What did Donald Trump do today?

He lied about crime in general and in Minneapolis specifically.

In an interview with NBC News today, Trump once again claimed that crime rates had dropped because of his deployment of military and paramilitary forces into American cities, including in Minneapolis. 

In reality, Minneapolis's rates of violent crime haven't changed much at all since Trump began his orchestrated ICE/CBP terror campaign against the city, except that federal agents are responsible for two-thirds of the homicides it's seen so far in 2026.

More generally, violent crime has been steadily dropping for decades. The causes of and solutions to those crimes are local, and who is president on any given day doesn't usually have much to do with how likely someone is to commit a murder or an armed robbery. 

 

That doesn't mean federal policies have no effect, though. When people have better access to mental health care, domestic violence interventions, criminal rehabilitation, general health care, child care, after-school programs, food assistance, community-based policing, job training, drug rehabilitation, suicide prevention programs, and lead abatement, it lowers violent crime rates in the long run.

Trump has zeroed out or deeply cut federal spending on all of those things since returning to office. 

Why does this matter?

• Presidents with real accomplishments don't need to lie about them. 

• Anyone who can't see that cutting programs that help Americans will hurt Americans is too dumb to be president.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said a female reporter asking about victims of child sex trafficking should smile more.

Trump had this exchange with CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins today:

COLLINS: A lot of women who were, are survivors of Epstein's are unhappy with those redactions that came out. Some of them, entire witness interviews are totally blacked out. Do you think that they should be more transparent—

TRUMP: Well, they're also unhappy with the thought that they released too much, you know, I heard that, and you tell me something else, well. Uh, I think it's really time for the country to get on to something else. And now that, uh, nothing came out about me other than — it was a conspiracy against me, literally by Epstein, and other people. But I think it's time now for the country to maybe get on to something else. 

Trump is correct about one thing: many of Epstein's surviving victims are furious that their personal information was carelessly—or possibly deliberately—left exposed, even as the names of Epstein's closest associates were blacked out. They also complained about Trump's DOJ publishing unredacted nude images of girls and young women. One survivor called it "weaponized incompetence."

There's no evidence of an anti-Trump conspiracy in the documents that have been released so far, although Trump's name appears thousands of times in the files. For example, one witness submitted a sworn affidavit in a 2016 lawsuit brought by another victim saying that she witnessed Trump sexually abusing girls, and that Trump threatened the plaintiff's life. 

Collins then followed up:

COLLINS: Well what would you say to people who feel like they haven't gotten justice, Mr. President. 

TRUMP: Like healthcare, or something that people care about. Yeah, what did you say? Go ahead.

COLLINS: What would you say to the survivors who feel like they haven't gotten justice?

TRUMP [crosstalk]: CNN. You are so bad, you know, you are the worst reporter. No wonder C — CNN has no ratings because of people like you. You know she's a young woman, I don't think I've ever seen you smile. I've known you for ten years. I don't think I've ever seen a smile on your face. 

COLLINS: Well I'm asking about survivors of Jeffrey Epstein— 

TRUMP: You know why you're not smiling? 'Cause you know you're not telling the truth, and you're, uh, you're a very dishonest organization.

Trump's handlers ended the press availability almost immediately afterwards.

Why does this matter? 

• There's a reason most people don't want to "maybe get on to something else" when the subject is a massive child sex trafficking ring. 

• Kaitlan Collins not smiling enough when discussing the trafficking and rape of children by Trump's close friend is not the problem for anyone but Donald Trump.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he wouldn't completely destroy another physical monument to the Kennedy legacy, for whatever that's worth.

An enormous amount of Trump's time and waning energy during his second term has been spent on the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which isn't even part of the executive branch. He's spent whole days touring it, replaced its board with loyalists, shoehorned himself into an emcee gig for its annual awards ceremony, floated the idea of giving the nation's highest award for artistic achievement to a long-dead baseball player, dictated its programming, sampled custom marble arm-rests for its chairs, used it for a screening of a vanity project for his wife that doubles as a bribe, and slapped his own name up on the sign for it. (The name hasn't actually changed, no matter what he says.)

Predictably, both artists and patrons are having none of it. Last week, composer Philip Glass became the latest artist in a long list to cancel a show, and ticket sales have fallen off a cliff since Trump started trying to make it part of his personal brand. 

In a fairly obvious attempt to stave off further embarrassments like that, Trump abruptly announced over the weekend that the Kennedy Center would be closed for two years for "renovations," something he decided to do without informing anyone who works there. Their surprise at learning about his plans from social media might have come from the fact that the Kennedy Center just finished a $250 million renovation, which now looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the structure that Trump thinks is "broken, tired and dilapidated" and "kind of dangerous."

In describing his plans for it today, Trump promised to rip the structure down to its structural steel, but said that he wouldn't completely demolish the building itself.

Quite possibly he won't. In fact, quite possibly he'll never get around to doing the "renovations" either. But then, that is exactly the same lie that he told about the now-demolished East Wing of the White House. 

Why does this matter?

• Two years of music, dance, art, education, and children's programming is worth a lot more than Donald Trump's ego. 

• Anyone who thinks the Kennedy Center isn't fancy enough is either delusional or just has incredibly bad taste.  

• This is mad-king shit.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he'd never heard of an election he was flogging the day before.

 

Yesterday, in a runoff special election for a deeply Republican state Senate seat in Texas, Democrat Taylor Rehmet won by 14 points, an enormous margin in a race that normally wouldn't even have been competitive. He did this in spite of having been outspent by a massive margin, and the runoff saw Republican voters crossing party lines to support him.

Special elections are not always perfect predictors of how candidates or parties will perform in general elections—although they certainly show which way the wind is blowing,. This one, however, is especially chilling to Congressional Republicans from Texas, who saw their district lines redrawn by the state legislature at Trump's specific command in a desperate attempt to stave off a wave election in the midterms. But gerrymanders can backfire, because they involve making the average seat less dominated by voters of the majority party. Many of the "safe" seats occupied by Texas Republicans have only a 6-8% Republican "lean." This means that if the electorate swings that much, not only will Republicans not gain any House seats, they might lose quite a few. 

Rehmet's district swung 31 points. 

On that subject, Trump had this exchange with a reporter today:

Q: Mr. President, in Texas, a Democrat won a special election in an area that you had won by 17 points. What is your reaction to that?

TRUMP: I don't know, I didn't hear about it. Somebody ran — where?

Q: In Texas, a special election for a legislative seat.

TRUMP: I'm not involved in that, that's a local Texas race. You mean I won by 17 and this person lost?

Q: Yes. 

TRUMP: Things like that happen.

Q: Does it worry you—

TRUMP: Well you don't know whether or not it's transferable. You know, I'm not on the ballot, so you don't know whether or not it's transferable. …No, I don't know a thing about it. I didn't know — I mean I know there's a race going there, and, uh, it's too bad. What can I say? 

In reality, Trump was very well aware of the race—or so he claimed on Friday and Saturday, when he posted about it three times to his private microblogging service.

 

That leaves three possible explanations for the discrepancy:

1. Trump remembered his involvement in the race he'd posted about repeatedly in the previous 48 hours, and was simply lying.
   
   
2. Trump had already forgotten about something he'd done several times in the past two days.
   
   
3. Someone on Trump's staff used Trump's account, and even "signed" it as a genuine post directly from him, and didn't bother to tell him about it. 

Why does this matter?

• It's a problem when "lying, senile, or manipulated?" is a question that comes up so often with the President of the United States.