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.

In his own words, Musk is a fraudster

Ever since November 5, 2024, things have been pretty dismal. But recently, MN Governor Tim Walz did what he does best - brought some laughter to those of us in despair. 

That drew some pretty explosive criticism from our shadow president.

But here's the interesting thing. During that same interview, Musk parroted a talking point we heard recently from Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, who claimed that the only people who would complain about Social Security cuts would be the "fraudsters." 

Here are Musk's own words: "You know who complains the loudest, with the most amount of fake righteous indignation? The fraudsters. It's a tell."

So Musk is the one who is complaining the loudest about Walz's remarks. In his own words, doesn't that make Musk a fraudster? 

I report...you decide :-)

Reckoning with the evil in power right now

Back in 2007, David Simon said this about his show The Wire:

I am wholly pessimistic about American society. I believe The Wire is a show about the end of the American Empire. We are going to live that event. How we end up and survive, and on what terms, is going to be the open question.

While I've always thought that The Wire was the best show ever produced for television,  I used to assume that Simon was too pessimistic. These days, I'm starting to question that.

I suspect that is something a lot of us in this country are beginning to wonder about. We've been raised on the idea that this country always ends up on the right side of history - even as it can take us a while to get there. But this time, we're not so sure.

Embedded in that optimism is a struggle to accept that those in positions of power in this country can be truly evil. That's what I began to think about when I read this description of Musk and his techno-pals from Amanda Marcotte:

Musk and his fellow techno-fascists often cast themselves as the saviors of "civilization," but that rhetoric is only there to put an ennobling gloss on a deeply sociopathic view: that human beings exist to serve the system, and not that the system is there to serve humanity...It's an attitude that's inherently eugenicist, measuring people's value solely in terms of whether they can be utilized to make more money for the already-wealthy investor class. It's why Musk has no respect for federal workers whose labor is centered around helping people, not profits. And it's certainly not a worldview that has space for retirees, people who, by definition, are out of the paid labor market.

Musk has demonstrated disdain for anyone who doesn't produce profits for the already-wealthy owner class: federal workers, the disabled, retirees, non-profits employees (NGO's), etc.  He even went so far as to suggest that empathy for others is "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization."

In case you think Musk is a one-off in the world of techno-fascists, I'd like to introduce you to Curtis Yarvin, the guy who said that Americans need to get over their "dictator phobia" and has inspired everyone from J.D. Vance to Peter Thiel. Back in 2008, Yarvin was writing a blog under the pseudonym, Mencius Moldbug. He laid out his ideal of "Patchwork realms," which would be city-scapes ruled by techno-CEOs (what some folks are referring to as "Freedom cities" these days). 

In laying out his vision for these Patchwork realms, Yarvin addressed the issue of what should be done with people who are unproductive (the people Musk refers to as "the parasite class"). Apparently, he likes to joke around about stuff like this.

I think the answer is clear: alternative energy. Since wards are liabilities, there is no business case for retaining them in their present, ambulatory form. Therefore, the most profitable disposition for this dubious form of capital is to convert them into biodiesel, which can help power the Muni buses.

Okay, just kidding. This is the sort of naive Randian thinking which appeals instantly to a geek like me, but of course has nothing to do with real life. The trouble with the biodiesel solution is that no one would want to live in a city whose public transportation was fueled, even just partly, by the distilled remains of its late underclass.

Things don't get much better when Yarvin is serious.

The ideal solution achieves the same result as mass murder (the removal of undesirable elements from society), but without any of the moral stigma...

The best humane alternative to genocide I can think of is not to liquidate the wards—either metaphorically or literally—but to virtualize them. A virtualized human is in permanent solitary confinement, waxed like a bee larva into a cell which is sealed except for emergencies. This would drive him insane, except that the cell contains an immersive virtual-reality interface which allows him to experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.

That's how the world of techno-fascists think about the "undesirable elements of society." You think they're going to give a damn about retirees losing their Social Security or the disabled losing access to education? Not for a minute! 

A few reporters have delved into the world some people refer to as the "Dark Enlightenment," or the "NRx movement" from which these tech-bros emerged. But for now, suffice it to say that it is the world inhabited by the likes of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and J.D. Vance. While they might not publicly endorse the idea of "virtualizing" people they view as unproductive, it is clear that they hold the same kind of disdain for anyone who doesn't contribute to the already-wealthy owner class.

That is the evil that has gained power in the United States right now, which is why I'm joining Simon these days in being pessimistic about American society. 

Fact-checking Musk/Trump lies about entitlements

On at least two occasions, Elon Musk has admitted to making mistakes when it comes to his use of a chainsaw to go after federal spending. He followed that up by saying that, when confronted with mistakes, he would immediately fix them.  That was a lie.

To demonstrate, let's take a look at what he said about entitlements last week during an interview with Larry Ludlow. 

At about the 1:45 minute mark, Musk says that there is a tremendous amount of waste and fraud in federal spending. He referred to a 2024 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) which, he said, estimated half a trillion dollars in government fraud. Here's the headline from that report: "2018-2022 Data Show Federal Government Loses an Estimated $233 Billion to $521 Billion Annually to Fraud." Right off the bat, you can see that Musk only mentioned the top number in the estimate. 

But a deeper look at that report provides us with some needed context. First of all, it states that the total represents 3-7 percent of federal obligations - which, while cause for concern, doesn't sound like a "tremendous amount." Secondly, they made their estimates by looking at fraud that was adjudicated, investigated, and/or suspected. In other words, it was based on fraud that the various departments knew about and were dealing with. For example, that would include the work of the Health Care Fraud Unit, which "has charged more than 5,400 defendants with fraudulently billing Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurers more than $27 billion."

I would note that, while DOGE is reporting $115 billion in savings from their efforts (not a reliable number), not one case of fraud has been referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution. Meanwhile, many of the staff who previously identified, investigated, and prosecuted fraud have been fired.  Whatever it is that is motivating the DOGE chainsaw, it has nothing to do with investigating fraud.

From there, Musk goes on to suggest that there is something nefarious going on with Social Security by pointing to the 20 million people who are dead, but marked as alive in the system. That one has been explained over and over again - even by the Trump administration's acting SSA commissioner. The fact that Musk continues to bring it up demonstrates that he is deliberately lying.

Musk's remarks at about the 14:35 mark are the ones that got the most attention. He said, "The waste and fraud in entitlement spending — which is most of the federal spending is entitlements — so, that’s, like, the big one to eliminate. That’s the, sort of half-trillion, maybe $6-700 billion a year.”

Giving Musk the benefit of the doubt, he wasn't suggesting that entitlements be completely eliminated. He was suggesting that there is a "half-trillion, maybe $6-700 billion a year" in entitlement fraud that he wants to eliminate. He seems to be relying on the top number from that 2024 GAO report, which was based on the entire federal government, not simply entitlements. Then he threw in an additional $1-200 billion for good measure.

In an attempt to defend those remarks from Musk, the White House issued a statement purporting to provide "facts" about entitlement fraud. They referred to the same 2024 GAO report on estimated fraud. But the rest of the so-called "facts" are all reports on "improper payments," which we have discussed before. Here's a reminder about what that term means: 

The vast majority of improper payments occurred in situations where a reviewer could not determine if a payment was proper because of insufficient documentation...Improper payment estimates are not fraud rate estimates.

Even so, the most recent figures on improper payments puts them at 6% for Medicare, 5% for Medicaid, and 0.8% for Social Security. That, my friends, is pretty damn efficient! 

Now that we've dealt with the policies, numbers, and definitions to debunk Musk's lies about entitlements, the shadow president got to the tin foil hat part of his claims. He ends the interview with Kudlow by making an argument adjacent to the white supremacist's Great Replacement Theory, claiming that it is access to entitlements that draws undocumented immigrants to this country. That is a bald-faced lie.

By law, one must “either be a U.S. citizen or lawfully present noncitizen in order to receive monthly Social Security benefits.” Similarly, Medicare benefits are only available to “U.S. citizens and qualified lawfully present immigrants age 65 and older.” In other words, undocumented immigrants—who are not lawfully present—cannot receive these benefits, even though their work strengthens these trust funds.

What we can take from all of this is that Trump/Musk are coming after Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - programs that primarily benefit seniors and the disabled. In order to pave the way for that, they'll tell a voluminous amount of lies. We must arm ourselves with facts in order to stave off those attacks. 

MAGA is also about an attack on the disabled

The list of words the Trump administration is banning tells us all we need to know about their attack on civil rights. But a couple of words have gotten less attention than the rest. Included on the list are "accessibility" and "disability." They've made it abundantly clear that their fight isn't just about DEI, it is about DEIA (the "A" is accessibility for the disabled). 

We all learned about Trump's disdain when he mocked a reporter with a disability during the 2016 campaign. The president recently  implied that February’s deadly plane and helicopter crash was linked to the FAA’s hiring of people with “severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions.”

Elon Musk's favorite attack on people he disagrees with is to call them a "retard." He's done so more than 16 times in the last year. It's spreading to his followers on X, where use of the term increased 200%. When Trump won in November, a “top banker” told Financial Times: “I feel liberated. We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled.”

But it's not just about words. Both Musk and House Republicans have set their sights on defunding Medicaid, which was created in part to ensure people with disabilities had access to affordable healthcare. Similarly, the administration's promise to eliminate the Department of Education would deal a death blow to funding for students with disabilities. 

Here is a description of what was happening in the United States prior to the 1970s:

As of the early 1970s, U.S. public schools accommodated 1 out of 5 children with disabilities. Until that time, many states had laws that explicitly excluded children with certain types of disabilities from attending public school, including children who were blind, deaf, and children labeled "emotionally disturbed" or "mentally retarded."...More than 1 million children had no access to the public school system, with many of them living at state institutions where they received limited or no educational or rehabilitation services.

With passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990, the federal government required public schools to create educational opportunities for children with disabilities and pledged to cover 40% of the average per-student cost. The latter promise has never been fulfilled, with the federal government currently covering only 13% of the costs. 

If the Trump administration eliminates the Department of Education, there will be no guarantee that even these minimal funds (should they survive) would go towards the education of students with disabilities. And, as the Trump administration shows preference for private schools, it is important to note that they are not required to provide special education services.

Justin Kirkland links all of this to eugenics - which is a powerful accusation. So it's important to take a look at how he justifies such a claim.

Starting in 1910, the term “mental retardation” was used to diagnose those who were “feeble-minded”, failed to develop on the average timeline, and were deemed by some doctors as “incurable”. Around the same time, the belief that undesirable traits – specifically intellectual disabilities, and eventually race and sexual orientation – could be “bred out” of existence was growing in popularity in the US. This eugenics movement was endorsed by political powerhouses and substantial research on eugenics was bankrolled by the likes of the Carnegie Institution and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Advocates of eugenics suggested people with disabilities should be institutionalized and separated by gender, so as to discourage “bad breeding”. It was the popularity of the eugenics movement that served as inspiration for the Nazi party: in 1939, the Third Reich began systematically murdering Germans with disabilities in institutions; an estimated quarter of a million people were killed during this “euthanasia” program, at least 10,000 of them children. Stateside, tens of thousands of people with intellectual disabilities were forcibly sterilized from the turn of the century and into the 1970s. People with disabilities didn’t secure sweeping civil rights, including equal access to employment and housing assistance, until the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 – just one generation removed from present day.

We've already seen a return to eugenics from Trump in his description of immigrants. 

Immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” he said at a rally last year.

“Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States,” he said earlier this month. “You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

Here's where MAGA's attacks on empathy come into play. To return to that kind of cruelty towards people with disabilities, they can't allow themselves to identify with the suffering caused by the eugenics movement. 

In order to prevent a return to our pre-1970s past, we need to learn more about this recent history, recognize what's going on right now, and stand up for the rights of people with disabilities.  A good place to start would be to watch the documentary "Crip Camp" and celebrate the heroes who brought us the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Why the MAGA movement fears empathy

When Elon Musk went on Joe Rogan's show last week, he said that "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy." He also referred to empathy as civilizational suicide. 

But Musk isn't the only one who sees empathy as a threat. There is a whole movement among Christian nationalists warning of the dangers of empathy. For example, Conservative Christian commentator Allie Beth Stuckey recently published a book titled Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. A few months later, Joe Rigney published one titled The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits. Several other Christian nationalists have joined the fray, including Josh McPherson, Doug Wilson, Joel Webbon, and James White.

The attacks on empathy were perhaps best captured by how these folks responded to Bishop Mariann Budde's call for mercy towards those who are afraid. Here's the author of that book about "toxic empathy."

Whoa! So for these folks, showing mercy to those who are afraid isn't just against God's word - it's satanic. I have no idea what Bible she's reading, but whenever folks get that riled up, I start wondering what they're afraid of. Here's a list of what comes to mind:

Conversation 

Empathy emerges when we engage deeply in conversation - often with those who disagree with us or have different life experiences. As Julian Sanchez pointed out years ago, that kind of conversation bursts MAGA's epistemic bubble (emphasis mine).

This epistemic closure can be a source of solidarity and energy, but it also renders the conservative media ecosystem fragile…If disagreement is not in itself evidence of malign intent or moral degeneracy, people start feeling an obligation to engage it sincerely…And there is nothing more potentially fatal to the momentum of an insurgency fueled by anger than a conversation.

Feminization 

As we see in Stuckey's tweet above, she expects this kind of thing from a female Episcopalian priest. Joe Rigney was more explicit. Here's what he wrote:

Budde’s attempt to “speak truth to power” is a reminder that feminism is a cancer that enables the politics of empathetic manipulation and victimhood that has plagued us in the era of wokeness. And for Christians, it’s a reminder of how destructive the feminist cancer is in the Church.

Josh McPherson, Pastor of Grace City Church in Wenatchee, Washington and founder of Stronger Man Nation, said that "empathy is dangerous, empathy is toxic, empathy will align you with Hell." He also said that "women are especially vulnerable" to empathy, and that husbands should control who their wives are friends with.

It is clear that, for these folks, empathy threatens the status quo of patriarchy. 

Vulnerability/Uncertainty

Here's what Shane Moe, a licensed marriage and family counselor, said about the anti-empathy crowd:

Yes, allowing ourselves to experience empathy can make us more vulnerable to (gasp!) the influence of those who think differently than we do. And if one lives in a perpetual state of spiritual hypervigilance or fear of potentially being wrong or corrupted — and, thus, with deep-seated existential anxiety surrounding theological/ideological difference and change — one might consequently come to see empathy as a threat.

Those who have a "deep-seated existential anxiety" about difference and change must protect their vulnerability by maintaining certainty. All doubt must be eradicated. 

I am reminded that, in the film Conclave, Cardinal Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes) says that "There is one sin which I have come to fear above all others - certainty....Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance."

Unity

One of the lessons we can learn from history is that authoritarian regimes require people to embrace an us vs them narrative about an enemy that must be punished and/or annihilated. That's why Trump/Vance keep talking about "the enemy within." The specifics are malleable and can be anyone they feel like targeting at the moment. Empathy for those targets is, therefore, a huge threat. 

In 2008, Barack Obama gave a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Here is the theme of his remarks:

“Unity is the great need of the hour.” That’s what Dr. King said. It is the great need of this hour as well, not because it sounds pleasant, not because it makes us feel good, but because it's the only way we can overcome the essential deficit that exits in this country.

I’m not talking about the budget deficit. I’m not talking about the trade deficit. Talking about the moral deficit in this country. I’m talking about an empathy deficit, the inability to recognize ourselves in one another, to understand that we are our brother’s keeper and our sister’s keeper, that in the words of Dr. King, “We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny.”

To the extent that we believe that we are our bother's/sister's keeper, we would unify against the forces that are tearing us apart.

That is why MAGA is referring to empathy as civilizational suicide, toxic, and a sin. They are scared to death of real conversation, women, vulnerability, and unity because all of those things will bring down the edifice of cruelty they are in the midst of building. Isn't it a pity. Isn't it a shame! 

What Trump has done for Putin in just 43 days

With all of the daily outrages coming from the White House, it is important every now and then to step back and take a look at the big picture. Here's what Trump has done for Putin in his first 43 days:

February 14th - Trump administration made it easier for Russia to interfere in our elections.

February 14th - Vance told European countries that the real threat isn't Russia, but their own attempts to disrupt misinformation.

February 18th - Trump repeated Kremlin talking points - blaming Ukraine for starting the war. 

February 19th - Trump repeated Kremlin talking points - calling Zelensky a "dictator."

February 24th - U.S. voted against a UN resolution condemning Russia for Ukraine war.

February 28th - Trump and Vance attacked Zelensky during their meeting in the Oval Office, leading to this tweet from the deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia.

March 2nd - Trump administration ordered U.S. Cyber Command to halt offensive cyber operations and information operations against Russia.

March 3rd - Trump administration is planning to give Russia relief from sanctions imposed as a result of their invasion of Ukraine.

March 3rd - Trump halts all military aid to Ukraine.

Of course, none of that includes all of the things that the Trump administration is doing that has Putin applauding - like shutting down USAID, alienating all of our foreign allies, and basically destroying the federal government. 

Is it any wonder, then, that the Kremlin spokesperson said that "The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. This largely aligns with our vision.”

After Trump's first term in office, it became increasingly difficult to dismiss the idea that the President of the United States was acting as an asset of the Kremlin. Forty-three days into his second term, he's wiping out all doubt.

At least one conservative British politician is saying the quiet part out loud.

With the Republican plan to increase the deficit by $4.5 trillion, they need a new argument to go after entitlements

For decades now, Republicans have demonstrated that one of their main goals has been to eliminate the social safety net. While they've used various arguments, the one they've depended on the most is to claim that we can't afford it by pointing to the federal deficit. 

But that argument is increasingly hard to make when the House budget proposal includes a $4.5 trillion addition to the deficit from tax cuts aimed primarily at the wealthy. So Republicans find themselves having to pivot to a new argument for doing away with the social safety net - especially when it comes to programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. 

It is becoming increasingly clear that the new argument is that these programs are infected with waste, fraud and abuse. As I noted previously, that is the lie Speaker Johnson is spreading about Medicaid. On Sunday, he said the same thing about Social Security.

Of course, Johnson didn't provide any evidence for "enormous amounts of fraud, waste, and abuse" in the Social Security system. And when Welker pointed out that the Social Security administration's internal watchdog found that less than 1 percent of benefit payments were improper, Johnson responded by simply saying "Don't believe it."

Call me crazy, but if Musk and Johnson want to use that chainsaw to go after Social Security, they're going to have to provide some actual evidence of fraud, waste, and abuse. We now know that their claims about millions of dead people getting Social Security checks was a lie. 

Overall, when it comes to Musk's claims of fraud, here's a good tracker:

To demonstrate how twisted this has all become, Musk recently told Joe Rogan that "entitlements fraud for illegal aliens is what is serving as a gigantic magnetic force to pull people in from all around the world and keep them here." Of course, that's all a lie. But Musk used it as a way to pivot to the great replacement theory, suggesting that Democrats are using entitlement fraud to "buy voters."

The bottom line is that, whether they're pearl-clutching about the deficit, lying about fraud, or blaming immigrants, the point of all of this is to dismantle programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. That's the end game. They know that these programs are not only popular, they are a lifeline for millions of Americans. So they keep searching for a convincing lie to justify their destruction. 

Vance is the one who staged the attack on Zelensky

The overall takeaway from Zelensky's meeting with Trump on Friday was perhaps best captured in an editorial from Kyiv Independent titled "A president just disrespected America in the Oval Office. It wasn't Zelensky." The opening line says it all: "It’s time to say it plainly. America’s leadership has switched sides in the war." As David Frum said, "It exposed in the most undeniable, unequivocal way possible the pro-Putin commitments of the president and vice president." We now live in a country where the leadership supports Russia over Ukraine.

In order to understand the context of what happened, I decided that it would be helpful to watch the entire meeting. It lasted about 50 minutes, with all of the social media clips coming during the last 10 minutes. The first 40 minutes were fairly amiable. While Trump emphasized that the deal he wanted to sign would give the U.S. access to Ukraine's rare earth minerals, Zelensky pointed to three things Ukraine wanted in exchange:

1. On-going air defense systems
2. Security guarantees
3. A return of the Ukrainian children that Russia has abducted

It is important to realize that the second point is something he has emphasized from the beginning. Here's how it was framed three weeks ago:

The U.S. president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine's war with Russia, said on Monday he wanted Ukraine to supply the U.S. with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort.

"If we are talking about a deal, then let's do a deal, we are only for it," Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine's need for security guarantees from its allies as part of any settlement... 

Ukraine has rapidly retuned its foreign policy approach to align with the transactional world view set out by the new occupant of the White House, Ukraine's most important ally.

In other words, Zelensky was smart enough to put these mineral rights on the table - knowing that it is exactly the kind of thing that would appeal to Trump. But he wanted something in return - security guarantees.

After about 40 unremarkable minutes of the meeting on Friday, Trump indicated that they would take one last question from the media. That's when Vance interrupted to say that for four years Biden talked tough about Putin, who then invaded Ukraine - implying that Russia's invasion was Biden's fault. The vice president went on to suggest that it was time for diplomacy. 

Zelensky responded by asking Vance, "what kind of diplomacy?" He pointed out that Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014. After being elected president in 2019, Zelensky engaged directly with Putin in diplomacy and reached a cease fire agreement - which Russia failed to honor. That is why Zelensky is so adamant about including security guarantees as part of any cease fire deal. 

Vance went on the attack against Zelensky - and was eventually joined by Trump. 

.@VP: "Do you think that it's respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?"@POTUS: "You don't have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards ... You're… pic.twitter.com/iTYyAmfuCJ

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 28, 2025

After spouting Russian propaganda, Vance accused Zelensky of coming into the oval office and attacking the Trump administration. Nowhere during the entire exchange had Zelensky done that. But it was enough to enrage Trump - who has no love lost for Zelensky.

The rest of the discussion was basically Trump and Vance demanding that Zelensky submit to their dominance ("you don't have the cards right now") and be grateful ("have you said 'thank you' once today?"). Anyone who has ever lived with an abusive spouse will recognize those kinds of messages as threats.

A lot of people I admire are suggesting that this whole thing was choreographed to give Trump a reason to end all U.S. support for Ukraine. They might be right, but I'm a bit skeptical for a couple of reasons.

The first is that, if you watch the first 40 minutes of the meeting, you'll see Trump practically salivating at the prospect of getting control of those rare earth minerals. In addition, the president praised himself over and over again for being the great peacemaker who was going to bring an end to the war. But all of that is now off the table.  

The one who seemed to have planned an attack is Vance. It came out of nowhere and was particularly vicious. It was also calibrated to raise Trump's hackles and get him engaged  - which is, of course - easy to do.

It could be that Trump directed Vance to upend the entire deal. But I don't give the president that much credit. My take leans more in the direction of thinking that it was Vance who staged the whole thing himself. To be honest, I don't really know why. Perhaps, as James Landale suggests, he's "developing a role as a political brawler for Trump," specializing in going after our allies - as he did in Munich. 

But I also suspect that Vance is aware of the fact that a shinny object like mineral rights is exactly the kind of thing that could distract Trump from the goal of upending the entire global order. The vice president just made sure that won't happen. 

How many "mistakes" does an oligarch need to make before he gets fired?

On two occasions in the last few weeks, Elon Musk has admitted that he and his techbros have made mistakes. He's not lying.  But what I want to know is: how many "mistakes" does an oligarch need to make before he gets fired? Here's a list of the ones I've been able to identify (I'm sure there are more).

1. Claimed that USAID sent $50 million worth of condoms to Hamas.  
2. Fired 300 people at the Energy Department, unaware of the fact that they are responsible for managing America's nuclear weapons.
3. Accidentally fired USDA employees working on the bird flu.
4. Spread a nonsense conspiracy theory about 150 year old's getting Social Security checks.
5. Cancelled 875 VA contracts worth $2 billion for things like medical services, cancer programs, and burial services to veterans.
6. Cancelled more than 60 contracts meant to boost efficiency, all while saving no money. 
7. Forced to delete the top five highest savings claims on its “wall of receipts” leaderboard after various news outlets pointed out multiple errors in its calculations.
8. Accidentally fired employees responsible for Ebola prevention.

That list doesn't even include all of the things the shadow president and his techbros have done that are illegal - which is for the courts to decide. They are simply things that are obvious "mistakes."

There are only one of two conclusions we can make about all of this. One would be that the group that claims to be about finding "efficiencies" in the federal government is extremely incompetent - and should be fired. The second is that, in their minds, these are not actually "mistakes." In other words, they are not a bug, but a feature. 

Speaker Johnson - who claims to base his political positions on the Bible - continues to lie

Back in January, I documented that Mike Johnson - who claims to base his politics on biblical principles - told seven lies about immigration in a short four-minute video clip. The Republican House Speaker continues to lie, and recently told a couple of whoppers about federal spending. 

In speaking about the Musk/DOGE efforts to destroy the federal bureaucracy, Johnson said this:

In that video, Johnson claimed that the "deep state" hid information about federal spending from congress, and now, "Elon's cracked the code." 

What he doesn't want you to know is that in 2006, congress passed a bill titled "Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act." It was introduced by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) and signed by President George W. Bush. As a result, the website usaspending.gov was created, providing everyone - including congress - with access to detailed information about all federal spending.  

In other words, no one was hiding any information - much less the so-called "deep state." Unless he and his staff were too lazy to search a database, Johnson has always had access to the data that doesn't lie.

Along a similar track, Johnson and House Republicans are paving the way to cut $880 billion from Medicaid - which will result in over 20 million people losing their health care coverage. The Speaker is also lying about that.  

First of all, everyone DOESN'T know "intuitively" that Medicaid is "hugely problematic because it has a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse."  But to justify his claim, Johnson suggested that experts identified $50 billion per year in fraud alone. That's a lie. Here's what he's referring to:

Each year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) releases estimated Payment Error Rate Measure (PERM) rates on improper payments in Medicaid...The overall 2024 improper payment rate was 5.09 percent, down from 8.58 percent in 2023...

It’s important to note that most of the improper payments are made for eligible health services for people who were eligible for Medicaid; the issue is that proper documentation for the payments is missing. That means that the improper payment rate is a measure of procedural errors not a fraud rate, nor is it an accurate count of funds that were misspent.

In other words, an error in documentation =/= fraud. Furthermore, CMS took specific steps to correct these documentation errors in 2024. 

The truth is that Medicaid fraud doesn't have anything to do with recipients or the services they are eligible to receive. 

The December 2024 report [from HHS and DOJ] lists examples of the different kinds of fraud against Medicaid (and Medicare) that the agencies have identified and prosecuted. Among those convicted are ambulance service providers, durable medical equipment suppliers, diagnostic labs, nursing homes, pain clinics, pharmacies, physical therapists, physicians, and substance use treatment providers. No beneficiaries are in the listing.

It's not the beneficiaries - it's the providers that are committing fraud. So as always, it is important to follow the money.

Given that, if Johnson and his Republican pals actually wanted to address the issue of fraud in Medicaid, they might have objected to Trump's firing of the HHS Inspector General. 

Since 2007, the OIG [Office of Inspector General] and the Department of Justice have been operating a special joint task force to root out waste, fraud and abuse in a dozen major metropolitan areas.

The Health Care Fraud Unit has charged more than 5,400 defendants with fraudulently billing Medicare, Medicaid, and private health insurers more than $27 billion...

The OIG’s semiannual reports to Congress estimated the agency recovered close to $10 billion for Medicare and Medicaid in 2024, nearly 20 times the 1,500-person agency’s annual budget.

What all of these lies tell us is that Speaker Johnson isn't interested in data, nor is he actually concerned about waste, fraud, and abuse. As I have pointed out previously, he is a Christian reconstructionist, meaning that he believes that the welfare state must be destroyed. 

This is how we puncture the media narrative about Democrats being powerless

Major media outlets (ie, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times) have been critiqued for normalizing the anti-democratic agenda of Donald Trump and then kowtowing to his threats once he was re-elected. But after the president unleashed his "shock and awe" chaos, I noticed an additional pattern emerge. For example, we've seen lots of headlines like this:

"Democrats confront their powerlessness as Trump flexes authority" at CNN

"Powerless, Democrats debate how deep in the wilderness they are" at NYT

"More Democrats fear the party’s image isn’t just damaged – it’s broken" at Politico

There are also some on the extreme left (who make a habit of always criticizing Democrats) that keep telling us the party's leadership is failing us. 

If you focus on that kind of news, you'd have reason to be completely demoralized and not notice that things like this are happening:

As I write, Josh Marshall has documented that constituents have disrupted at least five Republican town halls in the past week. There is enough of a pattern that even the New York Times noticed today.

But it's not just regular voters who are exercising their power. The web site "Just Security" has documented 89 court cases filed against the illegal actions taken by the Trump administration - even as Minority Leader Jeffries is doing his job in the House.

Perhaps one of the most important things we can all learn from this moment is that it is time to stop looking for a leader to save us. The truth is that it's going to take all of us.

If you need some inspiration along those lines, please watch/listen to the speech Kamala Harris gave Saturday while accepting the NAACP Image Award. 

These are some powerful words from our former vice president (emphasis mine).

This organization came into being at a moment when our country struggled with greed, bitterness and hatred. And those who forged the NAACP, those who carried its legacy forward, had no illusions about the forces they were up against — no illusions about how stony the road would be. But some look at this moment and rightly feel the weight of history. Some see the flames on our horizons, the rising waters in our cities, the shadows gathering over our democracy, and ask, ‘What do we do now?’ But we know exactly what to do, because we have done it before, and we will do it again.

We use our power; we organize, mobilize, we educate and we advocate. Because, you see, our power has never come from having an easy path. Our strength flows from our faith — faith in God, faith in each other, and our refusal to surrender to cynicism and destruction. Not because it is easy, but because it is necessary. Not because victory is guaranteed, but because the fight is worth it.

While we have no illusions about what we are up against in this chapter of our American story, this chapter will be written not simply by whoever occupies the Oval Office — nor by the wealthiest among us. The American story will be written by you, written by us — by we the people.

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Selma march, her words echo those of President Obama ten years ago.

Selma shows us that America is not the project of any one person. Because the single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word “We.” “We The People.” “We Shall Overcome.” “Yes We Can.” That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone.

Musk is an idiot with a Nazi axe to grind

When confronted with the lie about USAID sending $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza, Elon Musk said something worth noting. 

Musk acknowledged that "some of the things I say will be incorrect and should be corrected." 

Given that he and his DOGE minions haven't produced much (if any) evidence of fraud, it would be more accurate of him to acknowledge that "most of the things I say will be incorrect." But it's also important to notice where he is aiming his "incorrect" statements. Much like USAID, they're likely at agencies/programs, he is preparing to take down.

One of them is the child tax credit. Musk recently responded to this post on X by saying, "such a big jump in such a short time doesn't make sense."

Did you know the IRS is one of the largest providers of Welfare in the USA?

The IRS relies on US Residents (not just citizens) self-certifying their qualification for these IRS Welfare programs that are effectively a "negative income tax".

From 2011-2019, there were ~30M IRS… pic.twitter.com/HYBOF0Evsz

— ~~datahazard~~ (@fentasyl) February 15, 2025

The bar they're referring to is the light green one labelled "refundable credits" because you can get a refund even if you don't owe any tax. Musk's response makes sense only if you are ignorant of two facts:

1. 2020 was the year of the COVID pandemic, when so many people lost jobs and increased their likelihood of qualifying for the refundable child tax credit, and
2. 2021 was the year that Biden and Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan, temporarily increasing the child tax credit from $1,400 per child to $3,600. 

Equally ignorant are Musk's attacks on Social Security. During that same press conference where he admitted that he'd say things that are incorrect, the shadow president suggested that people who are 150 years old are receiving Social Security payments. He followed that up with this post on Friday.

His reference to vampires suggests that he thinks this is all some kind of joke. Which it isn't! 

But here's the thing: rather than spread lies about fraud, Musk could have checked out a report from the Social Security Inspector General (that Trump fired) published less than two years ago about this very topic. They found that "Years of birth for 18.9 million numberholders born in 1920 or earlier have no death information on their Numident [SSA's computer database file] record." 

So Musk and his minions have not uncovered anything new. But here's what the IG also reported: approximately 18.4 million (98%) of those numberholders are not currently receiving SSA payments. At the most, that means a potential 2% rate of fraud on the $1.35 trillion in Social Security payments per year.

But even those numbers overestimate the problem. Here are some actual facts about Social Security:

As a percentage of all payments, improper payments account for 0.84% of the total, the inspector general has found.

That’s "better than any private insurance company in the nation," and with a lower cost of administration, said Henry J. Aaron, a fellow with the Brookings Institution think tank and a former chair of the Social Security Advisory Board.

The fact is that Musk thinks he's some kind of genius when instead, he's just an idiot with a Nazi axe to grind. Perhaps that makes him less dangerous than an intelligent/informed person with a Nazi axe to grind. But that's debatable. 

A second essential safeguard of democracy is now at risk

On February 6th, Senator Angus King (I-ME) gave an important speech as he and his colleagues debated the confirmation of Russell Vought to be the Director of OMB (emphasis mine). 

Here's a paradox at the heart of the creation of any government, whether it's here or anywhere else on Earth, and anywhere else in history. There's a paradox built in, because the essence of creating government is to give it power, give it our power,...in order to provide for the common defense, to ensure domestic tranquility, to provide justice to our people.

In other words, we're giving our power to this separate entity. But we have to do so with the realization that the power that's being given has the potential to be abused. In other words, how do we give power to this entity, this government, and ensure that the government itself doesn't use that power to abuse us as citizens? This is a question at the heart of all political discussion throughout history...

Our framers understood this. They were deep students of history and also human nature. And they had just won a lengthy and brutal war against the abuses inherent in concentrated governmental power...

So how did they answer the question? How did they answer the question who will guard the guardians? They answered it by building into the basic structure of our government two essential safeguards. One was regular elections. In other words, returning the control of the government to the people on regular scheduled elections...But the other piece that's built into our system that's the other essential safeguard is the deliberate division of power between the branches and levels of government.

As we are bombarded with the chaos and corruption emanating from the Trump/Musk administration on a daily basis, it is important to recognize that our democracy rests on two essential safeguards: (1) regular elections, and (2) the separation of powers. 

Much of what we're witnessing from Trump/Musk is the neutering of number two. Ignoring laws passed by Congress and threatening to disobey the courts is at the heart of destroying the separation of powers in order to establish the president as dictator. 

But recent news suggests that Trump/Musk might be going after elections as well. At this point, they're not threatening to stop them from happening. But here's what they ARE doing:

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has frozen all of its election security work and is reviewing everything it has done to help state and local officials secure their elections for the past eight years, WIRED has learned...

In a memo sent Friday to all CISA employees and obtained by WIRED, CISA’s acting director, Bridget Bean, said she was ordering “a review and assessment” of every position at the agency related to election security and countering mis- and disinformation, “as well as every election security and [mis-, dis-, and malinformation] product, activity, service, and program that has been carried out” since the federal government designated election systems as critical infrastructure in 2017.

“CISA will pause all elections security activities until the completion of this review,” Bean added. The agency is also cutting off funding for these activities at the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing & Analysis Center, a group funded by the Department of Homeland Security that has served as a coordinating body for the elections community.

For a quick review of some recent history, the initial concern of the Obama administration when Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 election was that they would hack into state/local election systems. Just before leaving office, then-DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson designated election infrastructure as a "critical infrastructure" - setting up the federal government to help state/local officials prevent cyber attacks. Those are the funds/activities/personnel that are being frozen right now by the Trump/Musk administration. 

In reporting on this freeze, the right wing website New York Post quoted a DHS official who said, "The agency has determined that federally funded work organized under the EI-ISAC [the group that coordinates activities with local election officials] no longer effectuates Department priorities."

I know there's a lot to absorb right now. But shutting these systems down is basically a nod to Russia (or Iran, China, etc)) that they have an open door to hack into state/local election systems and control them. That's democracy's second essential safeguard going down the tubes.