Ray Hartmann

You thought Trump couldn't go any lower. Guess what?

President Donald Trump disgraced America again on Tuesday.

That’s business as usual, in most contexts. But this time Trump projected his psychosis beyond the customary bounds of American politics.

Trump stood before the United Nations General Assembly and delivered a rant filled with insults and lies that might go down in history as the vilest of its kind.

Presumably speaking for all of us Americans, Trump told the entire world to f––– off.

Among the most vile lowlights of Trump’s tantrum:

He dismissed climate change as a “con job,” mocking decades of scientific consensus in front of world leaders who have committed themselves to fighting rising seas and burning forests.
He framed immigration as a global poison, attacking nations that take in refugees while offering no solutions — just fear, contempt and seething xenophobia.
He claimed Christianity is the most persecuted religion on Earth, an inflammatory lie intended to stoke division and grievance while pandering to his White Nationalist base.
He vomited falsehoods that he had presumably “resolved” seven major conflicts — including Israel-Iran and India-Pakistan, rewriting reality while of course offering no proof since none exists and drawing eye-rolls, not applause.
He told U.N. diplomats their countries are “going to hell” for permitting too much immigration, then basked in the moment like he was inflaming a rally crowd, not representing all Americans at a global forum.

Here’s how the Wall Street Journal news report characterized the speech:

In an hour-long speech filled with grievances about ongoing wars, windmills and malfunctioning escalators, it was Trump’s attacks against what he called a “double-tailed monster” that rang loudest in the ornate General Assembly room.

“Immigration and the high cost of so-called green, renewable energy is destroying a large part of the free world and a large part of our planet,” he said.

“Countries that cherish freedom are fading fast because of their policies on these two subjects. Both immigration and their suicidal energy ideas will be the death of Western Europe.”

Immigration in particular was ruining other nations, Trump insisted: “Your countries are going to hell.”

(Now, if you’re wondering about the escalator references, Trump was whining like a toddler about how an escalator in the UN building had stopped for a moment, briefly stranding him and First Lady Melania Trump. All our hearts go out to Melania.)

Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with a U.S. president calling out the UN for perceived ineffectiveness. Many Americans share that concern — and while some of us would rather see constructive, adult engagement to improve the UN’s efforts, that would remain perfectly within the bounds of propriety.

But that’s not what Trump did yesterday. He put on world display a level of hatred and boorishness — and a cringeworthy lack of gravitas — that certainly had diplomats the world over shaking their heads. Even beyond what they have come to expect.

Two days before the UN speech, Trump delivered one just as toxic at the memorial service for slain conservative icon Charlie Kirk. There, he proclaimed, “I hate my opponent, I don’t wish him well.”

That, of course, was a message to the sizable majority of Americans — at least 60 percent and counting — who disapprove of Trump today. Without apology, he let hundreds of millions of Americans know of his hatred for them.

But Trump didn’t just stop with us today. He also let it be known that he hates the world.

“Your countries are going to hell!” Trump raged.

That’s the only way he’d ever get to know them better.

Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.

Trump's TikTok dealings should've set this GOP toady roaring. His silence speaks volumes

You're not going to believe this, but it appears the cat’s got Josh Hawley’s tongue.

The junior senator from Missouri — known for his unwavering ability to detect Communist infiltration in American tech companies from eight area codes away — has suddenly gone quiet.

Interesting timing, too.

Because on Friday, President Donald Trump announced progress on a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to block any U.S. sale or ban of TikTok in exchange for vague “national security commitments” that sound suspiciously like business as usual.

That would be the same TikTok that Hawley has passionately demanded be banned, or at least completely removed from Chinese involvement.

“TikTok — and its parent company ByteDance — are threats to American national security,” Hawley wrote in 2023, to then Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. He’s repeated that theme dozens if not hundreds of times as a senator.

So, you can imagine Hawley’s indignation when the Washington Post reported this:

“A ByteDance spokesperson in a statement Friday thanked Trump and Xi and said the company would work 'to ensure TikTok remains available to American users through TikTok U.S.'”

Shockingly, you could hear a pin drop. Hawley — arguably second to none among U.S. politicians in garnering attention and air time on every subject imaginable — has gone dark. No tweets, no press releases, no rushing to Fox News, no nothing.

So in the spirit of filling the void, let’s revisit what Josh Hawley has been screaming from the mountaintops for several years about TikTok — before it became a Trump-friendly enterprise. Here are just a few of his greatest hits:

“TikTok is digital fentanyl that’s addicting our kids and stealing their data!”
— Hawley, 2023
“TikTok is a surveillance tool for the Chinese Communist Party.”
— Hawley, 2022
“Every time you use TikTok, you're giving your information to Beijing.”
— Hawley, 2021
“We are literally subsidizing the destruction of our children’s mental health.”
— Hawley, 2023
“This is mind control by a foreign adversary — and Democrats won’t act.”
— Hawley, 2024

But now that Trump has personally intervened to compromise on TikTok’s Chinese ownership, Hawley apparently no longer thinks it’s all that big a deal, after all.

Just because he authored the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, which was successfully signed into law, and a broader No TikTok on United States Devices Act, doesn’t mean Hawley cannot mind “some TikTok.”

This is the same senator who once told Fox News that Democrats were “kneeling before Chairman Xi” for not banning the app. So what is that Trump’s doing?

Let’s put it this way. If President Joe Biden had done this, Hawley would have demanded a vote by this afternoon on Articles of Impeachment. He would have hosted a special tonight on Fox News.

Now, maybe not so much.

It turns out, according to the Post, sources are saying the deal Trump is working on with Xi would be hugely beneficial to Trump BFF Larry Ellison, “the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, a tech giant that will own a stake in the U.S. spin-off and provide it cloud-computing and technical services.”

Just can’t get wait to see Hawley teeing off in the Senate about this one.

In 2020, an Esquire writer aptly said, “The most dangerous place to stand in Washington D.C. is any place between Senator Josh Hawley and a live microphone.”

That was before we had a dictator.

Ray Hartmann writes on Substack at Ray Hartmann's Soapbox.

Jimmy Kimmel wasn't suspended for what he said about Charlie Kirk

It is important to get this right.

Comedian Jimmy Kimmel was suspended indefinitely Wednesday by ABC and his late-night show appears to have come to an end. It has been widely misreported that the action was related to the Charlie Kirk murder and its aftermath.

It was not.

Virtually every story about the sacking carried a headline referencing Kirk. The implication was clear that Kimmel was dismissed for something he said about Kirk. That’s the first thing I thought when the news broke.

That did not happen.

Donald Trump had Kimmel taken off the air — as he has suggested would happen after a similar fate befell Stephen Colbert as CBS — because he wanted to.

And because he could.

No need to call in Sherlock Holmes. Trump has long despised Kimmel, along with the entire mainstream media, which he routinely describes — in the grand tradition of history’s worst authoritarians — as “the enemy of the people.”

It’s obvious that Trump dispatched Brendan Carr, his sycophantic chairman of the FCC to put out the hit on Kimmel. Carr, a co-author of Project 2025, apparently did just that, and Disney — pushed by Nexstar, owner of roughly 30 of its ABC affiliates — rolled over.

This is the same Disney that folded a poker hand with four aces in December 2024, to “settle” for $15 million in a sham defamation lawsuit filed by Trump. It seems that Disney had far more to lose than $15 million — exponentially more — by crossing the incoming president.

So, it’s just another footnote to the story that Nexstar also has much larger fish to fry with the Trump administration — needing approval from Carr’s FCC for a pending, controversial, $6.2 billion merger with Tegna. It’s an instant replay of CBS putting profits above principle when it paid off Trump to save a proposed Paramount mega-merger with Skydance from sleeping with the fishes.

Carr offers no pretense of serving as anything but a corrupt political hack. Hours before the Kimmel announcement, he visited the friendly confines of Benny Johnson’s prominent conservative podcast and said this:

"We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct and take actions on Kimmel, or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

Sneering at the theoretical independence of the FCC, Carr made himself exclusively available to Sean Hannity and Fox News after the Kimmel sacking. It did appear, however, that lawyers had advised him by then to lose “easy way or hard way” gangsta rap.

As for Kimmel, he should have been the last one targeted for disrespecting Charlie Kirk. This is what Kimmel had posted on Instagram in the wake of Kirk’s tragic passing:

“Instead of the angry finger‑pointing, can we just for one day agree that it is horrible and monstrous to shoot another human? On behalf of my family, we send love to the Kirks and to all the children, parents and innocents who fall victim to senseless gun violence.”

Kimmel has said nothing on air since to disparage Kirk or even revisit Kirk’s previous statements that were inflammatory and now seem ironic. I happen to agree with that, having taken the old-school view that Kirk’s murder be “deplored without qualification.”

If you want to view the Monday monologue from Kimmel that has been absurdly linked to his suspension, knock yourself out. You can view it here.

If you do, you’ll be shocked as I was to find that nothing Kimmel said even remotely approached mean-spiritedness about Kirk. Kimmel ridiculed Trump, and deservedly so, for the president’s pathetic response to a sympathetic reporter’s question about how he was “holding up” in the wake of Kirk’s death.

Trump said he was fine and immediately changed the subject to how exciting it was that he was building a big, fancy White House ballroom. It was a singular validation of the daily, brilliant reminders from Trump’s niece — psychologist Mary Trump — that this a man suffering severely from untreated narcissistic personality disorder.

Humiliating Trump can come at a grave price to any company needing anything from Trump’s corrupt FCC. But, as I’ve suggested, Kimmel’s monologue Monday was just a fig leaf for going after him.

It was only a matter of time.

Just remember this: When Trump exerts his will and power over media that depend upon the federal government for their licensing — and in the case of giant corporations, far more — he is not acting like a dictator.

He’s acting as a dictator.

One senator's ignorant Charlie Kirk whine shows how far the GOP has fallen

Eric Schmitt tried to present himself as an intellectual at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

He came off like a little boy trying on his father’s clothes in the mirror.

It was all swagger and no fit.

Schmitt thoughtfully entitled his remarks, “There Can Be No Unity Between Good and Evil.” Even the subject of the hearing — smarmy FBI Director Kash Patel — must have been wondering to himself about how that could possibly be helpful.

The problem wasn’t merely with the content of Schmitt’s falsehood-laden messaging. His role, after all, was to parrot Donald Trump’s reprehensible words dividing the nation at a time of national strife, as no American president ever has before.

But Schmitt’s speech — which you can watch here or read here — was nothing more than a faux-intellectual diatribe delivered with the gravitas of Daffy Duck doing a TED talk.

Early on in his remarks, Schmitt sounded like a U.S. Senator:

Over the past week, leaders from across the political spectrum have come out and condemned Charlie [Kirk]'s murder and political violence more broadly. For that, we’re all very grateful. We should be grateful. There have been calls together to come together in the wake of Charlie’s murder and I want to do that. Someday, I pray we can be united as a country again and go forward again as one people under one flag.

That sounded fine to me. My reaction in this space had been that “we should all as Americans deplore — without qualification — Kirk’s murder. It’s a moment that could bring us all together in revulsion, across the great political divide.”

Unfortunately, Schmitt’s gratitude lasted just a few paragraphs. He cited some random polling which he claimed showed that liberals are fine with political violence and conservatives aren’t. That junk doesn’t deserve further mention here, much less — with no vetting or validation — at a U.S. Senate proceeding.

As for “coming together,” it was probably not all that helpful for the senator to spew lies like this one:

The George Soros empire has financed a vast ecosystem of radicals all working together — dropping off bricks at riots — to unleash a tidal wave of violent anarchists on our streets and prop it up with an army of researchers and experts and journalists and propagandists who downplay political violence.

Nothing like serving up propaganda to call out propaganda. It might soothe the sensibilities of MAGA faithful, but Schmitt’s just another politician making stuff up.

But what sets Schmitt apart is his veneer of solemnity while delivering such truly unserious drivel. With no self-awareness, Schmitt persists in trying to dress up the basest political tripe in a wardrobe of make-believe intellectualism.

Behold the philosopher Eric Schmitt holding forth with large words:

Upstream from the dehumanization and demonizing political violence and rhetoric tearing apart our country, is a divide on how we view America and Americans. Are we good? Are we evil? Is there something inherently special about Western civilization or is this 2,000-year project rotten to the core? And if it is something worth fighting for, which I believe it is, how do we do it?”

What?

Now, I’ve written quite a few clunky paragraphs in my day — and mixed more than my share of metaphors — but I’m not certain how to decode Schmitt’s gibberish.

We’ve all heard our nation described as a grand “experiment,” but arguably not one spanning 2,000 years. With apologies to those who maintain Jesus was an American.

And who describes “Western civilization” as a “2,000-year project?” Mind you, this wasn’t a slip of the tongue: it’s in his speech text and was faithfully repeated in his live remarks.

Are we good? Are we evil? Does dehumanization flow upstream? Were the Dark Ages part of Western civilization? Is this the sort of work product you’d get if Plato impregnated Laura Loomer?

I’m not so sure about those questions, but I am about this one:

Does Eric Schmitt truly not comprehend the outrageous hypocrisy of viciously attacking people’s character and motives who disagree with him — and calling them “evil” — and then whining like this?

And I would point out we’ve heard years of the left — their loudest voices — calling anyone on the right an extremist MAGA Republican, a fascist, a Nazi, an existential threat to democracy.

Check yourself. And don’t give me this both sides bullshit!

It’s hard to counter such eloquence from such a towering intellect.

Still, here’s a thought: If you truly hold the worldview that in American politics, everything comes down to good versus evil — and that you’re good and those of us who disagree with you are evil — say it all you want. It’s a free country.

But don’t bother pretending to be smart about it.

(Note: this is the first of a two-part post. Tomorrow’s installment will examine Schmitt’s premise that political violence in America is not a “both sides” matter.)

The suspect is not the stuff of rabid MAGA dreams. Thank God for that

This cannot be what President Donald Trump had in mind.

Authorities made an arrest in connection with the heinous assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The suspect is Tyler Robinson, a 22-year-old white, male Utah State University student, the son of registered Republican voters from the southwest of the state.

Robinson’s appearance — just a regular-looking white kid in college — could not be further from what the MAGA’s mind’s eye would have loved to see. At least superficially, he doesn’t fit the mold of their preferred villains.

In a decent time, this of course would not matter. We should all as Americans deplore Kirk's murder, without qualification. It’s a moment that could bring us all together in revulsion, across the great political divide.

But that’s not happening because Trump would never stand for that. As you probably know, Trump didn’t even wait for the existence of a suspect to blame it on fictional “lunatics on the Left.”

On Wednesday night, Trump delivered the most vile and unpresidential statement ever uttered at a moment of national grief.

Here’s the transcript of Trump’s most significant comments:

“It is long past time for all Americans and the media to confront the fact that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.

For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today and it must stop right now.

My administration will find each and every one who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence including the organizations that fund it and support it, as well as those who go after our judges, law enforcement officials and every one who brings order to our country.

From the attack on my life in Butler, PA last year which killed a husband and father to the attacks on ICE agents to the vicious murder of a healthcare executive in the streets of New York to the shooting of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and three others, radical left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”

I think we can let it speak for itself that Trump indignantly called out “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.”

The same can be said for Trump’s choices for examples of political violence in America. And, more importantly, his omissions.

But the key point — and it’s undeniable — is that all Trump cares about going forward is to exploit the Kirk tragedy to fit his own ends.

Just imagine what Trump and his MAGA acolytes would have done to exploit the Kirk tragedy had Tyler Robinson turned out to be a trans person. Or an undocumented migrant. Or a Black person. Or a Muslim.

So anxious was MAGA world to distort the murder for its narrative that someone leaked to the Wall Street Journal — well before Robinson’s arrest — that inscriptions found on shell casings related to the shooting contained messages of “trans ideology.”

It was confirmed on Friday that was empirically false.

So yes, Trump must have been apoplectic to learn that Kirk’s suspected assassin was just some white guy who grew up in a Republican household in deep-red Utah.

In dramatic contrast, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, did himself proud in the news conference announcing Robinson’s arrest.

“We can return violence with violence, we can return hate with hate, and that’s the problem with political violence — is it metastasizes. Because we can always point the finger at the other side. And at some point, we have to find an off-ramp, or it’s going to get much, much worse.

History will dictate if this is a turning point for our country. But every single one of us gets to choose right now if this is a turning point for us. There is one person responsible for what happened here, and that person is now in custody and will be charged soon and will be held accountable. And yet, all of us have an opportunity right now to do something different.”

Those off-the-cuff words from Cox came straight from the heart. The Republican Party needs more leaders like Cox, and so does the nation.

There’s a better path forward if we choose it, Donald Trump and his hatred notwithstanding.

This Trump move is illegal and immoral and should chill you all to the bone

There is arguably no better canary in the coal mine for the death of democracy than a president who seizes for himself the power to wage war.

We seem to be headed there.

President Donald Trump’s recent — and ongoing — unauthorized military aggression against Venezuela fails to meet even the minimal legal standard for presidential war powers.

Trump and his henchmen have largely dispensed with pretexts.

Citing no particular provocation, Trump blithely declared Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro America’s latest mortal enemy. That sort of gratuitousness is brought to you with a shrug by corporate media increasingly committed to a mission of stenography.

The administration has designated Tren de Aragua a “foreign terrorist organization” — which may well be accurate but does not seem to have come with any provable link to Maduro other than rhetorical. Even if true, nothing in U.S. law permits unilateral military action on that ground alone by a U.S. president.

But following the law has always ranked below the bottom of Trump’s “things to do” list in life.

Here’s how the United States has apparently begun to launch an illegal war almost overnight, without a millisecond of congressional debate. And with scant attention at best in the news media.

The Escalation — One Week, One Direction

August 8, 2025 — Trump designates Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization under the 2001 AUMF framework.
(AP)
Late August — U.S. naval and marine units mobilize in the southern Caribbean under an “anti-cartel” initiative.
(The Guardian)
September 2 — A U.S. drone strike sinks a speedboat allegedly linked to Tren de Aragua, killing 11. The administration justifies it as a drug interdiction.
September 3, 2025 — Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro denounces the U.S. strike as a violation of sovereignty, orders militias to mobilize, and warns that Washington is laying the groundwork for regime change.
September 3–4 — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calls the strike “just the beginning.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio signals more strikes are being considered.
September 5 — Trump orders the Pentagon rebranded as the Department of War in communications and signage. Hegseth becomes “Secretary of War.”
September 5–6 — Ten F‑35 stealth fighters are deployed to Puerto Rico. Trump publicly states he’s weighing strikes inside Venezuela.

Trump’s posture toward Maduro wasn’t always so hostile. During his first term, he told Axios on June 21, 2020, he was “open to meeting” with Maduro and even called him “very smart.”

The timing was just astonishing, especially in today’s context. Trump publicly praised Maduro fewer than three months after his own Department of Justice had issued a press release headlined: “Nicolás Maduro Moros and 14 Current and Former Venezuelan Officials Charged with Narco-Terrorism, Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Criminal Charges.”

Apparently narco-terrorism didn’t concern Donald the First as much as it seems to concern Donald the Second.

Back in 2020, Trump did reverse himself on Twitter, but only after heads exploded among Florida Republicans. Taking issue with fellow strongmen has never ranked as one of Trump’s strengths.

Trump has always positioned himself as an isolationist — and his repeated campaign pledges of “no more endless wars” — arguably garnered more votes than most analysts credited. Trump mocked “globalist” entanglements, vowed to bring troops home and end foreign adventurism.

That’s all a thing of the past now that Trump openly aspires to become the world’s most dominant dictator.

He drools about invading and seizing Greenland. He muses obscenely about annexing Canada, or at the very least, waging a mindless economic war with it and many other close allies. He obsesses about seizing the Panama Canal.

His MAGA base has always been animated by extreme nationalism — ethnically and economically grounded — and it’s widely presumed that instinct mutates into isolationism. Even among those whose political philosophies can only be captured in five words or less.

It remains to be seen how Trump’s abandonment of isolationism might play out with the base. But never underestimate the power of a cult leader.

What’s more, we should not discount similarities to the dicey motives of previous U.S. adventurism — “war for oil” in Iraq springs to mind — especially given that Trump is exponentially more transactional than all previous U.S. presidents combined.

On Saturday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller defended Trump’s Venezuela policy by calling the country “so rich in resources, so rich in reserves,” while describing Maduro as “the head of the cartel.”

In poker, that’s known as a “tell.”

Let’s hope I’m wrong in thinking this Venezuelan adventure is far graver than a few news cycles of an unstable Trump cosplaying as a warlord. But, to me, this one has real potential for disaster.

I don’t like the looks of that canary.

This Republican may blow up her life's work — just to please Trump

As many of you know, I ran last year for Congress against Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), and lost. I have no plans to run again.

As regular readers know, I’ve hardly mentioned her since starting this Soapbox almost four months ago. She’s largely irrelevant.

But the upcoming bombshell decision facing the U.S. House of Representatives about whether to release the Jeffrey Epstein files is a test of Wagner’s fundamental integrity unlike any other she has faced in her years in Congress. And it is upon us.

Wagner has had one signature issue in her career — standing up, she claims, for the plight of women who are victims of sex trafficking. When I say it’s her one signature issue, let me add: whatever comes in second place isn’t even close.

The issue didn’t come up when I ran against her, because there was nothing to argue about. For years, she has spoken loudly and repeatedly and elegantly on behalf of the need to have better protection for sex-abuse victims, and particularly for those who have been trafficked.

Good for her. I never questioned her righteousness nor her sincerity on this point and there were plenty of other issues for me to campaign on, none of which needs to be rehashed here.

But the Jeffrey Epstein scandal is the definitive sex-trafficking story of our time, and maybe of all time. What this pervert did, who he did it with, how, when and why — and the ongoing coverup of his trail of evidence by Donald Trump — is about as major as news stories get.

As best as I can tell, Wagner, the self-proclaimed champion of trafficked women, has never once spoken Epstein’s name publicly — despite the fact that he used his power and privilege to traffic and abuse hundreds, if not thousands, of young girls.

Wagner faces a vote that is tough for her fellow Republicans — but should be a slam-dunk for her — which is whether to require the Justice Department “to release all the files related to Epstein’s case, including information related to his clients and close circle,” as reported today at The Hill.

The Trump White House, dropping any pretense of true innocence, has gone full-authoritarian with its own Republican Party on this one.

“A White House official commented on the discharge petition Tuesday night, saying that supporting it would be viewed as ‘a hostile act,’” NBC News reported.

Really? Releasing all the Epstein files — in accordance with Trump’s repeated pledges on the campaign trail to do just that — is now a hostile act. Those are pretty strong words.

Wagner’s vote, whenever it happens, will present a rare binary choice. So would her refusal to follow the leads of fellow Republican Reps. Thomas Massie (the disclosure bill’s co-sponsor), Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert in the event Trump’s lapdog House Speaker Mike Johnson manages to kill it.

Here’s the choice:

Wagner votes “yes” for full disclosure of the Epstein files, proving she is a woman of integrity and cares about sex-trafficking victims, as she has claimed for at least a decade

Wagner votes “no” or even fails to vote “yes” as a participant in Trump’s coverup, in which “integrity” and “Ann Wagner” should never be mentioned in the same sentence again.

You didn’t hear me talk like that during the campaign, because nothing had occurred in her record for me to question her personal character. This would be it.

If Wagner fails to stand with Epstein’s sex-trafficking victims — and with the basic principle of accountability for sex traffickers — then she at least should do the world a favor and renounce the following that she either sponsored or cosponsored:

FOSTA – Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act
Bill: H.R. 1865 (115th Congress)
Role: Primary sponsor (authored)
Summary: Amended Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to remove immunity protections for websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking, enabling civil and criminal liability. Passed the House 388–25 (Feb 2018), Senate 97–2 (Mar 2018), and signed into law April 11, 2018 as part of the broader FOSTA‑SESTA package.

SAVE Act – Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation Act
Bill: H.R. 4225 (113th Congress, 2014) & H.R. 285 (114th Congress, 2015)
Role: Primary sponsor
Summary: Made it a federal crime to knowingly advertise commercial sex acts involving trafficking victims, particularly minors or coerced adults. Passed the House 392–19; ultimately incorporated into the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA) of 2015.
Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA)
Bill: S. 178 (114th Congress, 2015)
Role: Key House co-sponsor and advocate; included Wagner’s SAVE Act provisions
Summary: A wide-ranging bipartisan anti-trafficking law that enhanced law enforcement tools, increased restitution, funded services for survivors, and strengthened training across federal agencies. Incorporates multiple bills, including the SAVE Act, and was signed into law on May 29, 2015.
Trafficking Survivors Relief Act
Bills: Multiple versions — H.R. 6292 (114th), H.R. 459 (115th), H.R. 3627 (116th), H.R. 8672 (117th), H.R. 7137 (118th Congress, 2024), and reintroduced in H.R. 1379 (119th Congress, 2025)
Role: Original sponsor or cosponsor in multiple sessions
Summary: Provides post-conviction relief—such as vacating convictions, expunging arrests, sentencing mitigation, and affirmative defenses—for survivors of human trafficking who committed non-violent crimes as a direct result of their victimization. Versions reported in the House and supported across party lines.

For cynics who might think Wagner believes Trump is entitled to some special exemption on the subject of sexual exploitation of women, I would direct them to her public comments on October 9, 2016 — in the wake of the release of the infamous Access Hollywood Tapes — in which she most clearly stated he was not. In fact, she felt so passionately about sexual exploitation of women, that she made this public statement:

"I have committed my short time in Congress to fighting for the most vulnerable in our society. As a strong and vocal advocate for victims of sex trafficking and assault, I must be true to those survivors and myself and condemn the predatory and reprehensible comments of Donald Trump. I withdraw my endorsement and call for Governor [Mike] Pence to take the lead so we can defeat Hillary Clinton."

It took Wagner less than three weeks in 2016 to decide that Trump wasn’t such a bad predator, after all. Or maybe that she didn’t need to be that true to victims of sex trafficking and assault.

Today, the “strong and vocal advocate for victims of sex trafficking and assault” has another opportunity to show that she means what she has been saying all these years.

What’s it going to be, Ann Wagner, when it comes to your chance to stand up and make a politically difficult statement on behalf of those victims? Even at the risk of seeming “very hostile” to Trump?

It is her moment of truth.

Trump's lickspittle-in-chief just made a very dumb move indeed

Donald Trump’s narcissistic personality disorder took quite a jolt last week.

Here’s what some are saying happened: Vice President JD Vance somehow short‑circuited his electric fence and gave an interview to USA Today where he spoke openly — and maybe a little too eagerly — about that moment in the future when he might have to replace Trump as president.

“I've gotten a lot of good on‑the‑job training over the last 200 days," Vance said in an exclusive interview published Aug. 27, when asked if he was ready to assume the role of commander‑in‑chief.

"Yes, terrible tragedies happen,” he added. “But I feel very confident the president of the United States is in good shape, is going to serve out the remainder of his term, and do great things for the American people.”

Oh no you didn’t, JD.

By the time he started flipping around like a vice‑presidential seal, blathering about Trump’s supposed super‑stamina, it had to be too late.

Did Vance really not get the memo that Trump leaves office when Trump decides to leave office? That’s the last we all heard.

He might want to revisit the North Korean manual on speculating about the Leader’s health. We know he owns a copy — the whole Cabinet just performed it in unison in meeting with Trump last week.

We don’t have details as to how Trump exploded upon learning of the blasphemy from Vance, but it’s safe to assume he wasn’t swelling with pride. So, he thought he’d teach Vance a little lesson.

“Trump Removes Secret Service Protection for Harris.”

Oops. Wrong vice president.

Where can we go to get a president with cognitive acuity?

There’s nothing funny about the story that Trump revoked Secret Service protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris — as he’s done with other political targets. In fact, it’s disgusting that the topic is even being debated.

But liberals might not want to seize the bait too quickly on this one. As the New York Times reported, vice presidents typically receive six months of protection after leaving office as a matter of standard procedure.

President Joe Biden had extended that period by a year through executive order, given the unusually high threat level faced by Harris, the Times reported. Biden had done the right thing in the right way, which is to say quietly.

But it wasn’t a permanent step because the nation does not give lifetime Secret Service protections to former vice presidents and their families (unlike presidents). Maybe it should, but it does not.

I didn’t know that, and I’m guessing neither did you. But its important context because Trump and his right-wing state media wants our heads to explode on this one. Or any outrage that doesn’t involve mention of “Epstein.”

This doesn’t excuse the stench of Trump gleefully promoting diminished safety for his political opponents. It’s just the public version of how he privately chokes loyalty out of Republicans, in this view.

As a mobster, Trump has reveled in each opportunity to proclaim the withdrawal of Secret Service details from individuals — which would have taken place quietly under a decent president. He gets to thrill his bloodthirsty followers with the closest thing to “lock them up” presently at hand.

Best of all, Trump gets to bask in dishing out the one thing he’s never had to fake: brazen cruelty. Just another ugly trademark.

Meanwhile, the person who ought to be swallowing hardest is JD Vance.

After all, Trump tried to have his last vice president killed by a mob.

Firing Trump's most lunatic lackey is now a matter of life and death

Bear with me on this one.

I know that to 99 percent of readers, headlines reading “CDC Director Fired” fall squarely into the daily category of “Trump stupidity that I don’t want to hear about.” Fair enough. Especially if it reads, “Susan Monarez Won’t Quit” and no one knows who Monarez is.

This one’s a little different.

Monarez was confirmed as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director on Trump’s enthusiastic nomination just 29 days ago, on a straight party-line vote of the U.S. Senate. Nothing unusual there.

But here’s the rub: The 47 Democratic “no” votes were tied to Monarez’s refusal to distance herself from the rantings of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — the twisted soul dubbed Secretary of Health and Human Services by Trump. Conversely, being Trump’s pick was the only possible consideration of 51 Republican senators.

Then an unusual thing happened. Shortly after Monarez received the keys to her office door, she started feuding with Boss Bananas because he (RFK Jr.) is, after all, not playing with anything resembling a deck of 52 when it comes to the public health. Or much of anything.

Here’s how it played out, according to New York Times reporting.

Kennedy Jr. summoned Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to his office in Washington earlier this week to deliver an ultimatum.

She needed to fire career agency officials and commit to backing his advisers if they recommended restricting access to proven vaccines — or risk being fired herself, according to people familiar with the events.

So what does Monarez do? She immediately starts doing precisely what all the Democrats demanded, which was to push back against RFK Jr.’s natural instincts to Make America A Dark Ages Pit of Death Again. (That’s MAADAPODA if you’re looking to put it on a T-shirt.)

RFK Jr. demanded her resignation on the spot, not surprisingly. Initially, the White House said nothing, briefly leaving a question as to whether an initial refusal to resign would matter. It didn’t.

Trump fired Monarez, five weeks to the day he had said this about her:

“As an incredible mother and dedicated public servant, Dr. Monarez understands the importance of protecting our children, our communities, and our future. Americans have lost confidence in the CDC due to political bias and disastrous mismanagement.”

Four top CDC officials resigned in protest within four hours of RFK Jr.’s attempt to evict Monarez. Mind you, they — and Monarez — were presumably part of Trump’s MAHA braintrust until, say, 15 minutes ago.

And the two who spoke out most vocally weren’t especially shy:

“People of dubious intent and more dubious scientific rigor (are now) in charge of recommending vaccine policy. Their desire to please a political base will result in death and disability of vulnerable children and adults.” — Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

“Recently, the overstating of risks and the rise of misinformation have cost lives…If [Monarez] leaves, we don’t have scientific leadership anymore” — Dr. Debra Houry, CDC Chief Medical Officer.

As a footnote, the typically reticent American Public Health Association apparently snapped, calling Kennedy’s leadership “reckless mismanagement” and flatly stating: “RFK Jr. must be removed from his position.”

Unfortunately, that sort of condemnation from rational people with vast medical and scientific credentials might be precisely what Kennedy needs to survive. But it does seem to me that people who care about the collective health of our country — regardless of tribe or ideology — really ought to be speaking out.

As best as I can tell, Sen. Patty Murray, (D-Wa), has been the only Democrat willing to call for Kennedy’s firing. Where’d everyone else in her party go?

As Drs. Daskalakis and Houry told us, Kennedy’s derangement is a matter of life and death. We have no idea where this is headed.

But the nation will require a healthy dose of luck for this story to wind up as just more Trump noise.

Humiliation for Trump's hatchet woman is a win for everyone else

It’s a case of poetic justice made for the Internet.

Self-adulating U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro just received a large dose of humiliation, not mitigated in the slightest by her own inability to feel shame.

You know the famous adage that “you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich”?

Well, a Washington, D.C. grand jury sided Tuesday not only with the sandwich but with the young man who slung it at the chest of a Customs and Border Protection agent who Donald Trump wants to appropriate as a storm trooper.

The grand jury took the extraordinary step of declining felony charges against Sean Charles Dunn, 37, a former Justice Department paralegal, who had been enraged by the presence of agents in a peaceful D.C. restaurant-and-bar neighborhood.

Dunn has become something of an Internet folk hero since video captured him hurling his protest sub.

Undoubtedly, the grand jurors had to be pushing back against what they saw as a dramatic overcharging of Dunn with a felony. Good for them.

Why? Because ever since her broom landed in the U.S. Attorney’s office, Pirro has cackled that every Trumpian case on her watch must be charged up to the max. Just because she can.

There should be another adage for that: Bad people make bad prosecutors.

Get ready to be tired of losing.

And I’m enjoying the online backup that Dunn has been receiving, with my personal favorite being this one from poster Tim Massie raising the perfect question:

"What did Pirro want him charged with? Assault with a deli weapon?”

Let us not forget that this same Pirro was just fine with Trump pardoning as patriots 1,500 January 6 insurrectionists — including 14 commutations for full-out violent criminals — for their role in trying to overturn his election defeat on January 6, 2021.

Four policemen lost their lives, and at least 174 were injured as a result of the riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s patriots were not known to attack police with a single sandwich. No — their weapons included firearms, tasers, knives, crowbars, flagpoles bearing the American flag, fire extinguishers, and pepper spray.

So we don’t need a single lecture from the former Fox News ghoul — nor the First Felon — about protecting police.

Allow me to share the insults Dunn hurled at Trump’s police-state platoon along with the sandwich, straight from the police report:

“F––– you! You f–––––– fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!”

Maybe Dunn shouldn’t have wasted his sandwich on this, but I’m fine with him speaking his piece as an American who doesn’t wish to live in a police state. Even better were the grand jurors who sent “Judge Jeanine” a loud-and-clear sandwich message Tuesday.

Now, let the good memes roll.

Trump just delivered the darkest of messages

On Friday, the FBI raided the home and office of John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser.

Although it cannot be confirmed that the agents wore flak jackets emblazoned “DJT Retribution Tour 2025” on the back, they didn’t need to. Trump’s DOJ apparatchiks had already swarmed social media in the most unserious law-enforcement performance since the great Leslie Neilsen’s Police Squad classics.

The tweets were something to see. All just happened to get posted right around the times FBI agents were showing up for coffee with the Boltons. All were delivered in classic mean-face protocol, which of course demanded that no reference be made to anything in particular.

From FBI Director Kash Patel: “NO ONE is above the law … @FBI agents on mission.”

Agents on mission? What are you, 12?

But Patel’s was the serious stake in the ground. Others just retweeted it:

From Attorney General Pam Bondi: “America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always.”

From Deputy FBI Director Don Bongino: “Public corruption will not be tolerated.”

Bongino’s prospective bunkmate, Andrew Bailey, must be chomping at the bit to have a piece of this action.

This is such amateur hour. These performative fools have debased the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

We have a real problem here. The specifics of Bolton’s situation are beside the point.

In matters referencing national security, affidavits are almost always sealed — sometimes forever. There won’t be a lot of substance for liberals to pore over this weekend with their biscuits and gravy at Cracker Barrel.

The only part of this story worthy of prospective consideration is whether somehow, some way, the Republican political establishment might get nudged out of its cultish trance by this happening to old ally. I don’t think so.

Bolton is not a sympathetic figure on a personal level. From his earliest days as a vitriolic, super-militaristic, hyper-partisan neocon, his persona has remained the rarest of acquired tastes across the political spectrum.

More directly to the point of this story, it remains impossible to forgive Bolton for putting his bank account ahead of his country in 2019. That’s when he refused to testify in Trump’s first impeachment so as not to compromise upcoming profits from the 2020 release of his explosive tell-all book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.

Who knows what would have happened had Bolton done the right thing?

It’s widely assumed that the book — and Trump’s years-long public feud with Bolton — are the beginning, middle and end of this FBI adventure. And yes, karma’s a bitch.

But remember that famous old passage? “They came for the crotchety national security advisors, but I wasn’t a crotchety national security advisor, so I said nothing.”

In that sense, Bolton presents an ominous test case. Whatever natural base of supporters he might have had is likely limited to his cellphone contacts. He could be in for a rough time.

And I truly don’t believe anyone should be celebrating that.

I’ll harken back to my June 9 column on another part of Trump’s terroristic playbook. That was about ICE stormtroopers, but it applies equally to the police-state tactics involved today with the FBI:

“There’s an ancient Chinese proverb that reads: “Hang one to scare a hundred.”

I assure you there a whole lot more than a hundred former Trump officials, military brass and other vocal critics who won’t sleep well tonight. Trump just delivered the darkest of messages — and it has been received.

If anyone might harbor even the slightest doubt that this is 100 percent about vindictive, petty and malicious retribution, it’s helpful that the Dark Lord of Vengeance couldn’t contain his devilish glee.

“Good morning. John Bolton. How does it feel to have your home raided at 6 o'clock in the morning?” — Roger Stone.

This is what America voted for.

And John Bolton’s home won’t be the final venue.

This rare Republican can't avoid being crushed — by her own party

They partied like it was 1999 in Gov. Mike Kehoe’s office this week.

Kehoe unveiled Catherine Hanaway as Missouri’s new attorney general at a news conference Tuesday in his office. Hanaway represents a major upgrade over Andrew Bailey — who was called by Donald Trump to bring his thuggery to the FBI.

Being better than Bailey is lower than any limbo bar in the world. Hanaway is a normal person with the intellect, character and résumé for the AG job. Bailey is the polar opposite in all four respects.

Hanaway is what’s known as a “normal Republican.” She also is a hard-right social conservative — especially on women’s reproductive freedom — to a degree that almost guarantees she won’t be loved in her new job by anyone to the left of Attila the Hun.

Bailey, on the other hand, is a MAGA Republican to his venomous core. And herein lies the real uncertainty about Hanaway’s path ahead.

Catherine Hanaway is most definitely a RINO in the minds of Trump’s MAGA base. That’s not my definition; it’s theirs. The point’s not even debatable.

Watching the video of Hanaway’s introductory press conference, one could easily imagine Republicans were back in 1999 or thereabouts, when Hanaway was a freshman Republican state legislator. Kehoe was in Jefferson City as well at that time, as the owner of a prominent car dealership.

Everything said Tuesday was just normal GOP fare from the previous century. Hanaway would lead with her proven toughness on crime, she’d be pro-life, she’d advance “conservative values,” she’d draw upon her proud rural roots, and she’d protect individual rights.

But the event was far more notable for what wasn’t said. That would be anything that might soothe the psycho psyches of deep red MAGA world.

There was not a single reference to the scourge of the illegal-immigrant invasion, nor sanctuary cities, nor the need for the state to cooperate with ICE. There wasn’t a single reference to supposed genital mutilation of kids, for which Bailey slandered Washington University while Hanaway sat on its Board of Trustees.

There was no talk about the need to end habeas corpus or to increase the use of National Guardsmen and even federal troops to fight crime in Missouri. Hanaway even referenced St. Louis positively without the obligatory “Democrat-run” MAGA qualification.

Asked if Trump had been consulted or otherwise had input into Hanaway’s selection, Kehoe answered with a most abrupt — and I’d say telling — firm “no.” These folks better hope video of this doesn’t get shown on the walls of Stephen Miller’s vampire cave.

Here’s the problem for Hanaway and Kehoe: MAGA didn’t die this week. And it’s not going away anytime soon in the state of Missouri.

Left to her own devices, Hanaway might perform as a solid prosecutor like she did in St. Louis as U.S. Attorney, but with deference to the political winds that blow harder through her office in Jefferson City. She’d focus on the job, with the aforementioned right-leaning politics.

But Hanaway’s not going to be left to her own devices. Not as long as Trump is president.

Trump’s ceaseless and sustained assault on democratic institutions offends the instinctive sensibilities of real Republicans almost as much as it does those on the Democratic side. Real Republicans pride themselves as the party of states’ rights and less government and more privacy — and while they haven’t lived up to that much — it’s quite another thing for RINOs to embrace full authoritarian control.

On the other hand, we’ve seen what’s happened with Hanaway’s good friend, Rep. Ann Wagner, who quite literally sold her political soul — who cares about the Epstein files and all this talk about sex trafficking stuff? — in full subservience to the rule of Trump.

It’s not a question of whether Hanaway will be called upon to sacrifice her core beliefs — just as Kehoe is preparing to do now on Trump’s gerrymandering demands — it’s a question of when.

Whether that manifests itself in endless, feed-the-base frivolous partisan lawsuits at taxpayer expense like Bailey did — or whether it might involve something more deadly and serious — a MAGA reckoning will be coming for Hanaway.

As a citizen and as someone whose early career was privileged to feature working for the wonderful Kit Bond — mine when he was governor, hers as a young Senate aide — I truly wish Hanaway well. For all our sakes.

But I wouldn’t bet against the power of Trump and MAGA in Missouri. Horrific times lie ahead.

These aren’t the good old days

New Trump henchman's disastrous record would make a North Korean general blush

Andrew Bailey, Missouri hardly knew ye.

But what we saw of ye was plenty more than enough.

One of the most nakedly partisan attorneys general in Missouri history, Bailey has been tapped by President Donald Trump to become his quasi–number two man at the FBI. Bailey snagged his career vault solely by politicizing the power of his state law-enforcement office in Trump’s name.

Meanwhile, Governor Mike Kehoe announced today that former GOP House Speaker Catherine Hanaway — the only woman to hold that post — is his choice to replace Bailey as attorney general. That’s unlikely to sit well with many in MAGA world, a subject for later in this space.

For now, as I documented here, Bailey served a constituency of one and it paid off handsomely — one adoring, taxpayer-funded Trump press release at a time. Bailey didn’t limit himself to following the MAGA playbook like others at his craft; his degree of obsequiousness to Trump was enough to make a North Korean general blush.

Bailey’s rise is a cautionary tale. He succeeded not only because he advanced Trump’s agenda, but because of how he went about the task.

His was not a triumph of right-wing ideology. It was of style points, groveling, ruthless ambition, and a willingness to get down and dirty.

Bailey took a back seat to no one as a toady for Trump during the 2024 election campaign. That meant paying homage in a big way to the Big Lie that Trump was somehow robbed in 2020.

“The left stole that election by changing the rules of the game at the 11th hour. They’re going to try to steal this one by silencing our voices on big tech social media platforms, by stifling us in the mainstream media and by packing the polling places with criminal illegal aliens that shouldn’t be here in the first place.” — Bailey, May 14, 2024 debate in Springfield, MO

Most Republicans survived by nodding their heads at the falsehood needed to soothe Trump’s mental trauma over losing to President Joe Biden in 2020. Not Bailey. He went all in on the lie — and I suppose garnered some style points with that whole “packing the polling places with criminal aliens” sequel, which you didn’t hear every day.

Holding fast to the Big Lie wasn’t unusual. Doubling down with zeal four years later was quite another thing.

But Bailey goes big, just the way Trump likes it. When he attacked trans people as attorney general, he didn’t just check off a box — he went all in with the declaration that virtually all trans care was “an unfair, deceptive, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful practice” for “any person or health organization” to perpetrate.

Bailey didn’t even limit that dripping bigotry to kids. He tried to include adults as well — not for any decent reason, but to get himself lambasted by the nationally respected Human Rights Campaign. Think Trump doesn’t go for that sort of thing?

It’s the pattern that Bailey followed throughout his tenure in office. He wasn’t satisfied to use the power of his office to attack DEI wherever he could detect it as some horrible virus.

Instead, Bailey would do things like falsely blame the Hazelwood School District’s DEI program for the off-campus assault of a student. When proven wrong, Bailey must have been smiling broadly to become the focus of a formal complaint about the behavior of his office.

He recused himself from a gambling lawsuit filed against the Missouri State Highway Patrol after PACs connected to the lobbyist of the companies suing the state wrote thousands in checks to the committee supporting his campaign, the Missouri Independent reported. Trump likes that sort of thing.

It was not his only brush with campaign violations. And Bailey was blasted by Clay County Judge Karen Krauser, who ordered Bailey to sit for a deposition after it was discovered he and a deputy met with a member of the Jackson County Legislature without the knowledge of the county’s attorneys. The county was a defendant.

Do you think Trump minds that he crossed the line with a judge?

Bailey has resisted releasing individuals whose convictions were overturned, even when new evidence supported their innocence. In the case of Sandra Hemme, a judge threatened to hold Bailey in contempt for instructing prison officials not to release a woman whose conviction had been overturned after she served 43 years.

If there’s any mitigating circumstance to Bailey’s tenure as attorney general, it’s that he’s not a good lawyer. In one of his first and most important cases, Bailey attempted to thwart the will of the people to keep off the ballot the 2024 constitutional amendment that eventually reinstated women’s right to an abortion.

That wasn’t remarkable. Bailey was expected by Republicans to fight the measure. They might not have expected his 6-0 thrashing before a moderately conservative Missouri Supreme Court.

Legal observers point to the astonishing number of losses he’s piled up. From mask mandates to social media censorship to his toxic emergency order declaring gender-affirming care as “experimental,” the list goes on.

But the point for Bailey was never about winning cases. It was about winning attention from the MAGA base and, above all else, Trump himself.

Just because a guy isn’t good at trying cases doesn’t mean he can’t be good at that.

Besides, Bailey is off to a new job as one of the very top officials of the FBI, the most important law-enforcement agency in the world. There, he won’t need to worry about trying cases — or losing them.

In fact, how he did in his previous work won’t matter at all. Although he had a fine career in military service, Bailey comes to the FBI with zero experience at the FBI or any police agency like it.

Zero. Unlike all the 38,000 men and women who serve today at the FBI. What could go wrong with any of that?

Nothing, apparently, if Andrew Bailey does what he does best.

Which is to keep Donald Trump happy.

Even Trump's top toady is warning this appalling move risks disaster

Something treacherous looms today on the Alaskan horizon.

As Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet to hammer out their version of a Ukrainian-Russian “peace” plan, it could portend one of the darkest chapters in the history of American foreign policy. That’s not hyperbole.

I don’t pretend to have the chops to analyze a matter so grave. So I’ll be turning to an expert in this space.

But first, let’s review the basics. Trump’s friendship with Putin is warm and longstanding, most revealed — speaking of dark chapters — by his shocking statement in 2018 at Helsinki that he trusted Putin more than 18 intelligence agencies of his own administration.

We also know of Trump’s bitter history with our courageous ally, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In 2019 — just a year after Helsinki — Trump attempted to extort dirt about political rival Joe Biden in exchange for release of military assistance desperately needed by Ukraine. He was impeached for that.

Trump more recently scolded and attempted to humiliate Zelensky in a shameful scene that defiled the Oval Office. It’s an indictment of our times that it did not receive more universal condemnation.

But that’s just the common knowledge piece of the story. To do full justice to the background about Putin, Trump, Ukraine and American foreign policy, I’ve decided to call upon a real expert.

His deliberate words provide clear context to why summitry between Trump and Putin poses such a grave danger to the world:

Vladimir Putin is a thug. He is a murderer. He is not someone to be admired. He is someone who has jailed and killed journalists, political opponents. He bombed a schoolhouse full of children. This is not a leader, this is a gangster.

There is no moral equivalence between the United States of America and Russia. I don’t understand people who say, well, America’s not perfect, so who are we to criticize Putin? We are not in the same category.

When you give someone like Vladimir Putin a propaganda win by standing next to him and treating him like an equal, you empower every anti-democratic movement across the globe. You demoralize our allies and you send the worst possible message to the world.

Russia is not just another country. It is an active adversary of the United States. It interfered in our elections, it continues to attack our institutions, it backs brutal dictators like Assad, and it has invaded and illegally occupied parts of Ukraine and Georgia.

When leaders in our own country excuse or even praise Putin, it tells our allies they can’t count on us — and it tells our enemies they can walk all over us.

Donald Trump is a con artist … It’s time to pull off his mask so people can see what we are dealing with here. We must not hand the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual.

We cannot have a president who looks at Vladimir Putin and sees a role model. This is someone who poisons his political opponents, assassinates defectors on foreign soil, and jails dissidents.

Some people say, well, Putin’s strong. He’s decisive. That’s like admiring the mafia for its discipline. The question isn’t whether he’s effective. The question is: What is he effective at doing? The answer is crushing freedom and destabilizing the world.

We know Putin lies. We know he manipulates. And we know that when you stand next to him and suggest he’s telling the truth over our own intelligence agencies, it does enormous damage. It weakens our democracy.
The people of Ukraine are fighting and dying to resist Putin’s imperial ambitions. If we abandon them now, we won’t just be betraying an ally — we’ll be inviting more aggression, more chaos, and more suffering around the globe.
Supporting Ukraine isn’t charity. It’s in our national interest. If Russia can invade and conquer its neighbors without consequence, what message does that send to China? To Iran? To North Korea?

There are leaders in the world today who do not believe in freedom. They do not believe in elections. They believe in power, fear, and control. Vladimir Putin is one of them. We should never make the mistake of treating him as anything else.

When our own leaders parrot Russian propaganda or downplay Russia’s crimes, they’re not just being naive. They’re helping our enemies.

The minute you stop defending truth, the minute you decide it’s acceptable to ignore facts or excuse tyrants because it suits your politics, you’re no longer leading. You’re enabling.

In these perilous times, I hope every American takes these powerful words to heart from a man who today is a leading voice on U.S. foreign policy.

That would be Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Every word above is a direct quote from Rubio’s past public commentary over a 15-year period. He spoke them forcefully during his tenure as a U.S. Senator from 2011 through 2024, as well as his 2015-16 run for the Republican presidential nomination.

Now? Not so much.

Little Marco, as Trump called him during that campaign, has shrunken in stature to the sniveling, groveling member of Trump’s cabinet that we see today rendering a tragic parody of North Korean President Kim Jong-un’s sycophants. Rubio has sold his soul — in plain view of the world — to a degree that’s arguably unprecedented.

Now Rubio prattles about Trump being the peace president. He speaks with great restraint about Putin. The old Rubio fire applies now only to Zelensky.

But Marco Rubio’s real beliefs — his real words — cannot be erased by Trumpian revisionist history.

Unlike their author, they continue to stand for something important.

Trump's massive gamble has a fundamental flaw

It’s happening.

This morning, President Donald Trump took the largest step since he took office to test the limits of his power. And he did it in a way calculated not to alarm most Americans.

Trump announced that he was essentially supplanting the D.C. police with the National Guard and — most inappropriately — FBI agents to address what he termed an “emergency” crime problem in the nation’s capital.

It’s a perfect testing ground for an unprecedented expansion of presidential power. And understand that it’s a guardrail test, not a response to an actual crisis.

The residents of Washington D.C. face neither an emergency nor a crisis — and Trump fully understands that. Crime is empirically down, and even if it were not, nothing has transpired in the past seven months that would remotely rationalize this seizure of police power.

Trump views Washington D.C. as a petri dish.

Given that most Americans have long harbored an irrational distaste for D.C. — which happens to have an overwhelming Black majority population — it provides the ideal backdrop for Trump to invoke the national fear of crime. Any action advertised to fight crime in D.C. can count on a warm embrace from millions of Americans.

And in this case, the fact that Trump can declare a crime emergency where there is none — and get away with it — is a feature, not a bug. Because if he can do it in Washington D.C., he can eventually branch out federal police power to cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Minneapolis, Chicago and beyond.

The bluer the state, the better.

Trump’s action today also provides a test for a principle that we’ve seen unfold in alarming ways: He used his mastery of social media — and his mind control over a feared and powerful political base — to introduce false crises and invented issues that never occurred before he took office.

Just consider how many times Trump has successfully unleashed some bizarre new premise that had never been contemplated — much less debated — in the past presidential campaign. Or anytime, in any serious way, in the nation’s discourse.

Here are just a few examples:

Instituting a vicious trade war with our closest neighbor, Canada. As well as other erstwhile allies across the globe.
Repurposing ICE as a secret police force and using it to arrest judges and politicians.
Invading and annexing Greenland.
Re-seizing the Panama Canal.
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico, which, by the way, is still the Gulf of Mexico.

That list goes on. This isn’t an abstract debate.

The seizure of D.C. police fits an ominous pattern of Trump unilaterally declaring an emergency based on nothing but the reach of his megaphone — and a grip of power over Congress, sanctioned by a partisan U.S. Supreme Court, that is arguably unprecedented in U.S. history.

What makes this particular move ominous is that Trump has launched it without the slightest provocation or even the remote appearance of a crisis. He doesn’t need a fig leaf.

Trump initiated his seizure of police power against a backdrop of falling crime in the nation’s Capitol:

Violent crime: Down 26% in D.C. year-to-date
Homicides: Down 12%
Robberies: Down 28%
Aggravated assaults: Down 20%
Total crime: Down 7%
(Source: Metropolitan Police Department data)

Regionally, the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area has seen overall crime drop 13%, with homicides down 30%. The picture is clear: the “crime surge” is political theater, not statistical reality.

It’s almost incidental that the takeover undermines Home Rule and local democracy. It’s such an obviously false pretext for federal overreach that his MAGA apologists might as well admit that the best defense is that Trump’s doing this because he wants to.

And he can.

Trump is counting on a very specific bet: that much of the country either dislikes Washington, D.C., on instinct or simply doesn’t care what happens there.

This is a trial balloon. It’s a calculated test of guardrails.

If we as a nation allow it to stand, we do so at our own peril.