The Conversation -- July 21, 2025

“Trump: Making America Alone Again.” Margaret MacMillan in Foreign Affairs: “... it’s hard to think of a case in which the leader of a major alliance has so casually and brutally cast aside allies that, for the most part, have been dependable.... The striking lack of historical precedents for such behavior does not suggest a clever Machiavellian policy to enhance American power; rather, it shows a United States acting against its own interests in bewildering fashion, undermining one of the key sources of that power. And this comes at a time when American global leadership and economic and technological dominance are already under growing pressure from China and other major rivals.... Alliances are hard work: their management requires patience, forbearance, skill, and ... repeated tending.... Publicly chastising allies on their supposed faults, as Vice President JD Vance did with the Europeans at the Munich Security Conference in February, barking out orders and insults on social media, as the president does almost daily ... only stores up resentments and makes future personal relations more difficult.” ~~~

~~~ Trump: Making Europe Great Again. Jeanna Smialek of the New York Times: Donald “Trump’s pledge to 'Make America Great Again' ... is bringing Europeans together again. The European Union was in bad shape at the start of the first Trump administration. Public trust in the bloc was at a historic low, Britain had just voted to leave, and the European economy was struggling to recover from the global financial crisis, which had set off a series of debt-related meltdowns across the continent. But things slowly started to improve from around 2016. In recent months, sentiment around the European Union has picked up further. Trust ratings are approaching a two-decade high. E.U. leaders are striking trade deals with fast-growing economies like Indonesia, standing up a defense plan that has garnered partnerships with nations including Canada, and even Britain recently struck a deal to reset relations.” And Putin is helping, too!

There is a world of global trade that is being built excluding the U.S. -- Sebastian Breteau, a retail business auditor ~~~ 

~~~ David Lynch of the Washington Post: “Major U.S. corporations and trading partners are scrambling to adapt to a new global economy, even as ... Donald Trump mulls the imposition of historic tariffs in less than two weeks.... Stung by Trump’s unpredictable demands, close U.S. allies including those in Europe are trying to develop alternative trade links that skirt the U.S. market.... Taxes on U.S. imports will likely stay much higher than they have been for several decades. And the American role in the global economy is undergoing a profound change, with consequences for the rest of the world.... At this early date, the tangible gains [from Trump's economic regimen] have been muted. Spending on new factories, which soared under the Biden administration, has fallen in five of the past six months, according to the Census Bureau. Manufacturing employment also is down slightly....”

Ben Bernanke & Janet Yellen in a New York Times op-ed: “As former chairs of the Federal Reserve, we know from our experiences and our reading of history that the ability of the central bank to act independently is essential for its effective stewardship of the economy. Recent attempts to compromise that independence, including the president’s demands for a radical reduction in interest rates and his threats to fire its chair, Jerome Powell, if the Fed does not comply, risk lasting and serious economic harm. They undermine not only Mr. Powell but also all future chairs and, indeed, the credibility of the central bank itself.”

Frank Kendall, former Secretary of the Air Force, in a New York Times op-ed: “Fear is the universal tool of authoritarians.... [Donald] Trump does not accept dissent and is using fear to try to suppress it.... The fear in the Pentagon today is palpable.... Both the targeted removals of senior military leaders and the mass firings of members of our federal civil service that are taking place are unprecedented and clearly designed to eliminate dissent, replace professionals with political loyalists and create a climate of fear.... The administration has threatened prosecutions against former government officials and private citizens. It has threatened companies with the loss of government contracts and threatened nonprofit organizations across the country with cuts to funding. This climate of menace and apprehension extends to companies’ willingness to employ or associate with those who criticize Mr. Trump or his administration. I am one of those people.... Mr. Trump’s use of fear as a weapon has been most pronounced with undocumented immigrants and communities of immigrants more broadly.”

Mike Baker & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: In 1996, Maria Farmer complained to New York police and to the F.B.I. about being assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell. She repeated her complaints -- which included one involving her sister when the sister was a teenager -- in 2006. She described one incident in which Mr. Trump intimidated her and “hovered over her,” but did not assault her after Mr. Epstein told him, “No, no. She’s not here for you.”  “In interviews this week about what she told the authorities, Ms. Farmer said she had no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Mr. Epstein’s associates. But she said she was alarmed by what she saw as Mr. Epstein’s pattern of pursuing girls and young women while building friendships with prominent people, including [Donald] Trump and President Bill Clinton.... The story of Ms. Farmer’s efforts to call law enforcement attention to Mr. Epstein and his circle shows how the case files could contain material that is embarrassing or politically problematic to Mr. Trump, even if it is largely extraneous to Mr. Epstein’s crimes and was never fully investigated or corroborated.” The link is a gift link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare on the colossal stupidity of suing the Wall Street Journal for publishing a story the plaintiff knows to be true. “Trump’s conduct throughout the recent flare-up over the Epstein case is so bizarre that I can only understand it as reflecting fear on his part — panic, really — that something is going to come out. Ironically, there’s no surer way to make certain that it does than to sue a newspaper over a document the president knows to be real.” MB: Wittes claims in his essay that Trump dropped his frivolous lawsuit against the Des Moines Register. That's misleading. As the Washington Post reported (July 1), “Lawyers for ... Donald Trump on Monday filed a motion to drop his federal lawsuit against longtime Iowa pollster J. Ann Selzer and the Des Moines Register newspaper, and refiled the suit in an Iowa state court.”

Here is Donald Trump's latest attempt to divert attention from his Epstein debacle, this one abusing the power of his office and aiming directly at his bro base: ~~~

Trump Insists D.C. Team Revert to Racist Name. Daniel Trotta of Reuters: "...  Donald Trump threatened on Sunday to interfere with a deal to build a new football stadium in Washington, D.C., unless the local NFL team, now known as the Commanders, changes its name back to Redskins. The American football team dropped the name Redskins in 2020 after decades of criticism that it was a racial slur with links to the U.S. genocide of the Indigenous population.... 'I may put a restriction on them that if they don’t change the name back to the original "Washington Redskins," and get rid of the ridiculous moniker, "Washington Commanders," I won’t make a deal for them to build a Stadium in Washington,' Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform." Trump also wants the Cleveland Guardians to change their name back to "Cleveland Indians." The New York Times story is here. ~~~

~~~ More distraction, arguably also steeped in racism: ~~~

~~~ Joe Sommerlad of the Independent: “Donald Trump has posted a bizarre AI video of former president Barack Obama being arrested and thrown in jail. Trump ... posted the TikTok clip on his Truth Social platform on Sunday in which the Democrat is seen declaring in a rally speech that 'no one is above the law.' He is then seen being handcuffed by law enforcement during an Oval Office sitdown with a grinning Trump, created using real footage of the two men meeting at the White House in November 2016.... The Democrat is then led away and subsequently seen wearing an orange jumpsuit in a federal prison.... Trump appears to have been responding to comments made by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who ... accused Obama of orchestrating a 'years-long coup' to keep Trump from the White House.... The president posted about Gabbard’s claim 17 times over the weekend, drawing accusations that he was attempting to shift the national conversation away from his past relationship with [Jeffrey] Epstein....” ~~~

~~~ BUT. In Trump's version of events, he doesn't need an Epstein distraction, because the "Epstein Hoax" is making him even more popular. ~~~

~~~ Joe DePaulo of Mediaite: “... Donald Trump is boasting that his poll numbers have gone up 'significantly' amid what he’s calling the 'Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.' In a post to Truth Social on Sunday, the president crowed about his latest approval ratings and them chalked up to the Epstein story — despite polls showing widespread disapproval of his administration’s handling of the probe. 'My Poll Numbers within the Republican Party, and MAGA, have gone up, significantly, since the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax was exposed by the Radical Left Democrats and, just plain “troublemakers,”' Trump wrote. 'They have hit 90%, 92%, 93%, and 95%, in various polls, and are all Republican Party records. The General Election numbers are my highest, EVER! People like Strong Borders, and all of the many other things I have done. GOD BLESS AMERICA. MAGA!' Trump’s claims were largely backed up by CNN data guru Harry Enten on Thursday — although Enten’s dive into the Republican numbers shows Trump might have inflated them just a tad.... However..., Trump’s numbers with broader electorate are as low as they have been at any point in his second term.” ~~~

~~~ MAGA Reverts to Form. Erica Green of the New York Times: “... when The Wall Street Journal published a story detailing a decades-old letter with a lewd drawing that Mr. Trump allegedly sent Mr. Epstein..., Mr. Trump turned one of the most fractious moments for his base into one of the most unifying by tapping into other MAGA grievances: the deep mistrust of mainstream media, the disdain for Rupert Murdoch and the belief that the president had been unfairly persecuted by his political foes. Almost immediately, many of those who had been critical of the administration’s handling of the Epstein case cheered the president on as he vehemently denied the claims, sued The Journal and ordered his attorney general to seek the release of more information.”

On substantive matters, Donald Trump is the worst excuse for a president in U.S. history. He is cruel, corrupt, crass, ignorant and dictatorial. On unimportant matters, he is the saddest excuse for a president in U.S. history. ~~~

The Oval Office, then and now. pic.twitter.com/uCclHpveuF

— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) July 16, 2025

     ~~~ Gilding the Oval. Matt Stopera of BuzzFeed, published by the Huffington Post: "Donald Trump has completely transformed the Oval Office into his own gaudy, gold fantasy land.... 'It's like the Dollar Tree version of Versailles,' one person joked." Do click on the link. Stopera has posted quite a few photos, pointing out all the new golden plastic. 

Constitutional Failure. Justin Jouvenal of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump and his appointees have been accused of flouting courts in a third of the more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling, a Washington Post analysis has found, suggesting widespread noncompliance with America’s legal system. Plaintiffs say Justice Department lawyers and the agencies they represent are snubbing rulings, providing false information, failing to turn over evidence, quietly working around court orders and inventing pretexts to carry out actions that have been blocked. Judges appointed by presidents of both parties have often agreed. None have taken punitive action to try to force compliance, however, allowing the administration’s defiance of orders to go on for weeks or even months in some instances. Outside legal analysts say courts typically are slow to begin contempt proceedings for noncompliance, especially while their rulings are under appeal.  Judges also are likely to be concerned, analysts say, that the U.S. Marshals Service — whose director is appointed by the president — might not serve subpoenas or take recalcitrant government officials into custody if ordered to by the courts.”

A Journalist in Trump's Purgatory. George Chidi of the Guardian: “Prosecutors dropped the last remaining charges against Atlanta-area journalist Mario Guevara last week after he was arrested while livestreaming a protest in June. But the influential Salvadorian reporter remains penned up in a south Georgia detention center, fending off a deportation case, jail house extortionists and despair, people familiar with his situation told the Guardian. Donald Trump’s administration has been extreme in unprecedented ways to undocumented immigrants. But Guevara’s treatment is a special case. Shuttled between five jail cells in Georgia since his arrest while covering the 'No Kings Day' protests, the 20-plus-years veteran journalist’s sin was to document the undocumented and the way Trump’s agents have been hunting them down. Today, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, he’s the only reporter in the United States sleeping in a prison cell for doing his job.... Guevara is arguably the most-watched journalist covering Ice operations in the United States, a story that the English-language media had largely been missing, [Jerry] Gonzales [of GALEO Latino Community Development Fund] said.” (Also linked yesterday.) 

The president is the most maligned and attacked political figure in the history of American politics..., but he’s also the most resilient. And you see at the same time, his approval ratings are skyrocketing. CNN had a story, I think, a day or two ago. He was at 90 percent approval rating. There’s never been a president that high. -- Speaker Mike Johnson, lying on CNBC last week ~~~

~~~ Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: “Overall, according to the Strength in Numbers presidential approval average, 42.6 percent of Americans approve of the president’s performance while 53.5 percent disapprove, for a net negative of -10.9 points, a low for his second term so far.... The House speaker’s assertion that Trump was at a '90 percent approval rating' is the kind of falsehood you might hear from authoritarian state media. It is a servile display of allegiance as much as it is an attempt to mislead viewers. It’s Johnson telling Trump he is his man.... To tell such egregious lies for the approval of some higher authority is to prostrate yourself — to show ... your lack of self-respect. This becomes all the more egregious when one considers that Mike Johnson, as speaker of the House of Representatives, is more an equal to the president, in the American constitutional order, than he is a subordinate. He should have the dignity, at least, to act as a peer and not a supplicant.”

     ~~~ MB Note/Update: The CNN poll, as Joe DePaulo of Mediaite notes in the story linked above, was a poll of self-identified Republicans. According to Gallup's most recent polling, only 28 percent of Americans say they are Republicans. So that's (nearly) 90 percent of about 28 percent of Americans, Mikey. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The Speaker has not only a duty to demonstrate that he leads a co-equal branch of the federal government, he also has an obligation to stand up for -- to speak for -- the men and women of the House of Representatives. The House is the body that by law and in fact most directly represents the people in this "government of the people." By subordinating himself to the president*, by grovelling to him, Johnson demeans every member of the House, and by extension, every American citizen whom they represent. Johnson's paradox is that he is so determined to keep his job that he has opted not to do it. 

⭐ The Climate Has Changed, and We Have Not. Sarah Kaplan, et al., of the Washington Post: “From last year’s disaster in Asheville to this month’s catastrophic floods in Central Texas, the world has entered a new era of rainfall supercharged by climate change, rendering existing response plans inadequate.... The Post compared the response to Helene in western North Carolina with that of Florida’s Gulf Coast, where the storm hit first.... The fact that many North Carolinians remained in harm’s way ... resulted from a cascade of decisions all stemming from the mistaken assumption that hurricanes are mainly a coastal threat.... As Helene bore down on the Gulf Coast, years of investment and experience equipped officials there to take decisive action, issuing mandatory evacuation orders.... But most counties in western North Carolina ... lack the most basic tool: flood evacuation plans.... Though the National Weather Service correctly predicted that the flooding would be deadly, the warnings from local authorities were not forceful or specific enough to sway residents....”

⭐ Julien Berman of the Washington Post: “In the early 20th century, regardless of your family’s income, you could be fairly confident that enrolling in college would provide a solid bump to your wages a few years down the line. And back then, the returns were the same for both rich and poor students. That’s no longer the case. Wealthy college-goers now earn a premium nearly three times larger than the one earned by low-income students, according to economists Zachary Bleemer and Sarah Quincy.... For low-income students, those returns are half as large as they once were. In other words, higher education has become regressive, widening class divisions by delivering far greater returns to wealthy students than to their low-income peers. The primary reason for the shift: a decades-long policy failure that funneled poor students away from four-year research universities and into two-year community colleges and for-profit institutions.”

Marie: I'm not a fan of James Carville's nor of the "Democrats in disarray" theme song he likes to sing. But I do think in his New York Times op-ed, Carville hits many of the right notes.

Alex Horton of the Washington Post: “A passenger jet landing in North Dakota performed a 'go-around' to avoid colliding with an Air Force B-52, according to the commercial pilot’s comments posted to social media and the airline involved in the incident. SkyWest Flight 3788, acting as a Delta connection between Minneapolis to Minot, North Dakota, was cleared by the tower for landing on Friday, the airline said in a statement. But the pilot 'performed a go-around when another aircraft became visible in their flight path,' said SkyWest, which is investigating the incident. Air Force officials did not provide details of the incident, but they did say that a hulking B-52 bomber was performing a flyover at the North Dakota State Fair, which took place in Minot, home to a commercial airport and an Air Force base.”

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Israel/Palestine. Aaron Boxerman, et al., of the New York Times: “Israeli forces killed and wounded dozens of Palestinians on Sunday in the northern Gaza Strip, after crowds gathered near a crossing from Israel to try to seize aid from United Nations trucks entering the enclave, according to the Gaza health ministry and health workers. The episode was the latest in a string of deadly shootings as hunger and desperation have gripped Palestinians in Gaza during Israel’s nearly two-year campaign against Hamas. The latest attack took place near the Zikim crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel. More than 60 people were killed while seeking aid in northern Gaza on Sunday, according to the health ministry and Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.... At least 32 people were killed on Saturday after Israeli soldiers began shooting near a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation site in southern Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Wafaa Shurafa, et al., of the AP: “Gaza saw its deadliest day yet for aid-seekers in over 21 months of war as at least 85 Palestinians were killed while trying to reach food on Sunday, the territory’s Health Ministry said. There was new alarm as Israel’s military issued evacuation orders for parts of central Gaza, one of the few areas where it has rarely operated with ground troops and where many international organizations trying to distribute aid are located.”

Japan. Martin Fackler, et al., of the New York Times: “Japan’s long-governing Liberal Democratic Party suffered a defeat in parliamentary elections on Sunday that saw new right-wing populist groups make gains, heralding what could be a tectonic shift in what has been one of the world’s most stable democracies. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba vowed to stay on after his Liberal Democrats and their coalition partner lost 19 of their 66 seats that were up for re-election, depriving them of control of the less powerful Upper House. But he is facing calls to step down after the setback left the Liberal Democrats, who have led Japan for all but five of the last 70 years, a minority party in both chambers of the Diet, the country’s Parliament. Mr. Ishiba and his party failed to convince enough voters that they could resolve a host of challenges that included rising prices of staples like rice, tariff talks with the United States and the growing burden that supporting Japan’s aging population has placed on working-age people.”

Ukraine/Russia War. Andrew Kramer of the New York Times: “Russia overnight Sunday to Monday fired the latest in a series of huge missile and exploding drone barrages in Ukraine that have steadily escalated in recent months even as cease-fire talks began in the spring. At least one person was killed and several were injured in Kyiv, the capital.... In Kyiv, the engines of Russian exploding drones flying over the city were heard nearly continuously from after midnight until first light, interspersed with dozens of explosions. The authorities reported fires in four neighborhoods and one fatality.... While Kyiv has long been a target of Russian aerial assaults, recent attacks have also targeted western Ukrainian cities that until recently were havens from the worst violence of the war. Western Ukraine is also a center of military logistics for funneling Western weapons to Ukraine’s Army. The mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk, a city near the borders with Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, reported the most intensive strikes of the war early Monday, with missiles and exploding drones.”

~~~ Constant Méheut of the New York Times: “Ukraine has been ramping up domestic arms production significantly, unable to rely as heavily as it once did on an increasingly uncertain supply of weapons from its allies.... [Donald] Trump’s inconsistent support for Ukraine has called into question the continued backing of the United States, Kyiv’s biggest arms supplier.... Rather than pleading primarily for arms, as it did early in the war, Ukraine is increasingly asking for the money to build its own weapons.... Now, it produces about 40 percent of the weapons used at the front, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, and it is looking to increase that amount sharply. The most striking example of this growing self-reliance is the use of drones, now omnipresent on the battlefield and produced almost entirely in Ukraine. 'This does not bring peace of mind, but it does provide greater moral confidence that we will not be left empty-handed,' Mr. Zelensky said in February of Ukraine’s booming defense industry.”