, clashes and unrest. We have an incompetent Governor (Newscum) and Mayor (Bass) who were, as usual (just look at how they handled the fires, and now their VERY SLOW PERMITTING disaster. Federal permitting is complete!), unable to to handle the task. These Radical Left protests, by instigators and often paid troublemakers, will NOT BE TOLERATED. Also, from now on, MASKS WILL NOT BE ALLOWED to be worn at protests. What do these people have to hide, and why??? Again, thank you to the National Guard for a job well done! 

No part of this is really true. In particular, Trump seems to be confusing the protestors for the masked federal agents they were protesting. For the most part, this is about as "violent" as protestors got before tear gas canisters started flying:

 

The are line dancing in the middle of the protest while shouting Fuck ICE

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— Tina-Desiree Berg (@tinadesireeberg.com) June 8, 2025 at 6:26 PM

But as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass pointed out shortly afterward, Trump had the basic fact he was celebrating wrong: the National Guard had not been deployed when he sent that message.

 

In the busy day that has unfolded since, the White House has still not explained what Trump thought was happening or who he was confusing the California National Guard with. 

But Trump has been telegraphing for months that he wants an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act against Americans who oppose him. That would allow him to turn the full force of the United States military—the regular Army, not just the National Guard—against protestors or anyone else he claimed was a threat.

People all over the country, from cities like Los Angeles and Minneapolis to tiny Missouri farm towns, have been reacting with increasing anger and fear to the way that ICE and other federal agencies are conducting themselves in American communities since Trump returned to office. Agents have been seizing small children at schools, arresting people on valid visas when they show up for appointments on their legal path to citizenship, and—in a disturbing number of cases—simply rushing individuals en masse in the street while masked and shoving them into unmarked vans. 

Trump has made immigration a centerpiece of all of his political campaigns, but has never showed much personal interest in actually removing undocumented migrants. The work that they do in the United States is a major cost savings for business owners who break the law to hire them—as Trump himself is well aware as a business owner who repeatedly illegally employed immigrants with no valid work visa.

Instead, the thrust behind the new extremely aggressive and confrontational tactics is Stephen Miller. Miller is the winner, for the moment, in the messy soap-opera battle with Elon Musk to direct the Trump White House's agenda. An extremist even by Trump administration standards on immigration, Miller recently screamed at ICE officials for not meeting the targets he wanted for his mass deportation campaign. 

In spite of, or rather because of, the hyper-aggressive approach ICE is taking under Trump, removals are down sharply from the last year of the Biden administration. Voluntary departures arranged without the involvement of masked police don't make for good TV drama, but are vastly cheaper and more effective.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if a president is looking for any excuse to deploy the military against American citizens.  

• It's worse if nobody really knows if the president is in the loop at all. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He pretended he wasn't personally dictating what the Justice Department did.

Last March, the Trump administration illegally, and by its own admission accidentally, deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran prison camp. When ordered by the Supreme Court to secure Abrego Garcia's release from the notoriously brutal prison, the Trump administration pretended it had no control over what the Salvadoran government did, even though the United States was paying El Salvador to keep Abrego Garcia and hundreds of other deportees there.

On Friday, Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States, on the pretext that he was wanted for crimes committed here. (Abrego Garcia was a legal resident of Maryland prior to his deportation.) Trump did not explain why he was suddenly not helpless to compel El Salvador to return him, and the consensus view is that the administration decided that open defiance of the Supreme Court was not to its immediate advantage. One federal judge was already investigating what—if anything—Trump had been doing to attempt to comply with the Supreme Court's order.

But when asked about it today, Trump insisted he was out of the loop, and that the Justice Department had acted on its own. "This wasn't my decision," Trump told an NBC News reporter. "The Department of Justice decided to do it that way."

Normally, there is a strong firewall between the President and the DOJ, so much so that attorneys general and presidents rarely speak during their term in office. Even mild, accidental breaches of that protocol are treated as significant events under normal circumstances: it was a national scandal when former President Bill Clinton chatted briefly with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch in 2016, and Trump himself seized on it as evidence of a conspiracy against him.

But Trump has overtly weaponized the justice system. The top three officials at the DOJ were his personal lawyers. He's pardoned people who committed serious federal crimes on his behalf, forced investigations into or taken other forms of revenge against more than 100 of his supposed political enemies, and threatened to do worse. No other presidential administration has come anywhere near the lines that Trump openly crosses—not even President Nixon, whose top Justice Department officials resigned rather than appear to act at his behest at the peak of the Watergate scandal.

In fact, Trump threatened Elon Musk with "serious consequences" today if Musk moved against him politically, less than a day after other people in Trump's orbit had called for investigations into Musk's citizenship and the termination of his government contracts. 

There is, bluntly, no chance that these steps were taken except on Trump's direct orders. In other words, the explanation for Trump's sudden lack of involvement is that he wanted to back down from his defiance of the Supreme Court, but couldn't bear to admit that he was submitting to the rule of law.

Why does this matter?

• Obeying a lawful order of the Supreme Court isn't a sign of weakness and it's a problem if the president thinks it is.  

• A president who can't take responsibility for their actions isn't fit for office.

• This is why the executive branch isn't supposed to interfere in prosecutions for political reasons in the first place.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He spent pretty much his whole work day "not thinking" about Elon Musk.

The rift that erupted yesterday between Trump and Elon Musk, his chief political patron, was shocking in its intensity—though, as many people pointed out, also extremely predictable.

Since yesterday, Trump has accused Musk of being a corrupt official who sought to influence policy and legislation for his personal gain, a liar, and an opportunist. He referenced Musk's "CRAZY" behavior several times, talked about how irritating he'd found it to tolerate Musk's presence, and suggested that the man he'd given a ceremonial golden key to last week had serious mental health issues. Trump also said he was considering selling the Tesla he "bought" from Musk in a full-day Tesla commercial hosted at the White House in March, and threatened to cancel the government contracts that fund virtually all of Musk's businesses and are the ultimate source of his wealth. 

Separately, but in concert with Trump's barrage of complaints, his White House team amplified allies who called for the re-starting of investigations into Musk's companies that were underway during the Biden administration, or even stripping him of his citizenship on the grounds that it had been fraudulently obtained.

Musk, for his part, said that Trump was old and unlikely to hold on to power for much longer and took credit for him being elected in the first place. He repeated his critique of Trump's "disgusting abomination" of a budget bill, dared Trump to make good on the threat to cancel his contracts, called Trump a liar, posted video of times Trump had praised him. Musk also threatened to start a political party for "the middle 80%," which was generally interpreted as a threat at Republicans who sided with Trump.

Musk—who used Trump's executive authority like a blank check for the first few months of the term—also implied that he had proof that Trump was implicated in Jeffrey Epstein's child sex trafficking ring. (Trump and Epstein were friends, and long before Epstein's crimes came to light, Trump joked publicly about Epstein's sexual tastes for "younger" women. Trump also accepted flights the private jet that Epstein used to ferry clients to the base of his trafficking operation.) 

In spite of all the drama, Trump insisted this morning in a call with CNN's Dana Bash that he hadn't given it much thought. "I’m not even thinking about Elon. He’s got a problem. The poor guy’s got a problem."

Trump also called up reporters at least three other news networks before noon to talk about how he wasn't thinking about Musk: Jonathan Karl at ABC News, Robert Costa at CBS News, and Bret Baier at Fox News.

"Not even thinking about Elon" took up virtually all of Trump's work day. He appeared for about twenty minutes total at two afternoon events and then was en route to his private golf resort by 3:00 P.M. for his usual long weekend.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad that Trump gave absolutely unchecked executive powers to someone he thinks is a lying, corrupt, mentally unstable person who profits from wasteful government spending. 

• It's bad that Musk propped up a president he thinks is an ungrateful, faltering, incompetent extremist and pedophile who doesn't understand that he's been bought and paid for. 

• It's extremely bad that both of them are making pretty reasonable points. 

• Nobody who is not absolutely obsessed over interpersonal drama calls four different networks in the space of a single morning to talk about it. 

• This is what the President of the United States did with his day.

WTDT is, of course, aware of the ongoing Musk-Trump meltdown. We don't always pick the most salacious or embarrassing or important thing that Trump did in a given day. In today's case, Trump's glib assumption that a German chancellor in 2025 would regard the downfall of the Nazi regime as a bad thing seemed a more authentic example of his unfitness for office than his penchant for middle-school social media drama. We always knew he was happy to spend all day trading insults on Twitter, but showing sympathy over the tragedy of D-Day for the person he assumed was a Nazi sympathizer pushes the envelope even for him.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He basically tried to apologize for D-Day to the visiting German Chancellor.

Trump is not normally one for sympathy or apologies, but in an Oval Office meeting with Friedrich Merz, the new German chancellor, he did his best to be sensitive when the subject of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany came up, saying that D-Day was "not a pleasant day for you? Not a great day!" 

Merz, who was not born until 11 years after Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy, then had to remind Trump that he and the vast majority of Germans do not see the downfall of Hitler's regime as a bad thing.
 

MERZ: Tomorrow is the D Day anniversary, when the Americans ended a war in Europe TRUMP: That was not a pleasant day for you? This is not a great day MERZ: This was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 5, 2025 at 11:15 AM

This past February, Trump, no stranger to foreign election interference, tried to sway Germans to vote for a far-right party that is a little more ambivalent on the question of Naziism, with a little help from his now-estranged patron Elon Musk. Instead, Merz's center-right CDU party defeated the AfD handily by campaigning against Trump—after which Trump tried to take credit for Merz winning.

Why does this matter?

• This is not the first time Trump has shown extraordinary sensitivity to the feelings of Nazis or their admirers. 

• Actually, D-Day was a great day.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He spoke with Vladimir Putin and apparently learned some things that were news to him.

Trump used his private microblogging site today to break the news that he had spoken with Vladimir Putin, and that Putin intended to launch a counterattack after Ukraine's devastating drone strike against the Russian bomber fleet.

Russia and Ukraine have been in conflict since 2014, when the Putin regime invaded the Crimean peninsula, which is part of Ukraine, and in open warfare since Putin launched an attack against the remainder of the country in 2022. Under the circumstances, it is not exactly news that there would be further assaults by Russia.

What is notable, however, is Trump's matter-of-fact recounting of what Putin supposedly told him, and the absence of any indication that Trump tried to dissuade Putin. The United States is currently in a bizarre situation where its allegiances in this conflict are not clear even to itself: Trump's personal loyalties are and always have been with Putin, but the public and both parties in Congress overwhelmingly support Ukraine, to which the United States is still supplying some military aid. As recently as April, Trump was at least willing to use his social media posts to suggest that Russia could de-escalate, as he did in one much-mocked incident containing the memorable plea "Vladimir, STOP!"

Trump also revealed that he "believes" Putin is interested in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. This, too, does not come as news to people other than Trump himself: Russia was one of the partners in the JCPOA that Trump pulled the United States out of during his first term. At essentially no point in history has any nuclear power not been opposed to proliferation to other countries.

Trump's own self-written readout of the call is the only one available to the American public at the moment, but that may change. Trump's personal and political debt to the Putin regime, and the problems that Americans finding out about it has caused him, means he often edits or conceals entirely his calls with Putin. As a result, the Russian state media—which makes no secret of the extent to which it sees Trump as a pawn of Putin—is often the first and most forthcoming with details of their conversations.

Why does this matter?

• At this point, the only reason not to speak of Trump as a de facto Russian agent is that it's too embarrassing to acknowledge it. 

• Presidents who can't remember how hostile nations with nuclear weapons feel about nuclear proliferation aren't mentally fit to serve.
  
  
• The security of the United States and its allies is more important than Donald Trump's personal loyalties. 

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.