Watch what they're doing, not what they're saying

As the Trump administration talks openly about deporting U.S. criminals to prisons in El Salvador, it is worth taking a look at how they're abusing language in an attempt to make that case.

The first thing to notice is that they are twisting the meaning of the word "criminal." The definition of the word crime is "an illegal act for which someone can be punished by the government." In our judicial system, a criminal is someone who has been convicted of committing a crime. 

When it comes to the men this administration has already sent to El Salvador, Bloomberg reports that 90% of them have no criminal record. In other words, they're sending immigrants to those prisons - not criminals. So when Trump talks about sending "homegrown criminals" to El Salvador, take just a minute to think about what that means. 

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem might have said the quiet part out loud when she suggested that "We should only have people in our country that love us." When you pair that with statements the president has made accusing critics of being treasonous, you get some idea of what they mean by the word "criminal." 

The second word that is worth noting is the suggestion that the administration is "deporting" people to El Salvador. Here's the definition of that word: "the removal from a country of an alien whose presence is unlawful or prejudicial."

The Trump administration isn't simply removing immigrants from the U.S. He's sending them to a prison in El Salvador. The correct words for that are "extraordinary rendition" - which is defined as "the seizure and transfer of a person suspected of involvement with a terrorist group to another country for imprisonment and interrogation without legal process." Confirming that as the correct term, the White House and its allies regularly refer to those non-criminal immigrants as "terrorists."

Some parallels are starting to emerge.

Given all of that, there is a more accurate term we should use to describe the Salvadorian prison.

While I always want to avoid being overly-alarmist, the picture that begins to emerge when we look at what they're doing is pretty threatening. Their actions suggest that they are preparing to use extraordinary rendition to send their critics to concentration camps in El Salvador. 

How Trump is killing this country's reliability

In the eleven days since Trump ignited a trade war with the rest of the world, here's what has happened:

• The White House bounced back and forth on whether the announced tariffs were permanent or negotiable. 
• Commerce Secretary Lutnick said, "I don't think there's any chance that President Trump's going to back off his tariffs. This is the reordering of global trade."
• One of the rationales given for the tariffs is that they would bring manufacturing jobs back to America - with Lutnick specifically citing the making of iPhones. 
• When it became clear that these moves were causing a major sell-off of U.S. bonds, Trump paused the tariffs that the administration was referring to as "reciprocal."
• Treasury Secretary Bessent said the pause in "reciprocal" tariffs was the strategy all along.
• The higher tariffs on China were not paused. But members of the Trump administration were confused about whether they were 125% or 145%. 
• Smartphones (including iPhones) and computers were exempted from the tariffs on China. But as Paul Krugman noted, "we’re now putting much higher tariffs on intermediate goods used in manufacturing (ie, Chinese batteries) than on final goods. This actually discourages manufacturing in the United States."
• The next day, Lutnick and Trump announced that the exemptions for electronics would be temporary.

I defy anyone to claim that, behind all of this, is some three-dimensional chess strategy. It's simply nuts! 

The truth is that, as economist Justin Wolfers said, we are currently in the midst of two crises: "A tariff crisis, and a crisis of confidence built upon incompetence." According to experts, it is that crisis of  confidence that caused the sell-off of U.S. bonds. 

As Jerusalem Demsas points out, all of this poses a long-term problem for the United States.

Countries can and will move on without the United States. Their firms will establish new supply chains and pursue other markets. Even if the U.S. were the ultra-dominant trading partner it used to be, the credibility of the nation’s promises, its treaties, its agreements, and even its basic rationality has evaporated in just weeks...

America’s economic dominance has long been supported by alliances, faith in U.S. debt, and the independence of the Fed. Those three things “were all built on trust that took decades to build,” the economist Ernie Tedeschi told me...

The problem facing future administrations—and this one, in the unlikely event that it gains a modicum of rationality—is that the country has killed its reliability.

In case you needed some more gaslighting, the administration that killed this country's reliability is responding by simply saying, "Trust Trump." That's like asking you to trust the pyromaniac who is in the process of burning down your house. 

Donald Trump is incapable of making rational decisions. Instead, he openly brags about making them "instinctively." For example, when asked how he would decide whether to give tariff relief to particular companies, the president responded by saying, "Instinctively, more than anything else. You almost can’t take a pencil to paper. It’s really more of an instinct, I think, than anything else.” 

As a recovering therapist, let me assure you that the instincts of a narcissistic sociopath are the opposite of rational. 

It's the insanity, stupid!

As Heather Cox Richardson documented, "Wall Street billionaires tried desperately and unsuccessfully to change Trump’s mind on tariffs. This week they have begun to go public, calling out what they call the 'stupidity' of the new measures." 

But one company - Fundstrat Market Strategy & Sector Research - went even farther than that, writing this is their newsletter today (emphasis mine):

In the last few days, we have had many conversations with macro fund managers. And their concern is that the White House is not acting rationally, but rather on ideology. And some even fear that this may not even be ideology. A few have quietly wondered if the President might be insane.

That is something that many of us have been talking about for years now.  As others search for a political or economic strategy behind the president's actions, Jamelle Bouie goes to the heart of things.

It is a fool’s errand to try to rationalize President Trump’s obsession with tariffs... 

[Trump] did not reason himself into his preoccupation with tariffs and can neither reason nor speak coherently about them. There is no grand plan or strategic vision, no matter what his advisers claim — only the impulsive actions of a mad king, untethered from any responsibility to the nation or its people. For as much as the president’s apologists would like us to believe otherwise, Trump’s tariffs are not a policy as we traditionally understand it. What they are is an instantiation of his psyche: a concrete expression of his zero-sum worldview.

The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance...For Trump, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship or a positive-sum outcome. In every interaction, no matter how trivial or insignificant, someone has to win, and someone has to lose...

The upshot of this understanding of Trump’s personality is that there is no point at which he can be satisfied. He will always want more: more supplicants to obey his next command, more displays of his power and authority and more opportunities to trample over those who don’t belong in his America.

During a speech last night, Trump shared his delusional thinking about his own dominance. 

Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter for Trump's "The Art of the Deal," laid it all out for us eight years ago.

To survive, I concluded from our conversations, Trump felt compelled to go to war with the world. It was a binary, zero-sum choice for him: You either dominated or you submitted. You either created and exploited fear, or you succumbed to it...

Trump grew up fighting for his life and taking no prisoners. In countless conversations, he made clear to me that he treated every encounter as a contest he had to win, because the only other option from his perspective was to lose, and that was the equivalent of obliteration.

I recognize that it's hard for a lot of people to come to terms with the idea that the U.S. has elected a president who is insane. They want to console themselves with the idea that, behind these policies is some kind of political and/or economic strategy that can be countered via rational arguments. But the reality is that we have a president who is bragging that our (former) allies are now calling him up to kiss his ass. It is an affront to three year olds to claim that is simply childish. It is insane.  

As a musical side-note, I've been thinking about this one a lot lately. Paul Simon said it's the most neurotic song he's ever written. But on a communal level, it perfectly describes Trump's "America first" mentality.

In this moral moment, perhaps Cory Booker is exactly what we need

As someone who has been impressed with Cory Booker since the days before he was a United States Senator, it didn't surprise me that on Tuesday, he rose to the occasion. Here is just one clip of his 25-hour speech on the Senate floor (you can find more here). 

Joining in the kind of rhetoric that we heard from Bishop Mariann Budde, Booker ended with a clarion call: "This is a moral moment. It’s not left or right, it’s right or wrong.”

I'd like to share just one reaction that I saw on BlueSky. A mother wrote:

If you could see the look on my 14 year old son’s face watching Senator Booker filibuster on behalf of Americans. My son is a historian, in honors history, a passionate expert on world history. He was devastated when Trump was re-elected and this is the first time I’ve seen hope in his eyes.

 Wow, bringing the first glimmer of hope to a 14 year old is a BFD! 

As I've watched Booker over the years, I've seen how mainstream journalists basically dismiss him. Hayes Brown captured that in his response to Booker's efforts yesterday.

“Is Cory cringe or is this refreshing?” a colleague messaged me at one point during Booker’s speech. The answer, as my colleague immediately noted, is “yes.” Booker can be the cringiest of senators, which is saying something, wearing his heart on his sleeve and brandishing an inspiring quote at every possible chance. His lack of cynicism can be off-putting in a time when doomerism is rampant and hope can feel like a lie in the face of harsh reality. But maybe what America needs right now is a little cringe, a recommitment to being genuine and earnest in our desire to help others.

I'd suggest that, while some journalists dismissed Booker as being "cringe," he has often been a source of inspiration for many of us. As just one example, I'd remind you of the time Booker demonstrated what it means to be an ally. 

Here's what I wrote about that at the time:

The senator from New Jersey just gave us a master class on how to be an ally. He didn't settle for simply debunking the attacks on Judge Jackson. He built her up in the midst of others trying to tear her down. He gave her room to breath again, shoring up her ability to continue to take on those attacks with dignity and grace. Booker focused - at least for a moment - on what Judge Jackson needed rather than use his time to preen for the camera in order to score political points. That's precisely what it means to have empathy.

I've always believed in Cory Booker. While cynics might cringe at his open-heartedness, I've seen it for long enough to know that he's the real deal. Beyond that, he's smart as a whip and consistently supports policies that are not only progressive...but pragmatic. Here's just one example:

Booker is proposing “baby bonds” to give each child in the United States a savings account with $1,000. The account would grow in size every year, depending on the income of the child’s family, to as much as $50,000.

When the child turns 18, that money could be used for a number of things but not anything — including a down payment on a house or money to go to college.

One estimate from Columbia University researcher Naomi Zewde found that baby bonds would come close to wiping out the racial wealth gap, in part by increasing the assets held by young people across the board.

With all of that said, perhaps you will understand why it was no surprise to me that Senator Booker is the one who stepped up to the plate during this moral moment. He's exactly what we need right now.