What did Donald Trump do today?

He gushed over his name being put on a road by a government that was clearly trying to manipulate him. 

Trump has long been obsessed with his personal brand. His fame as a real estate investor came more from his penchant for putting his name on buildings, than from any success he had as a businessman. (Even after inheriting a billion-dollar portfolio of prime New York City real estate at the beginning of a decades-long housing boom, Trump still managed to underperform the stock market for his entire "career" in real estate, and that's ignoring the businesses he ran into the ground.)

Since returning to office, one of his highest priorities has been to put his name or face on everything he possibly can, from passports to US currency (both bills and coins) to buildings to a new form of child savings account that's just a little worse than existing options in every way. He got the Florida resort town where he now lives to rename its airport after him—and made sure he got a cut of the profits in the bargain—and is trying to get Washington's Dulles Airport named for him too, as well as NYC's Penn Station.

(That is, to put it mildly, only a partial list.)

A number of countries have courted and received Trump's favor by proposing new local "Trump Towers," which doubled not only as a form of influence-buying but also money laundering. But Morocco's government hit on a simpler and much cheaper way of buying Trump's goodwill: it is naming a highway after him. 

Trump was delighted by the news, and announced it himself on social media. But there's an obvious catch: the road runs through the disputed territory of Western Sahara, which is under Moroccan occupation. Trump, unlike every other US president for the past 50 years, has been open to recognizing Morocco's claim, which is heavily disputed by residents and a number of African countries supporting independence.

In other words, this successful appeal to Trump's ego also binds the United States to a policy that favors the occupying Moroccan government.

Trump gushed that he was looking forward to traveling the entire 655-mile length. That can safely be chalked up to diplomacy: it connects small, isolated desert cities in the kind of place Trump likes to refer to as a "shithole country." Also, it's extremely unlikely that he'd be physically able to sit in a car for that long.

Satellite view of the highway Morocco's government says it is naming after Trump

Why does this matter?

• It shouldn't be this easy for a foreign government to emotionally manipulate the President of the United States. 

• A desperate need to force others to recognize the supernatural greatness you think you possess is called megalomania, and it's not a sign of good mental health.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He admitted that Iran had beaten him.

While in Versailles, France today, Trump apparently signed the memorandum of understanding establishing the basis for peace talks with Iran. Also today, the United States government released the text of the MOU for the first time, effectively confirming Iran's previous readout.

There is a broad consensus across the entire American political spectrum that the MOU, even as it is only a temporary bridge towards actual negotiations, is a catastrophic humiliation for Trump and the United States. Some of the most withering criticism of Trump came from staunch Republican allies who'd initially backed the war. Fox News contributor and former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) said he thought someone was playing a practical joke on him when he saw the confirmation of the terms, correctly noting that it makes the Iranian regime many billions of dollars richer while requiring them to change nothing about their nuclear ambitions. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said that President Reagan was "rolling over in his grave" and called the war "the worst foreign policy blunder in decades." 

Other prominent Republicans (summarized in this article by conservative columnist Howard Kurtz) used phrases like "doomed to fail" and "awful," and said that Trump's whole misadventure in Iran was characteristic of "an administration that habitually over promises and under delivers." Arch-conservative media figure Erick Erickson said flatly that "Trump has surrendered to Iran."

Pressed today on why he signed the MOU, Trump effectively admitted what he'd denied all along: that Iran's ability to choke off traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—something that had been theoretical until Trump forced their hand—had forced his hand. As he put it:

The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people. The Strait of Hormuz would never have been opened. 

Trump had, for weeks, been insisting against all common sense and evidence that ships were transiting the strait. And he'd insisted, in extremely explicit terms, that he didn't care about the economic pain Americans were feeling as a result of the war because ending the military and nuclear threat he said Iran posed was more important.

In a sign of just how eager Trump is to run away from the conflict, he reversed himself on those points today too. In separate sets of remarks, he openly endorsed Iran's right to develop long-range missiles and nuclear reactors.

Trump endorses Iran having ballistic missiles: "I'm saying that if other countries have them, it's a little unfair for them not to have some"

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) June 17, 2026 at 2:14 PM

Why does this matter?

• This is the President of the United States admitting he lied about the war the whole way through, from why he started it to why he lost. 

• There's defeat, and then there's whatever this is.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He took a routine medical evacuation as a personal insult and made sure everyone knew it.

Denmark's military announced today that its Joint Arctic Command had participated in the medical evacuation of a crew member from a U.S. submarine in the waters near Greenland's capital, Nuuk. According to the statement, the crew member was taken by Danish helicopter a short distance to a hospital in Nuuk.

Both the event and the announcement were unremarkable. Cooperation between allied military forces like this is normal and expected. 

This routine act of humanitarian aid seems to have been taken as a personal insult by Trump, though, who has become obsessed with seizing Greenland from Denmark. His reaction was to declare that he would send one of the US Navy's two hospital ships to Greenland, to "help with the many people who are sick" who—he claimed—were suffering from neglect by Denmark. He has not acknowledged the Danish sea rescue. 

The USNS Comfort

 

Greenland does face unique health challenges, mostly due to its small population, many of whom live in extremely isolated communities cut off by rugged terrain from regular travel to the capital. (Similar problems exist across the Arctic, for example in Alaska.) There is no chronic or acute health care shortage in Greenland that a ship meant to handle combat medicine or large-scale humanitarian disasters could help with.

Probably the simplest and most damning way to summarize the state of health care in Greenland is that Greenlanders have regular, no-cost access to health care that is not much better than what Americans with health insurance can get—but still much better than what the tens of millions of Americans who can't afford it can get. That number is sharply rising due to Trump's refusal to fund the United States' own healthcare system. 

About 15 million Americans—or about 272 times the entire population of Greenland—are expected to lose health care in the coming year due to the lapse of those subsidies in Trump's 2025 budget bill. 

Why does this matter?

• A U.S. sailor receiving emergency medical care from an ally nation isn't an insult and any president who gets mad about that is too emotionally unstable to serve. 

• Americans need the United States government to look after their health care more than Greenland does.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got equal parts confused and mad over a decision the British government made regarding its own territory.

In October 2024, the British government announced it would cede a smattering of tiny islands in the Indian Ocean back to the nation of Mauritius, settling a long-standing controversy about whether Mauritius was unlawfully forced to give it up as a condition of their independence in 1968. Minor transfers of land between nations like this are common, but this one does have some geopolitical significance, because of the presence of a joint US-UK military base. Under the planned cession, the British government will sign a 99-year lease for full control of the island housing the Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia. 

Of course, the lease is simply a legal and diplomatic nicety: Mauritius is a tiny nation with no military capability to force the issue, and its government is geopolitically aligned with the United States and the United Kingdom anyway.

Today, for reasons that remain unclear, Trump decided that now was the time to register his objections to the plan. He, or someone posing as him on his private social media platform, posted a rant warning the British Prime Minister to cancel the deal because the United States might need to use NSF Diego Garcia in a forthcoming attack on Iran.

This is gibberish for several reasons. First, the United States could still use the base, which it will retain complete control over. Second, even if it couldn't, it wouldn't need to: Diego Garcia is 4,000 km from the nearest point in Iran, and there are many airbases much closer or better equipped for a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Third, at least according to Trump's official version of events there is no need for a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities because—again, according to the official position of the Trump administration—its uranium enrichment capacity was "OBLITERATED LIKE NOBODY'S EVER SEEN BEFORE." (In reality, of course, this is not even remotely true, but Trump himself may very well believe that it is.)

What makes the matter even more confusing is that Trump is once again rapidly flip-flopping between extreme opposite positions. Not only did the U.S. State Department announce the Trump administration's support for the deal yesterday, but Trump himself said less than two weeks ago that this was the "best" deal possible.

The White House did not clarify Trump's comments today, other than to have the press secretary promise that this was, really and truly, Trump himself saying this and not anyone else putting words in his mouth (this time). 

Why does this matter?

• Whoever said this is too confused and careless to be running either military or diplomatic policy for the United States. 

• The only thing this kind of last-minute tantrum accomplishes is driving a wedge between the United States and its closest military allies, which is something only the United States' military opponents could want.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He wrote a note whining about Denmark to the wrong person in the wrong country.

Trump repeated a few of the same lies about Denmark and Greenland on social media today that he has been telling for years. Specifically, he suggested that NATO (an organization he loathes and frequently becomes emotional about) had been "telling Denmark for 20 years" about the looming Russian threat.

In reality, NATO members—most especially the United States—have been closing military installations on the island precisely because they weren't needed. (The United States has a treaty right to build them back up again, but Trump doesn't seem interested in doing this, for reasons he hasn't explained.)

But today also saw reporting that Trump is mixing up his Greenland obsession with his Nobel Peace Prize obsession, in the form of a letter to Jonas Gahr Støre, the Prime Minister of Norway. Nick Schifrin, a reporter with PBS, posted the text he'd confirmed with multiple government sources today:

 

There's no neutral way to put this: either Trump is suffering from an acute mental health episode, or a chronic cognitive one. Norway and Denmark are two different countries. The Norwegian government does not award the Nobel Peace Prize. And even if it did, threatening to wage war specifically out of spite for not getting a peace prize is absurd.

And most importantly, even if Trump believed Russia had designs on Greenland—and even if Trump thought that the Putin regime having its way was a bad thing—Denmark already has a robust system of defense. It is a member of NATO, whose members, including the United States, would be obliged to come to its aid if it were attacked.

Incidentally, in the 77-year history of NATO, only one country has ever invoked the portion of the charter that requires allies to come to its aid: the United States, after the September 11th attacks. As a deterrent to Soviet and later Russian aggression, it has never failed—which makes Trump attacking it from within worth far more to hostile countries like Russia than Greenland ever could be.

Why does this matter?

• It doesn't really matter whether a president is doing the bidding of hostile foreign nations out of incompetence, corruption, or any other reason.  

• This is not how someone who is mentally stable and alert enough to be president behaves.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He declared victory in Venezuela, all evidence to the contrary.

Trump posted a cheery message on his private microblogging service today: "I love the Venezuelan people, and am already making Venezuela rich and safe again." 

The U.S. State Department had a message about Venezuela's safety today, too, urging any Americans still there to leave immediately and to take extreme precautions in doing so. Its bulletin urged U.S. citizens to leave while international flights were still a possibility, and warned of

reports of groups of armed militias, known as colectivos, setting up roadblocks and searching vehicles for evidence of U.S. citizenship or support for the United States.  U.S. citizens in Venezuela should remain vigilant and exercise caution when traveling by road. 

It added that there were "severe risks to Americans, including wrongful detention, torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure." 

As for making Venezuela rich, Trump took pains to make sure that any money derived from the sale of seized Venezuelan oil was kept in an account only he could access—and not Congress, which the Constitution gives power of the purse to. Claiming that the sale of that oil would somehow amount to a national emergency, Trump signed an executive order late Friday night declaring it, for all practical purposes, a private presidential slush fund. The order claims that this makes the proceeds immune from any "attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process," cutting out the judicial branch too.

Trump's happy gloss on the peace and prosperity of Venezuela comes a day after yet another failed attempt to interest American oil companies in what amounts to free oil. Oil executives called Venezuela "uninvestable" precisely because there is so little guarantee that Trump will ever be able guarantee peace or prosperity while trying to run an extractive industry through an non-complaint puppet government.

Why does this matter?

• Prematurely declaring victory never works. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made his dictator fetish about as clear as he possibly could.

In the last few days, Trump has attacked and blockaded Venezuela, renewed threats to annex Greenland, tried to force Ukraine to surrender to Russia, and threatened violence against a laundry list of countries including but not necessarily limited to Cuba, Canada, Mexico, Iran, Syria, Denmark, Nigeria, Nicaragua, Colombia, Panama, and NATO as a whole.

Trump made two more alarming comments in an interview released by the New York Times today. The first came when he was asked if there were any limits on his powers to invade, harass, or overthrow other nations. He responded:

Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.  

In reality, Trump is above neither domestic nor international law, although he can't be prosecuted while he remains in office—especially since he made a point of appointing his personal defense lawyers to run the Department of Justice. 

The second alarming thing Trump said today is that he thinks that Xi Jinping, the authoritarian ruler-for-life of China, has the same rights where Taiwan is concerned, saying of Xi that "it's up to him" whether China breaks over 70 years of US-imposed stalemate and reconquers the island. This follows concerns that China, Russia, and other authoritarian regimes looking to expand their regional influence might follow Trump's lead in Venezuela. 

Trump's branding for the idea that he can attack, colonize, or extort any country that isn't the special province of another authoritarian ruler is the "Donroe Doctrine." That's meant to be a play on the Monroe Doctrine from the early 1800s. There's a more accurate historical analogy, though: the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact (also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact), in which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to divide Europe into their respective spheres of influence.

Why does this matter?

• "I am accountable to nobody on the planet except myself" is what a cartoon supervillain says, not the leader of a democracy. 

• The "morality" of a convicted felon, tax cheat, rapist, fraudster, and longtime close friend of Jeffrey Epstein isn't going to stop him from doing anything. 

• Empowering dictators is a bad idea for the United States but it is what you'd expect from a man who openly admires them and their tactics to the point of worshipfulness.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He launched an attack on Venezuela in furtherance of a plan he hasn't come up with yet.

In the early hours of Saturday morning, the United States launched an aerial attack on Caracas as an apparent distraction for the apprehension of its president, Nicolás Maduro. At least forty civilians are reported dead so far. Relatively little else is known about the attack almost a full day later.

At a press conference this morning, during which he struggled to stay awake when others were talking, Trump made perfectly clear that this his motivation was not the Maduro's supposed involvement in drug trafficking, or the questions around his legitimacy, but rather Venezuela's oil industry. (Venezuela produces a moderate amount of low-quality crude oil.) Trump claims to believe that the oil in Venezuela belongs to the United States by right, because Venezuela nationalized its oil industry fifty years ago and expelled American companies. He also claimed that those same American oil companies would participate in the takeover of the Venezuelan oil industry, saying that the United States was "in the oil business." He said, "We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies – the biggest anywhere in the world – go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure and start making money for the country." 

Asked for comment, no American oil company was willing to validate Trump's claim. 

Trump also insisted that the United States would "run" Venezuela in the meantime. How this was possible was immediately unclear: there are no American troops on the ground (that Trump has acknowledged, anyway), although he didn't rule out the possibility of American forces being deployed to Venezuela, which is roughly the size of the eastern seaboard of the United States. Trump and his administration seemed to genuinely believe they would have the cooperation of Venezuela's vice-president and now acting president, Delcy Rodriguez. But Rodriguez immediately and passionately denounced the capture of Maduro as a "barbarity," calling him Venezuela's "only true president," and vowing that there would consequences for the United States.

It's not clear why Trump believed Rodriguez would support what amounts to an external coup. She is generally regarded as an integral part of Maduro's administration, and is under personal economic sanction by the United States. Confusing matters even further, Trump specifically rejected the idea that the Venezuelan opposition—widely regarded as having a legitimate moral claim on the Venezuelan presidency after the disputed 2024 elections—could now form a government. 

In other words, based on what is known tonight, Trump launched an attack that killed at least 40 Venezuelans in order to apprehend Maduro, then confidently but wrongly claiming he had the support of the second-in-command of the same regime—the one who was supposed to allow him to "run" Venezuela. 

The official justification for Maduro's apprehension was an indictment in U.S. federal court for his alleged involvement in cocaine trafficking. This is the same offense for which Trump pardoned a different former head of State, Juan Orlando Hernández. 

Trump himself was indicted in two different federal districts and remains liable to prosecution—and presumably capture by the United States military—when and if he leaves office. 

Why does this matter?

• The skill and capability of the United States military does not make up for this kind of incompetence at the executive level. 

• Innocent people died today for a plan that Donald Trump hasn't bothered to think through.   

• The American people were overwhelmingly opposed to exactly this happening, and Trump knew it. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why does this matter?

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

What did Donald Trump do today?

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Why does this matter?

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

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

What did Donald Trump do today?

He presented Ukraine with an ultimatum for a "peace deal" that Russia wrote.

Although he bragged on the campaign trail that he'd be able to do it on "day one," Trump has completely failed to broker a peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine—in spite of all but switching the United States' side in the middle of the war. Today, he offered Ukraine yet another ultimatum, demanding that its government accept a 28-point plan by next Thursday or have the United States completely withdraw its military support.

The "new" plan is much like Trump's last few attempts to broker a deal. Like those previous proposals, it gives the Putin regime all of the portions of Ukraine it's seized through force, and then some. It forces Ukraine to stand down its army, enters it into an exploitative agreement with the United States for the extraction of mineral resources, and forces it to supply Russia with electricity. It also richly rewards both the Russian state and the Putin regime with the end of sanctions and readmission into the G8 group of nations. And, as with the previous proposals, it concedes more to Russia than Russia has been able to take by force or threat.

In summary, it amounts to a complete surrender by Ukraine in all but name. For obvious reasons, the Putin regime is delighted by it, and has said so publicly.

There is one new twist to Trump's latest plan, however—or at least one that hadn't been noticed in previous drafts: it was apparently written directly by Russians. The English-language draft shows clear evidence of having been translated directly (and awkwardly) from a Russian-language original—even though, supposedly, the U.S. State Department and Trump's dubiously qualified personal envoy Steve Witkoff were the ones brokering the deal. 

If that had been the case, it would have been written in standard English first and then translated into Ukrainian and Russian. Pressed on the point, the White House admitted that the text had been written with the "help" of Russian envoy Kirill Dimitriev—and no Ukrainian counterpart.

In other words, Trump is pressuring Ukraine to accept its "mediation" to end the war by restating Russia's demands. 

Trump is financially and politically beholden to the Putin regime. But Americans outside of the Trump White House overwhelmingly favor continuing support for Ukraine.

Why does this matter?

• American foreign policy should reflect what Americans want, not what Vladimir Putin wants. 

• A president who is compromised in any way by a hostile foreign power is not fit to serve. 

• Betraying an ally like this is disgraceful.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said South Korea could use American nuclear submarine technology after South Korea gave him a literal gold crown.

At a highly choreographed meeting at the Gyeongju National Museum in Seoul, South Korean officials presented a delighted Trump with a literal golden crown. Trump stared, rapt, at the enormous crown, which a South Korean official said "symbolizes the divine connection between the authority of the heavens and the sovereignty on Earth, as well as the strong leadership and authority of a leader." Trump was also given various other golden accoutrements.

 

The subtext of the flattery was pretty obvious: Trump has reacted to massive nationwide "No Kings" protests by tweeting AI images of him wearing crowns. 

Trump, for his part, promised the South Korean government they could build three nuclear submarines using extremely sensitive American technology. He touted this on social as a revitalizing of the Philadelphia shipbuilding industry, but that is already thriving where commercial ships are concerned—and a South Korean company already owns Philadelphia's shipyards.

The "deal" Trump announced today follows a now-familiar pattern: He pretended pre-existing foreign ownership of American businesses were new investments, and made promises (like the nuclear technology) that future administrations will be bound by in exchange for meaningless "commitments" for more of the same. A promise by South Korea to pay what amounts to a $350 billion bribe in exchange for being exempted from tariffs, for example, falls apart on the details. It's quite likely that Trump's entire tariff regime will be radically scaled back by the courts within weeks, or at the very least immediately dropped by future administrations. In the meantime, the requirement that South Korea invest in American businesses or buy American oil and gas—again, things they already do as the normal course of trade—is completely unenforceable year-to-year.

In other words, whether he understands it or not, Trump traded access to some of the most closely-guarded military technology in the American arsenal for the chance to make some triumphant tweets—and a crown.

Why does this matter?

• Any other president flattered in such an obvious and manipulative fashion would know enough to be insulted. 

• American diplomacy should be about what's best for the country, not what will make Trump look like he accomplished something.

What did Donald Trump do today?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Why does this matter?

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

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

What did Donald Trump do today?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Why does this matter?

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

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

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

What did Donald Trump do today?

He was very angry very late at night and had to post about it.

Just shy of 2 A.M. this morning, Trump posted this to his private microblogging website:

The very wonderful and talented Lara Trump, whose show is a big ratings success, put racist sleazebag Charlamagne "The God" (Why is he allowed to use the word "GOD" when describing himself? 

[N.B.: Trump appears to be trying to say that Lara Trump had Charlamagne as a guest on her Fox News weekend show.] 

Can anyone imagine the uproar there would be if I used that nickname?). He's a Low IQ individual, has no idea what words are coming out of his mouth, and knows nothing about me or what I have done - like just ending 5 Wars, including a 31 year bloodbath between Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, where Seven Million people have died, and there was no end in sight. He didn't know that, or India and Pakistan or, wiping out Iran's nuclear capabilities, or closing the horrendous open Border, or creating the greatest economy, where prices and Inflation have come way down, and where STUPID and CORRUPT JOE BIDEN set the record for doing the Worst Job as President, EVER. But this dope, Charlamagne, would vote for Sleepy Joe or Kamala? Remember, one year ago our Country was DEAD, now it's the "HOTTEST" Country anywhere in the World. MAGA!!!

There's a lot to unpack here, but it ends in a familiar place: Trump's Epstein cover-up.

Charlamagne Tha God is the stage name of Lenard Larry McKelvey. He adopted the handle as he rose through the hip-hop equivalent of the shock DJ ranks, where oddball names like "Bubba the Love Sponge" or "Wolfman Jack" are common. We don't have to wonder what would happen if Trump compared himself to God, because he's done it many times.

"Low IQ individual" is one of Trump's favorite insults, although one he's very selective about deploying. Here is a gallery of the people he's on record as calling that name:

 
Recently, Trump has been claiming to have "ended" a varying number of wars, usually around five or six. In most cases, the United States has had literally nothing to do with it, and where Trump has actually tried to impose a cease-fire through diplomatic force of will, the results have been deeply embarrassing. This is, by all accounts, part of his campaign to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, something he has been seething about for years because President Obama has one and he doesn't. In fact, Trump pines so openly for that recognition that "nominating" him for the prize seems has become a favorite way for governments looking to manipulate him to curry favor.

But Charlamagne's spot with Lara Trump didn't make Trump mad because he talked about about IQ scores or Nobel prizes. The main thrust of it was his prediction that traditional conservatives would retake control of the Republican Party from Trump. He noted that the very core of Trump's base is already furious with him over his cover-up of the Epstein scandal and his courting of a quid pro quo with Epstein's main accomplice, the convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

Maxwell was transferred last Thursday to a minimum security, high-privilege "honor dorm" prison camp, in flagrant violation of Bureau of Prison rules for someone convicted of sex crimes against children. The transfer happened shortly after she spoke for nine hours with representatives of the Trump DOJ. The ranking person on the scene was Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, whose previous job was serving as Trump's own criminal defense attorney. Maxwell's attorney made clear that she expected to be rewarded for saying the right things.

Trump has adamantly refused to rule out pardoning Maxwell, and has reiterated several times that he has every right to do so.

Why does this matter?

• There is only one possible reason any president would so stridently protect his right to pardon someone in a criminal child sex trafficking scheme conducted by close friends of his. 

• Assuming telling the truth is off the table, the smart thing for Trump to do now would be to stop drawing attention to the Epstein scandal, which he doesn't seem capable of doing. 

• Thinking that people of color are intellectually inferior is racism. 

• Agitation and emotional instability that becomes worse late in the day is not a sign of good cognitive health.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said nobody knows what his plans are for Iran, which may very well include him.

Asked today about the growing Iran-Israel crisis and whether he intended to bring the United States into the war, Trump smiled, joked about nosy reporters, and then gave a coy answer: "I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.” 

There are two ways to interpret Trump's remarks. 

The first is that "nobody" includes him. Trump is uniquely vulnerable in this situation, in ways no other American president would be, because he has been politically co-opted by both sides of the conflict at once. Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister, boxed Trump in by forcing him to endorse Israel's initial attack, even though it was done without consulting the United States and blew up Trump's last-minute attempt at diplomacy in the process. (The State Department's instantaneous response was that it had been done without US involvement, but Trump told a different story the next day, apparently so that he wouldn't look weak and out of the loop.)

But Iran is a military ally of Russia, and Trump is personally and politically beholden to the Putin regime no matter what the consequences for the United States. 

Domestic politics won't help Trump decide either. A substantial majority of the American people—including a majority of Trump voters—do not want the United States to get involved in a war with Iran, and keeping the country out of foreign entanglements was one of Trump's main campaign themes. But politics are transactional for Trump, and voters can't give him anything now. 

Meanwhile, there are hardliners in Trump's party who have been calling for war with Iran for years, and with many other wedge issues splintering his Congressional base of support already, he can't easily afford to alienate them.

The second possibility is that Trump does know what he intends to do (or is going to be forced to do), and is simply trying to draw attention to himself. Trump has covered for flip-flops, embarrassments, and outright mistakes before by insisting that he was merely pretending to be unstable or incompetent. 

In fact, he's tried to rationalize his behavior that way in another nuclear crisis—sort of. In 2017, after suddenly escalating tensions with North Korea, he retweeted a Fox News host's explanation: that he was acting erratically on purpose, to keep his adversaries off guard. 

Of course, if that's your actual strategy, it tends to work better if you don't announce it.

Why does this matter?

• It shouldn't be this hard to think that a president contemplating a Middle East war has any clue about what he's doing. 

• You cannot have national security unless that's actually a priority for the president.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He let Benjamin Netanyahu decide the United States' policy on Iran.

Earlier this month, international monitors have sounded the alarm that Iran was within weeks of assembling enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons. This is the culmination of Iran's return to unchecked progress on a bomb since 2018, when Trump abruptly withdrew the United States from a multinational agreement that allowed Iran to operate a nuclear energy program in exchange for unlimited monitoring of its nuclear stockpile.

Last night, Israel launched a drone and missile attack on Iranian nuclear sites and other targets. The State Department immediately and unconditionally disclaimed any involvement in the attack. This rang especially true in light of the fact that American personnel in the Middle East were evacuated only at the last minute.

Then, at 5:56 this morning, Trump went on his private microblogging website and insisted that he had known all about the attack all along and implied that it was all part of his grand strategy—completely contradicting everything his administration had said up to that point.

The explanation appears to be that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has used Trump's flailing attempts to broker a new "deal" against him. Netanyahu, like Trump, is a convicted criminal in his own country and is using his continued role in government to forestall prosecution—and that is part of why he is deeply opposed to any kind of detente with Iran. But Israel is not militarily capable of taking out Iran's nuclear capabilities by itself. 

Trump had been trying to bring Iran to the bargaining table for a replacement nuclear nonproliferation deal, through the efforts of Steve Witkoff, his chief negotiator. Witkoff is a real estate lawyer with no diplomatic experience other than his concurrent attempts to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia—which has also been a failure. 

In other words, Netanyahu's actions appear to have forced Trump to choose between two options: either support the attack and pretend he'd been in the loop, or admit that he had not been in control of the situation, and that he was not someone his notional ally felt needed to be part of the decision-making process.

The United States is now participating in the defense of Israel against retaliatory attacks from Iran. This means that the United States is now directly involved in a shooting war in the same region that Trump repeatedly promised to bring peace to through his "dealmaking" skills.

Why does this matter?

• American national security is much, much, much more important than making Donald Trump look like he knew what he was doing.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He couldn't get away from the subject of his $400M "gift" plane.

Trump is on a three-country tour of the Middle East this week, visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. His family's wealth is deeply enmeshed with the ruling monarchies of all three of these countries. For example, Saudi Arabia gave billions of dollars to Trump's son-in-law's private equity firm even though their own analysis showed that it was probably a bad investment. (Once Trump was re-elected, other Gulf states, including Qatar, ponied up money for it as well.) And the UAE has, in recent weeks, been throwing money at several Trump business ventures, including real estate and cryptocurrencies.

In return, Trump has made a number of policy and diplomatic concessions to the rulers of these Gulf states, including ending sanctions on Syria and lavishly praising the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. MBS, as he is known, orchestrated the murder of a Saudi-American journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, during Trump's first term. The brutal murder of Khashoggi was international news for months, forcing Trump—who was financially entangled with the Saudi royal family then, too—to pretend he didn't know that American intelligence agencies had definitively linked the murder to MBS. 

Today, in his remarks about MBS, Trump gushed, "I like him a lot. I like him too much. That's why we give so much, you know? Too much. I like you too much."

But the main symbol of Trump's willingness to sell access to him and to the levers of American power for this week remains the $400M ultra-luxury jet that the Qatari ruling family wants to gift him. 

Trump has insisted it's not really "for" him because it would be donated to his presidential library after he left office, but only he or his heirs would ever have control over its use, making it his property in all but the most technical sense. He's insisted that it's "free," although inspecting and retrofitting it to the military standards necessary for a plane carrying the president will cost far more than the plane is worth in its current form.

Trump has always been intensely emotional on the subject of the planes he uses almost every week to shuttle between his various resorts, particularly with respect to the age of the current Air Force One. Its airframe is, as Trump bitterly complains about, some 40 years old. But it is, in every conceivable sense, a far "newer" plane than most Americans will ever see. Trump spent a great deal of time during his first term trying unsuccessfully to finagle a new plane on a faster schedule—or at least a new paint scheme. 

Pressed yet again on the matter today, Trump resorted to one of the few subjects where he has bona fide knowledge: golf. 

There was an old golfer named Sam Snead, did ever hear of him? He was a great golfer, he won 82 tournaments, and he had a motto: When they give you a putt, you pick up your ball, say "thank you very much" and walk to the next hole. A lot of people are stupid. They say "no, no, I insist on putting it." Then they putt it, they miss it. And their partner gets angry at them. You know what, remember that. Sam Snead. When they give you a putt, you pick it up, you walk to the next hole and say "thank you very much."

Trump is referring to the golf custom known as a "gimme," where in friendly no-stakes games, very short putts are treated as having been made without the player having to actually take a stroke or sink the putt. Of course, in the actual sport, which takes its rules so seriously that many infractions result in disqualification even if there was no ill intent on the part of the player, this is completely forbidden.

The United States Constitution, which are the rules of the game for Trump as president, explicitly forbids the president or any other officer to receive any "present" from any "king, prince, or foreign state" without explicit approval from Congress. 

Incidentally, for a man whose cognitive function is regularly called into question, Trump's recollection of Snead's record is accurate: he did, in fact, win exactly 82 PGA tournaments. However, in an interview on board the present Air Force One today, Trump couldn't recall the name or title of the person trying to give him the new plane.

Why does this matter?

• Open, naked corruption is still corruption.
  

• Nobody who becomes emotionally distraught because one of the most advanced, luxurious planes in the world simply isn't good enough is fit to serve as president.
  

• No matter how much a president may like kings, the President of the United States is not a king.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got ready to deport Afghans who helped the United States while welcoming exclusively white "refugees" from South Africa.

The Trump administration conducted a gaudy welcome ceremony for 59 citizens of South Africa, all of them white, declaring them "refugees" from a non-existent "genocide." In reality, some white landowners whose ownership of farms has its roots in decades of apartheid-era oppression of Black South Africas are upset by a new law which allows the government to seize unused or underused land for public development. (The United States and virtually every other country has a similar legal process, generally known as eminent domain.) 

Little if any land has been seized from white farmers under the law, and none without compensation. Trump has referred to this as a "genocide," a characterization that white South Africans themselves overwhelmingly reject.

Trump, who falsely assumes Congressional districts with Black representatives are "crime-infested" and who railed against "shithole countries" with Black- or Latino-majority populations, insisted that race was not a factor in remarks today. He then immediately followed that statement by saying that he had offered refugee status exclusively to the white Afrikaner minority because "white farmers" were being killed. In reality, three times as many Black South Africans were killed on farms in recent years.

A State Department spokesperson later made the subtext even clearer, saying that white South Africans were being favored over people in actual danger because, apparently unlike refugees from almost any other group, they "could be assimilated easily."

Trump has shut down virtually every other refugee assistance program while openly courting the white Afrikaner population, apparently at the instruction of his political patron Elon Musk, whose family fortune also has its roots in apartheid. 

As of today, that includes protection from deportations for Afghan citizens who aided the United States during its decades-long war in that country. The current Taliban-dominated government of Afghanistan is very likely to persecute refugees deported from the United States. The Trump administration's official line is that Afghanistan is now "peaceful."

Why does this matter?

• The only reason to make a public show of welcoming wealthy white "refugees" in no actual danger is to make a mockery of people who actually need help.

•  Betraying allies who sacrificed their lives and family members for the United States may common under Trump, but it's still evil. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He begged Vladimir Putin to play along with the "peace deal" only he wants.

Early Wednesday morning, Russia launched missile attacks at Ukraine's two largest cities. An unusually large strike against a civilian target even by Russian standards, the attacks killed at least 12 people in an apartment building in the capital city of Kyiv.

Trump, who has single-handedly switched the United States' side in the war to align with the Putin regime, has been attempting to broker a peace agreement, something he'd bragged on the campaign trail he could accomplish on "day one." But neither Ukraine nor Russia seems interested. 

Russia's indifference is most likely because it hopes it can invade even more Ukrainian territory than it already has now that Trump has sidelined American support for Ukraine's defense. Ukraine opposes Trump's plan because it is essentially a surrender to Russia without any real guarantees against further aggression. Trump also wants to lift sanctions on the Putin regime, which would amount to a massive financial windfall for both the Russian state and for the network of oligarchs who administer Putin's personal wealth.

Trump's personal loyalties aside, the vast majority of Americans support Ukraine in the conflict.

In response to the Russian attack, which further embarrassed his efforts to broker a deal, Trump took what he may have hoped was a stern tone with Putin on his private microblogging website:

 

(Trump did not say when would have been a good time to send North Korean missiles into an apartment building.)

Public reaction to his pleading was not kind to Trump, with pundits using terms like "pathetic" and "objectively embarrassing."

Trump's frustration was evident today when he snapped at a reporter who asked whether he'd try to put any pressure on the Putin regime: "You don’t know what pressure I’m putting on Russia." That much is true: nobody is aware of any pressure Trump is putting on Russia.

Why does this matter?

• Presidents who aren't completely captive to hostile foreign autocrats at least occasionally act like it.
  

• For someone who likes people to think of him a tough guy, this really is humiliating.