What did Donald Trump do today?

He unveiled a chatbot that would already have been fired for disloyalty if it were one of his human employees.

Trump signed an executive order today establishing a chatbot service, America.gov. It's a simple Large Language Model (or LLM) intended to answer questions about laws, government services, and other information of interest to constituents.

Within minutes of its launch, social media commenters were impressed with its accuracy in at least a few regards. For example, it correctly identified Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election. 

 It refuted Trump's belief that he has an "Article II power to do whatever I want."

It identified several of the many reasons that Trump's destruction of the East Wing of the White House was not legal.

It correctly identified Congress, not the executive branch, as the body with the authority to levy tariffs.

 

For good measure, it admitted what Trump does not: that tariffs are taxes, and that it is not foreign governments that pay them.

It agreed with the elected Democrats Trump tried to have prosecuted for saying that American military personnel had an obligation to disobey illegal orders.

 

It even flatly rejected one of Trump's more infamous medical theories.

It correctly refused to exonerate Trump for rerunning a 2024 campaign ad using taxpayer dollars just because Trump insisted it was a "public service announcement."

And, in perhaps the unkindest cut of all, it refused to talk about Trump the way he talks about himself.

 

It's worth saying that, like any LLM, America.gov is not really "thinking" or "saying" anything. It's simply a software program processing information in its databases according to a series of internal rules.

The good news, from Trump's perspective, is that the "problem" of the America.gov software accurately summarizing facts that virtually everyone but Trump acknowledges, is that it can be "fixed." LLMs are only as accurate as the information they're allowed to use, and they can easily be tweaked to give desired results along an ideological spectrum. Trump can also order it to draw from sources that give the answers he wants, rather than the vast database of government records, most of which he's been unable to purge.

That's exactly what Trump's political patron Elon Musk did with the LLM developed for Twitter. After Musk was embarrassed by "Grok" giving unflattering (but accurate) answers to questions about Musk himself and seemingly contradicting Musk's fringe-right ideology, he ordered it to be tweaked. Within days, Grok was calling itself "Mechahitler" and making unprompted racist and antisemitic remarks. 

Trump is heavily financially invested in the AI industry, which may account for his unwillingness to even consider regulating it, and his politically toxic embrace of unpopular data centers. 

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if the President of the United States lives inside a bubble of lies or fantasy—and that's true whether or not a computer says so.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He did a live address to the nation to say he'd created jobs for .0005% of the population, 4+ years from now.

Last night, the Trump White House announced that he would give a formal presidential address to the nation from the Oval Office this afternoon at 2 P.M. Traditionally, presidents use that kind of address to speak about urgent matters, or occasions of great solemnity: the beginnings and ends of wars, or natural disasters, or in times of economic or social unrest.

In fact, Trump's address today concerned the planned construction of a steel mill in Iowa. Trump claimed it would eventually employ more than 1,700 workers, assuming it were ever built.

Iowa is the site of an unexpectedly competitive Senate race this fall. 

To put Trump's job number claims in perspective, natural population growth in the United States means that about 97,000 new jobs have to be created every month just to keep unemployment rates stable. That means that if Trump's promises of 1,700 new steelmaking jobs came true, it would replace about half a day's worth of demand for jobs.

But not until 2030 at the earliest. That was the optimistic assumption for when the plant might open.

Trump has a long history of announcing these kinds of "deals," few if any of which ever actually materialize. In 2018, Trump said that a Taiwanese tech company would open a plant in Wisconsin that would be the "eighth wonder of the world" and employ 13,000 people. State and local governments poured more than a billion dollars into infrastructure improvements for factories that were expected to make giant flat-panel video displays. Working family farms were declared "blighted" and seized by eminent domain, and homes were bulldozed. But nothing ever came of it, and the foreign company, Foxconn, repeatedly scaled down the project until virtually nothing was left beyond a few buildings rented out to other companies.

Former residential areas near the planned Foxconn plant in Mt. Pleasant, WI, after homes were seized and destroyed for factories that were never built.

Experts and local residents disputed the economic viability of the Foxconn plant at the time Trump declared it a done deal. The question, as one resident put it, was this: "Why would you come to the United States of America, and use our workforce, when your own workforce is cheaper over there [in Taiwan]?" One answer is that giving Trump an opportunity to make gaudy promises about jobs—at U.S. taxpayer expense—paid off very well for the political connections of Foxconn executives, and those were potentially far more lucrative than making television sets.

The Iowa plant is expected to cost $18 billion to build—or, at least, that's the starting price. Trump didn't say how much taxpayer money would be used to prop up the privately owned mill, and how much would be contingent on the thing actually being built. (Most of the Foxconn money was spent in advance, and ended up costing half a million dollars per job created.)

In his remarks today, which most television networks declined to carry, Trump explicitly tied the construction of the mill to his imposition of tariffs on foreign steel: "Soon after my inauguration, I imposed powerful 50% tariffs on all foreign steel, and now our steel industry is roaring back to life." It depends on what Trump means by "our" steel industry: the company that would own the mill, Mesabi Metallics, is owned by an Indian conglomerate. 

But Trump's emphasis on the tariffs is just another way of saying that when those taxes on American consumers are removed—which is an economic and political certainty, whether or not it happens on Trump's watch—the Iowa plant will be that much less competitive, if it even gets built. 

Why does this matter?

• At this point, Donald Trump may be the only person who believes in the "deals" he's constantly announcing.
  
  
• It's extremely unlikely that this will change any Iowans' votes in favor of Trump's party, but it's still corrupt that he's obviously trying to make that happen this way. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He doubled down on forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for his own campaign ads.

On Thursday, the federal government paid for a "public service announcement" featuring images of Trump over music that chanted "love me, love me, I'll make them love me" and lavish praise from one of his political benefactors. It is a violation of several federal laws, including the Hatch Act, to use public money for partisan propaganda.

Today, Trump took things a step further, this time using federal funds to re-run one of his actual 2024 campaign ads. Asked for comment, the White House responded by claiming that the ad was "reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad."

Democrats were incensed, and many Republicans joined in the criticism. It's not the first time the Trump administration has done this: taxpayers also footed the bill for $220 million worth of ads for former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. (Trump fired Noem shortly afterwards—not because of the ads themselves, but reportedly because of his concerns that she was upstaging him.)

By government standards, the amounts Trump has used to run vanity ads for himself isn't much yet: roughly $1,000,000 so far. But there's no reason to think Trump will stop there. In recent months, he's become increasingly manic over his supposed importance to the 2026 midterm elections, even as Republican candidates are scrubbing his face from their websites and sending him to "campaign" in ultra-safe districts where the Republican incumbents won by more than 50 points in the last cycle.

Why does this matter?

• State-funded propaganda is what dictatorial regimes do to prop up the leader. 

• It's bad if the governing philosophy of the President of the United States is "what can I get away with and who's going to stop me?"

What did Donald Trump do today?

He freaked out about the consequences of his unpopularity.

In an emotional rant this morning posted to his boutique social media website, Trump angrily denounced the media for reporting on how Byron Donalds, Florida's Republican nominee for governor, has scrubbed his website of references to Trump. 

As the Daily Beast and other publications have noted, this simply isn't true—about Donalds, or other Republicans running away from Trump. 
  

Trump also insisted that he was "more popular in Florida today, even more than I was in the last Record Breaking Election!"

Again, whatever Trump may believe, the reality is exactly the opposite. Trump won Florida by 13 points in 2024, but his net approval rating in recent polls is minus 10, minus 16, or minus 21 points. The most recent AP-NORC poll shows Trump losing popularity in Florida faster than any other state, which is saying something, considering that he only has an approval rating above 50% in two states (Oklahoma and West Virginia).

The problem that Byron Donalds is facing—and is trying to solve by distancing himself from Trump—isn't that Floridians don't like him, or that they won't vote for Republicans. Florida hasn't elected a Democratic governor since 1994. But Trump's overtly racist approach to immigration enforcement, his coddling of abusive dictators in Central and South America, and his real or threatened actions against the people of Venezuela and Cuba are deeply unpopular with the large Latino voting base in the state. That's why Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, a Republican representing a normally safe Republican seat in suburban Miami, released an ad directly criticizing Trump earlier this month.
 

After working through his feelings about Donalds—which included a threat about his political future if the nominee "dropped" Trump—he attended the first half of the Texas vs. Tennessee college football game. As expected, he was loudly booed by the Tennessee Volunteers' home crowd.

Why does this matter?

• Past about age six, declaring yourself popular doesn't make it so. 

• A smarter president would understand he's better off letting members of his party create some distance. 

• A better president wouldn't be this historically unpopular with voters in the first place.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He accidentally nuked TV coverage of his upcoming football game appearance.

Earlier this week, a court ordered the Trump administration to reinstate the press passes of Politico, MS NOW, and CNN. Trump had banned them from the White House explicitly because he didn't like how the "free press"—his words—was reporting on him. That is illegal viewpoint discrimination on its face and a violation of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from trying to restrict free speech or punish those who criticize it.

In the meantime, the five networks that run the White House TV pool refused to record Trump as they normally would, leading to Trump being effectively silenced for a few days. That may have been as effective a defense as any court order: Trump relies on what he calls the "lying press" (an echo of the Nazi slogan lügenpresse) to get him in front of a national audience. Trump's immediate response to the show of press solidarity, "Trump TV," turned out to be a YouTube channel hosting video already available on the White House website.

Today, Trump announced he was banning CNN again—this time, from accompanying him on Air Force One to watch the Tennessee-Texas football game tomorrow. The TV pool hasn't named a replacement for CNN, so Trump will once again be off the air.

That may actually work to his advantage. Trump is so toxic to voters right now, even in red states like Tennessee, that ticket prices for the game plummeted by more than $100 after he announced he would attend. The game itself will be telecast, but sports broadcasts usually cut away or mute audio when Trump is being booed, as he inevitably is in front of crowds at sporting events he can't personally evict from the premises or order around. Political reporting crews are typically the ones who provide actual coverage of Trump at such events: how loudly he's booed, how early he leaves, whether he falls asleep, how many hours' worth of delay his appearance creates for real fans, and so forth.

Why does this matter?

• Coming out against even the concept of a free press is about as un-American as you can get. 

• There are much bigger problems Donald Trump should be worrying about right now than whether reporters notice what he's doing and tell people about it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He used taxpayer money to run a campaign ad, then said he'd "campaign" in two of the safest Republican seats left. 

Americans watching TV tonight may have seen a campaign ad for Trump and his version of the Republican policy agenda. They also paid for it: it contained a tagline stating that it was "paid for by the US government." White House officials called the ad a "public service announcement." 

Federal agencies are permitted to buy airtime for public service announcements. President Biden's administration used them to provide information about COVID vaccines, and the George W. Bush administration aired anti-drug ads. But it is explicitly illegal to use taxpayer money to run political ads.

The only people who speak during the ad are Trump, and one of his megadonors, who praises Trump personally as "tough" and "resilient." Most of the visuals are split-second images of Trump. No policy goal is mentioned, other than defeating "communism." (Trump, who is hosting a world leader who actually calls himself a communist at a luxurious state dinner tonight, uses the word to mean Americans who oppose him politically.)

It's unlikely that the ad, which ran only on the Trump-friendly Fox News and the fringe-right Newsmax, will actually persuade anyone to change their vote—much less "make them love me," which are the lyrics that air over pictures of Trump's face. But Trump is increasingly desperate as polls point to another anti-Trump wave election in the midterms, possibly even bigger than voters' rejection of his first-term agenda in 2018. Republican candidates are scrubbing his name from their campaign literature, and even denouncing him by name on camera.

Trump, meanwhile, has committed to the strategy of making the election all about him, literally begging his core voters to pretend he's on the ballot. At his so-called "midterm convention" earlier this month, which most Republican candidates in close races avoided, he led the sparse crowd in a pledge to vote, and even to "cheat like hell" if necessary. 

That combination of factors—his deep personal unpopularity combined with his determination to be the center of attention—may explain his announcement today of upcoming campaign stops in Oklahoma and Alabama. Both stops are in deep red districts in deep red states, and Oklahoma is one of only two states where his approval rating is above 50%. The planned rally in Mobile would have Trump shoring up support for a district that the Republican incumbent won by 57% in 2024. The Oklahoma rally would take place in a district where the Republican incumbent won by 53%.

No elected Republican who is on the ballot in 2026 from either state has commented yet, or committed to appearing with Trump. 

Why does this matter?

• As illegal as stealing taxpayer money for propaganda is, doing it like this is even more pathetic.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He clarified his position that the government SHOULD be able to punish free speech.

Last week, Trump had reporters from CNN, MS NOW, and Politico banned from the White House. His explicit justification was that he didn't like their coverage. When a reporter asked what form the ban would take, Trump had to ask her to clarify what ban she meant. After an aide mentioned Politico, he responded, "Oh, the ban on the free press?" 

Reporters from those outlets had their passes revoked shortly afterwards. They are now suing the White House to be reinstated, and they're likely to succeed. It's not unconstitutional for the government to limit press access, but it cannot be for viewpoint discrimination. In other words, the First Amendment forbids Trump or any other government official for punishing a news outlet simply because they don't like what that outlet reports.

In a late-night filing tonight, Trump seemed to go out of his way to reinforce that his motives were punitive and unconstitutional. The DOJ filed a declaration consisting of two links. One was to an MS NOW story reporting that Trump aides were discussing other historical landmarks his name could be added to, including Ford's Theater, the site of President Lincoln's assassination. 

That story provoked immediate mockery and derision of Trump online, prompting a hasty disavowal from Trump himself on social media—the second link in the DOJ filing.

In essence, Trump is arguing through the Department of Justice that the United States government should be allowed to punish news organizations that print things that the government has denied. Or, in other words, the government should be able to veto any story it doesn't like simply by issuing a denial, whether or not it's true.

It's worth noting that even incorrect reporting is covered by the First Amendment—but it's Trump's furious denial that gets the facts wrong. The MS NOW story doesn't say that Trump himself was consulted about the Ford's Theater renaming plan, or even that the idea was under serious consideration. It does say that Trump administration insiders know that flattering Trump with such plans is a good way of getting access to him. It also correctly notes that because the Department of the Interior owns the Ford's Theater site, it might be legally easier to put up signage with Trump's name on it.

The MS NOW story also cited some of the dozens of other attempts Trump has made to put his name and face on other things, ranging from the John F. Kennedy Center, to passports and National Park passes, to airports and train stations and NFL football stadiums, to the currently nonexistent $250 bill (among many other). Those have also generally provoked mockery and derision.

Why does this matter?

• It is incredibly plausible that Donald Trump would react positively to having his name put on the site of Lincoln's assassination, at least until he realized how people would react to it.
  
  
• The First Amendment probably wasn't written with actual temper tantrums in mind, but it still applies to presidential temper tantrums.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He used a diplomatic address to try to pump up his stock portfolio.

Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly today. His speech was full of obvious lies and at least one prosecutable incitement to genocide—or, at least, it would have been if other world leaders still took him seriously. 

TRUMP: I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East, or even the world. Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?

Trump didn't explain why he hasn't been able to defeat Iran, or even control the terms of the war as it approaches seven full months, but he did demand that his audience ignore confirmed reports that he has run the United States military almost entirely out of key munitions.

But Trump also used the speech to dabble in a favorite hobby: rebranding. Much as he decreed that the federal government would have to use his new names for Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico, he announced that the federal government would now call artificial intelligence "super intelligence." According to Trump, "from this point forward, all of United States' documents, and hopefully the world's, will be changed to use the more accurate term 'super' as opposed to 'artificial.'"

"Superintelligence" is already a term of art in AI research, describing a level of function that current models are nowhere near approaching, but Trump—who cited his then 10-year-old son as a computer genius at the start of his first term—almost certainly doesn't know that.

The more likely rationale is financial. Trump and his family members have invested heavily in the companies that develop AI models or supply them with hardware, and he has been using the federal purse as a way to goose the value of those investments, so he may believe that demanding that people use a different word for the technology could also make him money. 

But it may also simply be that Trump is aware that people are talking about something and has become deeply anxious to make sure that they associate it with him, which is a familiar pattern. 

Whatever the actual potential of AI technologies, the sudden push to redeem the value of Trump's investment isn't going smoothly. Posters saying "I want you to use AI!" and showing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in an "Uncle Sam" pose have gone up in the halls at the Pentagon. But last week, CNN reported that the US military was on the verge of boarding a Chinese ship—something China's government likely would have interpreted as an act of war—because an AI hallucination had incorrectly flagged it as carrying nuclear components to Iran. 

Why does this matter?

• "It will make the president rich" is a stupid reason for a government to do something. 

• "It will soothe the president's ego" is even worse.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He proposed to get a vital fertilizer from a sanctioned, landlocked Russian ally 6,000 miles away instead of Canada. 

According to a post on his private microblogging website today, Trump is supposedly "working on a massive Deal with respect to the purchase of Potash from Belarus." Potash is a mineral form of potassium salts, and is a key ingredient in fertilizer. The United States imports about 80% of the potash it uses from Canada, which is the world's leading supplier, and which is connected to the United States by a robust rail network.

    

Diversifying a country's suppliers of critical materials is generally a good idea. Canada, for example, is rapidly transitioning away from a reliance on trade with the United States, given the erratic and damaging trade policies Trump has pursued. But making the United States reliant on potash from Belarus is, to put it mildly, a terrible idea, for a few reasons.

• Belarus is under international sanctions. The Belarusian government is essentially controlled by the Putin regime, and is under international sanction for its role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This obviously doesn't bother Trump personally, whose obligations to the Putin regime are well known, but it would be a problem for American importers who need to do business with countries that respect the sanctions—which includes the entire European Union.
  
  
• Belarus is very, very far from the United States. Potash is sold by the ton, and it's not inherently expensive, currently selling for about $387 a metric ton. That means that shipping costs add a lot to the final price. Getting potash from Belarus would involve rail or truck transport across Russia, then a long sea voyage to an American port, and then another long rail journey across most of the United States to fertilizer production plants in the West. 
  
  Canadian potash, by contrast, goes directly in dedicated rail cars from Canadian depots to US customers.
  
  
• Prices don't work that way. Even if Belarusian potash weren't more expensive for American importers because of the increased shipping costs, the potash market is global, and the price is set by overall demand. Canadian potash is only expensive in the United States because of Trump has slapped import taxes on Americans in a quixotic attempt to somehow "win" at trade with the United States' largest trading partner. 
   
• Belarus doesn't export anywhere near enough potash. The United States imported about $3.6 billion worth of potash last year. Belarus' total potash exports came to $1.1 billion. Even if the United States instantly got access to every last ton of Belarusian potash, it would still fall more than two-thirds short of the needed supply.

And, as Belarus' president bluntly underscored today, the United States will not get any new Belarusian potash. Alexander Lukashenko immediately refuted Trump's claim of a "massive Deal" today, saying that "even if we wanted to supply [potash] to other, Western markets, we simply do not have those volumes—everything is contracted."

Trump has not elaborated on who, if not the dictator who controls Belarus, he was "working on a massive Deal with."

Why does this matter?

• Lying about supposed future "deals" doesn't change the fact that Trump's trade wars are making food more expensive for Americans right now. 

• It's bad if a president has a completely different foreign policy than the rest of the country.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He decided that his much-mocked "triumphal arch" was a military installation—just like his much-mocked ballroom.

Trump's plans to build a "triumphal arch" have been out of the public eye since he unveiled a scale model at his ill-fated "Great American State Fair" this summer. That hastily slapped-together structure, made of decaying plywood and featuring vinyl stickers meant to look like architectural features, probably didn't do much to spark public interest in yet another Trump taxpayer-funded building project. It was already a dud: barely one in five Americans approved of the plan to build it.

Today, Trump tried a new strategy, or rather re-used an old one: in a post on his microblogging site, he insisted that the "Arc d'Trump" was really a desperately needed military installation.

At the strong request of the United States Military, and for National Security purposes, I have agreed to convert the magnificent Triumphal Arch, planned since the Civil War Era many years ago, at the Receptive Circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge, into a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch, to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas, and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition in storage. There will be no facility like this anywhere in the World. Out of the 59 top cities and Capitals, Washington, D.C., IS THE ONLY ONE IN THE WORLD THAT DOES NOT HAVE A TRIUMPHAL ARCH, but it will now and, by far, the greatest of them all! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

To be clear, Trump is absolutely lying about the military having anything to do with the "strong request" to put snipers and drones anywhere in the DC area, much less on top of an unbuilt monument.

For example, a typical sniper rifle's effective range is about 800 meters. That means that the snipers Trump wants to have permanently keeping watch over his arch would be able to target people coming out of the Metro station that serves Arlington National Cemetery, and not much else. (Even if there were some reason to keep guns trained on a cemetery, snipers don't generally want their positions advertised in advance.)

The real reason Trump is claiming that the arch would serve a double purpose as a military outpost is that the Supreme Court gave him permission to proceed with what he calls the "military top secret" part of his ballroom project—which, in practice, may let him build the whole thing. Trump had been campaigning for the ballroom since his first term, absurdly insisting that presidents going back to Lincoln had been pining for a ballroom, but were too weak to actually build one. But it was only after he'd illegally destroyed the East Wing of the White House and was facing real legal threats to constructing a new building on its ruins that he suddenly insisted it was really a military installation.

As for Trump's claim that (exactly) 58 other world capitals have a triumphal arch, he appears to be making it up. Some do, of course. Paris has the Arc de Triomphe, which was commissioned by the self-crowned emperor Napoleon as a monument to his own glory—but was never built during his lifetime because of the economic and military ruin he led France to. It was only completed thirty years later, on a different plan, with all planned references to Napoleon scrubbed away.

There's another arch in a world capital that may be more to Trump's liking, one that was built without any legislative or judicial interference, or even public opposition: the Arch of Triumph in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

 

The Arch of Triumph is festooned in tributes to Kim Il-sung, the dictator of North Korea at the time it was constructed in 1986. Kim was the grandfather of Kim Jong-un, the current dictator and a very close friend of Trump, at least to hear Trump tell it.

Why does this matter?

• A president who had any real accomplishments wouldn't be so desperate to build big monuments to be remembered by. 

• It almost seems quaint to mention it, but it's not good for a president to be lying about national security, even if nobody believes him in the first place.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He actually had to come into work on a weekend.

Trump is doing something tonight he almost never does: spending a weekend night in the White House. He had been spending the weekend in Maryland, but the rapidly deteriorating situation in Saudi Arabia apparently forced him to make the possibly unprecedented decision to cut short the usual three-day getaway trip he takes virtually every weekend. At least, that is the speculation: as of midnight on Sunday, the White House had not given reporters any comment on the reason for the change in plans.

The government of Saudi Arabia is reporting that Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen launched a ballistic missile at its capital, Riyadh. The Houthis say they also attacked oil production facilities in Yanbu. Black smoke and fire were seen coming from Riyadh's main airport.

 

This comes just a week after devastating Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia's biggest oil pipeline, and the seizure of key islands in the Red Sea that would allow for Saudi oil shipments to be cut off just as Iran itself has made the Persian Gulf into a chokepoint.

Those earlier attacks took place while Trump was enjoying a round of golf even further from the White House than Maryland, as a spectator at the Irish Open tournament. When he was asked about that attack, Trump proclaimed the situation "fine and dandy." He also promised that the Houthis had secretly told him they didn't want a fight with the United States, and that Saudi Arabia had nothing to worry about because "it's going to be very good."

Why does this matter?

• The presidency is a full-time job and nobody who can barely stay awake through a four-day workweek is fit for office. 

• The more reason you give your nation's enemies reason to think you're weak and deluded, the more advantage they'll take of it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He announced "BREAKING NEWS" about Greenland that happened when he was four years old.

After more than a year of demanding, threatening, and social media whining about annexing Greenland, Trump posted this to his boutique microblogging website today:

BREAKING NEWS: I am pleased to announce that the United States of America has entered into an Agreement with The Kingdom of Denmark, and Greenland, that gives the United States permanent control over security, and all other needs, in Greenland, completely addressing ALL of our many U.S. concerns. There will be NO COST to the United States! At my direction, we worked with representatives of Denmark and Greenland to guarantee that the United States will FOREVER have the complete ability to do what is necessary in Greenland in order to secure and defend the security of Greenland, and the United States of America. Additionally, from now on, no U.S. adversary can EVER have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland, or make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval. For over 100 years, Presidents have known the strategic importance of Greenland, but NONE of them were able to do anything about it. I am proud to be the President that permanently and conclusively addressed this very important situation. This is an “Infinite Life” Agreement, there is no end! We are very honored and proud of what has just taken place, and everything agreed to today will be cherished by the American People. We will immediately begin the process of developing a large Military presence in the appropriate part of Greenland, of which there are many. We will work with the people of Greenland in its development and construction. This solution is a great one for the United States of America, Denmark, Greenland, and all of our Allies. We look forward to working with the wonderful people of Denmark and Greenland toward a magnificent future with respect to this large, and highly strategic, parcel of land. We will be very protective of it! This is a dream come true for the United States of America, one that is very important, historic, and special. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP 

It's not clear what kind of agreement, if any, Trump believes he has "entered into," but he's absolutely correct that an agreement with all of these provisions exists between the United States, Denmark and Greenland. It was signed in 1951.

There's no way to know whether Trump was aware of this when he made his post, although his staff certainly did, and presumably would have at least tried to tell him about the status quo. Officials in Denmark and Greenland have repeatedly tried to remind him of this reality, too. 

Trump, who has suffered increasingly obvious cognitive decline over the years, rarely listens to the specially simplified version of daily intelligence briefings the government prepares for him. In today's post, for example, he forgot that there are already American troops in Greenland, and have been all along. 
 

Why does this matter?

• If Trump genuinely didn't know what he was saying, he's not cognitively fit for office.

• If he did know what he was saying, and was just looking for a way to slink away from the empty threats he'd made to a NATO ally, he's just pathetic.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he had the power to "ban fishing" and in all likelihood probably believes that he does.

Today is Constitution Day. By law, all federal agencies and federally funded schools are required to provide educational programming on the history of the American Constitution on September 17th.

Trump's unofficial contribution came during a disjointed digression in a fundraising speech for his PAC. It started off with Trump complaining about a Biden-era restriction on boat speeds close to shore, and then became a story in which the lifelong New York City resident said that the only president who loved the outdoors more than him was Teddy Roosevelt. 

He also became visibly confused while trying to explain an executive order he had just signed, and needed to ask Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum what was in it.

Then, he claimed that he had the power as president to ban all fishing in the United States.

He does not. 

Referring to the billionaire CEO of Bass Pro Shops, Johnny Morris, he said this:

TRUMP: I could have made it so you couldn’t sell. You couldn’t sell anything. I could have banned fishing. I’ll tell you what. The power of this office is crazy. I could have banned fishing and driven Johnny right the hell out of business. Okay. I think I’m going to do that. Just maybe just a quick order, just for a day or two, till he calls me and he says, "Please, President, please, you’re putting me out of business, sir."

Trump often "jokes" about doing things he has no legal authority to do, like running for a third term. In this case, he probably was actually joking about trying to do it—but he also likely believes that he could. Trump has spoken in all seriousness about how Article II of the Constitution gives him "the right to do whatever I want as president."

It does not.

Why does this matter? 

• It's not surprising if someone who thinks they have the powers of a dictator acts like one, but it's still a problem.

• Presidents should know, and care, and be able to remember what was in the papers they just signed.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got even more confused about basic economic reality than usual.

Today, the Federal Reserve voted unanimously to raise the interest rates that banks charge one another for spot loans by a quarter of a percentage point. In practical terms, that means that interest rates in general will rise by a similar amount. The reason for raising rates is to curb inflation, which has been well above the target rate of 2% for all of Trump's second term, and has been greatly inflamed by Trump's war on Iran and the imposition of taxes on American consumers for imported goods.

In a social media rant immediately after the vote, Trump demanded that rates plummet to 1%, confusing the yields on US Treasury bills with the Fed rate. Trump also repeated his apparently genuine, but incredibly stupid, belief that trade deficits mean the United States is simply giving money away to foreign countries. (This is true in exactly the same sense that you are "simply giving money away" to the grocery store when you buy groceries.) 

To be clear, making it cheaper to borrow money during a period of high inflation would be like fighting a wildfire with gasoline. But what Trump does seem to understand is that he is one of the few people wealthy enough to actually profit from the damage that would result. It doesn't matter to a billionaire like Trump whether his Big Mac costs $5 or $50, or how many times the price of diesel doubles on his watch: the basic necessities that most American households have to carefully budget for are always a rounding error for him.

But plummeting interest rates would save him hundreds of millions of dollars if he could suddenly refinance the mortgages he has all over his real estate holdings, and it would sharply increase the value of the huge quantities of bonds he's bought since returning to office, apparently in the belief he could jawbone interest rates lower against all common sense.

The current Chair of the Federal Reserve's Board of governors is Kevin Warsh, whom Trump appointed in May. It was obvious that Trump believed Warsh would somehow force interest rates lower. After his social media tirade, Trump changed his story, claiming that he'd "allowed" Warsh to vote in unison with the rest of the board. (Trump has no power to force the Fed to do anything, which is independent from the executive branch by design, as Trump found out after trying unsuccessfully to purge its membership on returning to office.) 

A reporter pointed out that Warsh had already said that "raising rates was the right decision and responsible decision." Trump responded: "Well, I don't know what he's referring to, but I will tell you interest rates are too high. We have the greatest economy in history." (The vast majority of Americans, all but a handful of whom are not billionaires, strongly disagree with Trump's assessment the economy.)

Asked today about Trump's likely reaction to his voting in unison with the Board—and, in essence, every economist in the world—Warsh literally laughed out loud and said "I've got nothing for you."

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if a president can't understand basic concepts like "selling goods" or "inflation." 

• It's bad and suspicious if his lack of understanding of those concepts would somehow still make him money. 

• As one person on the internet put it, "The dumbest asshole in the country and the President need to be two different people moving forward."

What did Donald Trump do today?

UPDATE, Sept. 16: Trump said on Wednesday that the Kennedy Center would be "ripped down" if he could not have it named for him.

He threw a private temper tantrum to match his public one over not getting to chisel his name on the Kennedy Center.

Trump threw a predictable tantrum on social media today over the latest ruling by a federal judge preventing him from carving his name into actual stone of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Judge Christopher R. Cooper, who earlier this year found that Trump had no authority to rename the Center for himself, said that the latest attempt to add Trump's name to the Center without technically changing the legal name was "linguistic gymnastics." The Center was dedicated to the memory of President Kennedy by an act of Congress, Cooper ruled, and only another law could rededicate it to Trump or anyone else.

Trump's name was removed from the facade earlier this year under court order, but only after a tarp was put up to block video of the removal. It has remained in place since.

In response, Trump ranted on social media, threatening in effect to disobey Cooper and any higher court ruling that went against him by shutting the Center down indefinitely unless Cooper's ruling was overturned. The performance was typical of Trump's social media eruptions, personally attacking the judge and casting himself as the hero.

But Trump also lost his temper in private, too, screaming over the phone during a Board meeting at the member whose lawsuit kept his name off the building: Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat. Beatty is an ex officio member of the Board and was one of the few people Trump couldn't purge when he returned to office. A source who listened to the call said the spectacle of Trump berating Beatty was "fucking crazy." 

Like many people who have made Trump lose his temper, Beatty is a Black woman.

Immediately after Cooper's ruling, the Board voted to close the Center. Staff and visitors were ordered out this afternoon. Lawyers fighting Trump's attempts to rename the Center for himself said the Board risked a contempt charge by doing that. Virtually all of the Board's current members are personal Trump loyalists appointed since he returned to office, and include people like Trump's personal criminal defense lawyers, spouses of people he can fire from government positions, and Fox News hosts. Officially, the Board's reason for the closure is that Trump and only Trump can raise the necessary money to keep the Center's budget afloat—and only if he receives "appropriate recognition."

It's certainly true that the Kennedy Center's finances are in much worse shape since Trump personally took over. Like any such organization, its budget relies on ticket sales, facilities rentals, and private donations. All of these revenue streams have fallen off a cliff in response to Trump's attempts to remake it in his image and name. As one official put it, "Donors disappeared, ticket sales disappeared, artists disappeared—like it was doomsday."

The Trump-controlled Board has not, in any court filing or public document, acknowledged the fact that massive artist and ticket-buyer boycotts of Trump's takeover are the reason the Center is suddenly and for the first time in financial jeopardy. 

The Board also cited the danger to the public posed by supposedly deteriorating facilities. But those claims, which Trump has been making for over a year now, are lies. As with any large public facility, routine maintenance is needed constantly—although Trump and the board he controls now have a motive to let the buildings deteriorate. Congress allocated more than a quarter-billion dollars for renovations this year, at Trump's urging, in spite of the fact that the Center had just completed a huge renovation project in 2023. But Trump is now refusing to spend any of that money unless the Center is renamed for him. 

Why does this matter?

• Obsession with glorifying yourself above all other concerns is called megalomania, and while it's not uncommon among wannabe dictators, it's not a sign of good mental health or actual popularity. 

• "If I can't have this thing, I'll destroy it" is a shitty way to run anything, much less a country.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said it was "not a big deal" that his son got caught accepting even more "gifts" from the Putin regime.

ProPublica reported today that the recent wedding festivities for Donald Trump Jr. and his new bride Bettina Anderson Trump were paid for by a Putin lieutenant, Umar Kremlev. The multi-day celebrations took place on a private island in the Bahamas. 

In response, the couple acknowledged that their "dear friend" had given them the event as a "wedding gift." (Kremlev's "extraordinary gesture" is not one they had previously admitted to.) Just when and how Donald Trump Jr. and Kremlev became "dear friends" isn't clear. Kremlev is associated with a Russian front group that kidnaps Ukrainian children.

Umar Kremlev identified in a photo accompanying the ProPublica article.

In a statement today, Donald Trump Sr. said that "I have no idea who Umar is, never heard of him, and he didn’t pay for Don and Bettina’s wedding, which took place at a totally different location, and on a different day from the wedding [sic]."

Trump appears to be trying to draw a distinction between the wedding ceremony itself, and the private island that Kremlev rented for the whole weekend that followed. (Receptions, as Trump and his son know from the five marriages they've had between them, tend to be more expensive than the actual ceremonies—even when they don't involve putting up dozens of guests on private islands for a whole weekend.)

It's entirely possible that Trump really doesn't know Kremlev—or that he did, but has forgotten who Kremlev is. But whether Donald Trump Sr. is personally acquainted with the Putin regime functionary who put money in Donald Trump Jr.'s hands isn't really relevant, since the wealth of all such oligarchs is really just an extension of Putin's direct personal control over the Russian economy.

The actual costs Kremlev picked up for the Trump family are enormous by most Americans' standards, but still tiny compared to the Trump family net worth. Trump Jr.'s personal fortune is estimated to be around $300 million, much of that derived from monetizing his father's political connections. Among other things, Trump Jr. is an "advisor" to a number of companies that can benefit from having influence over Trump Sr.'s policies.

But the problem with what (for a Trump) is a small amount of money is the symbolism. It reinforces a hard truth that Trump Jr. himself once blurted out: that the Trump family owes its current wealth largely to timely Russian "investment"—much of it in the form of money laundering. That's a dependency that Trump Sr. has never freed himself from, and is a big part of why his personally pro-Putin stance is so at odds with the rest of American government.

It's also just how the Putin regime does business: as an FBI analyst quoted by the ProPublica article pointed out,  

In his statement, Trump also declared that having the Putin pick up the tab for his son's multi-day island celebration was "Not a big deal!" because he "was not present at the party."

Why does this matter?

• Any corruption this obvious is a big deal.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got even more confused than usual about Iran.

Recently, Trump has given up on actually winning the war he's declared victory in countless times, and has shifted the goalposts to a new place: that the war will be over after the midterm elections.

Asked today to explain why he thought it would happen then—and not in the two months between now and then—Trump changed his mind again, saying that the United States might not disengage from Iran at all. "We'll ultimately get out (of Iran), unless we decide to stay and keep the oil like Venezuela," he said.

The United States is not "in Iran" and has no Iranian oil "to keep."

Changing that would mean invading Iran, a country roughly the size and population of the Eastern Time Zone of the United States, but with much more rugged terrain. Even critics of the ruling regime in Iran are vehemently anti-US, and that was before Trump urged them to overthrow their government and then, when that didn't happen, turned around and threatened to kill civilians like them.

Short of using nuclear weapons, it is all but inconceivable that a U.S. invasion of Iran would succeed. For a comparison, the United States never managed in almost 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan to control more than the capital city of Kabul and the immediate surrounding area.

Trump, who may have gotten confused and convinced himself that some of what happened in Venezuela had actually happened in Iran, did not elaborate on what he thought had happened in Iran. He did, however, say that it was all right for China to assist Iran in targeting attacks that killed American troops. This is not the first time that Trump has excused hostile countries for attacking or killing American troops: he also gave Russia a pass for similar help to Iran, as well as for offering bounties on American servicemembers during the war in Afghanistan.

Why does this matter?

• If you can't remember which war you're fighting or whether you've already won or lost, you're not cognitively fit to be president.
   
• Presidents are supposed to care who is trying to kill US troops during war.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said losing free navigation on the most important remaining sea lane out of the Middle East was "fine and dandy."

There are two main shipping routes for virtually all Middle Eastern oil: the Persian Gulf through the Gulf of Oman, and the Red Sea via the Gulf of Aden. Both have narrow chokepoints: the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, respectively.

 

Iran, on the northern coast of the Strait of Hormuz, has had de facto control over Persian Gulf shipping, resulting in huge spikes in the price of oil and other essential goods like fertilizer and plastic feedstocks. Yesterday, Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen seized control of territory allowing them to control the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. At the same time, a major Saudi oil pipeline was attacked from within Iraq, forcing its closure.

This means that Iran or its proxies are now able to take control of both major shipping lanes in the region—and, therefore, all worldwide traffic going through the Suez Canal as well. Shipping prices and oil prices have already surged dramatically in response. Saudi Arabia, the second-biggest oil producing country in the world, had been shifting its output towards the Red Sea since Iran took control of the Persian Gulf lanes, but now faces a major crisis with both its export routes in jeopardy.

Asked about the situation on his golf vacation in Ireland today, Trump said that "everything's going to work out fine and dandy."

He did not elaborate, other than to say that the Houthis had supposedly called and said they didn't want to fight the United States. White House officials were unable to substantiate that claim, but Trump routinely announces that Iran has surrendered, and that ships are once again passing freely through the Strait of Hormuz. (They haven't, and they're not.)

 

Why does this matter?

• A president who had any clue what was happening probably wouldn't describe this situation as "fine and dandy." 

• A president who did understand the situation and had an idea to get himself out of this mess would probably take this opportunity to share it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He left the country to go to a golf course on September 11th.

 

At 8:57 P.M. tonight, Trump boarded a helicopter that took him to Joint Base Andrews, where he will shortly depart for Ireland. The trip is a vacation: he'll watch the Irish Open golf tournament at a seaside golf course he owns in County Clare.

Trump virtually always takes Friday off—usually leaving the White House for one of his golf resorts much earlier in the day than this—so in many respects this is a typical Friday for him. That extended to his other activities on the day as well. It began shortly after midnight, as he returned from his so-called midterm convention, when he snapped at and lunged towards a reporter. ABC News' Rachel Scott, a Black woman who has frequently been the target of Trump's temper, had asked him about his pledge to pay Americans $5,000 if they elected a Republican-majority Congress in the upcoming elections.

Later in the day, the left side of Trump's face drooped as he dozed through a memorial service at the Pentagon.

 

This will be the first time a president has ever been absent from the country on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks.
 

Why does this matter?

• Given that Trump spent most of the past week telling ridiculous new lies about his escapades at Ground Zero, it's probably just as well.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He sent his staff out to clean up the mess he made trying to bribe Americans for votes last night.

Last night, in the first of two speeches he's giving at the two-night "midterm convention" he called in Dallas, Trump blurted out a plan to give every adult American $5,000—but only if Republicans win the midterm.

TRUMP: And here is my promise. If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our economic, tremendous economic success—in history, we have never had anything like what's happening—I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000.

It's possible Trump made it up on the spot, although a handful of his aides are now saying they'd been looped in. Most, however, were clearly surprised by Trump announcing what amounts to an election bribe of $1.3 trillion dollars.

For comparison, that is more than half of the total individual income tax revenue collected last year. It's bigger than the defense budget, but it's smaller than the roughly $12 trillion Trump has added to the United States' total $40 trillion national debt during his time in office.

Reaction to Trump's latest attempt to make himself the focus of the midterm elections can be divided into two camps. Democrats and independents reacted with scorn and mockery, while Republicans mostly expressed emotions ranging from discomfort to horror. 

The one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that no such money will ever be forthcoming. Even Trump's assistant press secretary, Davis Ingle, refused to actually acknowledge the sum of money or any plans to pay it out, saying only that Trump would "keep delivering real results."

Where promises to pay Americans thousands of dollars out of their own government's treasury is concerned, though, Trump has never delivered a single dollar. In his second term alone, he's promised at least $12,000: the $5,000 from last night, a separate $5,000 "DOGE dividend," $2,000 in "tariff rebates," and $1,000-$1,500 to take the place of the Affordable Care Act.

Whether or not Trump had any intention of making those payments, there wouldn't have been any money to give out. DOGE's real purpose was to purge nonpartisan government employees, but what "savings" it delivered while destroying important parts of the machinery of the federal government amount to less than $10 per American. Tariff revenues—which Trump has already "spent" anyway, at least in his mind—are about $130 billion higher than in previous years, or about $390 per American. (That's money Americans already lost in the form of higher prices.) And the ACA money, in Trump's mind, would have been to replace all health insurance and return to paying all medical bills out of pocket.

Trump also tried to join in the clean-up effort today, although not in a way that's likely to help much. In an interview with Fox News that aired today, he was asked why, if he had any intention of issuing such a "dividend," he didn't do it now instead of demanding a victory for his party in the midterms first. Trump stammered, "Because they can't—I tell you what, the Democrats can't do it."

Republicans, not Democrats, currently control both houses of Congress.

Why does this matter?

• Past a certain point, all a lie tells you is how stupid the person telling it thinks you are. 

• Even the worst presidents before Trump never got this desperate.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He shifted the end date of the Iran war from "definitely six months ago" to "maybe two months from now."

Today is the 194th day of Trump's war with Iran. He first declared victory over Iran on the eighth day of the war, in early March, and has been repeatedly insisting that Iran has already been defeated ever since. 

He said it while loosening sanctions on Iranian oil mid-war, in a futile attempt to bring down the soaring gas prices caused by Iran's seizure of the Strait of Hormuz. 

He said it in June while being forced to agree, in theory at least, to humiliating terms just to bring Iran to the negotiating table, and then he said it again after Iran ignored those talks completely and refused to give up the tactical advantages it had gained. 

He said it after four servicemembers were killed by Iranian attacks in July—then deleted their names from a list of those killed during the war to support the idea that the war had already ended. 

He has said it so often that news organizations have attempted to keep track of how many times he's said it, only to lose interest. NBC News counted 32 times by early July.

But as virtually all observers outside the Trump White House agree, the reality is that Iran has trapped Trump in a quagmire he cannot escape through the only realistic tools available to him—economic sanctions and long-range bombardment—while simultaneously making it psychologically impossible for him to admit defeat. The result: a shockingly fast degradation of the United States' ability to function as both an economic and military power in the world.

Today, Trump changed course: instead of declaring the war over, he declared it would end sometime after the midterm elections, which are still two months away: "I think the war's going to end immediately after the election because they can't hold out any longer," Trump told reporters.

But in reality, that is an acknowledgment that Trump is unable to actually change the fact of Iran's new control over the Persian Gulf region, even though it is a matter of political life or death for his party. 

 

Trump made the remarks shortly before he spoke at the "midterm convention" in Texas that he demanded—with limited success—that Republican candidates attend. But even the diehard fans who made up the sparse crowd in Dallas tonight were expressing anger and disappointment over the situation with Iran.

Why does this matter?

• A president fit to command the United States military would never have gotten himself into this humiliating situation in the first place.