Trail Notes
Dazed and confused / Still pining for Greenland / To sir, with love / Supreme do-over / Air Farce One / Denying blue state aid / Expanding antifa war / Trump's sports curse
Dazed and confused
It was just another day in topsy-turvy world of Donald Trump. During a session with reporters in Turkey on Wednesday, the president said, “Inflation is way down (it’s not), that “prices are coming down” (they’re not), that Democrats “made up a phony word, ‘affordability’” (they didn’t), and that “oil is coming down very big” (it jumped 6 percent Wednesday). He also referred to the “Islamic Republic of Japan” and called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky “President Putin.”
These are the kinds of things that you tend to forgive an 80-year-old man. Except this one happens to be the president of the United States. It also wasn’t heartening to read a Wall Street Journal story about how European leaders have learned to adopt a strategy of “flattery diplomacy” with Trump and adapt their language to avoid his trigger words. For instance, he reportedly didn’t like hearing about “sanctions” against Russia, so they used the term “tariffs.” And at one point, when discussing a potential ceasefire involving Russia, they changed the language to “stop the killing.” They even had discussions about which words to write in ALL CAPS when communicating with the president.
Still pining for Greenland
In Donald Trump’s perfect world, he could sign a no-bid contract with a company in which his sons have invested and send it to Greenland to take care of everything, from tapping oil reserves and rare earth minerals to erecting “Welcome to Trumpland” signs. But, sadly for the president, Greenland isn’t the East Wing of the White House. There are complications, starting with the fact that Denmark colonized Greenland in 1721 and made it a self-governing territory nearly 50 years ago. And that 76 percent of Greenlanders don’t want the United States to take over their country.
But at the NATO conference in Turkey, the president once again declared that “Greenland should be controlled by the United States” for the stated reason that “it’s surrounded by China ships and Russia ships” (which BTW, is not true) and the unstated reason “Because I said so.” Trump then threatened to pull all U.S. troops out of Europe, and Vladimir Putin’s heart went all aflutter.
To sir, with love
Trump’s tough tone, however, shifted when he met privately with European leaders Wednesday. “We will remain with you,” he reportedly told them, according to Politico. The European officials seemed pleased by his mood change, although they saw it as yet another example of his increasing unpredictability. For his part, Trump said there was “a lot of love in that room,” and claimed that his counterparts said, “Sir, we love you!” “These are grown people saying that,” he marveled. “Isn’t that nice?”
Supreme do-over
The president continues to rage about the Supreme Court decision upholding birthright citizenship, demanding that it rehear the case. He said on Truth Social Wednesday that he plans to insist that this happens “IMMEDIATELY” and that the justices will “destroy America if they don’t change their absolutely insane decision.” The last time the Supreme Court reheard a case was in 1965. Trump’s eruption was apparently prompted by a Fox News story about two billboards just across the border in Mexico that promoted maternity services at a nearby hospital in Texas. The billboards were taken down to avoid “any unintended misunderstanding.”
Air Farce One
When asked why he flew home from Turkey on one of the older Air Force One planes instead of the retrofitted $400 million gift jet from Qatar, Trump said that the Qatari jet was going to fly to U.S. bases in Europe so the troops could see the “magnificent” plane.
Reality check: Sources told The New York Times that the Qatari plane doesn’t have all the necessary security features, particularly in light of the renewed hostilities with Iran. Industry and Pentagon officials estimate such an extensive upgrade could cost as much as $1 billion and take as long as two years to complete.
Denying blue state aid
The day before he hailed the greatness of America on July 4, Trump denied disaster aid to four Democratic-led states. Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island had requested a total of $227 million to help pay for recovery efforts following a huge snowstorm in February. But the White House said, “Not happening.” The denial came two days after the administration approved FEMA disaster aid for six Republican states. When asked to explain the apparent contradiction, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson replied, “There is no politicization to the president’s decisions on disaster relief.”
Expanding antifa war
The Trump administration wants to turn its war on antifa, a leaderless, decentralized antifascist movement, into an international campaign. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invited senior ministers from more than 60 countries to discuss a “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism,” according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. But sources told the paper that the move has raised concerns that the meeting is designed to build support for the White House’s claim that antifa is linked to international terrorists. If so identified, it could enable the Trump government to use more investigative tools, including surveillance, to crack down on any U.S. activists it considers to be left-wing extremists.
In any case, the Trump administration’s fixation on antifa, which is not a unified organization, isn’t justified by the data. Right-wing extremists are significantly more violent than their left-wing counterparts, according to a 2022 study published by the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Regardless, given the administration’s bias, the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who Trump pardoned for attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, apparently are of no concern.
Trump’s sports curse
To the glee of soccer fans around the world, the U.S team got its comeuppance Monday night. Dismantled by a superior Belgian squad, the Americans could have been feted as plucky underdogs who made it further in the World Cup competition than many had expected. Instead, they’ll be remembered as the team for which Donald Trump greased the wheels.
The president’s personal involvement in helping lift the one-game suspension of star U.S player Folarin Balogun and the team’s subsequent defeat have revived talk of a “Trump Curse” when it comes to sports. Proponents point to his prediction that the Kansas City Chiefs would win the Super Bowl he attended (the Eagles won), his presence at a Ryder Cup match where the U.S. team lost to Europe, and that he was sitting in the New York Knicks owner’s box when the eventual champions lost to San Antonio, ending their 13-game postseason winning streak. But in the end, in Trump World, the final score doesn’t matter. As he said before the U.S-Belgian match, “If they beat us, then they can be really proud. The other way, if they beat us, I’ll say it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020, but I won’t get into that.”
Blocking Blanche
Things are heating up for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week. On Tuesday, a letter signed by more than 1,200 former Department of Justice (DOJ) employees urged the committee to reject him. The letter, which runs 59 pages with all those signatures, zeroes in on how Blanche has been “demonizing career employees.” While it references other criticisms of Blanche’s performance, the signatories say their intent is to “focus on an area that deserves just as much attention: Todd Blanche’s degradation of DOJ’s apolitical career workforce.”
“Blanche has fired or overseen the firings of hundreds of these employees—usually without notice, and for improper, unlawful reasons,” the letter continued. “Some were terminated for having worked on cases the president didn’t like; for being relatives of the president’s foes; for adjudicating immigration cases in accordance with due process; for declining to initiate vindictive prosecutions; or for refusing to lie in court.”
Poll worker privacy
The Trump administration’s crusade to relitigate the 2020 election suffered another blow on Tuesday. U.S. District Judge William Ray, who was appointed by Donald Trump, ruled that the Department of Justice (DOJ) can’t subpoena the names and personal information of Fulton County, Georgia, election workers involved in reviewing 2020 election mail-in ballots and mobile voting locations. The Justice Department was seeking their names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, but Ray called the request “unreasonable,” noting that the information it sought is “private and sensitive.”
“Everyone,” Ray added, “whether you support the president or you do not, or whether you believe the 2020 Election was fair or believe that it was not, should be concerned about the DOJ’s ability to utilize the power of the grand jury to appropriate your private information without a legitimate purpose.”
Trump flunks math (again)
Here’s a shocker: Donald Trump is grossly distorting data to make it seem that illegal immigration during Joe Biden’s presidency played a major role in boosting housing prices. Earlier this week, he cited a draft Federal Reserve paper on his Truth Social platform to claim that the “Biden illegal immigrant wave drove up home prices 30 percent.” In fact, the study estimated that unauthorized immigration was responsible for about 30 percent of the 22.4 percent average metropolitan-area increases in home prices between early 2021 and early 2024. Thirty percent of 22.4 percent is 6.7 percent. But then what can we expect from Trump? Remember when he said he cut drug prices by as much at 1,500 percent?
Randy Rieland, Money Trail’s “Trail Notes” columnist, is a former columnist at Smithsonian magazine, website director at the Discovery Channel, and senior writer at Washingtonian magazine.
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