I am so stealing this!
This Politico article is full of righteous schadenfreude. Great read. I’m feeling a schadenfreudey version of a sugar rush haivng read it:
Another great commentary in the same vein from the Guardian:
like Marie Antoinette in a bad toupee.
Yep, I can picture that.
Donald Trump will enter 2027 with a hostile Congress, noticeably diminished cognitive power and physical stamina, a cratering approval rating and a term limit.
There must be a silver lining somewhere. But not for him.
Yeah, that was the money quote, I forgot to quote it.
Is he having a bad week? It seems to me he’s having a bad week. A very bad, no-good, awful week.
Good.
Can we send him to Australia?
What did Australia ever do to you?
To a prison in Australia, preferably. They have a tradition.
There’s a FB group called Australians Against Trump. I joined it even though I’m not Australian. But I do like Vegemite. 
You monster! Don’t tell me you also like Marmite!
I think I’ve only tried Marmite once, and decided I preferred Vegemite. I’ll have to give it another try.
Well, to each their own, but I prefer to satisfy my yeasty needs with beer…and sometimes bread.
Good article, thanks EH.
And yeah, that was the standout quote of the article.
Except, I do think the comparison is unfair to Marie Antoinette. Yes, the popular historical depiction of her as a heartless and thoughtlessly self-indulgent ruler endures, making it a natural comparison to trump; but in reality she was a political neophyte trapped in a situation not of her own making, who did enjoy the self-indulgent trappings of power, but also supported charitable help for the poor while she was in power to do so. trump’s damage is all of his own making. He is a monster of history; Marie Antoinette is (mostly) a victim of history.
Of course you’re right, but in the mind of the public she’ll always be remembered for the apokryph quote “Let them eat cake”, so that’s why journalists mention her that way.
More schadenfreude:
Trump loses the election bigly (well, not him directly, but we all voted as if he were on the ballot) and what does the stock market do? Shoot up. Well, mostly.
The stock market movement is almost entirely driven by AI right now. The talking head consensus is that the upward movement isn’t so much that “the Democrats will fix this lousy economy,” but more that the Democrats won’t do too much to stop AI spending in the next couple years.
Actually, Gina Hinojosa won the gubernatorial race in Texas and pledged a moratorium on new data centers. And Texas is where more data centers are opening than any other state.
Well, minor quibble: the word ‘apocryphal’ means ‘of dubious or uncertain authenticity’, which does not apply to that phrase; we know the history of its origin and incorrect attribution very well.
The phrase first appeared in print in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s autobiographical work Confessions (written around 1765 and published in 1782). He attributed it to an anonymous “great princess”. [1]
When Rousseau wrote the passage in 1765, Marie Antoinette was only nine years old and still living in Austria, long before she became Queen of France. [1]
The quote was never used against Marie Antoinette during the French Revolution. It was first linked to her decades later in 1843 by the French journalist Alphonse Karr. Similar folklore about oblivious nobility also appeared in earlier stories long before her time.
But hey, I’m not trying to pick a fight with you; I just have a personal pet peeve about relatively decent historical figures who got a bad rap. Don’t get me started about Captain Bligh!
There are enough actually horrible historical figures who do deserve a bad rap, which trump and his name will earn for all time, if there’s any justice.
Now let’s return to our schadenfreude: Hey, I got a saying for Repubs who cravenly put up with trump’s bullshit and are now all butt-hurt: “Let them eat shit!”.
All true and very well put, nice nitpick. And I fully subscribe the last sentence, I just would not stop at the eating shit part. They also have to drink.