The current second Trump administration: a compendium of horrors

[Sherrerd]

I don’t have access to The Atlantic, either, but I have seen the article referred to on MSNOW.

HC Richardson quotes Hillary Clinton saying something similar, in today’s column:

… As Clinton wrote today: “In just the last few days: Trump made a deal for the U.S. to buy Russian diesel, an economic lifeline for Putin; he and Elon Musk blamed each other for an order that slowed down Starlink satellite connectivity over Ukraine, hampering the country’s defenses during a devastating Russian attack; and Trump waived sanctions on Russia that Congress, led by his late friend Lindsey Graham, had pushed for. Now, Putin has proposed a summit with Trump and Xi to decide Ukraine’s fate for them, bulldoze a century of international cooperation, and frame Russia as an equal to the U.S. and China. “We’ll see if Putin’s puppet continues to dance on his strings.”

My bolding; it’s a reference to the exactly-10 years-ago today debate, in which she called Donald Putin’s puppet, and Donald brilliantly reposted “No puppet. You’re the puppet.”

October 19, 2026

[PhillyGuy]

Millions of Amazon settlement checks credit Trump ahead of the midterms

A notice with the checks in question uses the phrase “President Trump’s Federal Trade Commission” three times.

But actually it was the Biden administration that sued Amazon.

There might be a question here of whether it is an Amazon horror or a Trump administration horror. Perhaps Amazon did this in anticipatory compliance to the dictator, but back when the U.S. was a representative democracy (as opposed to the current hybrid regime), it could not have happened.

There also could be a question as to whether this is timed for the midterm election, in which case it would go into a different thread. But I think the administration is responsible for this kind of thing regardless of election timing.