The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Giorgia Meloni spent years sanding down her post-fascist edges so she could be the respectable face of the European right and Trump’s favorite continental cosplay partner. She got the photo ops, the White House invite, the whole "I’m a serious stateswoman" starter pack. Then Trump did what Trump always does: turned foreign policy into a petty loyalty test and a personal humiliation game, this time over war with Iran and a Pope who had the audacity to not be sufficiently bloodthirsty.

The Italian government, bound by a constitution and a public that doesn’t love endless Middle East wars, said US planes couldn’t use the Sigonella base for combat ops without parliament signing off. Trump responded by raging at Pope Leo XIV on Truth Social for being "weak on crime"—because nothing says strategic vision like subtweeting the Bishop of Rome during a shooting war. When Meloni didn’t fall in line behind his papal tantrum, he escalated: bragging on Italian TV that she had "begged" him for a photo and that he only agreed out of pity. She, having a shred of self-respect and a looming election, fired back on video: the story was "completely fabricated" and, minor detail, Italy does not beg.

Then NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte wandered into the minefield, boasting on Fox News that some 500 US aircraft had taken off from American bases in Italy in support of "Operation Epic Fury"—the US-Israeli Iran campaign—promptly detonating Rome’s domestic politics. Italy’s defense ministry called his description "fallacious" and "totally misleading", insisting they’d only allowed technical and logistical flights, not combat missions, while Meloni’s government keeps insisting it never authorized direct military action from Italian soil. NATO then helpfully "clarified" that Rutte just meant allies had honored existing basing agreements, which is the diplomatic way of saying: everyone’s trying to pretend this isn’t exactly what it looks like.

So now Meloni is stuck between a furious electorate, a war she can’t be seen as endorsing, and a US president who treats alliances like condo board feuds: you’re either worshiping him or you’re dead to him. Ministers floated boycotting the US Embassy’s July 4th party in solidarity, then quietly backed down to the very brave position of "everyone do what you want". The next NATO summit in Ankara will put Trump and Meloni in the same room again, where the leader of the free world will presumably decide the fate of transatlantic relations based on who flatters him more: the Italian prime minister, the French frenemie Macron, or whatever cable host he watched in the motorcade on the way over. This is what happens when global security is run like a Real Housewives reunion.

The Trump White House spent years bragging that the economy was "the greatest in history" while prices quietly did their best impression of SpaceX. Now the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge is up 4.1% year-over-year – a three-year high – powered by gas that shot up to nearly $4.50 a gallon after Trump’s little brush-with-war and then peace deal with Iran. Sure, prices have drifted back down to a still-awful $3.92, but nothing says "strong leadership" like turning every fill-up into a trust exercise with your credit card limit.

New Fed chair Kevin Warsh is doing his best "stern dad" routine, talking tough about getting inflation back to 2% while not actually saying what he’s going to do, as markets scream and tech stocks get body-slammed by rate-hike speculation. The central bank has already shelved the rate cuts it promised back in January, because when inflation has been above target for more than five years, even Wall Street starts to notice the house is on fire.

Meanwhile, the data says incomes and consumer spending are both up 0.3% after inflation, which the administration will absolutely spin as proof that everyone is thriving in Trump’s golden age. Out in the real world, households that went a decade without seeing inflation above 2.5% are now stuck in a never-ending price surge being sold as a "temporary" blip. The official line is that Americans are doing great; the PCE index, gas pumps, and grocery receipts would like to file a strongly worded rebuttal.

Donald Trump, current president and aspiring landlord of every city he hates, is now floating the idea of a federal takeover of Washington, D.C. if voters insist on electing democratic socialist Janeese Lewis George as mayor. She responded with the radical, fringe notion that the people of D.C. elect the mayor of D.C. — a statement so offensive to Trump’s understanding of power that he’s basically threatening to put the capital under political receivership if it stops voting the way he prefers.

While Trump plays wannabe viceroy of the federal district, democratic socialists keep winning or competing in major cities: Zohran Mamdani running New York City, Nithya Raman making the L.A. mayoral runoff, Katie Wilson taking over in Seattle, and Bernie-aligned Brandon Johnson governing Chicago. Trump’s answer to this wave of people asking for things like rent caps, universal childcare, and affordable transit is to weaponize federal power against disfavored jurisdictions — cutting funding, flooding cities with ICE and National Guard troops, and now musing about effectively voiding D.C.’s home rule if it elects the wrong person.

The article politely calls this a reaction to economic pain and Trump’s policies; translated from Beltway to English, it’s: people are broke, billionaires are thriving, and the president is responding to demands for economic justice by threatening the basic principle that local voters get to choose their government. He already barked about Mamdani’s New York win before later praising him from the Oval Office, so who knows if he’ll follow through — but the normalization of “maybe I’ll just take over that city if they elect a socialist” is exactly how you slide from performative strongman to the real thing.

The Federal Reserve, now chaired by Trump-approved loyalist Kevin Warsh, bravely decided to do absolutely nothing with interest rates for the fourth time this year, while inflation runs hot and wages get quietly mugged in a back alley. The big headline change? They removed the "easing bias" from their statement, which is central bank speak for "we'd love to cut rates for the president but we’re trying not to make it too obvious."

Trump, naturally, insists he doesn’t "want to have a big influence" on Warsh while publicly demanding rate cuts and praising him as "fantastic" for, presumably, understanding who gave him the chair. This comes after Jerome Powell was conveniently put under federal investigation over a construction cost overrun, an inquiry the DOJ dropped under political pressure, and which Powell accurately described as a pretext to strong-arm the Fed into cheaper money for Trump’s political needs.

Powell then wins a Profile in Courage award for warning that politicizing the Fed could destroy public trust, which is adorable given that the trust-destruction phase is already well underway. The central bank is supposed to be independent, but under Trump it’s more like a slightly fancier campaign office where monetary policy doubles as re-election strategy. Kill the guardrails, call it economic policy.

Keith Sonderling, Trump’s acting labor secretary and full-time Fox News booker, just fired off threat letters to 53 states and territories demanding they "combat waste, fraud, and abuse" in unemployment insurance—or risk having their administrative funds cut off for the first time in history. That’s right: the Department of Labor’s new fraud-fighting strategy is to defund the people who actually run the system, then act shocked when it breaks. Think arson investigator, but he shows up with a flamethrower and a press release.

The department helpfully backed its tough talk with…no data. Instead, it spotlighted three Democrat-led states—California, New York, and Illinois—blurring together "improper payments" and "fraud" like a guy who didn’t finish the GAO summary, much less the report. Meanwhile, actual numbers show Republican-run Florida with a 36.43% improper payment rate, more than double California’s 16.85%, but that didn’t make the cut for the Fox segment. Improper payments, which experts note are mostly about ancient tech and paperwork errors, are being repackaged as a partisan crime wave so Sonderling can go on TV and promise to "cut off" states that don’t bow to the narrative.

This is the same Labor Department that already yanked back unspent American Rescue Plan funds that were supposed to modernize these creaking unemployment systems and fight real fraud. Now they’re blaming states for the mess they helped create, threatening to choke off the money needed to fix it, and calling it fiscal responsibility. It’s less "protecting taxpayers" and more holding unemployed workers hostage until Democratic governors agree to be the villain of Fox & Friends. Governance by talking point: still cheaper than governing.