What did Donald Trump do today?

He said American citizens were practice for the American military.

Trump addressed a gathering of virtually all of the nation's senior military leadership today. More than 400 generals and admirals, plus their senior enlisted aides, were summoned from commands all over the world at the behest of Trump's Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth. News of the meeting was leaked last week, and Trump had clearly heard about it at the same time as the rest of the world—or had been told and then forgot—because he initially thought Hegseth was meeting with foreign generals rather than demanding the entire military leadership of this country attend him. 

Trump was a late add to the program, which was originally supposed to be about ex-National Guardsman Hegseth lecturing career military officers on the "warrior ethos." (Hegseth's own aides, speaking on background, told reporters yesterday that they believe he is in the middle of a mental health crisis.)

Hegseth, whose own mother joined in accusations that he had abused women, used the speech as an occasion to announce that he would expunge disciplinary records of such "earnest mistakes" committed by servicemembers. He accused "females" of weakening combat units with their presence, and called the idea that the military should reflect the actual American public an "insane fallacy." Hegseth, who was fired from two consecutive jobs with veterans' charities for losing control during alcoholic binges, also complained at length about "beardos"—servicemembers with medical authorizations to wear neatly trimmed beards because of folliculitis, mostly African-Americans. 

Trump then replaced Hegseth on the stage, received in silence that clearly unsettled him. He made a "joke" about firing anyone who didn't agree with him, and then gave what amounted to a campaign speech. As has been especially common during his second term, Trump was meandering and unfocused and occasionally struggled to speak above a mumble. 

One thing he said clearly, though, was that Americans living in cities who oppose his policies would be "training grounds" for American military forces. Trump called Americans who oppose him "the enemy from within" and a "horrible plague" and said that fighting them is "gonna be a big thing" for the troops commanded by the flag officers in the room. 

Trump, like Hegseth, left the stage to no applause (which is military protocol) but immediately, dozens of officials began speaking to reporters about the event, calling it "embarrassing" and "garbage" and "deeply troubling." Some outright questioned Trump's fitness for office—an astonishing breach of the usual deference the professional American military shows to civilian command. 

Why does this matter?

• Americans are not the enemy the American military fights. 

• Americans are not the enemy the American military fights. 

• Americans are not the enemy the American military fights.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He forgot about a fake tariff he'd already "announced," and announced it again.

This morning, Trump blogged that he would be "imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States."

How exactly a tariff would be imposed on an abstract intellectual property like a movie is… unclear, to say the least. Putting a tax on American distributors, or a sales tax on ticket prices, would require a new law entirely, one that Trump would have no chance of getting passed. Trump didn't explain, nor did he say what would count as an "American-made" film. That's important, because any given film might have some part of its production outsourced to a foreign company—including routine business services having nothing to do with the movie itself—and those also aren't subject to tariffs. 

Of course, even if these taxes could be imposed, they'd just be passed along to American (and only American) consumers, like all other tariffs Trump has imposed. And in reality, upsetting the balance of the world film industry could only hurt American studios, which are a major exporter of intellectual property through their movies.

But there doesn't seem to be any danger of Trump acting on this tweet-proclamation in any event: he'd already made it once already, back in May, and had apparently forgotten that he'd done so. All the same questions came up then, and the White House simply dropped the matter, leaving Trump to come up with the idea all over again four months later.

Why does this matter?

• Forgetting that you've done (or not done) something, and returning over and over again to the same thoughts, are clear signs of cognitive decline in elderly people.  

• Just because a policy is too stupid or damaging to ever actually be implemented doesn't mean it's great to have a president proposing it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He took down an obvious scam AI post he'd made to his social media account—or, at least, someone did.

Last night, Trump posted this video, in which an obviously AI-manipulated image of him promises to bring "medbed" technology to all American citizens.

Deep in the weirdest parts of online right-wing culture, "medbed" is the term for a science-fiction device that will supposedly cure diseases, leach "toxins" out of the body, and otherwise restore a patient to perfect health better than any human doctor. Sadly, they don't exist—but even more sadly, the belief that they do is very real. The mythology generally involves Trump's fight against a grand, shadowy conspiracy to keep these miracle devices out of reach for everyday Americans. Scammers have capitalized on this, selling desperate patients useless "treatments" in mockups of the beds for tens of thousands of dollars. 

It's not clear where Trump found the video, or whether someone in particular convinced him it was real or a good idea to post it, but it appears to have originated last week on an Instagram account connected to crypto scams. It's not impossible that Trump would have understood that it was fake but decided it was worth throwing some red meat to the cult-like conspiracy theorists who are an important part of his political base of support. 

But within hours, the general consensus was that Trump had just completely and uncritically accepted the video as real, and—as he had already done once that day—"announced" his new "policy" without checking with anybody actually running his government. 

Other scammers were quick to seize on the opportunity Trump created for them. Almost immediately, a website appeared at "medbedcard.com" selling early access to the "terahertz technology" of the fictional medbed for $447.

 

This morning, before Trump began his usual morning posting binge, the video was quietly deleted. The White House has not offered any explanation, but a number of Trump staffers (and the occasional hacker who guesses his passwords) have access to his social media accounts.

In short: the 79-year-old Trump appears to have fallen for an obvious AI scam, based on a QAnon conspiracy theory, featuring fake video that he believed were things he'd actually said. He then posted it to social media as though it were true, and created an opportunity for other scammers to fleece his supporters for hundreds of dollars before someone in his administration was finally able to take it down.

The web address where Trump's original post sat now returns the Orwellian error message "This Truth no longer exists."

 

 

Why does this matter?

• Usually, when someone's 79-year-old grandpa falls for a scam like this, the family takes away his credit cards and starts looking for a memory care unit to place him in.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He forgot to tell the actual authorities about his plans to invade Portland.

Trump set off a firestorm of criticism this morning with yet another post to his private microblogging website promising to invade an American city with U.S. military forces. This time it was the supposedly "war ravaged" Portland, Oregon, with the added explicit threat of the using the "full force" of the military against Americans protesting the ICE facility there.

But as is often the case, Trump doesn't appear to have told anyone else in his own administration his plans before tweeting them out. Pentagon officials were caught completely by surprise, and the Oregon National Guard hadn't heard anything about it, either. Neither had Oregon's governor, Tina Kotek.

As with virtually every city Trump has targeted for a military occupation, crime in Portland is low and dropping, and the supposed "threat"—people protesting an ICE detention facility—is laughable. For example, just today, there were about a dozen protestors standing outside the facility holding signs, including one man in a chicken costume. But there have been violent reactions from federal agents, responding to no greater "threat" than taunting or graffiti with tear gas and rubber bullets.

The "threat" to the ICE detention facility across the street. Photo taken Saturday, Sept. 27.

Trump has been trying to paint all opposition, including legal protest and free assembly, to his administration and policies as the work of a grand "antifa" conspiracy. He's even going so far as to proclaim "antifa" a terrorist organization, though that designation has no real legal meaning. (He appears to have forgotten that he'd already made the same proclamation in 2020, also to no effect.) While it's true that most Americans are indeed anti-fascist, there really is no such thing as "antifa" as an organization. 

It's entirely possible that nothing will come of Trump's social media saber-rattling. He backed down almost immediately from his promise to bring "WAR" to Chicago when it became clear that state and city officials would challenge him legally and politically, and Portland, though much smaller, is likely to react the same way. 

Many Portlanders posted scenes of the city and the few calm protestors and the ICE facility today, some of them juxtaposing normal daily life with audio of Trump describing it as a hellish war zone.
 

Why does this matter?

• A competent president who wasn't just trolling for attention would probably have told someone about an invasion before he tweeted about it.
  
  
• It's not a crime to not like Donald Trump or his policies, no matter how much he wishes it were. 

• Usually presidents are anti-fascist too.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He demanded that someone who'd investigated his crimes be punished, this time in the private sector.

Trump continued his vendetta against anyone who tried to hold him to account for his criminal conduct after leaving office with a threat against Microsoft, demanding that they fire a recently hired executive. Lisa Monaco, Microsoft's newly appointed president of global affairs, is a former U.S. deputy attorney general and had helped investigate Trump's theft of classified documents and his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Trump made the demand at the instigation of Laura Loomer, who tweeted shortly after Trump's post that she was the one who told him to do it. Loomer is a ultra-right-wing conspiracy theorist and podcaster who has a direct line to Trump, to the alarm of many others in his orbit.

In a lengthy rant posted to his private microblogging website, Trump called Monaco a "menace to National Security" and insisted that she be fired. This came on the same day that he gloated over having forced the Justice Department—over the explicit objections of line prosecutors, who saw no credible case—to bring charges against former FBI Director James Comey. (Comey, whose last-minute but fruitless investigation of Hillary Clinton's handling of classified material tipped the 2016 election to Trump, was summarily fired after refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump.)

Microsoft has not responded publicly, but Trump's attempt to jawbone them into firing someone he regards as an enemy is part of a bigger pattern. Trump, who inherited a vast real estate fortune just as New York City property values were skyrocketing, never had much luck in his independent business ventures. Aside from his infamous accomplishment of going bankrupt in the casino business, he lost money—his and other people's—in a variety of ill-fated acquisitions and product launches ranging from airlines to mail-order steaks. 

But forcing private companies to act at his behest gives him a chance to play CEO with a safety net, which may be the appeal. In his second term alone he's extorted the United States' only major manufacturer of computer chips for 10% of its stock, tried to get Coca-Cola to change its recipe, forced US Steel to operate a plant at a loss, prematurely celebrated getting Jimmy Kimmel fired for making fun of Trump's exploitation of a murder for political gain, and—in a move paralleling today's ultimatum to Microsoft—demanded that investment bank Goldman Sachs fire an economist who'd pointed out the basic economic fact that American consumers are the ones who pay for tariffs.

Trump has also systematically fired almost everyone in the public service who investigated or prosecuted cases related to his attempt to lead an insurrection to overturn the 2020 election results. In today's blog post, Trump referred to that insurrection, which was broadcast live as it happened and involved thousands of participants that Trump himself pardoned on returning to office, as the "January 6 hoax."

Why does this matter?

• The government of the United States is supposed to serve the people, not settle Donald Trump's private scores. 

• Businesses should be run by people who are not famously, provably, hilariously bad at running businesses. 

• Trump is not a god and reality does not change itself just because he says something never happened.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He promised to send the price of medicines (and kitchen remodels) through the roof.

Trump made three social media announcements about new tariffs today. The first was a 100% tax on imported medicines—or, in other words, doubling the wholesale cost of everything from cold medicine to chemotherapy. 

The order teased the possibility of some foreign drugs being exempted if the makers built drug-making facilities in the United States. But the vast majority of pharmaceuticals used by Americans are manufactured overseas. That gives foreign drug manufacturers enormous leverage, because they have very little reason not to simply let American consumers suffer the effects of Trump's tax—and no incentive to build factories in the United States they hadn't planned to otherwise.

The tariff will go into effect in five days, the same point at which health insurance premiums are expected to rise sharply as a result of Trump's budget bill canceling tax credits which funded insurance for poor and middle-class Americans. 

Trump also announced that he would be placing a 50% tax on bathroom vanities and kitchen cabinets. He explained that the reason consumers would have to pay extra for imported countertops and upholstered furniture was, and this is a direct quote, "National Security."

Finally, Trump said he would impose a 25% tax on "all 'Heavy (Big) Trucks' made in other parts of the world" in order to protect our "our Great Large Truck Company Manufacturers, such as Peterbilt, Kenworth, Freightliner, Mack Trucks, and others."

Mack is a subsidiary of Volvo, a Swedish company, and Freightliner is owned by Daimler, a British company.

Why does this matter?

• Any policy that makes medicine harder to get or more expensive for Americans is stupid and harmful, full stop. 

• Either Donald Trump is stupid enough to think that an IKEA couch is a threat to national security, or he thinks you're stupid enough to believe him when he says so. 

• Presidents who want to help American companies should Google whether they actually are American companies before slapping taxes on things.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threw a tantrum for the ages over the Great Escalator Conspiracy.

The reality of yesterday's debacle at the United Nations may be setting in for Trump, because today he offered a triple-barrelled excuse in the form of an elaborate conspiracy theory. He posted this to his private microblogging website this afternoon:

A REAL DISGRACE took place at the United Nations yesterday — Not one, not two, but three very sinister events! First, the escalator going up to the Main Speaking Floor came to a screeching halt. It stopped on a dime. It’s amazing that Melania and I didn’t fall forward onto the sharp edges of these steel steps, face first. It was only that we were each holding the handrail tightly or, it would have been a disaster. This was absolutely sabotage, as noted by a day’s earlier “post” in The London Times that said UN workers “joked about turning off an escalator.” The people that did it should be arrested! Then, as I stood before a Television crowd of millions of people all over the World, and important Leaders in the Hall, my teleprompter didn’t work. It was stone cold dark. I immediately thought to myself, “Wow, first the escalator event, and now a bad teleprompter. What kind of a place is this?” I then proceeded to make a Speech without a teleprompter, which kicked in about 15 minutes later. The good news is the Speech has gotten fantastic reviews. Maybe they appreciated the fact that very few people could have done what I did. And third, after making the Speech, I was told that the sound was completely off in the Auditorium where the Speech was made, that World Leaders, unless they used the interpreters’ earpieces, couldn’t hear a thing. The first person I saw at the conclusion of the Speech was Melania, who was sitting right up front. I said, “How did I do?” And she said, “I couldn’t hear a word you said.” This wasn’t a coincidence, this was triple sabotage at the UN. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. I’m sending a copy of this letter to the Secretary General, and I demand an immediate investigation. No wonder the United Nations hasn’t been able to do the job that they were put in existence to do. All security tapes at the escalator should be saved, especially the emergency stop button. The Secret Service is involved. Thank you for your attention to this matter! 

To summarize: Trump is saying that a stopped escalator posed a physical threat to him, and that nefarious forces also conspired to sabotage his prompter and the audio in the UN chamber—and that the Secret Service should get involved and arrest those responsible.

Fortunately for Trump, the culprits have already been found. A Trump administration videographer at the top of the escalator accidentally triggered a safety mechanism, something verified by the escalators internal diagnostics. 

Likewise, the Trump team was operating the teleprompter, or failing to operate it. Presumably he knew this, although staff have hidden things from him before. Trump, who usually rambles off his script anyway, didn't explain why the broken prompter forced him to speak for an hour, rather than the 15 minutes scheduled for him.

Finally, audio in the chamber was working fine, although there was a brief glitch near the end when the Portuguese translation was broadcast on the main audio channel, for about a minute of the hour he spoke. The proof of that is in the reactions from the people who heard it.

Trump was not injured by the escalator not being on, and may even have beaten expectations by being physically able to walk up the single flight without assistance.

Why does this matter?

• Even by Trump standards, this is an astonishingly pouty tantrum. 

• Presidents who cannot stare down a broken escalator without fearing for their lives should probably find a less dangerous line of work. 

• This is what Donald Trump thinks is important right now.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He embarrassed himself and the United States at the United Nations.

Trump was scheduled to address the United Nations General Assembly for 15 minutes this morning. After being briefly flummoxed by a stopped escalator and what he claimed was a broken prompter, Trump launched into an hour-long ramble filled with lies, grievances, and conspiracy theories that had even Republicans calling it "gaslighting" and "beyond embarrassing."

He also tried to sell hats.

The debacle comes almost exactly seven years after a Trump speech was openly laughed at by the audience. An embarrassment at the time, that speech drew favorable comparisons to today's. Others saw parallels with Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's infamous 2009 speech, which also featured an hour-long stream-of-consciousness rant filled with invective at the rest of the world's leaders and the promotion of political merchandise. 

The full transcript of the speech is available here. It includes Trump's claim that the rest of the world is "going to hell," that London is going to impose Islamic law, his complaints that the United Nations didn't hire him to renovate their building, that there is a secret conspiracy to "kill all the cows," that climate change and renewable energy are a hoax, and, of course, that "everyone thinks [Trump] should get the Nobel Peace Prize."

Trump said one other thing of note: that he "was very proud to see this morning, I have the highest poll numbers I've ever had."

In reality, Trump's approval rating has plummeted since he returned to office, and he is underwater on every issue. The only president since approval polls began with the Eisenhower administration with a lower approval rating at this point in his term was Trump himself—and only by 1.3%.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad for the United States when the rest of the world is laughing at the president. 

• Presidents who are popular don't need to tell people they're popular. 

• This is not how a person who is in full control of his mental faculties talks.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He regurgitated a mess of conspiracy theories about vaccines, autism, and Tylenol.

In a rambling press appearance today with Robert Kennedy Jr., Trump made a number of dangerous and medically illiterate claims about vaccines, autism, and the over-the-counter pain medicine Tylenol, based on his "feelings" and—to all appearances—conspiracy theories of the kind that Kennedy believes.

Trump appears to have swallowed the totally unfounded theory that Tylenol use during pregnancy, also known as acetaminophen, is connected to autism. Kennedy, who is more or less open in his embrace of eugenics and seems to regard people on the autism spectrum with a mixture of pity and contempt, has seized on this drug that almost every American has taken at one time as the root cause of the fantastically complex range of behaviors that fall under the autism spectrum. In reality, there is no known cause of autism spectrum disorders, and there is almost certainly no one cause.

Trump, who struggled to pronounce the word "acetaminophen" and seemed to be seeing it for the first time as he read it from a notecard, nevertheless felt confident telling pregnant women that "taking Tylenol is, uh, not good." It's not clear if Trump knows that acetaminophen is the one of the only over-the-counter pain medicine that is approved for use during pregnancy: actual studies have shown that it is much safer for developing fetuses than naproxen sodium (Aleve) and aspirin, which have been linked to lower birth weights (though not to autism). But he did seem to believe that pain is just something that pregnant women should just have to endure: "If you can't tough it out, if you can't do it—that's what you're gonna have to do."

Medical organizations all over the world immediately denounced Trump's statements. 

He also listed his objection to the current vaccine schedule for infants: that "eighty" shots are given at once, or perhaps eighty vaccines in one shot—it wasn't clear. In his own words:

I think it has—I think it's very bad. They're pumping, it looks like they're pumping into a horse. You have a little child, a little fragile child, and you get a, a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess. 80 different blends. And they pump it in. Uh, so ideally, a woman won't take Tylenol, and uh, on the vaccines, it would be good, instead of one visit where they pump the baby, you load it up with stuff, uh, you do it over a period of four times or five times.

Trump seemed mostly to be talking about the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella (although Trump seemed unable to remember what the R stood for). All three can cause death or serious lifelong complications in children. This is what an infant getting vaccinated actually looks like:

There's a particularly strong whiff of hypocrisy for Trump on the issue of what drugs people should be allowed to take at what stage of clinical certainty. He nearly died of COVID-19 in early October 2020. It's very likely that what saved his life was a highly experimental therapy called a monoclonal antibody cocktail—one that had barely begun human trials, and that he was able to receive only because he effectively gave himself special permission: the FDA, which answered to Trump, has to approve each such exception. He also had close personal and financial ties to the CEO of the drug company that made the treatment. 

Monoclonal antibodies have since been shown to be highly effective in treating COVID-19, but the ones Trump received were not available to the public on a temporary, emergency basis until several months later. About 60,000 Americans died of COVID-19 in the intervening period. The therapies that Trump recommended for people who didn't have special access to experimental drugs, at an eerily similar press conference in April 2020, were the antimalaria drug chloroquinine and the injection of household cleaning products.

Why does this matter?

• Past a certain point, it doesn't matter if Trump actually believes Kennedy's anti-scientific conspiracy theories, or just doesn't care if they become policy. 

• An absentee parent with no medical knowledge shouldn't be making national health policy based on what he "feels."   

What did Donald Trump do today?

He gave the Taliban a golden opportunity to score points off him.

Last Thursday, in a characteristically rambling speech during a state visit to the United Kingdom, Trump casually mentioned that he was interested in reacquiring Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. He complained that "we gave it to them for nothing" and stressed that it was important for the United States to "get it back" because it was near to a Chinese nuclear weapons facility.

A few things are worth mentioning for. First, the terms of the American withdrawal were set in 2020 by Trump, who essentially endorsed the Taliban, the notoriously repressive theocratic regime that sheltered Osama bin Laden. 

Second, China has had a nuclear arsenal since 1964, and the United States has bombers that can fly 12,000 miles. In the extremely unlikely event of an American air attack on Chinese nuclear facilities, something that would probably result in a nuclear war regardless, having a runway in Afghanistan would be meaningless.

Trump had apparently bounced the idea off of aides in previous months, but it's not clear that he actually meant to announce it publicly, or if his staff had any idea that he was going to. But with the cat out of the bag either way, the Trump administration rushed to put a proposal to the Taliban. Trump suggested that the Taliban—again, one of the least free nations in the world—could earn American support and money.

Today, the Taliban gave their response, telling Trump to get real—in almost exactly those words.

The United States could, of course, simply re-invade Afghanistan and retake the base, but there are quite a few problems with that. It would all but destroy what's left of American legitimacy in world diplomacy. The cost in both dollars and American lives would be enormous, not least because of Trump's overt betrayal of Afghans who supported the United States in the previous war. 

And, perhaps most importantly to Trump, it would cast doubt on his self-proclaimed role as peacemaker. He's recently been claiming to have ended between six and ten wars since returning to office (this is not even remotely true) and just yesterday announced that he had ended the war between Cambodia and Albania.

 

Cambodia and Albania are approximately 5,300 miles apart and have never fought a war. Of course, it was interpreted as a slip of the tongue, but it's at least the third time in a week that Trump has been unable to remember which wars he'd supposedly ended.
 

Why does this matter?

• It's a problem if the President of the United States can't remember why he wasn't supposed to blurt out plans to make friends with (or maybe invade) the Taliban. 

• Trump might have genuinely warm feelings for the people running Afghanistan, but there's no reason for any other American to.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tweeted out an order to prosecute specific political enemies, whether or not they'd done anything wrong.

In a post to his private microblogging site that may have been intended as a direct message, Trump directly addressed his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, and ordered her to take action to prosecute his political enemies. 

  

This comes the day after Trump forced the resignation of the US Attorney for Eastern Virginia for being unable to come up with a pretext to charge New York Attorney General Letitia James with a crime.

Whether or not Trump intended for this message to be seen, it is an open admission that Trump is trying to use the Department of Justice as a weapon against Americans who oppose him politically. (Trump is correct that he has been impeached twice: once for his attempt to blackmail Ukraine into creating a fake investigation against his political rival Joe Biden, and once for his attempt to incite an insurrection in order to cling to power after he lost the 2020 election. But he was indicted on 86 state and federal charges, not five.) 

Unlike any of the people he named, Trump is a convicted felon. He was found guilty by a New York state jury on 34 state charges related to illegal business practices, though he escaped punishment due to his election. He is still liable for prosecution on the federal charges related to his theft of classified documents, his role in the insurrection trying to overturn the 2020 election, and in Georgia for his attempts to coerce the state government to change election results on his behalf.

In what appears to have been a hastily-arranged press gaggle Saturday night, Trump tried to explain away the post, but ended up just reaffirming its central message—that his political enemies must be put in legal jeopardy, regardless of the facts.

It is unconstitutional and illegal for prosecutors to "act" against anyone if there is no evidence to suggest they have committed a crime. 

Until Trump, it was considered a major breach of ethics for the Justice Department to take any political cues from the White House, or even to have contact with it except on a need-to-know basis. President Nixon was forced to resign in no small part because he violated that basic principle.

Trump did not comment on the news of actual criminal behavior that came out of his administration today—the revelation that Tom Homan, his so-called "border czar," was caught on tape taking cash from undercover FBI agents last year in exchange for promises that he would influence policy if Trump were re-elected. In spite of this smoking-gun evidence of bribery and fraud, Trump's Department of Justice quietly closed the investigation earlier this year.

Why does this matter?

• In terms of the things that define a dictatorship, sending the law against people you know are innocent while protecting the ones you know are guilty is as bad as it gets. 

• Presidents who can't tell the difference between the "post" and "DM" buttons can't be trusted with phones or national security.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He (kind of) fired a US Attorney that he'd appointed himself for not falsely charging a political enemy with a crime.

Letitia James is the Attorney General of the state of New York. Last year, she won a massive civil fraud suit against Trump and his business for, among other things, falsifying mortgage documents. 

That appears to be why Trump has targeted her and at least two other prominent Democrats for mortgage fraud charges. The other two, Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and California Senator Adam Schiff, have produced evidence refuting the charge that they lied on mortgage application documents. James hasn't even been accused, because Trump's handpicked United States Attorney for Eastern Virginia, Erik Siebert, hasn't been able to find any evidence that she broke the law when she bought a house in his jurisdiction.

Today, Trump said he wanted Siebert fired. His administration, which leaked the story last night, is not making any secret of the fact that it is because Siebert failed to find some kind of criminal charge against James, although Trump's "explanation" today for wanting Siebert fired was that two Democrats had supported him to be confirmed. (Trump has never used this excuse with any other nominee who received Democratic support.)

But, as of the close of business Friday, Trump had not actually fired Siebert—only said, indirectly, that he thought Attorney General Pam Bondi ought to do so. For someone whose game show catchphrase was "You're fired," Trump is famously afraid to actually do it, preferring to have junior staff handle it or reassign staff to other roles. In one particularly notable case, he waited until he knew FBI Director James Comey had left the office on a business trip before having a note delivered to his office.

In response to today's events, Siebert resigned. 

This all comes several weeks after another Trump appointee, Ed Martin, performatively stalked James' Brooklyn townhouse in an old-fashioned detective costume, then posted pictures of himself doing it to social media and conservative news sites. Martin heads the ironically named "Weaponization Working Group" within the Department of Justice, which has only ever targeted Trump's political enemies. 

Trump's DOJ has also subpoenaed James over her office's suit against Trump, something it has no legal reason to do, since the fraud Trump was found to have committed was as a private citizen in a state court.

Accusing his perceived enemies of the crimes he's guilty of isn't exactly new territory for Trump. His first impeachment during his first term came because he tried to punish the Ukrainian government for failing to manufacture evidence that he could use against his 2020 election rival, Joe Biden. He's accused his former National Security Advisor John Bolton of mishandling classified information, something he did flagrantly in his post-presidency, stealing dozens of boxes of secret documents and refusing to give them back voluntarily. And Trump, who headed a fraudulent charity and a fake university, has threatened to have the IRS revoke the tax-exempt status of actual non-profit universities like Harvard.

Why does this matter?

• You either have an independent judiciary or you have a dictator's secret police. 

• Trump doesn't need Americans to be able to trust the legal system, but Americans do.  

• Convicted criminals who live in glass White Houses shouldn't throw stones.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he'd use his authority as president to punish anyone who made fun of him.

Trump was asked today on Air Force One about his administration's involvement in ABC suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He responded:

When you have a network and you have evening shows and all they do is hit Trump, that's all they do, if you go back I guess they haven't had a conservative one [sic] in years or something, when you go back and take a look all they do is hit Trump. They're licensed. They're not allowed to do that. They're an arm of the Democrat [sic] party.

In the United States of America, because of the freedom of expression guaranteed by the First Amendment, anyone is "allowed to do that" without fear of being punished by the government.

Comedians are allowed to "hit Trump" with jokes and not face reprisals from the government, and there are no exceptions to that. Broadcast networks are allowed to air comedians who do without jeopardizing their license. 

Of course, just because Trump can't legally seek revenge because someone made fun of him doesn't mean he can't illegally abuse his power to accomplish the same thing. In a nutshell, that's what happened here: Disney (which owns ABC) and two broadcast groups that carry ABC programming were afraid that Trump would simply corruptly use the powers of his office to hurt them, even if it meant breaking or ignoring the law.

It's not clear when or if Kimmel's show will return to the air. 

Trump did other things today too, all of which it is Constitutionally protected to make fun of:

• He couldn't manage to pronounce the word "Azerbaijan," and then forgot which country (Armenia) it was in conflict with, while lying about brokering a peace deal between the two. 

• He lied about not knowing the now-former British Ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, although there is plenty of evidence they know each other quite well. It's a sensitive topic for Trump because Mandelson—like Trump—was fired for writing Jeffrey Epstein an embarrassingly sympathetic letter after Epstein's conviction of sexual crimes against children.   

• He said that the UK would invest $17 trillion in the United States this year. The entire annual GDP of the United Kingdom is $3.6 trillion.

• He announced—apparently without meaning to—a plan to recapture Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, which would either mean re-invading the country or normalizing relations with the Taliban. (Trump is the one who ordered the withdrawal from Afghanistan, including Bagram, in the first place.)

• He went out in public looking like this:

Again, the United States government cannot legally punish anyone, in any way, for making fun of Trump about these things or anything else. It can only do so illegally.

Why does this matter?

• Humor makes dictators look weak and stupid, which is why they always try to shut it down first. 

• Trump may not care about Americans' freedom to criticize their leaders, but Americans do. 

• This is the reaction of a sulking toddler.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He used the power of the state to keep people from laughing at him.

Responding to threats made by Trump's handpicked FCC commissioner, ABC pulled its late-night program Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Trump had been threatening to make this happen since another cancellation of a late-night show that criticized him, CBS's The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. 

 

Brendan Carr promised today to suspend ABC affiliates' broadcast licenses if Kimmel weren't fired, and to fine the network for anything it deemed to be "not in the public interest." This marks something of a change in Carr's stated position on the matter.

 

Trump doesn't really have any legal authority to do any of that, at least as of the last time the Supreme Court addressed the issue. Being able to criticize the government is the core of the First Amendment, whether Trump likes it or not. But he does have the ability to abuse his power to punish or reward companies subject to federal regulation, and that is what happened here: two station groups that carry ABC are seeking to merge, which requires White House approval, and they are the ones who pulled Kimmel's show first.

The official justification from ABC had to do with Kimmel's commentary on the murder of right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk. It's important to point out that Kimmel didn't mock Kirk directly, or the fact of his killing—at all, whatsoever. In fact, his reaction was just the opposite:

 

But Kimmel did point out that Trump himself—who was, contrary to recent claims, not close with Kirk—was visibly bored with the attempts to turn Kirk into a martyr figure. He showed a clip in which Trump, asked to share his feelings about Kirk's death, immediately changed the subject to the ballroom he wants to build on the White House grounds. 

Kimmel also mocked Trump's false claims that politically-motivated violence comes from the left wing. In reality, the overwhelming majority of political killings in the last few decades have been carried out by right-wingers. Earlier this week, the Trump administration pulled down a government study proving exactly that point, although it remains available on mirror sites. Its summary begins:

Militant, nationalistic, white supremacist violent extremism has increased in the United States. In fact, the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism. Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives. A recent threat assessment by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security concluded that domestic violent extremists are an acute threat and highlighted a probability that COVID-19 pandemic-related stressors, long-standing ideological grievances related to immigration, and narratives surrounding electoral fraud will continue to serve as a justification for violent actions.

Earlier this week, Trump—who has been defying a law requiring him to shut down TikTok in the absence of a sale—announced that he had brokered a deal where the Chinese social media app will be sold to a group headed by Trump ally Larry Ellison. 

Why does this matter?

• If you can't criticize the leader of the country without the state taking action against you, you don't live in a democracy.  

• Only dictators try to control the media because only dictators need to. 

• There's nothing more pathetic than someone throwing a tantrum because people laughed at him.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He alternated between suing the media, threatening them with violence, and saying he'd tattle on them.

 

Late last night, Trump filed a defamation and libel suit against the New York Times, the book publisher Penguin Randomhouse, and several individuals for $15 billion over their coverage of him during the 2024 election. In essence, Trump's theory of the case is that by reporting unflattering things about him, the defendants not only negatively impacted his chances in the election, but hurt his personal brand, which he claims is worth $100 billion.

Of course, it is not defamation simply to report things that the subject doesn't like—or to endorse one presidential candidate over another, which is another thing Trump claims was somehow defamatory, in spite of it being standard practice going back at least as far as 1860. Reaction from legal scholars to the filing, which is riddled with legal errors, has not been kind. 

Trump has sued several other media companies since returning to office, with the more or less explicit goal of forcing them to accept a token settlement in exchange for influence over their coverage. ABC and CBS have both accepted such settlements to shield their parent companies from Trump actively working against their interests. But others, like the Wall Street Journal—which is owned by the conservative news tycoon Rupert Murdoch, and who can fight on Trump's turf—have called his bluff.

This morning, Trump continued to be in a combative mood with reporters. He snapped at an Australian journalist and accused him of "hurting Australia" by asking a question about the conflict of interest between his businesses and his presidency, and promised to tell on the reporter to the Prime Minister of Australia.

JOHN LYONS: But is it appropriate, President Trump, that a president in office should be engaged in so much business activity?

TRUMP: Well, I'm really not, my kids are running the business.

LYONS: But you are also—

TRUMP: Where are you from?

LYONS: I'm from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

TRUMP: Oh, all right. You're hurting Australia, right—right. In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now. And they want to get along with me. You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I'm going to tell him about you. You set a very bad tone. Jonathan? [To Lyons] You can set a nicer tone. Quiet!

He then outright threatened ABC reporter Jonathan Karl's job and hinted at the kind of stochastic violence he's threatened against his enemies before.

KARL: What do you make of Pam Bondi saying she's going to go after hate speech? A lot of your allies say hate speech is free speech.

TRUMP: We'll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It's hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart. Maybe they'll come after ABC. Well ABC paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech. Your company paid me $16 million for a form of hate speech, so maybe they'll have to go after you. …You should take your beautiful wife tonight and have dinner. You won't be shot. You won't be accosted. You won't even be looked at incorrectly by anybody.

It is not a crime in either the United States or Australia to ask the president a question about his conflicts of interest—or to look at him "incorrectly."

Why does this matter?

• There's no good reason for a president to be this afraid of a free press. 

• Hinting that something bad will happen to a critic (or his "beautiful wife") is what thugs in bad mob movies do.

• Most children grow out of tattletale stuff by about the third grade. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He realized, too late, how badly he'd screwed things up with South Korea.

On September 4, more than 300 Korean workers employed in setting up a new electric vehicle battery plant in Georgia were arrested and detained by ICE agents. ICE was responding to a tip by a woman trying to get attention for her campaign for Georgia state legislature.

In many respects, this was a routine operation under the Trump system. The people seized appear to have been here on valid short-term work visas, but Trump's immigration quotas mean that ICE is imprisoning legal immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. They were detained without explanation for more than a week in horrific conditions—but again, that is by design under Trump. 

But these workers, who were installing proprietary technology on behalf of a Korean company, are irreplaceable—and the widespread horror in South Korea that greeted the news of how they had been treated is now jeopardizing much more than a single factory and the American jobs that depend on it. That battery plant will now be delayed for months if it is built at all, and Hyundai is now reconsidering its planned $26 billion investment in other American factories. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who had to personally intervene to prevent the workers from being shipped back in handcuffs, has signaled that this incident has jeopardized several hundred billion more dollars in planned investments and lowered the chance of a trade agreement with South Korea.

The detained workers arrived back in Seoul on Saturday, alongside intense media coverage of the racist insults and physically cruel treatment they received at the hands of their American captors. They spoke of having to drink by licking water off the floor, of being kept in dirty urine-soaked cells, and of being taunted by guards with racist gestures and references to "Rocket Man," Trump's former nickname for Kim Jong-un of North Korea. A Korean news article gave this account:

Their waists and hands were tied together, forcing them to bend down and lick water to drink. The unscreened bathrooms contained only a single sheet to cover their lower bodies. Sunlight barely penetrated through a fist-sized hole, and they were only allowed access to the small yard for two hours. Detained by US immigration authorities for eight days, the workers and their families expressed shock, describing human rights violations and absurdities they could not have imagined as ordinary Koreans living in 2025. 

In a measure of how serious the issue has become, even Trump himself seems to have realized the damage he's done. Late last night (Monday morning in Korea), he posted what—for him—is perhaps the closest he has ever come to an apology for anything he's ever done:

 

It was clear from South Korea's response that this approach—combining a hint of regret with a promise to beat Korea at its own game—has failed. The South Korean government announced today that it has begun a human rights inquiry into how its citizens were treated, a level of diplomatic frostiness almost unheard of between the two countries.

This is not the first time that Trump's American-against-the-entire-world strategy has backfired. Canadian consumers are organizing boycotts of American-made goods, especially alcoholic beverages, devastating the industry in the United States. Foreign tourism—normally one of the most profitable sectors in the economy—has fallen off a cliff, not only because travelers worry about being arbitrarily detained, but out of a sense that the United States has become hostile to them. The same is true for higher education, another multi-billion-dollar vector for money coming into the U.S. that is now suddenly drying up.

It's reasonable to believe that Trump didn't intend for these highly skilled, irreplaceable, politically sensitive workers to come to harm. But it's also fair to say at this point that Trump has almost no control over what ICE and CBP do at all. The policy end has been seized by his aide Stephen Miller, and the front-line agents—many of them new and not yet trained—have embraced a culture of lawlessness and impunity. 

That's not just hurting high-tech businesses—it's also crippling farmers, construction, and other domestic American industries that are completely dependent on foreign labor.

Why does this matter?

• If your immigration policies accidentally put hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of jobs at risk for no reason, then your immigration policies are stupid. 

• Alienating our allies makes the United States poorer and weaker. 

• Even if there were no other consequences, subjecting anyone to human rights abuses—never mind guest workers with valid visas—is beneath the dignity of the United States. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried again to fire a Fed governor after his case against her fell apart.

Trump has been adamant since returning to office that the Federal Reserve Bank should drastically cut interest rates, something he would personally profit from to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. To accomplish that, he's threatened the Fed Chair Jay Powell with an "investigation" into cost overruns Trump himself approved. When that didn't work, he declared that he was firing a Biden appointee to the Fed because one of his own political appointees claimed she had lied on a mortgage application.

That appointee, Bill Pulte, has also "found" evidence for the same claim against another of Trump's political enemies, California Sen. Adam Schiff. The "crime" they're accused of is declaring multiple properties as their primary home, which would qualify them for lower rates. But both Schiff and Cook have presented evidence that they did not mislead banks. In Cook's case, the property she supposedly claimed as a second "primary residence" was in fact clearly labeled on mortgage documents as a vacation home. 

Trump had already been told by one court that his firing of Cook was likely unlawful, since presidents can only remove Fed governors for cause, and the mere rumor of a minor offense from before Cook's appointment would not qualify. That court issued a stay preventing Trump's purported firing from taking effect. That was before Cook released evidence that, on its face, conclusively exonerates her.  

But in spite of his case only getting weaker in the meantime, Trump was back in federal court today, with a last-minute appeal asking to have the stay overturned. His argument was, in essence, that "for cause" means whatever he wants it to mean.

The Fed has a tricky task in front of it. The massive consumer taxes Trump has imposed in the form of tariffs are hurting demand, even for domestic goods, which often rely on imported raw materials. The slowdown in growth and anemic jobs market would normally be a signal for the Fed to cut interest rates, though not by anywhere near the massive 3% Trump wants. But Trump's trade war is also sending prices up, exactly as predicted, and lower interest rates would only make that worse.

It's very rare to have both a shrinking economy and rising inflation at the same time: there hasn't been real "stagflation" in the United States since the 1970s. But then it's also very rare for a president to impose a de facto 22.5% sales tax on imported goods. That rate hasn't been seen since the disastrous Smoot-Hawley tariffs during the Great Depression.

 

Incidentally, lying on mortgage applications does happen. Trump himself got caught doing it on a grand scale with the business he inherited, providing one set of numbers for taxation and another for lenders. An example of the kind of small-scale fraud that Trump appointee Bill Pulte accused Cook of would be his own father's apparently illegal declaration of multiple homesteads.

Why does this matter?

• "The law means whatever I say it means" is a dictator's argument. 

• The health of the American economy is VASTLY more important than Donald Trump making money personally. 

• Trump wouldn't be the first corrupt official to bring fake charges against a political opponent, but he might be the first to do it this incompetently.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to give himself an excuse for not punishing the Putin regime for its encroachment over NATO territory.

Where Russia is concerned, most of Trump's second term has been an extension of the first. Trump, who is personally and politically indebted to the Putin regime in ways previously unthinkable for an American president, has occasionally made feints at independence, only to retreat before actually doing anything. 

That pattern repeated itself today. Earlier this week, Russian drones violated the airspace of Poland, a NATO ally—the first time in the 76 years of the alliance's existence that a hostile nation has done so. Trump waited 14 hours before responding, and then only in the form of a social media post—and not even with a threat of consequences, but a question: "What's with Russia violating Poland's airspace with drones?"

Almost immediately afterwards, Trump walked back even that mildly critical tweet, saying without any evidence that Russia's incursion (which shut down all Polish air traffic for most of a day) "could have been a mistake." (It was not.)

But even then, Trump administration officials were willing to rattle the saber a little with talk of increasing sanctions against Russian officials, which hurt the financial bottom line of the oligarchs that Putin has doled out control of state industries to. This is something that Trump has also occasionally hinted at, though never acted on.

Today, though, Trump slammed the door on even that possibility. He claimed that he wanted to punish the Putin regime, but for some unstated reason could only do so if all NATO members agreed to stop buying all Russian oil immediately. This is all but impossible for two reasons. First, it would hurt European allies more than it would hurt Russia, particularly going into the winter. And second, at least two NATO countries, Hungary and Turkey, are themselves run by autocrats who have used Trump to strengthen their own grip on power, and are effectively neutral where the Putin regime is concerned.

In other words, Trump is using the fact that 31 other allied countries won't instantaneously agree to do something against their own interests to escape having to do something—stand up to Vladimir Putin—that he is famously unwilling or unable to do in any event.

Trump, who has spent essentially all of his second term on the opposite side of a major war from his own government and public, once again today blamed Ukraine and the United States for somehow causing Russia's unprovoked surprise attack in 2022 that set off the current conflict.

Why does this matter?

• Past a certain point, it doesn't matter if a president's refusal to act in defense of the United States is because he's corrupt, scared, or just impotent.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made yet another threat to send National Guard troops to police American citizens.

Since being, in effect, run out of Chicago by furious local opposition, Trump has been casting about for another city to deploy military forces to. Ostensibly to "fight crime," the National Guard and regular military personnel that Trump has already put in American streets have ended up doing nothing of the sort—nor can they, legally. But they have angered Americans across the political spectrum who have a problem with a President of the United States treating Americans as enemies to be subdued by a show of force.

This morning, on a Fox News appearance, Trump said he had picked Memphis as his latest target. The city of 633,000 fits the profile of the other cities Trump has deployed military forces against, or threatened to: it has a crime rate that has dropped considerably in the past year, it has a white minority population, and its mayor is a Democrat and Black. Trump claimed that Memphis's mayor was "happy" about the occupation, but that was a lie. In reality, Paul Young said, "I did not ask for the National Guard and I don’t think it’s the way to drive down crime." 

Unlike in Washington, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Chicago, however, the governor of Tennessee is a Republican. Gov. Bill Lee has not offered any explanation as to why, if he thought Memphis needed a military occupation, he didn't order the Tennessee National Guard in himself. But the reason is obvious: he is doing Trump a political favor by "asking" for Trump's "help." This is something that the Democratic governors of Los Angeles and Chicago adamantly refused to do, reaping political gains in the process for standing up to Trump and, in the case of Chicago, leaving Trump essentially begging Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to beg him for "help." 

According to Politico, Trump settled on Memphis after being told a "sir story" by Jim Vena, the CEO of Union Pacific, who was lobbying for Trump's approval of a pending merger. In Trump's version, Vena told him, "Sir, ... when I walk one block to my hotel, they won’t allow me to do it, they put me in an armored vehicle with bullet-proof glass to take me one block."

Asked for confirmation of what would be a pretty ridiculous policy if it were true—the parts of Memphis where a CEO and FedEx board member stay are about as dangerous as the tourist fish restaurant around the corner from the White House—Union Pacific issued a vague statement that avoided directly calling Trump a liar by saying that Vena had discussed the safety of their "employees and customers' cargo."
 

Why does this matter?

• Presidents who have support for their policies don't need to lie about having support for their policies.
   
• Trump's need to look tough doesn't justify putting military boots on the ground of American cities. 

• Americans are not the enemy that America's military is meant to fight.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to make political hay out of a murder.

At a press availability today, Trump insisted that the murder of conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk was the work of "radical left lunatics" and hinted at a shadowy network of organizations linked to it that he promised to unearth and "beat the hell out of." 

Kirk was shot yesterday while appearing at Utah Valley University in Provo. Undeniably influential, Kirk was indeed unpopular with centrist and left-of-center Americans who were aware of him. Kirk's stated beliefs included the following:

• 10-year-old rape victims should be forced to bear children under all circumstances. 

• Doctors who care for transgender people should be put on trial like Nazi war criminals were.  

• Successful Black women like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson or Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, among others, "stole a white person's slot" and "don't have the brain processing power to be taken seriously." 

• "America was at its peak" when the foreign-born population was at its lowest. (That was in the early 1970s, but Kirk appeared to mean the mid-1920s.) 

• The racist and Islamophobic "great replacement theory" is true.  

• Retirement—at any age—was against the Bible.   

• President Biden should be "given the death penalty for his [unspecified] crimes against America"

• "Prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people" and that it's "happening more and more."  

• The government should create a volunteer "citizen force" to protect "white demographics"

• The Civil Rights Movement—all of it—was a "mistake" 

• 45% of American voters are "maggots, vermin and swine" (referring to registered Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents)

• Islam, as a religion, is a threat to the United States and "not compatible with civilization."  

• Getting vaccinated is an attack on the freedom of others.

• Blacks—as a race—are "in decline" since the end of the Jim Crow era of state-sanctioned segregation.

• The United States can and should mandate (his) specific religious beliefs. 

• Black people were presumptively unqualified for jobs like airline pilot. 

• Some number of gun deaths were an acceptable trade-off for the Second Amendment.

Many of those are versions of ideas that Trump has embraced, too. But Kirk was also the subject of furious attacks from the extreme right wing. Laura Loomer, a professional competitor of Kirk's who has a great deal of influence over Trump, just last week accused Kirk of being a "charlatan" who "stabs Trump in the back." Kirk had also weathered years of attacks from another white nationalist podcaster, Nick Fuentes, who encouraged his listeners to harass Kirk for not being anti-immigrant enough. 

Kirk was on the outs with the Trump White House at the time of his death, in part because he had joined the conservative mini-revolt over Trump's ongoing cover-up of the Epstein investigation results. 

Of course, Trump doesn't know anything about the ideology (if any) of the shooter yet, because that person—about whom virtually nothing is known other than that he appears to be a relatively young, light-skinned man—has yet to be found. The early response from the FBI, now led by Trump's flatly unqualified political loyalists Kash Patel and Dan Bongino, is not encouraging: the agency arrested and then released not one but two mistakenly identified suspects, and then delayed making public announcements including updated photos of the shooter until Patel and Bongino could be present in Utah for the cameras.

Trump himself fomented a mob attack on a session of Congress in a desperate attempt to hold on to power in 2021, and then rewarded the people involved with pardons and cash settlements. He also said on the campaign trail in 2016 that Hillary Clinton should be assassinated if she won the election, routinely encouraged supporters to beat up protestors at his rallies, and tried to cozy up to white nationalist gangs as a last-ditch ploy in the 2020 election.

Why does this matter?

• Jumping in front of a funeral procession for attention is pretty bad even for Trump. 

• "Waving the bloody shirt" works better if the person doing it knew or cared about the victim before they died.