What did Donald Trump do today?

He called sailors and their families liars.

The USS Abraham Lincoln is a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier with a crew of over 5,000. It has been stationed near the Persian Gulf for over 240 days now. Under normal conditions, even during active operations, it would make a port call after 30-45 days. But the Navy is stretched thin in the region, in spite of two carrier groups operating there, and Trump has been reluctant to call attention to the operational strains of a war he's been claiming was already won for months.

Because of an Iranian attack early in the war took out the Bahraini base that would normally resupply the Abraham Lincoln, sailors have been coping with rotten food, ruined plumbing, shortages of basic supplies, and communications blackouts. This has led to a drastic morale crisis aboard, with multiple suicide attempts reported. Family members of US servicemembers have become increasingly alarmed at the reports they're able to receive.

Trump was asked about the crisis today, and said this:

Q: The family members of US servicemembers are concerned about the conditions on board the USS Lincoln—

TRUMP: No, they're not.  

Yes, they are. 

Trump, who dodged the Vietnam draft, added that he thought that the unbroken 240-day stretch at sea—the longest on record for a US carrier—was "not nearly long enough."

Why does this matter?

• Nobody who hates servicemembers as much as Donald Trump has openly said he does is fit to command them. 

• Lying about reality doesn't change it. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He gave up listening to people trying to reason with him and ordered the Navy to downgrade its combat effectiveness.

Trump signed an order today requiring the Navy to scrap the modern electromagnetic catapults used on aircraft carrier flight decks and replace them with steam-powered catapults, the 1950s-era technology that preceded them. Returning to "goddamn steam" has been a fixation of his for almost a decade, and he's tried repeatedly without success to convince anyone who actually works in the Navy, or in engineering, to his point of view.

Today's order simply short-circuits the whole process and demands billions of dollars in changes to the next generation of Navy ships. 

Trump's comments about, for example, how he thinks magnets don't work underwater have been played for laughs in the past, but today's order has real consequences. Over and above the cost of redesigns and retrofits, and the years-long absence from the fleet that would require for each ship, the change would instantly reduce combat effectiveness. No matter how devoutly Trump believes otherwise, electric catapults are faster and more powerful, and can launch jets that steam catapults never could. They're also less likely to damage aircraft, require less maintenance, and are available for use instantly, whereas steam catapults require time to come up to operating pressure.

As a practical matter, Trump's order will never be followed—almost certainly, not even in a token fashion. What will likely happen is that the Navy will stall any work related to the affected systems and run out the clock of Trump's term of office. But that is likely to delay the arrival of new carriers altogether and increase the cost even further. Worse, it puts the Navy in the awkward position of having to pay lip service to orders—technically, lawful ones—that it knows will countermanded the moment anyone other than Trump is President.

What makes the situation particularly bizarre is that Trump is not subscribing to a minority viewpoint in naval engineering circles. He is, quite possibly, the only person at any level of government who believes this, and he appears to have come up with the idea all by himself.

China, the major threat to US naval dominance and the only world power building carriers that can compete with American ones, has not decided to downgrade its launch systems.

Why does this matter?

• A sane, cognitively fit commander-in-chief wouldn't ignore an entire service branch telling him he's wrong and doesn't know what he's talking about. 

• If a foreign power degraded American military capabilities this much in a single stroke, it would be the greatest act of sabotage ever.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He once again insisted he had total control over the Strait of Hormuz, which remains totally under Iranian control. 

Most of the last few news cycles have focused on Trump's decision last month to let journalists serve as unwilling decoys for an Iranian assassination threat, while he was whisked away to safety on an airport catering cart. He tried gamely to spin this today, saying that Iran would have been more likely to target the jet he was on, but that makes no sense: he was deliberately trying to trick Iran into thinking he was on the plane he boarded in full public view.

That may be why he tried to change the subject, declaring for the umpteenth time on social media that the United States had "total control" over the Strait of Hormuz. This remains completely, measurably untrue:

 
The effects of that closure continue to mount. The United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which Trump has been using to tamp down oil prices, is almost completely empty. It's fallen to its lowest level since 1983, and much of what little remains can't actually be physically removed from the caverns it's stored in. 

The effects can be seen in gas prices, which are currently at their highest-ever price levels for August. Normally, this is the month when seasonal effects start to lower prices at the pump, but the prices Americans are paying have gone up 10% in the last month and are once again trending towards all-time record highs.

Most of the few vessels that are trying to transit the Strait of Hormuz are obeying Iranian instructions and avoiding the US-approved lane that passes near Oman. Iran has been regularly attacking ships that deviate from its approved path, driving up risk premiums on insurance and making it a money-losing proposition for shippers.

Why does this matter?

• Lying about how strong and in control you are when literally everyone can see that you're not only emphasizes your weakness. 

• No president in history has ever made such an unforced error as blundering away free navigation through the most important waterway in the world.
  
  
  
  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He flirted with declaring an "emergency" over people being able to vote as they always have.

Today, a federal judge expanded her injunction against two executive orders that are part of Trump's attack on voting by mail. Nearly a third of all Americans vote by mail—notably including Trump himself—but he continues to insist without evidence that it's part of a conspiracy to rig elections against him. 

The injunction, which is now nationwide, bars the United States Post Office from complying with Trump's demand that it not deliver ballots in any state that hasn't agreed to purge voters who don't appear on a list curated by the Trump administration. (States keep their own voting rolls. There is no master database of citizens eligible to vote.)

There's growing concern that Trump won't stop with just unlawful orders to disrupt or defeat the 2026 midterm elections, and not only because he's already tried to overturn the will of voters once. He's been spinning conspiracy theories about American elections being "rigged" since before he was first elected, and in his second term he's turned the full mechanism of the federal government towards punishing "enemy" jurisdictions where a majority of Americans didn't vote for him.

In an interview with far-right podcaster Wayne Root today, Trump hinted that he'd be open to conducting the midterm elections under what amounts to martial law. Root suggested (incorrectly) that Trump had the power to declare a state of emergency and force elections to take place under the rules he wants to put in place, which would instantly disenfranchise millions of legally registered voters.

The Constitution explicitly gives states the power to set the rules for elections and conduct them. No emergency declaration could change that, and any attempt to impose Trump's rules by force would result in chaos—which, this cycle, would almost certainly work to his advantage. Trump winked at Root's suggestion, saying that "stranger things have happened."

Why does this matter?

• The only conspiracy to sabotage American elections was the one Donald Trump was indicted and impeached for.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got caught using reporters as human shields.

Last month, Trump suffered a minor embarrassment when he was forced to use the "old" Air Force One on a return trip from Turkey, as opposed to the jet he now usually uses. That jet, of course, was a gift from the government of Qatar, and has generally been understood as a bribe to Trump.

Initially, the explanation for his use of the original jet was that Trump wanted to give American troops stationed at a British airbase a chance to see the new jet. That didn't make much sense, and a more plausible explanation was soon reported out: that in spite of a billion dollars in taxpayer-funded upgrades to the "free" new jet, it still didn't have all the security measures necessary to transport Trump in safety that close to a war zone.

 

Now, reporting from the Washington Post today reveals that Trump wasn't on either jet. Instead, he flew in secret on a third jet, while reporters and other civilians flew on the jet Trump was supposed to be on, without knowing he wasn't on board. The reason for the lie-inside-a-lie is that American security officials had learned of a credible threat by Iran to try to bring down Air Force One and kill Trump.

In other words, Trump sent a jet full of reporters and other civilians into a danger he was unwilling to face himself. (Passengers on the decoy jet were not told about Trump's absence, or the threat that caused him to sneak away incognito.) 

Presidents have traveled in secret before, for security reasons. For example, President Biden traveled unannounced on a secured train when visiting Ukraine in 2023 to avoid presenting a target for Russian attack. When President George W. Bush made a surprise visit to US troops stationed in Iraq in 2003, he left his vacation ranch in secret so as to keep his departure out of public view, and his Air Force One flew without the usual transponder identification. 

But in all such cases, the ruse was revealed as soon as it had accomplished its purpose—and without putting other Americans in harm's way, knowingly or otherwise.

Trump, whose experience staying safe at the expense of others goes back to his days dodging the Vietnam draft, has not commented publicly. But a statement from the White House did not deny any of the reported facts. It said only that "we use every tool at our disposal to address" threats to Trump's life—including, apparently, having civilians unknowingly traveling in a jet that an enemy nation was hoping to target for destruction. 
 

Why does this matter?

• This is pure, shameful cowardice.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He once again forgot that he needs to check with other countries before assuming they'll do what he hopes they'll do.

On July 30, Trump announced that his "Board of Peace" had "reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza." The so-called "Board of Peace" is a non-governmental agency supported by what amount to bribes from a laundry list of totalitarian dictatorships hoping to curry favor with Trump. It is headed by Trump in his capacity as a private citizen, not as President of the United States, and its charter give him permanent and irrevocable control over its membership—and therefore its budget. 

Nevertheless, the 15-point plan it outlined was more or less identical to other peace proposals for the region, and got at least tepid support in the United States and abroad. Unfortunately for Trump's premature celebration, one foreign country has rejected it: Israel. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, like Trump, is vulnerable to prosecution if he loses the protection of his office. He's used the war against Gaza as a political tool, even as his government failed to act on detailed and specific advance knowledge of the October 7th attacks that started the conflict, but is now in danger of being turned out in elections this fall. Netanyahu, whose best chance at staying in power is to revive the apparent threat posed by Hamas in the minds of Israeli voters, said Trump's plan relied on "fictitious" disarmament that would leave Israel vulnerable to further attack.

Trump, who was infuriated by news reports that he'd let Netanyahu goad him into war with Iran, has tried without much success over the years to get the Israeli leader to acknowledge his authority. During the 2025 Iran-Israel conflict, Trump demanded that Israel call off an attack on Iran, then watched impotently as Israeli bombers proceeded to their target anyway, even as he insisted on social media that they were merely delivering a "friendly plane wave." Trump's public demands weren't enough to stop an Israeli attack on Iran in June of this year, either, as he scrambled to get Iran to agree to the now-defunct memorandum of understanding.

Trump, who as usual spent the weekend at one of his luxury golf resorts, has not responded publicly and his staff may not have managed to get him to sit for a brief yet. 

But it wasn't all bad news from Israel on the Middle Eastern diplomatic front today for Trump. He also got bad news from Iran.

Why does this matter?

• A president who can't understand that other countries won't just automatically do what he wants them to is too naïve or stupid to be fit for office. 

• If what happened in Gaza were important to Trump beyond giving him something to tweet about, he probably would have checked with Israel before announcing it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He accidentally told the truth about his attempts at voter suppression.

Trump has been pushing a voter suppression bill for months now known as the SAVE Act. It would instantly disenfranchise tens of millions of legitimate voters, if it were allowed by courts to go into effect—which it almost certainly wouldn't. It would require voters to show not only photo ID like a driver's license, but also "documentary proof of citizenship," which in most cases would mean either a passport or a birth certificate matching their current legal name.

That means that, for example, a married woman who took her husband's name and didn't have a passport would not only have to be able to present her original birth certificate, but also court paperwork for her name change. Many people simply don't have those documents handy, or have lost them over the years, and getting replacements can take months. Anyone in that situation would be unable to vote in the 2026 elections.  

The lengths to which Trump has been flogging this DOA bill have infuriated Senate Republicans, who are now in real danger of losing control of the chamber in spite of a terrible map for Democrats. Today, the Senate adjourned for five weeks, killing any chance of a last-minute vote. (Democrats could block it with a filibuster, but the bill is so toxic at this point that most Congressional Republicans are trying to sweep it under the rug themselves.)

In what was apparently intended to be a comment on this fact, Trump posted an Instagram video featuring an unusual guest on his private microblogging page: former Vice-President Kamala Harris. In the video, Harris accurately laid out the various forms of voter suppression that Trump and his political allies were looking to enact, and said this specifically about the SAVE Act:

HARRIS: So you've got the Supreme Court doing its thing, then, this president is trying to push this SAVE Act, which basically would require that for people to register to vote, you're going to have to have proof of who you are through a passport, which a lot of Americans don't have. Or a birth certificate—same point. Obstacles to make it difficult for you to register to vote.

At some point during the morning the original post was taken down and replaced with one where the video cut off after "proof of who you are," making it sound like Harris was objecting to there being any verification of voters at all.

Why does this matter?

• There's only one reason a politician tries to make it hard for citizens to vote. 

• If Trump could make the case for this bill, he wouldn't have to lie about it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to pass off his ballroom as a "military center." 

Trump ranted on social media today about a panel of DC Court of Appeals judges who blocked the construction of a "Military Center" in Washington, saying in an emotional 488-word post that "Two Obama and Biden Appellate Court Judges just voted against the desperately needed Military Center, required for the National Security of Washington, D.C., and our Country, itself."

The "Military Center" that Trump is referring to is none other than the ballroom he has been fixated on building since he returned to office. Trump demolished the entire East Wing of the White House—lying about his intentions in the process—in an attempt to force the issue, but has been blocked by courts from proceeding with building the ballroom portion of it.

 

 

Renderings of the interior of what Trump is now calling a "Military Center."

Faced with backlash against the destruction of the historic East Wing, and ridicule over his claims that presidents had been desperately pining for a ballroom for over a century, Trump switched tactics and started billing it as a "military top secret ballroom"—that is a direct quote—complete with a bunker hospital and drone ports and various other features theoretically related in some fashion to national security. (Most of these are already present in the White House, which is already fantastically secure.)

But in reality, Trump has not been prevented from constructing the underground portion with all the supposedly urgently needed military facilities. He's only been blocked from building the ballroom portion.
 

Why does this matter?

• What Donald Trump needs for emotional soothing, and what the United States actually needs, are two very different things. 

• Calling a ballroom a "military center" does not transform a ballroom into a military center. 

• A president who cared about hardening the White House against national security threats would have just done that, instead of fixating on chandeliers for a year and a half.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He pretended he hadn't lost the birthright citizenship fight.

Trump signed two executive orders today, purporting to alter who the Constitution considers a citizen. The Fourteenth Amendment states that every person born in the United States "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is a citizen of the United States. The only people courts have ever recognized as not being subject to the jurisdiction are the children of foreign diplomats or—at the time of its adoption—Native American nations that had not submitted to federal authority.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1898, and then again, at Trump's behest, earlier this year, that the plain text of the amendment meant what it meant, and that Trump could not simply waive it on a whim. That decision infuriated Trump, who called the last 128 years of legal bedrock and the judges who had upheld it "STUPID." In today's orders, Trump is once trying again to impose new definitions that go beyond what the Constitution says, purportedly barring from citizenship the children of what he calls "birth tourists": babies born to mothers on short-term visas. 

This is extremely unlikely to have any legal effect on children born to parents with visas in good standing, since the Court has just upheld that the children of people here unlawfully are citizens. What Trump calls "birth tourism" is rare and swamped by the number of Americans who, for various reasons, themselves have children in other countries. That rarity is for good reason: American citizenship doesn't offer much in the way of tangible benefits to foreign parents, other than the opportunity for their child to pay taxes in a country they don't yet live in. So-called "chain migration," where citizen children sponsor their own parents for immigration, is extremely difficult in practice, unless you are a naturalized citizen married to Donald Trump.

The order also excludes the children of "enemy aliens," which would likely pass Constitutional muster if there were an invading army camped on American soil, but only a real one—not the rhetorical "invasion" of immigrants Trump sometimes talks about at rally speeches. Nor would it apply to people Trump personally deems "enemies" like Americans of Somali descent.

Why does this matter?

• Americans are Americans whether Donald Trump likes it or not. 

• Pretending you have power you don't doesn't make you look strong.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to hide his finances from the BBC, which he's suing over alleged damages to his finances.

Through his lawyers today, Trump demanded to be exempted from financial disclosures as part of a lawsuit he's filed against the BBC. Discovery is a routine part of any lawsuit that ensures both parties are fully disclosing all relevant information.

Just before the 2024 presidential election, the BBC released a documentary titled Trump: A Second Chance? It contained a clip of Trump speaking on January 6 to a crowd of people that included many of those who, just hours later, would be attacking a session of Congress in a desperate attempt to help Trump cling to power. In that scene, Trump's voice can be heard saying "We're going to walk down to the Capitol... and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell."

That was actually a splice of two quotes: in the first half, Trump is encouraging the crowd to support those members of Congress who supported him. In the second, he really is winding up the crowd for the riot that eventually happened. But edits like that aren't best practices for objective reporting, and after the newly re-elected Trump complained, the BBC apologized.

Trump then sued the BBC for $10,000,000,000. 

It's extremely unlikely that Trump could win the suit because, in simplest terms, nobody is required by law to only say things about him that he approves of. Painting public figures in an unflattering light, or even outright lying about them, isn't enough by itself to generate liability. (If it were, the thousands of people Trump has lied about and insulted would all have a case against him.) What's more, the underlying message of the BBC documentary—that Trump's statements in that rally were part of the criminal conspiracy he was indicted for—is absolutely true.

Trump also claimed that the documentary was meant to "interfere in and influence the election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment." Again, even if that were the intent, speech intended to change people's minds about the outcome of an election isn't a crime or grounds for a lawsuit—at least, not if it's not part of collusion with a hostile foreign government.  

One of Trump's claims is that the documentary cost his businesses money in lost revenue. In a predictable response, the BBC is now seeking legal discovery about his businesses' finances. In this case, to determine whether a TV show that aired in a foreign country six days before an election that has obviously made Trump's businesses suddenly more profitable, to the tune of billions of dollars, could possibly have had any effect on his bottom line. 

Other relevant information would include those businesses' tax returns, corporate structures, subsidiaries, offshore accounts, and other financial data. This is an extremely sensitive area for Trump: setting aside his tax cheating on his personal income and the 34 felony fraud charges he was convicted of in 2024, the Trump Organization has also been convicted of tax fraud and other crimes. Its CFO, Allen Weisselberg—also Trump's personal financial fixer—went to prison for his role in those crimes.

The BBC's requests were granted by the judge overseeing the trial last month. In ruling that discovery could proceed, the court noted that Trump had made broad and vague claims about the damage that the documentary did to his "brand," so discovery could be equally broad.

Of course, just because the BBC got access to Trump's financial information doesn't necessarily mean it would become public. Trump could seek an order from the judge sealing it. But pertinent information could still come out at trial, in the unlikely event Trump—who has spent most of the last 11 years stonewalling attempts to learn where his money is coming from—is willing to go forward now.

Trump also sued several American media companies for their supposed offenses against him, in what was transparently an extortion attempt, as the BBC suit may have been intended to be. Both ABC and CBS settled for token amounts rather than risk Trump openly using the powers of his office to do real harm against them.

Why does this matter?

• Using the powers of office to extort friendly coverage for the leader from the media is what dictators do. 

• Trump damaged his own reputation by trying to overturn the will of the American people who voted him out of office, not the people who were filming him do it. 

• You don't get to demand $10 billion every time someone hurts your feelings.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got frustrated with his latest pet project and ordered weeks of work demolished.

Trump's latest renovation obsession—other than destroying the East Wing of the White House for his "military top secret ballroom," the already-just-renovated Kennedy Center, shopping mall-style signage reminding people standing directly outside the Oval Office what it's called, cheap gold-colored plastic appliqué from Home Depot on the White House walls, his proposed "triumphal arch," destroying what was left of the Rose Garden, putting up a UFC cage match arena on the White House lawn for a single night's private entertainment, closing off the last public views of the White House, and his now ten-times-over-budget, two-months-late attempts to replace the dark gray surface of the Lincoln Memorial's reflecting pool with a dark blue surface—is a new helipad.

 

Trump has been holding court for weeks on the specific aesthetic details he wants to include, enthusiastically telling reporters assembled for Iran War comment about the particularly beautiful color of granite he wanted, and how it would have the presidential seal carved into it. Much of the work had already been completed. But today, construction crews began demolishing weeks of work on Trump's orders, reverting almost all the way to the beginning because Trump was dissatisfied with the particular way it looked against the horizon from his vantage point inside.

The official reason for the destruction of the old landing site is that newer versions of the helicopters used to transport him could theoretically damage the grass. (Trump has been excitedly telling reporters about his plans to replace the grass on White House lawns lately, too, spinning biologically inaccurate stories about how the actual leaves of grass themselves were more than 100 years old.) But off the record, Trump's staff offer other explanations. He has become convinced that it is essential that China's president Xi Jinping be received at the White House on the new pad. And the 80-year-old Trump, who often finds it very difficult to walk short distances in a straight line, or go down ramps or stairs without assistance, would be spared a couple hundred feet of walking in the new location. 
 

Why does this matter?

• Putting up gaudy palaces as a show of the leader's power is what tinpot dictators do. 

• Presidents have more important things to do than worry about what kind of pavers border a helipad. 

• Presidents who decide to worry about that kind of thing anyway should be able to think things through first so that they don't have to do everything twice. 

• Elderly people repetitively obsessing over pet projects and becoming frustrated easily is not a good sign of cognitive health.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He waved off domestic abuse and a toddler's broken collarbone as "just accusations."

Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) has a long history of women accusing him of violent behavior. That list includes Trump's former press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who told Trump and his wife Melania that Miller had assaulted her. Trump, who liked them as a couple because he thought they looked good together, ignored it.

I felt that Mrs. Trump believed my story. I suspected the president, long invested in the view that women usually make up allegations of assault, didn’t want to believe it.

Whether they believed me or not, however, isn’t really the point. My ex has denied my allegations and engaging in any such behavior, but his denials aren’t really the point either.

The point is that the president and first lady seemed totally unfazed about whether there was an abuser — another abuser — in their workplace. There was no follow-up from either of them to see if I needed help or protection. There was no investigation ordered. No effort to get to the bottom of this. 

Miller now faces even more serious charges from his ex-wife, Emily Moreno. She says that Miller threatened her with a gun, threw scalding water on her during a fight, and broke their 2-year-old daughter's collarbone. (Evidence from medical records showed bruising in the shape of a hand on the child's injury.)

There were three developments in that matter today. The first is that Miller went on the offensive against Moreno, alleging without evidence that she is delusional and danger to their daughter. He also offered as "proof" that he was not an abuser the claim that, within a week of their last fight, Moreno voluntarily cooked dinner for him.

The second is that Moreno's father, Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), finally broke his silence and condemned Miller. There is evidence that Miller was trying to blackmail Moreno over alleged gay affairs from 20 years ago. It's not clear whether that played a role in Sen. Moreno's reluctance to speak out before now, or simply political pressure from the Trump White House. Miller is a favorite of Trump, whom he served as an aide.

The third is that Trump, asked about the matter, breezily waved away what Emily Moreno has said about her and her daughter being assaulted: "So far it's accusations." 

Q: You were asked yesterday whether Rep. Max Miller should resign from Congress over the allegations, and you said you'd have a look at it.

TRUMP: Yeah. It’s a very sad thing. I know Max. He’s a good person. I mean, I always thought he was a very good person, and I’m going to let the families figure that out. You know those families, uh, I know they're working on it. It’s a very sad thing, especially when you know somebody so well, to be going through that. But it's accusations. 

It's not clear whether Trump knew or cared that "the families" are at the point where they are taking out restraining orders against Miller, or even whether he remembered that this wasn't the first time a woman he knew personally had just made "accusations" about Miller specifically.

This is far from the first time that Trump has defended men in his orbit against women making allegations he can't possibly know are false. He stonewalled an FBI investigation into credible threats of sexual assault made against his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. He's also branded as liars the women who have accused former Fox pundit Bill O'Reilly, accused pedophile and Trump-endorsed Senate candidate Roy Moore, Mike Tyson (with whom Trump had a business relationship), Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, and White House aide Rob Porter. 

Trump, who one jury found as a matter of legal fact had raped a woman, has been accused by dozens of women of sexual assault and harassment. They run the gamut from his own ex-wife, who accused him of violently raping her during their marriage when he was angry over a botched hair transplant surgery, to underage girls who reported that he walked in on them while they were undressing at a pageant he ran. (Trump admitted to peeping on pageant contestants, but not specifically the underage ones.) He admitted on tape to "grabbing" women "by the pussy" and daring them to do anything about it because he was a "star." 

The allegations, which don't include activities like the time he threw a party at which the only attendees were himself, convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and "young women in a so-called calendar girl competition," span four decades. Few if any of the women who have accused Trump knew each other.

Why does this matter?

• Beating a two-year-old girl until her bones break is a despicable crime that deserves more than a shrug, whether or not Donald Trump thinks so. 

• Defending a man with a history of abuse and violence towards women is pretty much what you'd expect from a man with a history of abuse and violence towards women. 

• Given the political situation, the only reason Trump would have to defend Miller is that he genuinely cannot believe (or care about) women who say they have been abused. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He once again declared peace, only to be immediately contradicted by the country he's now losing a war to. 

Overnight, Trump posted to his social media that he had established the "perimiters" of a deal to end the war in Iran. (He probably meant "parameters.") This came hours after other news reports that other Persian Gulf nations, including Saudi Arabia, were pressuring him to deescalate.

Of course, Trump has made precisely this promise—to call off hostilities because of a peace deal that is just around the corner—at least seven times before now in the space of a five-month war. And today, as in all such previous cases, Iran's government is immediately contradicting Trump about what he is claiming Iran has agreed to.

In particular, Iran's foreign minister dug in on the future of the Strait of Hormuz, saying that in spite of Trump's claims, shipping "will in no way return to the status it was before February 28th." The scoreboard is on Iran's side here: Trump has claimed throughout the entire war, in spite of all evidence to the contrary that the strait was open. In reality, even during the brief period after Trump signed the humiliating "memorandum of understanding" to open talks in June, the passage has been completely or mostly blockaded by Iran's credible threats to attack vessels it hasn't authorized.

Trump may be gambling that he can get away with lying about what Iran has agreed to because American audiences are less likely to hear its government's rebuttals. If so, it doesn't seem to be working: the American public remains overwhelmingly opposed to the war and disapproving of Trump's handling of it.

But there are also grimmer reasons why Trump may have no choice but to retreat. The military's supply of interceptors to protect bases and ships is running critically low. The trickle of oil flowing through the Gulf won't be enough to prevent a major supply shock when dwindling reserves run dry. And, most of all, Trump's only real weapon, short of what would surely be a catastrophic invasion, is long-range bombardment—and that simply isn't working to suppress Iranian counterattacks or dislodge the government.

Iran isn't the only country Trump is lying about this weekend. His social media post claimed that "the Country of Israel joins me in this commitment." That was news to the government of Israel.

Why does this matter?

• Even people who might have been fooled the first few times you told a big lie eventually catch on. 

• No amount of Trump pretending Iran is on his side will make Iran be on his side. 

• At this point the question is not whether Trump will reach a peace agreement, but how catastrophically bad for the United States that agreement will be.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He once again demanded that heads roll over imaginary anti-Trump "vandalism" that even his own DOJ won't touch.

Yesterday, the Department of Justice dropped charges against David Hearn, the man they had accused of "vandalizing" the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. Hearn, 67 and a former Olympic champion canoeist, had bent to touch some of the newly installed spray-on lining that had peeled off from the bottom of the pool due to what the DOJ now admits was faulty installation. 

But Trump, who was reeling from embarrassment over the debacle that had become of his latest pet renovation project, was insisting that the deteriorating lining and even the normal algae bloom that followed the pool's refilling were the work of "vandals." He insisted that there was a "300-yard" gash that criminals had carved down the middle of the pool, even though nobody had seen any "vandals" wading out into the middle of the heavily surveilled pool, or could point to the existence of that huge gash.

With Trump ranting on social media about "criminals" trying to sabotage him, National Guard troops and park rangers were deployed to harass curious tourists, including Hearn, who had come to see the debacle for themselves.

In reality—as many experts had predicted even as the work was underway—the problem was that Trump hired inexperienced contractors to apply precisely the wrong kind of coating in precisely the wrong way, and had been caught on tape trying to fix their mistakes as they went along while the clock ticked on the Fourth of July celebration. Making that deadline was the "emergency" that Trump had used to justify a no-bid contract, which he gave to two companies owned by people who'd made large donations to his political funds and, in one case, had paid for a membership at Mar-a-Lago.

The DOJ's motion to dismiss charges against Hearn admitted that contractor error was to blame for the rapid deterioration of the lining. The motion was signed by US Attorney and Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who had earlier gone on a media tour to gloat over the possibility that the "violent" Hearn would spend ten years in prison for his "willful destruction of property." But in the dismissal motion, Pirro directly accused the Department of the Interior of providing false information about what park employees had witnessed, and of covering up the "rushed and flawed" nature of Trump's alterations to the pool.

That, finally, brings us to today.

Trump lashed out bitterly at Pirro in a social media post this morning, part of an emotionally overwrought binge of almost 50 posts—mostly low-quality AI slop images—in quick succession. He wrote that he "100% disagreed" with Pirro's admission that no vandalism was involved, sputtering, "I don't know what she was thinking?" He also dispatched Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior, to repeat Trump's claims about the invisible vandalism he insists must have happened.

Neither Burgum nor Trump addressed the photographic evidence provided in the dismissal motion of blistering, peeling, bubbling, and adhesion problems the lining was suffering even before it was complete.

It is, as usual, impossible to tell whether Trump actually still believes that a senior citizen and former torchbearer for the US Olympic team was part of a conspiracy to embarrass him by touching the peeling paint in a public park. 

Hearn will not be reimbursed for his attorney's fees or the lost time he spent in preliminary court appearances, and in spite of even Republican commentators saying that he should sue the government for malicious prosecution, that would be very unlikely to succeed. Trump has insisted—contrary to his acting attorney general's promises—that he would find a way to force the government to create a slush fund for anyone he deems has been harmed by the "weaponization of government" and unjustly prosecuted for crimes for political reasons. It doesn't look like Hearn is exactly who Trump has in mind, though.

At least six other people have been charged with similar "crimes."

Why does this matter?

• Trump prosecuting an obviously innocent man to make political hay is somehow less disturbing than Trump actually believing a word of what he's saying. 

• Selecting citizens at random for prosecution for "crimes" in order to make the leader look strong is what happens in dictatorships.