The Trump Presidency Is Going Great

Donald Trump has discovered a new branch of government: the Department of Things Are Rigged Whenever I Lose. This time, he’s decided that California’s elections are fake because an LA mayoral primary projection didn’t go the way he likes. He reposted GOP congressman Abe Hamadeh’s claim that California is "incapable of running free and fair elections" and slapped on his signature evidence-free stamp: "Rigged Election!" Apparently, if Decision Desk HQ calls a race for Nithya Raman, that’s not data — that’s treason.

During an NBC interview, Trump also insisted the California governor’s race was "rigged" and, when gently asked for literally any proof at all, he called Kristen Welker "crooked" and then "stupid" before ripping off his mic and flouncing out with a "Let’s call it quits" and a condescending "Thank you, darling." America’s strongman cosplay now includes storming out of interviews when journalists insist on facts.

Between declaring California elections illegitimate, insisting the 2020 election was stolen again, and casually announcing that Iran’s military has been "virtually decapitated" as his war hits day 100, Trump is just speedrunning the "collapse public trust in every institution" playbook. He’ll hit a New Jersey rally and a Knicks game later, where fans will enjoy airport-style security so the president can keep telling them democracy can’t be trusted unless it crowns him king.

Trump is out here explaining that his 2024 promise of "no new wars" was more of a vibe than an actual commitment, insisting that the war with Iran doesn't count because it's only been going on for three months. "I didn't guarantee no war," he tells NBC, helpfully clarifying that the slogan was just another campaign coupon with fine print. Also, if you're wondering why he built "the strongest military in the world," the answer apparently wasn't deterrence or defense, but store credit toward at least one fresh conflict.

He then declares he's "doing the world a service" by stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, while also bragging that U.S. strikes already "obliterated" Iran's nuclear sites last year. So either Iran had no nukes because he destroyed them, or they were such a threat he had to start a full-on war. Both are true, obviously, because the commander in chief said them within the same interview. Negotiating a better nuclear deal? That, he explains, "takes years"—unlike bombing, which takes an afternoon and no reading.

Just to round out the authoritarian sampler platter, Trump also defends his now-scrapped $1.8 billion fund to compensate his political allies—so, a taxpayer-financed loyalty rewards program—then pivots to claiming, again without evidence, that California's slow but normal vote-counting process is proof of mass fraud. His own Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Los Angeles says they're opening multiple investigations, because when the boss screams "rigged," the Justice Department apparently treats it like a to-do list. When NBC's Kristen Welker pushes back, Trump cuts the interview short, because nothing says "strong leader" like fleeing the set when someone reads the instructions on your talking points.

Donald Trump, the man who treated the Federal Reserve like his personal Yelp page for interest rates, now swears he doesn’t “want to have a big influence” on his new Fed Chair pick, Kevin Warsh. Of course he doesn’t. He just wants someone who will magically keep inflation at zero, the stock market at infinity, and his reelection odds pegged at 110%—all while insisting they’re totally independent and absolutely not taking daily phone calls from Mar-a-Lago.

The performance is familiar: Trump loudly proclaims his respect for institutional independence right before trying to bulldoze it. The Fed, historically insulated from raw partisan politics so the economy doesn’t live on a four-year campaign cycle, is now being sized up as another loyalty test. Warsh isn’t even confirmed yet and Trump is already pre-spinning the narrative: if rates help him, it’s because he picked a genius; if they don’t, it’s because the Deep State at the Fed betrayed him. Either way, the message to future central bankers is clear—your mandate is price stability, maximum employment, and keeping Dear Leader’s approval rating above water.

So when Trump says he doesn’t want a “big influence,” what he really means is he expects a Fed Chair who understands the assignment so thoroughly that Trump never has to ask. Subtlety doesn’t make it less corrosive; it just means the political capture of yet another independent institution comes with a wink, a nod, and a talking point about how he’s being very, very restrained this time. The markets may be watching the dot plot, but the rest of us are watching the slow conversion of the Fed into just another arm of the campaign.

Jill Biden has released a memoir explaining that everything was fine in 2024, Joe Biden was sharp as a tack, and if there had been any cognitive decline she and her team would definitely have done something, pinky swear. This bold work of fiction skates past the debate meltdown that ended his campaign, waves away concerns about his age, and treats the White House’s Gaza policy like an optional footnote. CNN’s Jake Tapper called the claims about Joe’s mental state "very difficult to believe, if not just downright false," which is cable-news-speak for "are you kidding me?"

The book’s big Gaza moment? Jill proudly recounts leaving a Post-it on Joe’s mirror that said "Net has to stop" after Israeli forces killed World Central Kitchen workers. The White House then rushed out a statement clarifying that no, actually, she was not calling for Israel to stop what it was doing. Jill now presents this as a harrowing tale of personal courage – ten words on a sticky note, while journalists and civilians in Gaza are being killed in record numbers for "speaking up" with something stronger than office supplies.

Meanwhile, the Democratic establishment is doing its own rewrite of reality. The DNC’s 50,000-word autopsy of the 2024 disaster somehow forgets to mention both Biden’s age and Gaza – the two issues that helped sink them. Consultants privately admit Harris’s Gaza stance hurt her, but publicly it’s treated as a messaging hiccup, not a policy choice that got people killed and voters furious. And off to the side, Hunter Biden is reinventing himself as a Substack populist railing against the "Epstein Elite Oligarch class," which is a fun phrase until you remember Jared and Ivanka are literally building a private island and Don Jr is married to Epstein’s banker’s daughter while Pentagon money and war-profiteering swirl around them like it’s Black Friday at Raytheon.

So yes, Jill Biden’s book is getting scrutiny – not because America can’t handle her truth, but because it barely contains any. It’s one more attempt by the ruling class to pretend 2024 was a tragic misunderstanding, not the logical outcome of gerontocracy, Gaza, and an elite that thinks accountability is what happens to other people.

The Trump administration is very bravely warning Europe to step up Ebola screening ahead of the World Cup, like a guy flicking lit matches around a gas station and then yelling at everyone else about fire safety. State Department cables reviewed by NBC News show U.S. diplomats being told to pressure European governments to copy America’s travel restrictions or face unspecified "unilateral measures" — always reassuring language from an administration that treats diplomacy like a protection racket.

There’s a tiny catch: global health officials say the Ebola outbreak is outpacing the international response in part because the U.S. pulled out of the World Health Organization, shuttered USAID, and slashed funding for disease surveillance networks that might have caught this sooner. So after kneecapping the very systems designed to stop this kind of thing, Team Trump now gets to strut around talking about "the highest standards of national security and public health" while scrambling to build quarantine centers in Kenya and screening hubs at U.S. airports. It’s disaster management as performance art: create the hole, then demand applause for bringing a slightly bigger bucket.

As Congo — which actually qualified for the World Cup — deals with a severe Bundibugyo strain of Ebola with no vaccine and no treatment, the U.S. is suspending visas and entry for people who recently passed through Congo, South Sudan, or Uganda, and hinting it might punish allies that don’t follow suit. Meanwhile, former USAID officials point out that the hollowed-out American presence on the ground slowed detection and contact tracing in the first place. But sure, let’s frame this as Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio selflessly safeguarding "millions of visitors" while the World Cup rolls through 16 North American cities and the administration furiously tries to retrofit a global health response onto the smoking crater of its own policies.

Kash Patel, Trump’s handpicked F.B.I. director and walking conflict-of-interest generator, has fired five bureau analysts over a 2023 internal memo about far-right extremists cozying up to “radical-traditionalist” Catholic groups. You know, the kind of overlap between white nationalism and religion that has been publicly documented for years and that the F.B.I. is actually supposed to notice. The memo was already withdrawn and internally reviewed back in 2024, with investigators finding it violated professional standards but showed “no evidence of malicious intent” — which in Trumpworld is clearly grounds for termination.

This is being sold as a grand defense of “religious freedom,” with Patel racing to social media to declare, “This FBI will never infringe on religious freedom,” shortly after tossing five careers into the wood chipper. Translation: the bureau will absolutely not look too closely at violent extremists if they wrap themselves in Latin Mass and a rosary. For decades, the F.B.I. has cultivated tripwires and sources in churches, mosques, universities, and businesses; now, under Trump 2.0, that’s rebranded as “weaponization” whenever it brushes against the president’s base.

The Richmond memo has become a MAGA holy relic, waved around as proof that the deep state hates Catholics, conservatives, and presumably anyone who thinks January 6 was just spirited tourism. The administration’s April “weaponization” report leaned on it heavily, while also smearing the Southern Poverty Law Center as some kind of donor-fraud conspiracy and then conveniently indicting the group a month later. The SPLC says it’s political retaliation; the same administration purging analysts for doing their jobs says it’s just law and order. Totally normal functioning democracy stuff.

Former law enforcement officials are, very politely, calling this what it is: a purge of independent civil servants to turn the F.B.I. into an ideologically compliant security service for the presidency. The message from Patel is clear: investigate extremists, but only the ones who don’t vote for Trump. Everyone else gets wrapped in the First Amendment like crime-scene tape and declared off-limits. America used to worry about the F.B.I. spying on churches; now the concern is that it’s not allowed to, even when the pews are full of people planning the next “Stop the Steal” field trip.