Monday, March 09, 2026

Trump Press Sec Goes Full Cult as Polls Take Brutal Turn

 Transcript: Trump Press Sec Goes Full Cult as Polls Take Brutal Turn



As this presidency enters the danger zone on multiple fronts, a writer who chronicles Trumpworld explains how cultlike praise of Trump functions for MAGA at moments of political crisis.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 9 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
In this episode, we discuss this polling average showing support for the Iran war at 38 percent, this finding showing Trump’s net approval on immigration has lost 20 points since last year, and these terrible numbers for Trump on the economy.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
We’ve noticed an interesting pattern. Whenever the news gets particularly bad for Donald Trump, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s cult-like obsequiousness gets dialed up to 11. That just happened after Trump was hit with a brutal news cycle on multiple fronts. Those fronts include increasing signs that the U.S. might have bombed an Iranian elementary school, terrible new jobs numbers, and the firing of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Trump’s presidency is in trouble, and it’s at moments like this that his sycophants really step it up. We’re trying to make sense of all this with Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, who dissects Trumpworld as well as anyone out there. Amanda, always good to have you on.
Marcotte: Thanks for having me.
Sargent: So first, we apologize for doing two episodes in a row involving Karoline Leavitt, but we think this is really important. Here’s Leavitt’s latest. Donald Trump exploded on Truth Social insisting that the war will not stop until Iran commits to “unconditional surrender.” That sure sounds like regime change is the goal, so Leavitt tried to clean this up. Listen to this exchange.
Reporter (voiceover): What does the president mean when he calls for unconditional surrender? Is he saying that the regime has to fully relinquish control?
Leavitt (voiceover): What the president means is that when he, as commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goals of Operation Epic Fury have been fully realized—then Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender, whether they say it themselves or not.
Sargent: I mean, that’s just insane. The Iranian regime must fully surrender; how will we know when that has happened? Not when it actually happens—just when Dear Leader says it has happened. This is bizarrely cult-like. What do you think, Amanda?
Marcotte: I had the worst flashback to George W. Bush in his flight suit with his “Mission Accomplished” banner in the Iraq War. He made the same mistake. He put a little bit more effort into the mistake—he maybe didn’t fly completely by the seat of his pants—but he still made the same mistake, which is: If I say the war is over, if I say it’s done, if I say we have succeeded, then that will somehow make it so. And it just turns out that’s not actually true. How many years did the war drag past the “Mission Accomplished” banner? This is not how it works. You can’t just say they have unconditionally surrendered when they’re still shooting at you and throwing bombs and fighting back.
Sargent: And who knows what could happen in the aftermath of this. Of course, the United States could essentially decimate the Iranian regime and then Trump could declare a victory at that point and go home—any one of these scenarios is possible. But what’s kind of alarming is this setting of the table for Trump gets to say what reality is. That’s why I find this so disheartening and so dispiriting to watch.
You have Trump himself popping off and just tweeting out: Here’s the new war goal, the new war goal is unconditional surrender. And instead of hearing from people in the administration who know what they’re talking about, all we get is his chief propagandist telling us that that’s absolutely a brilliant way to describe what’s happening—and that he’ll get to say when it has happened. Do you know what I mean?
Marcotte: Maybe I’m just a Pollyanna, or an eternal optimist, but I can’t help but see the escalating—everything is great, nothing is wrong, Dear Leader knows everything, if Dear Leader says this one day and says [the opposite] the next day, or honestly, with Trump and the Iran war, it changes by the hour, what he claims the objectives are—they’re basically trying to assert not just that Dear Leader knows everything, but that there’s sense to be made out of this pudding-brain nonsense that’s coming out of him. The louder and the more insistent and the harder the clapping gets, the more I just feel like that’s all they have. There’s a stench of desperation coming from Karoline Leavitt.
Sargent: Let’s check out a little bit more of Karoline Leavitt here. She was asked about MAGA’s anger over the attack on Iran. MAGA, of course, is supposed to be anti-interventionist, against foreign entanglements, et cetera. Leavitt said the following:
Leavitt (voiceover): President Trump is the leader of MAGA. He’s the creator of the MAGA movement. And there is nothing more America First than taking out terrorists who have maimed and killed our own servicemen and women, who chant “death to America,” and who pose a threat to the homeland. President Trump is the leader of the “Peace Through Strength” foreign policy doctrine. He attempted peace through diplomacy, exhaustively and extensively, with the rogue Iranian regime. They have been struck with the strength and the sheer might and will of the United States Armed Forces, and President Trump has proven he’s a man of his word.
Sargent: That too is just so crazy. MAGA is whatever Trump says it is. Any legitimate aspirations or fears that Trump voters or MAGA influencers have about excessive foreign military adventurism can just be wiped out by a mighty fatwa from the movement leader. And then of course there’s the bizarrely obsequious way she keeps circling back to praise of Trump himself. What did you make of this one?
Marcotte: It’s really interesting. Once again, I smell desperation. And a lot of the dynamics—the palace intrigue, but also what’s going on in right-wing media—can point to what the larger problem they’re facing is, which is that it’s increasingly clear to everyone in the MAGA movement that Donald Trump is not going to be there for another term. It’s not only illegal—he’s turning 80 this year, he’s in poor health, he has this vile rash on his neck, he has total pudding brain. His hands—we all know he’s not looking good. He sounds terrible. And he’s probably just not going to be able to run again, even if it was legal.
Everyone is trying to figure out what MAGA looks like after Donald Trump. But from Donald Trump’s perspective—or from the perspective of Karoline Leavitt, who needs to make him feel good to keep her job—we have to keep up this illusion that he’s going to live forever and that this debate about what happens next is not even happening, because Dear Leader will live forever. I think that’s what’s going on. You don’t live forever. Biology catches up with you. He’s not going to be able to tamp down these tensions within the party for that long.
Sargent: I hadn’t even thought about it this way, but the constant drumbeat of “Trump is invincible, Trump is strong, Trump is powerful, Trump is the great leader of MAGA” and so forth—it is also about the very visible signs of Trump’s physical decline, his mental decline, and his mortality, isn’t it. That is the thing that’s hovering over all this. He’s not going to be there forever. He’s on his way out. This is a last hurrah. He’s getting to blow up a bunch of things—cool, great, he’s very powerful and strong. But that’s what’s lurking behind all this obsequiousness.
Marcotte: To a large degree. It’s really profound in this particular issue because you have JD Vance, who I really do think did not want this Iran war. He was shut out of the decision-making about whether it was going to happen. He’s trying to make himself seem powerful by saying he has some say in how it happened. But he’s also trying to make clear—through background conversations with reporters—that he didn’t want this, because he believes—and I think there’s good reason to believe this—that the future of MAGA runs through this America First isolationist concept. They were actually able to cobble together a coalition with some swing voters by saying no more wars. This is bad for that. This is very bad for JD Vance.
So he has a real incentive to distance himself from Trump. But he also has a fear that if he does that too much, Trump is going to cut him loose. So he’s in a weird position. I have to assume that Trump is aware of these tensions, that he’s aware that a lot of people are circling and think they’re going to be next—and he does not like it.
Sargent: Well, all this comes after some pretty bad news for Trump. An elementary school was bombed in southern Iran—175 people were killed, mostly children. The New York Times did this devastating video analysis showing that the U.S. was conducting strikes right in that area at the same time as the bombing of the school. And Reuters reports that U.S. military investigators think it’s likely that the bombing was done by U.S. forces. None of this is definitive, but it raises the possibility that the U.S. just carried out the worst atrocity toward civilians in decades. Now, there’s nothing apologetic coming from Trumpworld at all. Do you hear anything like that?
Marcotte: No, and I have a small amount of optimism that this is going to break through to voters. There is sometimes a tendency to tune out the carnage that the U.S. government has inflicted on other people. Not always—I mean, [in] the Iraq War, a lot of the time the war crimes, Gitmo, the terrible things that happened broke through and people got angry about it. But in this case, it’s little girls. And that’s always tough to swallow.
It’s also because this is happening at the same time that they were waging war at home on their own residents and citizens, many of whom are also children. The assault on Minneapolis was understood as an assault on children. We have that little kid with his little bunny ears being hauled off to a detention center. We have that woman holding up a baby for the cameras in El Paso. And we’re beginning to see that the racist and fascistic policies of the Trump administration harm children. And that is getting through to people. There’s serious evidence I’ve seen that especially some Republican-voting women are starting to feel awfully queasy about inflicting so much death and destruction on children.
Sargent: That’s really interesting. There is definitely a through line there. And the other through line, of course, is unshackled state violence. I want to float an actual polling number as well. G. Elliott Morris, the data analyst, averaged together a bunch of polls on Iran—he took the high-quality ones—and found that an average of only 38 percent approve of the Iran war or Trump’s handling of it. Those are bad numbers. You take that along with this news about the school, and this is going badly for them politically. 
If you step back and keep that in your head and then listen to Karoline Leavitt go full cult the way she does over and over, you can see what’s really going on there. They are full culting in order to drown out the bad news. That’s what I think is going on as well. Both to keep it from Dear Leader’s ears, obviously, but also to drown it out in the public realm. If Trump is just eternally strong and invulnerable and invincible, then there can’t be bad news by definition. 
Marcotte: 38 percent is such a fascinating number, because that’s the number that for a decade now we know is basically the MAGA die-hards—the people that really are in the cult, the people that really will never, ever, ever admit that Trump is wrong about anything. 38 is where he fell after the Virginia riots in 2017. 38 was kind of where he fell during the worst parts of COVID. 38 percent is where [he landed] after January 6th. Those are the people that are in the cult—American fascists who will never change. 
And what he needs is a little bit more than that. But the fact that they’re doing only base management, that they’re strictly trying to remind their base: remember, if you admit that Trump did something wrong, the liberals were right, and we can never allow that—that says to me that they’re afraid they can’t even keep that 38 percent. 
And on this, they may not be wrong. Because one of the things that allowed Trump to win in the first place was that he really held himself out as absolution for all the people that voted for George W. Bush and had residual resentment, guilt, and shame over what happened there. Trump was a different kind of Republican, so they could trust that he was never going to shame them like Bush did with the Iraq War. And that’s what he’s doing now—doing exactly the same thing, except more ham-fistedly and stupidly. 
Sargent: Well, the base management element is really interesting. If I understand you correctly, you’re basically saying that when Karoline Leavitt goes out there and says MAGA is what Trump says it is, she’s saying to the base: don’t let the liberals be right. 
Marcotte: At the end of the day, the most important psychology that keeps these people on board is just that: That admitting that Trump is bad or wrong or a failure is admitting that all those people who for a decade have been telling you that you made a mistake were right. And what’s weird is the longer this drags on, the harder it is for them to let go without some kind of off-ramp. And if there ever was an off-ramp, I do think the Iran war might be it—because again, they don’t want another Bush. Trump ran pretty explicitly the first time as: I am not another Bush. He made fun of the Bush that was in the race, and here he is, another Bush. 
Sargent: All other Republicans are losers. That’s the crux, right? 
Marcotte: Yeah. So he lied to them pretty directly. If they want to take that, they can use it as their way out—which is to say, Well, I thought I was voting for no more wars, and I was lied to.
Sargent: And [Leavitt] is trying to say you can’t do that. We also just learned that the economy lost 92,000 jobs in February, which caps a stretch in which job creation was significantly worse on Trump’s watch than on his predecessor’s watch. Trump’s polling on the economy has been absolutely brutal of late. The tariffs are completely underwater and his general economic approval is also completely underwater. So if you take that along with the 38 percent who support the Iran war, you’re looking at a presidency that’s on very shaky ground, aren’t you?
Marcotte: And that’s before the midterms. We need to understand that if Democrats win both the House and the Senate, Trump is in very real danger. For one thing, the thing he’s been trying to avoid for a year now—which is the full release of the Epstein files—is coming down on him. And all sorts of other accountability could be in play. 
Sargent: His economic approval is in terrible shape, he’s losing ground on national security, and his immigration numbers are upside down. Harry Enten of CNN just put out new numbers where he said Trump has lost 20 points on net approval on immigration in the last year or so. You’ve got something that may be unprecedented, in which a Republican president is losing ground and throwing away the traditional Republican advantage on three different things—the economy, immigration, and national security. You’ve got all this bad news coming out. To what degree do you think that’s linked directly to these kinds of displays of obsequious cultishness from Leavitt?
It seems to me like there are several layers to it. One layer is that she just wants to make Trump feel better. Then there’s the other dimension, which is that he is physically in decline and all of MAGA world knows that they are looking at a world beyond Trump after he’s passed. Passed from the scene, maybe passed from this earth as well. You really can see the psychology of MAGA sort of in the raw when they go out there and hail his greatness the way they do at moments like this. What’s your basic thought on all of it? 
Marcotte: I agree that her first and foremost motivation is making her boss feel good so she keeps her job. I would love to look inside her head and see if she actually thinks it makes a difference to say these obsequious, laughable things—if she thinks she’s actually persuading anybody, or if it’s just ... managing her boss’s feelings, because it might just be that. 
They don’t have any other tools—I think is probably a piece of this. The traditional tools that MAGA has used to sort of bamboozle a lot of people in the past are falling apart on them. And I don’t think that they know what to do.  
We’re seeing a lot of people who are behaving like they don’t know what to do. They don’t know what’s going to happen next. They’re at the whims of a mercurial boss who may not be remembering super well what he said one minute to the next. There is no plan here. I think that they’re just winging it in the most ridiculous way. 
It makes me happy because I don’t think that that’s a sustainable plan, but I don’t know that there’s much more to it. I definitely don’t think Karoline Leavitt is going out there and talking to cameras like she’s Baghdad Bob because she thinks that that’s going to turn the tide in any way.
Sargent: I don’t think she thinks she’s going to move the middle, but a lot of this is base management. Can you wrap up your thoughts on that? The base is being bombarded by a lot of mixed signaling. They’re sort of in this propaganda bubble to some degree, but then on the outer edges of the MAGA base, you’re going to see people who get pretty damn upset about the kid getting thrown into detention with the child’s hat, and they’re going to get pretty damn upset about people getting shot in their cars on the street by Stephen Miller’s paramilitary goons, and pretty damn upset about the bombing of a school.
It’s almost like going out and then saying to those people this man is invincible and perfect, is another insult, but they don’t see it that way. You know what I mean? That’s where it breaks down for me. If you’re trying to hold MAGA together, why are you telling the people who are going to be upset by these horrors that this man is of unquestionable greatness? I don’t get it. 
Marcotte: It’s foolish. I watch Fox News sometimes, and other right-wing propagandists who are more effective at this stuff, like Tucker Carlson, or Candace Owens, or the people that the MAGA base actually is putting their trust in more and more every day, that’s not how they play this. 
When Trump is fucking up and ... they can’t defend it, their strategy is to say the left is worse, the left is dangerous, the left is chaotic, the left is demonic, they’re the bad guys. You know, the problem with Renee Good and Alex Pretti getting shot is that these people won’t stay in their houses, that they won’t stop fussing with ICE. The problem is the protesters are violent. The problem is blah, blah, blah. 
Whataboutism is their most effective strategy. And then you look at the White House themselves, and they have abandoned what has traditionally been their most effective strategy of distraction and like deflection, and instead are just saying, “shut up, Trump can’t do anything wrong.” Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe these people are so deep in the cult that there’s not even going to be defectors. 
But traditionally, even in cult psychology, you find that a lot of people, when they’re told to shut up and just obey the cult leader—maybe they do, because they don’t have any other choice when they’re in an actual cult, when they can’t leave—but they actually do question, and they do resist, and they do internally field outs. The thing with MAGA voters is they don’t have nearly as many constraints on their ability to leave as somebody who’s actually living in Jonestown.
Sargent: Yeah. We should probably clarify that none of this necessarily means Democrats win the House. Obviously they are favored for the House right now, but Trump could rehabilitate himself. Stranger things have happened. You could see him reaching some sort of point in this war pretty soon where he essentially declares victory in some way that’s not completely nuts. You could see something of an economic rebound. Maybe you could see them dial back the paramilitary executions of Americans in U.S. cities.
You could see him come back a little bit, and you could see the House being way more contested than it looks right now. That’s all possible. But right now it seems like his presidency is in some trouble. What are your final thoughts on that? 
Marcotte: I agree. The firing of Noem is a good leading indicator. They had a no-scalps policy in the White House because they didn’t want to give their enemies the satisfaction. And now they have decided that they have to sort of take some of the blame for these political failures, stick it on somebody, throw [them] overboard, and hope that that helps. It shows that they’re running out of options. 
And I agree with you, they could rebound. I wouldn’t just say this is a done deal. My biggest fear is that Trump just pulls out of Iran, declares victory, and hopes that nobody notices the fallout, which is totally possible because Americans don’t pay a ton of attention to foreign policy. 
But at this point in time, they aren’t doing very well. I don’t think that they have any idea of how to make things better. If things improve, it might just be by luck for them. But I don’t know that we’re looking at people that know how to fix the shit show they’ve gotten themselves into.
Sargent: They are certainly not acting as if they are in the middle of a shit show, and they are in the middle of a shit show. It’s just obvious to the rest of the world. Amanda Marcotte, wonderful to talk to you as always. Thank you so much for coming on. 
Marcotte: Thanks for having me.

BONDI IS LYING

 

Nine days of war take their toll. We can reverse the damage, if we act now.

 

Nine days of war take their toll. We can reverse the damage, if we act now.

March 9, 2026

It has been nine days since Trump began a war with Iran for reasons that are clear to no one, including Trump and his man-child Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. To them, war is about blowing things up. They lack the education, experience, and intelligence to understand the inevitable global consequences of war with a major Middle Eastern country of 90 million people that controls the Strait of Hormuz, through which 25% of seaborne oil and 20% of liquefied natural gas transit. Nor do they comprehend how their reckless action in the Middle East will encourage Russia in Ukraine and beyond.

What follows is sobering news about the cascading consequences of Trump’s illegal war. We can stop it by demanding that our representatives in Congress do their job—to exercise oversight of the executive in matters of war. The point of reviewing the quickly unfolding consequences of the war is not to frighten people, but to embolden them to reclaim our primacy as the government’s source of legitimacy and authority.

With that framework of hope, let’s take a look at the latest.

Prices are on the rise at gasoline pumps in the US, to which Trump replied “[I]f they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit.” It remains to be seen how high gas prices will rise, but even “a little bit” to Trump can be the difference between being able to commute to work or not for Americans earning minimum wage or living on fixed incomes.

By show of hands, how many people believe Trump has ever pumped gasoline into a car?

While Trump is dismissive of increases in gas prices, the rest of the world is preparing for a generational “oil shock.” Oil pushed past $100 per barrel over the weekend, causing the Wall Street Journal to lead its Sunday edition with a feature article entitled, The Long-Feared Persian Gulf Oil Squeeze Is Upon Us. (Gift article accessible to all.)

Per the Journal,

The doomsday some oil analysts believed could never happen was coming to pass. Unable to ship crude to world markets, much bigger producers in Iraq began to run out of places to put it. The country cut output by more than two-thirds. Tanks in Kuwait were next to fill up. U.S. oil prices vaulted above $100 a barrel Sunday for the first time since the fallout of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“In the whole written history of the strait, it has never been closed, ever,” said JPMorgan Chase analyst Natasha Kaneva. “To me, it was not just the worst-case scenario. It was an unthinkable scenario.”

Per CNN, oil hit $108 by Sunday evening, with leading experts suggesting that the price could reach $150 per barrel by the end of March if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. CNN, Oil prices soar past $100 a barrel as war escalates in Iran.

The oil shock has already hit the gas pumps in the US:

In the U.S., a gallon of regular gasoline rose to $3.45 on Sunday, about 47 cents more than a week earlier, according to AAA motor club. Diesel was selling for about $4.60 a gallon, a weekly increase of about 83 cents.” See Boston.com, Crude oil prices surpass $100 a barrel.

The US stock market lost all of its gains for the year last week and turned negative for the year. As of Sunday evening, the Asian markets (trading on Monday) and the DOW and S&P futures markets were down 2%+, suggesting a very bad opening to the US stock markets on Monday. See CNBC, Dow futures tumble over 1,000 points as U.S. oil nears $120 a barrel to begin the week’s trading.

Trump has admitted that he believed the war would last “four to five weeks.” What Trump and his military leaders failed to anticipate was the response of the Iranians, who just selected the Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late supreme leader, as Iran’s new leader, even as Tehran widened its attacks across the Mideast to strike oil and water facilities crucial to its desert sheikdoms.” See AP News, Iran names Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader.

The new Supreme Leader Khamenei is reportedly close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and is seen as a continuation of his father’s radical, hardline ideology. See Who is Mojtaba Khamenei? Iran’s hardline next supreme leader, explained.

Per Axios,

Between the lines: Mojtaba is expected to be more hardline than his father, and his ascent means the Iranian regime may get more repressive.

He has close ties to some of the most “ideologically extremist clerics” who have been at the forefront of the regime’s most violent crackdowns, per the Council.

Of course, Iran has suffered significant damage to its war-making ability over the last nine days. But eradicating its nuclear capability may require a ground invasion. See NYTimes, op-ed, W.J. Hennigan and Massimo Calabresi, There Is One Crucial Reason We’re Talking About Boots on the Ground (Gift article, accessible to all.)

As Hennigan and Calabresi explain, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium likely sits in underground vaults not susceptible to destruction by conventional bombing. One approach to seize the material is to launch a ground assault by elite troops trained to seize nuclear materials—an assault never before attempted.

Of course, it is a “best-case scenario” if the nuclear stockpile is still in one location and under the control of whatever functioning government exists in Iran. The cannisters containing the material could have been scattered across Iran in the early days of the US war—a possibility that would put the materials within reach of rogue states and stateless terrorists.

So, it is not enough to destroy Iran’s nuclear processing capability. The US must destroy or seize the existing stockpiles of enriched uranium—a task most likely accomplished through ground assault or negotiations, which is where the parties were nine days ago, before Trump pulled the trigger on a reckless war.

All the above is bad news that is difficult to hear and process. But talking about problems is only half the equation. We have agency. We grant the government legitimacy and power. We must withdraw both—through peaceful protest and regime change at the ballot box. It is not too late for Congress to begin to exercise oversight of Trump and his illegal war.

As of Sunday evening, DHS is still in partial shutdown mode, and the Pentagon will need a supplemental appropriation to continue its air war against Iran. Democrats and a handful of Republicans can stop (or cut short) the illegal war in short order by denying the Pentagon new funds.

Do not give up, do not lose hope. The coming global oil shock and the unpopularity of the war will weaken Trump and the GOP’s resolve to protect him at all costs. Although Trump is currently unrestrained, we are seizing the momentum. Stay strong, and show up!

Trump wears a golfing cap to the dignified transfer of the bodies of US soldiers.

The dignified transfer of the bodies of US soldiers killed overseas is one of the most solemn and mournful duties performed by a president of the United States. Any perceived indignity during the ceremony is viewed as an insult to the honored dead. President Joe Biden was severely criticized because some people believed he glanced at his wristwatch while waiting for the bodies to be returned to US soil.

On Saturday, Trump fidgeted through the dignified transfer ceremony, compulsively fiddling with his jacket buttons and lapel. Worse, he wore a white golfing cap and never took it off. By tradition, civilians remove their hats during ceremonies, e.g., during the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner.

There is no suggestion that the golf cap is part of Trump’s regalia as Commander in Chief. To the contrary, the golf cap is available on Trump’s campaign site for $55.

Trump’s disrespect provoked widespread condemnation. See International Business Times, Trump Sparks Major Outrage on Social Media After Wearing a Baseball Cap During Transfer of US Soldiers Killed in the Iran War.

This is not a “gotcha” story. It is about Trump’s lack of understanding and empathy. As I wrote above, Trump sees war as “blowing things up.” Dealing with the bodies of soldiers he sent to war is—for Trump—an annoyance that delayed his weekend golf by a day, to Sunday, when he wore the same golf hat that he wore during the dignified transfer. See Daily Beast, Trump Blasted for Golfing as More Die in His War.

Fox News was so embarrassed by Trump’s behavior that the network used video from a previous dignified transfer during which Trump did not wear a hat. When Fox was criticized for attempting to cover up Trump’s disrespect, Fox corrected the video and apologized for its “mistake.” See The Guardian, Fox News uses old clip of Trump after he wore hat while saluting slain US soldiers.

Trump’s inability to understand and appreciate the sacrifice that he is demanding from men and women who volunteered to defend their country is appalling. And it is another reason that we must do our best to ensure that Congress exercises oversight of this illegal war as quickly as possible.

Trump threatens to veto every bill until SAVE Act passes

Demonstrating his increasing desperation, Trump has threatened to veto any bills brought to his desk before he is able to sign the SAVE Act—a voter suppression bill that seeks to impose VoterID and proof of citizenship requirements. Notably, Trump is also threatening to impose those requirements by way of executive order—a move that would be immediately invalidated by the courts. See The Hill, Donald Trump threatens to veto all bills until SAVE Act passes Senate

Trump’s threat to veto all bills before the SAVE Act makes its way to his desk is an acknowledgment that he has no authority to impose VoterID and proof of citizenship requirements by executive order.

Concluding Thoughts

I received a remarkable “group email” from a reader who encouraged everyone in her address book to attend the next No Kings rally on March 28, 2026.

The reader wrote, in part,

Dear family, friends, and anyone who is in my email address book,

I am doing something audacious. I am writing to everyone in my address book. I know some of you well - you are in my heart. Some of you are people I have met and may have lost contact with. Some of you are names that got into my address book by chance email, and I don’t really know you that well. I am writing to all of you anyway.

That’s not my audacity. My audacity is that I am, as a political activist, writing to ask you to take action:

On March 28th, there is a nationwide  No Kings rally.

I am asking each of you to attend the rally in your area. 

Clear your calendar. Make a plan. Attend your rally with a commitment to be peaceful. But commit to being there. 

It is indeed an audacious act for the reader to reach out to everyone in her address book to encourage attendance at a No Kings Rally. While I understand that many readers would not feel comfortable making a similar request to hundreds of people, each of us can commit to asking one or two people to join us on March 28.

If everyone who attended the last No Kings protest recruits one new participant, March 28 will be the largest one-day political protest in American history by a large margin! If we can make that happen, the cowards in Congress will reconsider their absolute loyalty to a man who cares not a wit for them—and who is recklessly plunging the world into an “oil shock recession.”

The time to act is now, while we still have time to prevent far worse damage. We can do that—together. Ask a friend, acquaintance, or complete stranger to join you on March 28!

Talk to you tomorrow!

MICHAEL TOMASKY

 

Michael Tomasky/

March 9, 2026

How We’re All Now Paying the Price for the Myth of Trump’s Competence

The administration’s war with Iran is setting a mountain of taxpayer dollars on fire every day—mostly because he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

 

At some point, early Wednesday morning, the cost of the Iran war will top $10 billion. The Center for Strategic and International Studies released a paper last week pegging the cost of this latest misadventure at $891 million a day. I’ve seen higher estimates, but CSIS is a respected nonpartisan outfit, so let’s go with its number for now. The report states that the vast majority of this money had not been previously budgeted, especially the spending on munitions. One Patriot interceptor missile costs close to $4 million, and we’re apparently burning through them. And “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth promises that we’re just getting revved up.

None of us knows how long this war is going to last. But it’s certainly no Venezuela, which took—ready?—two and a half hours. Donald Trump may have told British Prime Minister Keir Starmer over the weekend that the war was “already won.” But also over the weekend, a prewar intelligence report was leaked to two Washington Post reporters showing that the National Intelligence Council, a panel of independent intel experts, seems to think that dislodging the regime could take a very long time indeed—at $37 million an hour, a rate that is almost sure to rise, especially if ground troops get involved.

Meanwhile, gas prices went up about 60 cents a gallon in the war’s first week. The Dow fell 453 points Friday. (It’s currently well below 50,000, so I guess that means, per Pam Bondi, that we’re now allowed to take the Jeffrey Epstein scandal seriously.) Also on Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. In the year and change since Trump returned to office, the economy has added around 140,000 jobs. In a year. The St. Louis Fed estimated last spring that simply to keep pace with the growth in the number of people who age into the labor force, the economy needs to add around 150,000 jobs a month.

In other words, everywhere you look, the news isn’t merely bad. It’s terrible.

We’ve seen numerous examples in these last 13 months of Trump’s mendacity and malevolence. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans will never see him that way. There are those who adore him unconditionally, but beyond these dead-enders, there are others who know he’s not a good person but aren’t all that bothered by it.

That’s hard for millions of us to accept. But I hope to God that these people are finally starting to move themselves toward the conclusion that, even if they aren’t that troubled by the mendacity and malevolence, the man is just wildly incompetent. A mountain range of mythmaking has gone into creating the Trump persona over the years; by him, by a pliant business press in his real estate days, and, since he entered politics, by a right-wing media that would make the old Soviet press agencies blush and a party of cowardly sycophants, most of whom know very well that he shouldn’t be in charge of a high-volume McDonald’s, let alone the executive branch of the federal government, but would rather let the country collapse than say so.

I remember a conversation I had with a Biden White House official in the spring of 2024, when Joe Biden was still running. I was asking about Trump’s weaknesses, and this official said something to me that may stand as the single most depressing couple of sentences I’ve ever had directed at me in 30-plus years of covering politics. We’re not going to dislodge people’s belief that he’s a great businessman, this official said; forget it. It’s hardwired in there, and undoing it, for a significant percentage of the people, just isn’t going to happen.

I believed this person, whom I’m known for a while; yet another part of me just couldn’t quite accept that people could be so—well, choose the word you prefer. And I was staggered during the 2024 campaign at all the voters who believed him when he said he’d bring down prices on day one.

Really. Who is that—OK, I’ll supply my own word—stupid? Presidents can’t control prices. Prices—of eggs, beef, oil, refrigerators, computers, you name it—depend on dozens of factors. Xi Jinping, who runs a command economy in a country where most electronics happen to be made, probably has far more control over the prices of refrigerators and computers than any president ever will. The price of beef has more to do with decisions made in Brazil than in Texas—and certainly at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

We all learn this in school. So how did so many millions of Americans unlearn it?

Another thing presidents don’t normally control is who runs other countries. At times, of course, American presidents have indeed made that choice for other countries. By the way, I can’t think of a single time that worked out well for the country in question. Cuba (in 1933, not 1959), Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile, and perhaps most of all, back in 1953, the same Iran we’re now “re-obliterating.” I hate to say it: It never ends well.

In more recent history, American presidents haven’t had, or exercised, that power. Yet Trump is going around now talking as if he has the power to appoint Iran’s next leader, as if it’s no more complicated than naming the next GOP chairman of Mississippi. As if there won’t be factions within the Iranian populace that will fight the elevation of anyone with the taint of a Trump association to the death.

Again, who can possibly believe his nonsense?

His poll numbers are bad. But they’re not nearly as bad as they ought to be. The man is, whatever his other faults, just way in over his head. Maybe Democrats should say that more often. The fact that he’s costing taxpayers a billion dollars a day on a war most of them didn’t want may be a good place to start.

Michael Tomasky

Terrible tragedies are coming. And the Republican Party owns them.

 

Terrible tragedies are coming. And the Republican Party owns them.

Trump has thrown America into financial crisis, expanding war, and a surging terror threat. The only good news is that he's all-but-guaranteed Republicans will lose in November.

Last week, I made some predictions after Trump’s ill-fated war with Iran. I said he’d dramatically increased the terror threat to the United States (here and here) and that he’d lit the fuse of a global financial crisis. Barely a week into the war, both predictions are coming true. It didn't take a genius to make this forecast. But it did require a senile sociopath to bring it to fruition. Now it's about to get worse.

Let’s start with the terror threat.

There was a reported explosion at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway over the weekend. Details are still emerging, but it wouldn’t at all surprise me if this was a terrorist attack carried out by an individual inspired by Iranian actors or working on their behalf. We should be expecting these sorts of reprisals, and worse.

More alarming than Oslo is what happened at the same time in Washington. The White House reportedly blocked DHS and the FBI from releasing an urgent terror threat bullein. I know what those warnings look like because I used to help write them. And I cannot imagine any conceivable reason for the White House to withhold such alerts, except for an unforgivable one: because they’re too insecure to admit they just put American lives in danger.

The Iran war is a gigantic target on the backs of Americans and the U.S. Homeland. The GOP knows it. The president’s political aides know it. Hell, even Trump himself knows it. That’s why his response to a question the other day about whether Americans should worry about retaliatory attacks was a begrudging two words:

“I guess.”

That’s actually what he said, by the way. And God forbid if tragedy strike the United States, that comment will follow him and haunt him wherever he goes. I hope someone is already printing the banners with the words, “I GUESS,” to show up at Trump rallies and appearances to remind him of his complicity. Because it’s clear he’s more worried about his political standing than he is about your safety.

And that’s the fundamental bargain Trump has just broken. The entire premise of the post-9/11 national security state — one I was part of building — was that the government would be honest with the American people about the threat environment, even when the news was bad. In fact, especially when the news was bad. That compact is apparently gone. The administration that launched a war without authorization is now hiding the consequences of that war from the citizens who will bear them.

I would typically say we should “defy” the fear — and in the deepest sense, we should. We cannot let terrorism reshape how we live. That’s the whole game, and I believe that in my bones. But I also have to be straight with you about the danger because the president won’t be. He launched this war without a plan, without authorization, and without a coherent strategy for managing the blowback in our own backyard.

As a direct and foreseeable consequence, the threat level is significantly elevated. Iran has extensive proxy networks and every reason to activate them against American soft targets. Embassies and bases are hardened. But shopping malls and outdoor concerts are not. In the absence of a government doing its job, you have to do some of it yourself. Be aware, know your surroundings, and trust your instincts, especially if you live in a major U.S. city or are traveling abroad. If you see something, say something.

This isn’t paranoia. This is what a functioning government would be telling you, if we had one.

And then there’s the financial catastrophe unfolding in slow motion (except it isn’t even moving that slowly anymore). In my piece last week, I told you to watch oil. I told you that if prices crossed $100 a barrel, we’d know the markets had priced in a long and destabilizing conflict — and that the people with the most money on the line had concluded this war wasn’t ending soon. It didn’t even take three days past publication for the threshold to break. Three days. The price crossed $100 a barrel before the ink was metaphorically dry.

We’re now in the danger zone of a major financial crisis.

The cascade from here could get quite ugly. American families will pay for it at the gas pump, at the grocery store, in their heating bills, and every single day this continues. And the federal government will pretend like it can “take steps” to remedy the situation, but options will be severely limited. Higher oil means higher inflation, which puts the Fed in an impossible position. Raise rates to fight inflation while the economy is already wobbling from tariffs and trade disruption, or hold and let prices run. Either choice is bad and means you’re likely to see economic hardship spreading.

None of this was necessary. This was a war of choice that has become an economic catastrophe of choice.

Whether it turns into a full-blown financial crisis on the scale of (or greater than) 2008 depends on whether the White House decides to end the war or keep it going to stroke the president’s ego. He can’t stand looking like “a loser.” So in his quest to feel like “a winner,” he may take a wrecking ball to the global economy by plowing forward with this war until he feels like Tehran is leveled enough for him to one day erect a gaudy Trump Tower from its rubble.

Here’s the only genuinely good news in any of this. Donald Trump has almost certainly just handed Democrats the midterms.

A majority of Americans opposed this war before the first bomb dropped. That opposition will only grow as casualties mount, oil prices bite, and the suppressed threat warnings likely give way to real-world tragedy. Wars that begin without popular support and without a clear path to victory become anchors around the necks of the politicians who own them.

Republicans own this one completely. They voted against war powers resolutions. They cheered Trump’s strikes. They basically lashed themselves to the president with ball-and-chain oblivion, and now there’s no daylight left between them and the decisions producing $100 oil and an accelerated financial crisis and a terror threat level that’s blinking red.

Hell of a political strategy, guys.

Meanwhile, Trump’s poll numbers are cratering. The coalition that returned him to power was not built on a mandate for new “forever wars.” All those voters wanted was cheaper eggs and to get the hell out of the Middle East. But it’s almost like Trump’s self-destructive tendencies drove him to purposefully give his followers the exact opposite. GOP candidates in competitive races have nowhere to go, and the only thing I’ll relish is watching them squirm politically. They deserve it. Because their lack of a conscience has put us all in danger. Financially and actually.

If we can hold on another few months — if our struggling institutions, our courts, our free press, and the basic good sense of the American public can hold the line — the adults will come back into the room. Let’s just hope the senile sociopath in the White House hasn’t blown everything up before we get there.

Your friend, in defiance,

Miles Taylor

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