âFreuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition, he found one of the successful hunters dropping off several hundred pounds of meat. He thanked him profusely. The man objected indignantly:
âUp in our country we are human!â said the hunter. âAnd since we are human we help each other. We donât like to hear anybody say thanks for that. What I get today you may get tomorrow. Up here we say that by gifts one makes slaves and by whips one makes dogs.
⊠The refusal to calculate credits and debits can be found throughout the anthropological literature on egalitarian hunting societies. Rather than seeing himself as human because he could make economic calculations, the hunter insisted that being truly human meant refusing to make such calculations, refusing to measure or remember who had given what to whom, for the precise reason that doing so would inevitably create a world where we began "comparing power with power, measuring, calculatingâ and reducing each other to slaves or dogs through debt.Â
Itâs not that he, like untold millions of similar egalitarian spirits throughout history, was unaware that humans have a propensity to calculate. If he wasnât aware of it, he could not have said what he did. Of course we have a propensity to calculate. We have all sorts of propensities. In any real-life situation, we have propensities that drive us in several different contradictory directions simultaneously. No one is more real than any other. The real question is which we take as the foundation of our humanity, and therefore, make the basis of our civilization.â
"A society that gets rid of all its troublemakers goes downhill."
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"Men rarely (if ever) managed to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."
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"I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything -- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."
~ Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (7 Jul 1907-1988)Â
Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863-1944) :: "The Sun," 1911 :: Oil on canvas :: 449 x 786 cm | 14.7 x 25.7 ft :: University of Oslo
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Gratitude rewires your brain. Laughter is anti inflammatory. Crying helps regulate your nervous system. Releasing anger can free the body from tension it was never meant to carry.
"Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, peopleâthey always go away, sooner or later. You canât hold them, any more than you can hold moonlight. But if theyâve touched you, if theyâre inside you, then theyâre still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart."
no title, just experimenting Giovanni Tilotta, 2020
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âif one accepts Jean Piagetâs famous definition of mature intelligence as the ability to coordinate between multiple perspectives (or possible perspectives) one can see, here, precisely how bureaucratic power, at the moment it turns to violence, becomes literally a form of infantile stupidity.â
â David Graeber, The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy
Graham Plattnerâs withdrawal speech on Wednesday evening dominated the news cycle, even as our attention should have been laser-focused on Trumpâs disastrous performance on the global stage. While there is much to discuss about Graham Platnerâs exit from the race for US Senate, we should have faith in Maine Democrats to handle adversity and come out on top. They can beat Senator Susan Collins. We need to trust them to do the right thing and then support them when they make their choice.
Platnerâs withdrawal and Trumpâs NATO debacle are not alike. One is inside-baseball politics; the other is a matter of global peace and security. Even so, Platnerâs troubles are irresistible clickbait for the media and political pundits, while Trumpâs offensive, destructive, and (at times) delusional statements at the NATO conference are receiving muted coverage.
But the drip-drip-drip of Trumpâs embarrassing missteps and calculated provocations is becoming too much for voters to ignoreâespecially when they are driving up prices at home and creating global economic uncertainty. See NPR, Iran tensions add fresh uncertainty to the global economy. (âEven before the latest attacks, the International Monetary Fund had downgraded its forecast for economic growth this year. . . . The possibility of renewed Middle East conflict looms large and could extend commodity price volatility, further threaten supply chains, raise prices, and weigh on financial conditions.â)
So, letâs take a look at how badly things went for Trump in Ankara, Turkey
Trumpâs disastrous NATO meeting
It is difficult to describe how badly Trump stumbled at the NATO conference in Ankara and how much damage he inflicted on the US and the NATO alliance.
Before discussing the political damage, it is imperative to note that Trumpâs mental deterioration was on full display. During a press availability in Ankara, Trump said that the âIslamic Republic of Japanâ fired on a US aircraft carrier and repeatedly confused Putin and Zelenskyy (the latter of whom was seated within five feet of Trump). See Newsweek, Trump Appears to Mistakenly Call Zelensky âPutin,â Iran âJapanâ.
Viewed in isolation and made at a different venue, those misstatements could be dismissed as mere slips of the tongue. Here, they occurred at a NATO summit, where our allies were hanging on every word Trump uttered. To state the obvious, if Joe Biden had made one of those errors in similar circumstances, the calls for his resignation would have been thunderous and incessant until Biden resigned.
Where is the same outrage today? Where are the major newspapers, the opinion writers, and the Hollywood A-listers who believed it was their patriotic duty to call for a president's resignation within days of a stumble in a political debate? We need to hear from them now, with greater urgency and force.
Trumpâs unfitness to serve was manifest at the NATO summit, and yet the same media outlets that hounded Joe Biden out of the 2024 presidential race accept Trumpâs continued mental deterioration as âTrump being Trump,â and, hence, a non-story. We deserve better from our media. It is not too late for them to hold Trump to the same standard of mental fitness to which they held Joe Biden.
[Aside: Rather than addressing Trumpâs staggering unfitness on full display at the NATO summit, the NYTimes Editorial Board published a lightning-quick editorial on Wednesday evening blaming Democrats for âtrying to satisfy [Democratic voters] with a personality instead of a purpose. . . . It is a party still hoping a contender will spare it the harder work of deciding what it stands for.]
Hmm . . . is there any other major political party that is focused on a leaderâs personality rather than his purpose? Oh, right! The Republican Party, which has become a cult of personality, a comparison that seems not to interest the Timesâ Editorial Board. So, rather than addressing Trumpâs collapse at NATO, the NYT Editorial Board believes that trying to âfixâ the Democratic Partyâs alleged obsession with personality is a more pressing priority. Shameful.]
During the meeting in Ankara, Trump continued his gratuitous attacks on NATO allies. In a spontaneous decision sparked by a synaptic misfire, Trump announced that the US would cease trade with Spain. He said,
Spain is a terrible partner in NATO. They donât participate. They donât pay. I donât want anything to do with Spain. Cut off all trade with Spain. . . . Donât even talk to them. Theyâre hopeless, bad people. There are a couple of others, but in particular Spain.
And just like that, the US is in a trade war with Spain, after the US president called Spaniards âhopeless, bad people.â In the days before Trump broke the US news media, a president who issued a slur against the people of any nation, let alone a reliable ally, would result in 24-hour carpet-bombing by the media.
Several hours later, Trump appeared to say that the trade war with Spain was suspended because the country âcame back all the way today. Spain was â very generous today.â
It is worth noting that Trumpâs apparent retreat from the trade war with Spain was made during a flight from Ankara to England on the former Air Force One, which has been replaced by a Boeing 747 gifted by Qatarâwhich Trump intends to claim for his presidential library after leaving office. Trump may have flown on the old Air Force One because the Qatari Air Force One lacks the same defensive capabilities as the former Air Force One. See AP News, Trump flies partway home in an old Air Force One after Iran strikes (âThe travel switch raised fresh security questions about the new aircraft that the U.S. spent $400 million to retrofit. Images of the Qatari-gifted jet captured since its unveiling show it is not equipped with some of the same missile detection and countermeasure systems as the older jets.â)
If it is true that the new Qatari Air Force One does not have the necessary anti-missile defenses, Trump has put the safety of the president and the national security of the US at risk by flying on a plane that is more vulnerable to missile attack than the old Air Force One. Vanity at its worst.
All in all, Trumpâs attendance at the NATO summit in Ankara was a disaster. Trump insulted, offended, and rambled during press conferences. And on two occasions, he was worse than incoherent, seemingly unable to distinguish between Japan and Iran, and Putin and Zelensky. And he exposed a critical weakness in the new Qatari Air Force One.
All of this in 48 hours. Only Trump could fit so much losing into a 2-day period. But it gets worse. Read on!
Trump resumes active war against Iran
Hostilities in the Middle East erupted over the weekend after Iran attacked a commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Retaliation by the US provoked counterretaliation by Iran, which targeted 85 US military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait. On Wednesday, in response to reportersâ questions, Trump effectively ended the ceasefire, trashed Iranâs leadership, and promised new strikes against Iran.
On Wednesday, Trump said,
Theyâre scum. Theyâre scum, theyâre sick people, theyâre led by sick people, and theyâre vicious. Theyâre scum. I donât want to deal with them, but theyâre scum.
See HuffPo, Donald Trump Calls Iranâs Leadership âScumâ In Latest Remarks.
Trump also said in response to a reporterâs question that he was ready to end the ceasefire, saying, âI think itâs over... As far as Iâm concerned, itâs over I think itâs over . . . .â Trump went further, saying that he was ânot sureâ he even wants a peace agreement. Shortly thereafter, US CENTCOM announced that it had begun a new round of major attacks on Iran. See CENTCOM Official Release, U.S. Forces Complete Another Round of Strikes Against Iran.
Predictably, oil prices began to increase on the news of renewed hostilities between the US and Iran. See USA Today, Oil prices are up. Gas prices could soon spike, too. (âOil prices spiked on July 8 to their highest levels in weeks after President Donald Trump said the ceasefire between the United States and Iran was âover.â)
The latest round of hostilities will likely lead to a second increase in gas prices in the US, reversing some of the decline over the last several weeks. Consumers (and voters) will experience the pain of price increases all over again, even if the increases do not take gas prices to new highs.
Trumpâs alleged âpeace dealâ was a mirage. He won a few weeks of reprieve through a notional ceasefire, but the ground truth never changed: Iran emerged as the victor, claiming control over the Strait of Hormuz, an outcome that Trump cannot tolerate.
Trump and Republicans are stuck in a war they cannot end unless they engage in a humiliating surrender that involves ceding control of the Strait of Hormuz to Iran.
Concluding Thoughts
Graham Platnerâs withdrawal speech was received poorly. It was largely an attack on other Democrats, many of whom were his supporters. He failed to mention Trump, Susan Collins, or the women who accused him of inappropriate behavior or sexual assault, except to say that the allegations against him were false.
It is important to recognize that Platner generated genuine excitement among Maine voters. As he departs the race, we must disentangle three strands of the enthusiasm for Platner. First, Maine voters who met Platner in town halls were impressed and motivated by his charisma and innate political skill. Second, voters were enthusiastic about his ideas. Finally, voters believed that with Platner, Democrats could finally defeat Susan Collins.
We donât know who will replace Platner as the Democratic Partyâs nominee. But much of the enthusiasm for Platnerâs ideas and the hope of defeating Collins remain after Platnerâs withdrawal. Whether the Maine Democratic Party can nominate a candidate who can replace Platnerâs charisma remains to be seen, but it is a tall order. No matter. Despite the Timesâ Editorial Boardâs sneering accusations that Democrats lack ideas, Platner had a very specific set of proposals and positions that spoke to Maine voters. Anyone who steps into Platnerâs shoes would do well to consider Platnerâs platform carefully.
Finally, Maine Democrats are blameless in this matter. Indeed, they are victims, despite Platnerâs efforts to portray himself as the victim. Many listened to his denials, evaluated his credibility, and gave him a chance at redemption. Others were skeptical but were focused on defeating Collins and saw Platner as a strong candidate.
While some groups have engaged in infighting and recriminations, we have no time for either at this point. While there are lessons to be learned, time is short to select a nominee and mount a campaign. Assigning blame or identifying internal control weaknesses can wait until after the defeat of Susan Collins.
Trump has re-ignited his war against Iran, and nothing good will come of it. Susan Collins has been Trumpâs apologist, defender, explainer, and surrogate. The people of Maine can defeat her. That has always been the real contest, and nothing has changed that fundamental truth. We should trust the people of Maine to deliver the right result in November.
If you read one post today this is the one. No one writes a column with his finger on the pulse of the nation better than Thomas Friedman.
Credit...Finn Gomez/Getty Images
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OPINION
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Trump Is Fleecing Us
July 7, 2026
Seen from behind, a man in a white cowboy hat and American flag-print shirt and a woman with a braid hold each other close as they watch fireworks in the distance.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving, and the dust clouds rolling
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
â Woody Guthrie, âThis Land Is Your Landâ
Our country is built on written documents â the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, to name the most important. So to celebrate Americaâs 250th birthday, my wife, Ann, hosted a special event at Planet Word, the immersive language museum she founded in Washington to promote literacy. The singer-composer Nolan Williams Jr. led a singalong featuring classic American songs, including, of course, Woody Guthrieâs âThis Land Is Your Land.â
Despite 100-degree heat, a remarkably diverse crowd of 300 people packed the museumâs main hall, and young and old sang together with gusto. There was so much joy and camaraderie in the room â and so many leaving attendees saying to one another how much they wished the entire country could reflect that same harmony every day. So many people asked afterward, âWhy arenât we singing these songs together on the National Mall?â
Which leads â I am sorry to say â to a quite different variation on âThis Land Is Your Landâ heard on the National Mall later that evening. In my mind, it was the Trump variation, with lyrics that went, âThis land is my land, this land is my land / From California to the New York island / From my cryptocurrency to the Qatari 747 / This land belongs to me and mine.â
One thing about President Trump: He is consistent. He never surprises you on the upside. He has never been remotely interested in being the president of all the people, only his base. He never tries to win by addition, only by division â only by us versus them.
As my newsroom colleague Shawn McCreesh reported from the mall: âMr. Trump used the nationâs birthday to scaremonger about Democrats four months before the midterms (he talked a lot again about âcommunismâ) and demand that Congress pass an act that would make it harder to vote.â Shawn continued, âWhat was meant to be the centerpiece of the nationâs 250th anniversary celebration was in some ways just another Trump rally.â
This very same Fourth of July, two other newsroom colleagues of mine, Eric Lipton and David Yaffe-Bellany, reported that nearly â1 million people who bought President Trumpâs memecoin have lost money through the end of June, according to a report by the cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen. Their losses total $3.81 billion.â My colleagues pointed out that the calculation came after Trump signed a financial disclosure revealing that the same crypto bet dealt him a $636 million payout. In all, his business ventures brought him at least $2.2 billion in 2025.
This is a big story, and my gut tells me that Trump also smells that this could be a big story: of how badly he fleeced his own supporters!
Since the start of Trumpâs second term, itâs been widely reported that he has been exploiting the presidency for financial gain, but the story needed a real number and real victims. Now it has both â $2.2 billion in total gains for Trump and at least $3.81 billion in losses for his investors. Thatâs a bumper sticker. Trump famously boasted that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and his supporters would still be with him. Will they also stick with him when he fleeces them?
And, have no doubt, he was targeting them, as The Times also reported: âThree days before his inauguration, Mr. Trump unveiled a second Trump-branded investment â the $Trump memecoin, a type of novelty currency with little practical value. âItâs time to celebrate everything we stand for: WINNING!â Mr. Trump wrote on social media. âJoin my very special Trump community. GET YOUR $TRUMP NOW!â But that turned out to be bad advice.â
Trump is surely terrified that the Democrats will win the House or the Senate or both and launch investigations into how much he has used his office, and exploited his own supporters, for grotesque personal gain.
Therefore, to my mind, the right themes for Democrats going into the midterms are two: If they win, they will expose how much Trump has been ripping off his own supporters; and if they win they will make bringing the country together a priority.
I believe the quest for national unity is the most underestimated political force in the country today. It is not an accident that CNN reported last month that ânearly half of Americans say they donât consider themselves a part of either major political party, the highest level of partisan independence measured by CNN polling in more than a decade.â
I am sure that is true because I heard the best political analyst I know make the same point. His name is Barack Obama. Which brings me to a third variation of âThis Land Is Your Land.â It was Obamaâs speech at the opening ceremony of his presidential center in Chicago, which I attended. My favorite passage from Obama was this:
As algorithms keep feeding us a steady stream of distraction and outrage, as only the loudest, most extreme voices get attention, fanning our prejudices, appealing to our basest, most tribal instincts, itâs tempting to give in to cynicism and even despair, to stop trying. We start thinking that appeals to democracy and civic participation are corny and old-fashioned and boring and naĂŻve, that the very idea of working on behalf of the common good is a suckerâs bet, and that in order for us to win, somebody else has got to lose. I get it. I am not immune to anger or doubt, but I do know this: When we lose faith in each other, when we stop believing that voting matters, that citizenship matters, that our collective voices matter, that how we treat each other no longer matters, and we give away our power to decide our own futures, we open the door to the most ruthless, or the most careless, or the most fearful among us, who see some groups and some people as more equal than others, and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies and keep those who are different in their place.
The fact is, though, Obama continued, âI do not believe that is the story of America that prevails in the end. ⊠I remain convinced that the overwhelming majority of Americans ⊠arenât looking for perpetual anger and division. They are looking for fairness and common sense and mutual respect, that deep in our gut we want to find a way to turn toward each other again, not further away.â
So, Democrats, you have your assignment. Itâs to not let Trump bait you into blind rage and extreme ideas. He feeds off that. Just focus on how much he has been fleecing all of us while tearing us apart. And how much Democrats intend to pull the whole country together.
Itâs important to remember that while media obsesses over the Trumpâs summersaults of lies and buffoonery, ICE is ever busy, destroying the lives of decent people in America. People are rotting in Dilley and Delaney. Let us never forget them. And fight for whomever pledges to stop the fascists in 2027.
An Inconvenient Moment for an Extreme Global Heat Wave
Will it light a fire under politicians?
By Bill McKibben
July 9, 2026
Photograph by Valery Hache / AFP / Getty
The Trump Administration has cut much of the funding for the National Weather Service, which is now launching only about half as many weather balloons each morning as it used to. The result, meteorologists say, has been a degradation in our ability to forecast severe weatherâlate last month in Boulder, as smoke from the wildfire that killed three firefighters on the Colorado-Utah border hung in the air, I spoke with Daniel Swain, one of the countryâs foremost researchers on the effects of climate change. âThere have been essentially no weather-balloon launches in the interior West some days,â he said. âAnd we see efforts to completely dismantle oceanic monitoring systems, as a potentially historic El Niño emerges in the Pacific. We see the scrapping of climate-monitoring satellites before the end of their useful life for no economic reason whatsoever, but presumably for ideological ones.â The irony, as he pointed out, is that âyouâre not really changing either the visibility of the impacts or changing the trajectory of whatâs actually happening.â
Indeed, you really donât need a weatherman to tell which way the temperature is going this summerâbasically, up. A heat dome descended across Europe in June, producing truly wild anomalies: Paris reported two days above forty degrees Celsius (a hundred and four degrees Fahrenheit) in a row; it had only recorded three previous such occasions in the past hundred years. More than a thousand people across Europe are dead, often as a result of the fact that nighttime temperatures stayed high, robbing bodies of the chance to cope. The heat moved to the United States last week, as many millions of Americans experienced the hottest Fourth of July in historyâparades in Philadelphia and in Washington, D.C., were cancelled because of the extreme heat. Now itâs back in Europe, where the organizers of the Tour de France are speculating whether theyâll have to cancel stages of the race, and wildfires are filling the air with smoke. Thereâs no wonder, of course, about whatâs causing all this: as the nonprofit World Weather Attribution said of the first European wave, âIn 1976, when some of the previous European records were set, the 2026 temperatures would have been virtually impossible to occur in June, while also highly unlikely at any time of the year. In 2003, the first major heatwave of this century, daytime heat like this would still have been very rare, about 10 times less likely than today, while nighttime temperatures such as this June would have been more than a hundred times less likely in 2003.â
But, if people have been suffering from the elevated air temperatures, the really scary numbers come from the ocean sensors. In the Mediterranean, just south of France and Italy, temperatures exceeded eight degrees Celsius (fourteen degrees Fahrenheit) above normal. In recent weeks, researchers announced that a marine heat wave is covering an area in the Pacific eight times the size of the contiguous U.S. That patch of warm waterâa combination of a North Pacific heat wave and the burgeoning El Niño cyclical Pacific heat pattern now emerging in more southerly watersâwill haunt the world for at least the year to come. It may coincide with another heat dome across the western U.S. in mid-July, for instance, bringing with it yet more fire danger; the whole region is already tinder-dry after the warmest winter in the regionâs history left behind what some snow scientists called a âno-packâ in the Rockies and Sierras. As the year wears on, heat from the ocean increases the odds of flooding rains in California, and northward shifts in oceanic currents indirectly caused by El Niño will drive sea levels higher along the Pacific Coast. Swain, in his blog âWeather West,â has suggested that some locations might âbreak all-time historical coastal water height records given the additional contribution from global warming.â We can now take a daily average temperature for the worldâs oceans, and itâs currently breaking all records. Remember, the oceans are storing more than ninety per cent of the heat that humans have caused with greenhouse-gas emissions; without that storage, air temperatures could have risen from a baseline average of about sixty degrees Fahrenheit, to a hundred and twenty-five degrees. And weâre stuffing more heat in all the timeâin 2025, we increased the heat stored in the ocean by twenty-three zettajoules. A zettajoule is a sextillion joules, and the joule is a standard measure of heat or energy, but the figure might mean more expressed in other terms: as the thermal scientist John Abraham explained, itâs the heat equivalent of â12 Hiroshima bombs being detonated each second, for every minute, hour, and day for the entire year.â That ocean storage is temporary; events like El Niño are the functional equivalent of flinging open the sauna door and letting the warmth cascade out.
All this could not be happening at a more inconvenient time for political leaders. Some wonât be bothered, of courseâthe U.S. Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, said in May that global warming is âsort of a no-big-deal kind of thing,â the product of a âcultâ bent on âscaring kids.â There are, however, politicians who have taken climate change more seriously in the past but who would like a pass at the moment, so that they can pursue projects they think are closer to votersâ hearts. New Yorkâs governor, Kathy Hochul, recently put the stateâs official climate targets on ice and plumped for new gas pipelines, insisting that âI refuse to let New Yorkers pay the price for a plan that no longer reflects the world we are living in.â New York has an economy roughly comparable in size to Canadaâs, where Prime Minister Mark Carney has been struggling with the issue since he took office. Though a longtime climate championâhis 2015 speech to the insurance industry at Lloydâs of London made the case that global warming threatened the planetâs financial stability, and was a truly prescient landmark on the road to the Paris AccordsâCarney decided last week to blink. Canada, too, he said, would have to revise its climate targets, because the current plan was âtoo expensive for Canadiansâ who are âalready struggling with affordability.â
One can sympathize with HochulâTrump has, for the moment, shut off new offshore wind power along the Atlantic Coast, which would be the easiest way for New York to decarbonize. And one can truly sympathize with Carney, who is squeezed not only by Trump but by a rising separatist movement in the oil-patch province of Alberta. But that sympathy goes only so far: in many ways, these leaders have it easier than their predecessors, since the price of solar and wind power and of batteries keeps falling, and other states and countries are demonstrating how quickly and affordably they can move in the right direction. On July 1st, many Australians started getting three free hours of electricity every afternoon, the result of the abundant solar power that the nation has installed. And, in any event, the heat waves of the past few weeks and the heat pouring out of the worldâs oceans remind us that humans donât get to set the terms of their encounter with physics. The planet is refusing to postpone the rapid warming that we have triggered until an easier political moment.
After the U.S. resumed bombing Iran yesterday evening, Iranian forces retaliated early this morning with strikes on U.S. military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait.
In Ankara, TĂŒrkiye, for a NATO summit, President Donald J. Trump told reporters that Iranian leaders are âscum. Theyâre sick people. Theyâre led by sick people, and theyâre, theyâre vicious, violent people,â Trump said in his comments earlier Wednesday. âFar as Iâm concerned, itâs just a waste of time dealing with them. Theyâre liars.⊠Thereâs something wrong with them. Theyâre cuckoo. As far as Iâm concerned, [negotiations are] over.â
The U.S. then launched another round of strikes on Iran to âfurther degradeâ its âability to threaten freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.â
Oil prices spiked over the course of the day, and Trump appeared to walk back his earlier words, saying: âI think anything that happens is going to be over very quickly, and weâll only make it safer, including for oil. Oil is going to be very free, very easy, and itâs going to happen very fast. We have the Hormuz Strait; the boats have pulled out. I mean thereâs a gusher of oil right now, we have a lot of oil.â
As Tom Nichols noted in The Atlantic, the U.S. emphatically does not have the Strait of Hormuz. âIran, Not Trump, Is in Control of This War,â the title of Nicholsâs article reads. It goes on to say that the Iranians are calling the shots in the war and âare routinely humiliating the American president.â The so-called ceasefire was likely intended to calm oil markets, Nichols says; neither side ever stopped shooting.
Like many other observers, Nichols noted that Trump was âincoherentâ in Ankara. He referred to Iran as the âIslamic Republic of Japanâ and referred to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky as âPresident Putin.â In an off-with-their-heads! moment, he also announced he had ordered Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to cut off all trade with Spain.
According to Humeyra Pamuk and David Latona of Reuters, Trump repeatedly complained about Spain, whose leftist prime minister Pedro SĂĄnchez refused to let the U.S. use its bases or airspace to attack Iran even though Spain has been dramatically increasing its NATO spending. Trump then told Bessent: âI donât want to do any more trade with them, alright? Donât even talk to them. Theyâre hopeless. Theyâre bad people.... They make so much money with us, and weâre going to see that they make a lot less. I want no business with them.â
As economist Paul Krugman notes in his newsletter, cutting off trade with Spain is simply not going to happen. First of all, Trump does not have the authority to do any such thing. Second, the U.S. actually does a lot of business with Spain, and American businesses would not accept any such cuts. But even more, it is impossible because Spain is part of the European Union. As Krugman notes, this declaration is rather like Europe declaring it is going to cut off all trade with Florida.
Trumpâs declaration is a ânon-event,â Krugman notes. It is ânot something that is real.â
What we should take from it, he says, is that the statement was âcompletely crazy.â âIn any kind of normally functioning political system,â he said, âin any kind of normally functioning party environment we would have a massive bipartisan call across the aisle, across almost everybody except for a handful of members of congress who are themselves crazy, to say okay this guy is non compos mentis. We cannot leave the fate of the United States or the world in the hands of somebody who is completely irrational, who is making demands and believing himself to have powers that he does not.â
Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker agrees. He reposted Trumpâs reference to the Islamic Republic of Japan with the comment: âDonald Trump is suffering from dementia. Someone needs to step in before itâs too late.â
Meanwhile, Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary of Politico reported that European officials at the NATO summit reacted to Trumpâs announcement of new attacks on Iran just a day after he had praised Iranian leaders with the recognition that they can no longer rely on the United States.
A European official told the Politico reporters: âAfter seeing whatâs happening in Iran and Ukraine, we first of all, have to build our own military might, and then everybody will respect us: Americans, Russians, Iranians or Chinese. The more muscles you have, the less political anger you show.â
A German official was more succinct: âEuropeans donât take Trump seriously any longer.â
Meanwhile, Steven Rattner of MS NOW noted today that Trumpâs son-in-law Jared Kushner and Trumpâs sons have raised about $13 billion in investment capital from foreign governments, mostly in the Middle East, even as Kushner is working for Trump as special envoy to the region.
The Founders Warned Us About A Man Like Trump As America turns 250, the warnings of Washington, Hamilton, and Madison read more like headlines. Commentary: https://rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/founding-fathers-warned-america-trump-1235577524/
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The Founders explicitly warned us about the dangers of a demagogue, the poison of hyper-partisanship, the corrosive effects of corruption and foreign influence, the politicization of religion, and the erosion of the separation of powers.
Yes, by those basic standards, weâre living through the foundersâ nightmare. But the right response is not civic despair but a defiant resolve to reclaim American patriotism and fix whatâs been broken so that we can strengthen our democracy to survive the next 250 years.
#AlexanderHamilton perfectly anticipated the figure of Donald Trump in a letter to George Washington in 1792:
âWhen a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents ... despotic in his ordinary demeanour â known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty â when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity â to join in the cry of danger to liberty â to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government [and] bringing it under suspicion â to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day â it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may âride the storm and direct the whirlwind.âââ
Read that a second time to let it sink in.
âUnprincipled in private lifeâ: Check. âBold in his temper, possessed of considerable talentsâ: Check. âKnown to have scoffed in private at the principles of libertyâ: For sure. âEmbarrassing the General Government [and] bringing it under suspicion â to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the dayâ: Well, thatâs almost too on the nose.
âAlways breathing-in this pre-life, exhaling this post. Something goes away, something comes back. But through you. Leaving no trail but self. As trails go not much of one. But patiently you travel it. Your self.â
â Jorie Graham, [To] The Last [Be] Human
