THE FANTASY WORLD TRUMP SEEMS TO LIVE IN WAS CREATED BY FOX NEWS

President Trump was just interviewed by his daughter-in-law Lara Trump for Fox News. One of Trump's claims in the interview has been contradicted by ... Trump himself:

One reason people would be surprised to hear that Trump has left Iran’s “military alone” is that earlier this month Trump said he had “completely destroyed Iran’s army,” and that “every single ship they had is resting underwater at the bottom of the sea.”

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— Larry Glickman (@larryglickman.bsky.social) May 31, 2026 at 6:27 AM

You might say he's sundowning, but I'm reminded of what Mark Cuban said about Trump back in 2015:

“He’s like that guy who’s going into a bar and he’ll say whatever it takes to get laid. Only in this case he’s not trying to f*** some girl, he’s trying to f*** the country.”

A few weeks ago, when Trump said he'd "completely destroyed Iran's army," he was trying to impress us with his display of manly force. Now, when he says he hasn't destroyed Iran's army but implies that he could destroy it any time he wants to, he's acknowledging the fact that we can all see Iran is still fighting, so he needs us to believe that this is only because he hasn't gotten really mad yet.

But there are other falsehoods in the interview that just seem delusional.

Trump: "California's elections are a fraud"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 30, 2026 at 9:24 PM

It's not just the suggestion in this clip that California could go red if it weren't for all the (imaginary) voter fraud. (Trump has been saying that since his first term.) It's also this claim about fraud in government programs:

On the economic standpoint, if we find half of the fraud that's going on in this country -- and we will -- we're gonna have a balanced budget very soon.

Trump said this in his State of the Union address earlier that year. (“If we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight.”) Stephen Miller also made this claim in late May, and Trump subsequently repeated it.

Stephen Miller: "Based on what I've heard, we could balance the federal budget if the only dollars that went out of the treasury went to individuals who were properly, lawfully, correctly eligible to receive them"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 26, 2026 at 2:32 PM

Trump claims preposterously that if Vance does a good enough job rooting out fraud, "we'll have a balanced budget without having to do anything. This is the kind of money they stole. I hope Todd is gonna do a real job."

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 27, 2026 at 12:08 PM

This is false, of course:

It is implausible that eliminating all fraud in government programs would balance the federal budget. The federal deficit was $1.8 trillion in 2025. A 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office estimated that the federal government lost $233 billion to $521 billion to fraud annually, including schemes that were undetected. Eliminating all fraud in government programs across the country would reduce the federal deficit by a third.

Stephen Miller, who's not stupid, knows this is false, but he says it anyway. Trump, who is stupid, apparently believes this is true.

From the beginning of his career in business, Donald Trump openly admitted to shading the truth. This is a quote from Trump's first book, The Art of the Deal:

I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.

But when Trump was a businessman, he had to live in a world where other people disagreed with his grandiose claims -- bankers, politicians, journalists (though not enough of them), the buying public. However, when he discovered Fox News, he entered a world where truth is subservient to narrative. Trump subsequently took over the political party that uses Fox as its media wing, and now Fox, along with the rest of the right-wing media, is subservient to his narrative.

Long before there was a Trump cult, there was a Fox News cult, which persists to this day. The cult members think anything that contradicts what they're told by Fox is a lie. The cult leaders -- Fox prime-time hosts -- tell the cultists that every Democrat is a communist and a jihadist sympathizer hell-bent on destroying America with debt, crime, multiculturism, and transgenderism. The leaders say that every undocumented immigrant and asylum-seeker is immediately registered as a Democratic voter upon crossing the border -- or was until Sheriff Trump showed up. It's one lie after another, and millions of Americans believe them all.

Fox hasn't been alone in this, of course. Talk radio hosts were cult leaders too, and podcasters are leaders now. QAnon and health conspiratorialists also built the narrative of the cult, as did sites like Breitbart and the Daily Wire.

Trump is a cult member as well as a leader. Many of the delusional things he says are things he "learned" from Fox. And when he tells his own lies, no one in the cult will contradict them. The cult affirms his greatness:

Lara Trump to her father in law: "Obviously, you have set the country up so perfectly to make life more affordable on the other side of the Iran conflict. What is your message?"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 30, 2026 at 9:25 PM

It's possible that Trump utters more falsehoods now because his aging brain can't distinguish the truth anymore -- but I think his problem is that he lives in the hermetically sealed information bubble of the right-wing media, which affirms his delusions and feeds him additional delusions to believe.

So I still believe it's not dementia that's rotting Trump's brain. It's Fox.

REPUBLICANS ARE EXTREMIST WEIRDOS AND DEMOCRATS SHOULD SAY THAT EVERY DAY

If you're wondering what will happen to the Republican Party when Donald Trump leaves the scene, the answer is obvious: It will continue to be what it is now -- a party dominated by extremist weirdos.

Sometimes the extremist weirdness is merely ridiculous. We all know that Republicans are accusing James Talarico, the Democrats' Senate nominee in Texas, of having low testosterone and being secretly transgender. But Utah senator Mike Lee decided that those smears weren't weird enough, so he went here:

James Talarico will put you first

On the altar to Moloch https://t.co/V5So901u9g pic.twitter.com/pZfTcq07VX

— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) May 28, 2026

Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee recently likened Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico to a child-sacrificing worshipper of the ancient god Moloch....

Lee's post was accompanied by an AI-animated video of an 1800s illustration of Moloch surrounded by flames and worshippers offering him a baby.

Moloch is “a Canaanite deity associated in biblical sources with the practice of child sacrifice,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, and is mentioned in the Old Testament as an example of the polytheistic gods that the Hebrew God forbade Moses and his followers from worshipping.

In more recent years, far-right conspiracy propagators have alleged that global political and business elites worship Moloch in secret and enact policies to appease the sadistic deity.

The only thing stupider than this attack is the likelihood that hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of Republican voters find the Moloch conspiracy theory completely believable.

Sometimes the extremists are more menacing. This week a former Trumpworld hero, Greg Bovino, traveled to Portugal to speak at RESUM26, a conference on "remigration" of immigrants (legal and otherwise), and also of "Non assimilated naturalized migrants in paralell [sic] societies." As anti-fascist researcher Jeff Tischauser notes, Bovino shared the stage "with no fewer than five people who idolize Hitler, including one who joined a group created by two Nazi SS members. Another guy is a self-described racist who refers to women as 'cockroaches.'" (You can read more about the "cockroaches" guy, Afonso Gonçalves, here.)

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A post shared by Remigration Summit (@remigrationsummit)

Bovino also gave an interview to the white nationalist VoxEuropa Herald in which he made his white nationalist allegiances clear.

In his interview with a white supremacist blog, disgraced former-CBP officer Greg Bovino also said he supports the neo-Nazi AfD party in Germany. 2/3 More on AfD from @globalextremism.bsky.social here: globalextremism.org/post/ein-pro...

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— Jeff Tischauser (@jtischauser.bsky.social) May 28, 2026 at 12:22 PM

In the interview, Bovino goes on to say:

Your daughters are being raped and your sons killed in Europe by aliens just like here in the United States. Same problem over different geographic regions. Why not unite and solve this problem once and for all worldwide?

A final solution, you might say.

Another proud Republican hatemonger is the lieutenant governor of Indiana.

Indiana's lieutenant governor is facing criticism from Muslim advocacy groups after comments he made about Islam during a Christian talk show appearance.

... Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith appeared on the Christian talk show "Flashpoint" on May 21. Around the 43-minute mark in the video, he expressed his hatred for Islam, saying they have "radical, jihadi mindsets."

"I am going to call on others to hate it because I hate Islam," Beckwith said. "It is a death cult. Now, I love Muslims, because they make great Christians when Jesus gets a hold of them. But I hate Islam. And we need to be OK with hating again."

But not every Republicans is a proud hatemonger. Some are just performative macho whackjobs.

Consider Colorado gubernatorial candidate Victor Marx:

The self-described “high-risk missionary” recently sat for an interview with 9News’ Kyle Clark where, among other things, he:

* Claimed to have been forced to kill a man at age 7.

*Got upset at Clark for asking if he’s killed people as an adult.

* Took credit for helping rescue 43 missing children in Florida, yet could offer no proof of that, nor of rescuing more than 45,000 women and children ― which he’s also previously asserted before removing the claim from his campaign website.

* Declined to address a claim that, as a civilian, he once called in a military airstrike that killed 70 fighters from the Islamic State group.

And here's my favorite:

* Told Clark how he performs exorcisms over the phone.

Victor Marx performs exorcisms, commanding demons to be cast off.

Marx says he doesn't charge for exorcisms but instructions appeared in a $99 Spiritual Warfare Guide on his website.

"Do you understand why so many of your critics think you're a con man," I asked.

"No," he said pic.twitter.com/4fEnISBVGy

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) May 28, 2026

In the only available poll of the Republican primary, Marx leads his nearest rival by 29 points and has a +32 net favorability rating. Marx has been endorsed, unsurprisingly, by Ted Nugent, Mike Flynn, and Lauren Boebert.

And that's just from the past few days.

This is who Republicans are. They hate everyone who doesn't worship like them or eat like them or enjoy the sports and vehicles they prefer. They hate whoever doesn't live like them in every way. Many of them claim to be superheroes cleansing the world of evil, but they're usually lying or fantasizing, or their voters are fantasizing on their behalf -- see every AI image and video of a buff, youthful Donald Trump conquering his enemies without breaking a sweat.

I'm old enough to remember that even at the height of Ronald Reagan's popularity, his religious-right allies became objects of mockery for being slimy, finger-wagging, money-grubbing moral hypocrites. They alienated much of America, including many people in flyover states who weren't liberal but had no use for their moral rigidity and sanctimoniousness. Also, their public displays of wealth were ridiculous and tacky.

Democrats should describe the current crop of Republicans as extreme weirdos because that's what they are. Millions of normal people don't want to hate everyone who's unlike them and don't want leaders who have chest-thumping delusions of masculine grandeur. Tim Walz was saying the right thing about Republicans in 2024 before the consultants persuaded him to stop.

DONALD TRUMP COULD BE CHARLES FOSTER KANE

In the opening monologue of his latest podcast, Ezra Klein tells us that he has a theory: that President Trump doesn't want to help Republicans win the midterms, and might be happier if they lose.

My pet theory right now is that President Trump is not trying to win the midterm elections. I’m not saying he’s trying to lose them, exactly. I just don’t think he cares.

What he cares about is controlling the Republican Party. The Republican Party is his power base. The Republican Party is his protection. The Republican Party is how he can wield power far into the future, long after his presidency, and so control of it is what he’s prioritizing.

Klein gives us the conventional wisdom about how a president helps his party in midterm elections.

Well, if he wanted to win the midterms, he’d be moving to the center. He’d be focusing on the things that Americans are angry about, disappointed in him about. He’d be supporting the strongest Republicans in contested races and doing everything he could to bolster Republicans in vulnerable states and districts.

He’s not doing even a little bit of that. Instead, he’s doing the opposite.

Klein's theory is that Trump is attacking electable Republicans who have challenged him because he cares more about keeping Republicans loyal than about winning the midterms.

He fears a Republican Party in which members of Congress begin to participate in the investigations of his scandals or they abandon him as his fortunes fall. And so he’s made his choice. He is showing them that to oppose him, even from the right, is to light your political future on fire.

I think there's something to that -- if Republicans ever join Democrats in taking on Trump, he's vulnerable. (That will never happen, of course.) But this doesn't explain why Trump endorsed Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in the Texas Senate race -- neither one was likely to break with Trump. It doesn't explain why Trump is pursuing staggeringly unpopular policies -- tariffs, public displays of self-aggrandizement, the war in Iran.

And, as Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist, reminds Klein on the podcast, Trump is obviously doing quite a few things that will help Republicans in the midterms, or that he thinks will help them. He's demanding pro-GOP gerrymanders. He's pushing for the SAVE Act.

What's my theory?

I think Trump believes he won two elections -- actually, he thinks he won three -- despite saying and doing things that were supposed to doom his campaigns, and he's smarter than the pundits and consultants and is doing what it takes to win, even though his genius is going unrecognized. Part of him undoubtedly believes that the polls are fake news and Americans really love him. I think he believes that the tariffs are a brilliant idea, that he really is the one president who can conquer nations that bedeviled previous presidents (Iran, Cuba), and that the public likes his tasteless self-glorification.

But I think he knows the polls are bad for Republicans, and he can't dismiss those polls outright. I think he understands that the GOP might get shellacked. Klein thinks Trump might prefer that outcome starting in 2027.

A Democratic-controlled Congress gives him an enemy to fight. I think he gets a little lost without an enemy. It frees him from the tedious work of trying to pass legislation. It puts him back in the place he’s most comfortable, which is not wielding power; it’s claiming persecution.

But I think he's looking forward to claiming persecution long before the next Congress is seated. If Democrats are winning, he'll say the elections were rigged right away, and he won't stop. We could have a "stop the steal" period between November and January -- and probably beyone January -- that's even more dangerous and divisive than the one we had in 2024. This time, Trump's entire administration will participate, particularly the Justice Department. And ordinary Trump cultists will participate fully expecting that the law won't touch them. (Trump will explicitly offer them preemptive pardons.)

The movement could fail. The courts are likely to affirm Democratic wins. And public opinion won't be on Trump's side.

But this could give Trump the best of both worlds: the enemy party running Congress and a Republican narrative asserting that he actually led his party to victory.

Trump could be Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane -- the newspaperman who failed in a bid to become governor, and ran a paper that was ready for victory or defeat:

CAN JAMES TALARICO AVOID BEING DUKAKISED?

I'm watching the Republican campaign against James Talarico in Texas and I'm having flashbacks to 1988. That year, a decent, non-macho Democrat named Michael Dukakis, who was the governor of Massachusetts, tried to win a presidential election saying things like this:

... this election is not about ideology. It's about competence.

... It's about American values. Old-fashioned values like accountability and responsibility and respect for the truth.

The 1988 election wasn't about ideology or competence. It was about one thing: Do you believe Michael Dukakis is a dangerous freak? That was the question Republicans had Americans asking themselves, whether they recognized it or not.

Republicans portrayed Dukakis as a freak in part because he wasn't tall or manly and because he didn't look good in the helmet he wore while riding a tank in a campaign photo op. Republicans portrayed him as dangerous because a criminal named Willie Horton who was released on a furlough program on Dukakis's watch committed a violent assault, something that wasn't unique to the furlough programs that had been established at that time by every state and the federal government. Republicans also portrayed Dukakis as dangerous because in 1977 he'd vetoed a bill requiring students to say the Pledge of Allegiance, a mandate that had been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court a couple of decades earlier; because he opposed the death penalty; and because he was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The attacks on Talarico feel similar to these attacks on Dukakis because, in both cases, positions that seem reasonable in more liberal and tolerant parts of America are easy to portray as bizarre and civilization-threatening in conservative America.

The first general election ad from Talarico's opponent, Ken Paxton unloads nearly everything Republicans have got on Talarico:



It's all cultural -- there really isn't anything here about policy. What doesn't make the cut in this ad shows up in the messaging of Paxton's surrogates:

What the hell is he eating?

It’s not BBQ—because Talarico is passionately anti-meat.

Is that a tofu log? https://t.co/J9Uvch1RY7

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 27, 2026

(Talarico isn't vegan, though he said during his 2022 state senate bid that he was running a "non-meat campaign.")

It's a huge problem for the Democrat Party that you take one look at the men they run for elected office and just know that they couldn't name a single obscure wide receiver from the early 2000s. https://t.co/fKmt8jhUoL

— Dan Weldon for Congress (FL-14) (@TampaDan) May 27, 2026

(Yes, this is how we decide who runs the most powerful country in the world.)

Watters: Talarico is also 37 and not married. He says he has a girlfriend. He called her his best friend. He’s not revealing her identity because he wants to protect her privacy. Why haven’t we ever seen her before? Does she exist? If he wins, are they going to have a coming out… pic.twitter.com/yFskJ7tcsm

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 27, 2026

It's middle school gay-baiting, but it might work. And Stephen Miller took it a step further, describing Talarico as the Democrats' "first transgender senate candidate." The party, to its credit, responded quickly and vulgarly -- "shut up you ugly fuck" -- but I think Marisa Kabas is right:

as much as i appreciate the democrats responding with vigor for once, the fact that republicans are using "transgender" as a slur for a political candidate is fucking horrifying and dems need to quickly figure out a way to address it head on. calling stephen miller ugly isn't a long-term fix.

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— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) May 27, 2026 at 2:29 PM

Over the course of my lifetime, there's been a significant positive change in how non-gay Americans see gay people, but I don't see any sign that we're approaching a day when the majority of cis Americans will be similarly at ease with trans people, or at least accepting of their rights. Talarico is a trans ally, and he might not be able to win a Texas election for that reason alone.

One big difference between Talarico and Dukakis is that Talarico appears to understand the assignment. Unlike Dukakis (and John Kerry sixteen years later), he's not ignoring the GOP's most vicious attacks and hoping they'll just go away. This is from a new CBS interview:

Pressed on a comment he made that God is nonbinary, Talarico said he was being "intentionally provocative," but added that "what it means is that God can't be defined by human categories." On his comments about gender, Talarico said "I know there are two sexes, men and women. I also know there's a very small percentage of people who have these chromosomal abnormalities, and I believe they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect."

Asked by O'Keefe about the criticism surrounding his diet, Talarico said he is not a vegan, noting that he's an eighth-generation Texan who's "been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton's first indictment."

(Talarico, as you can see in the Paxton ad above, has said that there are six biological genders.)

Talarico, by taking these attacks head-on, might remain competitive in the race, but I wonder if he can really neutralize them. This campaign should be about Ken Paxton's criminality and moral failings, about Donald Trump's incompetence and corruption, and about the Republican Party's failure to make life better for ordinary Americans. But I don't think it will be about that. I fear it will be about whether the Democrat is a big old weirdo. Talarico might win anyway, but he'll have to win on the GOP's turf.

IN TEXAS, DEMOCRATS DIDN'T VOTE FOR THE CRAZIEST S.O.B. (D.O.B.) IN THE RACE

You know about the big headline from Texas last night: Not only did highly corrupt extremist and Donald Trump endorsee Ken Paxton beat incumbent John Cornyn in the Republican Senate primary runoff, he trounced Cornyn, winning by a 64%-36% margin. Paxton appears to have won all but 2 of Texas's 254 counties.

And that's not the only Texas race in which extremism seems to have prevailed. Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo reports:

The Republican primary runoff ran for the open Texas Railroad Commissioner position was too close to call as of Wednesday morning, with extremist candidate Bo French leading the incumbent by less than 15,000 votes, according to the Associated Press’ unofficial tally of returns....

French waged an eye-popping campaign for the seat on a platform that had little to do with the actual work of the office, supporting the deportation of 100 million people and railing against what he described as the “Islamification” of Texas.

As Kovensky previously reported, French

largely campaigned on culture war intangibles, like cleansing Texas’ oil sector of Islam, fighting DEI, and deporting 100 million people. While chair of the Tarrant County GOP last year, French earned condemnation from fellow Texas Republicans for posting a poll that asked whether Jews or Muslims posed a greater threat to the United States....

He’s called Muslims “savages” and demanded their deportation; he’s said that Texas mosques are “training centers” for an “ideology” of people who “get to rape your wife and daughter.” ...

When the city of Corpus Christi began to run out of water this year, French pinned the blame on a nearby plastics factory, which is majority-owned by the Saudi government. French played that up. In a recent runoff campaign ad, French attacked Wright, accusing his opponent of selling the city’s water to a “Muslim foreign government” and claiming a Delaware court had caught the plastics company trying to “enact Sharia law in America.”

“Do you really want a commissioner who would sell out his own neighbors to a Muslim government? I don’t,” he concluded.

A couple of days ago, I quoted a 2017 observation by Thomas Massie, the libertarian Kentucky congressman who's now a lame duck because he crossed Trump. Massie talked about voters who backed Trump in 2016 after previously supporting him and fellow libertarians Ron and Rand Paul.

"All this time," Massie explained, "I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas—they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along."

In yesterday's runoff, Texas Republicans voted for the craziest son of a bitch for both U.S. senator and (apparently) railroad commissioner.

You know who didn't vote for the craziest son of a bitch -- or, rather, daughter of a bitch -- in yesterday runoff? Democratic voters in Texas's 35th congressional district.

Progressive sex therapist Maureen Galindo lost the Democratic runoff for Texas’ 35th District after being accused of antisemitism and facing condemnations from within her own party.

Johnny Garcia’s victory over Galindo on Tuesday has national and Texas Democrats breathing a sigh of relief.

They had moved en masse to disavow Galindo after she said in a recent social media post that she would write legislation to turn a local ICE detention center into a “prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking.”

The Instagram post on Galindo's campaign site didn't just call for the imprisonment of Zionists. It said they should be castrated.

Galindo lost the runoff 64%-36% after leading Garcia in the primary by 2 points.

Americans think both parties have an extremism problem. A Pew survey from last year found this:

61% say the phrase “too extreme in its positions” describes the Republican Party very or somewhat well; 57% describe the Democratic Party as too extreme.

But only one party is routinely defined as extreme. In a new Washington Post/ABC poll, respondents were asked to express in their own words what they don't like about the two major parties. For Democrats, the top answer (at 12%) was summarized in the poll as "Too liberal/socialism/race/gender/abortion/crime positions." For Republicans, the top answer was (also at 12%) was "Trump/Loyalty to Trump," while there's no all-encompassing ideological characterization of Republicans. "Lack of concern for ordinary people/cruelty" is at 6%, "Authoritarianism/disregard for rule of law/anti-democracy" and "Racist or anti-diversity politics " are at 4%, but extremism is not front of mind for most voters when they think about Republicans, and there seems to be no Republican equivalent of the W word for Democrats, as used by one survey respondent:

Too woke, focus on issues not central to Americans (economy and jobs).
— California woman, 50s, independent

And there's this:

Gone too far to the left, they are more in line with the communist and socialist parties.
— New York woman, 50s, independent

In reality, hardly any viable Democratic candidates are extreme in the way that Bo French and Ken Paxton are, and Democrats aren't accepting of unrepentant hatemongers, while Republicans increasingly embrace them. But the public still doesn't see that.

THAT CONSENT WON'T MANUFACTURE ITSELF

Paul Krugman struggles to understand the culture of flattery that surrounds President Trump:

On Memorial Day the New York Times published an article with the headline “Trump is the only person who can save America, according to his cabinet.” The article offered a quantitative analysis of senior-official sycophancy. As the article notes, Donald Trump likes to hold long, televised cabinet meetings. In these meetings, according to the Times,

On average, at least one of every six sentences either flattered Mr. Trump, gave him credit or criticized his political opponents.

Yeah, you know:

And it continues this morning, as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum tells us that Trump is the only president who's ever worked the phones on a holiday weekend, and is the only president who can get other world leaders to talk to him over a holiday weekend that actually isn't a holiday weekend in their countries:

Burgum: "It's obviously President Trump two moves ahead of his critics as always. Nothing short of aspiration for peace in the Middle East. I mean, who on a Saturday afternoon over a holiday weekend can pull together all of the world leaders from the gulf state allies, get 'em all on a phone call?"

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 26, 2026 at 7:44 AM

Obviously, Trump has an off-the-charts need for praise -- he might be the most emotionally needy person who has ever lived. But as Krugman notes, this exaltation of a Republican president is not unprecedented:

The truth is that the right wing attempt to build a cult of personality around a deeply unpresidential figure, while it has reached new levels of absurdity under Trump, isn’t new. Republicans tried to do the same thing for George W. Bush. Remember this?

And readers of a certain age may recall that the right’s canonization of Ronald Reagan began while he was still in office.

Why do Republicans do this? Sure, Democrats sometimes respond to their political heroes as if they're rock stars: Zohran Mamdani, AOC, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton in the 1990s. But it's more that we find them cool and like the job they're doing. At most, it's fandom, not worship. We don't exalt them. We don't imagine them as royalty, or as gods and goddesses.

I think two things are happening with the Republicans. First, they like traditional hierarchies: women subordinate to men, people subordinate to God. It feels natural for them to conclude that an especially favored president belongs near the top of the great chain of being, as a monarch or a god.

But it's also a way for them to manufacture consent for their party leaders' policies. When they tell us that one of their presidents is worthy of worship, they're trying to make us believe that everyone, or at least everyone normal, supports their leader and their party. They might never have fully succeeded in persuading the public that everyone loves Trump (except perhaps in red states), but they sustained Bush's popularity for years after his post-9/11 popularity spike, and they've created an aura around Reagan that persists after his death. (Even some liberal pundits recall him as a unifying president who was very different from the current crop of divisive GOP culture warriors. In reality, he was one of those divisive GOP culture warriors.)

As Bush's popularity faded, his handlers largely abandoned efforts to manufacture exaltation propaganda. By 2007 and 2008, you weren't very likely to see him positioned in such a way that his head would be framed by an apparent halo, as in a 2003 AP photo, or placed in front of Mount Rushmore, as in a photo from 2002.

With Trump, they're still doing it, even though most of America hates him now. (And unless he salvages the Iran surrender deal soon, I guess most of America will continue to hate him.) I suppose it keeps the base on board, so it's not an entirely wasted exercise for the GOP. And if Trump dies in office, it's groundwork for posthumous sanctification efforts of the kind we saw in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's death.

If Trump dies soon, I don't think the general public will respond the way Republicans hope. But the base will never stray. Trump will never be Richard Nixon, a president nearly everyone now agrees was justifiably driven from office. We'll never have universal agreement on Trump's awfulness.

DON'T BE SO SURE THAT TRUMP'S IRAN SURRENDER WILL BE A LOSS FOR HIM

In The Atlantic, David Frum declares that President Trump lost his war with Iran, and lists the reasons why. One reason, Frum writes, is this:

Trump is reckless. Trump is not a plan-ahead guy. He plunges into desperate adventures without any clear endgame in mind. What really was Trump’s plan on January 6, 2021? After Mike Pence was seized by rioters and forced at gunpoint to recite the magic words Trump wanted him to say, what was supposed to happen then? The 81 million American majority who’d voted against Trump in 2020 would submit? The military, CIA, and FBI would follow blatantly illegal orders? In 2021, Trump provoked violence and hoped it would all somehow work out. He followed the same approach again in 2026.

This got me thinking: Did Trump really fail on January 6?

I don't know what Trump's plan was, but at minimum it was to save face. Trump wanted to be perceived as someone who went down fighting (even though he left the fighting to his followers, the way the owner of a resort might ask the help to tidy up the rose bushes). In that sense, he got what he wanted.

But I think it can be argued that January 6 was a success for Trump -- just not right away. During the "stop the steal" period after the 2020 election, Trump turned an electoral defeat into a Lost Cause. He persuaded millions of Americans that he was the legitimate winner. Then he dodged accountability -- he wasn't arrested, he wasn't convicted after impeachment, and he wasn't successfully prosecuted. Many of his followers went to prison, but he succeeded in making them martyrs -- martyrs whom ordinary Trump admirers found relatable. In the primaries, it's quite possible that he beat Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and other challengers precisely because of January 6 and "stop the steal." What Republican base voters want most of all is to own the libs. Even a vote for DeSantis, a tireless culture warrior, didn't seem as lib-owning as a vote for Trump, who had persuaded the base that the libs stole the presidency from him.

In the way that historians such as Heather Cox Richardson argue that the South ultimately won the Civil War, I think we can argue that Trump won January 6, even if it took four years for him to collect his winnings.

If fall arrives and Trump's Iran surrender has lowered gas prices to an approximation of where they were before the war, while he's persuading gullible rubes that he saved America from an imminent Iranian nuclear attack, then he might ultimately win this time, too. Maybe the outcome would change if Democrats were willing to compare and contrast Trump's deal with the nuclear deal negotiated during Barack Obama's presidency, which cost America nothing in blood and treasure -- but apart from Obama himself, Democrats have never been willing to defend that deal, much less boast about it.

So at the very least, I think Trump will emerge from this debacle in better shape than he's been for the past three months.

TRUMP'S PLAN TO SALVAGE THE MIDTERMS: SURRENDER

In the latest New York Times roundtable, Michelle Cottle says that President Trump doesn't seem to be doing anything to improve his party's standing ahead of the midterms:

... as best I can see, Trump doesn’t even really seem motivated to focus on things that could turn it around. I mean, he’s doing his ballroom and his arch and the Reflecting Pool and his war, and maybe he’s going to invade Cuba, and he’s making statements about how he doesn’t care about Americans’ affordability crisis

What am I missing? What do you guys see that he is aggressively investing in, that suggests he gives two figs about turning this around? Besides rigging the game, of course....

Jamelle Bouie replies:

I don’t think there’s any evidence that this even crosses his mind.

Bouie cites Trump's belief in the Power of Positive Thinking, as well as information flow in the White House, which is designed to feed Trump only good news.

But as the midterms approach, it's clear that Trump does care about the opinions of people who don't like him. So he has a plan to make Republicans' more popular by November:

Surrender in Iran.

On Thursday, Robert Kagan wrote this in The Atlantic:

The outlines of President Trump’s endgame in the Iran war are now emerging. In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday, Trump reportedly explained that the United States was negotiating a “letter of intent” with Iran that would “formally end the war and launch a 30-day period of negotiations” on Iran’s nuclear program and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. The purpose and effect of such an agreement should be clear: The United States is walking away from the crisis....

In 30 days ... the new Iranian strait regime may already be firmly in place. As the Institute for the Study of War reports, Iran has been using the cease-fire period to “normalize” its control over the strait by “compelling oil-importing countries” to establish transit agreements with Tehran and charging fees on vessels from nations without such deals. According to Iranian officials, the new strait regime will give Iran’s strategic partners, such as Russia and China, priority and allow nations friendly to Iran, such as India and Pakistan, to negotiate their own transit agreements. Vessels associated with nations that Iran regards as an adversary will be denied access to the strait entirely.

Several nations, including South Korea, Turkey, and Iraq, are reportedly already negotiating at least temporary transit agreements. Now that Trump has made clear he has no intention of fighting to reopen the strait, the stampede to get good terms with Tehran will begin.... By the end of 30 days, most of the world will have a stake in the new arrangement and will oppose any resumption of hostilities, even in the unlikely event that Trump wanted to go back to war.

Trump no doubt hopes that he can slip away without Americans noticing the magnitude of this defeat.

And now...

[image or embed]

— George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 (@gtconway.bsky.social) May 23, 2026 at 8:37 PM

Iran was supposed to be scared into submission by Trump's bombing threats. Instead, Trump was scared into submission by this:

Jeff Currie, executive co-chairman at Abaxx Commodity Exchange, said that physical shortages [of oil] could hit Europe “any day now,” and the severity of the ongoing supply crunch is not yet reflected in oil prices....

Speaking with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” ... Currie said that oil supply concerns will intensify as inventories are depleted, adding that once the shortages hit, prices will go “non-linear.”

Currie said the oil market is currently in the midst of its “shoulder months” — traditionally the weakest part of the commodity demand cycle throughout the year, coming out of the heating season and heading into the driving season.

But, with the U.S. Memorial Day and U.K.’s spring bank holidays approaching, demand for diesel, gasoline and oil will rise sharply. “That’s when you’re going to begin to feel it,” Currie said.

Trump is trying to avoid an imminent spike in the global price of oil, and thus for a tank of gas in the U.S. And he appears to have grasped the fact that he needs to act now in order to rein in gas prices before voting starts in the midterms:

SocGen analysts said that even if the Strait [of Hormuz] were to reopen by early June, the complex physical supply chain sequence of getting more oil online — involving tanker transit, discharge, refining and distribution — still means a delay of at least 52 days....

A late June reopening, meanwhile, would bring “deeper and more prolonged stress”, with physical relief pushed back into late August and meaningful normalization not expected until September, according to SocGen.

But an even lengthier delay to reopening could see oil prices pushed toward $150 per barrel and staying elevated for the rest of the year.

So Trump will surrender, and Trump will declare victory, adding this to the absurd list of wars he claims he's ended as president. (He'll say he ended a 47-year war.) At least 30% of Americans will believe whatever he says.

And then it's on to Cuba. Americans oppose the upcoming Cuba war by a 64%-15% margin, but it will undoubtedly be less of a clusterfuck than the Iran war. It's quite possible that it will look like a victory. It won't improve ordinary Americans' lives, but it may serve as a moderately successful distraction if it doesn't make their lives worse.

If all this works, Trump will at least have stopped the bleeding for the GOP. But there's still time for the deal to come apart, and there's a great likelihood that Trump will do something else that's wildly unpopular between now and the fall.

THE FUTURE LEADER OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS KEN PAXTON, OR AT LEAST SOMEONE LIKE HIM

Yesterday I tried to answer a question raised by Jamelle Bouie in a video essay:

And so what does the Republican Party do when Trump is gone, when there is now a vacuum? I don't really have an answer to that. I'm mostly curious to see. But that, I think, is the dilemma the Republican Party will face. It doesn't have an identity outside of Trump, and it won't be in a position to even find one until Trump is gone.

I said that the party will organize itself around cultural (specifically, culture war) issues. But who'll lead the party?

For all we know, it could be Ken Paxton, the scandal-plagued Texas attorney general who's likely to become the GOP's Senate nominee now that he's secured Donald Trump's endorsement. It's likely to be someone who's very much like Paxton, though probably less enmeshed in scandal.

I've just read Elaine Godfrey's new story about Paxton in The Atlantic. Godfrey finds it baffling that Paxton has survived as long as he has in Texas politics, and finds it baffling that Trump would endorse him over the quite conservative incumbent, John Cornyn. Paxton has a closet full of skeletons -- mortgage fraud, securities fraud, multiple infidelities. He was impeached and nearly convicted in a Republican-dominated Texas legislature.

And surely he'll be much easier for the Democratic Senate candidate, James Talarico, to beat, right? All the smart people seem to think so, Godfrey tells us.

But many Texas political observers and strategists believe that Cornyn would be better-positioned than Paxton to beat Talarico in November, given Cornyn’s ability to fundraise and his palatability among general-election voters. Especially in a year when the political environment seems so favorable to Democrats, running someone as controversial as Paxton, they argue, would be risky. The Cook Political Report has already said that if the attorney general wins next week, “Texas would move into a fully competitive race.”

This is, of course, the outcome that many Republicans dread most: that Paxton will be unable to win over the moderate Republican and independent voters he’ll need to succeed in November—and that Texas will make Talarico the first Democratic senator it’s elected since 1988.

Godfrey thinks Paxton's supporters are delusional.

At least for now, [Paxton supporters] seem to exist in an alternate reality—a place where Donald Trump’s endorsement can only be a good thing, where MAGA reigns.... “I don’t know where they’re getting those numbers from,” a woman named Mary told me ... when I asked about the president’s dwindling national popularity.... [Supporters] don’t see Ken Paxton as an electoral liability any more than they believe that Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square. For them, November is looking particularly bright.

There's just one problem with this: the polls tell us that these "alternate reality" voters are right. Paxton's past doesn't seem to be a handicap in Texas -- in fact, his numbers and Cornyn's are nearly identical in head-to-head matchups with Talarico.

Why wouldn't years of scandals be hurting Paxton in Texas? Because he never stops trying to own the libs. Godfrey writes:

As attorney general, he sued the Obama administration more than a dozen times, with mixed success; later, he filed more than 100 lawsuits against the Biden administration. (Both of these facts are applause lines in Paxton’s stump speech.)

As attorney general, Paxton sues like he breathes. This month, he won a $10 million settlement from the Texas Children’s Hospital that required it to stop gender-transition surgeries for minors. He also ordered Texas public schools to show proof that they were displaying copies of the Ten Commandments in classrooms....

Culture war. Always culture war.

Godfrey doesn't really seem to understand this. She writes:

Paxton’s superpower is that he is highly adaptable to the changing dynamics of his party and, like the president, appears to be completely lacking in shame. He has always simply “ignored electability as a concern,” Brandon Rottinghaus, a political-science professor at the University of Houston, told me.

But the "dynamics of his party" aren't changing -- owning the libs is always in favor. Paxton hasn't "ignored electability as a concern." Boastfully attacking the libs is the source of electability.

This seems like a good place to bring up a 2017 quote from Thomas Massie, the GOP congressman from Kentucky who just lost his primary after challenging Trump on a few issues. Massie regards himself as a libertarian in the mold of Ron and Rand Paul, and recognizes that Trump is not a libertarian. In 2017, after Trump had been sworn in as president, Massie said this to the Washington Examiner:

"I went to Iowa twice and came back with [Ron Paul]. I was with him at every event for the last three days in Iowa," Massie said. "From what I observed, not just in Iowa but also in Kentucky, up close with individuals, was that the people that voted for me in Kentucky, and the people who had voted for [Ron] Paul in Iowa several years before, were now voting for Trump. In fact, the people that voted for Rand in a primary in Kentucky were preferring Trump."

"All this time," Massie explained, "I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas—they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along."

Ken Paxton survives scandals because he's always the craziest son of a bitch in the race. "Craziest," in his case, means least self-examining and most lib-owning.

I don't believe every Republican voter prefers the craziest son of a bitch in every instance -- Cornyn did, after all, poll slightly ahead of Paxton in the March 3 primary, though not decisively enough to avoid a runoff. And we know from national politics that many pollsters divide GOP voters into "MAGA" and "non-MAGA." Trump's support among non-MAGA voters is eroding.

But in a typical red-state election, zealots pick the craziest son of a bitch in the race and then less extreme Republican voters rally around that candidate because, gosh, you can't expect them to vote for a Democrat, can you? In red states -- including Texas until maybe, just maybe, this year -- that's all a Republican candidate has needed in recent years: supporters of the crazy SOB plus anyone-but-the-Democrat voters. In purple states, and also nationally, you need more, which is why Trump had to add a few non-white men and young bros to his coalition in 2024.

If the Democratic Party has a future, it will come from persuading some of the moderate-ish voters who don't prefer the crazy SOB that the Republican Party is bad and they should at least consider the Democrat once in a while. But I fear that Democrats will never grasp the need to do this, so the GOP will continue to be the party of crazy SOBs, who'll fire up the base and win the less-crazy GOP leaners, and maybe flip just enough swing voters to win nationwide.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE NASCAR

At the end of his most recent video, which is about Donald Trump's dwindling popularity and cult of personality, Jamelle Bouie says:

What makes a Republican now is whether or not you align with Donald Trump, whether you support his efforts to make himself something like king of America. If you do, then you're a Republican. If you don't, then you're not. And so what does the Republican Party do when Trump is gone, when there is now a vacuum? I don't really have an answer to that. I'm mostly curious to see. But that, I think, is the dilemma the Republican Party will face. It doesn't have an identity outside of Trump, and it won't be in a position to even find one until Trump is gone. Until then, it is his party as long as he wants it.

Bouie is right about Trump's status as the undisputed leader of the GOP -- a status he probably won't relinquish as long as he lives. But I don't agree that the party has no identity independent of Trump. It has a cultural identity -- or, perhaps, a culture-war identity. That predates Trump, and will persist once he's gone.

I screenshotted the front page of FoxNews.com late this morning. It hinted at a severe case of Trump fatigue in Murdochistan. The front page barely focused on politics. Here's the top of the page:

Lead story: A NASCAR driver who recently died at the age of 41. Lower right: A hero bystander prevents a crazed criminal from attacking a helpless woman. To the left of that: A celebrity exposes some flesh in a photo; readers are invited to gawk, and decide whether the celebrity is too thin. Next to this apolitical supermarket-checkout gossip is the lone story about Trump at the top of the page, and the clickbait headline conceals the fact that the "yearly vice" our manly hero is fighting is daylight saving time.

Further down the page, there's surprisingly little political ragebait, or even pro-GOP propaganda. Some is just booga-booga crime news: A town in New Jersey deploys law enforcement against "teen takeovers." Some is cultural: The founder of the "anti-woke" Black Rifle Coffee company drops a country music video in honor of veterans; a pro wrestler declares victory after a fight; a hero cop catches a baby dropped from the window of a building that's on fire.

And, of course, there's fraud in blue America and there are trans people who want to play sports. The mayor of New York exists and must be the subject of negative coverage.

But it's the cultural coverage that hints at the GOP's future when Trump is gone.

This coverage is all about aspects of American life that Republican base voters believe are their property: NASCAR, pro wrestling, the military, crimefighting. It envisions a world where cops are always good and crime is always lurking. Democrats are socialist, trans, and generally weird. Republicans are the guarantors of good old-fashioned normality.

As I said last month, Republicans in the post-Trump era could be like Republicans in 1988: a party trying to carry on in the absence of a twice-elected leader who is worshipped by the base. Before the George H.W. Bush campaign found the secret to defeating Mike Dukakis (racist scare ads about Black criminals), Bush played the GOP culture card. He talked about enjoying pork rinds. He campaigned with country music legend Loretta Lynn (who said of Dukakis, "Why, I can't even pronounce his name!"). He toured a flag factory (at a time when his campaign was floating rumors that Dukakis's wife, in her youth, had burned an American flag).

Republicans don't really care about the needs of NASCAR fans who eat pork rinds. But it's effective branding, and it will keep the GOP going once Trump is gone.

IS THERE SUCH A THING AS A PLATONIC HONEY TRAP? ASKING FOR A PENNSYLVANIA SENATOR.

A New York magazine story published this morning tells us about David "Dovi" Safier, a Long Island-born resident of East Jersusalem who has become a near-constant companion to Senator John Fetterman, despite the fact that he has no official position that would explain his close access to the senator.

Safier, a writer of Jewish history and fundraiser for Orthodox causes, has no public background in government or counseling politicians on Capitol Hill. He is not an official staffer or paid outside adviser. A few years ago, he “just kind of appeared” in the senator’s orbit, one former Fetterman staffer remembers. And then, suddenly, he seemed to be everywhere. Staffers would walk into Fetterman’s office, only to find Safier sitting in the room. When the senator went to Israel in 2025, Safier joined him on the trip; when Fetterman filmed Real Time With Bill Maher, Safier met up with him in Los Angeles. The two are constantly texting and talking, according to multiple former Fetterman staffers, and Safier has unofficially operated as a top campaign fundraiser and senior adviser. He has even set up and attended sensitive meetings with foreign officials; in some cases, he is the only person staffing those meetings, I’ve been told.

Fetterman, of course, is now the Democratic senator who is most uncompromisingly pro-Israel.

Safier met Fetterman in 2023 and "worked his way into the senator’s inner circle." He befriended Fetterman and later arranged a four-day trip to Israel, during which he traveled with Fetterman. He regularly appears in Fetterman's office.

When he is on Capitol Hill, Safier will “hang out and sit in Fetterman’s office all day or walk with him to the floor,” a former staffer says. After their conversations, Fetterman would appear “far more radicalized,” the former staffer remembers. The chatter around the office is usually: “Oh God, Safier is here, and now John’s not gonna go to any of his meetings.”

We're told that Safier has become Fetterman's best bud at a time when he otherwise seems socially withdrawn:

The senator has isolated himself from many of his Senate colleagues and members of his own party. There are few who Fetterman seems to trust beyond his dad and brother, who are conservative; Bobby Maggio, his 2022 campaign manager; and now Safier, who has become arguably the senator’s closest confidant.

But a recent Politico story about a possible Fetterman party switch tells us that Fetterman has some friends in the Senate -- two Republican senators and their spouses -- although he seems isolated otherwise:

If Fetterman does flip, according to officials who were given anonymity to talk about sensitive matters, it will be thanks in large part to his deepening friendship with a pair of senators and their high-profile spouses: Sen. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), and his wife Dina, and Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), and her husband, Wesley....

As he’s drifted from the party line, Fetterman has become increasingly isolated ... those who previously worked for him say he spends much of his time on social media....

The former aides and Pennsylvania Democrats say he rarely participates in the unglamorous work of a senator: showing up for ribbon-cuttings around his home state or racing between committee hearings in Washington.... He has a cool relationship with Gov. Josh Shapiro and barely interacts with the state’s Democratic congressional delegation.

He does, though, spend considerable time with Republicans, particularly the affable Britts and McCormicks, who’ve all but adopted Fetterman and his wife, Gisele.

These sound as if they might be genuine friendships. On the other hand, President Trump and Senator Majority Leader John Thune would love to flip Fetterman. We're told that Thune has good relations with Fetterman, but he "has largely let Britt and McCormick handle the Keystone account."

Safier and the McCormicks and Britts might be true friends, but they're also manipulating Fetterman for political reasons. And it seems easy for them to do that because Fetterman is not in a healthy state of mind.

It's not just the stroke Fetterman suffered while campaigning in 2022. As a 2025 New York magazine story noted, in early 2023, shortly after he was sworn in as a senator, Fetterman had six weeks of inpatient care for clinical depression. Subsequently, he appeared to stop following his treatment plan.

... by mid-March [2024], his aides were again worried that he hadn’t been getting regular checkups. No one I spoke to for this article could be sure about whether Fetterman stayed on his medication during this period, but five different people said they heard comments from the senator that suggested he was not.... Two aides told me they frequently heard him talk about how he felt so great that he didn’t “need” medication. One person told me Fetterman said he “didn’t like the way” his medication “made” him feel — made, past tense.

He alienates people:

One staffer told me there would be entire days when they couldn’t let anyone outside the office be around him because he was in “some sort of state” and might say “really fucked-up shit to constituents.” Sometimes he would just “shut down,” according to one former staffer. He was saying “unhinged shit,” according to one text, and spending more time on social media. [Eric] Stern [a Fetterman consultant] wrote to the group that it seemed to him like Fetterman was “spiraling” and that his constant “doomscrolling” — “I think he’s on essentially all day now?” — would only make things worse.

Many men are in a very bad place right now. They have trouble maintaining personal relationships and lose themselves on the internet. Some of this is the culture; some is their own damn fault. I think Fetterman is an unhappy, unwell man -- if there's a male loneliness epidemic, he has a bad case. It's compounded by his medical history, his discomfort with his treatment plan, and possibly the fact that he's in a commuter marriage, and doing a job he seems to hate. It also seems to be compounded by the fact that he likes alienating people.

We all know about "honey trapping" -- "the use of romantic or sexual relationships for interpersonal, political (including state espionage), or monetary purpose." David Safier's friendship with Fetterman seems like a platonic honey trap -- Safier became Fetterman's friend in order to encourage him to be more and more pro-Israel. The McCormicks and Britts also seem as if they're honey trapping Fetterman on behalf of the GOP. I'm sorry Fetterman is a senator. Because of his difficulties with people, he seems extremely vulnerable to this, and thus far too easy to influence.

DOES TRUMP WANT TO STEAL THE MIDTERMS OR THROW THEM? OR BOTH?

What is President Trump doing in anticipation of the midterms? On the one hand, he and his fellow Republicans on the bench are obviously trying to steal them for the GOP. The Supreme Court opened the door to eleventh-hour gerrymandering in the South, while right-leaning appointees on the Virginia Supreme Court blocked a gerrymander that would have aided Democrats. Meanwhile, Trump has pardoned January 6 insurrectionists, strong-armed Democratic governor Jared Polis of Colorado until he offered clemency to electoral criminal Tina Peters, and now is dangling a slush fund before anyone who might want to riot in response to Democratic wins in November.

But on the other hand, he seems to be doing everything he can to handicap his party's chances in the midterms. Punchbowl tells us:

With less than 24 weeks until Election Day, President Donald Trump seems almost maniacally focused on doing and saying things that could harm Republicans’ chances of keeping their House and Senate majorities in November.

With voters saying they’re frightened by high prices and disappearing healthcare coverage, Trump is building a new billion-dollar White House ballroom and asking for taxpayer money to secure it. His administration announced Monday that it was setting up a nearly $1.8 billion fund to compensate victims of “weaponization and lawfare” under the Democrats, a move that shocked even Republicans.

As gas prices skyrocket due to the unpopular war in Iran, Trump says it’s a “very small price to pay” as long as he believes the conflict is proceeding to his liking.

He's alienating Senate Republicans -- and possibly putting a key seat at risk -- with his decision to endorse Ken Paxton rather than John Cornyn in the Texas Senate race, as The New York Times notes:

Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican whose independent streak has often angered the president, said that she was “supremely disappointed” by Mr. Trump’s decision.

Then she went a step further, saying that the president’s endorsement of Mr. Paxton, a scandal-plagued conservative firebrand, could cost Republicans what had been considered a safe Senate seat.

“I think that this puts that seat in jeopardy,” she told reporters.

Punchbowl points out that this also about campaign cash:

... GOP senators privately griped about Trump forcing out one of their most prolific fundraisers; Cornyn has raised more than $400 million for Republican candidates and incumbents over his long Senate career. Many saw the episode as Trump once again using Senate races to advance his personal goals at the expense of the GOP majority....

So on the one hand, Trump seems ready to cheat or strong-arm his way to victory in the midterms. He might even send troops to polling places to make that happen. But he doesn't seem to want to win the midterms through legitimate means: advancing popular policies, maintaining party unity, and so on.

Does this make sense? I think it does to Trump.

I think Trump wants to win, but he wants to win his way: brutally. He always wants to project "strength," which, to him, means breaking the rules and getting away with it. He's happy when he gets away with violating (or doing an end run around) the law, and he's also happy when he breaks the laws of politics and wins. (That pretty much describes his own political career since he announced his candidacy in 2015.)

And even though he'll happily engage in felonious conduct or instigate mob violence in order to win the midterms, I'm not sure winning is as important to him as fighting -- specifically, fighting dirty -- and surviving after acting recklessly. At that point, even if he loses, he can blame other people who were "very unfair" to him, while enjoying the thrill of surviving his own recklessness.

I'm haunted by something Tucker Carlson said in his recent New York Times interview. Carlson says he tried to dissuade Trump from invading Iran, and Trump waved him off:

He felt he had no choice and he said to me, Everything’s going to be OK. Because I was getting overwrought. Don’t do this. The people pushing you to do this hate you. They’re your enemies. This will destroy you. This will gravely harm our country. We’ve got kids. I’m hoping for grandkids. Let’s not go there. And he said, It’s going to be all right, and he said, Do you know how I know that? And I said no, and he said, Because it always is.

And he said, It’s going to be all right, and he said, Do you know how I know that? And I said no, and he said, Because it always is. That's Trump's belief in the Power of Positive Thinking. It's also his accurate assessment of the course of his life. When he said this to Carlson, he'd done so many ill-conceived things, from the bad deals that led to his first bankruptcies to the incompetence that led 81 million Americans to vote for his not particularly inspiring opponent in 2020, and then to January 6 and his theft of presidential papers and a host of other actions that would have sunk anyone else. And he was still standing. He was president again. You can't blame the guy for thinking he has life's cheat codes.

On some level, I think he knows he's a colossal fuck-up -- but he also knows that he's gotten away with being a colossal fuck-up all his life. I think he gets off on that idea: that he fucks up, but (as he might put it) he fucks up "very strongly," in an aggressive, intimidating way, and it all works out for him. That's what he wants out of the midterms: he wants the feeling of being a vicious aggressor, and he wants to survive if he can't win. But whether he's consciously aware of this or not, he'd rather lose as a thug than win shrewdly -- as long as he can keep going, even in defeat.