Republicans must wake up to the purpose of Donald Trump's slush fund: He will use the money to bribe fealty from the GOP

Outrage Over Trump’s 💲1.8 Billion Slush Fund

Echo opinion letters published in The New York Times

To the Editor: Re “Risking Wrath of Trump, Some in G.O.P. Push Back” (front page, May 23):

Congressional "Growing Old Party" Republicans may be nowhere near defying Donald Trump’s sweeping right-wing agenda, but the opposition of some senators to the president’s outrageous 💲1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund scheme to finance claims of mistreatment and possibly to support anew the grievances of January 6 felons is a positive departure from second-term blind subservience to Donald Trump by Republicans in both chambers.

For Donald Trump, though, pardoning the felons who desecrated the Capitol, brutalized police officers, defecating in the halls and tried to violently interfere with the certification of a presidential election was clearly not enough. Now, stooping to a new low of lawlessness himself, the president may seek to reward these people by offering them restitution, provided directly by American taxpayers.

With his years long, twisted interpretation of the horrendous attack on the Capitol, Donald Trump has sought to justify lawlessness that he personally orchestrated and encouraged. Now, finally, Senate Republicans — some of whom are taking a firm stand on the 💲1.8 billion fund — have found the courage to openly express opposition to Trump’s slush fund scheme. At long last, it’s a meaningful challenge to Trump's tight grip on them. (Maine Writer- Ya'think the maga cult knows how Trump's slush fund will also be used to keep them in kowtow positions❓)

From Roger Hirschberg in South Burlington, Vermont

To the Editor: Republican senators expressed outrage at Donald Trump’s plan to create a slush fund from which he would compensate cronies for having been investigated and in many cases convicted of crimes. So it seems that these sycophants can, indeed, distinguish between right and wrong.

The outrage was expressed mostly by senators who have either decided not to run again or who have been defeated in primaries. This scenario only underscores the cowardice of elected officials who have abandoned their sworn responsibility to serve the best interests of the nation in deference to their desire to remain in office. Shame on us for electing such corrupt people.

From Bill Gottdenker in Mountainside, New Jersey

To the Editor: Re “Curious Legal Aspects of Trump’s New Slush Fund,” by Adam Liptak (The Docket column, May 24):

Let’s use simple language to describe what is happening here: Donald Trump, aided by his sidekick Todd Blanche, is using a bogus nonadversarial court proceeding, with a too-clever “settlement,” as a fig leaf both to immunize himself, his family and his businesses from federal tax liability and audits, and to confiscate $1.776 billion of taxpayer money to be enjoyed by his friends and allies at the unreviewable discretion of a five-person commission controlled by Trump. A fairly audacious maneuver, one may say.

This travesty is, among other things, an egregious abuse of the federal court system. It is also an impeachable offense. (There has been no shortage of those in Trump’s second term to date.😡💢)

From Newman T. Halvorson Jr., Washington
The writer is a retired lawyer.

Senator Susan Collins has 28 years seniority in the senate but refuses to show courage against Donald Trump

Senator Susan Collins is facing sharp criticism for her recent votes to increase health care costs in Maine. News Center Maine reports that “more than 60,000 Mainers … are seeing their health care costs rise drastically” after Susan Collins voted with Donald Trump to take away health care tax credits. In Maine, the average premium increase is 💲886, according to a recent study by CAP. Mainers say they are already struggling to afford housing, groceries, gas and health care – and Susan Collins is making life even more expensive.

Susan Collins no longer represents Maine | Echo Letter published in CentralMaine.com

Why is Sen. Susan Collins so silent❓ Donald Trump established an unconstitutional💲 slush fund to pay his criminally convicted supporters; he takes gifts from Qataris and others; he has enriched himself by $4 billion; he enables his sons and son-in-law to profit on government contracts; he obstructs the release of the full Epstein file trove as required by law; he pardons drug lords and embezzlers who then pay his PACs; and the list goes on. But Sen. Collins has said nothing about most of these actions.

All while Mainers are losing their healthcare, paying high prices at the pump and facing growing inflation — all perpetrated by an immoral president, and Collins is silent. Senator Collins accepted a 💲6.2 million donation from the Senate Political Leadership Pac, in other words, "hush money". 

She no longer represents the hard working people of Maine.

From Paul Josephson in Vinalhaven, Maine

An excellent retrospecitve analysis about Donald Trump's failed Iran world war of choice published in Australia

Echo report published in The Interpreter by Thomas Wright*

Hubris: The January 2026, illegal raid that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro instilled confidence in Donald Trump to use lethal force to deliver outsized results.

Loading U.S. Air Force B-1 Lancer Bomber on tarmac at RAF Fairford in Southeast England on March 2026.

Plenty of people predicted catastrophe, just as they had predicted it ahead of the June 2025, strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, but it did not occur. Trump saw both operations as clear successes. Nevertheless, regime change in Venezuela did not create a new administration. In June, 2025, Trump alone declared the Iranian nuclear enriched of uranium capacity was "annihilated- a.k.a. destroyed completely", when, clearly, by every assessment, it was not.  Trump said the strikes "completely and totally obliterated" Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities; but as of August 2025, a final bomb damage assessment of the strikes was still ongoing.

Trump came out of these episodes with a false sense of over-confidence. He was convinced that he had developed an instinct for when force would work and when it would not. He felt confident. He was willing to roll the dice.

Shortly after, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to him with the argument that Iran was weaker than it had been at any point since the 1979, revolution – Iranian proxy groups Hezbollah and Hamas had been gutted; the pro-Iranian dictator of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, was gone; there were sustained protests in Iran – and that this was the moment to deal the regime a blow from which it would never recover. Netanyahu also reminded Trump that Iran had tried to assassinate Trump in 2024, and that this was a chance for retribution. Trump was easily deceived by Netanyahu, so he disregarded his own intillence services assessment about the plan and was receptive to launch an illegal war of choice, announced on the night of February 28, from his Mar-A-Lago Florida home and out of Congress's site.

Operation Epic Fury, launched on 28, February, was unmistakably a war of choice. The June 2025, strikes had set back not only Iran’s nuclear program but also its missile stockpiles and air defenses. The regime was indeed weakened. But precisely because of this, there was no pressing need to act militarily. 

Also, there was no urgent need to push for a comprehensive deal. A deal in which Iran gave up its enrichment program would almost certainly have required sanctions relief on a scale that would have provided the regime with an economic lifeline at the very moment its internal pressures were building. Simply staying the course – keeping the pressure on and holding open the option of further strikes if the regime tried to rebuild – was a viable strategy.

It was also, on paper, the strategy one would have expected from Trump. He had run against forever wars and regime change. He promised not to get the United States bogged down in the Middle East. When he struck Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025, he declared it “obliterated” and moved swiftly to impose a ceasefire on Israel and bring the war to an end, over Netanyahu’s objection.

Donald Trump has failed in Iran. His losing stragegy now has him experiencing vaious stages of grief. He has zero acceptable options while Iran hold tight to the Strait of Hormuz. War crimes were committed in the early hours of the illegal Trump war of choice, when nearly 90 school children were murdered by a U.S. tomahawk missile attack.

But by early 2026, Trump was in a super narcissistic legacy mode. He could see the outlines of a quick and historic victory: the regime that plotted to assassinate him in 2024, that sponsored Hezbollah and Hamas, that had been a thorn in the side of successive American presidents for 47 years, might be removed under his watch. The opportunity, the personal element, and the hubris arising out of the Maduro raid combined to override the instincts that had pulled him in the other direction the previous summer.

There was one more piece. In Venezuela, Trump quickly did a deal with Maduro’s deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, to work with the United States. He hoped to replicate the approach in Iran by working with a strongman who would cooperate with him on a peace deal and possibly cut the United States in on oil exploration. Trump showed little interest in backing an exiled opposition figure such as former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, and instead told the press that a new leader “from within” the regime “might be more appropriate”. 

What happened in Venezuela, he told The New York Times, would be “the perfect scenario” for Iran. The campaign was meant to be short. The successor was meant to emerge naturally from a regime under enough stress to break, but not so much stress that there was nothing left to inherit.

None of these assumptions survived contact with the war.

Tactical success, strategic setbacks

The opening days of the February 2026, campaign produced a tactical success (although the murder of about 90 school children by a U.S. tomahawk missile created a war crime to upstage the news about killing a bunch of Iranian men whose names nobody in America could pronounce❗) – the assassination of Ali Khamenei and many of his top associates was accomlished. But, for Trump, it created a problem for his preferred Venezuela-style succession scenario. As he told ABC’s Jonathan Karl: “The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates. It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.” Obviously, nobody bothered to alert Donald Trump to the risks caused by killing Iranian leaders.

For Israel, the war would be a failure if the regime survived in any form. Tehran could bide its time, rebuild its missile program, wait for the United States to lose interest, and threaten Israel again. Israel wanted regime change, ideally to a democracy or a more benign government, but it was prepared to accept chaos in Iran, even civil war, as the price of regime destruction.

For the United States and many other countries, state collapse in Iran would be a disaster. It had the potential to flood the region with refugees, energize jihadist movements, draw in Turkey and the Gulf states, and bog down US forces in the Middle East for years, exactly the open-ended commitment that Trump had spent his political career promising to avoid.

The tension became evident in the administration’s reported plan to arm Kurdish fighters to move against the regime on the ground. At one level, this solved a problem Trump was grappling with – how to affect political change in Iran without committing American troops – but it also came with great risk. The use of the Kurds could antagonise pro-American Iranians (who are also nationalist) and boost the regime. It would anger Turkey, potentially leading to the collapse of its peace process with the Kurds, and it could lead Erdogan to intervene against them. After consulting with the Turks, Trump backed off, telling reporters “the war’s complicated enough without getting the Kurds involved”.

Early operational results were impressive in the way that early operational results often are. The US and Israel destroyed much of what remained of Iran's navy and air force. Many of Iran’s missile systems were eliminated. More senior figures across the regime were killed. Trump began to claim that the war was “already won” and “very complete”. Some leading Republicans, such as Senator Josh Hawley, urged him to declare victory. Trump told Fox (Fake❗) News that he would end the war when he felt it “in his bones”.

Yet, the costs began to accumulate in ways for which the administration had not prepared.

Iran immediately expanded the war by hitting over a dozen countries in the region, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Oman, and Turkey. Iran targeted US bases but it also struck airports, energy facilities, and data centers, with a particular focus on the UAE. To some, it appeared counterproductive – Iran was uniting the region against it. But, Tehran knew that it could not win a limited war against the United States and Israel. It was taking aim at the core value proposition of many of the Gulf states – that they are safe and reliable venues for investment and in some cases tourism. Tehran also hoped that the region would pressure the United States to end the war. Trump was, by his own admission, surprised: “They weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East. Nobody expected that. We were shocked.”

Iran also gained effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, denying transit to allied traffic. Iran was able to use its coastal areas to threaten ships and tankers with rockets and drones. A closure of the Strait had often been gamed out by Pentagon planners but they did not have a ready-made option to open it without the use of ground troops. In an extraordinary twist, Iran was able to keep using the Strait itself to export oil and the United States even lifted some sanctions on Iranian oil to keep it flowing into the market as prices hovered around 💲100 per barrel. Trump went through various stages of grief. He denied that it mattered at all because the United States does not get oil from the Strait. He blamed others, especially Europe, for not opening the Strait. And ultimately he would accept the closure by imposing a counter-blockade.

The deeper problem, however, was that Iran had absorbed the strikes and adapted. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), far from being broken, became even more dominant than it was under Ali Khamenei. Iran had been facing a succession crisis but the circumstances of the war meant that Mojtaba Khamenei was able to succeed his father without great unrest – partially because he was injured and lost several members of his family in the initial strikes and partially because real power seemed to lie elsewhere, with the IRGC (Republican Guard). The Iran regime, smartly, also, quickly came to understand that it had real leverage over the United States, the Gulf, and the global economy more generally.

Iran was supported, quietly but materially, by China and Russia. China’s largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, provided Iran with chipmaking tools and technical training; satellite companies provided real-time imagery of US forces; Iran acquired a Chinese spy satellite and was able to use it to capture images that were used in drone and missile strikes; and China provided Iran with sodium perchlorate, a precursor used for solid missile propellant. Meanwhile, Russia reportedly provided Iran with targeting intelligence, spare parts, missile components, and advanced drones. Trump was largely dismissive of both countries’ efforts, saying that the United States also helped Tehran’s and Moscow’s enemies, and that their assistance was not making much of a difference anyway.
Trump in a bind

By early May 2026, Trump confronted a set of choices that ranged from poor to worse. He did not want to fight a war of attrition that could drag on for the rest of 2026, and perhaps longer. 

Yet, each alternative option had been narrowed by the choices that came before it.

Trump thought about escalating. One option was to conduct a raid on Iran’s nuclear sites to seize its highly enriched uranium. This could provide a spectacular tactical success that would allow him to declare victory and end the war.  (Rumor has it that Trump actually tried this failed tactic, but he lost when the air raid plan was foiled and several pilots were nearly killed, one went missing but was rescued.  Americans have never learned the identity of those pilots.)

But such an operation would be extremely difficult to pull off. It would likely require thousands of troops deployed to the site for up to a week, to extract hazardous material from under rubble, transport it out by air, all while under attack. Another idea was to seize Kharg Island, a critical hub for Iran’s oil industry, only giving it back to Iran after it accepts US terms. But US troops needed would find themselves within range of Iranian rockets. A third escalation option was to deploy ground forces to the coastal area of Iran near the Strait to clear out Iran’s military positions but this could lead to a protracted ground war.

Finally, having considered and discounted all of these options, Trump threatened to destroy all of Iran’s infrastructure, including its energy plants and bridges. But this appeared certain to result in Iranian retaliation against the Gulf states’ critical infrastructure, including energy and water desalination plants. On 7 April, Trump posted on Truth Social that “a whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again”, shocking many of his own supporters. As the clock ticked closer to his own deadline, he agreed to a ceasefire brokered by Pakistan.

The other option was to agree to a deal with Iran, closer to its terms. This would impose limits on Iran’s enrichment program but not abolish it entirely; it would not touch its missile program; it would recognise Tehran’s effective control over the Strait of Hormuz; and it would give Iran full sanctions relief. In the ceasefire announcement, Trump said that Iran’s 10-point plan was “a workable basis on which to negotiate”. Within days he was backing away, and in talks in Islamabad, Vice President JD Vance found that Iran had no intention of accepting US demands on its nuclear program. Trump then imposed a counter-blockade on Iran in the expectation that it would cause the regime to quickly accept his terms. It did not.

The United States had imposed significant military damage on Iran, destroying its navy and air force, much of its missile program, and its defence industrial base. Trump was puzzled that the regime was not accepting defeat. But there is a difference between tactical and strategic success. The regime had survived, which was an accomplishment in itself. It discovered the equivalent of an economic nuclear weapon in its ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. And it was able to hit the Gulf states and Israel with missiles and drones throughout the war, despite the aerial bombardment. In effect, both sides sincerely believed they won and were in little mood to compromise.

The most likely outcome to the war is a settlement that satisfies no one. Either a stronger nuclear arrangement than the 2015, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but one that involves sanctions relief and leaves Iran’s missile program untouched and the regime intact; or an arrangement closer to the offer Iran tabled in late April in which the Strait reopens and nothing else is settled.

The consequences for MAGA

The World Bank estimates that the Iran war may already be the largest ever oil supply shock. If the war drags on, the costs will mount. The brunt of it will be felt in Asia, the destination for 80% of the oil that flows through the Strait of Hormuz. There are soon likely to be shortages of key commodities, including petrochemicals and fertiliser, not just a spike in price. The United States is relatively insulated from this shock compared to some of its allies, as is Israel, but there will be upward pressure on the price of energy and inflation more generally. That is bad news for the Trump administration and Republicans as they head into the 2026, mid-term elections.

Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran alienated many of his most ardent high-profile supporters, including media figures Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, but his approval ratings among Republicans and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement remain high. Trump has long claimed that MAGA means whatever he says it means, but the war may spark a rebellion as the 2028, primary approaches. 

Media reports have recounted Vance’s opposition to the war within the administration, which could give him an advantage over another likely candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But Vance is in a difficult spot, unable to criticize Trump directly and forced to defend something he doesn’t believe in. (Probably this is the reason why the former Marine Corporal J.D. Vance, our elected vice president, was not in the photo-op shown about the May 27, Trumpian boring stupid kitchen cabinet meeting. Instead, Trump was bookended by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Whiskey Hegseth.)

The war is also likely to undermine political support for the US-Israel alliance among Republicans, particularly if it drags on and is perceived to go badly. Early in the conflict, Rubio told the press that the United States was compelled to strike Iran because Washington knew an Israeli strike was imminent and that Iran would retaliate against American forces.

Above all though, the Iran war is a reminder that Trump’s second term is markedly different to his first and that he is willing to take big risks on issues that he believes could build a unique legacy. These actions will have outsized geopolitical consequences. The Middle East will be different after this war ends. There may well be (and very likely will be) other shoes to drop in the next two-and-a-half years.

The Interpreter has a strong commitment to analytic integrity. Our editorial stance is independent and non-partisan, with the aim of informing and strengthening discussions about international policy.

Our focus is the Asia-Pacific – the region’s politics, security, economies, and international relationships – though we range more widely when events elsewhere shape the regional order or carry lessons for it. Australian perspectives are welcome.

Donald Trump is creating a treasonous slush fund to reward criminal insurrectionist supporters- using our tax money!

Echo opinion letters published in the Sun Sentinel, a South Florida newspaper:

Maine Writer opinion:  Donald Trump is telling his storm troopers to prepare for a January 6th encore insurrection by assuring them of his intention to compensate their evil fealty. ⚠️

January 6, 2021 Trump evil storm troopers will be compensated if the slush fund is permitted. But I believe Trump also intends to use this  💲1.8 million to pay collaborators to keep Republicans in kowtow positions.

Only in the U.S.A. can you get a mob together, march to the U.S. Capitol, cause millions of dollars in damage, assault the police, have members of Congress fear for their lives and subsequently be charged, only to be pardoned by the man in the White House.

How am I doing so far❓

Now the same person sets up a “slush fund” to the tune of 💲1.8 billion, an anti-weaponization fund which is blantly illegal in return for never having to be audited by the IRS.

The same person does not care about the financial condition of the citizens of this country, but he wants to reward those who damaged the Capitol. You can bet they will apply for compensation. I wonder if that will include the families of officers who died or committed suicide.

Surely a sad 😥day in America’s history.

From — Pat Eland in Delray Beach, Florida

Trump sinks lower and lower

According to Trump, Iran’s weapons have been annihilated. We won the war. Our economy is better than ever. Food costs are down. Gas will go down soon.  So why do I feel sick to my stomach❓🤢

Because Trumpzi, his family and Cabinet are existential threats to America. We stand by and watch Trump destroy all the safeguards of our institutions while Russia and China revel in the demise of our democracy. While so many suffer, our president enriches himself, his family and his cronies. These despicable acts are the norm of this administration.

Just when I think Trump can’t sink any lower, he pulls another act of sick retribution: a slush fund for the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol. The king of criminality wants to compensate the offenders whom he has already pardoned.

Donald Trump, who called his treasonous supporters (a.k.a. "storm troopers") to arms, wants our tax dollars 💲 to compensate these tyrants. And to think he was elected twice❗ A self-proclaimed king👑 ⚠️💢will be remembered for his savage disrespect for America, its people, and all it stands for.

We must vote as one. Our lives, children’s and grandchildren’s lives depend on our actions. The only way is with truth and justice — the American way.

From — Esther Feit, Delray Beach in Florida

Donald Trump said he does not think about consumers! Yes, he said that!

Donald Trump Is Now the Un-Populist

Donald Trump, on May 12, 2026, while taking questions from reporters about the Iran conflict. When asked if he was considering Americans' financial situations during negotiations, he responded, "Not even a little bit."

Published in New York Magazine Intelligencer by Ed Kilgore

From the expensive and unnecessary ballroom to the illegal Iran war, to blatant self-dealing, Donald Trump is ignoring the will of the people — to his Growing Old Party's peril.

Less than four months from now, early voting begins in the 2026, midterm general elections. Political scientists differ on exactly when voting intentions are formed, but the consensus is that for the vast majority of the electorate, it happens well before the last-minute rush of campaigning. Most Republicans, whose control of Congress is at risk in November, are acutely aware that they are running out of time to convince swing voters that their sour perceptions of Donald Trump’s job performance — always the single most important variable affecting midterm outcomes — are erroneous. And at almost every turn, the president seems to be on a mission to make that as hard as possible.

While assessments of Trump’s handling of a broad range of issues have remained well underwater for over a year now, there are particularly and especially salient negative perceptions of how well he’s dealt with high living costs (arguably the issue that most determined his 2024 victory over Kamala Harris) and whether his strange and aimless war with Iran was a good idea. Trump’s two biggest problems are dangerously interactive, since the Iran war’s effect on global energy prices has clearly boosted domestic inflation, and his prosecution of this “war of choice” has come to symbolize his refusal to focus on the public’s actual concerns. For all the interminable discussion of a GOP “affordability agenda,” it’s getting very late in the year for that agenda to suddenly appear.

And, most recently, despite the intense loyalty congressional Republicans have consistently shown toward Trump, an unprecedented revolt has broken out, for the moment shutting down the legislative process. The growing GOP grievance is that Trump is continuing to elevate personal hobbyhorses (e.g., his White House ballroom project, which he now wants taxpayers to subsidize, and his bizarre new slush fund for alleged victims of Biden administration persecution) over the measures Republicans need to stay in office.


The implications of this revolt go beyond smooth executive-legislative relations or even the unity of the GOP. Whatever one thinks of Donald Trump from the perspective of ethics, policy, the U.S. Constitution, or the health of democratic institutions, his prowess as a gut-level politician has been universally, if grudgingly, respected. An essential ingredient of the loyalty he has inspired in the Republican ranks has been his ability to bend traditional conservatism to “populism,” a voter-friendly blend of themes and proposals that probably saved the GOP from the irrelevance it seemed to be courting before he came down the escalator in 2015. He famously convinced a party in love with “entitlement reform” to lay off trying to slaughter the sacred cows of Social Security and Medicare. He talked Republicans out of a near century of free-trade orthodoxy because culturally conservative blue-collar voters hated NAFTA. And he convinced the militarist wing of the GOP that massive defense spending didn’t require actually using it in unpopular “forever wars.”

Now comes the terrifying possibility that the man who made Republicans “populists” is himself becoming the ultimate un-populist. Trump is not just ignoring (or, because he can only acknowledge praise of himself, actively denying) public opinion; he seems to be courting unpopularity. Americans really dislike his beloved tariffs, and although Trump has the perfect legal excuses to stop pursuing them, he still persists. Trump can’t stop bashing Obamacare, even though he got badly burned on the subject in his first term and has no coherent replacement for it. His war in Iran was the rare U.S. war that was unpopular from the get-go, but he can’t seem to let go of it, and it’s an even bet he’ll start another war before suppertime. The political “outsider” who was too rich to bribe is now the consummate insider grabbing money with both hands to enrich his family and friends and the most disreputable of his supporters.

Most astonishing of all, the veteran entertainer who understood the intense resentment of working people for elites who seemed to mock them while fleecing them is now becoming the elitist-in-chief. He is explicitly annoyed that people struggling to make ends meet don’t appreciate they are living in a “golden age” in which stock markets climb dizzily upward on record corporate profits. He’s angry that Americans don’t just take his word for it that they need to pay higher prices for gasoline or light and heat so that he can win some more wars and peace prizes. And he is indifferent at best to how very bad it looks that he is devoting more time to his many tacky and self-glorifying vanity projects than to his day job. Many regular folk used to enjoy watching Trump thumb his nose at the powers that be. Now he’s the Man, the very opposite of a plucky underdog.

For Republicans who desperately need his help to retain their offices and their power, it increasingly appears that Trump has lost touch with the country. Yes, he’ll help them in the midterms by rigging congressional districts and perhaps interfering with the vote itself, but not by bending to adverse public opinion. It would be one thing if like some second-term presidents of the past, he drifted toward lame-duck status and began ceding power to his allies and successors. But no: Trump dominates news media and the political landscape more forcefully and ubiquitously than ever. (The more Trump talks, the more he contradicts himself and his advisors.)

He’s in danger not only of squandering his party’s midterm-election hopes, but of handing his putative heir J.D. Vance an anvil and the GOP an indelible MAGA brand — even as the idea that he has restored “American greatness” becomes ridiculous to all but his fiercest acolytes.

It’s possible, of course, that such assessments once again underestimate the 47th. Perhaps, against all expectations, he will snap out of his extended fugue state and begin listening to the public and his party leaders. But, Donald Trump would be well advised to make his 80th-birthday wish Make Trump popular again. In the meantime, the candle  he’s already🕯️ blowing out is his own.

Donald Trump''s slush funds is a criminal use of tax payer money for him to use for his own vindiciive purposes

 Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial

Times Opinion: Trump’s new slush fund is rank corruption — public money for lawbreakers and his corrupt pals.
The dollar amount in Donald Trump's

💲1.776 Billion slush fund memorializes this nation's revolutionary break from a king; if this agreement fully goes through, we might as well be returning to an unaccountable monarchy. The origin of this corrupt pot of cash for the president to pay himself, his family and his political allies, including January 6th, rioters and other democracy enemies, was his personal lawsuit against the IRS, which has been settled with the new agreement to create the slush fund.

If there has been one through line to the second Trump administration, it is the effort to relentlessly push the boundaries of what is possible or acceptable by an executive a little further out every day. This represents one major leap in the direction of authoritarianism — Donald Trump is directly raiding the public coffers to enrich cronies, not just via his corrupt business dealings and pseudo-bribes from foreign governments, but straight up getting checks from the public treasury.

Also, we must ask what this outcome ultimately incentivizes❓ It's hard not to read it as Donald Trump paying the foot soldiers in his failed 2021, coup for t

These convicted  insurrectionists have already ensured that they won't face criminal consequences for their attempt to end American democracy during their evil January 6th attacks on the Capitol. It is impossible to understand how Republicans continue to support evil Trumpzi-ism and his corrupt intentions. 

Trump has continuously intimated that he may attempt to run for a third term; this would of course be unconstitutional, but Trump has demonstrated that he places very little stock in that document.
The Anti-Weaponization Fund (aka "slush fund") being set up in the Department of Justice will have a five-person board answering only to the attorney general, who is now Trump's former personal criminal defense lawyer Todd Blanche in an acting capacity. There will be no congressional oversight and no public accountability. It's also not clear who can seek money, but as the Daily News pointed out, Rudy Giuliani and Eric Adams seem to fit the profile.

The message of these payouts is that those who violate the law, even those who engage in violence on behalf of Trump's agenda may, not only evade consequences but be compensated with public funds, a sickening outcome. In addition, the settlement reportedly has stipulations that the IRS will forever suspend inquiries into Trump, family members and companies over past tax non-compliance. What is that if not a direct license to keep even more public money pilfered via nonpayment, and a marker that the president and his inner circle are above the law❓

Police officers who defended Congress on January 6 are suing to stop this Anti-Weaponization Fund, 💢which would reward the mob who beat them. That seems like pretty good standing to us.

Congress, of course, should also probe this extraordinarily corrupt transactionk if it is ever able to shake itself out of its stupor and engage in the checks that it is supposed to have on the executive, who has busied himself weaponizing the government for his benefit while sapping Congress' own powers.

As shocking as this slush fund is, it should best be understood as one more test for what the administration can get away with. If that test is successful, it will absolutely not be the last time that Trump raids our taxpayer dollar💲 to bolster the MAGA agenda in direct contravention to the interests of protecting American democracy.

Donald Trump has zero integrity no respect for America's fallen heroes. Memorial Day begins the cruel construction for his hideous arch

In Washington DC, the nation’s capital, this Memorial Day will be like no other. Editorial opinion published in the Boston Globe.

The once unbroken vista across the Potomac River leading to Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place of 400,000 American veterans, last week became something of a construction zone — as plans proceed apace for Donald Trump’s hideous triumphal arch on Memorial Circle.

What the arch is supposed to celebrate — what “triumph,” real or imagined — is itself a matter of controversy and conjecture. What is certain is that nothing — not a lawsuit brought by veterans nor a federal court order halting its construction — will stand in the way of a president more obsessed with monuments than with honoring the fallen service members this day was set aside to honor more than 150 years ago.

Having set his sights on Memorial Circle near the entry to the Arlington military cemetery for his 250-foot arch, topped by two gilded eagles and a gold-plated Lady Liberty — all with wings extended — Trump apparently wasn’t waiting for Congress or the federal courts to give him the go-ahead.

No, exactly a week before Memorial Day 2026, the fencing went up at Memorial Circle, along with an industrial drilling rig and pink flags used by surveyors.

It was days after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum had testified at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing. And according to Representative Jared Huffman of California, “there wasn’t a project. Not even a proposal. Just a discussion,” Huffman posted on Instagram.

Asked at that hearing, “Who is the arch being built for?” Burgum responded, “For the American people.”

However, when asked last year by a CBS reporter what the monument was for, Trump pointed to himself and answered, “Me.”

And who are we to not take Trump at his word❓

The design was reportedly inspired by Trump’s fascination with the Arc de Triomphe, which began during a visit to Paris in his first term for a ceremony marking the anniversary of the end of World War I. But the Parisian landmark, its construction begun during the reign of Napoleon, is, however, only 164 feet high. It would be dwarfed by Trump’s proposed 250-foot monument — a figure that’s supposed to represent the nation’s 250th birthday and originally slated to be completed by July 4, 2026.

Meanwhile, the administration has cut medical staffing at the Veterans Affairs Department.

The arch would be more than double the size of the Lincoln Memorial and the equivalent of a 25-story office building, the lawsuit filed against its construction notes.

“Its location on Memorial Circle would situate the monument on an axis between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, obstructing a line of sight that was designed to represent the unification of the Nation following the Civil War and that has existed for nearly a century,” the suit says.

The lawsuit also charges the construction is illegal because it lacks congressional approval and ignores a host of “statutes impos[ing] procedural requirements” for construction in the area.

But mostly, the Vietnam vets and the architectural historian bringing the suit argue it “would dishonor their military and foreign service and the legacy of their comrades and other veterans buried at Arlington National Cemetery, and would degrade their personal experience when visiting Arlington Cemetery or traveling around Memorial Circle and on the Memorial Avenue Corridor.”

And could there be a more stark contrast to the row upon row of simple white gravestones than this proposed gaudy monument to nothing more than the enormous ego of the current occupant of the White House❓🤢

It speaks volumes about the offensiveness of this ego driven project — and its location — that the administration simply couldn’t wait for this Memorial Day to pass before the very pathway to Arlington National Cemetery was desecrated with fencing and drilling equipment.

People, of course, will still come to Arlington, will still place the flags that honor loved ones, brothers and sisters in arms, fallen heroes, as they have since this sacred place was opened to honor the service of those who fought on opposite sides in a war that nearly tore this nation apart. Arlington became part of the healing process — as it was on that day in May 1868, when some 5,000 men and women walked among the then 20,000 graves of Union and Confederate soldiers, decorating them “with the choicest flowers of springtime,” former Union General John A. Logan insisted.

“We should guard their graves with sacred vigilance,” he added. “Let pleasant paths invite the coming and going of reverent visitors and fond mourners. Let no neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten as a people the cost of a free and undivided republic.”

True then. Truer now.

Main Stream media not holing the evil Trumpzi administration to the same standards as with President Joe Biden

 

Trump self-deals, lies and seems to fall asleep in meetings. The media treats it all as ‘priced in’ (IOW already reflects all known information and expected) published in The Guardian by Margaret Sullivan.

As for the corporate news media, they remain highly distractible and largely deferential.

Trump is a sleety sleepy criminal 🥱  

Trump's insane screeds on his ❗ social media posts are unhinged. He falls asleep in meetings. He proudly proclaims he’s not thinking “even a little bit” about Americans’ personal finances in talks with Iran. And he lies constantly about the supposed success of the war with Iran he started for no good reason.  (To quote Joseph Heller in Catch 22: "From now on I will think only about myself". 🤢) 

That’s just the start, of course, when it comes to Donald Trump’s disastrous second presidency. There’s the ruination of the Kennedy Center, the building of a ballroom (or bunker?) to replace the White House East Wing, and the wrecking ball that the Trump-aligned supreme court has taken to the voting rights of Black Americans. There’s the endless self-dealing and the abuse of the justice department’s intended purpose.

And yet, the mainstream media doesn’t make much of any of that, not in any sustained way.

The shocking excesses and corruption of Trump 2.0 are “priced in”.

These outrages, for the most part, are largely treated as, well, Trump being Trump.

It’s as if much of big media has decided that it’s too much trouble to focus, in any sustained way, on developments that would have resulted in weeks of headlines, if not impeachment and conviction, in the pre-Trump era. And certainly in the President Biden era.

“I simply cannot believe I live in a timeline where journalists helped force the last president out of his reelection campaign for being too old, so the country put an unstable 79-year-old who falls asleep constantly in office and none of the same journalists care at all,” one observer, Jamesetta Williams, put it succinctly on X/ (formerly Twitter).

Next month, Trump turns 80. He functions with no apparent restraints, and it seems doubtful that the situation will improve any time soon.

Some extreme outrages do rise to the surface, provoking a raised eyebrow or two.

The New York Times gave its lead news position in print the other day to his “anti-weaponization fund” of 💲1.8bn. It’s intended to use taxpayer money to compensate his allies – maybe including the January 6, convicted criminal rioters who attacked police officers – for being prosecuted by an earlier iteration of the US justice department.

Reporters quoted Donald K Sherman, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a legal watchdog organization, calling it “one of the single most corrupt acts in American history”. And a sub-headline made a carefully distanced reference to “critics” who call this a slush fund.

Ah, the critics. There they are again.

The mainstream media largely shrugged off the slush-fund story, depicting it as politics as usual – no cause for alarm or sustained coverage. The NBC evening newscast by Wednesday had moved on, focusing instead on Raúl Castro’s indictment, the California wildfires and a car explosion in lower Manhattan. And Fox News, home to the fervid Maga base, offered cursory coverage both on the air and online, giving an obligatory nod to Democratic lawmakers who voiced their objections, but mostly handing the network’s microphone to Trump allies such as JD Vance and the loyalist acting attorney general, Todd Blanche.

Granted, there have been a few recent pieces about Trump’s apparent physical and mental decline, including one by Jonathan Lemire in the Atlantic. He acknowledged that Trump hasn’t faced the same scrutiny for his age-related decline as Biden did, and pointed out “questions about his health and increasingly erratic behavior”.

But it didn’t get all that much attention. Nothing does.

One of the problems, of course, is that there’s just so much.

Journalists get geared up to cover one outrage – $1bn for ballroom security! – when another one comes along: $1.8bn for the slush fund!

And ever onward.

Now he’s dissing Americans’ worries about their family budgets, but that fades as he schmoozes the next authoritarian dictator, or threatens “a friendly takeover of Cuba”.

“Flood the zone with shit,” was the way former Trump aide Steve Bannon once described the media strategy. It’s turned out to be a highly effective technique.

One almost can’t blame overwhelmed citizens for wanting to hide their heads in the sand, despite the extraordinary dangers of doing so.

As for the corporate news media, they remain highly distractible and largely deferential. Also, not really unhappy since Trump provides constant outrage, which makes for news, and then he moves on

They do, too.

Often, it falls to independent voices – not associated with corporate media – to say the obvious, loud and clear.

Terry Moran, formerly of ABC News and now on Substack, called the slush fund “plunder” in a recent post, and urged mainstream media to stop using “weasel words”, like unusual or controversial, to report on it. Moran called an associated development, the shielding of the Trump family’s entire tax history from scrutiny, for all time, as “breathtakingly corrupt”.

You won’t hear THAT on the evening news or in the rest of mainstream media.
By the time you read this, they’ll already have moved on. 💢

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans support evil Stephen Miller and his wife Katie Miller cruel child separation from immigrant parents

Evil Stephen Miller delivers for Trump: 145,000 US kids separated from their parents:  A thinktank investigation shows how immigration detention has torn apart families, and experts point to trauma.  Published in The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi

More than 53,000 citizen children with a detained parent were estimated to be under the age of six. 😢

Evil Stephen Miller, Donald Trump’s immigration czar and the architect of some of the government’s cruelest policies, doesn’t care what you think about him. He doesn’t care if you call him “Pee-wee German” or “Weird Stephen” or “Voldemort”, or any of the other nicknames he has inspired; his self-esteem is excellent. (Try Miller's doppelganger, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi public relations officer and chief architect of the regime's messaging.)

Joseph Goebbels (29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945)

“I have a very, very secure, intact ego,” Miller told Fox (Fake❗) News’s Jesse Watters this week after being asked how he felt about his wife, Katie Miller, potentially landing a big distribution deal with Paramount for her terrible Maga podcast. “I’ve never had a larger fan following,” Miller continued. “[A]ny man who works for Donald Trump is a man that is very, very strong and self-assured in his role.”

Well, yes, I suppose you’ve got to be a very, very strong man to separate babies from their parents – which is what Miller will forever be famous for. Back in Trump 1.0, Miller played a key role in implementing a “zero tolerance” border policy that systematically removed more than 5,000 immigrant children, some just a few months old, from their parents at the US-Mexico border. 

A Human Rights Watch report released in December 2024, found that as many as 1,360 children had never been reunited with their parents.😟😠😢

Trump is not the first president to detain or deport the parents of US citizen minors. Nevertheless, he’s doing it at a much faster rate, and in a much crueler way, than his predecessor. 

A data analysis by ProPublica published in March found “ICE arrests of parents doubled in the first seven months of Trump’s second term compared with the President Joseph Biden administration”. It also found mothers were being more aggressively targeted: “Trump is deporting about four times as many moms of US citizen children per day as Biden did.” A Guardian investigation from May uncovered similar statistics.

Another change from Biden administration norms are the guidelines on how immigration officers should exercise their discretion when it comes to families. “A document once known as the Parental Interests Directive has been given a new name under Trump – the Detained Parents Directive,” writes ProPublica. “And its preamble, which once instructed agents to handle immigrant parents in a way that was ‘humane,’ has been stripped of the word.”

Again:  Sadly, Trump is not the first president to separate US citizen children from their immigrant parents. But no other administration has been so callous about the welfare of the children affected. “The bottom line is that there is no systematic approach to protecting the children of those detained by ICE,” the Brookings report states. There is “no government entity … responsible for their wellbeing”. There also isn’t adequate record-keeping, meaning we have little idea what is happening to all these children.

What we do know, of course, is that many of these children are going to be immensely traumatized. Kelly Kribs, an attorney at the Young Center, told the Guardian in May that the separation crisis unfolding now is even more insidious than the family separation policy from Trump 1.0. “It’s leading to all the same forms of trauma that we saw unfold back in 2018,” said Kribs. “But the speed and the scale of the separations now is at a level we’ve never seen before.”

One suspects that the Millers, who have three kids of their own, are not particularly perturbed by these 145,000 traumatized children. Stephen met his wife, Katie, when they both worked for Trump during his first term, and she is just as hawkish on immigration as he is. “DHS sent me to the border to see the separations for myself – to try to make me more compassionate – but it didn’t work,” Katie boasted to Jacob Soboroff in 2018, according to his book, Separated. She added that colleagues told her she’d think about family separation differently when she had her own kids: “But I don’t think so.” Perhaps she’ll share some more of her charming views with us on The Katie Miller Podcast. (a weekly talk-show style series hosted by conservative communications strategist Katie Miller.)

Donald Trump and maga Republicans want Americans tax money to create a slush fund to support convicted criminals!

Trump’s 💲1.8 Billion Slush Fund Is Worse Than Stealing

Definition: an unofficial, loosely regulated pool of money set aside for unspecified, discretionary, or illicit purposes

Recasting the January 6 insurrection as the work of heroic patriots remains the president’s highest priority. Published in The Atlantic, by Jonathan Chait

Among the very first things Donald Trump did upon assuming the powers of the presidency for the second time was commute the sentences of, and grant pardons to, everybody involved in his attempt to overturn the 2020, election. 😡😠 Republican allies expressed moderate disappointment but vowed to move past this ugly blemish. Senator Susan Collins called it a “terrible day for our Justice Department.” Senator Tommy Tuberville admitted, “It’s a hard one, because we work with them up here,” referring to Capitol Police who were viciously beaten by Trump’s allies. Tuberville concluded, “At the end of the day, we’ve got to get January 6, behind us.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said that Republicans were “not looking backwards; we’re looking forward.”

It was not, however, just one terrible day. Trump’s loyalty to his most violent and criminal supporters was a signal of his highest priority and has been a reliable guide to his decisions ever since. The impulse to rewrite the history of January 6, 2021, appears to be the inspiration even for the establishment of a 💲1.8 billion Treasury Department slush fund ❗for victims of so-called weaponization of government.

Last week, when the administration floated the notion of disbursing payments to alleged victims of government weaponization, cynics assumed that Trump meant to divert the money to himself. But this assessment may have turned out to be too naïve. Trump already has ample ways to profit from office, including from stock trading with the benefit of inside knowledge and by accepting gifts from client states. The Justice Department told reporters yesterday that Trump, his sons, and his family business would not receive payments from the fund. The recipients will almost surely be insurrectionists and other Trumpzi allies.

How, exactly, can Trump hand out taxpayer dollars at his whim❓ The putative mechanism is a settlement with the Internal Revenue Service. In 2020, an IRS contractor leaked a few years of Trump’s tax records. (Before Trump, major presidential candidates had for decades voluntarily released their returns, an essential step in demonstrating that they had no conflicts of interest.)

The contractor was caught and sent to prison. Trump, nevertheless, sued for the offense of being subjected to a portion of the scrutiny his fellow candidates have voluntarily undergone. 

Because Trump runs the IRS, it is no longer in a position to place any limits on his demands. He has already exploited the loophole of suing his own government to pay a series of allies investigated for or convicted of committing crimes out of loyalty to him. The recipients include the family of Ashli Babbitt, an insurrectionist who was shot and killed on January 6, while smashing her way into a corridor behind which members of Congress had taken shelter from the mob.

Trump’s Justice Department describes the forthcoming payouts as a “systematic process to hear and redress claims of others who suffered weaponization and lawfare.” The process is, in fact, the opposite of systemic. It is designed to be controlled personally by Trump and sheltered from any judicial scrutiny.

If the government were actually compensating victims of lawfare, it would direct payments to James Comey, Mark Kelly, Adam Schiff, and other targets of Trump’s vindictive prosecutions. 

Trump has described his actions as turnabout—“I was hunted by some very bad people. Now I’m the hunter.”—which, given that he has called his own prosecutions political targeting, is tantamount to confessing that he is targeting his enemies.

But, of course, nobody entertains for a moment the thought that the fund could conceivably reward an actual victim of weaponization. To ensure that it will never be used for a deserving victim, the fund is scheduled for termination on December 15, 2028.

Asked by a reporter yesterday whether people who committed violence against police officers should receive payments, Trump replied, “It’ll all be dependent on a committee. A committee’s being set up of very talented people, very highly respected people.” The committee is being selected entirely by Trump, who retains the power to replace any member who displeases him, and who in any case has argued in multiple contexts that he is entitled to exert full control over any decision by the executive branch.

The most dystopian explanation for this scheme comes from sources who sketched it out to ABC News last week. As ABC’s reporters characterized it, the sources described the fund as “a hybrid between a victim compensation fund—similar to the civil claims process that followed the 2010, Deepwater Horizon oil spill—and a truth-and-reconciliation-style commission.”

Trump’s commission is deviously inverting the original and most famous truth-and-reconciliation commission. South Africa established its commission to document the crimes committed under its apartheid regime. Rather than uncovering the truth to facilitate the state’s transformation from authoritarianism into democracy, Trump is doing the reverse, inscribing his lies into the historical record in an effort to undermine democracy.

It is common to describe Trump’s steps as vengeance, but he has more in mind than merely settling old scores. This obsession drove Trump to support a successful primary challenge to Senator Bill Cassidy, whose offense was casting a symbolic vote to impeach him after January 6. Cassidy had long since surrendered any independent impulses, to the point of violating his own pro-vaccine convictions to cast a humiliating, decisive vote to confirm (the idiot❗) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services. Yet Cassidy’s penitence did not satisfy Trump.

Trump considers it essential both to intimidate anybody who would stop him from carrying out illegal orders—hence his attempts to imprison Democrats who truthfully advised military members that they should not obey illegal orders—and to reward anybody who does follow them. He has reportedly promised mass pardons before he leaves office. Trump could have waited until after the 2028, elections to set up his slush fund, but he is doing it now in a high-profile way, presumably to communicate directly that loyal allies can expect lavish rewards.

The government’s operating ethos during Trump’s second term has followed the dictum that the president and his allies are immune from the law, while his enemies can expect to be hounded. As his party watches silently and cowers, his intentions grow only more naked.💢😡😱

Donald Trump and maga Republicans are wrong to promote expensive and unpopular Trumpian narcissists' policies

News Analysis published in The New York Times by Luke Broadwater

Defiant After Bad Week, Trump Pushes Ahead on Politically Unpopular Ideas. Donald Trump continues to act like he’s politically all-powerful, even in the face of indications that he is not.

By pretty much any estimation, Donald Trump has had a very bad week.

New poll numbers show his approval rating has hit a second-term low. He is weighing whether to restart a bombing campaign in an unpopular war against Iran. Gas prices are high and inching higher heading into Memorial Day weekend. And his grip over Republican lawmakers is beginning to slip after he proposed a pair of deeply unpopular spending items, prompting an unusual revolt from the Senate.

When faced with such a backlash ahead of midterm elections, many politicians would pivot, redirecting their focus to issues they are on stronger footing with.

But Trump has decided to double down, presenting himself as politically all-powerful even in the face of indications that he is not.

Over the years, Trump has often appeared to have an air of invincibility. He survived assassination attempts and won re-election despite being under multiple criminal indictments. He has successfully exacted retribution on many a perceived enemy. Now, with less than three years left in office, he seems comfortable burning whatever political capital he has in order to leave his legacy, even if it drags his party down in the process.

Rather than abandoning his plan for a 💲1.8 billion fund to reward allies who claim they were persecuted by Democrats, Trump has defended the proposal, suggesting he could have used the taxpayer money to enrich himself.

“I gave up a lot of money in allowing the just announced Anti-Weaponization Fund to go forward. I could have settled my case, including the illegal release of my Tax Returns and the equally illegal BREAK IN of Mar-a-Lago, for an absolute fortune,” the Trump wrote on his (fake❗) social media. “Instead, I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!”

Trump's acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, also (unethically) attempted to defend the plan in a hostile meeting with Senate Republicans. 

Inside the room, Blanche came under withering questioning and criticism. Several Republicans spoke up to express worry that the fund would be used to provide money to people who had attacked police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and were later pardoned by Trump.

The meeting went so poorly for Blanche that party leaders scrapped planned votes on another of Trump’s top priorities: a 💲72 billion immigration crackdown measure lawmakers had planned to muscle through before Memorial Day.

“There’s a boiling point here,” said Sarah Binder, a professor of political science at George Washington University. “Of course, the boiling over, it’s in part because Trump doubles down. He rarely admits that maybe he needs to backtrack a little.”

Trump was also undeterred when another unpopular policy position — using taxpayer money to help fund security for his 💲400 million luxury ballroom on White House grounds — was met with backlash on Capitol Hill.

He said that without the 💲1 billion, the “White House won’t be a very secure place.” He called for the firing of the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, a nonpartisan official who ruled that approving the money would violate Senate rules.

“The Republicans allow the Elizabeth MacDonoughs of the World to stay in power, and brutalize us,” Trump complained.

Another dynamic at play in the Trump White House is a lack of dissenting voices to some of Trump's most extreme ideas.

In Trump’s first term, some of the president’s most radical ideas were checked by aides like John F. Kelly, the Trump White House’s longest-serving chief of staff; Jim Mattis, who was. Trump’s first defense secretary; and Gary Cohn, an economic adviser.

But those men are long gone, and their positions have been filled mostly by people who are true Trumpzi cult believers.


Underscoring that point, Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy, this week defended the so-called weaponization fund, even as critics called it a “slush fund” that could give payouts to Jan. 6 rioters.

“So many lives destroyed, so many livelihoods ruined, so many people who were deprived of their fundamental rights and freedoms as American citizens,” Mr. Miller said of the need for the fund, adding: “This settlement is just a small measure of the justice that they are owed.”

Trump seemed unconcerned about whether these ideas are popular with voters, and has lamented openly that Democrats are likely to gain ground in the midterm elections. He has been most animated when discussing how he exacts vengeance on Republicans who criticize him.





At a political rally Friday in Rockland County, N.Y., Mr. Trump boasted about the recent victories in Republican primaries in which challengers he backed took out incumbent lawmakers who had crossed him.

“We knocked out a bad senator from Louisiana,” Trump said to cheers. “We knocked out everybody,” he added.

Left unsaid was that Trump needed the votes of the Republicans he opposed.

Ms. Binder said she took Trump at his word when he argued last year that he had little further use for Congress, a suggestion that he could enact most of his agenda by circumventing lawmakers. She said that the president was thinking in larger terms about continuing to control the G.O.P. after his presidency, and what kind of legacy, historically and physically, he could leave behind. She pointed to his push to build a triumphal arch in Washington.

“He’s focused on the arch. I think he’s focused on his own personal legacy. He’s focused on vengeance,” she said. “He doesn’t have a legislative agenda, so does he really need a Republican Senate?”


Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.