Month: January 2025

The left has been ambivalent at best about tech giants once their potential for evil became obvious. Elon Musk has become the face of the new administration. What does that mean for American politics?

It means Musk, Ramaswamy, and the rest of the techno-aristocracy are going to be the unambiguous targets of the left in 2026 and 2028. They’re going to wear all of the failures of the Trump administration–possibly even more than Trump himself, who will become a lame duck the day he takes office.

It means populism is going to migrate back to the left, for better and for worse, in relatively short order.

We’ll probably never know much about what was happening from the Hamas side, but we now know for certain that Bibi had plenty of previous opportunities to make a very similar ceasefire deal; prior to today, he deferred to the far right members of his cabinet. Three days before the inauguration, we have an agreement. What has changed?

I think it comes down to three things. First, Bibi is now more confident in his ability to win an election in spite of his failures before October 7 as a result of events in Syria and Lebanon. Second, he wanted Trump to get at least some of the credit for the deal. But third, I think he and Trump have decided to focus their attention on the head of the snake–Iran–and they view Gaza in its current condition as a sideshow and an unnecessary distraction.

On that point, they are undoubtedly correct.

The Supremes are apparently going to release their opinion on the Tik Tok case today. Based on the tenor of the oral argument, everyone expects them to uphold the ban. In the meantime, several prominent members of Congress are frantically asking for more time before the ban is enforced, and Trump, of course, has completely changed his position on the matter. He wants to use his unique powers to make a deal that will work for everyone–kind of like his plan for Obamacare, I guess.

What does this tell us? That in spite of lots of tough talk about China being an existential threat from the right, short-term political and economic concerns can still prevail over ideology. The intense pain of decoupling from China, for which Trump and his acolytes have done nothing to prepare the public, means it will happen, if at all, in fits and starts.

Joe, Dr. Jill, and Hunter are packing up their stuff in the White House.

JOE: I can’t believe it’s ending this way.

JILL: Me, neither.

JOE: I keep wondering if I should have done something different. Should I have stayed in the race, or gotten out earlier?

JILL: It wouldn’t have mattered. The country hated inflation and blamed you for it. That decision was made long before the election. Even if you had gotten out earlier, the result would have been the same. Kamala couldn’t run as a popular incumbent, and she couldn’t run as a change agent. All she had was abortion and January 6. It wasn’t enough.

JOE: The worst thing is that I’ll go down in history as a footnote and a failure. My job was to keep Trump out, and in the end, I didn’t do it.

JILL: History will be kinder than that. Look at the elder George Bush. At the time, he looked like an out of touch patrician who didn’t finish off Saddam when he had the chance. Today, he looks like a really good president.

JOE: He won the Gulf War. What do I have?

JILL: You brought us back from the pandemic. You made investments that will be really important a decade from now. You saved Ukraine without starting World War III. That will look a lot better in hindsight.

HUNTER: And you pardoned me! That was your best move yet!

JOE: Somehow, I don’t think historians will agree on that.

JILL: Your only failure was to be a bad salesman. That was partly due to your age, and partly to your conscious desire not to hog the limelight like Trump. You wanted America to be normal again. Unfortunately, Americans were used to Trump, and they saw a vacuum instead of a normal country.

JOE: That’s true. I wonder if I should have made more of an effort to bash companies for price increases. If the public had associated me more clearly with the fight against inflation, things could have been different.

JILL: You weren’t cynical enough to do that. You knew that kind of grandstanding wouldn’t actually lower prices.

JOE: I bet Trump does it when his tariffs kick in. He’ll blame everyone but himself for the inflation he causes.

JILL: You can take that to the bank. Now, let’s get a move on; we only have a few days left.

TIER ONE: Will we have universal tariffs? If so, how large will they be? What taxes will be cut? What kind of agreement will we impose on Ukraine? What budget cuts can we expect? Will entitlements be included? Will we go to war with Iran or Mexico? Will Venezuela be invaded? How extensive are the deportation efforts? These are enormously important issues with significant impacts on our lives, but they are the stuff of normal politics; in other words, they don’t impose threats to our liberal democratic system. The proper antidote to bad policy decisions is to publicly oppose them when they are made and to point out their effects when they go wrong. That is what a normal opposition does.

TIER TWO: Trump, Bondi, and Patel use their power to make life as miserable as possible for the blue team. Journalists and prominent left-leaning politicians are investigated by a variety of agencies for frivolous reasons and harassed mercilessly by right-wing trolls on the internet. This is a rejection of norms created after Watergate, but no one has ever argued that Nixon, LBJ, and JFK were fascists; the core of the system remains intact. Resistance comes through publicity and in courtrooms.

TIER THREE: Trump and Hegseth turn the military into a right-wing militia and use it to stamp out dissent in blue states. Liberal democracy collapses. The response is far more drastic–general strikes, massive demonstrations, and a threat to shut down the government, if the Democrats have the votes to do it.

We will undoubtedly be dealing with Tier One. The others? TBD.

Steve Bannon has now called Elon Musk “evil.” Even by MAGA standards, this is extraordinarily harsh. What should we make of it?

Trump loves the court politics of “The Apprentice;” he wants lots of different people jockeying hard for his favor. But this particular dispute, which is fueled by legitimate issues of ideology just as much as jealousy, will be difficult to contain for the next four years, particularly if “Donald Trump” somehow turns out to be the second coming of Paul Ryan.

The focus here is obviously on the statements he has previously made about prosecuting Trump’s enemies, a list of whom apparently appears in one of his books:

1. Do you maintain today that you do not intend to prosecute the people you identified as targets in your book?
2. Why should we believe you now, when you have something at stake, as opposed to then?
3. If you don’t intend to prosecute those targets, why did you make those statements in your book?
4. Do you believe in the unitary executive theory?
5. If you are ordered to investigate a prominent Democrat, judge, or prosecutor by Donald Trump, and you aren’t aware of any plausible legal reason to do so, what will you do?
6. Why did Bill Barr, a very conservative Republican, essentially blackball you during the first Trump term?
7. Law enforcement is a job that traditionally appeals to conservatives. Do you really think the FBI is dominated by liberals?
8. Do you think removing Democrats from the FBI is a good way to depoliticize it?

Thomas Friedman thinks Trump is making a terrible mistake by talking about his aspirations to take Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal. After all, how can Trump position himself as a defender of international law with regard to Ukraine and Taiwan under those circumstances? Xi and Putin will simply throw his imperialism back in his face.

Friedman’s comment is correct, but it is based on an incorrect premise; Trump doesn’t pretend to care about international law or human rights–only power. He won’t make those arguments to Xi and Putin. He is undoubtedly going to help Putin carve up Ukraine, and if offered a deal with China on spheres of influence and managed trade that sacrifices Taiwan, expect him to take it.

These should focus primarily on Trump’s tariffs, as follows:

1. Does Trump intend to impose universal tariffs?
2. What authority will he rely on for that purpose? Does he plan to seek legislative authority, or go it alone?
3. For what purpose will the universal tariffs be imposed? Will they be a temporary measure to reduce trade barriers in the rest of the world, or a permanent attempt to create an economy based on import substitution and the recreation of fading industries?
4. How will the administration respond when our trading partners retaliate?
5. Where will the money come from to provide compensation to the victims of retaliation?
6. What standards will be established to provide exemptions for the tariffs? Who will be responsible for administering them?
7. Will the tariffs be applied to goods that are not, and cannot be, produced in our country?
8. Do you believe, as Trump apparently does, that foreigners will pay all of the tariffs, and there will be no resulting inflation? What historical experience do you rely on for that opinion?
9. You and Trump have indicated that America can produce even more energy than it does today, thereby lowering consumer prices. Lower prices will reduce the incentives to drill. How do you plan to overcome the market on this issue?
10. How is reducing public investment in renewable energy consistent with your plan to make America an energy powerhouse?

It is frequently said that people seek power for its own sake, but that isn’t true. Some people desire power because it creates objective material advantages; some are emotionally needy and use power to prop themselves up psychologically; and some honestly believe that the well-being of their followers completely depends on them.

To Trump, power is everything–nothing else really matters. Why? For all three of my stated reasons, but predominantly for #2.

If Trump succeeds in using law enforcement to persecute his political opponents, Pam Bondi will be the head of the snake. As a result, she needs to be asked the following questions:

1. You took the position on TV that Trump was cheated out of the 2020 election. The courts have said otherwise. Will you insist that they were wrong in DOJ court filings?
2. Do you agree with the unitary executive theory?
3. If Donald Trump calls you and says he wants Mr. X to be put in jail even though there is no meaningful evidence against him, what do you do?
4. If Kash Patel calls and says he wants to arrest Ms. Y based on a legal theory that you know is frivolous, what do you do?
5. Will the DOJ focus its civil rights activities on members of historically powerless groups or on protecting white men from discrimination?
6. If Kash Patel calls and says he wants to arrest someone who was on the list in his book to be arrested, will his request be given additional legal scrutiny?
7. Do you believe the reforms made after Watergate to depoliticize federal law enforcement were a mistake?
8. Do you intend to undo them?

Mark Zuckerberg is doing everything he can to appease Trump by turning Facebook into a MAGA sandbox. Why?

First of all, as I’ve noted before, content moderation is difficult and expensive. Trump gives him an excuse to do something he probably wanted to do anyway. Second, Meta has been clashing with the EU over a variety of issues, including moderation; maybe Zuckerberg can persuade Trump to treat Facebook as a national tech champion that should be protected against foreign overregulation through threats of sanctions and tariffs. That doesn’t seem implausible to me.

In all likelihood, Zuckerberg’s DEI and moderation issues weren’t evidence of his essential liberalism; they were a response to demands made by his workforce and his customers. How will they react to the counterrevolution? TBD.

Most of the discussion about Hegseth’s qualifications has focused on alleged incidents of personal misconduct. I have no idea if those allegations are true, but I am quite certain that a committee meeting is not the best way to resolve them. In any event, they do not represent the best reason to refuse to confirm the man. The real questions should revolve around his willingness to use the military as an active agent against anyone other than white Christian men in American culture wars.

And so:

1. You proudly wear a tattoo that contains a slogan that has been linked to white supremacists. I know you will deny being a white supremacist, but how, under the circumstances, can you lead a military that is disproportionately black?
2. You have apparently told some senators that you have changed your mind about women in combat. Why should we believe you are sincere about this last-minute conversion?
3. You have identified yourself as a “crusader” and openly expressed your contempt for Islam. How is that going to go over with the thousands of Muslims in the military?
4. If Donald Trump gives you a clearly unconstitutional order to use the military over the objections of state and local politicians to shoot unarmed civilians, will you do it?
5. Does the military represent and protect all of America, or just the parts that you agree with?
6. Would you ever consider requiring members of the military to take an oath to Donald Trump personally?
7. Do you view members of the military more as problem solvers or unrestrained professional killers?
8. In the past, you championed members of the military who were found guilty of war crimes through the chain of command. Will you continue to do that as head of the DOD?

Under most circumstances, empires are more trouble than they’re worth. The exceptions are when the mother country has the ability and the willingness to ruthlessly exploit the people and resources of the colony for its own purposes (Spain, Rome) or when the colony can provide significant manpower for war (Team GB in World War I). With those principles in mind, how does acquiring Greenland stack up?

It doesn’t. Greenland is a possession of a NATO ally, and it has a very small population. National security is already guaranteed by Denmark’s ownership. Greenland’s resources can be purchased and used by Americans on the same terms as anyone else. What’s the point?

Well, I guess it makes sense if you assume NATO is about to pass away.

Trump wants to annex Canada! You can’t say it hasn’t been tried before. There was an unsuccessful American invasion of Canada in the early days of the Revolutionary War, and annexation was one of the two principal reasons (impressment obviously being the other) behind the American declaration of war in 1812.

But there have been no serious disputes between America and Canada since the 19th century, which has been a great diplomatic success for both parties. With some bad luck and worse policy, Canada could have become America’s version of Ukraine. Who would want that?

Putin and Xi, for starters.