What did Donald Trump do today?

He lied about why he was withdrawing National Guard troops from cities governed by his political opponents.

Today, Trump posted this to his private microblogging platform:

We are removing the National Guard from Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, despite the fact that CRIME has been greatly reduced by having these great Patriots in those cities, and ONLY by that fact. Portland, Los Angeles, and Chicago were GONE if it weren’t for the Federal Government stepping in. We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again - Only a question of time! It is hard to believe that these Democrat Mayors and Governors, all of whom are greatly incompetent, would want us to leave, especially considering the great progress that has been made??? President DJT 

In reality, Trump is withdrawing the National Guard because he has to. Courts ruled that his federalization of the Guard was illegal, and the Supreme Court declined to come to his rescue with an injunction.

Trump has never provided any evidence that the presence of armed military forces in American cities has reduced crime. The deployed forces have not been acting in a real law enforcement capacity, and have occasionally been assigned to things like landscaping chores.

Trump's retreat comes too late for thousands of National Guard members to celebrate the holidays at home. It also comes with a body count: Spc. Sarah Beckstrom of the West Virginia National Guard was shot and killed while deployed to a DC Metro station in November.

Why does this matter?

• The American people are not the enemies the United States military is meant to fight. 

• A president lying about obeying a court order to look tough is pathetic.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He used hungry Minnesota children as an excuse for a racist attack on Somali-Americans.

Trump has made the United States' Somali population a particular target in his second term, calling them "garbage" and launching into nativist, racist rants that wouldn't have been out of place at a Ku Klux Klan or Nazi Party rally. Many Americans of Somali descent live in Minnesota, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, who usually inspires particularly vicious reactions in Trump. 

Today, in response to a supporter's YouTube video that purports (without evidence) to show "fraud" at daycare centers run by Somali immigrants, Trump froze the entire state's federal funding through the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.

In other words, Trump is holding up funding meant to provide food, shelter, care, adoption assistance, child support enforcement, foster care subsidies, and child abuse prevention for all Minnesota children who need it, in order to score a political point against specific Americans he regards as enemies.

This and other government programs have been the target of fraud. Minnesota's state government, led by 2024 Vice-Presidential candidate Gov. Tim Walz, has been cracking down on federal welfare fraud for years, although it's hardly unique to Minnesota. 

As a rule, federal and state governments are easy to defraud in the short term: the trick is getting away with it. Trump knows something about this first-hand: he was caught defrauding New York State to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars in a 2023 civil trial. Other fraudulent Trump enterprises that state governments eventually brought to heel include his scam "Trump University," and the Trump Foundation, his illegally operated "charity."

Trump has pardoned a number of convicted fraudsters during his second term. These include:

• Joseph Schwartz, the CEO of a nursing home chain who defrauded Medicaid and then paid Trump loyalists $960,000 to secure a pardon 

• Ross Ulbricht, a cryptocurrency market drug kingpin who used fraudulent identity documents to maintain his criminal empire, and whose pardon also wiped out a nearly $200 million fine in restitution to the United States 

• Devon Archer, whose $44 million restitution for securities fraud against the Oglala Sioux Nation was wiped out by Trump's pardon 

• Trevor Milton, convicted of securities fraud, pardoned by Trump explicitly because of his political support for Trump, costing $660 million in restitution. 

• at least two dozen others

 

Why does this matter?

• Hungry and homeless children shouldn't be used as political pawns. 

• Presidents who cared about fraud wouldn't commit so much of it or excuse it when it was committed by wealthy donors.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He repeated Russian propaganda and then shrugged when told it was a lie.

Trump told reporters today he was "very angry" about a Ukrainian drone attack on the residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump, who has become increasingly desperate to conclude the war between Russia and Ukraine on terms favorable to his political patron, had this exchange with a reporter today:

Trump on a report that Ukraine tried to strike Putin's residence: "I don't like it. It's not good. I heard about it this morning. You know who told me about it? President Putin told me about it ... I was very angry about it."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) December 29, 2025 at 12:41 PM

Q: Are you worried that the alleged strike on Putin's residence could scuttle the peace—

TRUMP: Yeah, I don't, I don't like it, it's not good, uhh, I heard about it this morning. You know who told me about it? President Putin told me about it Early in the morning, he said he was — attacked. It's no good, it's no good. …You know, it's a delicate period of time. It's not the right time. It's one thing to be offensive, because they [?] were offensive. It's another thing to attack his house. It's not the right time to do any of that — and — can't do it. And I learned about it from Putin today, I was very angry about it.

Notice that Trump says twice that he learned of the attack from Putin, and not from any American military or intelligence source. That is most likely because there was no such attack, and Putin's claim is an apparently successful attempt to bamboozle Trump.

Even Trump loyalists were appalled by Trump's repetition of the Putin line, something that has become a recurring theme where Trump and Putin are concerned.

Notably, the "attack" gives the Putin regime an excuse to yet again pull back from Trump's "negotiations," a pattern that has been repeating all year. Neither Ukraine nor Russia really wants a settlement now. For Ukraine, any deal that Putin would agree to would be tantamount to surrender. Every plan Trump has been willing to support involves Russia taking even more land at the bargaining table than it has been able to win by force. 

And Russia is counting on Trump keeping the United States and Ukraine's European allies out of the fight long enough to finally defeat a much smaller and militarily weaker opponent that has nevertheless kept it at bay for three years. 

Later in the same meeting, a reporter gently asked if there was any actual evidence that the attack had taken place. Trump literally shrugged and said, "You're saying maybe the attack didn't take place? That's possible too," before once again insisting that Putin had told him that it had.

 

Regarding Putin's nonsense that Ukraine attacked his house, a journalist asks "maybe there was no attack?". Trump dismisses it because Putin would never lie. Moron.

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— Jay in Kyiv (@jayinkyiv.bsky.social) December 29, 2025 at 1:00 PM

 

 

It's worth noting that even if Putin's claim of an attack had been true, he is a legitimate military target under the laws of war. Putin himself has repeatedly tried to assassinate Zelenskyy. 

Why does this matter?

• A president who is too dim or senile to understand that a hostile foreign leader may be lying to him is not fit for office. 

• It is a disgrace for the United States to betray an ally like this. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said Russia only wanted to help Ukraine.

Trump has returned to a full-court press to get Ukraine to surrender to the Putin regime on terms dictated by Russia. Today, after a phone call with Vladimir Putin and a meeting with Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump had this exchange with a reporter, in which he claimed that "Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed."

Q: In your conversation with President Putin, did you discuss what responsibility Russia will have for any kind of reconstruction of Ukraine— 

TRUMP: I did. I did. They're going to be helping. Russia's going to be helping. Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed. Once— it sounds— a little strange but I was explaining to the president [Zelenskyy], uh, President Putin was very generous in his feeling toward Ukraine— succeeding. Including, uh, supplying energy, electricity, and other things at very low prices. So, lotta—lotta good things came out of that call today.

The Putin regime does not want to see Ukraine succeed except as a conquered province of Russia.

Russia invaded and annexed Ukraine's Crimean peninsula in 2014, then launched a surprise decapitation attack against the remainder of the country and its government in 2022. Since then, it has killed nearly 100,000 Ukrainians (including more than 10,000 civilians), stolen Ukrainian children from parents in occupied territory, and committed numerous war crimes.

Reaction to Trump's endorsement of the Putin regime's "generous feeling" was sharply negative and bipartisan.

Trump has openly sought and received Putin's help in influencing American elections through disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks, and is personally and financially beholden to him. 

Why does this matter?

• Past a certain point it doesn't matter if the president is being controlled by a hostile foreign power or just behaving exactly as though he were.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He sent his Treasury Secretary out to tell most Americans a lie about their tax returns.

Trump has not taken questions from reporters in weeks, a period of time that coincides with the initial rollout (and subsequent coverups) of Epstein documents. Trump's DOJ is not complying with the law requiring their release, first missing the deadline and then "finding" over a million more documents than it had previously acknowledged. Instead, he's hidden behind social media binges, a "holiday" that is extended even by his standards, and his own staff.

Today, one of those staff members, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, tried to put a happy spin on an economy most Americans are worried sick about by claiming that their tax refunds would be much bigger this year. 

That's true, for two reasons, neither of which are good news.

The first is that when tax rates change, whether up or down, the amount withheld from paychecks is out of sync for a while with the final tax bill. Ideally, a tax refund is zero, meaning that employees kept exactly as much of their income as appropriate. 

In other words, Bessent is asking Americans to feel grateful that they'll be paid back what amounts to an interest-free short-term loan to the federal government.

The second reason is that tax rates changed because of Trump's 2025 budget bill. But they didn't change very much for the vast majority of Americans: only the very wealthiest saw any real drop in their tax bills. And what little benefit there was for low- and middle-income Americans was wiped out by the average increase in prices due to the massive import taxes (also known as tariffs) that Trump imposed on virtually all foreign goods. A conservative estimate of the impact of those taxes amounts to about $1,200 per household. 

That means that, refund or no, the actual amount that more than 60% of Americans are paying under Trump's new tax regime will be going up, not down. And that doesn't take into account the enormous increases in health care costs that tens of millions of Americans will see in the coming year as a result of Trump ending subsidies in the same bill.

Why does this matter? 

• You only tell people to ignore what they're seeing with their own eyes if you're very stupid, or you think they are.

Posting will be brief today due to the necessities of holiday travel. As always, this is one thing Trump did today—not the only thing, nor necessarily the most important or outrageous thing. For example, he also once again attempted to bigfoot Ukraine into essentially surrendering to the Putin regime, tried desperately to shift the blame for his own intimate ties to Epstein onto other people, and gloated over a Christmas attack—that did no actual damage—on a terrorist organization he'd already falsely claimed he'd destroyed.  But today's chosen thing lends itself to brevity. It's enough to say that the President of the United States is devoting any part of what remains of his mental energy and focus to marble armrests at what is still, under the law, called the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He returned to his main personal focus during his second term: interior design. 

Since returning to office, Trump has assumed person control of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He's appointed himself the chairman of its board, fired most of its leadership and replaced them with loyalists, physically installed his own name on its facade (even though it can't actually be renamed without an act of Congress), and gave himself the job of hosting its awards ceremony earlier this month.

As a result, acts are canceling their shows, ticket sales have plummeted, and the awards ceremony got its lowest ratings ever.

Today, he unveiled his plan to turn it all around: marble armrests on the seats.  

Why does this matter?

• Even by Trump's standards, this is out of touch with what matters to Americans or the business of government.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He spent Christmas as only he can, or would.

Trump usually celebrates holidays, including important religious ones like Christmas, by offering sarcastic "greetings" to the Americans he sees as his enemies. This year, he did it twice. The first message, posted at 7:02 p.m. on Christmas Eve, wished a "Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country." The second, at 5:51 p.m. today, offered a "Merry Christmas to all, including the many Sleazebags who loved Jeffrey Epstein"—presumably not meaning to include himself, evidence of their intimate and long-lasting friendship notwithstanding.

In between, he posted more than 100 times to his private microblogging site. The binge of furious conspiracy theories and rants about his enemies took him to well past 1 a.m. this morning. Much of the content had to do with his bizarre fixation on his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. For example, he approvingly reposted a video about the comedian Roseanne Barr's belief that the COVID-19 pandemic had somehow been created by Democrats to force Americans to vote by mail. (No, really.)  

Trump remains cloistered at Mar-a-Lago, as he has for most of the period since the beginning of the Epstein document rollout and associated attempts at a cover-up.
 

Why does this matter?

• This is not how a mentally stable person behaves on any day, much less Christmas. 

• Shouting deranged conspiracy theories from the bully pulpit of the presidency is bad for the country.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He talked to children, which was probably a bad idea under the circumstances.

One of the United States' more unusual holiday traditions is the NORAD Santa Tracker, in which the international defense agency tasked with tracking missiles coming over the polar regions towards North America instead "tracks" Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. The agency has embraced the idea in the name of good publicity, and several presidents before Trump have joined in, talking with children who call into the "hotline."

When Trump did this in 2018, he made headlines for criticizing a 7-year-old boy for still believing in Santa, calling it "marginal" at that age.

Tonight, Trump took six calls, including one from a very young child—probably too young to understand NORAD's actual role in missile tracking—who was apparently asking Trump to explain the concept. 

CHILD: Does Santa have a tracker on him? 

TRUMP: We track Santa all over the world. We want to make sure that Santa is being good. Santa's a very good person. We want to make sure that he's not infiltrated, that we're not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa. So we found out that Santa is good, Santa loves you, Santa loves Oklahoma like I do. You know, Oklahoma was very good to me in the election. So I love Oklahoma. Don't ever leave Oklahoma, okay? 

This wasn't the only call in which Trump made reference to elections the children he was speaking to hadn't been alive for, or the only reference to his standby political gripes. He also used small children's phone calls about Santa to plug his coal-first energy plan and spread a 2020 election conspiracy theory.

Trump once again ducked reporters all day today, as he has done every day since the bungled partial release and cover-up of the Epstein investigative documents began last week. Considering that, rambling about "bad Santas" who are "infiltrating" the country was not even close the most disturbing thing Donald Trump said to a child today.

Trump: I am fine. You sound beautiful and cute. How old are you? Caller: I am eight

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— Acyn (@acyn.bsky.social) December 24, 2025 at 3:55 PM

 

Why does this matter?

• It's not the most important skill a president needs to have, but it's still embarrassing if you can't talk to little kids about Santa without being creepy or going off on a political rant about stolen elections.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He had the Justice Department declare him innocent of anything you might imagine he'd done.

Another tranche of Epstein investigative documents was released today, along with a social media post by the Justice Department preemptively clearing one person of any suspicion based on what they contained: Donald Trump: 

Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false. And if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.  

The DOJ is not supposed to act as the president's personal defense lawyer—although several of its top officials were exactly that in private life. Outside of Trump's terms in office, there has been a strict policy against giving any appearance whatsoever that the Justice Department is acting out of political motivations rather than its mission to defend the integrity of the American judicial system. President Nixon was eventually forced to resign as a direct consequence of the so-called Saturday Night Massacre, in which he fired a succession of attorneys general until he found one who would dismiss the investigation into him. And when former president Bill Clinton had a brief airport meeting with the current attorney general, Loretta Lynch, the mere suggestion that he might be trying to influence an investigation into presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was a major scandal. (Trump himself called it "so horrible.")

By contrast, the current AG, Pam Bondi, took an illegal campaign contribution from Trump's fake charity as Florida's attorney general, then dropped the state from a lawsuit against Trump's scam "university." She later became his personal defense lawyer.

The files released today do contain "sensationalist" claims involving Trump, but also more mundane details of how intimately connected Trump and a great many other wealthy and powerful people were with Epstein. That in and of itself isn't news, as even Trump's own subordinates have started to admit, but there are also documents that underscore how anxious Trump has been to try to rewrite history. One bombshell revelation is that Trump apparently misled his own DOJ during his first term about his Epstein connections, to the point where an assistant US Attorney felt compelled to warn someone in the Trump administration about how much more implicated he was.

Trump once again spent the entire day cloistered away from the public and reporters.

Why does this matter?

• The Department of Justice is supposed to serve the American people, not protect one person from scandal at all costs. 

• Again, Trump could not possibly be behaving more like someone with something terrible to hide than he is right now. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He named a new class of ship after the only person he's ever named anything after.

Trump announced today that the Navy would purchase a new kind of proposed warship, named to honor Trump himself. He declared it "one hundred times more powerful" than any previous battleship. In reality, it's not a battleship at all, and the initial design has attracted scorn for its lack of power. Reporting from the Wall Street Journal makes clear that Trump's vision for the "Trump-class" ship is driven by what he thinks looks good: a "cool-looking ship" with forward-facing gun turrets, as one expert derisively put it.  

This is the actual concept art released by the White House.

Trump, who dodged the Vietnam draft and neglected to enlist in the Navy when he first became eligible to do so 62 years ago, has all kinds of opinions about Navy ships. For example, he wants to tear out the launch systems on modern aircraft carriers and replace them with 50-year-old models they replaced because he believes magnetic launch systems don't work when wet. He's also been distressed by visible rust on Navy ships, calling them "terrible looking." (Rust is completely inevitable even on very new ships, and not in and of itself a sign of decay or poor maintenance.)

Even if designers ignore Trump's artistic touches in favor of things that would actually make them useful as military vessels, they'd still be a poor match against their most likely combat adversary, China, according to the experts quoted in the WSJ article.

As for why the Navy and defense contractors would build such a tactically useless ship, the likely answer is that they have no intention of doing so—or of keeping the "Trump-class" name in the face of what is sure to be massive opposition inside and outside of the military. But while Trump will have no power to insist on "cool-looking" guns over functional ones when ships are actually built in the coming decade, his support today might help secure the massive amount of funding needed for a new ship class.

It's becoming difficult to keep track of the number of things Trump has tried to slap his name and personal brand on during his second term: a dubious new kind of savings account, a pay-to-skip the line version of a permanent residency card, the Kennedy Center, and—apparently without any sense of irony—both a new warship and the United States Institute for Peace. 

Why does this matter?

• There are lots of words for this kind of behavior—megalomania, narcissism, attention-seeking behavior—and none of them refer to someone with stable mental health.  

• The purpose of the United States Navy isn't to make Donald Trump feel like he's useful or popular.

• It's dangerous and sad when a president can be this easily manipulated.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He appointed an "envoy" to Greenland, which still doesn't want anything to do with him.

With news stories still landing about his DOJ's carefully (and illegally) groomed Epstein document release—and its botched attempt at a coverup of damning materials that got released anyway—Trump once again stayed safely hidden away from the press and the public. His only public "appearance" was a call-in lasting about a minute to a conservative political event.

He did take one official action: he appointed the current governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, to be his "envoy" to Greenland.

Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, and one of Trump's more bizarre fixations. He appears to believe that making it a territory of the United States—and not of a different NATO ally—is somehow essential for American national security. (The United States already operates a military base in Greenland.) In a few manic appearances early in his second term he went so far as to threaten to invade it and take it by force, before apparently mostly forgetting about it.

Then in August, the Trump administration was caught in what appears to have been a clumsy attempt at a covert influence operation, trying to drive a wedge between the tiny Greenlandic population and Denmark. 

It's not clear why Trump appointed Landry, the governor of a place about as unlike Greenland as it's possible to be. But then it's not clear why Trump needs an "envoy" at all. He sent his son, Donald Trump Jr., for a brief tourist appearance earlier this year, and Vice-President JD Vance visited the US military base. But those visits were poorly received: a planned meet-and-greet between locals and second lady Usha Vance had to be scrapped when literally nobody could be found who wanted to meet with her.

Why does this matter?

• This is placating the mad king's nonsense from top to bottom.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He learned the hard way about the Streisand effect.

Yesterday, Fox News reported that the Trump administration was redacting information about "politically exposed individuals" from its partial release of documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Trump, whose deep and intimate friendship with Epstein over the course of decades is already public knowledge, appeared only a handful of times in thousands of documents posted online yesterday.

But Trump appeared in one photograph where he might have been missed at first glance by the DOJ employees tasked with reviewing them: an image of a desk or dresser, with its drawers open. In the central drawer there is a photograph of Trump posing with, among other people, Epstein's main co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. In front of it is another picture, also identifiably of Trump, posed with four scantily clad young women.

 

The image, which was labeled EFTA00000468 in the DOJ's catalog of the images, doesn't directly implicate Trump in Epstein's trafficking ring any more deeply than he already has been, but the optics of a picture of Trump surrounded by young, sexualized women and Epstein's partner in crime being kept in Epstein's desk aren't good.

Today, image EFTA00000468 was removed without explanation from the DOJ's archive.

The law requiring the Epstein files to be published specifically forbids withholding release on the basis of "embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity… to any government official, public figure, or foreign dignitary." 

It's not clear what Trump hopes to gain by removing the image from the DOJ archive, since doing so only draws further attention to it. And while the sight of Trump with his arm around young women or girls in skimpy bikinis is damning, it's not worse than what is already out there, like the doodle of a small-breasted female figure Trump drew for Epstein for his 50th "birthday book," or the reports of a deluxe "party" full of young women in the modeling industry where Trump and Epstein were the only male guests.

Trump did not appear in public or in front of reporters today.

Why does this matter?

• Concealing evidence doesn't mean it never existed. 

• An innocent person with an innocent explanation would just say what it was. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He announced he wouldn't be complying with the Epstein document release law he signed a month ago.

Today is the deadline for the Trump administration to release materials the DOJ gathered during its  investigation of Trump's longtime friend Jeffrey Epstein. After fighting tooth and nail against its near-unanimous passage in Congress, Trump signed a bill into law last month that set this deadline, with a 30-day window in which to redact certain details like the identities of Epstein's victims. The law also requires that the DOJ provide a specific and explicit justification for any materials withheld from public view, in order to prevent it from simply refusing to release materials that might be embarrassing or incriminating for Trump or his political allies. 

This morning, the Trump administration announced it was not complying with the law, and issued a vague timeline for when it would supposedly produce the documents. It did release some documents, including a vast number of documents that had been entirely blacked out.

But as the normally Trump-friendly Fox News reported today, Trump's DOJ is explicitly redacting the identities of "politically exposed individuals," even though the text of the law expressly forbids that. 

Trump, who knew and was befriended by and partied with Epstein for decades, and who is mentioned thousands of times in files released by Congress from the Epstein estate, is mentioned only twice in today's document release—all but guaranteeing that he was either deliberately kept out of today's file release, or illegally redacted.

Even the law's authors admit that it's ultimately powerless to force Trump to release anything that is actually damning to him: as today's announcement demonstrates, simply breaking the law is always an option for Trump. Given the horrendous implications of some of the material regarding Trump's ties to Epstein that have already come out from other sources, that might be the correct tactical choice anyway.  

There's no smoking gun that Trump was ensnared in Epstein's blackmail web or had sex with the children that Epstein trafficked—yet. But it's almost impossible to escape the conclusion that Trump knew what Epstein was doing and kept quiet about it, at least until their friendship began to deteriorate over business conflicts. As e-mails that his estate released make clear, Epstein himself believed in 2011 that Trump had been an informant for the Palm Beach police, something he was in a position to do because he'd spent "hours" alone with one of Epstein's victims. (That person, Virginia Giuffre, had previously been employed by Trump as a Mar-a-Lago "massage therapist" despite being underage.) And in 2019, shortly before he apparently committed suicide while awaiting trial, he told a reporter that "Trump knew about the girls."

Why does this matter?

• The American people are allowed to read something into the fact that Donald Trump could not possibly be acting any guiltier than he is.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He preened over renaming a building for himself.

Trump has been absent from most of the core duties of the presidency during his second term, even more so than in his first, but his interest in certain pet projects like redecorating (or destroying parts of) the White House remains strong. One of them is the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He fired most of its board of directors immediately on returning to office, replaced them with loyalists, and declared himself the chair. 

He's returned to the venue several times since. On a visit in August, he "joked" about renaming it the Trump-Kennedy Center. He "accidentally" referred to it the same way last week when he hosted its annual awards ceremony, another job he appointed himself to. 

Today, Trump's handpicked board members voted to rename it… the Trump-Kennedy Center. The White House immediately publicized the vote, claiming that Trump had "saved" the building from collapse. This appears to mean that Trump didn't specifically choose to fight against funding that the Center had requested for renovations and improvements to its facilities.

Bizarrely, the statement by Trump spokeswoman Karolina Leavitt also congratulated the late President Kennedy, suggesting that he would make a good "team" with Trump.

Leavitt's statement also claimed that the vote was unanimous, which was a lie. Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), a board member who was on the conference call when the vote was taken, was muted by the person controlling the call and her vote against it was not recorded. She also said that the name change was not on the meeting agenda, in spite of Trump apparently knowing it was coming.

In reality, though, the name hasn't changed at all. It is fixed by the law that established the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and only another law can change it.

Why does this matter?

• Narcissism is a serious psychological issue and it doesn't get better by giving the narcissist what he wants.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

Bribes.

Trump made news on at least three different fronts related to bribery today, both of himself and others.

The first was the announcement that the cost of his pet "ballroom" project, for which he tore down the East Wing of the White House before he had permission to build anything in its place, had gone up yet again. The figure he has been quoting has steadily risen from $200 million to $250 to $300 and, as of today, to $400 million. But the increase in cost is actually a positive for Trump, whose career in the private sector as a "builder" was more of a cautionary tale than a success story. Trump has been hitting up companies and individuals for "donations" with the implicit threat that he will grant or withhold favors based on their contributions. 

 

The second story was the announcement that another billionaire has announced he will be "donating" money to help fund the so-called "Trump accounts" created by this year's budget bill. Legally required to have Trump's name attached to it, the accounts are essentially a watered-down version of the existing 529 Savings Plan, and one that would actually financially hurt many low-income families to use in spite of it coming with "free" money. Several ultra-wealthy firms and individuals have "volunteered" seed money for the project, not just to buy favor with Trump, but to get a piece of the lucrative business of administering the accounts. 

Finally, in a televised address tonight, Trump made a clumsy attempt at a bribe of his own, announcing a $1,776 bonus for active-duty members of the military. The amount, chosen for its symbolic value rather than what members of the military might actually need, is roughly equivalent to an extra week of pay for a staff sergeant in the Army. A bonus check like that would go a small way toward making up for Trump calling for the smallest military pay raise in four years in his most recent budget.

Trump, a Vietnam-era draft dodger, has always been unpopular with servicemembers, who often lean Republican in their voting patterns. The reaction on military subreddits like r/navy, r/veteransbenefits, and r/militaryfinance to the bonus announcement was, to say the least, not kind. Many posters openly doubted that the money would ever come, while others pointed out that an actual raise for the lower ranks would do more good than a purely symbolic number being given to high-ranking officers. Even posters who were glad to be getting the money understood it as a bribe.

And more rank-and-file servicemembers than Trump is probably comfortable with were aware that Trump was lying about tariff revenue paying for it, or even his legal authority to spend money that had been appropriated for other purposes.
 

Why does this matter?

• No matter how routine it becomes, corruption is still corruption. 

• A president who truly valued "warriors" would do much, much more than try to buy their gratitude with a small one-time check.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He basically declared war in a tweet accusing a country in South America of stealing our "land."

In a post to his private microblogging service tonight, Trump claimed he was going to impose a "blockade" on Venezuela with an American "armada" as retaliation for a laundry list of supposed crimes. Most notably, he floated the absurd idea that Venezuela either had taken "land" from the United States, or possibly was intending to in the future.

For the record: Venezuela has not "stolen" any land from the United States. It is its own country on a different continent.

 

Likewise, the oil it exports comes from inside itself. Venezuela nationalized its oil industry in 1976, when the man leading the government Trump is accusing of "taking" oil was 13 years old. By Trump's logic, almost the entire world's supply of oil is "stolen" from the United States. 

Trump's unhinged tweet-declaration aside, it's not clear how much Trump's social media post has anything to do with his actual administration's plans—if any—for Venezuela. Trump personally doesn't seem to have, or want, much control over what his Cabinet does for the most part, and that's especially true on military matters.

What's more, the "blockade" is limited to oil tankers already under international sanction, which operate at constant risk of seizure almost anywhere in the world. American oil companies like Chevron reported that they were still doing business with the state-run Venezuelan company PDVSA tonight. Even so, the oil prices Trump routinely lies about spiked immediately after his post. 

Recent opinion polls show Americans are deeply skeptical of Trump's claims that Venezuela poses any threat, and absolutely opposed to any kind of military conflict with it.

Why does this matter?

• If Trump actually believes any of what he's saying here, he's not cognitively fit to serve as President or order Americans into military conflict. 

• If he doesn't really believe this, and is ginning up a conflict to draw attention away from other problems, it's worse.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He declared fentanyl a "weapon of mass destruction" after pardoning one of its biggest traffickers. 

Today, Trump signed a memo declaring the common post-surgical painkiller fentanyl to be a "weapon of mass destruction." That puts it rhetorically alongside hydrogen bombs, nerve gas, and weaponized anthrax. But the declaration has no real legal meaning: the fentanyl is a legal and commonly used drug when prescribed, and selling or trafficking it without a prescription was already illegal.

Instead, Trump seems to be trying to convince Americans that there is a sinister military plot against the United States being carried out by outside enemies—one that can only be fought by a militaristic response, like unlawful airstrikes against supposed "narcoterrorists" in the Caribbean. Another such strike was carried out today.

It's true that people die from fentanyl overdoses: about 47,000 last year, although the number of deaths per year is dropping sharply. Almost nothing else Trump or his administration has claimed about the drug is true. It is not made in or smuggled from Venezuela, and Trump has not personally saved 258 million Americans from overdosing on it, as his attorney general claimed with a straight face in May.

Instead, fentanyl kills Americans who become addicted to it and accidentally take too much. As with other opioids like heroin, morphine, and oxycodone, it's possible to overcome that addiction with drug rehabilitation programs like the ones Trump has slashed billions of dollars from since returning to office. Of course, nobody wants to be addicted to drugs, but American consumer demand for opioids is what drives smuggling.

That said, there are criminals who traffic in enormous quantities of fentanyl. One of them, Ross Ulbricht, was convicted in 2015 of masterminding a "dark web" marketplace, Silk Road, that became known as "the Amazon of drugs" and helped launch the first wave of imported fentanyl into the United States. Ulbricht took a percentage of each transaction and became fantastically wealthy running a drug empire that rivaled the biggest South American cartels.

Trump commuted Ulbricht's 20-year prison sentence on the second day of his second term.
 

Why does this matter?

• Drug abuse is a serious enough problem that a president should probably at least be pretending to try to solve it.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got very excited about his new top priority, a ceremonial arch.

Last month, shortly after Trump had destroyed the East Wing of the White House, his spokesperson Karolina Leavitt said that building a ballroom on its ruins was Trump's "main priority." The fact that she said this during what became the longest government shutdown in American history, among other more pressing problems, didn't go unnoticed. (Leavitt later insisted she hadn't meant what she said.)

Today, Trump reveled in what may be his new favorite hobby: building a ceremonial arch like Paris's Arc de Triomphe, except—to hear him tell it—bigger and better.  To that end, he said today he'd assigned his top domestic policy advisor the task of building such an arch by the 250th anniversary of independence next year. In fact, Trump said he'd told that advisor, Vince Haley, that it was his top priority: "That's your primary thing."

Building a ceremonial arch is not really "policy." As one columnist put it:

Americans struggling with increased costs due to tariffs imposed by Trump on imported goods – or those whose health insurance premiums are set to double or triple in the coming weeks – might disagree with the president’s claim that the construction of an Arc de Triomphe knockoff should be the main focus of his chief domestic policy adviser. 

There is some historical context Trump doesn't seem to be aware of. The Arc de Triomphe in Paris was commissioned by Napoleon in 1806, when he was already ruling as a dictator and had had about as much success as a military conqueror as he ever would. But his declining military fortunes and decaying empire made it impossible to continue construction, and he was long deposed and dead before it was finally completed in 1836. When it was done, it had none of the memorials to Napoleon's personal glory that he had intended.

Trump, who has also spent a great deal of his second term enthusiastically "redecorating" the surviving parts of the White House with gold-colored appliqués and signs labeling the Oval Office, has been carrying around actual models of his planned arch for months now.

Why does this matter?

• Quite literally nobody other than Donald Trump ever thought this was necessary or a good use of resources.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He actively spread misinformation during an active shooter situation, saying it was over when it wasn't. 

At 4:22 p.m. today, Brown University in Rhode Island issued an emergency alert to its campus community about an active shooter. The alert told people to avoid the area if possible, shelter in place if already there, and to be prepared to fight for their lives.

At least two people are believed dead, with others injured. 

Within the hour, media reports began to circulate that a suspect was in custody. These reports were false, and Brown's police force sent a second alert at 5:11 urging people to continue to shelter in place.

Further shooting was reported just a few minutes later.

At 5:44, Trump declared that "the suspect was in custody," based on a "briefing" he had received.

At 5:52, Brown University police once again sent out an alert pleading for people in the area to remain in hiding, and that the situation had NOT been resolved.

At 6:03, Trump went on social media again, blaming the Brown police for "reversing" their previous statement, while leaving his earlier false post up. 

 

There is no evidence that Trump was basing his posts on anything other than social media rumor. At no point did Brown University lift its shelter-in-place order, nor did Brown's police force tell anyone that a suspect was in custody or that it was safe to come out of shelter.

 

The campus remains locked down as of 6:27 p.m. on Saturday evening.

UPDATE: The shelter-in-place order ended at 5:42 a.m. on Sunday morning, twelve hours after Trump first broadcast the false statement that the shooter had already been caught. 

Why does this matter?

• Jumping in front of a spotlight and spouting misinformation during an active shooter situation is about as stupid a thing as a president could do under the circumstances.   

• The people in danger from an armed attacker were more important than Donald Trump's need for attention. 

• It's not the Brown Police Department's fault that Trump fucked this up.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said massive increases in health insurance costs weren't "so bad" and lashed out at a reporter for asking about them.

This week, acting on orders from Trump, the Republican-controlled Senate killed the last chance it had to restore the subsidies that fund the Affordable Care Act. Trump was asked about it today.

REPORTER: At the end of this year, those extended Obamacare subsidies expire. What's your message to those 24 million Americans who will see their premiums go up? 

TRUMP: Don't make it sound so bad because, you know, obviously you're, uh, a sycophant for Democrats, you're obviously a, a provider of bad news for Republicans.

The bad news for Republicans and everyone else is that tens of millions of Americans will, in fact, see skyrocketing insurance premiums in the coming year because of Trump's refusal to fund health care. 

In fact, the bad news got worse this week, as the Senate now seems unlikely to pass a related series of tax credits that had reduced costs for enrollees. That means that the average cost of health insurance will, on average, more than double for those tens of millions of Americans. 

In a particularly cruel twist to voters who may have believed Trump's pledge to bring down costs, the worst increases are likely to hit providers in rural areas, which tend to vote Republican. In other words, Trump's attack on the ACA will be hitting his own voting base the hardest.

Trump is the heir to a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars and has never relied on insurance of any kind even before his health became the taxpayers' burden: people with that much wealth usually just pay for everything out of pocket. That may explain why he seems confused about the basic concept of insurance in the first place, and why he thinks giving Americans a small amount of cash and leaving them to "negotiate" individually with providers and insurance companies would suffice. 

Or, as one pundit put it: "80 years as a human and 10 years in politics and he has no idea how health insurance works."

Why does this matter?

• Reporters asking questions about bad things isn't what caused the bad things to happen. 

• 24 million Americans seeing their health insurance costs double "sounds so bad" because it is so bad.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He pretended he hadn't tried very hard (and failed) to get Indiana Republicans to pass an unpopular redistricting plan.

Trump is fighting a losing and increasingly desperate battle to have Republicans keep control of the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterms. His main, or perhaps only strategy, has been to demand that Republican-controlled states redraw their Congressional maps in such a way as to make it mathematically difficult, if not impossible, for Democrats to win seats. 

But partisan gerrymanders are generally seen as unfair and undemocratic, and are extremely unpopular with voters—even Republican voters. As one Republican state legislator in Indiana put it, "My opposition to mid-cycle gerrymandering is not in contrast to my conservative principles, my opposition is driven by them. As long as I have breath, I will use my voice to resist a federal government that attempts to bully, direct, and control this state or any state. Giving the federal government more power is not conservative."

That is most likely why Trump's demand that Indiana redraw its lines to give Republicans a 9-0 majority in their Congressional delegation was roundly rejected by its legislature today. 40 out of the state's 50 Senate seats are held by Republicans, but only 19 voted for Trump's maps.

Asked about it today, Trump insisted that he "wasn't working on it very hard," before identifying a Republican state senator by name who opposed the new maps and essentially casting him out of the party.

In fact, Trump tried very hard to force the issue, even after Hoosier citizens from both parties began swamping legislators with demands to kill the redistricting plan. He sent J.D. Vance to the state twice to lobby for the gerrymander. He posted the names of specific Republicans who opposed the plan, resulting in death threats and swatting attacks against them. He promised to end the political careers of Republicans who voted against it. He even threatened to cut off federal funds for the state, punishing voters in a state he won in 2024 by almost twenty points, if it failed to obey his demands.
 

Why does this matter?

• Presidents who are not dragging their party down with their incredibly poor job approval don't have to try to rig the vote. 

• Trying to make elections meaningless before they even happen is what dictators do. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to brand the basic functions of government with his name and face.

The White House launched an official government website today accepting applications for what Trump is calling the Trump Gold Card. Supposedly, it will allow wealthy foreigners to skip the normal process for obtaining permanent residency and receive it "in record time," in exchange for fees starting at $1 million (plus a $15,000 nonrefundable "processing fee"). 

Additional fees may apply—Trump hasn't said for what—and there's even a more exclusive "platinum" tier costing $5 million but offering special tax breaks, over and above the existing favors that Trump's tax code does for wealthy individuals.

There's a reason that cutting the line like this isn't usually allowed in democracies, and it's not just that most Americans don't really share Trump's belief that wealth is what makes a person good. The official White House line is that people with money are inherently more "productive" and will "create jobs." But in reality, the expensive passes will come at the expense of people who would normally be awarded EB-1 and EB-2 visas, who would normally have to go through a rigorous application process and demonstrate truly exceptional or unique talents.

In other words, Trump is promising to replace the absolute top-tier of the very most talented skill-based visas with a system where any rich person can buy a visa regardless of their personal merit, potential contribution to the American economy, or need. 

In addition to being named after him, the "card" also features Trump's face. The site—again, an actual page operated by the United States Government—showed his face appearing from behind mountain peaks like the rising sun.

 

Bizarrely, it's not even the only government document Trump has unveiled recently with his own face on it. He also put it on the all-access National Parks pass, which federal law requires to be a specific award-winning nature photo. (The picture of Trump's glowering, heavily made-up face was not the winner of the relevant award.)

 

The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental organization, sued the government today to enforce the law and change the pass, calling it Trump's most "crassest, most ego-driven action yet." Presumably, that means that they regarded it as even crasser than Trump's decision to make admission to parks free on his birthday while canceling it for the actual federal holidays Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth.

Why does this matter?

• Money isn't what makes someone good, or a good American. 

• Even by the standards of Trump's usual need for attention, this is pathetic.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He demanded Americans ignore reality and applaud his "A+++++" economy.

In an interview with Politico released today, Trump gave himself a grade of "A plus plus plus plus plus" for his handling of the economy. Confronted with testimony from a supporter of his who complained that "Groceries, utility, insurance, and the basic cost of running small business keep rising faster than wages" and that Trump wasn't doing enough to solve this problem, he responded by once again insisting that "prices are all coming down" and that gasoline prices in particular had hit $1.99/gal in "three states."

In reality, of course, prices are up and rising uncomfortably fast for consumer goods, groceries, energy, and gasoline—which was well above $1.99 in every state at at about $3 nationwide.

The most recent figures on inflation are from September. More current figures are aren't available because Trump shut down the federal agency that tracks them in order to avoid having to sign a health care bill—which itself is causing massive spikes in premiums for Americans who get their insurance through the Affordable Care Act. 

But even without hard data, Americans are generally under no illusions about what they are spending on groceries, rent, heating bills, and other necessities. He has a 36% approval rating on the economy in the gold standard Gallup tracking poll. That may be why he has spent much of his time lately insisting that the very concept of "affordability" is a "con job," although what exactly this means isn't clear.

At a rally in Pennsylvania tonight, Trump also returned to another of his economic themes: that Americans can fight tariff-induced inflation by simply making do with less.

The one thing you need, you need steel. You know, you can give up certain products. Uh, you could give up pencils. Because under the China policy [sic], you know every child can get 37 pencils. They only need 1 or 2, you know. They don't need that many. But, uh, you always need, you always need steel. You don't need 37 dolls for your daughter. 2 or 3 is nice. You don't need 37 dolls. So, uh, we're doing things right. 

Pencils, which cost about fifteen cents each, are one of the few things that a typical American family could afford 37 of.

Of course, not every American family needs to hoard pencils to get by in Trump's economy. By a conservative estimate, Trump's net worth has increased by $3 billion since returning to office. That doesn't include the money that his adult children, who are able to more openly profit from his presidency, have made. Adding that in yields a net worth of more than $10 billion dollars, and even that doesn't include assets designed to be hidden from public scrutiny like cryptocurrencies. 

Why does this matter?

• In a democracy, the public tells politicians how good a job they are doing, not the other way around. 

• You cannot solve a problem you're too afraid to admit exists.

• The American public is not nearly as stupid as Donald Trump seems to think they are.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threw a tantrum because a woman asked him about a promise he'd made five days ago and apparently forgotten.

On December 3, ABC News reporter Selina Wang asked Trump about his plans to release video of the second strike on the defenseless survivors of the Sept. 2 military attack on a boat in the Caribbean.

SELINA WANG, ABC NEWS: Mr. President, you released video of that first boat strike on September 2nd, but not the second video. Will you release video of that strike so that the American people can see for themselves what happened?

TRUMP: I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have we’d certainly release, no problem.

This is significant because the video of the second strike is very likely evidence of a war crime. So far it has only been by selected members of Congress, who have called it "deeply disturbing" among other things.

Today, Trump was asked by another ABC News reporter about his promise to "certainly release" the video to the American public. He became angry, lashed out at her, and tried to pass the buck to his subordinate, Pete Hegseth.

RACHEL SCOTT, ABC NEWS: Mr. President, you said you would have no problem with releasing the full video of that strike on September 2nd off the coast of Venezuela. Secretary Hegseth now says –

TRUMP: I didn’t say that. That’s – you said that, I didn’t say that. This is ABC fake news. 

SCOTT: You said that you would have 'no problem' releasing the full — okay, well, Secretary Hegseth 

TRUMP: Whatever Hegseth wants to do is okay with me.

SCOTT: He now says it's under review. Are you ordering the secretary to release that full video?

TRUMP: Whatever he decides is okay with me.

Trump then repeated his ludicrous claim that his extrajudicial attacks on these alleged drug-smuggling boats saves tens of thousands of American lives. In the space of two sentences, he claimed that number was 25,000 and 45,000. Afterwards, Scott followed up, prompting Trump to get visibly angry:

SCOTT: Are you committed to releasing the full video? 

TRUMP: Didn't I just tell you that?

SCOTT: You said it was up to Secretary Hegseth—

TRUMP: You are the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you — you are an obnoxious — a terrible — actually a terrible reporter. And it's always the same thing with you. I told you. Whatever Pete Hegseth wants to do is OK with me.

Trump's temper has always been an issue, but it is growing harder and harder for him to control during his second term, particularly around female reporters.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents who can't handle "obnoxious" reporters really can't handle the questions they're asking. 

• The rights of the American people to know what their military is being ordered to do are more important than Donald Trump's feelings. 

• Donald Trump, not Pete Hegseth, is President of the United States.