The Social World

Author: Jacob Heilbrunn

  • Donald Trump’s affordability blues

    Donald Trump’s affordability blues

    So President Donald Trump may have dozed off during his cabinet meeting on Tuesday. Who could blame him? Listening to Secretary of State Marco Rubio drone on about Russia would prompt souls less hardy than Trump to catch some shuteye. 

    What should be keeping Trump awake, or at least uneasy, is the shaky state of the American economy. The federal government may not be releasing much data about the economy, but the payroll processing company ADP is reporting that private employers cut 32,000 jobs last month. The losses were heavily concentrated among small employers who have been slammed by Trump’s capricious tariff policy. The only positive sign has been in the data center industry, where investments in AI have been fueling stock market gains. A recent Fox News poll indicated that 76 percent of voters view the economy negatively and that twice as many blame Trump as Biden. 

    When he’s not hosting foreign dignitaries or playing golf or discussing the architectural plans for his ornate new ballroom or anathematizing media organizations with a “Hall of Shame” on the White House website, Trump has been grasping at whatever straws he can to try and prop up the economy. On Tuesday, Trump mused about appointing his economic advisor Kevin Hassett as Federal Reserve chairman in the expectation that he will push for radically lower interest rates – a move that might briefly juice the economy but would also send inflation soaring. 

    On Wednesday, he took a fresh swipe at former president Joe Biden’s Green New Deal policies by rolling back fuel standards, a measure that the American Petroleum Institute has been advocating. That may benefit Ford and GM in the short term but exacerbates their dependence on gasoline cars that are being phased out abroad. Add in the tariffs that Trump is imposing and American industry could become increasingly unable to compete abroad. 

    A sign of the vexation that businesses are feeling towards Trump came with retail giant Costco’s announcement this past Friday that it intends to sue the administration over its tariffs. For the most part, big business has tried to placate rather than confront Trump. No longer. Bumble Bee Foods and Ray-Bans, among others, are already suing Trump. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court appears likely to rule that Trump’s tariffs are unconstitutional.  

    Nothing could boost the economy more than a sweeping verdict that abolishes them. But the administration remains fixated with Herbert Hoover economics – retaining tariffs, whenever and wherever possible. If the Supreme Court rules against it, then “we can recreate the exact tariff structure with [sections] 301, with 232, with 122,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview at the New York Times DealBook Summit.  

    Trump himself has been touting a $2,000 tariff dividend that would be paid to Americans. But Fortune notes that the math doesn’t add up. It would cost roughly twice as much as the tariffs have raised to disburse a dividend. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the dividend check would cost $600 billion a year – or $6 trillion over a period of 10 years. 

    Trump, a serial bankrupt, is not unaccustomed to financial obstacles. But his struggles with the economy are starting to tax his skills at political prestidigitation. As prices go up and jobs go down, Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t like what people are saying. “They just say the word,” he said during his cabinet meeting. “It doesn’t mean anything to anybody. They just say it – affordability. I inherited the worst inflation in history. There was no affordability. Nobody could afford anything.” They still can’t. 

  • Trump blames Biden for shooting of National Guardsmen

    Trump blames Biden for shooting of National Guardsmen

    In response to the attack on Thanksgiving eve by a suspected Afghan national upon two West Virginia National Guardsmen, President Trump demanded a renewed effort to expel illegal immigrants. During a brief and uncompromising address from West Palm Beach that bore the rhetorical fingerprints of White House advisor Stephen Miller, Trump ripped into illegal immigration and former president Joe Biden.

    The President deemed the influx of refugees from Afghanistan and elsewhere the “single greatest national-security threats” facing America. Biden was a “disastrous president.” Trump reserved special scorn for his detractors who he said purport to protect constitutional liberties but are leaving America exposed to rampant criminality. One big problem for Trump, however, is that although the suspected shooter was “mass paroled” into the country and immigrated here in 2021, he was apparently approved for asylum in April 2025 – by the Trump administration.

    It was Biden, Trump implied, who, more than anyone else, was culpable for the descent of American cities into criminality. To listen to Trump it might have seemed as though Biden had flown in Afghans expressly for the purpose of targeting innocent Americans. Indeed, Trump averred that not only Afghans but also Somalis are pillaging America. He declared, “We must now reexamine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden, and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here, or add benefit to our country.” Trump has already called for the termination of special status for Somalis living in Minnesota, a stance that he is likely to double down on.

    Throughout his speech, Trump’s rhetoric was sweeping. But Trump’s actual response – an additional 500 National Guardsmen to be deployed to the nation’s capital – was not. Trump, for example, could have declared that he intends to terminate Washington’s Home Rule and return to the days of yore when the federal government ran the district. Perhaps he envisions such a prospect.

    Trump’s critics are arguing that the same measures he took to impose law and order are creating the very havoc he decries. New Yorker writer Jane Mayer stated that the Guardsmen should “never have been” in Washington in the first place. The White House responded by calling her a “disgusting ghoul.” But others are voicing their disquiet with the stationing of federal troops in Washington as well.

    Their cautions will surely be portrayed by Trump and his advisers as an exercise in pusillanimity. The shooting took place near Farragut Square. In the center of the square is a prominent statue dedicated to the legendary Admiral David Farragut. Inscribed on the plinth of the statue is his credo, “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” Will Trump follow suit?

  • DoGE has had its day

    DoGE has had its day

    DoGE has been DoGE’d. The once fearsome government efficiency office has been shut down eight months before its contract officially ends in July 2026. What was supposed to be an organization that exploded traditional ways of running the federal government has turned into a damp squib. 

    It was established by President Trump on the first day of his second term in office. Headed by Tesla chief Elon Musk and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (who resigned early on to run for Ohio governor), it struck the kind of fear into government bureaucrats that a visit from the Red Guards might instill during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Musk’s minions rampaged through government offices, whether it was the US Institute of Peace or the Wilson Center. The idea was that the bastions of the liberal establishment would not simply be purged but permanently abolished. 

    Now, as Reuters reports, the efficiency office has been disbanded. “That doesn’t exist” as a “centralized entity” Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor said. Hasta la vista, in other words. After Musk torched, or appeared to torch, his relationship with Trump in May, DoGE began to sputter. The Trump administration is trying to put the best face possible on its dissolution. On social media Kupor declared, “”DoGE may not have centralized leadership under @USDS,” Kupor said, referring to the United States Digital Service, which was reorganized into DoGE. “But, the principles of DoGE remain alive and well: de-regulation; eliminating fraud, waste and abuse; re-shaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first-class citizen; etc.”  

    Yeah, right. The truth is that a government-wide freeze on hiring is over and the federal deficit has reached a record $38 trillion in the past month. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will add over $3 trillion to the deficit and that the deficit for fiscal year 2025 will run $1.8 trillion. The only mitigating factor has been a de facto tax hike by Trump who has imposed punitive tariffs. 

    If the debt remains, so does the insalubrious legacy of DoGE. One is the agencies that it either denuded or shuttered during its brief but chaotic existence. Take the Kennan Institute, which was formerly housed in the Wilson Center on the Washington Mall. I recently visited its new headquarters on K Street – a one-room office. The institute will make a comeback, but demolishing the Wilson Center was symbolic of DoGE’s march of folly through Washington. 

    Another inadvertent legacy of DoGE is actually diametrically opposed to its mandate – the expansion of big government in the form of National Guard troops stationed in a variety of American cities. When DoGE staffer Edward “Big Balls” Corisine was attacked by ten juveniles near DC’s Dupont Circle in early August, Trump responded by stationing the National Guard in Washington and other cities. But this initiative, too, appears to be ebbing as Trump refrains from sending in troops to New York City and a federal judge blocks his deployment of the National Guard in Washington. 

    As he focuses on becoming the world’s first trillionaire, Musk, who attended the White House dinner for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, appears to have put the entire episode in the rearview mirror. Once upon a time he called himself the president’s “first buddy.” Then came the feud with Trump. Now the reconciliation? 

  • Trump bromances MbS as Epstein Files loom

    Trump bromances MbS as Epstein Files loom

    The contrast could hardly have been starker. As Donald Trump palled around with Mohammed bin Salman in the newly gilded Oval Office, Congress was voting on a transparency act that would further expose Jeffrey Epstein’s grave misdeeds. Trump, who had worked overtime to try and quash the vote, was in his element with the Saudi crown prince. Transparency? Not a bit of it. Trump proclaimed that the crown prince “knew nothing” about the death of Jamal Khashoggi who was, after all, “extremely controversial,” the term that he often deploys to describe anyone he dislikes or finds nettlesome. 

    The hero, or, to put it more precisely, heroine, of the day was Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene is a profile in courage. She stood up for Epstein’s victims in an honorable and upright fashion that underscored the sordid nature of Trump’s attempt to suppress the release of the files in possession of the Justice Department. What those files will reveal is an open question. The likelihood that they will divulge anything incriminating about Trump seems slender – other than the fact that he has battled so ardently to prevent them from seeing the light of day.  

    In seeking to bury the files, Trump has been defending the very establishment that he professes to despise. Greene, in battling to ensure the release of the files, has revealed the rampant corruption in elite America, including the escapades of former Harvard president Larry Summers. Trump has referred to Greene as Marjorie “Traitor” Greene. She hit back today outside the US Capitol in the presence of Epstein’s victims, one of whom eloquently demanded that Trump stop seeking to politicize the brouhaha over the files.  

    According to Greene, “I fought for him for the policies and for America First. And he called me a traitor for standing with these women and refusing to take my name off the discharge petition. Let me tell you what a traitor is. A traitor is an American that serves foreign countries and themselves. A patriot is an American that serves the United States of Americans and Americans like the women standing behind me.” Strong words. 

    If Greene has been on something of a tear lately, she’s not the only one that has administered a shellacking to Trump. He has been suffering a number of defeats in other arenas. The latest arrived this afternoon when a Texas federal court struck down the state’s redistricting map that was designed to ensure an additional five Republican seats in Congress. The worst blow is that Trump originally appointed the judge who wrote the decision, Jeffrey V. Brown.  

    Trump’s remedy has been to retreat to foreign policy, where he effectively enjoys a form of suzerainty, at least for now. He’s been making noises about attacking Nigeria and Venezuela. For the next day or so, he will enjoy his bromance with the crown prince, escorting him to a grand dinner tonight. Meanwhile, he’s planning to sell him F-35 fighter jets, a move that Congress may seek to block, particularly since Israel is opposed to the deal. A lucrative real-estate deal also appears to be in the offing, no matter the public outcry. 

    Trump himself could not appear to be more blasé. MAGA, as Marjorie Taylor Greene put it, is being “ripped apart.” Trump, though, is enjoying hanging out with his new pal from Riyadh. “We talk at night. We can talk, I can call him almost any time,” Trump said. “He goes, ‘Hi, how are you doing.’ It’s like, the craziest times.” It is indeed. 

  • How much did Trump really know about Epstein?

    How much did Trump really know about Epstein?

    The main thing that has made the Epstein files seem politically (as opposed to morally) significant is that Donald Trump remains obsessed with preventing them from seeing the light of day. He thus devoted much of Wednesday to importuning Republicans such as Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert not to back their release. “Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican,” Trump declared, “would fall into that trap.”

    But senior Republicans, as Politico reported, are expecting mass vote defections in the coming week as legislators prepare to vote for a disclosure bill sponsored by Representatives Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie. Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene says that releasing the files is “not only the right thing to do for the victims but it’s also the right thing to do for the country.” While the current batch of emails that are being released comes from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, the treasure trove rests in the Department of Justice, where Trump already had hundreds of government agents pore over them for mentions of his name.

    For now, the emails that are being released are already further tarring the President. Others are implicated as well. According to former Time magazine correspondent Nina Burleigh: “There is amazing stuff in those emails. Jared Kushner is in there quite a bit. A lot of high profile, powerful people are not having a good night. You can see how enmeshed Jeffrey Epstein is in the power structures here and abroad.”

    If the House overwhelmingly passes the bill to force the release of the Epstein files, then the Senate will face severe pressure to pass it as well. Trump would almost surely veto it. But vetoing the bill would be tantamount to an admission of guilt that might look worse than anything that’s actually in the files. Had Trump simply released the files at the outset of his new presidential term, he wouldn’t be in this predicament.

    So far, the emails that have been released are suggestive but not dispositive. In one email Epstein observes, “I know how dirty Donald is.” Presumably, he was not alluding to Trump’s personal hygiene. In another he wrote, “I have met some very bad people. None as bad as Trump. Not one decent cell in his body.” Worse: “Of course he knew about the girls.”

    The surprising thing, of course, would be if the President had not known about Epstein’s child sex ring. Trump was spending oodles of time with Epstein, who was his best, maybe only, buddy. As late as 2017, he was apparently celebrating Thanksgiving together with Epstein. Put bluntly, the two had a bromance going. To believe that he would have been unaware of Epstein’s principal preoccupation stretches credulity.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that these stories are all a manufactured attempt to divert attention from the weighty affairs of government that Trump is focused on addressing. “These stories are nothing more than bad-faith efforts to distract from President Trump’s historic accomplishments,” she said, “and any American with common sense sees right through this hoax and clear distraction from the government opening back up again.”

    Trump, a tabloid president, as Sam Tanenhaus once put it, has repeatedly been dogged by sexual scandals. But this one goes beyond mere prurience. Russia and Israel all figure in the files. Whether the documents will do more than further singe the President’s already equivocal reputation is an open question. If nothing else, Trump’s frantic behavior suggests that they will.

  • Trump is creating a political Frankenstein

    Trump is creating a political Frankenstein

    During the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump depicted himself as synonymous with winning. “We’re gonna win so much,” he said, “you may even get tired of winning and you’ll say please, please, it’s too much winning we can’t take it anymore.” Lately, however, Trump has been losing – losing not only in the court of public opinion, but also the courts themselves.

    The latest instance came with the decision of Utah judge Dianna Gibson to reject a congressional map that Republican lawmakers drew to try and ensure that a Democrat cannot win even a single seat in the state. Gibson ruled that the map “unduly favors Republicans and disfavors Democrats.” Utah Democrats rejoiced. This is a win for every Utahn,” they said on social media. “We took an oath to serve the people of Utah, and fair representation is the truest measure of that promise.”

    The pickle for Trump is that in demanding that Republican state legislatures tilt the election playing field in their direction, he may have created something of a political Frankenstein. Democrats, incensed by what they see as a decades-long effort by Republicans to employ legislative skulduggery to squeeze them out of office, whenever and wherever possible, are starting to respond in kind. Gavin Newsom gambled that he could upend California’s legislative map with Proposition 50 and won. He not only boosted the chances of Democrats to gain an additional five congressional seats, but also his own presidential chances. Elsewhere, Democrats are looking to pad their margins, including in Maryland. Meanwhile, Republicans are starting to get cold feet. In Kansas, for example, top Republican legislators are balking at redrawing their districts. 

    Some of it may be principle. And some of it may be cold political realities. Divvying up districts, as Trump is demanding, could backfire on Republicans. There is no guarantee that Hispanics will vote for the GOP in large numbers in Texas. So the very efforts the right is adopting to try and shore up Republican prospects in 2026 could inadvertently undermine them. Trump, in other words, may be too clever by half. 

    Crybaby Republicans like Utah state representative Matt MacPherson are trying to go a step further. He’s demanding the impeachment of Judge Gibson. “I have opened a bill to file articles of impeachment against Judge Gibson for gross abuse of power, violating the separation of powers and failing to uphold her oath of office to the Utah Constitution,” MacPherson announced on X. This dog won’t hunt. Impeaching judges simply because they issue judges that politicians don’t like isn’t a winning political issue, any more than it was when conservatives erected billboards demanding “Impeach Earl Warren,” after the Supreme Court Justice issued the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954 that banned racial segregation in American schools.

    Trump’s real problem remains the fact that his popularity rating continues to sink as quickly as the fortunes of the Washington Commanders football team. The Economist reports that 39 percent of Americans approve of his presidency while 57 percent disapprove. Its verdict is terse: “dissatisfaction with Mr. Trump is widespread even in states that voted for him just a few months ago. The numbers will make anxious reading for Republicans facing competitive races in next year’s midterm elections.” 

    Small wonder. As he threatens to prosecute what may well prove to be a disastrous war in the Caribbean against Venezuela, Trump is neglecting domestic issues in favor of playing battleship. No amount of gerrymandering can compensate for a presidency that is literally at sea. Trump must right the ship of state or the GOP will run aground in the midterms.

  • Is Trump becoming a lame duck?

    Is Trump becoming a lame duck?

    No sooner did Democrats in the Senate reach a deal to end the federal government shutdown than a frenzy of liberal pearl clutching ensued. The Democrats should have held out longer, they argued. Healthcare subsidies could have been rescued. Donald Trump’s approval ratings were plunging. Golly, maybe the Democrats could even have driven the dreaded Trump from office? Jonathan Chait’s verdict in the Atlantic was not untypical: “Senate Democrats just made a huge mistake.”

    Don’t believe a word of it. The surprising thing isn’t that Democrats folded. It’s that they held out as long as they did. In the end, the moderate Democratic Senators, ranging from Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman to Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto, made the right call. Here’s the deal: ending the government shutdown puts the focus back squarely on Trump – and his failure to deal with a faltering economy and rising healthcare costs. Add in the fact that the Epstein files will now likely be released as the House of Representatives goes back into session and you have turbulent political seas awaiting Trump. Can the President safely steer his administration through them?

    Some of Trump’s key supporters are starting to get queasy. Exhibit A is a fiery excoriation from Sunday night on X issued by one of the President’s most prominent supporters in the Maga media – Sean Davis, the co-founder of the Federalist. After contending that congressional Republicans have no real accomplishments or plans, Davis laid into someone who is usually exempted from such criticisms by MAGA world: Trump himself. According to Davis: “Trump needs to ditch the foreign policy crap and focus all his attention on the domestic economy, which is still not working for the majority of people. Right now he looks weak and rudderless. Be mad all you want, but it’s the truth.”

    The truth is that Trump has in many ways become a foreign policy president. He’s been hosting a stream of foreign visitors, including from Central Asia this past week. He’s also handed out a $40 billion subvention to his Argentine chum Javier Milei, while failing to assist farmers in America who have been whacked by his tariffs. Instead, he’s engaged in happy talk about how prosperity is just around the corner. As Davis observed: “Newly minted college grads can’t find work and are saddled with debt. Where is their path to the American dream right now? Who is giving them a vision of a future worth fighting for?”

    This past weekend, I spoke with a mother whose 24-year-old son earned double degrees in mathematics and computer science and is now living in Manhattan – where he works as a rock-climbing instructor and scrapes by living in an efficiency apartment that costs $2,400 a month to rent. Small wonder that a socialist like Zohran Mamdani cruised to victory as mayor of New York.

    For his part, Trump appears to be living increasingly in the past. He dozed off in the Oval Office three days ago. Now his latest move is to preemptively pardon 77 of his supporters, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and lawyer John Eastman, for their support of his efforts to upend the 2020 presidential election. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declared, “President Trump is putting an end to the Biden regime’s communist tactics once and for all.”

    Hmm. Actually, it is figures on the right who are starting to sound the red alert. On the RealClear Politics news site, for example, Hoover Institution fellow Peter Berkowitz warned that the kerfuffle over the Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts’ defense of Tucker Carlson for interviewing the Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes could damage the conservative cause. According to Berkowitz: “Tucker Carlson’s cozying up to Holocaust downplayers, Nazi apologists, Stalin enthusiasts, and rank anti-Semites – along with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts’ October 30 insistence that conservatism’s big tent is big enough to embrace those who hate Jews and fawn over murderous tyrants – widened a parlous rift on the right.”

    Internal fights are one thing. But the economy is what could take down a president who declared in his second inaugural speech that he would usher in nothing less than a triumphant new golden age in America. With the Supreme Court poised to strike down his tariffs, Trump is starting to look like a lame duck and the 2026 midterm elections loom larger than ever. As the government reopens, the battle between Trump and the Democrats may only have begun.

  • Is Trump’s $2,000 tariff dividend plan loopy?

    Is Trump’s $2,000 tariff dividend plan loopy?

    It’s becoming increasingly taxing for Donald Trump to defend his tariff policy. His latest gambit is to float the prospect of a $2,000 rebate to Americans from the tens of billions that the federal government has collected in tariffs. But will this prove any more successful than his previous attempts to justify his loopy tariffs?

    With the Supreme Court apparently poised to strike down his tariffs as a form of revenue collection designed to perform an end-run around Congress, Trump is scrambling. As usual, bravado prevails. On Sunday, he declared, “A dividend of at $2000 a person (not including high income people!) will be paid to everyone,” the president said on Truth Social.” Trump also dismissed his detractors as “FOOLS!” In his view, “We are taking in Trillions of Dollars and will soon begin paying down our ENORMOUS DEBT, $37 Trillion. Record Investment in the USA, plants and factories going up all over the place.”

    What specific factories Trump meant was left unsaid. The truth is that a small coterie of tech firms is driving the American economy by building AI centers. To fund them, companies are relying on exotic debt-financed options. If that bubble pops, it could be 2008 all over again – or worse.

    Speculation about a 1929 redux is on the rise. Former Securities and Exchange Commission official William A. Birdthistle notes that Trump has been “has been firing regulators and vigorously tearing down the guardrails that have kept our markets thriving for nine decades.” As he bellows about the efficacy of high tariffs, Trump himself seems intent on replicating the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariff which ensured that America tumbled even deeper into the Great Depression. At least Smoot-Hawley was passed by Congress. Trump is doing it singlehandedly while Republican lawmakers cower in fear at the consequences.

    The difficulty for Trump is that in promising an economic boom, he has highlighted his responsibility for inflation and unemployment. Voters, as the recent election showed, remain as unhappy about the economy as they were during the Biden era, when the White House also issued a steady stream of happy talk. In July 2021 Biden dismissed the notion that inflation would prove to be a persistent problem: “Our experts believe, and the data shows, that most of the price increases we’ve seen are expected to be temporary.”

    Speaking at the American Business Forum in Miami this past Wednesday, Trump insisted that nothing less than an ”economic miracle” was taking place under his leadership. He also invoked his favorite adverb, tremendously, to state that “Americans are doing tremendously now.” A day later, he said, “I don’t want to hear about affordability” – a line that is certain to feature in Democratic campaign ads. Trump is also touting a new Walmart Thanksgiving meal as 25 percent cheaper than last year, but it also has six fewer items than the 2024 basket. The most recent consumer price index shows that grocery prices were up 2.7 percent in September compared to a year ago. So much for whipping inflation now.

    Then there is the government shutdown. Disrupting air travel, terminating SNAP benefits and allowing health insurance premiums to soar even as Trump sends billions to Argentina is hardly a recipe for promoting economic growth. Some Republicans are getting antsy. “We need to deal with [health care] now because, number one, it’s the right thing to do, just morally,” New Jersey Congressman Jeff Van Drew said on Fox this past Wednesday.” “Number two, we’re going to get killed” in the 2026 midterm elections.

    But Trump has other concerns. On Friday night, he threw another opulent gala event for his chums at Mar-a-Lago, complete with opera singers and ice sculptures. As Republican lawmakers fret about their futures, Trump continues to party on.

  • Who will replace Pelosi in Republican demonology?

    Who will replace Pelosi in Republican demonology?

    Nancy Pelosi’s career is ending as it began. She entered Congress in 1986 during the Reagan administration and is ending it under the most influential Republican president since the Gipper. On Thursday she released a six-minute video announcing her retirement in 2027 from Congress, the latest octogenarian to depart it.

    No sooner did this contagonist announce that she would not seek reelection, than Donald Trump crowed that he had outlasted her. Old age, it seems, is no barrier to a slanging match. A few days ago the 85-year old Pelosi called him an “evil creature.” Now Trump, on the verge of becoming an octogenarian himself, returned the favor. She was evil, corrupt and only focused on bad things for our country,” Trump said. “She was rapidly losing control of her party, and it was never coming back. I’m very honored that she impeached me twice and failed miserably twice. Nancy Pelosi is a highly overrated politician.”

    The impeachments, the first over Ukraine, the second January 6, went nowhere. But the notion that Pelosi was overrated does not hold water. At the 1984 Republican convention UN ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick mocked what she called “the San Francisco Democrats” – weak, spineless, simpering. But this was one San Francisco Democrat who did not fit that mold. Pelosi had sat at the feet of her father, the mayor of Baltimore.

    She was a skilled and ruthless operator, superior to many of the men she dealt with during her political career, including Barack Obama. It was Pelosi who ensured that Obamacare passed the House of Representatives in 2010. This measure, which, after a faltering start, has gained mounting popularity, including in the Red states, continues to bedevil the Republican Party and Trump. It is at the core of the current government shutdown as the Democrats demand the restoration of subsidies for health insurance. In a sense, Pelosi has had more than a small measure of vengeance against her detractors.

    A new generation of Democratic females such as AOC will take the place in Republican demonology. Whom the Democrats, in turn, will focus on in coming years in the House of Representatives is an open question. A prime candidate, Marjorie Taylor Greene, has lately been the recipient of friendly overtures from liberals besotted by her criticisms of the Republican leadership and the government shutdown. Indeed, speaking on Thursday on CNN, Greene had this to say about Pelosi: “I will praise Nancy Pelosi. She had an incredible career for her party. I served under her during her Speakership in Congress. I was very impressed in her ability to get things done.” Could this be the beginning of a beautiful friendship?

  • How Dick Cheney made Donald Trump

    How Dick Cheney made Donald Trump

    Former vice president Dick Cheney, who died on Monday at age 84, loathed Donald Trump. In a 2022 election campaign ad for his daughter, Liz, a congresswoman from Wyoming, he declared: “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” Yet Cheney was more responsible for Trump’s rise than almost anyone else in the Republican establishment. He helped to mastermind the calamitous Iraq War and preached the unitary executive theory of the presidency. Instead of vilifying Cheney, MAGA-world should offer him a bouquet of appreciation.

    Recall that it was during the 2016 South Carolina primary that Trump first showed his real independence from the folderol surrounding the Iraq War. Trump created shock and awe by denouncing it. “The war in Iraq,” he said, “was a big, fat mistake.” Until then, Republicans had marched in lockstep beneath the George W. Bush banner.

    After Trump’s abortive attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Liz Cheney headed a commission to expose his machinations. But it blew up in her face. The Cheney brood now became heroes to Democrats. During the 2024 election Kamala Harris was endorsed by Dick Cheney. Harris said that she was “honored” to have the backing of the “well-respected” Cheney. Well-respected? Harris was in essence effacing the true legacy of Cheney and the Iraq War. Writing in the New York Review of Books, Fintan O’Toole acutely notes that Trump had recognized that Americans had “soured on the extended occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan… It is quite extraordinary that the Democrats allowed Trump a virtual monopoly on the exploitation of this profound disillusionment, and that Harris never stopped to ask who, exactly, Dick Cheney remains “well-respected” by.

    Who indeed? The Cheney era has become synonymous with imperial overreach and disdain for constitutional safeguards. Cheney’s hubris had its sources in Watergate, when he served as a young aide in the Nixon administration. He rose seamlessly in Republican ranks, entering Congress in the 1978 election as a representative from Wyoming. His highpoint was serving as Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush during the 1991 Gulf War when America repelled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.

    But Cheney and his aides, including Paul Wolfowitz, became obsessed with the idea of toppling Saddam himself from power. This idee fixe led Cheney to empower the neocons after 9/11, when America failed to capture Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora and instead focused its effort on concocting a fictitious case for war in Iraq. Cheney and his cohort succumbed to paranoia, seeking to tie Saddam by whatever means necessary to the attack on the Twin Towers. This was fantasy. But it issued in a war that turned into a debacle. At the summit of their power and influence the neocons were discredited by a bungled crusade to implant democracy in the arid soil of the Middle East.

    It wasn’t until the 2006 midterm elections, when the GOP suffered a brutal buffeting, that George W. Bush began to follow a more pragmatic approach, ousting Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Cheney’s influence had passed its high-water mark. Bush started to realize that he had been conned by the neocons. “Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?” Cheney once remarked. “It’s a nice way to operate, actually.” It was indeed. But the consequences of Cheney’s decisions continue to reverberate in insalubrious ways.