The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Donald Trump took to prime-time television to declare victory in Iran, which is always what you do when you definitely haven’t started a mess you can’t finish. The White House version: flawless statesmanship and peace through strength. The reality version: a president using a foreign crisis as a campaign infomercial, waving around "mission accomplished" vibes like George W. Bush’s ghostwriter, and hoping nobody notices the body count, the regional chaos, or whatever classified thing they definitely don’t want Congress to see.

While Trump was busy victory-lapping, the Supreme Court heard arguments on whether the 14th Amendment still means what it says about birthright citizenship. The administration’s long-running dream of turning citizenship into a vibes-based loyalty program is now one conservative ruling away from reality. If they can get SCOTUS to help them carve holes in the Constitution big enough to drive Stephen Miller’s white ethnostate fantasies through, that’d be swell for them, less so for, you know, American democracy.

And then there’s Attorney General Pam Bondi — now out, which is interesting for someone whose main qualification for the job was "once took money from Trump’s foundation while deciding whether to investigate Trump University." The woman who helped weaponize the Justice Department as a presidential law firm is suddenly gone, leaving behind a DOJ so battered and politicized it should probably qualify for disaster relief. The revolving door of loyalists continues, each one leaving the rule of law slightly more broken than they found it. Tremendous operation, really.

Donald Trump has apparently decided that if you’re going to violate international law, you might as well do it with the rhetorical subtlety of a Monster Energy can. He’s talking about Iran like it’s a Call of Duty DLC: promising to “keep bombing our little hearts out”, describing the US presence as a “lovely ‘stay’ in Iran”, and bragging on Truth Social that as the 47th president it’s a “great honor” to kill “deranged scumbags” — by which he means, an entire nationality. War, but make it influencer content.

Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth, now proudly titled “secretary of war” because “defense” didn’t sound murdery enough, is out here live-blogging war crimes. He gushes over “death and destruction from the sky all day long”, openly endorses targeting civilian infrastructure like desalination plants, and announces a policy of giving “no quarter” — i.e., proudly advertising a Geneva Convention violation as if it’s a gym PR. He lovingly calls the US military’s role “lethality”, likens America to a rabid attack dog that shouldn’t be “shackled”, and savors the “quiet death” of an Iranian warship’s crew like he’s reviewing a wine.

All this bloodthirsty honesty, of course, is wrapped around the usual lies. Trump still refuses to call it a war so he doesn’t have to talk about Congress, preferring “excursion” and “stay”, while the White House homepage claims a “doctrine of peace through strength” that has allegedly “ended eight wars” and brought “global stability”. At the same time, the Financial Times reports a broker for Hegseth tried to pile into US military stocks before the shooting started, and Trump helpfully clarifies his favorite part of the whole adventure: “take the oil in Iran.” Bold new doctrine: peace through plunder.

So on the surface, it’s all macho plain-speaking and taboo-busting — the MAGA base gets its fix of unfiltered ultraviolence and linguistic cruelty. Underneath, it’s the same old imperial grift: geopolitical miscalculation and war profiteering, now dressed up as an edgy podcast. Orwell said insincerity is the enemy of clear language; Trump and Hegseth have solved that problem by being both maximally insincere and maximally deranged at the same time. Truly, an epic fury of killing-democracy cosplay.

After nearly 50 days of stiffing more than 35,000 Department of Homeland Security employees, Donald Trump has magnanimously decided they can have their own paychecks back. A new presidential memo orders DHS to start paying people at FEMA, the Coast Guard, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — you know, the folks who deal with disasters, defend the coasts, and keep critical infrastructure from being hacked, all of whom Trump previously treated as interest‑free lenders to his shutdown vanity project.

Trump already carved out TSA last week once passengers started noticing that having unpaid security workers is somewhat bad for air travel. Now, with a record-long DHS shutdown still grinding on, he’s issuing one-off memos like coupons at a clearance sale, while ICE and CBP conveniently stayed funded the whole time thanks to his so‑called One Big Beautiful Bill. So the border cops get steady cash, the rest of DHS gets sporadic presidential mercy, and Congress’s actual power of the purse gets replaced by whatever Trump feels like signing between TV hits. Governing by hostage release note is the new normal.

Presidential historian Barbara Perry stops by NPR to do the increasingly popular academic subfield of our era: explaining that no, this is not normal. Trump’s so-called wartime rhetoric doesn’t sound like FDR rallying a nation under fire or Lincoln agonizing over the cost of war; it sounds like a guy live‑tweeting a grudge match and trying to get a cut of the concessions. Where past presidents talked about shared sacrifice, Trump talks about ratings. Where they tried to calm the country, he tries to crank the volume to eleven and sell merch.

Instead of careful, constrained language that acknowledges Congress, allies, and, you know, reality, Trump’s version of “wartime” is a rolling campaign rally with missiles. Enemies are always cartoon villains, critics are traitors, and the press is the real threat to national security. That shift isn’t just a style note; it’s how you prep a population to accept endless emergency powers, ignore legal limits, and cheer when democratic institutions get run over in the name of “strength.”

The conversation makes clear that earlier presidents at least pretended to respect constitutional guardrails while they tiptoed around them; Trump barely recognizes the concept of guardrails unless they have his name in gold on them. By redefining war as a branding exercise and dissent as disloyalty, he turns the bully pulpit into a foghorn for permanent crisis. The historian is too polite to call it what it is, so allow a translation: this isn’t just rhetoric, it’s the soundtrack to killing democracy.

Donald Trump is reportedly frustrated with Attorney General Pam Bondi because she’s not turning the Justice Department into a fully operational personal revenge machine at a fast enough clip. According to multiple sources, Trump thinks Bondi hasn’t “executed on his vision” — which, helpfully translated from Trumpese, means she hasn’t produced enough indictments of his political enemies to satisfy a man who now talks about the DOJ like it’s DoorDash for prosecutions.

Bondi’s standing apparently cratered after the Jeffrey Epstein files saga, where Trump’s allies decided she didn’t squeeze the case hard enough to manufacture “wins” against his foes. Failing to secure indictments, a former White House official notes, is “a problem for job security with the president,” because nothing says "independent law enforcement" like your boss grading you on how many people he hates end up in handcuffs. Trump, we’re told, is very aware that “time goes fast” and “wants action” — a charming way to describe an elderly man trying to speedrun banana republic authoritarianism.

Enter Lee Zeldin, current head of the Environmental Protection Agency — an agency he’s presumably been busy dismantling — now floated as a top contender to run the Justice Department. Trump has been polling his friends about Zeldin as a possible replacement, with the key question being whether the Senate will confirm someone even more openly enthusiastic about weaponizing federal law enforcement. Publicly, Trump calls Bondi “a wonderful person” who is “doing a good job,” while privately shopping for a new Attorney General who will treat indictments like campaign swag.

So the president is mad that his Attorney General hasn’t gone hard enough after his political enemies, is looking to replace her with a loyalist, and everyone’s calmly discussing whether the Senate will sign off on this next step in turning the DOJ into his personal hit squad. American democracy continues to be held together by the fact that his cronies keep failing at authoritarianism in the most embarrassingly public ways possible.

Indiana Republicans committed the unpardonable sin: they didn’t contort the congressional map quite hard enough to please Donald Trump. So now the president is on a full-blown revenge tour, using the White House like a mob clubhouse and the Resolute Desk as a step-and-repeat backdrop for state senate primary challengers whose main qualification is that they’ll happily saw democracy’s legs off if he asks nicely.

Blake Fiechter literally dropped out of his race, then got called to the Oval, took a photo with Trump, and — presto — he’s back in. The message, as one adviser helpfully translated: “Work hard, we’ll be there for you, don’t let me down.” Totally normal thing for a president to say about a state legislative primary that just happens to be about punishing anyone who voted against a Trump-approved gerrymander. Millions of dollars are now flooding into these primaries, because apparently the republic must be saved from the existential threat of Republicans who think maybe the maps shouldn’t be drawn exclusively to please one guy.

Outside groups are lining up to kiss the ring and crack the whip. Club for Growth is tossing in $1.5 million, Jim Banks-linked outfits are throwing $3 million more, and every ad reads like a personality cult infomercial: Trump’s name four times in 15 seconds, loyalty oaths dressed up as campaign spots, and attacks on sitting GOP senators for the crime of being “against Trump.” One digital ad even tells voters to scold a state senator because he’s “voting like a bad guy,” which is what passes for policy analysis in the MAGA era.

Fair Maps Indiana — an Orwellian little brand, given the context — brags that Indiana could have picked up two more GOP seats if only the legislature had fully surrendered to Trump’s demands, and now those who hesitated must be purged. The president of the United States is micromanaging state senate primaries to enforce loyalty to gerrymandering and himself, while a network of PACs and “youth groups” shovel cash into the fire. American democracy isn’t just being undermined; it’s being focus-grouped, branded, and sold by the ad buy.