David and Goliath

Posted on June 2, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 2, 2025

There is little in the Old Testament that can be taken to be literally true, but its books and stories do a good job describing human nature and shaping our values. Perhaps one of its most pervasive morals is to never underestimate a weaker-seeming adversary. Americans, especially, have always been drawn to underdog stories, but when I refer to Americans, I do not include Donald Trump, who only sees underdogs as prey.

Yesterday, we had a biblical event, when David (i.e., the Ukrainian armed forces) took Goliath (the entire Russian military apparatus) by surprise. The latest incarnation of David didn’t use a stone in a sling, however. Instead, the attack that seriously tarnished Goliath’s reputation as a fearsome fighter was carried out with 117 drones. It took everyone including the White House by surprise, and today, military analysts are heaping praise on the brilliant, patient planning that went into the attack that may have destroyed a third of the aircraft Russia has been using to bomb Ukrainian cities.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is neither biblical allegory nor fairy tale. It’s a vicious, deadly conflict driven by an implacable autocrat’s ambition to rebuild the Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin is not likely to roll over and play dead because of a stone flung at his forehead. And Volodymyr Zelensky, no matter how much we may cheer for him, does not have the resources to defeat Russia on his own. The story from the Book of Samuel isn’t a valid analogy. The reasons should serve as a dire warning.

Ukraine’s ability to successfully strike and severely degrade five Russian military bases separated by more than two thousand miles with absolutely no resistance and no casualties, was extremely impressive. It’s not likely to cause Putin to flinch during the alleged peace talks in Istanbul, but it sends a serious message to the rest of us, who have been consoling ourselves with the belief that although who wins this conflict matters, it’s not really our war. We keep hoping it’s not Europe’s either, but what Ukraine did, yesterday, belies that.

Ukraine demonstrated with a single coordinated attack with limited resources, how quickly the conflict could encompass targets all over Europe, and with us on the sidelines, it’s not clear what NATO would do. Trump’s ego requires him to continue to see himself as a savior with some magical ability to turn Putin into a decent human being. It’s clear, however, that that’s just another of Trump’s delusions. Putin couldn’t care less about Trump, except to manipulate him to get what he wants. We can only hope Putin is smart enough to realize that Trump’s new nickname, TACO, doesn’t apply here.

It doesn’t really apply to his tariff war, either. Anyone who thinks Trump chickens out on tariffs is as delusional as Trump. His tariffs are like a professional boxer’s jabs. Remember when Muhammed Ali taunted his opponents, “dancing like a butterfly,” taking random shots that did little damage, but seriously messed with the other boxers’ heads? Trump doesn’t chicken out, even when any rational person should. He’s incapable of it, not because he’s a courageous warrior, but because his very serious mental illness won’t permit him to. Trump only knows how to double down when he’s backed against a wall. It’s what extreme narcissists always do.

The risk should be obvious to everyone. Putin will never back down until a coup among his own people takes him out. Trump will never back down unless he’s put in a strait jacket and dragged out of the White House by saner heads, but there’s no evidence that any of those exist among the MAGA movement. The whole point of Project 2025 was to attack relentlessly on every front until someone had the guts and resources to stop them.

Trump’s not a master strategist. He’s more a prisoner of his own limitations. If he can’t deliver on his brag about ending the war on day 153 or day 500, there’s no reason to believe diplomacy can save the situation. In 1962, the world averted nuclear war because despite his bluster and reputation, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was a shrewd statesman who understood that everyone would lose if he didn’t back off, since the Kennedy administration had backed itself into an untenable corner.

Putin isn’t Khrushchev, and no one can assure that he wouldn’t risk the destruction of Russia, Europe, or the entire world to achieve his goals. Ukraine’s successful retaliatory attack on Russia, yesterday, showed us how quickly the war that isn’t ours could escalate.

A rational president with objective, expert advisors would know that trusting Putin and failing to defend Ukraine are a disastrous strategy. But if you’re a fan of world wars, it’s a brilliant tactic. Trump can go ahead with peace talks with an adversary who will never back down or concede territory, but if he doesn’t ramp up weapons deliveries to Ukraine immediately, Europe and the world are both at risk.

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A Horrifying 1983 Television Event

Posted on June 1, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 1, 2025

An article in today’s New York Times, grabbed my attention, as I expect it grabbed the attention of everyone who read it who is old enough to remember 1983. Alissa Wilkinson’s column, When the Whole Country Watched a Nuclear War Movie at Once, brought back the horror more than 100 million of us experienced watching an ABC movie that terrified the entire country.

The film, The Day After, and all the controversy it caused, not the least of which was over whether it should ever have been shown on television, are the subject of a new, soon to be released, documentary, Television Event. In horrifyingly realistic detail, it depicted the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Kansas City, from the point of view of the University of Kansas trauma center in Lawrence, thirty miles to the west.

Back then, horror films were defined by zombies, vampires, and crazed killers with chainsaws, but none of them came remotely close to the terror-inducing trauma of watching babies die of radiation poisoning. Wilkinson wrote that research for the upcoming documentary found that after watching The Day After, seventy percent of adult Americans believed there would be a nuclear war in the next ten years.

In 1983, I lived in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue. I was there because I thought it was a safe place to raise my family in the years after Vietnam and Watergate, but Puget Sound was suddenly elevated to nuclear target number one in the United States, when the Defense Department chose to build the base for Trident nuclear attack submarines across the Sound from Seattle. Months of protests, including people lying on railroad tracks to impede construction of the base, led to an event called “Target Seattle,” which is credited with spurring the Nuclear Freeze Movement and the Strategic Arms Limitation talks.

On October 2, 1982, 14,000 people, including me and my 14 and 12-year-old sons gathered in the Kingdome for an afternoon of anti-nuclear films, songs, and speeches. The place we’d always associated with the Mariners and Seahawks was very different that day. I’ve regretted taking my kids there ever since, though they reassure me it didn’t traumatize them. I’m not sure I believe them, though, because researchers concluded, subsequently, that a whole generation of young people lived with the expectation their parents had: they’d likely be dead before they reached adulthood. How that affected them growing up I can’t say, but I heard things like, “Why do we have to go to school when we’re going to be nuked anyway,” more times than I can count.

Being reminded of all that affected me because of what it implies about today. I frankly marvel that we’ve avoided mutual nuclear destruction for eighty years. The idea of nuclear war triggers our normal reaction to terrifying situations – denying and tucking them away where we don’t have to look at them. But the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza with Iran looking on gave those fears life again. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine was the depository of a large fraction of its nuclear weapons. Russia wanted them back, and Ukraine agreed to give them up in exchange for a guarantee of sovereignty and independence from Moscow. In the thirty-plus years since then, however, military analysts acknowledged that many of those weapons are unaccounted for. Where are they and who has them? I’m not sure I really want to know.

Both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have used the N word as a vague threat in the war in Ukraine. That’s of great concern, as is Iran’s nuclear program. It’s difficult to know what’s really happening because of the Trump administration’s questionable relationship with truth. Trump claims he is close to a deal with Iran, but he also brags that he’s close to trade deals, without evidence of anything significant in the works. The Times also reported today that Iran has accelerated the pace of its uranium enrichment program whose only goal is the production of nuclear warheads.

The international chaos caused by Trump’s tariff war, his apparent disdain for our former allies and NATO, and the way Putin and Xi Jinping have mocked his tough-guy stance should give everyone pause. Chaos is the worst possible background for international diplomacy, and with someone like Trump involved, and the questionable nature of unqualified, extremist Cabinet officers like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, we hear people making irresponsible threats and shooting from the hip without supporting evidence every day.

We’ll probably muddle through this, but adding the idea of using nuclear weapons to the madness Trump has caused is chilling. That’s the main reason there is so much controversy over Television Event. After what I recall from 1983, I’d ask the same question people asked back then? Is reminding the country of the horror nuclear war would bring a good thing or a serious mistake?

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A Matter of Time

Posted on May 29, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 29, 2025

Ever since Donald Trump turned to politics, many of us who followed his career for decades had a sense that it was just a matter of time before Americans caught on to what he’s really about. His extreme narcissism aside, his history of business fraud, stiffing people who worked for him when the bill came due, vindictiveness, and relationships with organized crime figures suggested he would govern the same way if he were ever elected. Corruptly.

We were right about all of it except the part about Americans catching on – yet. While Trump’s approval rating is a moving target, currently hovering just above the level that triggers warning sirens for the 2026 midterm elections, his base, so far, is sticking with him. A large factor in that is the utter lack of leadership and unity shown by Democrats, whose only virtue seems to be that they’re not MAGA Republicans.

Another major factor is Republican billionaires’ willingness to pony up huge amounts of cash through PACs and questionable vehicles like foreigners investing billions in Trump’s crypto business. The money flowing into Trump’s accounts is unprecedented. The greediest among wealthy Americans see a one-time window to establish long-term oligarchic dominance that will close the moment Trump’s base deserts him.  In many parts of our country, flooding right-wing media with dollars can buy almost anything.

It’s a matter of time before people see through Trump’s immigration policy to its real underlying intention: seizing power unconstitutionally and threatening courts and law firms when they try to reel him in. There’s a painful reality that makes it difficult to fight back, however. No administration since World War 2 has been able to pass a meaningful immigration law or interdict trafficking in drugs like fentanyl because Americans with power and money don’t want them passed. Millions of small businesses would close without the cheap labor provided by undocumented immigrants, and too many Americans want illegal drugs and are willing to pay for them.

It’s a matter of time before voters realize Trump’s infatuation with autocrats and his boasting about special relationships with people like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are part of his power-mad fever dream. Xi has shown no inclination to bend to Trump’s will, as China looks to replace American markets with others in Europe, Africa, and South America. And the corollary threats to business leaders who manufacture products in China are having no impact, because the economic realities that created the problem haven’t changed.

Putin has demonstrated that there is no “special relationship” with Trump. Trump said he would end the war in Ukraine on Day One of his presidency. Yet, here, on Day 150, Russia is killing more civilians and destroying more Ukrainian infrastructure than at any time since the war began, three years ago, all of this happening under the guise of pretending to be considering Trump’s cease-fire plan. All Trump has accomplished is humiliating Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on the world stage and driving him to find support from Europe, specifically Germany and Poland. America is the loser in Trump’s mishandling of the war.

It’s a matter of time before Americans, especially Jewish voters who Trump panders to by cozying up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, realize that Trump’s only interest in the Middle East is enriching himself. When he thought it would help him win votes, he was all about stopping the killing in Gaza, about which he cares even less than he does about Israel. His bluster about ending the war in Gaza stopped when Arab nations began investing billions in Trump’s businesses and gifts, like airplanes and golf resorts. He seems to neither notice nor care that Gazan civilians are starving and dying, as Israel intends to occupy all of Gaza completely and attempt to annex it.

It’s a matter of time before Trump’s tariff war collapses under its own weight. We’re not very far from that day, as billionaire investors have figured out how to get richer using the TACO strategy. Wall Street coined the phrase Trump Always Chickens Out to remind investors that his on again, off again tariffs, which have changed more than fifty times in Trump’s 120 days in office, are a wonderful opportunity to buy low and sell high, timing trades to his tariff announcements.

It’s a matter of time before the dozens of lawsuits filed against the Trump administration by private citizens, universities, law firms, and state governments reach the Supreme Court. Trump’s batting average in the lower courts is close to zero, as judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans rule his actions unconstitutional. He took a major hit, yesterday, when the U. S. Court of International Trade ruled that all of his Liberation Day tariff orders were illegal.

Finally, it’s just a matter of time before most Americans react to Trump’s pardoning of gang leaders and hardened criminals, because they supported his campaigns.

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The Most Corrupt President Anyone Can Remember

Posted on May 23, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 23, 2025

Years ago, a story circulated about a brilliant way to avoid capital gains taxes on the sale of a home (or any other capital property.) The idea was not only clever, but simplicity itself. It worked like this: suppose someone made you an offer to purchase your home, let’s say, for half a million dollars. You sign the contract and the buyer makes you an alternative offer.

The buyer has a rare coin collection. Every coin is legal U. S. currency, mostly solid gold or silver. The buyer presents you with an assay report valuing the collection at $650,000, 30% more than your agreed price, and offers to trade the collection for your house. You do your due diligence, accept the offer, and issue a bill of sale. The price on the bill of sale is $375, the total face value of all those gold and silver coins. Remember, the coins were legal currency.

To make the issue more interesting, my suburban Washington DC county, was home to dozens (maybe hundreds) of IRS agents, so there was a spirited debate about whether you could claim you sold your home for $375. If IRS accepted that, you’d not only avoid capital gains taxes, but be able to claim a sizable capital loss. Even my extremely conservative tax accountant couldn’t definitively answer that, although he said if I ever tried it, he wouldn’t sign my tax return. I believe IRS eventually ruled such transactions were illegal, but since I didn’t know many people with million-dollar coin collections, I lost interest in the issue.

The story seems particularly apt today because of all the ways Donald Trump is enriching himself in office. It sounds a lot like his Crypto marketing campaign. Federal law makes it illegal for non-Americans to contribute to political campaigns, candidates, or elected officials. But it’s not illegal to sell them highly inflated Crypto shares or futures.

Seven federal agencies play a role in regulating Crypto sales and trades. For example, the US Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Unit (FinCEN) “governs virtual currency businesses…and mandates them to have anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulations.” I’m not an expert on this stuff, but it seems to me that the only difference between Trump selling Crypto shares to billionaire foreigners and money laundering is that we can’t know whether the money they invest comes from criminal acts.

Neither Trump nor his foreign investors are likely to open their books to public scrutiny any time soon, so it will be decades and several administration changes before we can examine these transactions, but insiders are leaking and speculating that the whole thing is rigged. It looks like a legal investment scheme on the surface, except we know it’s not.

If, as president, I offer to sell you $100 million in Crypto shares, and privately, we both agree that you expect to lose half of your investment, because it’s worth $50 million to you to have access to me, that smells like a bribe that carries heavy federal prison time if you’re indicted and convicted. (Not me, the Supreme Court said I’m immune.)

When Trump talks about making deals, he always means, “What are you willing to give me in exchange for… .” You fill in the blanks. In a local barter economy, that’s fine. When you’re the President of the United States, and your investors are wealthy foreigners who stand to profit from being in your good graces, it’s criminal.

Crypto corruption is only the latest in a series of actions that began the moment Trump took office. Half-million-dollar memberships in the Trump family’s Executive Branch Club, which explicitly offers presidential access to members, started it all. I won’t list the other instances here – I and many others have enumerated them before.

If you voted for Trump, was that kind of outright theft and corruption you had in mind? And as his “Big Beautiful Bill” and his tariff war make everything you buy more expensive while enriching Trump and his wealthy friends, while it reduces your health care options, and even threatens your job if Trump doesn’t like your employer, do you still think you made the right choice?

We hear a lot about Trump’s fixation on President William McKinley, who also loved tariffs. But in the 1890s, America was not the most powerful country in the world and the hope of every nation threatened by 21st century imperialism. We have a responsibility to at least pretend to act morally and ethically.

All the bad actors aren’t Trump loyalists. The Democrats have their problems, too. While there is no federal law that specifically makes lying about or covering up a President’s failing health a crime, the events of the past year tell us there should be. Jake Tapper’s new book, Original Sin, while much too late to the party, details a horrifying conspiracy among senior Democrats to hide President Biden’s failing health from voters. That would be appalling under any circumstances, but when you look at the result – four more years of Trump as president – I wouldn’t mind seeing a few Democrats held accountable. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries should be ashamed of what they were a part of. Nancy Pelosi got it right, but the cow was already out of the barn by then.

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The Danger of a Transactional President

Posted on May 18, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 18, 2025

We’ve had transactional presidents before, but never like this. The President of the United States is arguably the most powerful and influential person in the world. Despite Donald Trump’s America First philosophy there’s a lot more to the American presidency than jingoism. MAGA and America First are largely disingenuous when you examine the details. Is it great for America to raise billionaires to the level of oligarchs and rigidify the lines between economic classes?

The leader of the Free World has an obligation to act responsibly, but Donald Trump has no concept of that. As a businessman, he surely understood that the larger a business entity grows the more it takes on responsibility for all the lives it affects. Startups and small businesses are driven by entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the American Dream. But as companies succeed and grow, their priorities change. They must be cognizant and supportive of the needs of their employees and customers, even of their competitors.

Modern, civilized nations aren’t solely about fierce competition and the survival of the fittest, either. As a businessman, all Trump ever cared about was loyalty and profit, and even then, there were levels of fealty. He’s worse as president. He throws around words like peace and greatness, but the entire world realizes they can’t take anything that comes out of his mouth, literally. He’s quixotic and unpredictable, which are more about a practiced strategy than personality traits. Everything Donald Trump says and does is aimed at increasing his wealth and appeasing his monstrous ego.

According to our Constitution, governing is a partnership among co-equals. But Trump considers Congress his vassals. He manipulates legislators like a puppet master with no respect for their constitutional role. Our founders thought they were building in guardrails, but they never counted on someone like Trump.

How does attacking our finest universities and trying to control what they teach, destroying public education, placing someone who has no respect for medical research in charge of the nation’s health care, suspending habeas corpus, and treating ethics as something only for losers and sukers make America greater? How does trashing our alliances, trade agreements, and defense treaties while fawning for the support of dictators who laugh at him behind his back improve the lives of Americans – or of anyone except foreign dictators?

Today’s New York Times reported about a Heritage Foundation (the organization behind Project 2025) plan to destroy all support for Palestinians in the United States sheds light on Trump’s reaction to Palestinian demonstrations on American college campuses. Trump charged white steed to protect Jewish students against anti-Semitism, but the truth is, being anti-Palestinian is good politics in America, especially if you pretend to give a damn about Jews or Israel.

Trump couldn’t care less about either, except inasmuch as it increases his power and personal wealth. The notion that Republicans are more protective of Israel than Democrats is a myth that has plagued our politics since 1947, and Trump proved it this week. After touting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his BFF, and continuing to supply Israel with massive amounts of weapons with no regard to how they might be used, it was clear that neither Netanyahu or Hamas was listening to anything he said. They were all just playing him.

When he realized there was no benefit in remaining engaged, Trump turned his back on Israel and Gaza with covetous eyes on the trillions of dollars looking for investments in Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, and accepted a half-billion-dollar airplane as a gift from a nation with which he was engaged in trade talks. Ignoring Israel, he unilaterally removed sanctions on Syria suggesting that he wanted to give its new leader, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, a chance to be great, the same Al-Sharaa our State Department labeled a terrorist with a ten-million-dollar bounty on his head. And while all this was going on, Netanyahu continued to pound Gaza in the midst of an alleged cease-fire.

Not coincidentally, another Trump touted BFF, Vladimir Putin, is doing the same thing in Ukraine, violating his own cease-fire by bombing civilians in Kyiv. Trump was going to end that war on day 1, remember? He went so far in sucking up to Putin that he staged a humiliating ambush on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before a world-wide television audience. I wonder if Zelensky being Jewish had anything to do with that.

The most frightening aspect of Trump’s transactional presidency is that so far, he’s getting away with it. We hear rumblings about deep rifts among Republicans and whispered unhappiness about Trump, but there’s little evidence of anyone standing up to him. Yesterday, Utah Senator John Curtis, who replaced Mitt Romney as the only Senate Republican willing to speak out against Trump, announced that he intended to be an independent voice and push back whenever he thinks Trump is wrong. (He doesn’t like tariffs.) I’ll be waiting with baited breath.

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License to Steal

Posted on May 11, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 11, 2015

Since it’s been reliably reported that Donald Trump doesn’t even read his daily security briefings most days, we can reasonably conclude that he doesn’t spend much time studying history, either. But the people who wrote Project 2025 do, and many of them are quite intelligent and talented. Whether you despise Project 2025 or subscribe to its ideology, we can all recognize what a brilliant manifesto it is.

What it proposes is hateful, but the strategy it describes is masterful. It’s based on an updated version of the playbook Adolf Hitler used to seize and hold power, combined with everything organized crime figures know about evading the law. It was also cleverly worded. Compare the phrase “Christian Nationalism” with Bernie Sanders’ “Democratic Socialism.” Which is more likely to turn off average Americans?

Sanders chose an unfortunate way to describe his brand of progressivism. The authors of Project 2025, however, understood that Christian Nationalism sounds a lot better than Fascist Oligarchy, although It should be clear to every American that that is exactly where Trump wants to take our country. More Americans hate that than love it, yet the Trump machine at times looks unstoppable. How that can happen in a democracy?

In a real democracy, it can’t. No matter who tells you otherwise, the United States is not a democracy. It’s a broken republic that’s been hijacked by a  minority of right-wing zealots. It’s those zealots who are running things, not Trump. That should be obvious from the fact that this administration’s most obvious attribute is chaos. The people who wrote Project 2025 understood from the start that Trump was the perfect front man for their plans.

They salve his ego. They feed his narcissism. They support the illusion that he’s as powerful as he fantasizes he is, but what makes the sinister symbiosis work is that they showed him how to use the presidency to enrich himself. Trump doesn’t give a damn about the presidency. He doesn’t give a damn about the United States or the Constitution, either, except that if it all implodes, he stands to lose billions.

The truth is that Trump administration-2 is already the most corrupt presidency in the history of our country. It’s also an object lesson in shell games, because that’s what Trump has always been about. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. He brags about it all the time.

He lies, exaggerates, and makes up insane fantasies, knowing that his base thinks it’s great entertainment. But as his base loses millions of jobs, as the government services they depend on evaporate, as tariffs destroy their businesses and make everyday life so expensive, they have to choose between food and doctors, how do you think they’ll react when they see how much Trump has stolen? We don’t know the extent of his crimes yet, but three-and-a-half months in, the list is impressive.

Access to the president has become a commodity, and the White House sets the prices. Anyone who wants to influence Trump’s policy decisions can join the Executive Branch, a private club set up by Donald Trump, Jr. All it takes is a $500,000 entry fee. More than a hundred people have already joined, putting millions in the Trump family’s pockets. Then there are the million-dollar-a-plate dinners with the president, the understanding among foreign leaders that a great way to get Trump’s attention is to book a $10,000-a-night suite at one of his properties while they’re in town, sales of Trump-endorsed bibles, and coins with his face on them. The government of Qatar, as a prelude to trade negotiations, offered to build Trump a $4.5 bllion golf resort and want to gift Trumpa $400 million airplane. But those are peanuts.

The real money is in other currency. Trump’s crypto business, a wonderful vehicle for laundering money, has reportedly earned the Trump family more than 1.5 billion dollars since he’s been in office, while most of the people who were persuaded to invest in the venture are losing money. But perhaps the worst of his crimes is helping his friends and family profit from the volatility of our financial markets.

Trump can make markets crash or boom just by opening his mouth. In the midst of chaos, when no one is sure what’s real, if he tells his billionaire friends he’s going to increase tariffs tomorrow, would you be surprised if they shorted the markets? Trillions of dollars can change hands in a single day, and the people behind Project 2025 know exactly how to manipulate that to their advantage.

Insider trading is a felony under federal law. If Trump’s cronies in the Securities and Exchange Commission, the FBI, or the Congress chose to investigate, there’d be a ton of evidence. It’s even possible that some of Trump’s friends would go to jail. But you know who wouldn’t? Donald Trump, because the Supreme Court gave him a license to steal as long as he’s in office.

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How Precarious is Our Economy?

Posted on May 1, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 1, 2025

Everyone’s talking about how chaotic and unprecedented Donald Trump’s first hundred days were. That’s a good thing. People who are terrified of the future Trump’s leading us to need to know they’re not alone, that almost everyone feels that way. Even some of Trump’s base – they may not turn on him until things get much worse, but they feel the pain and they know who caused it.

Trump’s base will be obediently patient waiting for things to turn around, but they can’t deal with lost income and trashed retirement savings indefinitely, and when those run out, they’ll come face-to-face with MAGA’s destruction of our social service support network. What happens when farmers go bankrupt and their kids need medical care? Will Medicaid still exist by then?

The first quarter 2025 economic numbers came out this week. The one pundits like to focus on is GDP growth, which was negative at -0.3%, compared to the forecast of +2.4%. Another quarter like that or worse is the economics technical definition of a Recession, but why assume it will stop there? Trump is experimenting with radical changes to every aspect of American life, and the continuous body blows his tariffs keep delivering to our economy are so unprecedented, economists have no basis for forecasting how badly it will be hurt. Every researcher knows that experimenting in real time with untested theories considered irresponsible by most experts is insane.

Theories should to be tested in laboratory settings, not risking the lives and health of 350 million people. The Great Depression transformed America virtually overnight. In 1931, the Hoover administration assured Americans that the 1929 disaster was over, and things were recovering. But the underpinnings of the economy had been badly weakened, and when markets crashed even worse later that year, it didn’t take long for Americans to be waiting in bread lines. No one imagined that in 1932, but once bitten, as the saying goes. What Trump is doing could easily spiral out of control, with America on the losing end.

CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald addressed this issue this morning. She explained that the contraction of 0.3% in our GDP may be greatly understated, and our economy might be far weaker than the numbers imply. The first quarter ended on March 31st, so the decline in GDP didn’t count April, when when financial market were out of control. Buchwald points out that Trump telegraphed his intentions the day he was inaugurated, although no one, not even Trump knew how large the tariffs would be. The result was stocking up, a euphemism for panic buying used by economists.

Trump’s tariffs, if they’re not rescinded, will not only trigger a new open-ended course of inflation, but many corporations predict that if Trump doesn’t immediately change course, the country will see COVID-like supply chain failures within weeks. Even the dimmest Americans remember what it was like to run out of toilet paper, so both individual consumers and corporate buyers “stocked up” in anticipation of both price hikes and supply shortages.

As a result of both factors, imports rose 51% in the first quarter. That’s a remarkable number, mostly because it’s as artificial as its positive impact on GDP growth – thus the conclusion that things may be much worse than they appear. We didn’t increase our imports by half. We bought well ahead of demand out of concern that we would be importing far less after tariffs took effect. Buchwald quoted Ernst & Young’s Chief Economist Gregory Daco, who said the data was largely emblematic of “an artificial pull-forward in demand — and what often lies beyond these pull-forward effects is a cliff.”

It’s too early to scream, “The sky is falling,” but that doesn’t mean it isn’t. In 1931, no one predicted the depth of the Great Depression that followed the second crash. No one’s predicting it now, but no one imagined the assassination of an Austrian Duke could trigger a world war, and possibly two. We’d be fools to ignore the warning klaxons going off everywhere. It’s not just America’s economy that’s at stake. If Trump doesn’t find an off-ramp for his insane policies, the worst case will be another world-wide Depression; the best case is that China will sign trade deals with our former allies (whom we’re also screwing) that will leave us with whatever is leftover when the dust settles.

Who will ever trust America again after this? When the most powerful country in the world is governed by people who have no respect for truth of the rule of law, why would any country make a significant investment in whether we keep our promises, because that’s what treaties and trade agreement are – promises. I trust everyone I meet until they show me I can’t. If the world views us that way, we’re in serious trouble.

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Democrats Finally Have the Leader They Desparately Need

Posted on April 29, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 29, 2025

Ever since Donald Trump began his second term, Democrats have been treading water, (some people would say drowning,) hoping a leader would come along to throw them a lifeline. If it were only the Democratic Party’s future that was at stake, I’d say it was time for a complete makeover. The only positive thing about Democrats is that they’re not MAGA Republicans. For Democrats to point fingers at gutless Republicans who won’t stand up to Trump is to ignore the fact that they themselves have been completely impotent in the face of Trump’s race toward Oligarchy and Fascism.

Both parties have failed us badly. Except for the madman at  the helm, neither party has a viable leader. The Democrats don’t deserve another chance, but there’s far more at stake than their political future. The survival of our democracy depends on Democrats getting their act together and unifying into a force Americans can relate to. Since the disastrous cover-up of President Biden’s declining health, Democrats have been like an ocean liner without either a Captain or a steering mechanism floundering in a storm.

When comedian Bill Maher asked Democratic activist George Clooney, who some people believe was responsible for ending the Biden cover-up, who should lead the Democratic Party, Clooney pointed to Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear and Maryland Governor Wes Moore. I admire both of them, but Clooney was wrong. A Governor from a state Trump won by a two-to-one margin can’t lead the Democratic Party, and Moore, brilliant, caring, and eloquent as he is, simply isn’t white enough. Americans made it clear that they’re not ready for another Obama when they chose Trump over Kamala Harris.

Others have pointed to California Governor Gavin Newsom and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. But Newsom is too much of a flake for the rest of the country, and my initial reaction to Shapiro was that he was too Jewish. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is too, and he has done little to rally opposition to Trump. If he got under Trump’s skin a tenth as much as Mitch McConnell got under Biden’s, Trump’s stampede would be meeting opposition, but the resistance to date has been from institutions and blue states fighting against Trump’s attacks on their own, without unified support. When CNN’s Kaitlin Collins asked California Congressman Robert Garcia who he thought should lead his Party, he couldn’t answer, but finally opined that Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez would be his pick. One of the most radical progressives in the House? Absolutely not!

And then, along came Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. His rallying cry over the weekend converted me instantly. After hearing him speak about massive demonstrations and fighting every day against MAGA and Trump, urging us to give Republicans no moment of peace until they stand up to Trump, I realized that his courage and leadership easily transcend the fact that he, too, is Jewish. He’s also a billionaire, the heir of the Hyatt Hotel empire, but he’s not one who flaunts his wealth or disdains working people and the middle class. His entire rallying cry was about caring for the needs of average Americans and preserving Constitutional guarantees for everyone.

I also realized that my concern that Americans are not ready to elect a Jewish president were irrelevant. Pritzker laughed when asked if he planned to run in 2028. He is the leader we need to rally the nation to flip the Congress in 2026. His speech last Sunday was fiery, direct, and forceful, calling out Trump for what he is, a madman drunk on power driven solely by ego and lust for revenge against everyone who ever opposed him. And he was very clear about what every American has to lose if Trump isn’t stopped.

Pritzker called for nonstop, nonviolent resistance to MAGA and Trump. Yet, one of Trump’s most despicable attack dogs, Stephen Miller, who loudly supported the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, called his words “dangerous.” That tells me that the thing Trump most fears is a revitalized Democratic Party ready to fight him at every turn, and Pritzker can be the one to make that happen. My favorite line from Pritzker’s speech was, “Standing for the idea that the government doesn’t have the right to kidnap you without due process is arguably the MOST EFFECTIVE CAMPAIGN SLOGAN IN HISTORY.”

I also found myself thinking about how Trump himself might respond to Pritzker. Trump has been casting himself in the role of a leader fighting against anti-Semitism, something about which he couldn’t care less. I wonder how the pretend defender of American Jews will respond when a Jewish Governor who is more eloquent, smarter, and undeniably more likable than he is emerges as a leader capable of bringing him down.

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Oligarchy

Posted on April 28, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 28, 2025

Oligarchy is a word that’s been thrown around a lot since there was so much attention paid to Russia and Ukraine. The dictionary definition is a government controlled by a small group of people or clique. The definition doesn’t say so, but to have that kind of influence on the governance of an entire nation, they’d have to be extremely wealthy and powerful in their own right.

In medieval times, such a clique might have been people who could read and write, like priests, when no one else could. Today, oligarchies are all about money buying influence and power. We mostly hear about Russian oligarchs, that clique of symbiont billionaires who nurse at Putin’s treasury and provide the support he needs to remain in power. Together, they control most of Russia’s economy, and if you control a country’s economy, you can buy legislators and judges who’ll pass the laws you need to stay in power. It’s corruption in its purest form, right out in the open.

It was enlightening for me to watch the Netflix series Servant of the People, in which Volodymyr Zelensky, at the time Ukraine’s most popular comedic actor, played a populist president swept into office by millions of people who were tired of being controlled by oligarchs. I had no idea, until I watched it, that oligarchs were a systemic problem throughout the former Soviet Union, not just in Russia.

The series was made between 2015 and 2017, after Russia illegally invaded and occupied Crimea, and its extreme popularity offers a candid look at how Ukrainian citizens viewed both Russia and their own oligarchs. They fiercely hated both. A repeated theme on the show is a violent brawl among legislators and oligarchs on the floor of  Parliament which only comes to a halt when Zelensky shouts, “Putin is dead!”

Russia is an example of what happens when a clique of billionaires support a dictator, and the dictator, in turn feeds their coffers. If you think that can’t happen in America, you’re wrong. It won’t be a coup – it requires only what we see all over the country today: millions of Americans caught in a paralytic ennui, shocked and awed by the MAGA assault. If they don’t wake up soon, it might be too late.

The process began fifteen years ago, and has been underway ever since. Project 2025 is its blueprint, and Trump is following it to the letter. When the Supreme Court handed down the Citizens United ruling that gave billionaire’s a way to buy elections, the die was cast. Democrats, who in the face of MAGA have shown an impressive lack of fight and imagination, have spent all this time spectating, as Russell Vought and his cohorts built the necessary infrastructure.

Vought is in his second term as Director of the Executive Office of Management and Budget. Most Americans have no idea that tiny (by government standards) EOMB is the most powerful organ of government. It handles the flow of money authorized by Congress to the Executive Branch agencies tasked to enforce laws and regulations, including the ability to interdict funds at the behest of the President.

If you’re not anxious about the direction Vought and the President are taking our country, the latest development should do the trick. Yesterday, Donald Trump’s sons, Don Junior and Eric, launched a new club, but it’s not one any of us are likely to join. It requires an initiation fee of $500,000, and only billionaire donors to Trump are allowed to buy their way in. Expectations are that the club will host more than a hundred billionaires who will be given exclusive access to White House policy staffers.

The math is simple – at the outset, if 100 billionaires each ante up a half million dollars to join, Trump and his sons immediately pocket $50 million. After that, Trump’s staff will receive regular guidance from club members on pending legislation and recommendations for cutting tax-supported programs to enable further massive tax cuts. That’s a tight feedback loop that will become the foundation of an American oligarchy unless the rest of us fight back. I’m not the one to tell anyone how to fight, but I’m certain that if we don’t, Trump will have rebuilt his fantasy of a new McKinley administration with a new crop of robber barons.

The goal, according to Politico, “is to create the highest-end private club that Washington has ever had, and cater to the business and tech moguls who are looking to nurture their relationships with the Trump administration.” The Politico article includes a photograph of five people grinning broadly, anticipating watching the billions roll in: Vivek Ramaswamy, Senator Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), megadonor Omeed Malik, Vice President JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr.

Sounds like a budding oligarchy to me. It definitely can happen here, and it will if we all just sit back and watch.

PS: One day after I posted this, on April 28th, two major polls reported Trump’s approval rating had dropped to 39%. We ignore Jim Carville at our peril.

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Trump’s Plummeting Approval Numbers

Posted on April 27, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 27, 2025

At the beginning of March, James Carville, who made his reputation helping Bill Clinton win the presidency with the slogan, “It’s the economy, stupid,” wrote an OpEd in the New York Times advising Democrats on how to defend the country against Trump’s excesses. At the time, he predicted that Trump’s approval rating would fall into the thirties quickly, probably by the end of April, but certainly by the end of May. He advised Democrats to step aside for a while and let Trump hang himself.

Today, April 27th, Trump’s approval rating stands at 41%, down from 53% when he was inaugurated. Moreover, it’s down 3% from Trump’s own approval rating at the same point in his first term, and it’s the lowest hundred-day presidential approval number since the Korean War. Far more significant is that voters who identify as Independents disapprove of Trump’s actions by more than three to one.

That’s critical because Republicans hold only a razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives that depends on a couple of dozen Republicans who won in vulnerable swing districts. In those districts, it’s Independents who make the difference, and that will likely derail Trump’s agenda.

In today’s money-driven politics of self-interest, swing state Republicans will have Trump’s agenda on a short leash, because they value getting re-elected next year more than they care about MAGA. To make things worse for Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, Axios reported that at least three prominent House MAGA Republicans seem poised to quit the House and run for higher office, and in the two special elections to fill House seats vacated by Trump’s Cabinet members, Democrats reduced the Republicans’ margin of victory in deeply red states by more than half. Those results had nothing to do with a Democratic Party that appears to be comatose – they were entirely about Trump’s actions.

Carville’s point was that once they see Trump’s approval rating drop below 40%, swing district Republicans will fear backlash from voters more than they fear Trump’s retribution. Carville’s right – you can bet your mortgage on it. But there’s a lot of money backing Trump and many of his MAGA supporters. Even massive dissent will not bring down the MAGA agenda easily or quickly. The best the nation can hope for is a gradual, accelerating trend of defections. This administration will inevitably unravel, but it will occur in slow motion like an approaching avalanche.

A lot of Americans, at least half of the country, have been living in a paralyzed state of disbelief since Trump was re-elected. They feel helpless watching their beloved country decompose into something unrecognizable. I haven’t seen America in this state since the days when it looked like Richard Nixon might get away with covering up Watergate. We were saved, then, by senior Congressional Republicans led by Barry Goldwater, who informed Nixon that he was not above the law and would be impeached and removed from office if he didn’t resign.

That won’t happen to Trump unless and until he has done so much damage to our economy, our people, and our standing in the world that everyone but hard-core MAGA advocates vote him into oblivion, much less a third term. I now believe that collateral damage is the most serious threat we face. Carville’s forecast that Trump will crash and burn will come to pass. But how many people will die, go hungry, or sicken, or lose their homes and livelihoods before he’s stopped? How much carnage will be done to small businesses that survive on the labor of immigrant workers, whether or not they’re here legally?

Maybe Trump’s gross misconduct will finally enable Americans to see that our problem with undocumented immigrants is very similar to  our problems with fentanyl and heroin addiction. Our immigration system and our approach to stopping the smuggling of dangerous drugs across our border are equally wrong  and broken, but they will never be fixed either by Executive Order or congressional action as long as there is intense demand for both among American citizens. Perhaps as Americans wake up to those realities, they will see that the MAGA agenda has never been about fixing problems. Trump simply uses them as an excuse to seize power and wealth, and undermine our Constitutional liberties.

As Trump’s numbers tank, and they will continue to as people wake up to the fact that he has accomplished absolutely nothing in a hundred days except degrade our economy, our strength, and our alliances, his vulnerability will become obvious to everyone. Americans who have been hunkering down in their shelters will feel free to come out again and speak their minds. That time is coming, sooner than a lot of people thought. When three-fourths of us say “NO MORE!” to Trump, we’ll go back to being America again.

The hundred-day approval thing is a surrogate for comparing each new president’s performance to the accomplishments of the Roosevelt administration in 1933. FDR, in his first hundred days, put the essential pieces of the New Deal in place. In the throes of the Great Depression, tens of millions of Americans were unemployed, homeless, or hungry. FDR’s first 100 days were about providing for average Americans in need, and assuring they would never have to stand in bread lines again.

PS – Two major polls released after I posted this showed Trump’s approval rating at 39%. We disbelieve Jim Carville at our peril.

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