Trail Notes
Not Rubio's type / Bailing out farmers / More Trumparian media clout? / The business of America is business / Trump family connections pay off / Trump's mortgage scam
Not Rubio’s type
Who knew? The war against “woke” includes typefaces. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered that his department switch back to Times New Roman from the more modern, sans serif Calibri typeface on official documents.
Rubio called the change to Calibri during the Biden administration “wasteful” and blamed “radical” diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. Former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken ordered the switch to Calibri in 2023 based on a recommendation by the State Department’s DEI office because the font is easier to read for people with disabilities, such as dyslexia, and also for people who use screen readers.
Bailing out farmers (again)
Donald Trump has not only been saying for months that “tariff” is one of his favorite words, but also that his taxes on imports can fix just about everything that Joe Biden apparently destroyed in the U.S. economy. Trump’s latest example is his $11 billion bailout for American farmers, a relief package funded by tariff revenue. See how it all works, the president has reminded us.
Except, of course, a big reason farmers desperately need help is Trump’s tariff policy. That’s particularly true for soybean farmers. Once the Trump administration levied steep tariffs on imports from China, it reciprocated with its own “Thanks, but no thanks” policy regarding U.S. crops. That wiped out more than half of the U.S. soybean farmers’ market. In just the first half of 2025, 181 American farmers filed for bankruptcy, a 60 percent increase from the first half of 2024.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt welcomed NewsMax viewers into Trump’s tariff fantasy world from the White House lawn. “President Trump convinced President Xi to continue purchasing again American soybeans,” she said, “which is something China wasn’t doing under the last administration because they had no respect for President Biden or the country at the time.”
I hate to nitpick, but most what Leavitt said isn’t true. Last year, when Joe Biden was president, the Chinese purchased nearly $27 billion’s worth of soybeans from U.S. farmers. China stopped importing U.S. soybeans last May. Instead, it bought them from Brazil and Argentina.
More Trumparian media clout?
The campaign by Donald Trump’s allies to take more control of big media outlets took a startling turn Monday when Paramount made a hostile takeover bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Just last week, Netflix announced a huge $83 billion deal to buy the company. But Paramount countered by going straight to Warner Bros. Discovery’s shareholders, indicating it would pony up $108 billion to purchase the company, including its cable channels, which was not a part of the Netflix offer.
Why does this matter so much politically? For starters, the head of Paramount is David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry—the largest Paramount shareholder—is a big Trump booster. If the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal goes through, it will give the Ellisons control of CNN, and the elder Ellison reportedly told White House officials he would consider firing CNN hosts Trump doesn’t like.
Not that long ago, in the deal through which the Ellison’s took over Paramount, they made CBS part of their domain. As part of its pitch to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders, Paramount is claiming that its deal is more likely to get federal regulatory approval than Netflix’s. A detail Paramount left out is that one of the investors in its proposed deal is Affinity Partners, the private equity firm led by none other than the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
The business of America is business
I can’t say I agreed with Ronald Reagan on a lot of things, but I did respect his view of America’s role in the world, that it should use its power and wealth to be a global force for freedom, and that we need to work with our longtime allies, particularly in Europe, to perpetuate and protect the democratic principles that has truly made America great. But according to the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy, those days are over.
It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that its emphasis is more on deals than principles. For instance, in making the case that the United States should focus more on reasserting its dominance in the Western Hemisphere, it shifts the priority to maximizing financial gains. The document recommends that U.S. diplomats should look for “major business opportunities in their country, especially major government contracts. The terms of our agreements, especially with those countries that depend on us most and therefore over which we have the most leverage, must be sole source contracts for our companies.” It promotes the same approach to Middle Eastern countries, which it describes as “a source and destination of international investment.” At the same time, it argues for “dropping America’s misguided experiment with hectoring these nations” on such matters as human rights abuses.
But the most striking aspect of this foreign policy blueprint is how it addresses America’s relationship with Europe. It warns that the continent is facing “civilizational erasure” due to the inflow of immigrants. It blasts what it sees as European leaders’ censorship of right-wing parties. And it prioritizes “ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.”
It’s worth noting that the Russian government heartily approves of this new emphasis. “The adjustments we’re seeing,” said a Russian spokesman, “… are largely consistent with our vision.”
Trump family connections pay off (again)
Yet another company with ties to the Trump family has landed a huge federal deal. The Pentagon has granted a $620 million loan to a small company called Vulcan Elements that specializes in producing rare-earth magnets used in drones and other military equipment. Vulcan has financial backing from 1789 Capital, a venture capital firm that brought Donald Trump Jr. on as a partner last year. According to analysis by the Financial Times, the Trump administration has awarded contracts totaling $734 million to at least four companies in 1789’s portfolio this year.
Trump’s own mortgage scam
In building his case to remove Lisa Cook from her post as a Federal Reserve governor, Donald Trump accused her of mortgage fraud. He charged that she claimed more than one home as her primary residence, which he described as “deceitful and potentially criminal.”
As it turns out, Cook declared in financial forms that the property in question would be used as a “vacation home,” not her primary residence. And, according to an investigation by ProPublica, Trump did the very thing he falsely accused Cook of doing.
ProPublica reported that Trump signed a mortgage for a home in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1993 and indicated it would be his primary residence. Just seven weeks later, he made the same claim about a neighboring property. In fact, Trump never lived in either property but instead used them as investment properties he rented out.
When asked to comment, a White House spokesperson said, “This is yet another desperate attempt by the left wing media to disparage President Trump with false allegations…. President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law.”
Pardons for pushers
Donald Trump has characterized his war on drugs as “aggressive” and “militarized,” and contends that he’s all about being “tough on crime.” Reality check: According to a Washington Post analysis, Trump has pardoned or granted clemency to at least 10 people convicted of drug-related crimes since he returned to office in January.
Randy Rieland is a former columnist at Smithsonian magazine, website director at the Discovery Channel, and senior writer at Washingtonian magazine.
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