THE TRUMP BASE JUST WANTS TO BE REASSURED THAT IT'S RIGHT, AND LIES ARE GETTING THAT DONE

Here are a couple of responses to the execution of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis yesterday:

I disagree with Stonekettle on a couple of points. The Trump administration will continue to lie about what happened here, but within hours of Pretti's murder, the lead story at The New York Times was "Videos Appear to Contradict Federal Account of Fatal Shooting" -- and now it's simply "Videos Contradict Federal Accounts of Fatal Shooting." The Washington Post leads with "Federal Agent Secured Gun from Minn. Man Before Fatal Shooting, Videos Show." CNN's Dana Bash pushed back on Greg Bovino of the Border Patrol when he tried to advance the administration's narrative:

Dana Bash grills Bovino to provide any evidence that Alex Pretti "assaulted law enforcement" and Bovino has absolutely nothing

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 25, 2026 at 9:26 AM

Referring to members of the administration, Stonekettle says, "MAGAs know they are lying." But they don't. We think they can watch the videos we've watched, see the Alex Pretti never reached for his gun, see that he was disarmed before he was shot, learn that he had the legal right to carry a weapon, and reach the same conclusions we do. But they won't do that.

They're not embracing the administration's version of events out of fear, as Stonekettle suggests. They're embracing it because they want to be reassured at all times that the people they like are right and the people they dislike are evil. They want Bovino and other members of the administration to tell them that they don't need to watch the videos of the incident -- if Trump officials say that Pretti was violently assaulting federal agents, they believe it, and that settles it. If he says this took place in the midst of a "riot," as he did at another point in the interview, they believe that too. Assertions by Trumpist talking heads serve as evidence, even if actual video evidence contradicts what the Trumpists are saying.

Video has value because it reveals the truth to people on the left and in the center who want to know what really happened. But Republican voters don't want to know what really happened. They want to be told that they're right. They want people they regard as authorities to tell them what they see in these videos (or what they would see if they watched them). Lies keep them loyal, so the lying will continue and the base will remain onboard.

WHEN YOU LIVE IN A RIGHT-WING BUBBLE, YOU LOSE YOUR ABILITY TO TALK TO NORMAL PEOPLE

I keep thinking about this CNN story with the headline "Trump Privately Frustrated That He Risks Losing Control of Immigration Message Amid Minnesota Chaos."

The ongoing protests and images coming out of Minnesota have prompted concerns from some Trump administration officials over the optics of the immigration crackdown as Americans grow alarmed by the chaotic scenes unfolding in the state.

President Donald Trump has expressed frustration behind closed doors that the immigration messaging is getting lost, sources familiar with the discussions told CNN.

The Trumpers are saying, Who are you going believe -- your lying eyes or our narrative? because they've spent years communicating only with their own supporters -- on Fox, on right-wing podcasts, on X -- and their persuasion muscles have completely atrophied. They're used to communicating with people who automatically assume that the GOP narrative is correct, because gthey believe that anyone opposed to Trump and Republicans is evil. In the Trumpist bubble, no one will watch the videos that clearly show Renee Good steering away from ICE officers; they limit themselves to the videos that fit the Trump administration's narrative because they're already inclined to hate ICE critics like Good and her partner.

Children are being seized by ICE? The president and administration officials aren't used to having to persuade Americans that brown people who have pending asylum claims, like five-year-old Liam Ramos and parents, are bad by definition. The people in their bubble already believe that. They already believe every brown-skinned asylum seeker is a threat to U.S. sovereignty. The Trump administration doesn't know how to make this case because the Trump base considers the case closed.

Trump has sought to take control of the narrative, starting with an impromptu press conference on the anniversary of his first year in office.

The president, at times sounding exasperated, thumbed through mugshots of individuals arrested in his immigration crackdown, highlighting their alleged crimes. His message was clear that while there might be some issues, ICE is necessary to follow through on his agenda — to deport the most dangerous criminals back to their home country.

But we don't see "the worst of the worst" being arrested. We see children being arrested. We see white protesters being arrested. We see ordinary immigrant workers being arrested. We see citizens of the "wrong" ethnicities being arrested. The Trumpers don't understand that normal people see a disconnect between their stated goal and what they're actually doing. The people they're used to talking to don't see the disconnect -- they think all immigrants are evil by definition and all protesters are violent terrorists paid by George Soros. Recall that a statement made by Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin in the immediate aftermath of Renee Good's murder said that "rioters" were "blocking ICE officers" and referred to Good as "one of these violent rioters." The Republican base literally believes that a riot was taking place in the minutes leading up to Good's death, even though they haven't seen a single video showing protesters doing anything other than shouting and filming.

And recall what Trump said about ICE agents in that press conference (emphasis added):

“They’re going to make mistakes sometimes. ICE is going to be too rough with somebody or — you know, they’re dealing with rough people — or they’re going to make a mistake sometimes. It can happen. We feel terribly.”

They don't understand that normal Americans watch what's happening in Minnesota and don't see "rough people." They can't grasp this because the people in their base thinks they're actually seeing "rough people."

We're told:

... top White House officials have been plotting how to move the narrative away from the unrest in Minneapolis and instead focus on what they view as ICE’s achievements.

“There’s an effort underway to come up with new ideas and new ways to amplify the good work they are doing,” a senior White House official told CNN....

Do you know how ordinary law enforcement agencies show that they're rounding up "the worst of the worst"? They hold press conferences showing seized caches of weapons, bundles of cash, bricks of drugs. The Trump administration can't do that because ICE's mandate is arresting the most, not arresting the worst. If the administration wants praise, it needs to start prioritizing arrests of really bad people. But that's not what Stephen Miller wants, so it won't happen.

I wonder if Trump will eventually decide that Stephen Miller is a liability because his heavy-handed, merciless tactics make Trump look bad. It seems doubtful -- many top aides found themselves in Trump's doghouse in his first term, and some have in the second term, But Miller has never been on the outs with Trump.

I don't think Trump will ever understand why his government acts are offputting to normal people because, apart from some outreach to swing voters in the 2024 campaign, Trump hasn't tried communicating with normal people in years.

DISTORTED REALITY IS HOW REPUBLICAN VOTERS -- AND TRUMP -- SELF-SOOTHE

We all know that Donald Trump lies to himself in order to get through life in a world where some people don't believe he's the world's most remarkable human being. He tells himself he's ended eight wars, dropped gas prices to below $2.00 a barrel, and lowered drug prices by mathematically impossible percentages. When his polls are bad, he just makes up a new approval rating that's much higher than pollsters' actual numbers. A normal president would understand that some people won't agree with what a politician does. Trump can't bear that.

And we also know that Republican voters prefer a media diet that tells them exactly what they want to hear -- that everyone who agrees with them politically is a person of pure virtue, and everyone who disagrees with them is a figure of pure evil. I've always assumed that they maintain this worldview merely because they want to believe in their own moral superiority. But they clearly need more reality distortion than right-wing narratives can supply. They need the world to look the way they want it to look.

That's why they love AI, and why this story isn't surprising:

The White House posted a digitally altered image of a woman who was arrested on Thursday in a case touted by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to make it seem as if she was dramatically crying....

The woman, Nekima Levy Armstrong, also appears to have darker skin in the altered image. Armstrong was one of three people arrested on Thursday in connection to a demonstration that disrupted church services in St Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday. Demonstrators alleged that one of the pastors, David Easterwood, was the acting field director of the St Paul Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office....

The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, posted an image of Armstrong’s arrest at 10.21am on Thursday, less than an hour after Bondi’s announcement. The image shows a law enforcement agent, face blurred out, escorting Armstrong, who appears to be handcuffed. Armstrong, dressed in all black, appears to be composed in the picture.

A little more than 30 minutes later, the White House posted another image of Armstrong’s arrest in which she is crying. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, reposted the image. The image posted by the White House is altered....

To Republican voters, this is what should have happened. Armstrong shouldn't have been calm and composed. She should have been owned. MAGA/GOP propaganda promises that everyone Republican voters hate will be made miserable in the glorious reign of Donald Trump, and it's almost unendurable if the evil libs don't appear to be suffering.

This is mild compared to the usual AI slop Republican voters enjoy. Here's a tweet from a long-time Trump cheerleader who's been nominated to be ambassador to Malaysia:

President Trump is immune from corruption because he can’t be bought. pic.twitter.com/D4JfINcvwP

— Nick Adams (@NickAdamsinUSA) January 18, 2026

Think about what you're witnessing here: Adams is ascribing a high level of virtue to Trump, and his "evidence" is an encounter that's completely made up.

This is a template for a staggering amount of pro-Trump propaganda. Here are just a few examples from a pro-Trump Facebook account:



(And yes, I know what you're thinking about that last one.)

In the real world, consumer prices seem high, there's unrest in the streets, and America seems perpetually on the verge of war. Republican voters' self-esteem would plummet if they had to live exclusively in the real world. Fortunately for them, they don't. They can live in a fantasy world where Trump is good (and thus they're good), while evildoers (and demons) are suffering. But this means, in the long run, that they need to remain in this world, where the object of their adoration isn't a normal, flawed human being but an inerrant god. I don't think they can tolerate reality anymore.

YOU CAN'T BEAT ABSOLUTIST ZEALOTS WITH CRINGING APPEASERS

This New York Times poll isn't good for Donald Trump.

Less than a third of voters think the country is better off than it was when President Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with a wide majority saying he has focused on the wrong issues, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Siena University.

A majority of voters disapprove of how Mr. Trump has handled top issues including the economy, immigration, the war between Russia and Ukraine and his actions in Venezuela. And significantly, a majority of Americans, 51 percent, said that Mr. Trump’s policies had made life less affordable for them.

All told, 49 percent of voters said the country was worse off than a year ago, compared with 32 percent who said it was better....

Mr. Trump’s own job approval rating stands at 40 percent, down three points since September. His disapproval rating has crept up to 56 percent.

But the cult still loves the man. One poll participant is shockingly frank about his mancrush on Trump.

“I think he must be doing something right when there are so many people opposed to him,” said Paul Minihane, 77, a real estate broker who lives in Dedham, Mass. “I mean, Donald Trump could look at me in the face and tell me to go screw myself. And I’d say, ‘Thank you.’ I think that’s good. I don’t think he’s looking to kiss everybody’s ass. I think he’s going to do what he thinks is the right thing. And I think that’s a positive thing.”

I'm reminded of Dennis Hopper as a drugged-out photojournalist talking about Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now:



This is a personality cult interwoven with a cult of Fox News-style zealotry, a belief system according to which everything Democrats and liberals do or believe is evil, and every aspect of human life can be summed up in right-wing catchphrases. Consider this woman:

A New Hampshire state representative is in hot water after messages from an encrypted GOP group chat were leaked and show her advocating for “segregated schools.”

Granite Post was the first to report about a group chat in the encrypted messaging app Signal that includes Rep. Kristin Noble, the chair of the House Education Policy and Administration committee in the New Hampshire House of Representatives....

In one message, Noble states, “When we have segregated schools we can add all the fun stuff lol.”

She follows that message up with another, saying, “Imagine the scores if we had schools for them and some for us.”

When the story leaked, Noble responded with a catchphrase I'm sure she believed trumped all objections:

Only hours after news of the messages was made public, Noble released a statement on social media with a donation link asking people to help her “stop the spread of the woke mind virus.”

She want on to insist that she was talking about political segregation, not racial segregation:

“It’s funny to watch the Democrats feign outrage when I thought they’d be supportive of managing their own schools, with libraries full of porn, biological males in girls sports and bathrooms, and as much DEI curriculum as their hearts desire. Schools like that will have terrible test scores because they focus on social justice rather than academics.”

“Republicans have been self-segregating out of the leftist indoctrination centers for decades. If democrats had their own schools, and we had our own, families wouldn’t need to avail themselves of the wildly successful education freedom account program. It’s a win / win proposition.”

These people are only 40% of the country at most. We're the majority. But these catchphrase-spewing automatons punch above their weight because the party in opposition to them is led by this pathetic nebbish:

How closely, if at all, should Dems collaborate with this administration, especially in an election year? That question is always pertinent to a minority party, but especially now. The latest edition of The Opposition from @lauren-egan.bsky.social plus @samsteindc.bsky.social:

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— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) January 22, 2026 at 9:08 AM

A HOST OF PROMINENT POLITICAL LEADERS descended on Onondaga County, New York, last week to mark the official groundbreaking of a $100 billion semiconductor manufacturing facility by Micron Technology.

Among those in attendance were Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (New York’s senior senator) and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

... Micron’s expansion was initially made possible by the CHIPS Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law, and which Donald Trump opposed. And so, as the gathered politicians and Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra took questions from the press, Luke Radel, a college reporter from nearby Syracuse, posed a question to Lutnick: Why should Trump get credit for these jobs?

Lutnick geared up to answer. But before a word left his lips, Schumer—a Buffalo Bills beanie tented over his head—jumped in: “We’re not looking for one side or the other,” he said. “We’re working together to make this thing happen in the right way.”

If Schumer were in attendance just to ensure that anyone watching the ceremony understood the Democratic contribution to this project, fine. He could invoke Biden and the CHIPS Act, and could let Lutnick take the heat from (unsurprisingly) a student journalist.

But no. He ran interference for Lutnick.

And what thanks did he get?

Later that day, the Commerce Department posted a glossed-up promotional video about the Micron groundbreaking. Schumer was not even in it. Instead, it featured Lutnick mugging triumphantly in a variety of settings: shoveling dirt, striding alongside Mehrotra, photographed with his arms crossed and a vainglorious grin, boasting from a lectern that Biden had secured a measly $75 billion investment from Micron while Trump had negotiated one for $200 billion.

I'm pounding my head on the desk as we speak.

We talk about Donald Trump's mental state, but maybe it's Chuck Schumer who should be taking a cognitive test. I question Schumer's grasp on reality, specifically the reality of politics in the 21st century.

I don't really believe that Chuck Schumer has dementia, but he's a stubborn old man. He's as committed to his belief that appeasement is the only way Democrats can win as Trump is to the belief that tariffs are a miracle economic elixir. Like Trump, Schumer refuses to process any information, any facts from the real world, that suggest he should reconsider his idée fixe. Chuck Schumer will not utter a negative word about the Republican Party. He will sing the praises of bipartisanship every chance he gets. He's dug in. He will die on this hill.

And America may die with him.

INSIDE THAT WORLD-BESTRIDING MEGALOMANIAC BULLY LIVES A MID-LEVEL CEO WORRIED ABOUT THE MARKETS

Donald Trump has been a narcissist all his life, but prior to his career in politics, life occasionally slapped him down: his media coverage was sometimes disrespectful, he was never wholeheartedly welcomed into elite society in New York, and he struggled to keep his businesses afloat and his personal wealth intact.

That 1980s/1990s guy still lives inside the global bully we see today. I think twentieth-century Trump's insecurities explain this:

President Trump reiterated his determination to take control of Greenland from Denmark during a 72-minute tirade at the World Economic Forum — but seemingly ruled out using force to do so....

Trump began the Greenland portion of his speech by calling for "immediate negotiations" to acquire the Arctic territory, mocking Denmark for losing it "in six hours" during World War II.

But he also signaled it was time for de-escalation with NATO, dismissing fears that the U.S. military would attack its own allies.

... Trump said that if the U.S. decided to take Greenland by force it would be "unstoppable," but "I don't want to use force. I won't use force. All the United States is asking for is a place called Greenland."

Trump apparently couldn't remember which cold island he wants to seize against the residents' will (and the global community's will), but he was clearly shaken up by yesterday's selloff.

Trump is now confusing Greenland and Iceland: "They're not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So Iceland has already cost us a lot of money."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 21, 2026 at 9:20 AM

The selloff was nothing -- the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1.8% yesterday, far less than the worst plunges in history, like the 22.61% drop on October 19, 1987, just about the time that Trump's own businesses began sinking into a sea of red ink. As The New York Times reported a few years ago, referring to a period when Trump suffered nearly a billion dollars in business losses:

... Mr. Trump’s 1990 collapse might have struck several years earlier if not for his brief side career posing as a corporate raider. From 1986 through 1988, while his core businesses languished under increasingly unsupportable debt, Mr. Trump made millions of dollars in the stock market by suggesting that he was about to take over companies. But the figures show that he lost most, if not all, of those gains after investors stopped taking his takeover talk seriously.

Trump intimidates powerful people in America and the rest of the world, but the markets intimidate him. He knows that even if it's seen as a last resort, Europe could use its Anti-Coercion Instrument -- the so-called "bazooka"-- to restrict trade and prevent U.S. companies, especially tech companies, from bidding on European public contracts.

The markets seem to be the only force Trump fears -- see also his "TACO" (Trump always chickens out) approach to truly punitive tariffs. It's regrettable that the markets won't do more than give Trump an occasional wrist-slap -- as I said yesterday, they don't really fear that Trump's mad-king reign will lead to catastrophe for them -- but it's fortunate that he remains responsive even to mild financial punishment. (I'm sure Trump has heard an earful recently from old billionaires in corner offices. He talks a lot with aging moguls, many of whom he's known for half a century.) Other institutions won't save us, but the markets might be a small check on Trump's ambitions.

And yes, I fully realize that Trump might change his mind about using force to take Greenland weeks, days, or hours from now. But if he doesn't, then capitalism saved us from a full-scale Greenland War and the end of NATO.

IT STILL DOESN'T SEEM LIKE A CRISIS TO ANYONE RICH ENOUGH TO MATTER

I regularly see social media posts floating this scenario:

This won't happen. Normal people are fed up with Trump, or at least disapproving of the way he's doing his job, but Republican voters are still worshipful. Any Cabinet member who supported Trump's removal from office would be declared an unperson in the Republican Party and would be faced with daily death threats and threats to spouses and family, which might or might not be carried out. So forget it, folks. They're not going to eighty-six the mad king.

You might imagine that rich and powerful people are worried about the chaos Trump is unleashing -- NATO under threat, a "sell America" mood on global markets, and so on. But you always have to remember that the rich can put their money on whichever side of a rising or falling market makes them the most cash. Right now they don't see the potential for a 2008-style crash, and even if it happened, they'd expect to be made whole if they suffered significant losses, and both political parties would agree that that was for the best.

Moral hazards don't get much more hazardous than that. The people in power simply don't believe their world is going to hell in a handbasket, even if ours is. Meanwhile, they're getting their tax cuts. They're getting their regulatory cuts. They might need to bribe Trump to continue doing business more or less as usual, but as long as he's clear about his price, they're willing to pay it. They don't like the tariffs, but the bifurcated, "K-shaped" economy means that there are rich and upper-middle-class people for whom the price increases aren't a problem, so the economy rumbles on.

We're in this mess because it's practically impossible for rich people to stop being rich. They never have reason to fear, so they have no fear of Trump's societal disruptions. The people who run our economy would probably be whispering to their friends at The New York Times and The Atlantic that it was time to start writing about impeachment or 25th Amendment removal if they felt they were at risk now, but they don't. They don't see Trump's madness as anything more than a minor problem. There certainly won't be a "business plot" to overthrow him in a military coup, as there was when Franklin Roosevelt was president. The rich are too well insulated.

It's all on us. Insiders and fat cats won't help us.

IMAGINE HOW MANY SEATS DEMOCRATS COULD WIN IN NOVEMBER IF THEY ACTUALLY RAN AGAINST THEIR OPPONENTS

There's some good news and some bad news for Democrats in recent polling. This is very good news:

The Democratic Party has a deeply motivated base and a clear advantage on the generic congressional ballot ahead of this fall’s midterms despite dismal impressions of its current leaders in Congress, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.

Democratic registered voters are far more motivated right now than Republicans. While the party has a 5-point edge on the generic ballot, among those who say they’re deeply motivated to vote, that advantage expands to a massive 16 points.

Democratic voters are dissatisfied with the party's congressional leadership, but they're ready to vote Democratic, in a big way. That's good.

This is not so good:

On issue after issue, according to the latest Wall Street Journal poll, voters think Republicans -- specifically, Republicans in Congress -- would do a better job than Democrats in Congress. This is in spite of the fact that voters are quite unhappy with the way the Republican president of the United States is handling these same issues:

... more voters disapprove than approve of his handling of inflation—by 17 percentage points, a worse showing than the 11-point gap in July. By 10 percentage points, more voters disapprove than approve of his handling of the economy.

... 58% of voters in the survey said that Trump’s policies were most responsible for the current economy, while 31% said former President Joe Biden’s policies were most responsible.

And many voters in the survey think Trump has distracted himself from what is most important.

Majorities say they disapprove when asked whether Trump has the right priorities, is looking out for middle-class families or cares about “people like you.” Asked about the president’s attention to Venezuela, Iran and other countries, a 53% majority says he is focusing on unnecessary foreign matters at the expense of the economy, while 42% say he’s working on urgent national security threats.

Voters strongly disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy, inflation, foreign policy, and immigration, yet they think his rubber-stamp party-mates in Congress would do a better job than Democrats on all these issues. Why?

This is what happens when Democrats incessantly sing the praises of bipartisanship and refuse to say that the opposition party is bad because they think it will somehow offend Chuck Schumer's mythical Baileys if they do.

You're probably tired of hearing me say this, but it is normal politics to say that the other party is bad and your own party is better. Democrats reverse this. The party's leaders and consultants can't stop engaging in public criticism of fellow Democrats, who are accused of being "weak and woke" and alienating voters with "faculty-lounge language," and they regularly vow to work across the aisle if elected, even though the people they'd work across the aisle with are the principal enablers of a very unpopular president.

And Democrats' message is weak tea. Here's a Chuck Schumer quote from The Bulwark. Schumer is talking about the possibility that Democrats could win the Senate:

SCHUMER: Let me say this: We have a strong, clear path to winning the majority. We are on our front foot and we are in much, much better shape than people ever thought we would be. A year ago, people thought we had no chance of taking back the Senate. And then I laid out to people that we had to do three things to take back the Senate: recruit candidates in our battleground states, create a political environment where across the country Trump was much weaker, and show that when we get back in charge, we’re going to actually do things. That we’re not just criticizing them.

You will see in the next months, we’re going to be focusing on five buckets. One is housing, one is the high price of food [and] food monopolies playing a major role there. One is electricity. One is the high cost of childcare. And then, of course, health care.

None of these messages -- these "buckets" -- are The Republican Party is dragging this country to hell, and we need to stop them.

I think the messaging will improve in individual races, as it did in New Jersey and Virginia last year. But this is a long-term problem for the Democratic Party. The Republican Party is led by a very unpopular president, a man who inspires blind loyalty in all but a handful of Republicans, but Democrats refuse to say, The GOP is bad for America.

Say it with me now, Chuck: The GOP is the party of inflation and tariffs. The GOP is the party of invading Greenland. The GOP is the party of shooting mothers in the face. There -- that wasn't so hard, was it?