Opinion
This phony Democrat got blown out of the water — and that's terrifying for Trump
Maine just handed Democrats a wake-up call that they’d damn well better actually listen to this time.
Governor Janet Mills suspended her Senate campaign Thursday, leaving Marine veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner as the presumptive Democratic nominee to take on Republican Senator Susan Collins in November.
The message Maine voters are frankly shouting is the same one I’ve been hearing from listeners on my radio/TV show for years and the same one that pollsters across the spectrum keep picking up across the country: people are sick and tired of mealy-mouthed corporate Democrats who run on focus-grouped slogans and govern like they’re scared of their own shadow.
They want fighters.
Mills was Chuck Schumer’s hand-picked candidate, recruited by Democratic Party insiders because they thought the 78-year-old two-term governor would be the safest, most “electable” option against Susan Collins. What Schumer and the “insider Democrats” got instead — and deserved — was a 30-point shellacking.
Platner, who launched his campaign last August by naming “the oligarchy” and “the billionaires who pay for it” as the enemy, outraised Mills every single quarter, packed wildly enthusiastic town halls all over the state, and even earned Bernie Sanders’ endorsement along the way. He turned Mills’ establishment alignment into a major liability and thus pushed her out of the race a full five weeks before the primary.
That’s what happens when voters finally get a real choice: they want the real thing, not a compromising deal-maker taking money from corporations and billionaires like Republicans do. As then-President Harry Truman said on May 17, 1952:
“If it’s a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don’t want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign.”
And it matters that on roughly the same day Mills bowed out, the Congressional Progressive Caucus — just as fed up with moderate Democrats running the same losing playbook as voters are — rolled out its New Affordability Agenda, a 10-point legislative package aimed straight at the cost-of-living crisis that’s now crushing working families.
It would make:
— Prescription drugs cheaper by establishing a government program to sell generic drugs at a discount, cutting the price of a vial of insulin from $300 to $50;
— Utilities cheaper by cracking down on for-profit utilities overcharging consumers, saving the average family $500 a year;
— Gas cheaper by charging big oil companies a tax on extra profits from the war, then refunding that money to consumers. If oil stays at $100 a barrel, most families would get $324 back;
— Childcare cheaper by guaranteeing no family pays more than 7% of its income – under $10 a day for most families;
— Housing cheaper by building millions of new homes, offering every first-time homeowner $20,000 in downpayment assistance, and expanding rental assistance;
— Groceries cheaper by cracking down on big grocers who fix prices and on companies that abuse seed patents to make farming more expensive;
— Time off cheaper by guaranteeing every worker two weeks of paid vacation time;
— Ban ‘Surveillance Pricing,’ where companies use personal data to raise prices with AI;
— Put money in pockets by requiring companies to pay double wages for overtime, as opposed to the current time-and-a-half standard; and
— Abolish Super PACs so billionaires can’t buy more policies that make stuff more expensive.
New polling from Data for Progress found that every single one of those proposals is supported by close to 60% of Republican voters. Among Democrats it pushes into the 80% range.
That’s not a “leftist” agenda. That’s a genuine populist agenda that works for the actual American electorate, and Greg Casar, Ilhan Omar, AOC, Mark Pocan, Ro Khanna, and the rest of the Progressive Caucus deserve real credit for putting it on the table.
Some of us have been ringing this bell since the 1990s. Back when Bill Clinton was triangulating his way through welfare reform and NAFTA, I was telling readers that we were watching the Democratic Party gut its own coalition for a handful of cocktail-party invitations from Wall Street.
As I laid out in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America and on the air for over two decades, when Clinton embraced Reagan’s neoliberalism in 1992 and Obama maintained it through his eight years in office, the Democratic Party took a fatal turn to the right.
“End welfare as we know it.” “The era of big government is over.” NAFTA, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, bailing out the banks and hobnobbing with their CEOs at Davos while throwing the homeowners those banksters had defrauded out on the street, sucking up to Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and Big Defense, defending Netanyahu no matter how many war crimes he commits.
Then nominating Hillary Clinton on a platform that tried to tell working-class voters that things were basically fine, right before Donald Trump ran ads in the Rust Belt about NAFTA and how nobody in Washington gave a damn about them. The post-1992 neoliberal Democratic Party didn’t lose because it was too progressive: it lost because it kept refusing to be progressive at all.
Meanwhile, look at what the Republicans have actually done with the power voters keep handing them. They’ve:
— Cut taxes on billionaires and corporations so dramatically that the national debt just officially crossed 100% of GDP, the highest peacetime level since the years right after World War II.
— Rigged elections through aggressive voter purges and partisan gerrymandering, with help from a Supreme Court that just this week further gutted the Voting Rights Act.
— Cheered on foreign wars, including the “magnificently stupid” current Iran war Platner himself has denounced, while running interference for the daily war crimes happening in Gaza and now in Lebanon.
— Allowed the Trump family to turn the presidency into a multi-billion-dollar grift machine of meme coins, crypto launches, stablecoins, and foreign payoffs while millions of Americans skip prescription doses to make rent.
— Kept the federal minimum wage frozen at $7.25, where it’s been stuck since 2009, and even went to this corrupt Supreme Court to kill Joe Biden’s student debt relief.
— Taken hundreds of millions from the fossil fuel industry while heat domes, hurricanes, and wildfires are killing thousands of Americans — most recently children in Texas —every single year.
— Taken millions more from the gun industry while terrified schoolkids hide under their desks.
— Hijacked Christianity, pushing a twisted version that Jesus would’ve flipped tables over, while hustling for huckster televangelists, performatively demanding mandatory school prayer, Ten Commandments postings in every classroom, and Whiskey Pete pitching prayer every weekend in every barracks.
— Deployed armed, masked thugs to intimidate and murder American citizens while building a massive series of concentration camps across the country.
That’s the record American voters across the political spectrum need to know about, and Democrats should be shouting from the rafters. A wishy-washy Democrat saying “well, we’ll try, but we really don’t want to p--- off the Republicans by impeaching Trump or Clarence Thomas” — like we saw in 2024 — is never again going to work.
Maine’s Democrats saw a guy who’d actually served three tours in Iraq, who runs a small business on the working waterfront, who talks the way they talk, and who isn’t afraid to say out loud that the people robbing them are the billionaire class and the Republican shills they own.
The lesson for the DNC, DCCC, the DSCC, and every damn consultant who’s suggested running on an anodyne “don’t make waves” agenda without naming who’s screwing everyday Americans is clear: the New Affordability Agenda isn’t just good policy, it’s also good politics.
It tells voters exactly who’s stealing from them and offers concrete steps progressive candidates will fight to actually deliver. That’s the formula Bernie Sanders has been pushing for three decades (and did for 11 years weekly on my radio program), the formula AOC and Zohran Mamdani just rode to victory in New York, and the formula Platner just used to blow Janet Mills out of the water.
So, reach out to your Democratic member of Congress and senators and tell them to sign onto the New Affordability Agenda. Tell them you want fighters, not neoliberal wusses.
If you’re in Maine, help Graham Platner finish the job and send Susan Collins home in November. And if you’re anywhere else, find the populist progressives in your state’s primary and back them, too, or sign up to run yourself.
Maine just showed the rest of the country what’s possible when Democrats finally stop wimping out and trying to appease Republicans. Voters want candidates like Graham Platner who’ll take names and kick ass.
It’s now on the rest of us to follow their lead.
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Trump warned America's enemies of imminent doom — yet left his own country in the dark
The Wall Street Journal reports in an article titled “Trump Tells Aides to Prepare for Extended Blockade of Iran” that:
“President Trump has instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran, U.S. officials said... In recent meetings, including a Monday discussion in the Situation Room, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports. …
“For now, Trump is comfortable with an indefinite blockade, which he wrote Tuesday on Truth Social is pushing Iran toward a ‘State of Collapse.’”
So, Putin and America’s billionaires who religiously read the WSJ are officially tipped off to prepare for what may well be a worldwide repeat of the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s. Or at least a revisit to the GOP’s infamous Nixon-era crises of the 1970s, Reagan’s “Black Monday” 22% market crash, Bush’s 2008 “Great Recession,” and Trump’s 2020 massive botched-pandemic-response economic melt-down.
Trump and his people didn’t bother to say one word to average Americans — no press conference or warning — but they sure made certain that their billionaire buddies are informed.
And, of course, they’re not at all worried by this; recessions and depressions are when the morbidly rich like Trump and the 13 billionaires in his cabinet make their greatest fortunes. Businesses are failing, stock prices collapsing, and people are losing their homes, all fantastic buying opportunities for wealthy, cash-rich predators investors.
For example, when a handful of greedy Wall Street CEOs crashed the American economy in 2008, home prices (and, thus, homeowner equity) collapsed by 21%. Over 10 million Americans lost their homes to banking predators like “Foreclosure King” Steve Mnuchin, and tens of millions of others were underwater.
The stock market plummeted by over 50% in the last year of Bush’s presidency. On October 9, 2007 the Dow was at its all-time peak of 14,164 but by March 5, 2009 it had collapsed to 6,594. No bankers were ever prosecuted.
While millions of Americans lost their jobs and were wiped out as the Bush Crash started today’s homelessness crises, the top 1 percent saw it as one of the finest buying opportunities of the new century.
Working-class people were desperately selling their homes and unloading the stocks in their 401Ks at a loss just to pay the bills, as wages plummeted in the face of a loose labor market.
But the morbidly rich were doing great.
Between 2009 — the bottom of the Bush Crash — and 2012 when the recovery finally began under Obama, the top 1 percent of Americans saw their income grow by over 31 percent. Fully 95 percent of all of the income increases in the country were seized by the top 1 percent of Americans during that period.
As the economy recovered, rich people who’d bought stocks at the market bottom rode the S&P 500 up by 462 percent to 2020. A billion dollars invested in 2009 became $4.62 billion in just 11 years, a period during which the combined wealth of American billionaires went up by over 80 percent.
Then they did it again 10 years later!
The Trump/Covid Crash of 2020, “mismanaged” in a way to create maximum pain for working people, presented America’s morbidly rich with another brand new and huge opportunity to get even richer on top of a crisis brutalizing the rest of America.
As the market collapsed under Republicans and Trump, average Americans, now out of work, were again selling their homes and stocks at a loss just to buy food and medicine. But for the wealthy, it was a gift from God.
March 16, 2020 — just after Trump declared a pandemic and lockdown — the Dow sustained the largest single-day crash in its entire history. For the investor class, Trump and his billionaire buddies, this was an even better opportunity than the Bush crash of 2008!
Fewer than three months later, on June 4th, we learned that the seven richest people in America had seen their fortunes increase by fully 50 percent.
And with Trump’s massive tax cut for his fellow billionaires, they could keep most all of it: by that time the average American billionaire was paying less than 3 percent in income taxes (a situation that persists to this day).
Just during that one single terrible pandemic year of 2020, the Institute for Policy Studies documents, U.S. billionaires saw their net worth surge 62 percent by $1.8 trillion. Average billionaire wealth worldwide increased 27% in that one year alone.
American billionaires’ real taxes have fallen by 79 percent since Reagan’s election in 1980, and a 2012 analysis found that as much as $32 trillion of that is safely squirreled away in tax-fraud offshore shelters, about the same amount as their tax avoidance has left us as a national debt.
Which is why working-class Americans and our media should stop pretending that downturns are random acts of God. They’re predictable outcomes of GOP policy choices that get repeated whenever a Republican is in the White House — ten of the last eleven recessions happened when a Republican was president — and this one is being engineered right now in plain sight.
Republican deregulation weakens guardrails. Trade chaos disrupts production. Inequality hollows out demand. Tax breaks for the rich force cuts to government support for poor and middle class Americans. And when the system finally buckles, the losses to average working class people mean huge profits for the morbidly rich.
And this downturn could easily be the biggest one of our lifetimes, a singular achievement the Trump Crime Family will profit from massively, along with their billionaire cronies. As CNN reports, “About half the stuff Americans buy comes from Asia” and Asia is melting down from a lack of Middle Eastern oil. It’s hitting the rest of the world, too:
“The Middle East ships about 25% of the world’s polypropylene and 20% of polyethylene, two of the most-used plastics. It also accounts for a quarter of the world’s sulphur and 15% of its fertilizer.”
Not to mention a fifth of the world’s oil, most of the world’s helium, necessary to run MRI machines and make precision chips, and other crucial commodities. As Martin Wolf wrote for yesterday’s Financial Times:
“Fifty per cent of the world’s seaborne trade in sulphur passes through the Strait of Hormuz. So does 34 per cent of trade in crude oil, 29 per cent of liquefied petroleum gas, 19 per cent of liquefied natural gas, 19 per cent of refined oil products, 13 per cent of chemicals, including fertilisers, and nearly 10 per cent of aluminium. This is a chokepoint of the world economy.“
The oil shock has become so bad in Asia that, CNN notes, “Several major petrochemical producers, including South Korea’s Yeochun and PCS in Singapore, have declared ‘force majeure,’” meaning they can no longer honor their contracts to supply their customers because of circumstances out of their control.
And now it’s starting to show up here in the US in ways that go far beyond just the price at the pump.
Some are wondering if Trump’s efforts to bring down the world economy — which are explicitly helping Russia — are because Putin told him to do it.
That’s possible; our joining Netanyahu in illegally bombing Iran has also been a big boon to Putin’s regime, both in justifying his similarly illegal bombing of Ukraine and in jacking up world demand for (and the price of) Russian oil, which Trump has conveniently dropped sanctions on.
But it’s just as likely that this is simply the same type of stupid decision-making that has caused Trump to run every one of his dozens of companies except those subsidized by Russian or Middle Eastern money straight into the ground. Or it’s a two-fer, that benefits both American billionaires and Putin.
However it came about, buckle up. Hegseth’s pathetic performance before Congress yesterday tells us explicitly that the Trump regime has no plan to work out a peace deal with Iran any time soon.
While Putin, the Trump kids, and their fellow billionaires are rubbing their hands in glee, it’s going to be a hell of a year for the other 99% rest of us.
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Congress just got bawled out for letting Trump run wild
Donald Trump isn’t just breaking norms, he’s running a live experiment on the limits of American power. Each move is a test: How far can a president go? What laws and how much of the Constitution can be ignored? And, most importantly, will anyone actually stop him?
It took the King of England to remind Congress that their job is to restrain a president, not cheer him on no matter what. Charles III said:
“The U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society has calculated that Magna Carta is cited in at least 160 Supreme Court cases since 1789, not least as the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.”
King Charles was essentially begging Congress to restrain Donald Trump’s imperial overreach, the most glaring example of which is his starting a war with Iran without congressional approval and in violation of both the US Constitution, the 1973 War Powers Act, and the Geneva Convention.
It’s a lesson America first lost touch with when President Harry Truman got us into the Korean War without Congressional authorization, was amplified by LBJ and Nixon in Vietnam and Reagan in Granada, and has since led through a series of modern presidential actions straight to Trump joining Netanyahu to bomb Iran without Congress, provocation, or legal basis.
Both parties have been complicit in this, generally in support of their own presidents while questioning the actions of presidents of the other party, but the actions of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney — and Obama’s failure to respond to them — most directly led to Trump’s excesses.
George W. Bush came into office wanting to start a war with Iraq as a strategy to get himself re-elected in 2004 and “have a successful presidency.” In 1999, when Bush decided he was going to run for president in the 2000 election, his family hired ghostwriter Mickey Herskowitz to pen the first draft of Bush’s “autobiography,” A Charge To Keep.
“I’ll tell you, he was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999,” Herskowitz told reporter Russ Baker in 2004. He told Baker that Bush said:
“One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of (Kuwait) and he wasted it.
“If I have a chance to invade Iraq, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”
Cheney, meanwhile, was in a world of trouble because of a huge asbestos bet he’d made as CEO of Halliburton in 1998. The company was facing possible bankruptcy.
In July of 2000, Cheney walked away with $30 million from the troubled company and the year after that, as Bush’s now-Vice President, Halliburton subsidiary KBR suddenly received one of the first no-bid no-ceiling (no accountability and no limit on how much they could receive) multi-billion-dollar military contracts that arguably rescued the company.
Bush and Cheney both had good reason to want to invade Afghanistan in October 2001 for their own selfish purposes, the law and public good be damned.
— Bush was unpopular and seen as an illegitimate president at the time because his father’s corrupt appointee on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, had cast the deciding vote in the Bush v Gore lawsuit that made him president; he wanted a war that would give him legitimacy and the aura of leadership.
— Cheney’s company was in a crisis, and Afghanistan War no-bid contracts helped turn around Halliburton from the edge of bankruptcy into one of the world’s largest defense contractors today, adding a fortune to Cheney’s family’s holding of Halliburton stock.
Under Bush’s and Cheney’s command, American forces committed numerous war crimes — including torture, murder, slaughter of civilians including children, and kidnapping/rendering to “black sites” — that earned America universal condemnation. Our reputation was damaged, but, even worse, the precedent of an untouchable, unaccountable presidency was established.
That could have been stopped by Congress, but the body failed; the crime was then compounded when Barack Obama came into office in January, 2009 with a 257-198 Democratic majority in the House and a 60-vote supermajority in the Senate. They had real political power, but instead of holding these two liars and war criminals to account, President Obama said, when asked if he was going to prosecute them:
“I don’t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
When he and Democrats in Congress took that position — much like House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries saying this Sunday on Fox “News” that impeaching Trump is not a priority if they take power in this November’s election — they let Bush and Cheney off the hook and thus pretty much guaranteed that Trump would overreach and commit war crimes, as he has done.
After all, if Obama and congressional Democrats let Bush and Cheney get away with what everybody in America knew was a series of deadly lies that cost us both lives and treasure, why would Trump think that any Democrat would ever try to hold him accountable for the same thing?
Which is exactly why it’s so important for Democrats to abandon appeasement and hold Trump accountable for his many crimes in office — from taking bribes and selling pardons to tearing down part of the White House to bombing Iran — if they regain the power of the subpoena and impeachment this fall.
Instead of telling Trump in advance that he’ll skate just like Reagan, Bush, and Cheney did, Jeffries and Schumer should be loudly proclaiming that there will be accountability.
This sort of behavior — by presidents of both parties — has to stop. It’s wrong, it’s illegal, it’s unconstitutional, and it destroys the world’s confidence in America as a moral force.
Taking on Trump is also good politics.
A recent Strength in Numbers/Verasight poll found 55% of all voters support impeaching Trump, with especially strong backing among Democrats. One-in-five of Trump’s own voters want him impeached and at least 85 members of the House are on record for holding him accountable. A Quinnipiac University poll found that fully 95% of Democrats support prosecuting Trump on federal charges.
A hereditary king praising restraints on executive authority before the U.S. Congress was both historically ironic and politically elegant: King Charles III was reminding Congress not to tolerate a man trying to become the kind of ruler our Founders rejected. As he pointed out, free nations only survive as free when executive power is answerable to Congress, the people, and the law.
Democrats damn well better be paying attention.
At some point, this stops being just about Trump. It becomes about whether the United States still believes in accountability at all. Because if the answer to every abuse of power is still “nothing,” then the destruction of American democracy isn’t just continuing, it’s succeeding.
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This smug MAGA baby's insane freak out proves they're worried sick
Give me the confidence of a mediocre MAGA man hiding behind his false bravado.
Seriously, I wish I had whatever lack of awareness these men possess so that I could just skate through life and never have to face any consequences from anything I say or do.
This week, women watched our voting rights being ritualistically gutted by the mediocre MAGA men on the Supreme Court. At the same time, we’ve witnessed multiple MAGA sycophants publicly declare their love for a convicted felon Epstein Bestie who whines when anyone makes a joke about him.
Acting Attorney General Todd “Thank You Sir, May I Have Another” Blanche proved himself to Trump by moving Jeffrey Epstein’s side piece and fellow sex trafficking rapist, Ghislaine Maxwell, to a Club Fed instead of putting her on Death Row where she belongs. Here’s Blanche--clearly just seconds after extracting himself from his new office inside Trump’s alimentary canal--giving Juliet’s balcony soliloquy a run for its money.
Ew. My cringe has cringe.
Another Trump suck-up who sucks at his job is CNN’s resident smug frat boy, Scott Jennings. Aside from being the worst part of every panel discussion helmed by the long-suffering Abby Phillip, who really should have had enough by now, Jennings has never once landed a point based on facts.
Like all mediocre MAGA “men,” Jennings is easily baited and triggered, mainly because there’s a part of him that knows Trump is all of the worst things. But Jennings isn’t being paid to be authentic; he’s paid to scream over anyone who dares to speak ill of Dear Leader.
Jennings was famously owned by Leigh McGowan, aka “I Am Politics Girl,” during a segment where he showcased his patented MAGA disregard for facts and human life.
That exchange led to this screenshot, which now lives on my phone because we are all Leigh whenever Scott Jennings opens his smug frat boy mouth.
But then the internet got another gift on Thursday night, thanks to another gifted political commentator, Adam Mockler. A rising star in the Democratic influencer space, the 23-year-old Mockler was speaking truthfully about the situation in Iran when Jennings began to use his usual smug tactics. Aside from talking over Mockler, Jennings muttered something about him “being up past his bedtime,” because the show airs at 10 P.M.
And then this happened.
Yes, the same smug frat boy who whines about Democrats being mean to Trump dropped an expletive live on CNN because he’s a giant babyman.
The Jennings/Mockler moment set off a social media firestorm, with the kind of meme game that could make you appreciate that the internet exists. They don’t even need words to capture the MAGA default setting of self-victimization anytime the truth about Trump hurts their delicate snowflake feelings.
“Mooommm! He’s telling the truth about Trump again!”
Or, “Moooomm! He took the last piece of meat loaf, and you said I could have it!”
This one is also good and embarrassing for him, because you can see how the father of four sons probably treats his own kids.
Jennings whined that Adam’s hand was “in his face, which clearly isn’t the case, but at least we have this evergreen reply to him from now on.
Seriously, for one second, you thought, “Oh, I love the internet!”
The fallout from this encounter is accumulating A LOT of MAGA snowflakes on the ground, by Smug Scotty’s fellow Trumpsimp, FCC sycophant Brendan Carr, was tweeting on Friday night about how he would essentially let Trump punch someone in the face while dropping F bombs, but Jimmy Kimmel isn’t allowed to say that Melania Trump has “the glow of an expectant widow.”
Brendan seems to have forgotten he once had a firm grasp on how the First Amendment works. I’ve repeatedly asked him what’s changed for him over the last seven years, because the Constitution remains the same, but he keeps ignoring me to chat with his fellow MAGA bullies instead. Weird!
Feel free to screenshot that and use it to haunt Brendan Carr’s replies, because MAGA receipts are my favorite kind of receipts. Using their own words against them will forever be the best tactic.
Trump held another ego rally on Friday night at The Villages, aka Ground Zero for Geriatric MAGA, because his approval rating is at an historic low and he has to show the world he can still draw a crowd. Only a full-on cult would accept this behavior from the Commander-In-Chief of the allegedly most powerful military on Earth.
Donny Dementia once again bragged about acing a cognitive test that no other president ever had to take because no one was concerned their brains had turned to rancid tapioca pudding. He also did an impression of what he classified as a transgender woman weightlifter. Just imagine the reaction from MAGA if any Democrat behaved like this.
But as a result, we have this to use at our leisure to show MAGA what their guy really looks like instead of those AI memes he posts in the middle of the night, where he has defined abs and friends.
Trump was joined by another mediocre MAGA man, “Dr.” Phil McGraw, whom we wouldn’t know existed without Oprah (Same for Dr. Oz, and really, that’s two YUGE strikes, ma’am).
To his credit, Trump fully checked out as soon as Foghorn Leghorn really got going.
Instead of being embarrassed by any of Trump’s antics, MAGA will just keep bullying anyone who challenges their cult narratives. They wrap themselves in their false pearl-clutching manufactured MAGA outrage and act all put-upon if you make them face the reality they’ve been willfully ignoring for over a decade.
Just like Dear Leader.
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Trump's intimidation tactic just got destroyed — and he's reeling
In a week when Donald Trump seemed to think he was a king because he hung with one, something hopeful reminded us he is far from one. In fact, you might say that the emperor's clothing is beginning to be removed, and what’s being exposed is a scaredy cat fraud.
Three diverse, noteworthy figures, over the past few days, looked Trump in the eye and essentially told him, “Get lost.”
After watching universities fold, law firms capitulate, networks grovel, and broadcasters bench their own talent at the first hint of White House displeasure (I’m dreading saying goodbye to Stephen Colbert), we saw a different response to Trump’s horrid reign.
First, a world leader stepped forward to call out Trump’s tragically misguided war with Iran. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who had been careful to maintain cordial relations with Trump and left a White House visit last month on good terms, did something rare among Western leaders.
Speaking to students in his home district of Marsberg, Merz said the Americas, i.e. Donald Trump “have absolutely no coherent strategy whatsoever” in the Iran conflict, and that “an entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards.”
Trump, predictably, lashed out on Truth Social, claiming Merz “thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon” and writing, “No wonder Germany is doing so poorly, both Economically, and otherwise!”
But Merz didn’t apologize or backtrack. He was right. U.S. negotiators were set to travel to Islamabad for talks last weekend, and Trump canceled the trip, boasting, “We have all the cards,” while Iran keeps the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, hurting the global economy. Merz said publicly what many leaders say privately.
And let’s hope that other world leaders take the hint and come down hard on Trump. Doing the right thing always works out in the end. Just ask Jimmy Kimmel.
Kimmel, and, more importantly, Disney and ABC. Kimmel joked last Thursday about Melania being an “expectant widow” because of their May-December marriage, not, as Melania claimed, about precipitating the White House Correspondents Dinner shooting incident.
You’ll recall that the last time Trump targeted Kimmel, ABC caved, benching him after backlash from conservative politicians and station owners over a monologue about the politicization of activist Charlie Kirk’s murder.
Subscribers canceled Disney+ in protest. It was so embarrassing, and to be blunt, it was great to see consumers react quickly and decisively. Disney, this time, is handling things differently. The same day the Trump’s toothless toady, FCC Chair Brendan Carr, challenged ABC’s broadcast licenses. It was clearly in retaliation for Melania’s accusation. Carr said it wasn’t but of course he’s blatantly lying.
But Jimmy? He went on air and he kept hammering.
He didn’t apologize, because he didn’t need to! He noted the irony that Trump had just joked about his own marriage to Melania at a royal arrival ceremony. Trump noted that his parents were married for 63 years. He then turned to Melania and said, "That’s a record we won’t be able to match, darling. I’m sorry. Just not going to work out that way. We’ll do well, but we’re not going to do that well".
Kimmel took notice. Only Donald Trump would demand that I be fired for making a joke about his old age,” Kimmel said, “and then a day later go out and make a joke about his old age.”
And Disney? The company invoked the First Amendment and signaled it is willing to fight, saying it has complied fully with FCC rules. The FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez, said Disney “has the First Amendment on its side.”
Then there’s Jerome Powell. Who would have thought a 73-year-old, diminutive, nerdy math guy could make Trump look even more feckless? On his last day as Fed chair, the man Trump appointed, hounded, threatened, and tried to have investigated did not go quietly.
Powell called the political attacks on the Fed “unprecedented in our 113-year history” and announced he will remain on the Board of Governors after his chairmanship ends May 15, rather than disappearing as outgoing chairs typically do—despite Trump repeatedly demanding he do so.
Powell just stuck a sharp #2 pencil in Trump’s eye. I’d say a Sharpie, but Trump’s obviously able to do that himself.
Powell has long projected neutrality, even favoring purple ties to avoid partisan signaling, while pushing back on Trump’s pressure for rate cuts. Now he’s staying put. As one former top Fed official said, Powell “may think it’s in the best interest of the institution to demonstrate he won’t be pushed around or bullied.”
That’s exactly what staying on the board signals.
There’s also James Comey, who responded to his seashell indictment from Trump’s acting AG Todd Blanche with a blunt, unintimidated “let’s go.”
You could even argue King Charles delivered a subtle poke. Speaking before Congress, he didn’t mention Trump but spoke pointedly about Magna Carta, balance of power, and protecting all religions.
Are these signs something is shifting?
Trump has grown used to his targets folding. Many chose to do so, thinking it easier and safer to avoid his wrath, i.e. to protect their funding or tax breaks.
He has spent his second term making examples of his perceived critics, and some have acted cowardly. Universities, law firms, broadcasters, all calculated resistance was futile.
But in one week, three powerful figures from different arenas sent a different message. If defying Trump’s bullying and threats becomes a trend, it will be a welcome one.
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These GOP cowards are scrambling to avoid publicly backing Trump
Friends,
Friday marked 60 days since the start of Trump’s failed war in Iran. The U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8) gives Congress the power “To declare War,” and the War Powers Resolution of 1973 — enacted over Nixon’s veto — mandates that troops be withdrawn within 60 days unless Congress extends the deadline or declares war.
On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed that Trump doesn’t need Congress’s approval to continue the war past the 60-day mark because the cease-fire agreement with Iran has effectively stopped the clock. (Trump echoed Hegseth’s claim today in a letter to Congress.)
That’s BS, of course. But the interesting question is why — when Republicans have majorities in both chambers of Congress — Trump doesn’t want such a vote. Why not just let Republicans vote in favor of continuing his war, and be done with it?
It’s possible, of course, that Trump is worried that some Republican members might vote against the war — joining with all or almost all Democrats in voting against its continuation. Even a close vote could force a debate and pressure Trump to set the conditions and timeline for a withdrawal.
But there’s an easier and more straightforward reason.
Trump’s war is so unpopular that Republican members of Congress don’t want to have to go on record as voting in favor of it. With midterm elections in six months, they know their votes in favor of Trump’s war could be held over their heads — especially if the war drags on, or if gas prices continue to rise because Iran is blocking the Strait of Hormuz, or both.
They’ve let the White House know that forcing them to vote on the war will hurt their chances of maintaining control of Congress.
So congressional Republicans are choosing the coward’s way out: agree with Hegseth and Trump that there’s no need for such a vote because the cease-fire has tolled the clock. Or claim, even more absurdly (as has the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson) that there’s no “war” to begin with, and hence no reason for such a vote.
Republicans in Congress are not brave people. To the contrary, they may be the most cowardly group ever to claim to represent the American people.
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org
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Even MAGA's most committed devotees can't back this buffoon
You would probably be hard-pressed to find even a committed MAGA supporter coming to Peter Hegseth's defense at this point, which constitutes a major problem for the self-anointed "Secretary of War" — and rightly so, because he's becoming an actual problem for President Donald Trump.
And that never works out well, not for the official dumped nor the country.
All reports are that Hegseth needs help to remain in his job, and he sure didn't help himself in front of the Senate on Thursday. We've seen a poor testimonial performance result in an unceremonious ouster already in Kristi Noem's departure. This is a lot like that.
As reported on this website, Hegseth got more than a bit defensive under rather regular questioning from Senator Warran about him possibly profiting by being long on war right before, well, a war. The Secretary of War lashed out:
I'm not looking for money. I don't do it for money. I don't do it for profit. I don't do it for stocks. And that's part of the reason why I'm able to be effective in this job, because no one owns me.”
Right.
But why so angry then? People without an issue simply lean into the microphone and calmly say, "No, Senator Warren. I have not traded on defense stocks and will not," then await the next question.
But perhaps Hegseth has an issue. He most certainly has other issues, having already been rattled when he castigated critics as Pharisees, only to be confronted by Secretary Rosen:
ROSEN: 'Pharisees' is a problematic and historically weaponized term that casts Jewish communities as morally corrupt. You said it today. Words matter. How do you justify using this language?
HEGSETH: It's a pretty accurate term for folks who don't see the plank in their own eye. I stand by it.
Except, Mr. Secretary of War, you could easily have your wires crossed a bit here.
Hegseth, the guy with the crusading cross inked into his chest, is likely adding his voice to the increasingly anti-Semitic tone one finds on the Right these days, which would otherwise be normal for conservatives, were it not for the fact that perhaps the entire reason Trump ordered American troops into war in the first place owes itself to his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and American AIPAC's influence on Trump.
Whether Hegseth knows of the conflict of interests is actually neither here nor there; he will soon.
Rounding out the trifecta of Democratic women demanding answers was Sen. Gillibrand, rightly concerned about the bombing of a girls' school in Iran:
[Gillibrand] asked about the dramatic cuts in the Pentagon unit that seeks to prevent civilian deaths.
“Why did you cut by 90% the division that’s supposed to help you not target civilians?” Gillibrand asked sharply.
Hegseth responded that the Pentagon has an “ironclad commitment” to prevent civilian deaths.
Commit all you want, the fact that so many civilian deaths continue to happen, and Hegseth has a poor record of prioritizing such concerns, again makes Hegseth defensive and unable to really answer a question, perhaps because he's failing.
The Secretary has lost support even among GOP Congressional members, which means it is only a matter of time before the White House loses its support. Making matters worse for Hegseth personally, which doesn't equate to making things "better" for anyone else, is the fact that Hegseth may well have largely succeeded in his real mission already, making him less important to keep around.
No, not the mission to defeat Iran, but the mission to clear the Pentagon of commanding officers who are not white men, and waging proper "warfighting" against anything touching on DEI. That mission is largely done, making room for someone actually interested and qualified to come in and win the shooting war.
Much as we all enjoy seeing Hegseth feeling the heat, we know better than to believe an ouster improves anything. Again, Noem sets the standard, because DHS played out like the fish into the fryer, and she's hardly the only one. Except for this, there is hope.
Donald Trump finds himself in the middle of a war he declared, of which he's lost control, and that's causing him all kinds of problems. But running the Defense Department isn't ICE; good leadership doesn't equate to more and better MAGA. Perhaps in this job alone, it might just mean "someone better" at running and getting out of wars. Such a reality does provide a spark of hope, a tiny one.
But certainly enjoy seeing Hegseth fight for his particularly awful life. He has more than earned it.
Yes, of course, Trump finds it particularly hard to fire white men. This particular white man is making that battle infinitely easier. Perhaps Hegseth actually can win a battle for the American people.
This whole situation feels familiar, and Hegseth surely knows it.
Jason Miciak is a Rawstory Columnist at Large and is a former associate editor at Occupy Democrats, an author, attorney, and single parent girldad. He can be reached at jasonmiciak@google.com, and followed on Bluesky.
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GOP draws with its favorite color after Supreme Court's blessing
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
This radical solution would end America's fiasco
Friends,
Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders voted last Thursday on the Ellison family’s purchase of the company. Some 1.743 billion shares were cast in favor of the sale; 16.3 million were cast against it, a ratio of roughly 99 to 1.
1. Great for a Handful of Super-Wealthy, but Bad for Workers and Bad for America
This vote came soon after more than 4,000 workers in the media industry — directors, screenwriters, producers, actors, editors, cinematographers, musicians, and composers — signed a letter predicting an industry disaster if the sale went through.
That’s because, as my friend Harold Meyerson from The American Prospect has noted, such deals typically saddle the purchased companies with gigantic debts that buyers incur to make the deal — in the case of Warner Bros. Discovery, $79 billion — and this debt, in turn, requires that buyers slash costs (especially payrolls) to pay off some of it.
More than 70 percent of all the shares in Warner Bros. Discovery are held by institutional investors — including the Vanguard Group, BlackRock, and State Street. These institutions voted for the sale because they believe it will make their shares more valuable.
The sale will also make certain individuals a lot of money. David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, stands to collect some $886 million for shepherding it, in addition to his regular pay package (which was $51 million in 2024). Oracle’s Larry Ellison and his son, David, the new owners of Warner Bros. Discovery, are already among the richest people in the world.
But what about the workers in the industry who’ll lose their jobs as a result of the sale? What about all the people whose wages will be slashed? What about Los Angeles, which may lose a sizable portion of its major industry?
And what about the concentration of so much of the news business — so much of what Americans learn about what’s happening — under these two Trump suck-ups?
If Trump’s Justice Department approves the deal (do birds fly?), CBS News and CNN — along with CBS entertainment (home to Stephen Colbert, whose contract is about to run out and who will be taken off the air because of his criticisms of Trump) and Comedy Central (home to Jon Stewart) and HBO (John Oliver) and TikTok (where 1 out of 5 Americans now get their news) — are all about to become one giant mega-media monopoly under the control of Trump allies, the Ellisons.
2. The Moral Bankruptcy of Shareholder Capitalism
At the heart of modern American capitalism is the assumption that a corporation exists for only one purpose: to make its shares more valuable.
That goal trumps (excuse me) all other goals — such as raising workers’ wages, improving workers’ job security, creating more jobs, enhancing the quality of life for the community where a company is headquartered or does business, making life better for the inhabitants of the nation and the world, even protecting democracy.
In fact, if shareholders can make more money by shafting these other “stakeholders” and destroying these other values, that’s thought to be perfectly fine. It’s simply the way “impersonal market forces” work. It’s “efficient.”
Before the 1980s, American capitalism ran on a very different principle: that large corporations had responsibilities to all their stakeholders. “The job of management,” proclaimed Frank Abrams, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, in a 1951 address, “is to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly affected interest groups … stockholders, employees, customers, and the public at large.”
The sentiment may seem quaint or inauthentic today, but in the three decades after World War II, it laid the basis for rapid economic growth and, with strong unions, an equally rapid expansion of the American middle class.
It reflected the sincere views of corporate executives. Many had endured the Great Depression and the war and felt some responsibility for America’s future well-being. These views helped legitimize the role of the large corporation in the public’s mind.
Today, shareholder capitalism has replaced stakeholder capitalism — and most Americans are excluded from its benefits.
Over 92 percent of the value of all the shares of stock owned by Americans is owned by the richest 10 percent. More than half is owned by the richest 1 percent. And even they have turned over their votes to giant institutions like Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street, which have no concern for the well-being of anyone or anything other than the short-term value of the shares they buy or sell.
We are witnessing the logical ending point of shareholder capitalism.
As the share values of America’s biggest corporations continue to soar — even as (and in many cases, because) they eliminate tens of thousands of jobs — the goal of “maximizing shareholder returns” is revealing itself to be morally bankrupt and economically rotten.
And as Artificial Intelligence takes over a growing amount of the work Americans do, the gap between share values (including the wealth of top investors and executives) and the incomes of most Americans will widen into a chasm.
3. Toward a New Stakeholder Capitalism
But here’s the good news: We don’t have to stick with shareholder capitalism. We don’t have to be victims of “impersonal market forces” over which we supposedly have no control.
We can have control. The market is a human creation. It is based on laws that humans devise. We can make laws that alter market forces to serve the interests of the vast majority instead of mainly the oligarchs at the top.
Over the last four decades, corporate laws have been shaped by wealthy individuals to channel a large portion of the nation’s total income and wealth to themselves.
If America’s super-wealthy continue to have unbridled influence over laws and gain control over the assets at the core of Artificial Intelligence, they will end up with almost all the wealth, all the income, and all the political power. Under such conditions, our economy and society simply cannot endure.
Laws can and should be changed to produce a new version of stakeholder capitalism that shares the wealth more widely.
How? For example, corporations could be required to provide long-term employees with the same number of shares as are held by investors. Profitable corporations could be required to provide their workers a portion (a quarter?) of their profits.
Corporations whose highest-paid executives earn more than 100 times their lowest-paid employees should have to pay a surtax. Corporations over a certain size (worth, say, $1 trillion or more) or having more than a certain share of their markets (say, 25 percent) should be broken up. Unfriendly (hostile) takeovers should be banned (as they were, in effect, before 1980).
The “stepped-up basis” rule that allows the wealthy to pass assets to their heirs without ever paying capital gains taxes on them should be eliminated. Vast accumulations of private wealth (say, in excess of a billion dollars) should, after a certain number of years, automatically be turned over to a fund providing subsistence incomes — a universal basic income.
State corporate laws shouldn’t empower corporations to make any campaign donations (effectively reversing Citizens United).
Sound radical? Maybe it is. But shareholder capitalism doesn’t work — as illustrated by the Warner Bros. Discovery fiasco. Unless radical changes are made, that fiasco is just a taste of what’s to come. If Artificial Intelligence isn’t to destroy capitalism and obliterate democracy, we’re going to have to come up with something that does work, and soon.
Happy May Day, 2026.
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/. His new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org
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America's national disgrace got shown up on his own stage
So that’s what a normal leader sounds like.
King Charles helped me remember what an actual dignitary and classy leader sounds like. What a refreshing change from the guy who prides himself on being a thug with only the faintest grasp of the English language.
Mind you, I wasn’t a supporter of Charles’ coming to the United States for a state visit. I thought it would disgrace the crown for the King of England to break bread with a fascist, felonious president — an authoritarian who launched a coup after losing an election.
But Charles changed my mind simply with his low-key presence and eloquent style, showing by example how a man of eminence is supposed to behave. The contrast with Trump could not have been more glaring.
As an old guy, I can remember when Charles was still the lowly Prince of Wales — and he was mostly loathed by the public. That was especially true while he was married to Princess Diana. She was beloved, while he was considered dull, boorish, distant, cold, stuffy.
When Charles and Di’s relationship unraveled, the world fully sided with her. No one could figure out why he’d choose Camila Parker Bowles over the ravishing Diana. The public grief was enormous when Diana died in 1997, and it hardened into anger at the royal establishment and Charles personally.
But time healed the gaping wound. Charles spent years focusing on public service. His relationship with Camilla, once so scandalous, gradually became normalized. He grew more comfortable as a public figure – less stiff, sometimes even self-aware and glib.
Once Charles became King, he wasn’t (and isn’t) universally beloved, but he’s broadly accepted in a way once thought impossible. He’s still not terribly charismatic, yet he’s seen as a steadying influence and nothing close to the abomination Trump has proven to be. He’s shown himself to be the new leader of the Free World.
When King Charles III addressed Congress this week, he was a man determined to restore the special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States that Trump had seemingly irretrievably broken with his bullheadedness, his rancor, his sheer idiocy.
Charles spoke about alliances as commitments, not as something that could be bought and sold off like a stock. He invoked the name of Ukraine to discuss our obligation to have its back, not pretend to support it until Vladimir Putin crows too loudly.
In short, King Charles came across as the international community’s conscience, the kind of overseer America used to be. He was dignified. He was articulate without being preachy. He was polite. He was quietly magnetic.
And beside him stood Trump, looking and sounding every bit like the oaf he is. He was there physically but in no way spiritually. He delivered his usual bluster, whiny and with a side of stupefied. His rhetoric inflamed without illuminating, as it always does. The man is incapable of genuine elucidation. It was an embarrassment to know this was the best this country can do.
As Charles spoke, I thought back to last weekend and Trump’s speech after the White House Correspondence Dinner and how the president used the occasion of a genuine crisis as a moment to re-pitch his ballroom project, to sell another monstrosity bearing his worthless name.
It was so ludicrous that it’s now become a meme. There is one of schoolchildren cowering beneath a desk as a shooter lurks in the shadows when one of them says, “You know what would’ve prevented this? A ballroom.”
This is a man who values things over people, materialism over empathy, wealth over relationships. If you were to attempt to create a human being with the worst imaginable traits on a 3D printer, Trump is what would pop out.
What Trump really wants, of course, is to completely destroy anything approaching dissent. He would far prefer to have a populace exhibiting phony acquiescence than one demonstrating genuine beliefs. This is why he and his wretched wife Melania want so desperately to quiet Jimmy Kimmel and force ABC to dump him or risk losing its license.
Hopefully, Disney has learned its lesson and won’t make the same mistake it once made. This administration is one that utterly lacks a sense of humor and cannot fully comprehend laughing at itself. This is one of the hallmarks of fascism.
Say what you will about King Charles, but he seems to understand the concept of placing values over all else. Trump does not. This is one of the most reprehensible things about him, though not the most reprehensible. To gauge that, we should hold a contest where everyone gets a vote.
All I know is, one of the key reasons why I don’t want to travel internationally at the moment is that any question tossed at me about living in a nation overseen by our criminal-in-chief would prove entirely too humiliating. I would have no explanation. I’d be worried that customs might stamp my passport with, “Somehow lives willingly in the U.S.”
The truth is that I don’t have a lot of choice at the moment. Oh sure, I could get a visa to spend months at a time in Mexico or Canada, and that’s often tempting. But at the same time, I feel like my leaving would mean Trump won. And I certainly want to be here when he goes so I can dance with frenetic abandon in the country he did his best to ruin.
Do you think about that? About the celebration that will happen once he finally, mercifully is gone? I do.
But to wrap this up, my new thing is now to go through life pretending King Charles is our leader – Charles in charge, if you will. Even just writing that sentence makes me feel better.
Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.
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Shell-shocked Trump finds a new threat
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Trump's arrogant fool may follow a despised predecessor's path — and suffer the same fate
Watching the loathsome Pete Hegseth testify over the last two days in front of both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees gave me a slight sense of déjà vu.
I struggled with why, because Hegseth just comes off like such a jerk. And that’s when it hit me. Former President George H.W. Bush once famously referred to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a “jerk.”
Granted, comparisons have been made between Rumsfeld’s arrogance, another word Bush used to describe his son’s Pentagon chief, and Hegseth. But what hasn’t been fully considered is how both approached congressional hearings during failing wars.
I vividly recall Rumsfeld treating his testimony with a prickly, know-it-all crassness. That’s the same way Hegseth came off, over-the-top defensive, slight pun intended.
At the time, Republicans in control of Congress tolerated Rumsfeld’s dismissive attitude. Then came the 2006 midterms, which swung to the Democrats. It’s no coincidence that Rumsfeld resigned the morning after.
His boss, George W. Bush, understood that voters had delivered a verdict on a war they were tired of being spun about, and the system had shifted against him and his abrasive defense secretary.
After watching Hegseth this week, it’s fair to ask: if Democrats regain control of Congress, will he be destined for the same fate?
The Rumsfeld–Hegseth comparison has been duly noted. Both men arrived at the Pentagon radiating egotism. Both treated congressional oversight as an unnecessary inconvenience, even though it’s the law. Both have overseen wars facing strong public backlash, and both showed open disdain for lawmakers tasked with questioning them - that’s their job.
But the comparison ultimately lets Hegseth off too easily. Whether you liked Rumsfeld or disliked him, he built a formidable career as a Navy pilot, a four-term congressman, and White House chief of staff. He became the youngest Secretary of Defense at 43 under Gerald Ford, and later the oldest under Bush.
Hegseth’s credentials can be summed up this way: don’t ask, because he’ll lie; don’t tell, because there’s nothing to tell.
Rumsfeld’s contempt for Congress was more cerebral than Hegseth’s. After watching him closely for five years, he thought he was smarter than everyone in the room and made a show of it. His evasions relied on cutesy wordplay like “known unknowns,” “stuff happens.” It was maddeningly condescending, but he operated within a system he knew well.
Hegseth is about as far from cerebral as you can get. He has little institutional experience, and his fallback replaces wordplay with blunt aggression. When Rep. John Garamendi called the war a “geopolitical calamity,” Hegseth shot back: “Who are you cheering for here?”
When pressed on the nearly $25 billion already spent, a figure many say is far too low, he brushed it off. When lawmakers expressed skepticism, he labeled them “the biggest adversary” facing the United States.
To Rumsfeld, the game with Congress was a chess match of wits, where Rumsfeld thought he could fight with one arm behind his back. Hegseth thinks he needs to put both fisted arms out to underscore his warrior ethos.
Rumsfeld treated Congress as an obstacle. Hegseth treats it as an enemy. Both approaches are ultimately self-defeating.
The financial parallels are hard to ignore. In 2003, Rumsfeld told Congress the Iraq invasion would cost under $50 billion. It ultimately exceeded $2 trillion.
Now, two months into the Iran war, there is still confusion about the total cost. The Pentagon’s $25 billion figure seems far short of earlier estimates, suggesting a burn rate near $1 billion a day. If that holds, the cost after 40 days would already be around $40 billion.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is already tens of billions in, with a massive supplemental request looming. Congress hasn’t formally authorized the war and hasn’t been given a clear price tag.
Rumsfeld at least understood Congress would eventually demand answers. His strategy was to delay, push forward until backing out became politically impossible.
Hegseth’s posture is more extreme. He behaves as if Congress isn’t entitled to answers at all. Oversight, in his view, is disloyal.
That stance aligns with a broader theory of executive power: that Trump, and by extension his defense secretary, can wage war with minimal interference.
The War Powers Resolution clock has already run out on the Iran conflict, launched without congressional authorization. Legal concerns are mounting, and Democrats, and some Republicans, in Congress are taking notice.
The political environment is shifting. The war is unpopular. Costs are rising. Voters are focused on domestic concerns. The conditions that led to the 2006 backlash are reappearing, only faster.
Midterms are months away. If control of Congress flips, oversight will intensify.
Rumsfeld understood what a hostile Congress meant, a nightmare really, with loads of subpoenas, hearings, and more exposure to his trickery. He chose to leave rather than endure it.
For Hegseth, if this war drags on without clear victories and public support continues to erode, a Democratic House will investigate, and then some. And when it does, it won’t tolerate his warrior ethos, obfuscation, or that grating arrogance.
So, will Hegseth end up following Rumsfeld out the door?
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