Quote of the Day (Ian Frazier, on Putin and the Influence of Lenin’s Tactics at Home and in the U.S.)

“Unlike Marxism-Leninism, [Soviet dictator V.I.] Lenin’s tactics enjoy excellent health today. In a capitalist Russia, [Vladimir] Putin favors his friends, holds power closely and doesn’t compromise with rivals. In America, too, we’ve reached a point in our politics where the strictest partisanship rules. Steve Bannon, the head of the right-wing media organization Breitbart News, who went on to be an adviser to the president, told a reporter in 2013, ‘I’m a Leninist...I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy today’s establishment.’ Of course he didn’t mean he admired Lenin’s ideology—far from it—but Lenin’s methods have a powerfully modern appeal. Lenin showed the world how well not compromising can work. A response to that revolutionary innovation of his has yet to be figured out.”—American writer and humorist Ian Frazier, “What Ever Happened to the Russian Revolution?,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 2017

In the wake of the midterms, cries of “reaching across the aisle to work for the good of the country” sound a bit less tinny now than they have in the past decade.

Still, it’s unlikely that much will come of this sentiment. Changes in campaigning and governance—dating back not just to Donald Trump, but even to Newt Gingrich holding sway on Capitol Hill in the 1990s—militate against that.

If there is any hope for bipartisanship, that may come in how Congress forces a change in administration policy regarding Ukraine.

It remains highly suspicious why Donald Trump watered down a proposed plank in the 2016 Republican Party platform on military aid to that embattled country, let alone why he has been so autocrat-friendly towards Putin since then.

If the GOP is serious about entering a more chastened, post-Trump era, its members in the House and Senate can start by reversing the President’s rank appeasement of the Russian dictator.

Will they start singing “Kumbaya” with the victorious Democrats now? Hardly. But aiding Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be an excellent way to work for the common good abroad—and in a way that will enhance American security at home.

Joke of the Day (Bill Maher, on How To Tell If You’re in a ‘Too-Boozy Administration’)

“If everybody does a shot every time the Strait of Hormuz opens back up.”—American comedian Bill Maher, in an April appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher, quoted by Benoit Denizet-Lewis, “Bill Maher Feuded With Trump. Did He Get the Last Laugh?”, The New York Times Magazine, July 21, 2026

Maher might want to amend that joke. This week, amid the midterm election debacle, everybody in the administration must have done a shot after every GOP seat lost in the Senate…in the House of Representatives…in governor’s mansions…and, maybe now, among White House staffers.

I’m sure these rounds were led by Pete Kegseth.

(The photo of Bill Maher accompanying this post was taken by David Shankbone, November 2007, at the PETA screening of I Am An Animal: The story of Ingrid Newkirk and PETA.)

Quote of the Day (Joe Klein, on Voters Who View ‘Smart’ and ‘Stupid’ People)

“A smart guy, according to [Donald] Trump, is someone who is wise enough to cheat. Stupid people abide by the law and attend their refugee status hearings; smart ones abscond. Stupid people pay their debts; smart ones stiff their lenders and dare them to sue. Stupid people believe their elected officials; smart people know the game is rigged. The most distressing aspect of Trump’s enduring appeal, even in defeat, is how many Americans seem to agree with him.”—American journalist-novelist Joe Klein, “Honor Code” (review of James Comey’s Saving Justice), The New York Times Book Review, Jan. 17, 2021

Joe Klein’s note of caution following the defeat of Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential election is worth bearing in mind today, even as progressives sing “Happy Days Are Here Again” and celebrate what The Daily Show termed “The Bluebonic Plague” suffered by the President’s MAGA allies at all levels of government.

Certainly Democrats can be glad that the President can no longer run amok with Cabinet and judicial appointments unhindered by spineless Capitol Hill operatives, and that their majorities are so sweeping that they are unlikely to be hindered by Democratic Socialists (far smaller than their GOP counterpart, the Freedom Caucus) or the defection of Pennsylvania’s answer to Lurch of The Addams Family, John Fetterman.

It’s also heartening to see how deflated (if still delusional) Trump has sounded following the resounding rebuke of the midterms.

Nevertheless, multiple obstacles remain if Democrats are to undo the devastation following Trump’s return to power in January 2025. Despite the catastrophes that inevitably befall administrations, he has proven, time and again, to be the Rasputin of modern American politics: a figure who can survive multiple wounds that would be fatal to normal mortals.

So much of that endurance derives from the unscrupulousness that Klein identified nearly six years ago. Learning all too well the lessons taught by his father and his longtime lawyer-mentor Roy Cohn, Trump has become masterful at dodging the law and projecting valid charges back onto accusers.

At the same time, he has administered a massive shot of cynicism that the American body politic, already enervated by this virus, will have enormous difficulty eradicating.

The barriers in overcoming Trump’s certain vetoes are only one example of why Democratic officeholders and the voters who put them in office will need to maintain patience and hard-headed realism before 2028.

Even one of their best potential tools—their investigative power as lawmakers—has its limitations, as expertly outlined in commentator and former GOP speechwriter David Frum in a podcast discussion with Dave Rapallo, former longtime staff director of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Yes, Trump is, by standard measures, a lame duck. But as with everything else with him, all tradition falls by the wayside.

The first assumption is that he will leave office on January 20, 2029. Often, his apologists claim that he doesn’t really mean some of his stunning breaks with precedent, then excuse his attempts to transform his free-floating speculations into actuality.

Nevertheless, it’s notable that in 2016, shortly after he said, “Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Putin’s intelligence service “began targeting email accounts associated with Hillary Clinton for possible hacks,” observed special counsel Robert Mueller.

In that light, it’s disturbing that he has joked about running again, despite the 22^nd Amendment’s limits on Presidents to two terms. His defiance of a measure that his own party was instrumental in passing 75 years ago, in belated frustration over FDR’s four successful Presidential races, should not be lightly dismissed.

Or consider this: how can he prevent being indicted 2 1/2 years from now? Only two methods guarantee that outcome: supporting a bid to succeed him by Don Jr. (even if his only son is unaware that Ohio is already a state) or keeping the job himself.

A tenacious hold on the party faithful could complicate what seem like efforts by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice-President J.D. Vance to distance themselves from the Iran War. 

In the best of times, a President can wield tremendous, nearly unhindered power in foreign power, and that remains even more the case with a President who launched and continued with an invasion of Iran without even a by-your-leave consultation with Congress.

So pardon me if I part company with New York Times columnist Lydia Polgreen who summarized the election results as meaning, “Decency won.”

A cornered rat remains dangerous, so it’s premature to think that Trump won’t inflict fresh damage. Don’t be surprised if so many of us turn on the evening news, after the current hallelujahs fade, and ask, a la Dorothy Parker, “What fresh hell is this?”

Quote of the Day (Mark Mazower, on ‘The Crisis of Democracy’)

“In fact if there is one good thing to come out of the current political uncertainty, it is that complacency about American democracy will be harder to sustain in future. Let us not worry overly about how to define a fascist: there are plenty of other nasty kinds of authoritarian regimes. It is the crisis of democracy that should concern us more. We know by now what can happen when the institutions of representative government become bitterly polarised, when large swathes of the electorate lose the capacity to compromise, when power and wealth pile up in the hands of elites and when those in charge of the state give up the challenge of responding to widespread economic hardship. History is not a one-way street and democracy has turned authoritarian before. Can it happen again? Why not?”— Columbia University historian Mark Mazower, “Fascism Revisited,” Financial Times, Apr. 14-15, 2018

I took this nighttime picture of the U.S. Capitol in November 2015, before the "crisis of democracy" of the last decade began in earnest. The aftermath of this midterm election will determine the next phase of that crisis.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Erasmus of Rotterdam, on Choosing a Leader)

“Statues, gold, and gems contribute no more to state government than they do to a master in steering his ship. That one idea which should concern a prince in ruling, should likewise concern the people in selecting their prince: the public weal, free from all private interests.”—Dutch Renaissance humanist, theologian, and philosopher Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), The Education of a Christian Prince, translated by Lester K. Born (1936)

One item can be added to the list of three at the start of the above quotation: monuments erected or altered by a leader, often (re)named for himself. Hmm...who could be like that?

Quote of the Day (Michael Kinsley, on Washington-Style ‘Branding’ and ‘Rebranding’)

“ ‘Branding’ as a general term for the way you present yourself to the world has become a popular usage. It implies that, if people see you for what you really are, that’s a failure on your part. Success is when people see you as what you wish you were. Or as what you need to be, or seem to be, or need to seem to be, to suit the exigencies of the moment. Of course Washington and the media didn't invent branding or rebranding. The term is imported from the commercial world. [In Washington], rebranding itself is widely tolerated, but the word ‘rebranding’ is still something a politician would not choose to have attached to his name. Bad for the brand.”— American political commentator and editor Michael Kinsley, “How Top Politicians Rebrand Themselves,” Vanity Fair, June 2014

Kinsley was correct: The notion of branding did indeed derive from the commercial world, and there were portions even there where it took a while to take root. (It was considered quite novel three decades ago when I worked for a not-for-profit organization that served the real estate industry when several developers who had just gone public began to brand their properties in an effort to increase their value.)

In mid-2014, Kinsley's peg to consider this idea was Eric Cantor, a House Majority Whip running into turbulence in his campaign to retain his Congressional seat. The Republican congressman’s attempts to brand his primary challenger a liberal—and to soften the views of constituents who felt he himself had become arrogant and was taking them for granted—both failed, in what was called one of the most stunning electoral upsets in memory.

Wouldn’t you know that it took someone from the “commercial world" to show Capitol Hill grandees the right way to “brand.” A journalist friend of mine recounted how, during an interview with Donald Trump, the then-New York developer, asked for how he had become so successful, responded, “It’s the Trump brand.” That phrase ended up repeated so often in the interview, my friend said, that he was sick of it by the time the talk was over.

Much to the astonishment of local journalists who had been following Trump’s career from its early days, he followed the path to the White House through the creation of a spurious “brand” on his “reality” show The Apprentice: a businessman so phenomenally rich that he would never be tempted to steal or grift.

Little could these non-New York voters have imagined that, once re-elected to the White House, Trump would try to rebrand several capital institutions after himself. This renaming and construction phase is so manic that he is beginning to resemble some of the more debauched, egocentric Roman emperors.

Simultaneously, Trump began to target GOP candidates, large and small, as part of his brand. What voters face now, like it or not, is an organization committed not to conservative principles as such, but to Trump.

The question that scares the GOP now, a couple of weeks before the midterm elections, is whether the President has pushed his branding campaign too aggressively: too fast, and on too many fronts.

They wonder if too many of these races have become unnecessary toss-ups, with voters resembling a work colleague of mine who said he was delighted that a property of one developer had added that company’s moniker to its own: “Great! Now I’ll know to avoid it from now on.”

Now eighty years old, Trump should not by rights be able to “rebrand” himself to skeptical voters. But like some combination of Rasputin and Count Dracula, he’s come back from the dead (or undead) too many times before to be counted out now. Democrats would be making a colossal mistake if they become overconfident of their chances.

Quote of the Day (Oliver Goldsmith, on Absurdity)

“Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.”—Anglo-Irish playwright-poet Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1744), The Traveller: Or, a Prospect of Society (1764)

I can think of at least one shameless supporter of absurdity. I’m sure you can come up with multiple examples.

Quote of the Day (Lee Bollinger, on How Authoritarian Threats to Higher Education Developed)

“You would have to go back to the McCarthy period in the 1950s to see something comparable to what’s happening today. For many decades we lived free from government efforts to seize control of universities and suppress criticism and independent thought. And in this time, we forged individualistic identities. We want our students and our faculty to think of themselves as loyal to our particular institution, and at the same time, we’re competing for students and faculty against other schools. So we’ve set up a system in which institutions have individual identities and compete with one another, and this makes us more vulnerable to authoritarian efforts to undermine us.”—Former Columbia University President Lee Bollinger interviewed by Paul Hond, “Defending the Fifth Branch: A Response to Authoritarian Attacks on Universities,” Columbia Magazine, Spring/Summer 2026

With the academic year in full swing now, new threats are sure to develop against America's colleges and universities, even beyond the wide-ranging war aged by the Trump Administration outlined in Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder's US News article from earlier this month. 

In the face of all of this, Bollinger advocates “the equivalent of a NATO charter, with an Article 5 for universities in the US: If any institution among us is attacked, all of us will come to its defense.”

That may be not just the best way, but the only way to proceed now. Following President Trump’s ban on CNN, Politico and MS NOW, the White House TV pool, which includes CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox, responded by not covering him last night. (Predictably, the President counterattacked with—what else?—“Trump TV.”)

If the pool’s strategy works, other American institutions—like higher education and prominent law firms—should follow with a similar resort to collective action.

(The image of Lee Bollinger that accompanies this post was taken on Oct. 11, 2007, by Daniella Zalcman.)

Quote of the Day (Margaret Atwood, With a Bad Guess About American Culture in the Past Decade)

“What sorts of novels, poems, films, television series, video games, paintings, music, or graphic novels will adequately reflect America’s next decade? We don’t have any idea yet. We can’t: Nothing is predictable except unpredictability. It’s probably fair to say, however, that Donald Trump’s interest in the arts, gauged on a scale from one to 100, is somewhere between zero and negative 10—lower than any president in the last 50 years. Some of those presidents didn’t give a hoot about the arts, but at least they found it politic to pretend. Trump won’t. In fact, he may not even notice they’re there.”—Canadian novelist, poet, and essayist Margaret Atwood, “Creative Reconstruction,” The Nation, Feb. 6/13, 2017

Margaret Atwood developed a reputation as a master dystopian novelist with The Handmaid’s Tale, but I’m afraid that her soothsaying capabilities have failed in at least one respect. Had she substituted “appreciation” for “interest” in the above paragraph, I would have had no quarrel with her prediction.

Yet it turns out that Donald Trump is very much interested in American art and culture. It all goes back to what conservative Republican and former speechwriter Peggy Noonan called in her recent Wall Street Journal column “The Art of the Self-Deal.”

In other words, whatever or whoever trumpets his name, money, and allies, meets with his approval. But whoever interferes with any of these, he will go beyond the already vast powers of his office to crush them.

Count among the latter Army Chief of Staff Randy George, fired without explanation earlier this year by Trump’s Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. Perhaps not so coincidentally, George had refused to kill a probe into an unauthorized Apache helicopter flyover near the Nashville estate of Kid Rock, according to this Hollywood Reporter account from earlier this week.

In implementing plans by his Orwellian titled Department of Government Efficiency to terminate funding for more than 1,400 National Endowment for the Humanities grants totaling more than $100 million, Trump hoped to demoralize key portions of academe.

But the algorithms that triggered many of the cuts were so ridiculous that a federal judge ordered the grants’ reinstatement in May—and even Brian T. Allen, writing for the venerable conservative magazine National Review, was forced to concede, “Entrusting the cancellation of grants to twentysomething tech nerds was a big mistake.”

Moreover, the Kennedy Center controversy continues. Trump couldn’t stop with replacing former trustees with ones of his choosing, all of whom bent over backwards to rename that much-loved Washington performing arts center in his honor. More recently, he has threatened, if it’s not allowed to proceed with plans for a renovation that might not even be needed, to simply knock the whole building down.

Even before becoming President, Trump wanted his name on all his business ventures, as part of his branding effort. It’s a different matter when he’s talking about buildings that, properly speaking, belong to the people of the United States and not him and that traditionally honor retired or, better yet, dead American figures.

Nevertheless, he has no compunction about plastering his name and/or image not just on the Kennedy Center but, among other initiatives, on the Interior Department’s “America the Beautiful” pass, the State Department’s Institute for Peace, or limited-edition U.S. passports.

When late-night comics predictably mocked the President (as they should, and as they have done with other incumbents of both parties), Paramount yielded to FCC pressure over its planned merger with Skydance Media to cancel Stephen Colbert’s longtime perch on CBS—and Jimmy Kimmel only narrowly avoided a similar fate at ABC.

Anytime something happens, Trump always wants to make it about him. Poor Dolly Parton couldn’t pass away without the President claiming to conservative commentator Glenn Beck, on scant evidence, that the country-music icon “really liked me, I will tell you!” (If she did, she kept it very well hidden—rejecting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from both Trump and Biden, so as not to alienate either Republican or Democratic fans.)

I guess we should probably qualify Ms. Atwood’s statement above in another sense. When she is referring to “the arts,” it is true that Trump could care less about, say, literature, classical music, or the visual arts. But he may be our most show-business President in the same sense that Lincoln was our quintessential war President.

His second term continues the pattern from his first in commanding the nation’s attention 24/7. That is not a compliment: no society can be counted as well when its citizens cannot carve out for themselves a private realm where the mind is not dominated by images from the state.

Unfortunately, this second term has abundantly proved that Atwood was overly optimistic that Trump wouldn’t notice the presence of arts programs.

But she was absolutely correct in believing that “Nothing is predictable except unpredictability”—at least when it comes to a wildly capricious President intent as much on self-aggrandizement as on retribution towards opponents.

This Day in New York History (Roy Cohn, McCarthy and Trump Whisperer, Dies)

Aug. 2, 1986—While pressed by multiple misconduct charges leading to disbarment, Roy Cohn—a shadowy courtroom presence behind public figures ranging from Sen. Joseph McCarthy to future President Donald Trump—died of complications from AIDS, a disease he denied having.

When I was an undergraduate nearly 50 years ago, I was talking with fellow staffers on my college newspaper about the McCarthy Era, venting my loathing for the senator’s chief counsel. Suddenly, a freshman reporter yelled, “Don’t talk about my Uncle Roy that way!”

To say that I was stunned by this unexpected response would be an understatement. But I was equally amused by the retort of another reporter in the room: “I wouldn’t go boasting about it, Richard.”

Cohn had graduated from the same school where we were matriculating, Columbia University. For all his brilliance (he graduated from the law school at age 20), he remained, a quarter-century after his meteoric rise to fame and notoriety during the Red Scare, a deeply loathed figure on campus.

He was reviled in New York at large and Washington, too, for what many judged his abrasive, ethically edgy representation of clients. But his Rolodex still bulged with prominent people from all walks of life and even both political parties. (Despite closeness to far-right Republicans, he retained the ties to local Democrats developed by his father, a judge and member of the party.)

Clients hoped to benefit not just from his undoubted knowledge of the law, but influence. Ironically, in his last couple of years, even as he falsely claimed he was afflicted with liver cancer, Cohn was calling in chits in the ideologically sympatico Reagan Administration to secure the experimental AIDS medication AZT, then only in the clinical trial stage.

Nearly a decade after his death, Cohn was depicted, in all his splenetic hypocrisy, in Tony Kushner’s epic drama of life during the AIDS years, Angels in America. 

And more than three decades after his passing, he was recalled as the evil mentor of young real estate tycoon-on-the-make Trump, in the documentaries Where’s My Roy Cohn? and Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story Of Roy Cohn, as well as the feature film The Apprentice.

Ivy Meeropol, the director of Bully. Coward. Victim, has special reason to abominate Cohn. As an assistant prosecutor, he was not only instrumental in winning espionage convictions against her grandparents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, but also in communicating in secret with Judge Irving Kaufman about the need to sentence both to death.

(Today, after the release of declassified Soviet archives and USA government intercepts, the historical consensus is that though Julius was guilty of running a spy ring, the evidence against Ethel was far thinner—contradicting Cohn’s ludicrous contention years later to journalist Sidney Zion that she was “the mastermind of this conspiracy.")

Though Cohn facilitated the Rosenbergs’ destruction, it is equally true that he helped engineer the self-immolation of his boss after that trial, McCarthy, during the lawyer’s 18 months as chief counsel for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

His insane threat to “wreck the Army" if it did not give friend and fellow aide G. David Schine favored treatment in boot camp—and his demand that McCarthy back him up—resulted in the televised hearings that exposed the senator unmistakably as a bullying, reckless threat to the Constitution.

Resigning from his post after the Army-McCarthy hearings, Cohn retreated to New York, where he spent more than two decades building up a profitable practice at his law firm, Saxe, Bacon & Bolan.

By the time that journalist Ken Auletta caught up with him for a December 1978 Esquire article, he was riding high—scoffing at four trials from which he had escaped unscathed, even crowing that his notoriety, rather than being a stigma, furnished him with more publicity and clients.

He had some reason to feel that he’d survived the worst blows thrown at him. By this time, his clients had numbered Francis Cardinal Spellman (who had employed his services in a school prayer case), Barbara Walters (whom he briefly dated), Studio 54 co-owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, Aristotle Onassis, Rupert Murdoch, Bianca Jagger, and rumored Mafia chieftains Carmine Galante and “Fat Tony” Salerno.

Nevertheless, Cohn’s ambition and ruthlessness were so relentless as to spark speculation that they were rooted in fear, including of antisemitism. 

Robert Sherrill’s August 2009 review in The Nation of two books pointed to Cohn’s concerns that the public would associate Jews with Marxism, and the lawyer did stun friends with enough slurs directed at co-religionists that it was commonly believed that he was a self-hating Jew.

That behavior was certainly bewildering. But I think Sherrill does not give adequate attention to what was surely Cohn’s more gnawing unease: exposure as a gay man.

As early as the Army-McCarthy hearings, when he and Schien were closely, even inextricably, linked in the public eye, he squirmed as the lawyer representing the military, Joseph Welch, when asked by the senator what a “pixie” meant, responded, “A pixie is a close relation to a fairy. Have I enlightened you?”

As Cohn reveled in his celebrity, whispers about his sexual orientation turned into open conjecture. Auletta, for instance, bluntly asked during an interview if he was gay, and it was difficult to miss the insinuations—starting with the quiet adjectives and adverbs before exploding in the final sentence—in this passage:

“He looks like a killer. Except for the body and the deportment. He's only five feet eight inches tall, 144 pounds. The suit he is wearing this day is dark blue, slightly tucked at the waist, with a faint stripe. A modest paisley tie fades into a nondescript striped shirt. His mannerisms—the licking of the lips, the waving wrists—are effete.”

Six weeks before his death, surely too sick from AIDS to fight with his long accustomed vigor and ruthlessness, he was finally disbarred on several charges, including:

*tricking a dying, elderly multimillionaire client into signing a will naming Cohn as co-executor;

*failing to repay a client $100,000 he’d borrowed for two decades, until the disbarment proceedings started; and

*submitting a false statement on an application to the DC bar.

No summary of the influence of Cohn on life in the second half of the 20^th century—or the first quarter of this one—would be complete without a discussion of his relationship with President Trump, which began in the mid-1970s.

Dennis Rohatyn’s October 2019 post on the Culture Catch Web site criticized Where’s My Roy Cohn? for offering an overly simplified explanation of Cohn’s impact on Trump, leaving the President's overbearing father Fred out of the picture. Fair enough.

But with that said, it’s all too easy to see how Trump absorbed the lessons of his consigliere:

*Never admit wrongdoing, or even a mistake.

*Attack, attack, attack the prosecution.

*The more preposterous a countercharge, the better. (He called the Jewish lawyers from the Nixon Justice Department suing the Trump Organization for refusing to rent to blacks “Gestapo agents,” just as Trump later would weaponize the Justice Department to pursue counter-investigations against officials involved in previous cases against him.)

It’s fair to say that Cohn helped Trump gain his coveted foothold in the Manhattan real estate market with advice on converting the Commodore Hotel into the Hyatt Hotel. 

Then he protected him from the consequences of his playboy lifestyle not only by writing his prenup agreement with Ivana, but also by directing the young Czech emigrant to a lawyer of his own choosing who would review the pact.

For all his tirades about desiring loyalty from aides, Trump displayed little of it as Cohn fought in vain against disbarment and AIDS. The disappearing act did not go unnoticed by the lawyer, who is said to have remarked (in the bowdlerized version) that Trump had ice in his veins.

It is rare that one individual can be seen as a malevolent force in three different eras. But the life of Cohn resoundingly confirms the truth of Shakespeare’s line from Julius Caesar: “The evil that men do lives after them.”

(The image accompanying this post, of Cohn conferring with Sen. McCarthy over questioning of witness William Taylor, was taken on Aug. 23, 1953. It appeared in the Los Angeles Times and is now part of the collection at https://digital.library.ucla.edu/catalog/ark:/21198/zz0002shqk/)

Quote of the Day (Elliot Ackerman, on ‘The Stories We Tell About War’)

“The stories we tell about war are really important to the decisions we make around war.”—American Marine veteran-turned-novelist Elliot Ackerman, quoted by Emily Bobrow, “Weekend Confidential: Elliot Ackerman,’” The Wall Street Journal, May 20-21, 2021

What stories did Donald Trump hear about war that led him to commit American forces to Iran? What made him think the outcome would be better than the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan that he criticized in his Presidential campaigns?

The image accompanying this post, of Elliot Ackerman at the 2015 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, was taken on Oct. 18, 2015, by Larry D. Moore.

Photo of the Day: Two Kinds of Toxic Environment

I took the image accompanying this post a week ago while I was still on vacation at the Chautauqua Institution, a lovely enclosed upstate New York community with numerous Victorian cottages that have helped make this picturesque place a National Historic Landmark.

As much as its cultural and intellectual atmosphere, habitual visitors glory in its physical environment. For the 30-odd years that I have come up here, I have made it a point, as long as the rain is holding off, to take daily brisk walks by Chautauqua Lake.

Until the last three days of this vacation, that is.

In the background, a particle-laden, milky uniformity had replaced sunlight streaks of the morning horizon. Never mind a wide view of what lay upon the waters: as you can observe in this image, nothing could be seen beyond the boats lined up at the marina.

Probably at no time, I suspect, since the height of COVID-19 up here, masks were being distributed and gratefully worn by many visitors on the grounds.

The first day of the wildfire, the designation was “Dangerous for Certain Groups”; the following day, the label became simply “Dangerous”: and by the third, the bad air quality had turned sufficiently dreadful to earn the term “Hazardous.”

This photo renders in literal terms a toxic physical environment. But it symbolizes what has increasingly become a toxic diplomatic one, as well.

At this moment, Donald Trump has chosen to do what he does best: make a bad situation worse. He’s taking literally the satirical South Park song “Blame Canada,” but without an iota of logic. Our nation up north is responsible for not maintaining its forests properly, he claims.

That’s pretty rich, coming from a President who has already laid off thousands of U.S. Forest Service workers and whose 2027 budget includes cuts of more than 70% to the agency. But his rationale would be hideous in any case because he refuses to accept the reality of human-caused climate change.

Super-hot temperatures in the areas around the wildfires, together with dry vegetation, resulted in “functioned like a chimney, a super long chimney shooting smoke into the upper atmosphere and then the jet stream” and then found its way to the US, according to Ava Berger’s NPR report last week.

This is a situation that calls for international cooperation to address causes, not finger-pointing—unless you’re Trump. Then he tells citizens of a country that he has not-so-jokingly called to be annexed into the U.S. that he’s going to levy “a big tariff” on their nation for the wildfires crossing the border.

Trump has turned the Ugly American stereotype of the Vietnam War era into an actuality. His default reflex—to blow smoke every time he finds himself in a difficult situation—has become literal this time, and it’s losing the U.S. a neighbor and friend it could always count on.

The smoky air has cleared from beautiful Chautauqua Lake, as well as other areas affected in the northern part of the U.S. last week. But before the end of this second Trump term, you can count on it coming back, perhaps at more hazardous levels.

And Americans had better accept that it’s going to take longer before the effects of Trump’s careless, toxic rhetoric dissipate.

From now on, traditional allies like Canada are entitled to wonder what got into Americans that they put in the White House a charlatan like Trump twice—and whether the Republican Party he has remolded in his image will nominate as his successor someone equally wedded to his agenda of environmental callousness and diplomatic exploitation.

Quote of the Day (Pamela Paul, on ‘The Dudebro Candidate’)

“Broadly speaking, the dudebro candidate is more about vibes and style than about policy or platform. Picking up on the attitude and aesthetics of the manosphere, he is out to court attention, the tonal opposite of politic or cautious. This is a guy who openly disparages the need to watch what you say—and that's part of the appeal. Running for office almost as an act of defiance, the dudebro offers a potent brew of strong masculine energy, cross-party populist fury, frat-boy antics and straight-talk authenticity.”— American journalist, correspondent, editor, and author Pamela Paul, “Politics With Swagger. Meet the Dudebros,” The Wall Street Journal, June 13-14, 2026

First, the “Tech Bros”; now, “The Dudebros.” I wish the whole bunch would just bro away!

Well, one such “Dudebro,” reality TV star Spencer Pratt lost his bid for LA Mayor a month ago—and, by the end of the week, one more is likely to fall by the wayside. All kind of questions had been swirling about the Democratic primary winner for U.S. Senator from Maine, Graham Platner, even before the weekend.

But now, with a claim from a woman he dated that he had raped her several years ago—and the subsequent withdrawal of endorsements by prominent Democrats and a threat by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee not to invest in his campaign if he remains on the ballot—it’s hard to see him continuing.

Pamela Paul identifies Donald Trump as the prototype “dudebro candidate,” though I would argue that the real forerunner of this type was former wrestler turned Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura.

In any case, Trump won’t be going away any time, insulated from accountability by an acquiescent Supreme Court and GOP majorities in the House and Senate, as well as from so many gaffes and missteps that anyone else would have disappeared from the scene a long time ago. 

(Consider this: while Platner has one unadjudicated sexual assault charge against him, Trump has had at least two dozen women who accused him of sexual misconduct---and a civil jury found him liable for sexual abuse against E. Jean Carroll.)

The “Tech Bros” are unlucky to go away any time soon, either—unless one or more fall out with Trump, as almost happened with Elon Musk.

“Frat-boy antics” might be one description for this entire crew, but I prefer “obnoxiousness.” It’s an indictment of our time that these men are able to come out of nowhere and be seriously considered for high positions in government or business.

(The image accompanying this post, showing Pamela Paul at the 2019 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, was taken Oct. 26, 2019, by Larry D. Moore.)

Britain’s Gamble 10 Years Ago—and Ours

I don’t imagine the British know much baseball history. More’s the pity, because if they had, this week’s major political event might have reminded them of the adage of the great New York catcher and philosopher, Yogi Berra: “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

For my mostly stateside readers, I’m talking about Monday’s announcement by Keir Starmer (pictured) that he would step down as Prime Minister. Wouldn’t you know it, it was almost 10 years to the day that David Cameron did likewise.

Cameron’s decision immediately followed his failed gamble that a defeat of a referendum calling for Brexit would deflate the anti-free trade movement within his Conservative Party.

Instead, the yes vote to withdraw from the European Union precipitated his own fall from power, and overshadowed the terms of five subsequent PMs (including, now, Starmer) who eventually stood in front of 10 Downing Street to say, too, they would be stepping down.

Six leaders in 10 years represent no way to run a government, let alone a business. Coalition fractures mean at minimum that long-term projects won’t start, and that unscrupulous leaders will make a money or power grab while they can. At worst, they encourage a voter perception of anarchy and the need for a strongman to quell the chaos.

Sifting through the controversies that eventually engulfed Starmer in an article last month in The Financial Times, Anthony Seldon, co-founder of the Museum of the Prime Minister, summarized questions related to this streak of ineffective British leaders:

“Is it the incumbents or the system that is responsible? Are the problems the prime minister faces simply greater than before? Has the job now become impossible?”

Seldon cites three government structures in decline that are contributing to the current “churn at the top”: the replacement of Members of Parliaments motivated by the public interest by ones acting in their own private one; a deterioration of the civil service; and an electorate susceptible to instant gratification.

He also fears current developments in the two established parties, the Conservatives and Labour: “It is entirely possible that one or both will cease to exist as exist as mainstream parties in the next 10 [years]. If that happens, another source of national stability will be swept away.”

Seldon’s sweeping historical overview is fine, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t take into account how the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09 stoked popular resentment on both sides of the Atlantic against international trade arrangements that millions came to regard as inequitable.

That popular unrest was manifested in the successful Brexit campaign, which produced its own inevitable lamentable consequences in the public sphere, according to The New York Times’ Michael D. Shear and Megan Specia:

“Perhaps no part of British society was changed more by Brexit than its political landscape, which has fractured into a chaotic tug of war in which no party seems able to satisfy the demands of an angry and disillusioned public for long.”

With all the hang-wringing by Seldon, Shear and Specia over volatility in the British government, they should cast their eyes “across the pond.” Here, unsteadiness over the past decade was generated not by six people, but by just one, driven by rage and retribution?

Yes, just as Britain took a flyer on a major shift in government, so did the United States 10 years ago this fall, when it elected Donald Trump—a candidate with no governmental or national security experience—President. Anger over two major issues that landed him in the White House also propelled the Brexit campaign: immigration and unequal class outcomes over trade policy.

In the last 10 years, Britain has only had one leader who remotely resembles Trump: Boris Johnson. As I wrote in this post from 10 years ago, when it looked like Johnson would not seek the brass ring, their shared traits include brashness, lying, an overactive libido, non-ideological conservatism, irresponsibility, a brand name, and faux populism.

Even so, Johnson has been no match over time for Trump, who, even after being cast out of the White House in the 2020 election, darkened American politics with ceaseless conspiracy mongering and his bid to return to power to avoid criminal and civil responsibility for his misdeeds.

And now, when he’s not busy earning nicknames like “Landscaper in Chief” and “The Creature From the Green Lagoon,” the Trump Presidency has created a vortex of instability characterized by longtime friends and allies insulted and alienated, promises made and broken, policy positions taken before being forsaken, including:

*Republican Senators cozy up to him unashamedly, only to find themselves “primaried” and losing their seats for no reason they can account for.

*The same senators are assured by White House aides that Trump will support a housing bill they’ve been working on with Democrats for over a year, only for the President to cancel the signing event at the last minute, insisting he won’t put his signature on it until Congress passes his pet voter ID legislation.

*Trump publicly speculated about making Venezuela the 51^st state.

*Even as the Trump administration negotiated with Iran, it prepared and launched a surprise invasion.

*With the “Memo of Understanding” (not yet a treaty, let alone one fulfilling initially stated war aims), Trump is teaching Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu what US observers have known for years: don’t count on his loyalty when he finds it disadvantageous.

*By exempting many agricultural commodities he announced last year, Trump has “raise[d] questions about the coherence of the president’s tariff initiatives as a whole,” according to a report this month by the American Enterprise Institute.

*At the start of the Iran War, he called for “unconditional surrender”—a demand long-since dropped.

I wish the British all the best as they look for a competent leader who’ll last more than Boris Johnson’s three years or Starmer’s two. But it could always be worse. They could choose a Trumpian leader desperate and able to stay on longer, perpetrating untold damage in the process.

(The image accompanying this post, of Keir Starmer, is his official portrait, taken July 5, 2024, on his appointment as Prime Minister, by Simon Dawson/ No 10 Downing Street.)

TV Quote of the Day (‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ on a Looming Financial Scandal)

[The investment bank Phillips Berenson has collapsed, and rumors circulate in “The City,” London’s central business district and financial center, that it’s due to financial chicanery. Another bank, the more venerable Bartlett's, is also in trouble, having lent it so much money. Its chair, Sir Desmond Glazebrook, confers with Prime Minister James Hacker about a government bailout for his institution.]

James Hacker [played by Paul Eddington]: “What do you know about Phillips Berenson?”

Sir Desmond Glazebrook [played by Richard Vernon]: “What do you know about Phillips Berenson?”

Hacker: “Well, uh... only what I read in the papers.”

Glazebrook: “Oh, good. Yes, well, they're in a bit of trouble, that's all. They lent a bit of money to the wrong chaps. Could happen to anyone.”

Dorothy Wainwright [Hacker’s political adviser] [[played by Deborah Norton]: “So you haven't heard any rumors?”

Glazebrook: “Oh well, there are always rumors.”

Dorothy: “Of bribery, embezzlement, misappropriation, insider dealing?”

Glazebrook: “Oh, come, come, dear lady, those are strong words.”

Dorothy: “So they're not true?”

Glazebrook: “Well, there's... there are different uh, different ways of looking at things.”

Dorothy: “What's a different way of looking at embezzlement?”

Glazebrook: “Oh, well, of course, if a chap embezzles, you have to do something about it.”

Hacker: “Have a serious word with him?”

Glazebrook: “Absolutely. Usually it's just a chap who's advanced himself a short-term, unauthorised, unsecured, temporary loan from the company's account, and, uh, invested it unluckily. You know, horse falls at the first fence, that sort of thing.”— Yes, Prime Minister, Season 2, Episode 4, “A Conflict of Interest,” original air date Dec. 31, 1987, teleplay by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, directed by Sydney Lotterby

You can keep your Benny Hills. When it comes to British TV humor, Yes, Minister, and its equally waggish follow-up, Yes, Prime Minister, are the shows for me. These UK political satires aired in the Eighties, and the closest we’ve had stateside has been the more potty-mouthed Veep. I wish they would be broadcast as often this side of the Atlantic as The Honeymooners.

The government bailouts of risk-happy financial institutions at the heart of the above dialogue is something that has rightly enraged American taxpayers, with the Bush I-era savings and loan scandal and the Global Financial Crisis of the “oughts.” But something else intrigued me about this episode: that title, “A Conflict of Interest.”

That concept has been a part of American life since the founding of the republic, including the establishment of the First National Bank and, more starkly, slaveowning lawmakers who passed legislation benefiting themselves at the expense of other human beings.

But these ethically questionable interactions of government and business have ramped up, to an unprecedented degree, under the current administration.

President Trump, his family, and his Cabinet have profited so abundantly and shamelessly from such transactions—and following their trail has been so complex—that many, if not most, Americans have given up trying to keep track of it all. It’s much easier to follow the Epstein files (though, truth be told, financial interests are an often-overlooked part of this still unresolved scandal).

The outcome is what you might expect. None of the departments in the executive branch make even a pretense now at the relatively gentle coaxing of the truth from Sir Desmond employed by PM Hacker and his aide Dorothy. The regulatory agencies that could have raised alarms were emasculated by Trump and Elon Musk’s Orwellian-titled Department of Government Efficiency.

The path was paved for this through three Supreme Court decisions that gave the Trump Administration virtual carte blanche to transform the government into an endless slot machine for themselves and their allies:

*In Trump v. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and Trump v. District of Columbia) (2021), the justice vacated lower courts’ rulings involving allegations that, as president, Trump benefited from the hotels and restaurants that he owns, violating two anti-corruption provisions of the Constitution known as the emoluments clauses.  

* In Trump v. United States (2024), the GOP-appointed majority ruled that former presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within their core constitutional powers, and at least presumptive immunity for all other official acts—a decision opening the door to Trump lawlessness in his return to power.

* In Murphy V. NCAA (2018), the court invalidated a federal ban on states legalizing sports gambling—opening the way to, as Drew Hutchinson’s May Bloomberg Law article noted, is opening companies to “questions about insider trading, reputational and legal risk, and whether internal policies address this new environment.” And what do you know—Donald Trump Jr. is an adviser to Kalshi, one of the two major prediction market platforms, and a major investor in another, Polymarket.

As Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett noted, “If Trump dictates how prediction markets develop, while his family profits, it will make Washington look (even more) like a corrupt casino. So, too, if insider trading goes unchecked.”

Over the last 560 days, the Trump family has taken in an estimated $2.7 billion, according to “Trump’s Take,” a real-time financial tracker documenting the cash and gifts that the President and his family have received by selling the presidency.

All the money-making schemes—ventures that would have been certainly regarded as undignified under all his predecessors, and even unconstitutional—have just kept coming: Trump Bibles, fragrances, gold cell phones; the $TRUMP Meme Coin; "America's 250th Anniversary" hats; and a luxury resort proposal by son-in-law Jared Kushner in Albania that has drawn more than a week’s worth of protest in that nation over the potential environmental damage it may cause.

Then there is the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) scheduled for the White House South Lawn on June 14—not so coincidentally, Trump’s birthday.

Leave aside whether this tacky $60 million spectacle would have been better staged in the Roman Coliseum under an ancient emperor’s gaze, or even whether the event offers Trump ally and UFC chief executive Dana White direct access to the White House for a prime marketing opportunity.

Lost in all of this is that Trump bought between $15,000 and $50,000 of stock in the parent company of UFC, TKO Holding Group—a little more than two weeks after he began promoting the event.

Conflict of interest, anyone? Well, as Sir Desmond might say, there are “different ways of looking at things.”

Though they will never be able to overtake their lord and master when it comes to quantity and audacity, the Trump Cabinet is doing its best to do well financially at the country’s expense. This online resource from the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) itemizes all the ways that each Trump Cabinet member has engaged in conflicts of interest. They are worth exploring in depth, but I’ll just highlight some of the more egregious ones:

*Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (who, after his evasive talk about his connection to Jeffrey Epstein, should change his surname to “No-Good-Nick”) is now coming under scrutiny for his relationship with Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer.

* Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earned around $2.5 million in referral fees from 2022 through September 2025 from Wisner Baum, a law firm suing Merck, the maker of the HPV vaccine Gardasil—putting RFK Jr.’s vaccine skepticism in an ever worse light, if that’s possible.

* Education Secretary Linda McMahon was required to divest from financial holdings that posed possible conflicts of interest, but does not appear to have done so as of July of last year, according to a complaint filed with the Office of Government Ethics by the CLC.

In keeping with PM Hacker’s question—“Have a serious word with him?”—if the “him” in question is Trump, I say “Yes.” And let that word, as soon as mathematically and electorally possible, be “impeachment.”