The Trump Administration: The Clusterfuck Continues (Part 2)

[Gordon_G]

@Stratocaster

Not many people know this, but the Amazon is longer than the height of the Chrysler Building. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I wondered how best to parody Trump’s inanity. I thought of zooming in on the little mushroom Stormy Daniels picked out, and contrasting 47,047,047 angstroms with the 2,030 feet of the reflecting pool.

In other news, some Americans are benefiting bigly from Trump’s War against Sanity:

CNN reports President Donald Trump’s own servicemembers appear to be hedging their bets against the United States in Trump’s war on Iran… roughly 150 Polymarket accounts appear to be U.S. military insiders, some with clear access to sensitive military information.
…
“That nonpartisan organization, the Anti-Corruption Data Collective, said it analyzed a massive trove of publicly available Polymarket data and found 152 accounts that profited about $8 million on war markets – including about the Iran war – and contained several hallmarks of insider activity,” reports CNN.

Many of the accounts showed signs of potential insider activity with brand-new wallets that placed remarkably well-timed bets with longshot odds. They had a staggering 97 percent win rate, despite most traders on prediction sites losing money, according to Polymarket sources speaking with CNN.

[Gordon_G]

Paul Krugman’s latest is worth a read:

Trump Has Given Up

Donald Trump will never admit that his gratuitous Iran war has been a total disaster. But the debacle has clearly broken him. So we are now saddled with a president who has given up governing, but will maintain his grip on power wherever he can. And his power will be exclusively focused on rage and revenge.

Hence Trump has appointed Bill Pulte as the acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a position critical to national security.

The word “acting” is crucial. The statute creating the position of DNI explicitly requires that the appointee “shall have extensive national security expertise.” … But pointing out that Pulte is unqualified for his new job doesn’t convey the extent to which Trump is trolling America with this new appointment.
… Who is Pulte? He’s a wealthy nepo-baby, the grandson of the founder of PulteGroup, [but] he was pushed off PulteGroup’s board in 2020. The family’s charitable foundation has issued a statement that “Bill Pulte does not represent, nor is he a spokesperson for, all members of the Pulte family, in any capacity.”

The Times [notes] that These days, one of Bill Pulte’s primary connections to the residential real estate business is a group of five aging mobile home parks he owns in Florida, some badly in need of repair.

… as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, his real job has been weaponizing the agency as a tool against Trump’s perceived enemies … Pulte confected false claims of mortgage fraud to try to push out Lisa Cook, the only black woman on the Federal Reserve Board. [and] Letitia James, New York’s Attorney General, and several Democratic politicians. [etc.]

Pulte is a bumbling hatchet man: so far none of his attempted lynchings have succeeded. But for Trump, willingness to engage in unethical behavior is all that matters.

What will Pulte do as America’s senior intelligence official? You might think that even someone like Trump, who has no desire to serve the national interest, who sees wars only as ways to enrich himself and distract from his domestic woes, would want accurate intelligence. After all, if you’re going to wag the dog, you don’t want the dog to bite back the way it has in Iran.

But Trump appears to have given up on governing — even governing aimed at consolidating his own power and legacy. He wants to punish everyone he imagines has wronged him but has lost all interest in making the government work, even for nefarious purposes. So he don’t need no intelligence, just someone who will indulge his rage. And that will be Pulte’s job.

Just to be clear, I am by no means saying that Trump’s descent into rage-madness has ended the threat to U.S. democracy. The Koch-backed Federalist Society …

But Trump himself is, at this point, little more than a festering ball of anger and hate.

[Dr.Winston_OBoogie]

@Gordon_G

But Trump himself is, at this point, little more than a festering ball of anger and hate.

In other news, water is wet.

[OttoDaFe]

Now if he would just take the next step and become a spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the dark, but can no longer grow or take shape …

[robby]

@Gordon_G

Paul Krugman’s latest is worth a read…

This is definitely worth a read, but note that it was actually written in early June.

[DesertDog]

I take exception to the lede, No longer interested in governing.

When in hell was he ever interested in governing? He loves the campaigning and the adulation he gets from his fanbase but even during Trump 1.0 he was never particularly interested in doing any actual Presidenting. Trump 2.0 is the same except for having figured out – or gotten advice on – how to maximize the grift.

[enipla]

@DesertDog

When in hell was he ever interested in governing?

He loves bullying others. He must have had a horrible childhood.

[Red_Wiggler]

True dat and he’s gonna spend the next two years scheming to extend his time in office, enacting protections for his post-presidency, glorifying himself by naming everything he can in his own honor or all of the above.

[Smapti]

@enipla

He must have had a horrible childhood.

The only time anyone has ever told him no was when he asked his dad “Are you proud of me?”

[Monty]

@OttoDaFe

Now if he would just take the next step and become a spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the dark, but can no longer grow or take shape …

He’s partway there. Blob is not a shape.

@enipla

He loves bullying others. He must have had a horrible childhood.

I’d think the truth is closer to he must have made others’ childhoods miserable.

Democracy dying in the dictatorship.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) published a rule Friday that would require states to provide lists of voters who received mail-in ballots to the agency.

The USPS rule, first proposed June 2, moves to align the agency with President Donald Trump’s March 31 executive order, which, among other things, ordered the agency to mandate that all states that plan to use USPS to send mail-in ballots notify the agency at least 90 days before an election and to send USPS a list of eligible voters the state plans on providing a mail-in ballot to at least 60 days before the election.

“Any state that intends to receive mail-in or absentee ballots from individual voters through the Postal Service must ensure that such individuals have been enrolled with the Postal Service for inclusion on the state’s Mail-In and Absentee Participation List,” the new rule states.

To be included on the list, an voter’s state must submit to the USPS the individual’s name and address and include a “uniquely serialized Intelligent Mail barcode (IMb)” on both the outbound federal ballot and the return ballot sent to the individual.

The finalized rule, however, cannot go into effect under an outstanding federal injunction against Trump’s March executive order.

The felon hires a felon for, you guessed it, election monitoring.

A lawyer who served jail time for hacking election websites appears to be working alongside the Justice Department officials tasked with monitoring elections.

David Levin was spotted with DOJ attorney William F. Mohrman outside a Minneapolis polling place during the department’s monitoring of Minnesota’s primary, according to Democracy Docket.

The sighting comes a decade after Levin was arrested for illegally accessing government election websites in Florida.

Investigators said Levin used a cyberattack in 2016 to extract usernames and passwords from the Lee County Supervisor of Elections website.

He then used Supervisor Sharon Harrington’s credentials to log in and navigate the site as an administrator. Authorities also found evidence that he separately targeted the Florida Division of Elections website.

War criminal Petey chases away Army leader.

Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is looking to leave his role at the Pentagon around the end of 2026 following a months-long turf war with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former White House official and another source familiar with the discussions told The Hill on Friday.

A third source familiar said Driscoll has long communicated that between 23 and 24 months is the lifetime of an Army secretary in the Trump administration. Driscoll, an ally of Vice President Vance, was confirmed by the Senate on Feb. 25 last year in a 66-28 vote.

Driscoll’s spokesperson declined to comment.

A U.S. official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, told The Hill on Saturday they have heard a similar timeline for Driscoll’s departure.

The Army Secretary has pushed the service branch to improve living conditions for service members, modernize equipment and learn from Ukrainian forces how to utilize commercial technology in modern warfare.

One of the sources familiar said Driscoll has been “aggressive” in getting buy-in from general officers to spearhead and deliver on these efforts, given his limited tenure.

During his tenure, Driscoll, a former venture capitalist, formed a close working relationship with the former Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Randy George, who was ousted from his role in early April by Hegseth.

The Felon in the Oval now has a war on law education.

The Trump administration is pushing to end the American Bar Association’s role in accrediting law schools, claiming the group is too liberal and is controlled by supporters of “woke” diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

The Department of Education suggests in a 500-page report it may not renew the group’s authorization to oversee law schools when it expires later this year because ABA officials “inject their own political preferences, their own ideologies into the work that they do.”

The effort was first revealed by the Wall Street Journal on Friday.It’s part of a wide-ranging effort by the Trump administration to exercise greater power over institutions of higher education, which it believes are in the thrall of liberals.

“Accreditation, in general, operates like a cartel,” assistant Secretary of Education David Barker told the paper. “When there’s no competition, accreditors feel free to inject their own political preferences, their own ideologies into the work that they do.”

Conservatives say the ABA was slow to step away from DEI policies designed to make the legal profession more closely reflect American society even after the Supreme Court ruled that universities could not consider race in admissions.

It’s unclear what other group could be authorized to fill the accreditation role now played by the ABA.

Unclear? Yeah, right. I think we all know who will get to fill that role and it’s not a group, it’s an individual, one.

Vance might as well have the Flavor Aid in barrels next to him.

Vice President JD Vance claimed on Friday that young Americans can afford to own homes again thanks to President Donald Trump’s policies, after former President Joe Biden “nearly doubled” the cost of a median-priced home.

Vance spoke about “affordability” and the Trump administration’s economic agenda at a factory in his Appalachian hometown of Middletown, Ohio.

“Under Joe Biden the cost of the median price home nearly doubled,” Vance said. “Now for the first time in over five years, rents are falling for the first time. Got a lot of work to do but we are finally seeing that American dream of homeownership become accessible again to young people.”

Vance first made the claim in March 2025 that home prices “nearly doubled” under Biden, but experts said that was misleading.

“According to four government and private-sector metrics, home sales prices alone didn’t double under Biden,” reported WRAL reported. “However, if you factor in associated costs, most notably fast-rising mortgage rates, the price tag doubled on Biden’s watch.”

Vance’s claim that “rents are falling for the first time” in five years, was just plain wrong, according to Realtor.com. Instead of a massive drop in rent prices during Trump’s second term, the site reported that U.S. median rent has slowly been dropping for 36 straight months, beginning when Biden was still president.

The Felon in the Oval’s visa ban on 75 countries is illegal.

The Trump administration’s ban on visas for immigrants from 75 countries was struck down by a federal judge on Friday, who ruled it was “contrary to law” and outside the statutory authority of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In January, the State Department paused the issuance of immigrant visas from almost 40% of the world’s nations – including Brazil, Colombia, Egypt, Haiti, Somalia and Russia – in a move that it said would prevent the entry of people who would “take welfare and public benefits.”

Judge Jeannette Vargas of the Federal District Court in Manhattan took issue with the State Department’s rationale for the policy, reversing any visa denial based solely on it – in another setback to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Under the law, an immigrant can only be turned away as a likely “public charge” (someone expected to depend on government support) after a consular officer weighs that person’s own finances, age, health, skills and family situation.

Judge Vargas found that, in practice, US officers were ordered to reject visas for applicants, even those who could support themselves, solely based on the country they came from.

The visa ban halted permanent-residence visas for people joining family members or taking jobs in the US, but did not apply to nonimmigrant visas such as tourist or student visas.

[Guest-starring_Id]

@Monty

The felon hires a felon for, you guessed it, election monitoring.

Lots of scary news most of the time, but this one I find particularly troubling. If this isn’t the fox looking after the henhouse…
These midterms could really be in trouble now.

[smithsb]

Take our Treasury Secretary, please.

I didn’t know about this, and this guy is working for a guy who bankrupted a casino?

Double yikes!

Every market has a fellow who is certain the prices are wrong and that he alone knows the right ones. Usually the market charges him tuition for this belief. Occasionally, it hands him the Treasury.

Consider the record. In 2000, Scott Bessent left Soros to run $1 billion of his own. Five years later, the fund no longer existed. In 2015 he tried again with Key Square, co-founded with Soros alum Michael Germino and seeded with $2 billion of Soros money — which is a bit like failing your driving test and being handed a Ferrari. Assets peaked at $5.1 billion in 2017 and finished 2023 at $577 million. Institutional investors reportedly went from 180 to 20, a retention rate that would embarrass a gym in February. And in 2018, Soros — the man who staked him — took his chips off the table. When your own anchor investor would rather not watch, that is not typically a buy signal.

Which brings us to the question: is the man now confidently dictating where oil, the dollar, Treasury yields, and stocks ought to trade a macro mastermind the market tragically failed to appreciate? Or did the market spend two decades doing its due diligence on him — and sell? He believes he’s smarter than the market. The market already graded that exam. Twice

[Monty]

@Guest-starring_Id

@Monty

The felon hires a felon for, you guessed it, election monitoring.

Lots of scary news most of the time, but this one I find particularly troubling. If this isn’t the fox looking after the henhouse…
These midterms could really be in trouble now.

Midterms? We’re going to have midterms?

[jsc1953]

@Monty

“Under Joe Biden the cost of the median price home nearly doubled,” Vance said. “Now for the first time in over five years, rents are falling for the first time.

Notice the switcheroo that Vance pulled in those sentences? Cost/price of a home, and rents, are two different things.

[Alessan]

Was he trying to distract us with the “for the first time” redundency?

[Monty]

Abdul El-Sayed publicly calls out Vance’s hypocrisy. (The bolding is mine.)

Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed responded to criticism from Vice President V.D. Vance on Saturday on MS NOW:

J.D. VANCE: El-Sayed, this guy running for Senate in Michigan, he once argued not too long ago that criticisms of Sharia law were rooted in white supremacy.

I’d love to go back in time and tell my papaw that there’s a man who claims to stand for working people who says not only should we have Sharia law, but if you criticize it, you’re a white supremacist.

That’s not my papaw’s Democratic Party, my friends.

AL SHARPTON: It sounds to me like J.D. Vance is feeling some nostalgia for the segregationist Democrats of the Solid South. But I wonder what you heard in these comments.

ABDUL EL-SAYED: Well, I’ll tell you this. Every time J.D. Vance opens his mouth, the first two things I can think are, man, that guy is boring. And second, Peter Thiel had to spend a ton of money to get that man elected, barely, in the state of Ohio.

Now, you know, I’m from Michigan, and we got issues with people from Ohio. But this one in particular, I took somewhat confusedly, because here’s the thing about it: He’s painting this picture of going back in time to talk to his papaw about me.

Now, why is he pointing to me? Why is Donald Trump pointing to me, pointing to me to try and say that somehow I’m less American than they are?

Now, what does that have to do with - I don’t know - the color of my skin, how I pray?

But the confusing thing about it is that he thinks that there are some people who are more American than others because they can point to their papaw who was here earlier.

And my question to him is simply: Why is it then, how do you look your parents-in-law in the eye and say that somehow they’re less American than you are? Because that’s what he’s implying there.

These are literally the best of the best, but war on foreigners knows no boundary. (The formatting is from the linked article.)

Two Nicaraguan players will miss the Little League World Series. Visa problems kept them out of the United States. Their team now competes short-handed in Williamsport.

The players are from the Ministerio Sobre Las Alas Del Aguila Little League in León. That squad represents the Latin America Region. Little League confirmed the absences in an official statement, per Sportico.

“We work closely with the U.S. Department of State to support our participants and their travel, and we are pleased that 12 of our players from Nicaragua were able to obtain the appropriate documentation and understand the disappointment for their two teammates not able to make the trip,” Little League’s statement said. “No further details are currently available.”

Timing prevented any roster replacements. The squad moves forward with its remaining 12 players.

Here’s how the secretary of war crimes cares about the military.

The Department of Defense does not request enough funding to fully meet its installation maintenance and major improvement needs, a Government Accountability Office report found.

The department sought to fund 90% of its maintenance needs, but the GAO found that the services continue to request funding for only about 80% of their needs, according to the report released Friday. The funding shortfall led to an estimated $285 billion of maintenance backlogs in fiscal 2025.

“DOD has not fully determined the risks to its mission and to the quality of life of its personnel as a result of not meeting its funding goal,” the report reads. “Fully determining and communicating these risks would provide better information to DOD and Congress to weigh budget priorities.”

GAO authors examined Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force military installations across the U.S. and its territories for this report.

The report found that the department does not request the full amount of maintenance funding as recommended by its Facilities Sustainment Model, which estimates the average annual sustainment funding requirement for facilities based on their size, location and other factors.

The human binky is mad as a hatter.

Years before Natalie Harp became a key White House aide to President Donald Trump, she flooded her Twitter feed with posts demonstrating extraordinary devotion to him on January 6, 2021.

A CNN review of Harp’s now-removed account on X, previously Twitter, found that Harp posted more than 150 tweets that day, urging Republicans to “FIGHT FOR TRUMP” as he began his speech near the White House. She echoed the president’s talking points that the election was stolen, and amplified rhetoric of his allies, who also sought to undermine the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election win. Harp’s X account appears suspended. It’s unclear when her account was taken down, and whether she or the platform removed her posts.

Harp’s devotion is hardly unusual in Trump’s inner circle: The president stocked his White House with loyalists. But her January 6 posts offered a public display of fealty, as she praised those fighting to keep Trump in office and repeatedly cast him and his allies in heroic terms.

“She has proven to be a totally loyal sycophantic adviser and staffer for him,” said David B. Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron who studies the American presidency. "Trump likes that, he doesn’t like to be questioned. He likes to be revered, and she clearly does that.

Neither Harp nor the White House responded to CNN’s requests for comment.

As a crowd descended on Washington, DC, on the morning of January 6, Harp, a One America News Network host whose Twitter bio described her as a Trump “advisory board” member, shared comments from Trump’s family members declaring, “This movement will never, ever die!” and “This fight has only just begun.”

Harp, then 29, praised pro-Trump demonstrators gathering for Trump’s speech as “patriots” and challenged lawmakers to show “a fraction of the courage & passion” of the crowd, declaring: “today we STOP THE STEAL!”

But, hey, she didn’t support the attack on the Capitol, right? Right?

And after a pro-Trump mob forced its way into the US Capitol, Harp shared tweets insisting the rioters were “not Trump supporters,” and circulated false reports that Antifa had infiltrated the mob. Later, Harp shared Trump’s calls for the rioters to go home.

Mrs. T 4.0 no doubt.

[ThelmaLou]

@Monty

Mrs. T 4.0 no doubt.

In her dreams. Donnie has her right where she will do him the most good. Why tamper with that?

[Little_Nemo]

Trump was asked a question about high interest rates on Friday. (For background, interest rates on bonds are at a very high level. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent tried to lower them by having the government buy up bonds. The results were very temporary.)

Reporter: “The yields have come back up since then. Have you talked to Bessent about another type of intervention? Is that something he will be doing?”

Trump: “We have many types of intervention. That’s one. The ultimate intervention is our military. And if we have to use that, we will.”

Uhhhh…what?

That response was so bizarre I think it stunned the reporter and she didn’t ask a follow-up question about how Trump thought he could direct the military to take action against high interest rates.

[Pardel-Lux]

@Little_Nemo

Reporter: “The yields have come back up since then. Have you talked to Bessent about another type of intervention? Is that something he will be doing?”

Trump: “We have many types of intervention. That’s one. The ultimate intervention is our military. And if we have to use that, we will.”

The only safe way is to nuke the rates from orbit. Classic. That is why he wants a space force.

[Pardel-Lux]

@Red_Wiggler

True dat and he’s gonna spend the next two years scheming to extend his time in office, enacting protections for his post-presidency, glorifying himself by naming everything he can in his own honor or all of the above.

The Ineptstein regimme has learned a lot from Orban’s Hungary, from how to rig elections to corruption. Now Hungary is fighting back. There is a lesson there too for the future:

The Guardian view on the new Hungary: de-Orbánising at pace | Editorial

“I was not elected simply to change the government, but to change the regime,” he had told interviewers soon after taking power. Three months on, the symbolism is being supplemented by a peaceful political revolution.

The most important thing is to plan ahead and be prepared when the chance comes. If Biden had been ready and prepared to go after TFG when he took office, acting decisively concerning his corruption, stealing, violating his international obligations by treaty, revealing secrets to enemies, classified document handling, and so on and so forth (oh, the list is much longer! We all know that) he would be in jail and not in the White House.
Please do not repeat the same mistake.