What did Donald Trump do today?

He invented a brand new lie about his supposed 9/11 heroics to go with all the old ones.

Today, at a ceremony that was supposed to honor fallen heroes of September 11th, Trump unveiled a new and unequivocally false story that put him squarely at the center of the action. Not just supervising literally "hundreds" of Trump Organization employees in a rescue effort—a disproven lie he's told in the past—but personally in danger of death at the U.S. Steel building right next to the collapsed towers. 

TRUMP: And I'll never forget, two firemen—we thought it was coming down on top of us, and two firemen, big strong guys—and I'm not the smallest guy in the world—they grabbed me under the arm, said, 'Got to get out of here!' and they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I'm big. They lifted me up and they started running with me, I said, "Fellas, I can run myself." But they were amazing, but they thought it was coming down. It didn't come down, U.S. Steel.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Trump was anywhere near the World Trade Center site on September 11th or September 12th. The earliest he was anywhere near the site was on September 13th, when he gave the latest in a series of post-attack interviews, this time for a German news outlet. He did not mention the fictitious imminent collapse of the U.S. Steel building then—or at any point in his life until today.

That interview on the 13th was when he claimed to be there supervising Trump Organization workers—"over one hundred… and about 125 [more] coming." This was, and has always been, a lie. No one, including the hundreds of supposed workers, has ever come forward with any evidence. Contrary to Trump's version of the facts, untrained office workers would not have been allowed anywhere near the site, which was incredibly dangerous and an active crime scene. As an NYFD battalion chief at the time put it, if Trump's phantom army of volunteers existed,

There would be a record of it. Everybody worked under direct supervision of the police and fire department and the joint commander for emergency services.  

In reality, by early on the afternoon of September 11, Trump had kicked off a media blitz. He called into a local Fox affiliate to brag that a property he owned, 40 Wall Street, was now the tallest in Manhattan. Even this was a lie: The Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and 70 Pine Street were all taller. Trump didn't even own the building: he just held the lease. 

During his post-attack publicity spree, Trump promised the massive audience of the Howard Stern radio show that he would give $10,000—about 0.01% of his supposed net worth at the time—to 9/11 charities. He never did. In 2016, while running for president, he directed his charitable foundation to give $100,000 of other people's money to the 9/11 Museum. (That foundation was later dissolved by court order as a fraud.)

Trump's September 11th story has changed considerably over the years, though never quite as dramatically as today. When he was running on an anti-Muslim platform in 2016, he claimed to have seen television footage of a "large Arab population… thousands and thousands of people" in Jersey City who were "cheering as that building was coming down." This, too, is a lie: literally nobody other than Trump has ever corroborated his story, which would have happened during a time of extreme tension and backlash against Muslim- and Arab-Americans. No such television footage ever existed.

At today's event, Trump also "jokingly" complained that an actual 9/11 hero, the volunteer firefighter Welles Crowther, had "become more famous than me—I don't like it." Crowther, whose identity as the man who ran repeatedly upstairs to guide injured people to safety, died on the day of the attacks. He had helped to save 18 people who were trapped on the upper floors of the South Tower, just below the point of impact.

Welles Crowther, who died on Sept. 11, 2001, after saving the lives of 18 other people

Trump will not attend the official 9/11 memorial in New York City. He is scheduled to leave the country on that day to attend a golf tournament in Ireland. 

Why does this matter?

• The kindest possible interpretation of what Trump dared to say today, in front of the families of actual heroes and victims, is that he is so far gone into dementia that he has no idea what he's saying. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He demanded and got an illegal US coin honoring himself.

The U.S. Mint announced today that gold-colored $1 coins with Trump's face on them are now in circulation.

 

It is flatly illegal for the US Mint to issue any currency, whether coins or bills, featuring a living person. 31 U.S. Code § 5114 (b) states, unambiguously, that "only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities."

Trump appears to have simply ordered the Mint to proceed in violation of the law, and without consulting the outside review committee that would have had to approve it. Both Republican and Democratic members of that committee were opposed to Trump putting his face on real United States currency.

American money joins a very long list of things that Trump has tried, and in some cases succeeded, in using the power and influence of the presidency to get his name or face attached to since returning to office. It includes, but is not limited to: airports, train stations, passports, independent government agencies, savings accounts, government benefits websites, a class of battleships, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, national parks passes (which the National Parks Service is under orders to void if Trump's face is covered), and special pay-to-play backdoor to citizenship for wealthy people.

Why does this matter?

• This kind of self-obsession is dangerous and pathological even before the powers of the office of the President are involved. 

• Leaders obsessed with forcing their own image into everyday life aren't exactly uncommon in history, but those memorials don't often work as well as the dictators hope they will.

 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He bragged about an article that credited President Biden with lowering drug prices.

Trump's White House communications team spent the day trumpeting a headline from yesterday's Washington Post that noted a drop in prescription drug prices. The PR blitz came a day after Trump waved a printout of the article at reporters, proudly asking, "Did you see it? Okay, got it? Everybody have it?"

 

But the actual article explicitly gives the credit for the drop in drug prices to former President Joe Biden, repeatedly and pointedly noting that Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, which required Medicare to negotiate for bulk discounts on drugs, was most likely the reason.

Trump is famous for his short attention span and unwillingness, if not inability, to read anything that's not about him. It's not clear if his press team had also failed to read the article either, or whether they knew what it contained and simply felt it was easier to pacify Trump by following his lead in bragging about "his" accomplishment.

But at least one person in the Trump White House seemed to know why he shouldn't be drawing attention to what the article actually said. Steven Cheung, the White House communications director, posted a screen shot of the headline only—with no link to the text that praised Biden's accomplishment.
 

Why does this matter?

• A president with achievements of his own wouldn't have to try to steal credit for things his predecessors had done.
   
• Presidents should be both willing and able to read a short newspaper article.

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 put words in the mouths of American soldiers he got killed.

Today, the Defense Department announced the names of another killed in the ongoing war in Iran. The body of Sgt. Angel Rampersad of Queens, New York, was brought back to American soil at Dover AFB, along with the remains of two other soldiers killed in an Iranian attack on an Army post in Jordan.

 

Asked about the deaths today en route to the transfer ceremony, Trump put words in the mouths of the dead soldiers, claiming that "they said, and—all of them said, very strongly, 'we can't let—cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.'"

Trump, of course, never spoke to any of them while they were alive, and if he'd spoken with their families—a responsibility he's tried to avoid in the past—the White House hasn't mentioned it. He himself didn't settle on the nuclear justification for quite some time after the war began. Instead, Trump seems to have been pressured or manipulated by the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who wanted open war with Iran for his own domestic political reasons. 

Trump has outright lied about what dead servicemembers and their families have said in the past. He's also publicly picked fights with grieving family members who don't let him control the narrative. In 2017, after he'd ordered an ill-advised raid in Niger that saw four American soldiers killed, he lectured a widow on how her husband would have felt about his sacrifice, and then attacked her in the press when she told reporters what he'd said.

Trump, who dodged the draft in Vietnam by getting a tenant of his father's to write him a fake medical excuse, has often expressed contempt for people who died in military service. He once asked his former chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, "What was in it for them?" and referred dead servicemembers as "suckers" and "losers." (Kelly's own son was killed in Afghanistan.) At an earlier transfer ceremony, he took the opportunity to wear a campaign baseball cap, which he did not take off in the presence of the bodies.

The American death toll in the war now stands at 18.

Why does this matter?

• Even by Trump's standards, this is a disgusting kind of lie to tell.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got in the way of sports, again.

Trump attended the World Cup final at the Meadowlands in New Jersey today. As is usually the case when Trump goes to a sporting event, his visit resulted in three things happening:

1. Loud, sustained boos. Trump is deeply unpopular with both American and international audiences, and fans at sporting events always let him know it. (That's why he's tried to promote the annual Army-Navy football game—cadets under military orders can't boo him.)
   
   Today was no exception: when he took to the field to take part in the trophy ceremony, he was loudly booed.
   
   
2. Disruption and delays. As usual, Trump's security requirements forced long waits for fans who paid for tickets—up to three hours in the hot sun, just to get through security. Fans were told to arrive four hours early for this game, although there were no waits at all for other capacity crowds at the Meadowlands during the tournament.
   
   Journalists in particular reported being turned away in spite of having valid credentials.
   
   
3. Making himself the center of attention. In spite of the loud boos that greeted his appearance, Trump seemed to consider himself part of the celebration for the victorious Spanish team, and had to be cajoled off the stage by FIFA president Gianni Infantino.
   
   
   
   
   
   It was an eerie repeat of Trump's bizarre performance at the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, a warm-up event for this year's tournament. Then, Trump refused to yield the stage to the tournament's winners, instead standing center stage with the trophy while boos rained down on him. A tournament official had to physically take hold of the trophy and guide Trump to the waiting Senegalese team, and he still stood in front of them as they celebrated. 
   

 

Why does this matter?

• Past a certain point, the need to be the center of attention becomes pathological. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got Americans excited about watching scaffolding go up in the middle of the night, among other arts news.

Trump's name was ordered to be physically removed from the facade of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, the capitol-area institution that he tried to rebrand after himself. Since returning to office, Trump purged the Kennedy Center's board, stocked it with personal loyalists, installed himself as the emcee of its awards ceremony, cancelled or drove away most of the artists scheduled to perform there, and tried to turn it into a culture-war battlefield. He also had his name installed above Kennedy's.

But only an act of Congress can rename the Center, and even with a Republican majority in both houses for the moment, there is very little appetite in Trump's party to indulge in his obsession with using the power of his office for self-promotion. Federal courts struck down the move, and last week Trump appeared to acquiesce, sort of. He issued a sulky social media post saying that if he couldn't have it named for himself, he'd "transfer" the Center back to Congress's control, which is legally meaningless.

 

 

But late yesterday, at the very last minute, Trump made one last-ditch attempt, in the form of a motion for an emergency stay of a judge's order to chisel his name off the building. In it, his loyalists on the Board claimed to have rewritten their own bylaws to cripple the Center's fundraising arm if and only if Trump's name was removed from the building.

 

In other words, Trump had his political appointees put a poison-pill provision in the Center's own governing documents designed to hurt it financially if a judge tried to enforce the law.

The motion was promptly denied.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people tuned into livestreams of the Kennedy Center's facade all day in anticipation of Trump's name being taken down. Scaffolding slowly went up over the course of the day, delayed for a while by lightning in the area. By midnight EST, Trump's name was still up, but workers continued preparations as raucous crowds chanted "bring it down."

Trump's loyalists on the Kennedy Center board are also being sued for a more traditionally Trump-like reason: they're accused of trying to steal funds from a non-profit organization, the Washington National Opera. (Trump's own "charity" was dissolved by the State of New York when he was found to be using it as a personal slush fund, vehicle for tax evasion, and as a way of making illegal campaign donations.)

The WNO's suit alleges that, after years of mutually beneficial partnership, the Center's board illegally used the WNO's endowment as collateral for its own loans. Then, when the WNO decided to end the partnership, the Center's board seized donations it had been managing for the opera. It also "cut off the opera’s access to its emails, donor records and board minutes dating to 2011; locked staff out of their offices; sent termination letters to WNO employees; and scrubbed the opera’s remaining season from the center’s website."

Why does this matter?

• This is the kind of destructive, self-centered behavior that would have parents worried if a four-year did it, much less a sitting President of the United States. 

• There's a term for striking down monuments to self-glorifying dictators—damnatio memoriae—and all things considered, given how dictators usually meet their ends, it's the moderate response. 

What did Donald Trump do today?

He tried to make himself a hero for pardoning a white-collar criminal who got caught trying to cheat pollution rules.

Shortly after concluding a full week following a hospital visit in which he did not appear in front of cameras, Trump gave what amounted to a rally speech today in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Uncharacteristically, he remained sitting the whole time, leading to some speculation that he wasn't able to stand for that long. 

During the speech, Trump made reference to a man he had supposedly pardoned from a seven-year prison sentence for the crime of "fixing his car." 

There is legitimate debate over the so-called "right to repair" issue. As consumer goods, and especially vehicles, become more complex and computerized, manufacturers are more likely to use software or intellectual property protections to force third-party repair shops to pay a licensing fee for access. This can drive up repair costs and limit what consumers can do with their own property. That appears to be the spotlight that Trump was trying to jump in front of today.

In reality, the man Trump was apparently referring to, Troy Lake, was not in prison for  "seven years" and certainly not for "fixing his car." Lake, the owner of a large truck repair company, was convicted for his role in an interstate conspiracy to disable emissions monitoring on hundreds of heavy-duty commercial trucks so that they'd pass inspections. That gave Lake's co-conspirators, who owned the trucks that Lake disabled monitors for, a huge financial advantage over competitors who followed the law and kept their trucks in compliance with emissions standards. As the Department of Justice noted at the time:

Emissions controls on vehicles are critical to maintaining air quality, and when these controls are disabled, the increase in excess tailpipe pollution is significant. A study of the effects of tampering with these 344 trucks showed that the conspirators in this case collectively caused an illegal increase in pollutants of at least 1,300 tons of excess nitrogen oxides, 30 tons of excess non-methane hydrocarbons, 600 tons of excess carbon monoxide, and 30 tons of excess particulate matter. The World Health Organization has found that diesel exhaust is a carcinogen and causes lung cancer. Diesel exhaust is also associated with asthma and an increased risk of mortality from cardiovascular and respiratory disease. These impacts disproportionately affect low-income communities that tend to be located near highways and other high-traffic areas. 

Lake's actual sentence was for one year, not seven. Trump also seemed confused about other details: he claimed that he'd pardoned Lake one or two weeks ago, but it happened last December. He also blamed the conviction on "the Democrats" but the investigation into Lake and his criminal co-conspirators began in 2018, when Trump was president.

Why does this matter?

• If Trump had pardoned someone people would actually have sympathized with, he wouldn't have needed to lie about what the criminal had done.
  
  
• Past a certain point, lies get so obvious that they're just another way of telling your audience you think they're stupid.

What did Donald Trump do today?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why does this matter?

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

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

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

What did Donald Trump do today?

He preened over renaming a building for himself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why does this matter?

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

What did Donald Trump do today?

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

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

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

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

Further shooting was reported just a few minutes later.

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

Why does this matter?

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

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

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

What did Donald Trump do today?

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

Why does this matter?

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

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

What did Donald Trump do today?

He awarded himself a peace prize while taking credit for ending a war that's still going on.

Trump hosted leaders of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda today, to celebrate a "peace accord" signed at the White House. Trump claims this as one of an ever-changing number of "wars" he's "ended." For the most part, when he's been able to articulate which wars he's referring to, they have been long-running brushfire conflicts that, almost without exception, continue to burn in spite of Rose Garden ceremonies in which Trump declares himself a peacemaker.

That was the case for today's "peace" announcement, with the same sporadic fighting continuing even as the countries' leaders signed a document for the cameras.

It wasn't the only "peace" news related to Trump today, as news broke that he's literally, physically slapped his name on the building that houses the U.S. Institute of Peace. The USIP is an independent agency that Trump appointed a white supremacist to lead while illegally seizing the building earlier this year. 

Trump, who has effectively switched the United States' side in the Russia-Ukraine war and is threatening to start a war in Venezuela, has spent a great deal of time and energy this year in a failed attempt to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Why does this matter?

• Giving yourself prizes for pretend accomplishments is pathetic in anyone and especially in the President of the United States.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He "joked" with a dictator about illegally staying in power after his term ends.

Trump has spent much of his second term desperately looking for some kind of peace deal he can claim he has brokered, in order to burnish his case for the Nobel Peace Prize he feels he deserves. This has created an opportunity for other nations, who can curry favor with him by "nominating" him. Five countries have done so already, extracting favors in the process. The most recent two countries to do, Azerbaijan and Armenia, allowed Trump to "negotiate" a cease-fire this week, although it had been in the works for years. 

Today, Trump gave Ilham Aliyev, the leader of Azerbaijan, a tour of the White House. Aliyev is a dictator who has held power by force and sham elections for 22 years, and whose family has been in de facto control of the country since the early 1990s. When he told Trump how long he had been in office, Trump replied that that made him "tough and smart"—the same kind of openly admiring language he's used to describe China's Xi Jinping and North Korea's Kim Jong-un for their ability to remain in power.

Trump took the opportunity to show Aliyev a White House office crammed full of "Trump 2028" merchandise, and teased his own plans to cling to power:

TRUMP: You know you're not allowed to run, uh, a — the — so — I mean — 'cause everyone —

ALIYEV: [laughter]

TRUMP: I'm 28 points higher than everyone—

ALIYEV: [laughing] I know. 

TRUMP: The — the — it's funny, so this drives them crazy, look. [Holds up a "Trump 2028" hat]. "Four more years." So that's sorta cool.

The "28 points" number is nonsense: with barely one in three Americans approving of his performance, only one president has ever been this unpopular at this point in their term, and it was Donald Trump in 2017. 

Trump frequently "jokes" about remaining in power after his second term ends, or "wonders" about whether the 22nd Amendment really applies to him. In reality, Trump tried to stay in power in 2020 even after he knew he'd lost a fair election to Joe Biden (according to his own Attorney General), first through frivolous lawsuits, then by attempting to corruptly influence state officials, and finally by inciting a violent insurrection against Congress in an attempt to prevent them from certifying Biden's win.
 

Why does this matter?

• Americans get to choose their own government whether the president likes it or not. 

• It shouldn't be this easy for a dictator of a tiny country to manipulate the President of the United States.  

What did Donald Trump do today?

He watched a soccer game and then acted like he'd won it.

Trump had a leisurely Sunday as usual, but swapped playing golf for watching soccer, attending the FIFA Club World Cup. The event was a dress rehearsal for the 2026 World Cup, which will be jointly hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

During the playing of the national anthem, the stadium video screen showed a live shot of Trump, provoking loud boos. In and of itself, that's not so unusual—presidents are polarizing figures even when they're popular, and after almost six months back in office, Trump is anything but popular. In fact, the only time a president had lower approval ratings than Trump does at this point in his term was when it was Trump himself in 2017.

Trump was booed again during the presentation of the trophy to the winning Chelsea team, not so much for his presence on the stage, but for his inexplicable refusal to yield it to the athletes. A FIFA official tried in vain to get Trump to step aside for the announcement of the winners, but he wouldn't budge. Eventually, the official succeeded in herding him to the back of the crowd of athletes he'd been standing in front of, holding the trophy himself.

 

His popularity aside, there are serious doubts about whether Trump will be willing or even able to allow the World Cup to proceed as usual. Normally the World Cup is one of the biggest international tourism events there is, but Trump has made the United States a pariah for foreign visitors, with legal visitors from close U.S. allies experiencing harassment, detention, and summary deportation due to Trump's hyper-paranoid approach to immigration enforcement. Revenues from the tourism sector—normally one of the biggest American industries—have fallen off a cliff as a result. 

In particular, the United States now requires foreign visitors to turn over sensitive social media information for screening, and visa applicants can be rejected for "political activism" or "any hostility towards the government of the United States"—meaning, in practice, criticism of Trump personally.

It's already affecting sports: the Senegalese women's basketball team was denied entry last month because of Trump's "national security" policies. At least one major league baseball team is advising its players—citizens and noncitizens alike—to carry their passports with them, for fear that ICE will detain anyone with a Hispanic surname or accent. When a worried FIFA board raised the question of how to square this with hosting an international tournament at a meeting with Trump last month, he reportedly responded that “tensions are a good thing,” and uncertainty would "make it more exciting."

Why does this matter?

• Past a certain point, the need to be the center of attention becomes pathological. 

• It's stupid and self-destructive for the president to kneecap a major American industry for no reason.  

Today is June 14. It is, among other things, Donald Trump's birthday, and as you may have heard, he made the Army throw him a parade. It happened—but given how badly he seems to want the attention, just this once, let's look at what people who aren't Donald Trump did today.

What did people who aren't Donald Trump do today?

Quite a lot, actually, all over the United States of America.

Beachgoers in San Francisco made some art.

 

In Atlanta, people were turned away from Liberty Plaza when it reached its capacity of 5,000.

Boise's capitol grounds were bustling.

Thousands of people rallied in downtown Minneapolis, in spite of warnings that the man who impersonated a police officer and murdered one Democratic legislator and her husband, and shot another and his wife, was still at large and planning to target a rally.

In West Palm Beach, citizens got as good a look at Mar-a-Lago as you can get without paying a million dollars a year for a membership. (For some reason, the bridge leading right up to it was blocked.)

In Arlington, some folks celebrated the Army's 250th birthday.

Versatile character actor and anti-war activist Mark Ruffalo, best known for his starring role opposite Channing Tatum in the sports thriller Foxcatcher, was mobbed by fans on the streets of Manhattan.

It was a beautiful, sunny day in Homer, Alaska (pop. 5,000).

Bostonians stood up for trans rights in a Pride parade.

In Starkville, Mississippi, a tiny little dog and her person spoke out against dangerous and cruel cuts to Medicaid.

In Philadelphia, someone put together a budget proposal for the administration to consider.

They pondered theology in Tallahassee.

 

In Cincinnati, some friends went for a stroll.

A woman in Gig Harbor, Washington, had some thoughts about fish. 

Residents in Gulfport, Mississippi coordinated their parasols.

Dolores Taylor of Denver got out and enjoyed the sun. 

Folks enjoyed novelty balloons in Los Angeles.

Approximately 2,000 marches, rallies, sit-ins, gatherings, and other forms of protest took place in big cities, small towns, and tiny villages all over the United States today, which is also Flag Day. Millions of Americans took part in them.

It wasn't all happy news today in America, though. Washington, DC hoteliers were lamenting unseasonably low occupancy rates for a June weekend with the Nationals playing at home. (The Nats dropped their seventh game in a row, 4-3, in a day game in front of a crowd of 21,129.)

Why does this matter?

• It matters because Americans can and still do exercise their rights to free speech and freedom of assembly no matter how much their government might wish they wouldn't.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He had some ideas about how to make sure American children were prospering.

Today, Trump did a product rollout for a provision in his budget bill: "Trump accounts" for newborns that would come with $1,000 in seed money invested in a stock market fund. The press release said that it would help teach children the "miracle of compounded growth and set them on a course for prosperity from the very beginning."

As is the case with many provisions in that bill—most notably, the tax rate itself, which will be changed to massively benefit the wealthiest Americans—it won't actually help any family below a certain income. 

Nevertheless, the plan makes for an interesting contrast with Trump's own upbringing. He has claimed—falsely—that his father had given him only a "very small loan" of $1 million, or 1,000 times as much money with which to seek his fortune. In reality, between his actual inheritance and various tax evasion schemes, Trump had been given about $413 million by the time his father died—not counting the value of Fred Trump's real estate business itself, which was a guaranteed income stream for Donald.

Ironically, Trump himself would have benefited from a lesson in the "miracle of compounded growth" in the stock market. Even as the value of the buildings he inherited skyrocketed thanks to the New York real estate boom, his own business ventures repeatedly failed or underperformed, to the point where his own net worth would indisputably be higher if he'd just invested his 413,000 "Trump accounts" worth of inheritance in an S&P index fund and let qualified business experts it.

If the "Trump account" plan sounds similar, it's because it's a watered-down and redundant version of an existing and superior program, the 529 Savings Plan. Those are established by parents to save tax-free for children's future educational needs, and are much more flexible. Even if a child chooses not to use the accumulated funds for education, up to $35,000 can be put in a Roth IRA, which is another kind of tax-free investment account. 529s and Roth IRAs can be used with almost any form of investment (not just a single index fund), and Roth IRAs can be tapped without penalty to pay for expenses many Americans encounter, like buying a first home, tuition, or medical emergencies.

Of course, they would also contain the seed money of $1,000. That is 5.3% the average cost of giving birth in a hospital ($18,835) for a parent whose Medicaid coverage was cut, as the same budget bill calls for. 

41% of Americans rely on Medicaid to pay for the cost of each delivery (not counting prenatal checkups), and about 3.5 million babies are born in the United States each year. If only half of those parents lost their coverage due to Trump's budget bill, then the net cost to parents would be about just over ten billion dollars: 

On the other hand, "Trump accounts," would, as a matter of law, have the name "Trump" in them.

Why does this matter?

• There are ways to build Trump's brand that don't involve taxpayer money. 

• There are many ways to improve the financial prospects of America's children that don't involve worrying about Trump's brand.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He gave graduating West Point seniors some advice.

Decked out in a hot pink tie and campaign baseball hat, Trump gave the commencement address to the graduating class at West Point today. Trump, whose draft-dodging is common knowledge and and who famously called America's war dead "suckers" and "losers," nevertheless seems to enjoy speaking to military audiences, where discipline and protocol mean that he will never have to worry about a crowd's reaction.

As he does in most speeches, Trump walked the graduates through a litany of grievances he had over his impeachments and criminal convictions. He directly insulted the military leadership that the graduates will be serving under. He said that he—not the military, but he himself—had "defeated ISIS in three weeks." (No part of that is true.) And he let the nation's newest crop of Army officers in on a secret: "We have introduced a thing called drones." 

Then, apparently departing from his script, he told this story to the young men and women who will now begin their careers as commissioned Army officers. A video clip can be seen here, and as is often the case with Trump, hearing it is a different kind of experience than reading it.

Momentum is an amazing thing. Keep it going. I tell a story sometimes about a man who was a great, great real estate man. He was a man who was admired for real estate all over the world actually. All over the country. He built Levittown. He started as a man who built one house, then two, then five, then he built 20. He built a thousand. Then he built two thousand and three thousand a year. He got very big. He was great at what he did. You see him all of the country still. 

Levittowns. This was a long time ago. 

He was the first of the really, really big homebuilders. He became very rich. A very rich man. And then he decided to sell. He was offered a lot of money by a big conglomerate, Golf and Western—Gulf and Western. They saw the money he was making. They gave him a lot of money, tremendous amount of money. More money than he thought he would get. He sold his company and he had nothing to do. We ended up getting a divorce. Found the new wife. 

Can you say a trophy wife? It didn't work out too well. That doesn't work out too well, i must tell you. Trophy wives. It made him happy for a little while at least. 

He found a new wife. He sold his little boat and got a big yacht. He had one of the biggest yachts anywhere in the world. He moved to Monte Carlo and led the good life. Time went by and he got bored. Fifteen years later, the company he sold to call him. They said "That housing business is not for us." 

You have to understand, when Bill Levitt was hot, he had momentum, he would go to the job sites every night and take up every loose nail. He would pick up every scrap of wood. If there was a bolt or screw lying on the ground, he would pick it up and use it the next day putting together a house. Now he was spoiled and rich. He was really rich. They called and said this is not for us, this business. Would you like to buy it back? We will sell it back to you cheap. 

He bought it. He bought it. He thought he made a great deal. He was all excited. It was 15 years later. He lost a lot of momentum. Remember the word momentum. 

He lost everything. It just didn't work. I was sitting at a party on Fifth Avenue one night a long time ago. The biggest people in New York, the biggest people in the country were all at that party and saluting each other, how great they were. They were telling each other how great—I'm greater than you. It gives you a headache sometimes. They had all these people telling their own stories about how fantastic—a cocktail party. 

I looked over and I was doing well. I was invited to the party so I had to be doing well. I was very, very young. I made a name in real estate. 

I looked over at the party, sitting in a corner by himself, nobody talking to him, was Mr. Levitt. He had just gone bankrupt and lost everything. He lost everything. His home, everything. I went over and talked to him. He was in the real estate business and I loved real estate. 

I said, "Hello Mr. Levitt, how are you?" He said, "Hello Donald. Nice to meet you." He knew me from being in the business. "How's it going?" "Not well. Really not well as you have probably read. It's been very tough for me." I said, "What happened? Anything you can do?" "No, there is not a thing I can do."

He said, I will never forget, I have lost my momentum. I just didn't have it. I used to have it but I lost my momentum. 

It is a story I tell. You have to know when you have momentum. Sometimes, you also have to know when you lost the momentum. Leaving a field sometimes, leaving what you are doing sometimes is okay. You have to have momentum. You have to know that momentum is gone. You have to know when to say it is time to get out.

It's a very sad story. I remember that story so well like it was yesterday.

It's not always bad advice to tell someone to give up when things get difficult, but it's not something West Point cadets hear very much.

There are some curious similarities between William Levitt and Trump. Levitt refused to sell his properties to Black buyers, even after racist tactics like deed covenants and other forms of housing discrimination were illegal. Trump's first appearance in the public record was as the defendant, along with his father, in a racial discrimination lawsuit after he, too, refused to rent to Black tenants. Like Trump, Levitt stole money from his self-named "charity." And as Trump's "trophy wife" reference indicates, they were each married three times, with subsequent marriages to women they had had affairs with during previous marriages.

And—Trump's story is accurate on this point—both lost fortunes in real estate. The chief difference is that Levitt mostly lost his own money, while the money Trump lost came from his inheritance, the taxpayers, or other investors.

It's entirely possible that Levitt and Trump really did meet, although when Trump thinks he can get away with it, he often inserts himself into stories. (For example, he once said he competed at a baseball tryout with Giants star Willie McCovey. But McCovey was seven years older than Trump and was playing in the major leagues by the time Trump was 13.)

It's tradition for the President to shake the hand of every graduate when they preside over commencement at one of the service academies. Trump left immediately after his speech.

Why does this matter?

• Maybe don't tell America's future military leaders to quit when the going gets tough.
  

• The United States Armed Forces aren't a prop, even if their commander-in-chief seems to think that's all they're good for.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He had some thoughts on popular music.

Trump made two forays into the world of music criticism today. One was to declare that Taylor Swift, a mega-star less than half his age he's tried to start drama with in the past, was no longer "hot"—because he said so.

Taylor Swift on the 2024 Eras Tour, the highest-grossing and highest-revenue concert tour of all time.

The other was to threaten Bruce Springsteen (who, at 75, is still four years younger than Trump) for criticizing Trump at a concert in Manchester, UK on Wednesday. The legendary rocker said that Trump's administration was "corrupt, incompetent and treasonous." Trump responded by suggesting that Springsteen might have trouble returning to the United States if he didn't "KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT."

Trump also called Springsteen "dumb as a rock" and critiqued the condition of his skin.

It's not uncommon for Trump to spend the presidential workday riffing about pop culture on social media. But Springsteen and Swift weren't the only musicians on his mind today. Rolling Stone reported today that friends of the rapper Sean Combs, also known as Puff Daddy and P-Diddy, have been working Trump for months to get him to grant a pardon. Combs is on trial in federal court for sex trafficking and racketeering.

While Diddy isn't Trump's favorite rapper—that would be Kanye West—he does have a good chance at a Trump pardon, based on Trump's history. Combs is a celebrity in a high-profile trial, and more importantly his alleged offenses (running a criminal organization and sex crimes) are similar to ones Trump himself is known or generally suspected of having committed. A great many of Trump's pardons fit that exact pattern.

In fact, Combs is such a natural fit for a Trump pardon that it was first "reported" three days ago, in the satirical newspaper The Onion.

Why does this matter?

• There are probably more important things for the President of the United States to be thinking about than how much he hates popular musicians.
  

• Saying mean things about popular people to get attention is immature even by 7th-grade standards.
  

• It's bad if satire of you reliably comes true.