Can someone whose values are corrupt occasionally do something that benefits the whole? Maybe in the short term, but the long-term will always yield far more harm for the whole. Trump’s value is a love of money - for himself. He is showing so clearly that is his guiding value and what motivates his actions. History (and all of the major religions) warn of the very real and present danger of a person whose only moral is a love of money. He lacks the moral character to lead. I can’t believe all patriotic Americans cannot agree on this.
I think this is akin to a broken clock being right twice a day. Does this benefit the whole? Perhaps. It wasn’t the reason behind the action and that it may be the result doesn’t matter because it would have been done anyway.
I am deeply distressed over everything he does, and selling the soul of what truly makes our ideals stand above the rest is a diplomatic bridge too far. I’d rather lose economic advantage than our morality.
The school I’m in had a seminar this semester and it was done by an educator who came from VCU to set up the VCU school in Qatar for fashion. She spoke about the evolution of fashion but took questions and I’ve never been but my father lived there deployed for a year and my mother in law spoke of how expensive the airport was on her layover to Sri Lanka and how different both places were. The teacher who lived there spoke of the money and how the women were covered and so bathroom visits for women were like fashion shows where the overgarments come off and you see all of the designer clothing underneath. She acknowledged people in these clothes were extremely wealthy and that people came to Qatar to work but that the Qatarese people live on oil money that makes them very wealthy.
I think of the movie Munich and the current situation and how diabolical the pagers were with Israel. It seems like a huge national security risk to be accepting a plane of any sort by a foreign government.
All of this just makes me heartbroken. I drop my kids off to their grandparents today and I know my dad is glued to that tv; watching Newsmax probably praying Trump doesn’t do something else stupid because they know what he does goes against what they were taught about foreign policy living in Iraq and Qatar and how the US felt they should be interacting with people who also housed Hamas and what about Khashoggi, the amount of disrespect or lack of care over certain American citizens because they are black or brown or didn’t fit their narrative in the moment, while openly opining to be accepted by autocratic rulers.
I can remember all of the toxic social media posts by women in America putting down other women or holding their own feet on their necks during the me too movement saying we complain too much in America when women in Afghanistan or other countries really don’t have the same rights.
I’d say it’s funny how narrative shifts but it’s not, it’s diabolical.
Regarding the plane, this is one of the reasons it will not even be ready for his use until near the end of his term...because in addition to all the normal AF1 upgrades it basically needs to be dismantled piece by piece to be searched for listening devices and other threats.
I feel like even with them dismantling it just the cost of that alone. I know it’s also a glaring issue of NS that Boeing can’t produce a new AF1 too it just seems untenable to accept it imo.
I'll be honest. I got through about half of the article, and stopped reading. This is certainly not an indictment on author, Elise Labott. Rather--my ability to continue absorbing news about Tump's egregious behavior, knowing that the last half of the article would not reveal an epiphany. I admire those who are able to relentlessly follow, and report of the tragedy that is "Trump."
Thanks again for this reporting, Elise. You got me thinking again. I know that none of this is funny but I feel like pointing out irony is the one way I can make sense of the news lately. The entire idea of tracking hypocrisy is silly at this point, because all principles are paper thin. This administration consistently abandons any principle the moment it becomes inconvenient for maintaining power. Let me list a few examples before explaining how this is relevant to the article.
Look at how they claim to fight anti-semitism when it comes to tearing up the constitutional rights of some people, and the next day call the world's biggest and most open anti-semites their close friends and advisors for their perspective.
The list could continue for many paragraphs, but let’s focus on the first amendment for a sec. The administration positions itself as defenders of free expression, with VP Vance publicly scolding Germany for silencing their far-right and giving speeches about the dangers of censorship. Meanwhile, in the United States, students are being kidnapped and detained for barely criticizing Israel in school newspaper editorials, and the administration celebrates these crackdowns with tweets trolling their imprisonment. They've created a system where "free speech" only applies to their preferred speech, while criticism of certain allies or policies is treated as dangerous and requiring imprisonment.
Another example, why not: after campaigning on eliminating government waste and claiming to have "taken a chainsaw to bureaucracy," the administration is pushing a budget that dramatically expands the deficit specifically to make tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy permanent, and fund a military parade for Trump’s birthday. They insist that even basic taxation of billionaires is somehow unfair while cutting social programs that benefit millions of Americans. The message is clear: government spending is wasteful and irresponsible unless it's funneling money to the already-wealthy, in which case it's essential regardless of the impact on national debt. Somehow, asking the world's richest people to contribute anything toward the government's most basic functions (even after you’ve claimed to clean house on spending) is portrayed as unjust, while cutting services for those who need them most is framed as necessary discipline.
Today's irony reminds me of how one of the first big words Trump used in this new administration was "merit" — he wanted to reshape not only the government but private companies because he believed that hiring from a diverse pool of job candidates was inherently hiring against the concept of "merit" — which, if you think about it... might be the definition of racism and misogyny? That our old system of white men choosing other white men for hiring decisions was the golden era of competence? In fact, when Trump wanted to pin a plane crash on DEI in air traffic controllers earlier this year, without any evidence and before an investigation could even take place, he had Pete Hegseth, who is infamously white, male, and drunk, and only the 2nd cabinet member in American history that needed a tie-breaking vote (the other being Betsy DeVos in Trump's first term) before he got one of the most difficult jobs in the world…to be the one giving the speech about the importance of hiring on merit, while people were still learning about the basic details of the tragedy. Welcome to the Upside Down.
I bring “merit” up today because I think it helps explain Trump's fascination with dictators. He loves a story that echoes his own: nepotism unchained. People who inherit extreme power without any real test or training (or, in the case of the dictators, and I’m sure he’d prefer for himself: without an election) to demonstrate that they are the right person for the job. Although… you might be able to make the argument that the trauma of being raised as the offspring of a dictator might be formative enough to succeed at the main qualification of being a dictator: denial of empathy. So maybe there is a little bit of merit to nepotism. I didn't know that was where my comment was heading when I started writing this, but there you go! Nepotism has some merit. How ironic. I first wrote a piece I called "Merit" earlier this year, check it out if you're in the mood to better understand how sad and ironic the anti-DEI movement is. Good morning.
PS- Pivoting from irony to strategy for a sec. When it comes to the "what can we do about this" feeling most of us feel when we read about this blatant corruption, could we ask our leaders to say something loud, right now, in terms of a message for the next presidential election? Something to the effect of: "When assuming office in 2029, should I be elected in 2028, I propose that the federal government will seize all assets of any Trump-aligned company that is currently accepting improper gifts that are enriching Trump and his friends. This is the only way to incentivize them away from continuing to profit off their positions of power at the expense of the American people." I wonder if something like that will resonate with voters that are going to be soooo sick of him by election season? All we have to do is find someone to run against Vance (or Trump, who knows) that will make clear that they will be everything MAGA pretends to be (for the people) but is not, and prove it with extreme transparency and unflappable principles. Hopefully principles are just taking a little nap right now and will have a comeback in the next year. Anyone else have ideas about how to break through to the average voter while presenting an opposite message?
The Dems (or radical moderates!) should follow and greatly expand the playbook of the late Russian opposition leader Alex Nalvalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and hammer home, through TikToks, IG posts, short videos, etc., the stark differences between billionaires and all the people hurt by billionaires:
.
-Families around the kitchen table try to make the most of their meager meal after cuts to SNAP while wealthy people pay millions for a chance to share a lavish meal at one of the President’s resorts.
-Health care companies announce record profits and bonuses as rural hospitals and clinics close and people are forced to race hours away for emergency treatment.
-While some MAGA Republican is discussing how vital the cuts to services are in paying for the tax cut extensions, roll footage of billionaire mansions, private jets and mega-yachts.
--Masses of pregnant women and sick children show up to closed clinics in poor countries while billionaires spend millions for anti-aging treatments
-A senior having trouble getting anyone at Social Security on the phone while the Trumps open an exclusive private club granting access to the Trump family and top gov’t officials for a half million dollar membership fee/person.
-Gazans continue to be starved and slaughtered as U.S. defense contractors make billions and rich countries race to carve up and monetize the Middle East while ignoring the suffering.
There are countless other examples. What others would you like to see?
Here’s another one: show the billionaire’s immigrant nanny, cook, chauffeur, maids, gardeners, etc., and then show ICE snatching people from their immigration check-ins, from their workplaces, their cars, at courthouses, etc.
Oh my god, I love all of this. I want to make these. Thank you, Kate! I have been thinking about how to convey the obvious dichotomy to people like my friends and family who play dumb whenever I cite the corruption in conversations. ("I don't know enough about it to have an opinion" etc.) Content like this would be hard to argue with, if done right. It's so simple.
I'm familiar with Navalny as a person and what he went through, but I'm not aware of the strategy his foundation employed. Now I've got my homework today for my lunch break.
You should get in touch with the Meiselas brothers over at Meidas Touch media. They would do a great job with it. Or the people at the Lincoln Project. I think it should be the crux of the whole mid-term election campaign.
I feel like the more I hear about how "we don't want China to have this" or "we don't want China to do this," the more I want China to have it ALL. The corruption in this administration knows no bounds. Coupled with the other 9 billion things this current government is either doing or not doing, at this point, I think I'm more pro-China than pro-America. If Trump thinks China is bad and I think Trump is bad, maybe China isn't actually bad?
I mean, they have an authoritarian government who has been engaged in ethnically cleansing their Uyghur minority, so I'd say it's more a case of "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day" rather than "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
What is undeniable is that the Chinese people are not their government, and it's certainly unsettling how often there is an undercurrent of Sinophobia to the arguments that Chinese labor is always exploitive (it's not) or that Chinese products are inherently inferior (they're not) or whatever other knee-jerk sentiment comes out when folks are blanketly suspicious of the Chinese people or nation as a whole. We should definitely be mindful to resist those impulses!
Allison's comment is very relatable regarding China and is an indicator of how badly America has ceded its good will and soft power around the world and how that will hurt us in the long run, when even we Americans are questioning whether China is really so bad.
Can someone whose values are corrupt occasionally do something that benefits the whole? Maybe in the short term, but the long-term will always yield far more harm for the whole. Trump’s value is a love of money - for himself. He is showing so clearly that is his guiding value and what motivates his actions. History (and all of the major religions) warn of the very real and present danger of a person whose only moral is a love of money. He lacks the moral character to lead. I can’t believe all patriotic Americans cannot agree on this.
I think this is akin to a broken clock being right twice a day. Does this benefit the whole? Perhaps. It wasn’t the reason behind the action and that it may be the result doesn’t matter because it would have been done anyway.
I am deeply distressed over everything he does, and selling the soul of what truly makes our ideals stand above the rest is a diplomatic bridge too far. I’d rather lose economic advantage than our morality.
The school I’m in had a seminar this semester and it was done by an educator who came from VCU to set up the VCU school in Qatar for fashion. She spoke about the evolution of fashion but took questions and I’ve never been but my father lived there deployed for a year and my mother in law spoke of how expensive the airport was on her layover to Sri Lanka and how different both places were. The teacher who lived there spoke of the money and how the women were covered and so bathroom visits for women were like fashion shows where the overgarments come off and you see all of the designer clothing underneath. She acknowledged people in these clothes were extremely wealthy and that people came to Qatar to work but that the Qatarese people live on oil money that makes them very wealthy.
I think of the movie Munich and the current situation and how diabolical the pagers were with Israel. It seems like a huge national security risk to be accepting a plane of any sort by a foreign government.
All of this just makes me heartbroken. I drop my kids off to their grandparents today and I know my dad is glued to that tv; watching Newsmax probably praying Trump doesn’t do something else stupid because they know what he does goes against what they were taught about foreign policy living in Iraq and Qatar and how the US felt they should be interacting with people who also housed Hamas and what about Khashoggi, the amount of disrespect or lack of care over certain American citizens because they are black or brown or didn’t fit their narrative in the moment, while openly opining to be accepted by autocratic rulers.
I can remember all of the toxic social media posts by women in America putting down other women or holding their own feet on their necks during the me too movement saying we complain too much in America when women in Afghanistan or other countries really don’t have the same rights.
I’d say it’s funny how narrative shifts but it’s not, it’s diabolical.
Regarding the plane, this is one of the reasons it will not even be ready for his use until near the end of his term...because in addition to all the normal AF1 upgrades it basically needs to be dismantled piece by piece to be searched for listening devices and other threats.
I feel like even with them dismantling it just the cost of that alone. I know it’s also a glaring issue of NS that Boeing can’t produce a new AF1 too it just seems untenable to accept it imo.
I'll be honest. I got through about half of the article, and stopped reading. This is certainly not an indictment on author, Elise Labott. Rather--my ability to continue absorbing news about Tump's egregious behavior, knowing that the last half of the article would not reveal an epiphany. I admire those who are able to relentlessly follow, and report of the tragedy that is "Trump."
Thanks again for this reporting, Elise. You got me thinking again. I know that none of this is funny but I feel like pointing out irony is the one way I can make sense of the news lately. The entire idea of tracking hypocrisy is silly at this point, because all principles are paper thin. This administration consistently abandons any principle the moment it becomes inconvenient for maintaining power. Let me list a few examples before explaining how this is relevant to the article.
Look at how they claim to fight anti-semitism when it comes to tearing up the constitutional rights of some people, and the next day call the world's biggest and most open anti-semites their close friends and advisors for their perspective.
The list could continue for many paragraphs, but let’s focus on the first amendment for a sec. The administration positions itself as defenders of free expression, with VP Vance publicly scolding Germany for silencing their far-right and giving speeches about the dangers of censorship. Meanwhile, in the United States, students are being kidnapped and detained for barely criticizing Israel in school newspaper editorials, and the administration celebrates these crackdowns with tweets trolling their imprisonment. They've created a system where "free speech" only applies to their preferred speech, while criticism of certain allies or policies is treated as dangerous and requiring imprisonment.
Another example, why not: after campaigning on eliminating government waste and claiming to have "taken a chainsaw to bureaucracy," the administration is pushing a budget that dramatically expands the deficit specifically to make tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy permanent, and fund a military parade for Trump’s birthday. They insist that even basic taxation of billionaires is somehow unfair while cutting social programs that benefit millions of Americans. The message is clear: government spending is wasteful and irresponsible unless it's funneling money to the already-wealthy, in which case it's essential regardless of the impact on national debt. Somehow, asking the world's richest people to contribute anything toward the government's most basic functions (even after you’ve claimed to clean house on spending) is portrayed as unjust, while cutting services for those who need them most is framed as necessary discipline.
Today's irony reminds me of how one of the first big words Trump used in this new administration was "merit" — he wanted to reshape not only the government but private companies because he believed that hiring from a diverse pool of job candidates was inherently hiring against the concept of "merit" — which, if you think about it... might be the definition of racism and misogyny? That our old system of white men choosing other white men for hiring decisions was the golden era of competence? In fact, when Trump wanted to pin a plane crash on DEI in air traffic controllers earlier this year, without any evidence and before an investigation could even take place, he had Pete Hegseth, who is infamously white, male, and drunk, and only the 2nd cabinet member in American history that needed a tie-breaking vote (the other being Betsy DeVos in Trump's first term) before he got one of the most difficult jobs in the world…to be the one giving the speech about the importance of hiring on merit, while people were still learning about the basic details of the tragedy. Welcome to the Upside Down.
I bring “merit” up today because I think it helps explain Trump's fascination with dictators. He loves a story that echoes his own: nepotism unchained. People who inherit extreme power without any real test or training (or, in the case of the dictators, and I’m sure he’d prefer for himself: without an election) to demonstrate that they are the right person for the job. Although… you might be able to make the argument that the trauma of being raised as the offspring of a dictator might be formative enough to succeed at the main qualification of being a dictator: denial of empathy. So maybe there is a little bit of merit to nepotism. I didn't know that was where my comment was heading when I started writing this, but there you go! Nepotism has some merit. How ironic. I first wrote a piece I called "Merit" earlier this year, check it out if you're in the mood to better understand how sad and ironic the anti-DEI movement is. Good morning.
PS- Pivoting from irony to strategy for a sec. When it comes to the "what can we do about this" feeling most of us feel when we read about this blatant corruption, could we ask our leaders to say something loud, right now, in terms of a message for the next presidential election? Something to the effect of: "When assuming office in 2029, should I be elected in 2028, I propose that the federal government will seize all assets of any Trump-aligned company that is currently accepting improper gifts that are enriching Trump and his friends. This is the only way to incentivize them away from continuing to profit off their positions of power at the expense of the American people." I wonder if something like that will resonate with voters that are going to be soooo sick of him by election season? All we have to do is find someone to run against Vance (or Trump, who knows) that will make clear that they will be everything MAGA pretends to be (for the people) but is not, and prove it with extreme transparency and unflappable principles. Hopefully principles are just taking a little nap right now and will have a comeback in the next year. Anyone else have ideas about how to break through to the average voter while presenting an opposite message?
The Dems (or radical moderates!) should follow and greatly expand the playbook of the late Russian opposition leader Alex Nalvalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation and hammer home, through TikToks, IG posts, short videos, etc., the stark differences between billionaires and all the people hurt by billionaires:
.
-Families around the kitchen table try to make the most of their meager meal after cuts to SNAP while wealthy people pay millions for a chance to share a lavish meal at one of the President’s resorts.
-Health care companies announce record profits and bonuses as rural hospitals and clinics close and people are forced to race hours away for emergency treatment.
-While some MAGA Republican is discussing how vital the cuts to services are in paying for the tax cut extensions, roll footage of billionaire mansions, private jets and mega-yachts.
--Masses of pregnant women and sick children show up to closed clinics in poor countries while billionaires spend millions for anti-aging treatments
-A senior having trouble getting anyone at Social Security on the phone while the Trumps open an exclusive private club granting access to the Trump family and top gov’t officials for a half million dollar membership fee/person.
-Gazans continue to be starved and slaughtered as U.S. defense contractors make billions and rich countries race to carve up and monetize the Middle East while ignoring the suffering.
There are countless other examples. What others would you like to see?
Here’s another one: show the billionaire’s immigrant nanny, cook, chauffeur, maids, gardeners, etc., and then show ICE snatching people from their immigration check-ins, from their workplaces, their cars, at courthouses, etc.
Oh my god, I love all of this. I want to make these. Thank you, Kate! I have been thinking about how to convey the obvious dichotomy to people like my friends and family who play dumb whenever I cite the corruption in conversations. ("I don't know enough about it to have an opinion" etc.) Content like this would be hard to argue with, if done right. It's so simple.
I'm familiar with Navalny as a person and what he went through, but I'm not aware of the strategy his foundation employed. Now I've got my homework today for my lunch break.
You should get in touch with the Meiselas brothers over at Meidas Touch media. They would do a great job with it. Or the people at the Lincoln Project. I think it should be the crux of the whole mid-term election campaign.
Thank you Elise for articulating better I how feel about this!
We are for sale. Where will this end?
I mean just in case anyone had doubts about whose interests were ALWAYS at the forefront of his reasons for wanting to be president 🙄🙄🙄
i need a shower after reading that. uugh. and thank you.
I feel like the more I hear about how "we don't want China to have this" or "we don't want China to do this," the more I want China to have it ALL. The corruption in this administration knows no bounds. Coupled with the other 9 billion things this current government is either doing or not doing, at this point, I think I'm more pro-China than pro-America. If Trump thinks China is bad and I think Trump is bad, maybe China isn't actually bad?
I mean, they have an authoritarian government who has been engaged in ethnically cleansing their Uyghur minority, so I'd say it's more a case of "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day" rather than "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
What is undeniable is that the Chinese people are not their government, and it's certainly unsettling how often there is an undercurrent of Sinophobia to the arguments that Chinese labor is always exploitive (it's not) or that Chinese products are inherently inferior (they're not) or whatever other knee-jerk sentiment comes out when folks are blanketly suspicious of the Chinese people or nation as a whole. We should definitely be mindful to resist those impulses!
Allison's comment is very relatable regarding China and is an indicator of how badly America has ceded its good will and soft power around the world and how that will hurt us in the long run, when even we Americans are questioning whether China is really so bad.
One word: corruption