Friday, June 06, 2025

THE TRUMP-MUSK WAR IS ALREADY OVER, AND TRUMP (AND THE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL) WON

The feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump has gone on for about a week, and Musk already wants to kiss and make up:


Trump is telling the media that he's not interested:
Speaking on a phone call Friday morning shortly before 7 a.m., ABC News asked him about reports he had a call scheduled with Musk for later in the day.

"You mean the man who has lost his mind?" he asked, saying he was "not particularly" interested in talking to him right now.

He said Musk wants to talk to him, but he's not ready to talk to Musk.
However:
People close to Trump have described him as more sad than angry at Musk. One adviser who was with Trump on Thursday night said he seemed "bummed" about the breakup. And that's the way he sounded on Friday morning.
I wouldn't rule out a private conversation over the weekend, followed by a reconciliation. When have you known Trump to "more sad than angry at" someone who defied him this way? Maybe he feels that way about Putin -- but that gives you an idea of how Trump looks at Musk. He doesn't see him as a subordinate from whom he expects absolute loyalty. He clearly sees him as a big mover and shaker (and sees himself as an even bigger man because Musk does his bidding, or used to do it, which is also how Trump wants to see Putin).

But Musk has lost this war already, and I'm somewhat surprised. If you go to Musk's feed on X, you see that most of his tweets and retweets are about the fact that the Big Beautiful Bill will increase the national debt.


Many congressional Republicans have been saying the same thing. A large segment of the congressional GOP wants -- and has always wanted -- to cut more, more, more. GOP voters feel the same way, at least in the abstract. (Polls show that GOP voters don't want Medicaid cut, for instance.) But congressional Republicans are rallying around Trump, as The Wall Street Journal reports:
Rep. Troy Nehls (R., Texas), a vocal President Trump defender, stared into television cameras that circled him outside the Capitol steps and addressed Elon Musk: “You’ve lost your damn mind.”

“Enough is enough. Stop this,” he said....

In the fight between the Republican titans, most GOP lawmakers sided with Trump. Rep. Tim Burchett (R., Tenn.) said Musk is “going off the deep end” with his call for Trump’s impeachment and suggested Musk is losing his sway with the MAGA crowd....
It appears that Musk has made it less likely that the "cut more" crowd will prevail:
Musk’s attacks had raised the possibility that conservatives could extract more cuts from such programs as Medicaid, but that new push appeared to stall as Musk’s fight with Trump stretched deeper into Thursday.

“He hasn’t moved a vote,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R., La.) of Musk.

White House aides argued Musk’s broadsides would weaken the position of Republican critics of the megabill, who had initially viewed Musk’s spotlight on deficits as helpful to their cause.
Republicans are angry at Musk for bringing this up:


Fox News reports:
House GOP lawmakers are accusing Elon Musk of going "too far" after he suggested President Donald Trump was "in the Epstein files."

"Hopefully we never have to answer questions about tweets like that from Elon again," said Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, calling Musk's comments "not helpful."

"Elon crossed the line today," Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital....

Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, said Musk had "gone too far."

"There's just no need for this," Nehls said. "Those conversations should be taking place behind closed doors."
But can't Musk just take his money and start a third party that will destroy the GOP? Well, sure, he's thinking about it, as is at least one Techworld billionaire.


But Republican voters will overwhelmingly side with Trump:


Poll results here. I think it's possible that this party could draw as many disaffected Democrats (and apolitical voters who always or sometimes lean Democratic) as it does Republicans.

In the modern GOP, either you're a Trumper in good standing or a you're a traitor to America, Christianity, and common decency. There's no middle ground. Trump is God. I was thinking about calling this post "You Come at God, You'd Best Not Miss," but God is God -- in the GOP, it's unthinkable that Trump is capable of meaningful error. There's no way Musk could come out of a fight with God looking like the good guy.
Posted by Steve M. at 10:55 AM 10 Comments

Thursday, June 05, 2025

MATTHEW YGLESIAS, MEET CAROL HUI

Matthew Yglesias believes that it's a mistake for Democrats to talk about immigration. G. Elliott Morris, the liberal poll nerd who ran FiveThirtyEight after Nate Silver's departure, disagrees. Yglesias made his case at the left-centrist Welcomefest yesterday. Morris quotes from Yglesias's speech:
I was talking to people who said, "You know, everybody knows that immigration is kinda Trump's strongest issue, why do you have so many people making bad press on this?" Well, you know, these guys are from safe seats, you know, so they do it, and people like it.
Morris writes:
When Yglesias delivered the quote above, he showed on screen a clipping of a PBS headline that read "More Democratic lawmakers visit El Salvador to see Abrego Garcia." The story is about four U.S. House Democrats who traveled to the country to try to see Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland dad wrongly deported to El Salvador in violation of a U.S. court order in April.

(The phrase "bad groups" in Yglesias's image refers to left-leaning activist organizations, whom left-centrists call "the Groups" -- a disparaging term because left-centrists believe that "the Groups" push Democrats too far left for the public's taste.)

Morris continues:
The claim Yglesias is making is that focusing on — or, to use his words, "raising the salience of" — immigration shifts public opinion (both on this issue and in general) toward Republicans. And in particular, he is arguing that Democrats "making headlines" about Kilmar Abrego Garcia hurt the party.
But as Morris notes, when some Democrats were talking about Abrego Garcia, Trump's poll numbers on immigration went down:


Morris says,
Trump's approval rating on immigration fell precipitously the day after media attention to the Abrego Garcia case peaked, on April 20. Then, as that attention fell, Trump's approval rating recovered.
I'd put it this way: Democrats in Congress were urged by party leaders to stop making an issue of Abrego Garcia and other detainees who've been renditioned and incarcerated without due process, and have largely backed away from the issue, and -- who could have foreseen this? -- Trump's immigration numbers have risen again.

There are two lessons to be learned from this. Here's one of them, from a Morris post on this subject written when Trump's immigration numbers were dropping:
Public opinion can change based on new information and engagement from party leaders! Trump's approval on immigration policy in general has fallen from about +10 last month to +5 today.
The other lesson is this: For many Americans, anecdotes are more important than data. Anecdotes are how millions of Americans form opinions.

Republicans know this. That's why they personalize issues whenever possible. Trans women in sports? Here's Riley Gaines, who was beaten tied (for fifth) with a trans swimmer in a collegiate match and has not only turned the outcome of that match into a career (speaking fee: $20,000 to $30,000) but has apparently made being a victim of the alleged trans menace her entire personality.

On the subject of immigration, Republicans have, among others, Laken Riley, who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant. She's talked about on Fox News incessantly; Republicans named a bill after her and got it through Congress. To millions of Americans, she's the reason that it's good to crack down on immigration.

But Americans -- even Trump voters -- have a different response when they think about immigrants who just want to work and live quiet lives. Yesterday, an immigrant named Carol Hui was released, to the great relief of her neighbors in Kennett, Missouri, a town Trump won in a landslide. Until her arrest, Hui worked as a waitress there.
The staff of John’s Waffle and Pancake House was elated. The diner, a morning mainstay in Kennett, rallied the community to bring attention to her story. Her co-workers organized a “Carol Day” fund-raiser, put petitions to free her on every table and swapped out the servers’ shirts with black-and-yellow T-shirts that read, “Bring Carol Home.”

... The public outrage and backlash to Ms. Hui’s arrest was remarkable in a town like Kennett, the seat of a rural county where 80 percent of voters supported Mr. Trump last November, and where many voters said they had supported his promises of mass deportations.
Or maybe the public outrage and backlash aren't so remarkable, because this keeps happening. It happened in Sackets Harbor, New York:
Three students will return to Sackets Harbor Central School after their community in northern New York called for authorities to release the family, arrested by federal agents in late March.

When the three children come back to Sackets Harbor Central School, they'll find signs and decorations celebrating their return — and the end of an ordeal that started in late March.

... Hundreds of people — kids, parents, teachers and neighbors — have called for federal authorities to bring the students and their mother back. And now, their call has been heeded.

... The children and their mother weren't charged with a crime; they were swept up during an operation to arrest a South African man accused of using his cell phone to share child pornography.

... local officials led calls to bring the family back home.

...The town is part of New York's 24th congressional district — rated by the Cook Partisan Voting Index as the most reliably Republican district in the state.
Near Tampa, Florida, community members rallied around a detained pastor named Maurilio Ambrocio. Among Ambrocio's supporters is his next-door neighbor, Greg Johns:
His eyes water as he recalls when Hurricane Milton hit last year. Ambrocio checked in on him immediately. “Do you need propane?” he asked. “Do you need water? What do you need? That’s the type of neighbor [he is]. This man is a part of the neighborhood.” Like many in this small rural community, Johns voted for President Trump last November. In fact, he did so at Ambrocio’s church, which doubles as a polling station. “I did.” He hesitates. “Because I was not happy with the direction the country was going.” He says he was hoping migrants in the country without papers and with criminal records would be targeted. But he says he never expected a pillar of the community like Maurilio Ambrocio would be taken away.
Why shouldn't Democrats talk about these people -- and then expand from the specific to the general, perhaps citing the Washington Examiner story in which ICE officials say that Stephen Miller explicitly told them to prioritize arrests of working immigrants over arrests of crimninals?
“Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?'” the official recited.

One of the [ICE] officials in attendance stood up and stated that the Department of Homeland Security and the White House had publicly messaged about targeting criminal illegal immigrants, and therefore, ICE was targeting them, and not the general illegal immigration population.

“Miller said, ‘What do you mean you’re going after criminals?’ ..."
As for detainees who have been accused of being criminals with little or no evidence presented, Democrats could ask, "If these people are criminals, where are guns? Where are the drugs? Where's the money?" (I say this as a lifelong city dweller who's seen dozens of news stories about cops breaking up criminal gangs. There's invariably a press conference where the cops, and maybe the mayor, display seized guns, piles of cash, and bricks of heroin. Where are those stories now? Did Miller's agents find any guns or drugs when they arrested Abrego Garcia, or Andry José Hernández Romero, a gay makeup artist detained in March? If so, can we see the contraband?)

Yes, talk about this. Make it personal. Make it vivid. Question Trump's honesty. Ask why so many decent, hardworking immigrants are being rounded up. On immigration, public opinion is not firmly on Trump's side.

UPDATE: Riley Gaines story corrected.
Posted by Steve M. at 11:27 AM 16 Comments

Wednesday, June 04, 2025

WE'RE AT THE "I HATE MY DAD!" ADOLESCENT PART OF THE TRUMP-MUSK RELATIONSHIP

Is this total war? Is it a serious blow to Republicans as they try to pass the Big Beautiful Bill? I have my doubts, as I explain below:
Elon Musk continued his rampage against Donald Trump’s spending bill on Tuesday night, setting the stage for an ugly showdown with the president’s faithful.

“Mammoth spending bills are bankrupting America!” he wrote, sharing a graphic depicting rising national debt over the past three decades. “ENOUGH,” he added.

He also responded with a “100″ emoji to an X user who wrote that Musk had “reminded everyone: It’s not about Right vs. Left. It’s about the Establishment vs the People.”

He then posted an American flag emoji under a post from conservative satire site The Babylon Bee, highlighting a story titled, “The Lord Strengthens Elon One Last Time To Push Pillars Of Congress Over And Bring Government Crashing Down.”

Earlier Tuesday, the billionaire unleashed hellfire on Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, lambasting the president’s flagship legislative package as “outrageous,” “pork-filled” and a “disgusting abomination.”
We think of Trump as someone who demands complete loyalty. That's true ... for most of his allies. Trump seems to treat Musk differently.

I said this in November and I'm sticking with it:
... I think it's noteworthy that Trump is the same age as Musk's father.
A couple of weeks later, I wrote:
And Trump might be looking for a son. He seems disappointed in his three biological sons....
That's how I think their relationship works: Trump is the father, and Musk is the rich, successful businessman son he never had. I'm sure Trump believes his genes should have created someone with Musk's wealth and status, but it never happened.

This was never just a boss-subordinate relationship. Remember this?


And remember this from last week's Wall Street Journal story about the end of Musk's time in Washington?
Trump has described Musk to aides as “50% genius, 50% boy,” according to White House staffers who heard his comments. Another White House aide said they heard Trump call Musk “90% genius, 10% boy.”
"Boy" isn't a word Trump uses very often. It's weirdly paternal.

Many super-rich men throughout American history have seen themselves as equal in power to the president of the United States, or even superior. Musk clearly doesn't feel that way. He wants Trump's love -- and, of course, government contracts and the termination of all government investigations of his companies. He clearly believes he's not putting his empire at risk by lashing out at the bill -- he's really just lashing out the way a normal teenager would at a parent with whom he doesn't have any serious conflicts -- and Trump's failure to lash out at him, at Truth Social or anywhere else, suggests that their peculiar relationship will survive this. (We knew this wasn't a normal Trumpworld falling-out when Trump invited Musk to that press conference in the Oval Office last Friday, as a farewell. Trump usually kicks people to the curb abruptly and completely. There are very few soft landings.)

What's more important to understand is that Musk's attacks on the bill won't doom it. They won't give Senate Republicans cover to vote against it. The bill seems to be in trouble now, but this is a familiar pattern, and the endgame is always the same: Trump twists arms and critics fall in line. It will happen again. No one will be emnboldened by Musk's criticism because everyone in the GOP, including Elon Musk, knows which of the two, Trump or Musk, is the Daddy in the party.
Posted by Steve M. at 10:27 AM 15 Comments

Tuesday, June 03, 2025

DEMOCRATS AREN'T DOOMED, THOUGH THEY SHOULD BE LESS DOOMED

In The New York Times today, poll guy Nate Cohn asks this question, in effect: Yes, the 2024 presidential election was very close in practice. But was it a Republican blowout in theory? I'm serious. Here's his headline:
Should Republicans Have Won in a Landslide?

The question of whether Donald Trump cost conservatives a more decisive victory is a useful one to consider.
Cohn writes:
Should Republicans have won the 2024 election by a much wider margin?

While the history books will rightfully dwell on whether Democrats could have forestalled another Trump presidency, the question of whether Mr. Trump cost conservatives a more decisive victory might be the more useful one to understand American politics today.

Voters wanted change, badly. They were repelled not just by Mr. Biden’s faltering condition, but also by rising prices and perceived failures of Democratic governance on everything from immigration to energy. While it didn’t yield a more decisive Republican victory, the backlash against pandemic-era restrictions, rising prices and “woke” all help explain why a close election felt like a conservative “vibe shift.”
The "vibe shift" was an invention of pundits, because the voters who turned out in increasing numbers for Republicans (men of all ethnicities) were considered zeitgeisty and the voters who turned out in large numbers for Democrats (mostly women, especially women of color) were considered not cool at all.

Cohn makes much of the fact that early polling revealed Democratic vulnerabilities. He cites a November 2023 Times poll of six battleground states. In this poll, Nikki Haley was beating Biden 46%-38%, while Ron DeSantis was in an effective tie with Biden, leading him 44%-43%. (Biden led Donald Trump 48%-40%; Trump led Kamala Harris 47%-44%.)

Haley probably would have been the strongest candidate against either Biden or Harris. But the actually existing Republican Party would never have nominated Haley, because she wasn't perceived as a Fox News culture warrior and bombthrower. Similarly, polls in early 2016 showed John Kasich with a large lead over Hillary Clinton -- 7.4 points, according to Real Clear Politics. I think Kasich might have won a far more decisive victory than Trump, but like Haley, he had a reputation (deserved or otherwise) for moderation and conciliation, so there wasn't a chance in hell that his party would nominate him.

The Republican Party has nominated an extremist presidential candidate three times in a row, and pushed somewhat less extreme candidates to the right in the two previous election cycles. (Surely you recall John McCain repudiating his own immigration bill and Mitt Romney rejecting the healthcare law he signed as governor of Massachusetts.)

Meanwhile, CNN is selling a new poll as more bad news for the Democrats:
There’s new evidence that the Democratic Party’s reputation is in a bad place.

... a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS provides insights into the party’s problems.

... Perhaps most striking was that people were more likely to view the Republicans than Democrats as the party with strong leaders (40% to 16%) and even the “party of change” (32% to 25%).

... The “strong leaders” question might be the most troublesome finding for Democrats. Only about 1 in 6 Americans said Democrats have stronger leaders than Republicans. As remarkably, only 39% of Democrats said that.
Well, obviously we feel this way -- our leaders aren't strong. But that may not say anything about future voting intent, as I'll explain soon.

In an additional CNN write-up of this poll, it becomes clear that there's disenchantment with both parties.
Neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party has consolidated a majority of the public behind its approach, with more than 4 in 10 saying that neither party can get things done or has strong leadership, a new CNN survey conducted by SSRS finds.

Asked to choose which of the parties they see as the “party that can get things done,” “the party with strong leaders” or the “party of change,” the lion’s share of the public – more than 4 in 10 – say that neither party fits the bill.

... True independents, those who don’t lean toward either party, are particularly grim in their views of the parties on these issues: 76% say neither party has strong leaders or can get things done, and 72% that they view neither as the party of change.

... While the public as a whole sees the GOP as relatively effective, they also say, 41% to 30%, that it’s better described as the party of extremism.

... Americans are closely split on which party represents the middle class, with a third saying neither does.
Republicans are seen as having strong leaders and the ability to effect change, but Americans don't seem thrilled with the change they're getting.

And where does this leave Democrats, assuming there are future elections? According to Brendan Higgins at The Smoke Filled Room, it leaves them on track to win a 231-204 House majority. That's based on polling showing Democrats with an average 4-point lead on the "generic ballot" question. That average is skewed by one poll showing Democrats up by more than 9 points, but the poll is from AtlasIntel, one of two firms given an A+ rating by Nate Silver.

I think there are many voters who want to vote for a Democratic Party that isn't ground down by GOP attacks, media contempt, and its own timidity. In elections, or at least non-presidential elections, Democratic candidates stick up for themselves, advance good ideas, and denounce Republican policies -- and often they win, or at least exceed expectations. Even as we're seeing the Democrats-are-doomed messaging in the media, we're also seeing poll results like this:


This poll was conducted before Ernst's "We are all going to die" remark and obnoxious follow-up.

Take it with a grain of salt -- it's from a liberal polling firm working for Sage, and the big caveat is that Sage took the lead only after biographies of the candidates were read. Click to enlarge this if you want to see what respondents were told about Ernst, Sage, and other Democrats who might challenge Ernst (one, J.D. Scholten, just entered the race):


The Ernst bio is positive, but the two versions of Sage's bio are very appealing. One says:
Born and raised in a trailer park in Mason City, Sage enlisted in the Marines, served two tours in Iraq, then re-enlisted in the Army and served a third tour in Iraq. Back home, he put himself through college with the GI Bill and worked as a mechanic, a sports radio host, and eventually became Director at an Iowa radio station, working closely with local businesses. He's now the director of his local Chamber of Commerce as a voice for Iowa small businesses and working people.
The other says he "actually cares about working people" and describes him as "a patriot, not a politician."

But in a real campaign, Democrats can't control the messaging, which is why, in a red state, it'll be a struggle for Sage or any other Democrat to win. But a Democrat who could be perceived this way throughout a campaign could appeal to committed Democrats as well as swing voters. There's an opening.

However, Democrats need to a better job of defining themselves positively and counteracting the negative impression created by Republicans, the media, and some fellow Democrats. The country hasn't moved to the right -- Republicans have simply done a better job of ensuring that the media environment downplays their flaws and allows them to claim virtues. And that might be breaking down as the reality of GOP rule becomes more obvious. So Democrats aren't doomed -- but they need to define themselves before their enemies can define them. And they need to do a better job of persuading swing voters that Republicans aren't on their side.
Posted by Steve M. at 11:37 AM 16 Comments

Monday, June 02, 2025

STEPHEN MILLER WAS ALREADY TRYING TO MEMEIFY THE COLORADO ATTACK JUST HOURS AFTER IT HAPPENED

Israel's brutality in Gaza is no justification for this:
Eight people calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza were injured at an outdoor mall in Boulder, Colorado, by a man who police say used a makeshift flamethrower and hurled an incendiary device into a crowd. The FBI immediately described the violence as a “targeted terror attack.”

The suspect, identified by the FBI as 45-year-old Mohamed Sabry Soliman, yelled “Free Palestine” during the Sunday attack on the group of demonstrators, said Mark Michalek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Denver field office....

The injuries authorities found were consistent with reports of people being set on fire, Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn said....
The right-wing media is eager to inform us that the suspect entered this country unlawfully.


I think Stephen Miller is the happiest man in America right now. I'm sure he feels entirely vindicated in all of his life choices.

The incident took place yesterday afternoon. In the evening, Miller posted this:


You know that he's trying to make the phrase "suicidal migration" happen, because he's used it before:


The right has accused the U.S. and European countries of having "suicidal migration policies" for years, but Miller seems to want a tighter, punchier, meme-ier phrase, one that leaves the dull word "policies" out and gives the listener just two words, equally weighted: "suicidal" (with its echo of the early-twentieth century eugenicist idea of "race suicide") and "migration." He's saying that the act of allowing more liberal immigration policies has been suicidal for America, but he's wants our brains to associate national suicide with migration, period.

Apparently it's working.


Expect to hear this phrase repeatedly in the near future -- from Kristi Noem, from prominent elected Republicans, and from everyone on Fox.
Posted by Steve M. at 1:11 PM 13 Comments

Sunday, June 01, 2025

TRUMP PROBABLY DOESN'T BELIEVE BIDEN WAS KILLED (BUT HE WANTS TO KILL BIDEN'S PRESIDENCY)

Last night at Truth Social, President Trump "re-truthed" a post that claimed Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and replaced by a clone. Does he really believe this?


I don't think Trump believes this. Trump sometimes posts conspiratorial ideas that he doesn't express himself -- for instance, he's retransmitted and amplified QAnon messages over the year without ever fully embracing QAnon. It's a way to stay connected to his craziest supporters -- and it's a way to own the libs.

What Trump does believe is that Biden wasn't in charge of his own presidency. Last weekend, I told you about this Truth Social post:


Trump's own theory is that there were "people that knew [Biden] was cognitively impaired, and that took over the Autopen." Biden was alive, in Trump's view, long after 2020 -- he just wasn't the real president.

Then on Friday, in his joint press conference with Elon Musk, Trump said this:


The headline was Trump attacking Biden after Biden's cancer diagnosis (which suggests that Trump knows Biden is alive) -- but again, if you watch a longer version of the clip, you see Trump questioning who was really president the last four years:


TRUMP: One thing I can't figure out is what would an administration -- what were they thinking when they allowed millions of people from prisons all over the world -- not just from South America, Venezuela, all over the world, from the Congo in Africa, hundreds of people, thousands of people from the Congo, rough, rough prisoners, from Asia, from Europe, rough parts of Europe -- why would they allow them to come into our country? Why would they do that? It's the one thing I can't figure out.

And I don't believe it was Joe Biden. I really don't. I mean, look, he's been a sort of a moderate person over his lifetime -- not a smart person, but a somewhat vicious person, I will say. If you feel sorry for him, don't feel so sorry, 'cause he's vicious. What he did with his political opponent, and all of the people that he hurt -- he hurt a lot of people, Biden. And so I really don't feel sorry for him. But he wasn't a person that would allow murderers to come into our country. He wasn't a person that was in favor of transgender for anybody that wanted it, take kids out of families, et cetera, et cetera.

So I just don't understand why, why a thing like this, how a thing like this, could have been allowed to happen. Very sad. It's very, it's very sad, very sad for our country.
Again, Trump clearly believes that there is a living Joe Biden who doesn't deserve our sympathy, but who also wasn't involved in his own admini stration's policy-making.

As I told you last weekend, Trump really, really wants to prosecute political enemies who were pardoned by President Biden at the end of his term, and he also presumably wants to invalidate bills and executive orders that were signed by Biden. So Trump is pushing the "Biden was too mentally checked out to function as president and subordinates controlled the autopen" conspiracy theory.

I also told you that fossil fuel interests are pushing the autopen theory -- and now here's a Fox News story from a couple of days ago:
A pro-energy group is renewing its call for an investigation into over half a dozen Biden administration executive actions related to climate that it believes should be deemed null and void due to them being signed by an autopen without any public comment from former President Joe Biden confirming his knowledge of them.

Power the Future, a nonprofit organization that advocates for American energy jobs, reviewed eight Biden executive orders that it says were significant shifts in domestic energy policy and said it found no evidence of the president speaking about any of them publicly, raising concerns that the orders were signed by autopen and that he was not aware of them....

The executive orders reviewed by Power the Future include an Arctic drilling ban in 2023, a 2021 executive order committing the federal government to net-zero emissions by 2050, an executive order mandating "clean energy" AI centers and an offshore drilling ban executive order shortly before leaving office in 2025.

Finding no evidence of Biden publicly speaking about the executive orders on climate, Power the Future sent letters this week to the DOJ, EPA, DOI, DOE, along with the House and Senate Oversight Committees, calling for an investigation to determine who made the decisions, drafted the executive orders and ultimately signed them.

"In light of the growing evidence that actions purportedly taken by the former president may not have been approved or signed by him, but instead promulgated by a small coterie of advisers in his name without his knowledge or over his signature using an ‘autopen,’ the need for congressional access to information has grown in importance with these revelations," the letter to GOP House Oversight Chair James Comer states.
Here's some information about Power the Future:
Power the Future is an energy advocacy organization with a “mission of offering truth, facts, and research that will enrich the national conversation on energy.”

Power the Future was launched in February 2018 by Daniel Turner, a former Republican communications staffer and alumni of the Charles Koch Institute. Turner also worked for Generation Opportunity, a non-profit 501(c)(4) organization that is funded by Freedom Partners, a multimillion dollar Koch-tied funding vehicle.
And before you get too mushy and sentimental about Josh Hawley because he's positioned himself as a defender of Medicaid, remember that he's still a bog-standard Republican in most ways. Here he is peddling anonymous gossip about Biden to Fox News -- and, of course, invoking the autopen:
... a Republican senator has made an explosive new claim: that Biden would sometimes get lost in a closet inside the White House while serving as commander-in-chief.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., made the stunning claim on "Hannity" Friday, citing an unnamed Secret Service whistleblower who Hawley said was assigned to Biden.

"He [Secret Service member] told me that Biden used to get lost in his closet in the mornings in the White House," Hawley said. "I mean, the guy literally stumbling around in the White House residence couldn't find his way out of his own closet. The president of the United States. I mean, this is outrageous. We were lied to."

... Hawley said the brewing scandal about the Biden administration’s use of an autopen to sign executive orders amounts to "one of the worst constitutional crises of our country’s history."

"We need to find out who actually signed off, so to speak, on all those autopen signatures and all of those pardons and all of those clemencies."

"It’s a rogue’s gallery of crooks and criminals and terrible people, rapists and others, I mean who actually was doing that, we know it wasn’t Biden, he didn’t know anything about it. "we’ve got to figure out who was actually in charge cos it sure as heck wasn’t Joe Biden."
Can they go mainstream with this? As I said last weekend, I think they'll try.
Posted by Steve M. at 11:12 AM 21 Comments

Saturday, May 31, 2025

DO TRUMP'S POLL NUMBERS IMPROVE EVERY TIME WE BEAT HIM?

I know you all hate it when I take a Ross Douthat column seriously, but Douthat's latest includes some ideas worth considering if we want to combat Trumpism.

Douthat begins by discussing the acronym we're all using these days, TACO, which stands for "Trump always chickens out." It's a reference to Trump's tariffs. Douthat sees Trump's capitulation to financial markets as an explanation for his popularity with many voters:
... the acronym gets at something that’s crucial to Trump’s political resilience. The willingness to swerve and backpedal and contradict himself is a big part of what keeps the president viable, and the promise of chickening out is part of Trump’s implicit pitch to swing voters — reassuring them that anything extreme is also provisional, that he’s always testing limits (on policy, on power) but also generally willing to pull back.

A case study: Just six weeks ago, I wrote a column describing the second Trump presidency as headed for political failure, while noting that a course correction was still possible....

But since that column appeared, Trump has bobbed and wove away from his most extreme China tariffs, he has achieved some kind of separation from Elon Musk and he’s started complaining about the “crazy” Vladimir Putin while casting himself as the great would-be peacemaker of the Middle East. And lo and behold, his poll numbers have floated back up, not to genuine popularity but to a perfectly normal level for a president in a polarized country.
I wouldn't exactly say that Trump was willing to pull back on tariffs -- he did it, kicking and screaming, because the markets scared the hell out of him, and because his poll numbers cratered. But now markets have recovered, and in the Real Clear Polling average, Trump is at 47.5% job approval, 50.4% disapproval.

It's good that Trump pulled back, but it's also creating a false sense that guardrails are constraining him the way they did in his first term. If you're paying attention, you know that Trump is much, much less constrained by guardrails than he was in his first term -- but most people don't pay a lot of attention, and nothing earth-shattering has happened in their lives. Immigrants are being sent to hellhole torture prisons for life with no due process, but most Americans are native-born citizens. Foreign aid cuts are killing hundreds of thousands of people, but all that is happening in countries most Americans can't find on a map. The markets crashed and dragged 401(k)s down with them, but then there was a market recovery. Cuts to the Veterans Administration and Social Security staffing and science funding haven't affected most people directly yet. Harvard is being gutted, but most people don't go to Harvard.

The sense that the center is holding is false. Even Douthat understands this:
And then there is just the inherent danger in living, for three years and eight months more, with a president whom we know from the experience of Jan. 6, 2021, doesn’t always backtrack when he enters dangerous terrain.
I worry that Trump is so thin-skinned that his response to the humiliation of the "TACO" insult will be to apply even bigger tariffs, just to show us all who's boss, especially now that an appeals has ruled that the tariffs can proceed for now, and because there are other mechanisms through which Trump can apply tariffs if the block is upheld.
The Trump administration nevertheless has other legal means of imposing tariffs, Goldman [Sachs] says, flagging Section 122 of U.S. trade law, Section 301 investigations and Section 338 of the Trade Act of 1930.
And what do you know: the ruling that blocked the country-wide tariffs permitted Trump to impose tariffs on categories of goods, so Trump doubled the steel tariffs yesterday.

Trump is responding to court losses on the subject of immigration by doubling and tripling down.


With all this chaos, and some pushback from the Establishment, does life ever get better? Douthat is skeptical:
But any trust-the-plan case for Trump’s approach underrates how much time can be wasted and policy opportunities lost unraveling problems of your own making. The idea that we’re going to end up with the optimal form of re-industrialization at the end of all the Trump trade drama is, let’s just say, extremely unproven; a scenario where the economy just survives the drama seems more like Trump’s best case, with worse ones still very much in the picture.
I worry that many Americans are having a reptile-brain response to Trump's push-and-pull on tariffs. Obviously, MAGA Nation is happy no matter what he does:


But I worry that there's a psych-experiment quality to this:
1. Trump arouses anxiety with new tariffs. Markets tumble.
2. Trump removes/suspends all or some of the tariffs he imposed. Markets rally.
3. Even though we're no better off than we were before step 1, voters feel as if progress is being made. Trump's poll numbers go up.
Trump's poll numbers aren't terrible anymore because he's constantly doing things, and constantly telling us he's doing things. Biden did things that would have paid off in the long run, but most voters didn't know what he'd done because he was a terrible public communicator, and because Democratic presidents generally assume the public will simply know what they've done.

Trump's decent poll numbers suggest that roughly half the country just wanted a president who seemed forceful, no matter what he was doing -- and if they don't like the specifics, they believe there are still guardrails to save them. It may be quite a while before they understand that that's not true, and they might never grasp that all the problem-solving that made them happy was just Trump solving problems he'd created.
Posted by Steve M. at 11:01 AM 30 Comments
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