In an increasingly hostile world of great power competition, it’s nice to know that in Pete Hegseth we finally have a secretary of defense focused on the important things: purging military web databases of thousands of images featuring women, minorities, and anything else that smacks, to the right-wing palate, of DEI. The crowning achievement, per the AP: “In some cases, photos seemed to be flagged for removal simply because their file included the word ‘gay,’ including service members with that last name and an image of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II.” Happy Friday.
A Good Day in Dumb Newsby Andrew Egger Every day is stupid now, but not all stupid days are created equal. Some days are darkly energizing. You want to shout from the rooftops: Look at all the damage these malevolent, clueless jerks are doing! Other days, when the stupidity feels less evil than pointless, are enervating: You’d rather just log off and take a nap. You have to remind yourself: These are actually the good stupid days. You’d rather these than the others. Yesterday was of the latter category. Markets had been sagging for days over Donald Trump’s inexplicable trade war with Mexico and Canada, and he had plainly been looking for an off-ramp. Mexico was giving him an easy one: President Claudia Sheinbaum had held off on imposing retaliatory tariffs before this weekend and was taking pains not to say anything that would ruffle Trump’s feathers. Canada, by contrast, was meeting fire with fire—imposing immediate retaliatory tariffs and threatening worse. And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was punching back hard against Trump’s rhetoric about making Canada the 51st U.S. state. So on Thursday, when Trump praised Sheinbaum, denounced Trudeau, and announced he was delaying most tariff hikes on Mexico for another month, the moral seemed clear: Even under the most insane circumstances, flattery works. Until a few hours later—when Trump quietly pushed back tariffs on Canada as well. What did it all mean? Who was it all for? Who knows! Just a few days of pointless value-destroying market chaos, begun at whim, ended at whim. Tune in April 2 and we’ll do the whole thing over again. Then there was DOGE. Elon Musk’s arson brigade, as we never tire of telling you, has been stepping on rake after rake recently, and Trump finally seemed to decide yesterday that the time had come to yank the chain. During a cabinet meeting this morning—at which Musk was again present—Trump told his agency heads that they, not Musk, had ultimate authority over staffing. Meanwhile, he again signaled that his favor was shifting: “As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go. We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet.’” (Or, one assumes, the chainsaw.) A significant development, it seemed! Until a few hours later—when he undercut it completely in Oval Office remarks to reporters: “Elon and the group are going to be watching them. If they can cut, it’s better. And if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.” It’s unlikely, of course, that any of this will hurt Trump with his core constituency: The president is blessed with a deeply credulous base that is perfectly willing to chalk up all flip-flops, swerves, and flailings as the 4D chess moves of a master negotiator. But the rest of us should take comfort in it, even as we worry that we get actively dumber just reading about it. In some crucial ways, Trump is on a pitch clock: The longer he flounders, the less markets trust him and the less popular he becomes. And the less markets trust him and the less popular he becomes, the more he will stress about how to reverse those trends—which only makes him more indecisive, leading to more whiplash-inducing stories like the ones we saw yesterday. It’s a vicious cycle, the upshot of which is that he gets worse at making America and the world worse in a timely way. It’s a good start. Don’t Chastise Al Green—Channel Himby Bill Kristol Early this morning I was trying to decide: Should I write about the latest examples of the Trump administration’s extraordinary assault on the rule of law, its most recent acts of cruelty toward immigrants, the reckless damage it’s doing to our civil service, or the betrayal of the brave people of Ukraine on behalf of Vladimir Putin? It all felt too much; all too infuriating for a cool, calm, and collected 600 words. And then my mind drifted to someone who wasn’t embarrassed to show this week that he was infuriated—Rep. Al Green, Democrat of Texas. It was the 77-year-old Green, a ten-term member of the House, who stood up and interrupted President Trump’s address to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. When Trump said that voters in the 2024 election had given him a mandate to slash the federal government, Green rose from his seat near the front of the chamber, and, waving his cane for emphasis, shouted that the president had “no mandate to cut Medicaid . . . no mandate.” The Speaker of the House asked Green to sit down and respect decorum. Green showed no sign of obeying that request. So the speaker ordered the sergeant at arms to remove him from the floor. Green left peacefully. Some Democratic members and liberal commentators were unhappy with Green. It was inappropriate! It was disrespectful! In any case it was politically unwise and counter-productive! What would those sensitive swing voters think? Really? Was it that inappropriate, given all that Trump has been doing? Would Al Green truly cost Democrats a single swing voter twenty months from now? I’m doubtful. Let me go further. Am I alone in feeling that it was good to see some fervent conviction and righteous indignation? Am I the only person who was actually kind of happy to see, in a sea of Democrats waving little paddles with lame messages, someone literally standing up to Trump? Afterwards, Green was unapologetic. He told reporters, “I was making it clear to the president that he has no mandate to cut Medicaid. I have people who are very fearful. These are poor people, and they have only Medicaid in their lives when it comes to their health care.” The next day Green elaborated:
On Thursday, the Republican-controlled House voted to censure Green. After the vote, as a censure resolution requires, the congressman stood in the well of the House chamber while Speaker Mike Johnson read the resolution to him. In a show of solidarity, dozens of Democratic members joined Green in the well and sang “We Shall Overcome.” Speaker Johnson told them to stop and to clear the well. The Democrats ignored Johnson’s request, and he recessed the House. I don’t think Green will be or should be the dominant voice or the future leader of the Democratic party. But I couldn’t help being impressed that he did what he did. I couldn’t help admiring him for what he did. I couldn’t help being moved watching the video of him and his colleagues singing. And I couldn’t help thinking, We shall overcome this, someday. Quick HitsABORTION DRUGS IN THE MAIL: During last year’s election, when Democrats had a clear advantage over Republicans on abortion messaging, Donald Trump repeatedly pledged that he would not restrict access to abortion pills if elected. But during yesterday’s confirmation hearing for Dr. Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration, Republican senators urged Trump’s nominee to review a Biden-area policy permitting the drug mifepristone to be prescribed through the mail. Makary sounded open to the idea. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) described the FDA’s former, long-standing requirement that the pills be dispensed in person as “the pre-political protocol.” Under Biden, the FDA first temporarily permitted mail access for abortion drugs as a pandemic measure, then made the change permanent as the Supreme Court was considering whether to end Roe v. Wade. “I do think it makes sense to review the totality of the data and ongoing data,” a seemingly sympathetic Makary said. “I know personally of OB doctors who prefer to insist—though they have the option to prescribe otherwise—but they choose to insist that mifepristone be taken, when necessary, in their office as they observe the person taking it. I think their concern there is that if this drug is in the wrong hands it could be used for coercion.” TRUST ME, IT’S A GOOD DEAL: A key friction in Trump-era diplomacy so far: Trump prefers bilateral negotiations with adversaries; our allies resent being frozen out of the process. Last month, it was Ukraine; this week, per Axios, it’s Israel:
On the substance of the Gaza war, Trump has paired relentless anti-Hamas rhetoric and saber-rattling with wild flights of fantasy—promising the United States would take over the Gaza Strip and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East,” sharing bizarre AI-generated video of himself and Elon Musk relaxing in the pool of a Trump Tower Gaza. Israel’s government has been publicly grateful for Trump’s support, but seemingly fears—not without reason—the president will forge ahead with some truly crackpot “deal” without their input. Meanwhile, we can’t help but wonder what the Republican reaction would have been if, say, Joe Biden were to have cut Israel out of diplomatic talks with Hamas. AUDIENCE OF ONE: The Department of Homeland Security’s $200 million ad campaign thanking President Donald Trump for “securing our border” and warning migrants who are in the country illegally to “leave now” has aired in major media markets around the country. According to data from the ad tracking firm AdImpact, DHS has placed six-figure ad buys in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, Phoenix, Miami, San Francisco, and Chicago. But there was also a small but curious expenditure buried in AdImpact’s data: DHS also spent $30,000 to air the ads in West Palm Beach from February 25 through March 5. Palm Beach County has had some ICE activity under Trump. But it’s been relatively modest. The more likely explanation for that expense: Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago club that weekend. And as everyone—including the leadership at DHS knows—Trump likes watching TV. The $30k is a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of the agency’s ad budget. But it’s yet another data point of how Trump officials will go out of their way—and even spend taxpayer money—to suck up to the president. That it comes as the Trump administration is ostensibly on a crusade to cut government spending at every corner is just a cherry on top. Then again, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Noem’s hands may have been tied here. After all, we know Trump was really into the idea. At last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Noem told the gathering that Trump explicitly said he wanted her face in the ads and wanted her to “thank me for closing the border.” —Lauren Egan Cheap Shots
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We Live in the Dumbest Times
March 07, 2025
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