MAGA's New Target: Trump
He is the keeper of the secrets. He is the one stealing away people's liberties. He is the one weaponizing government and protecting the ruling class.
With ICE and DOGE, Trump deputized wolf packs to root around in Americans' personal information. He got Republicans to give Stephen Miller his own army. Trump manipulates government to hurt his perceived enemies. He obscures rather than reveals, pushing aside reporters who ask penetrating questions in favor of Pravda-like partisans who take his side.
Trump's supporters thought he would shed light on shady elites protecting their own money and power. Now MAGA is reckoning with the fact that Trump is the shady elite, shielding information about Jeffrey Epstein.
'So the guy who spent his lifetime saying the deep state hides things from you and represses you is now saying 'We've got nothing to hide, trust me,'' said the Trump biographer Tim O'Brien. 'And the people who follow him don't. They think he's just as bad as the people he criticized before he became president.'
It's mythic, being devoured by the forces you unleashed. Trump has trafficked in conspiracy theories since the despicable 'birther' one about Barack Obama. Now that whirlpool of dark innuendo has sucked him down. He can no longer control the Epstein conspiracy madness inflamed by his top officials.
Trump always reminded me of Lonesome Rhodes, the charismatic, populist entertainer whose 'candid' patter with plain folks garners him enormous power in Elia Kazan's 1957 movie 'A Face in the Crowd.'
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Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
News Analysis: Trump's 'force of personality' hasn't delivered on key foreign policy goals
When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins in record time. He said he would halt Russia's war against Ukraine in 24 hours or less, end Israel's war in Gaza nearly as quickly and force Iran to end to its nuclear program. He said he'd persuade Canada to become the 51st state, take Greenland from Denmark and negotiate 90 trade deals in 90 days. 'The president believes that his force of personality … can bend people to do things," his special envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, explained in May in a Breitbart interview. Six months later, none of those ambitious goals have been reached. Ukraine and Gaza are still at war. Israel and the United States bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, but it's not clear whether they ended the country's atomic program once and for all. Canada and Denmark haven't surrendered any territory. And instead of trade deals, Trump is mostly slapping tariffs on other countries, to the distress of U.S. stock markets. It turned out that force of personality couldn't solve every problem. 'He overestimated his power and underestimated the ability of others to push back,' said Kori Schake, director of foreign policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 'He often acts as if we're the only people with leverage, strength or the ability to take action. We're not.' Read more: Inside Trump's ICE expansion: Can he really hire 10,000 new agents? The president has notched important achievements. He won a commitment from other members of NATO to increase their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product. The attack on Iran appears to have set Tehran's nuclear project back for years, even if it didn't end it. And Trump — or more precisely, his aides — helped broker ceasefires between India and Pakistan and between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But none of those measured up to the goals Trump initially set for himself — much less qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize he has publicly yearned for. 'I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for this,' he grumbled when the Rwanda-Congo agreement was signed. The most striking example of unfulfilled expectations has come in Ukraine, the grinding conflict Trump claimed he could end even before his inauguration. For months, Trump sounded certain that his warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would produce a deal that would stop the fighting, award Russia most of the territory its troops have seized and end U.S. economic sanctions on Moscow. 'I believe he wants peace,' Trump said of Putin in February. 'I trust him on this subject.' But to Trump's surprise, Putin wasn't satisfied with his proposal. The Russian leader continued bombing Ukrainian cities even after Trump publicly implored him to halt via social media ('Vladimir, STOP!'). Critics charged that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. The president bristled: "Nobody's playing me." But as early as April, he admitted to doubts about Putin's good faith. 'It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along," he said. 'I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, 'Well, that was a nice phone call,' and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,' Trump complained last week. 'After that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn't mean anything." The president also came under pressure from Republican hawks in Congress who warned privately that if Ukraine collapsed, Trump would be blamed the way his predecessor, President Biden, was blamed for the fall of Afghanistan in 2022. So last week, Trump changed course and announced that he will resume supplying U.S.-made missiles to Ukraine — but by selling them to European countries instead of giving them to Kyiv as Biden had. Trump also gave Putin 50 days to accept a ceasefire and threatened to impose 'secondary tariffs' on countries that buy oil from Russia if he does not comply. He said he still hopes Putin will come around. 'I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed in him,' he said in a BBC interview. It still isn't clear how many missiles Ukraine will get and whether they will include long-range weapons that can strike targets deep inside Russia. A White House official said those details are still being worked out. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sounded unimpressed by the U.S. actions. 'I have no doubt that we will cope,' he said. Foreign policy experts warned that the secondary tariffs Trump proposed could prove impractical. Russia's two biggest oil customers are China and India; Trump is trying to negotiate major trade agreements with both. Meanwhile, Trump has dispatched Witkoff back to the Middle East to try to arrange a ceasefire in Gaza and reopen nuclear talks with Iran — the goals he began with six months ago. Despite his mercurial style, Trump's approach to all these foreign crises reflects basic premises that have remained constant for a decade, foreign policy experts said. 'There is a Trump Doctrine, and it has three basic principles,' Schake said. 'Alliances are a burden. Trade exports American jobs. Immigrants steal American jobs.' Robert Kagan, a former Republican aide now at the Brookings Institution, added one more guiding principle: 'He favors autocrats over democrats.' Trump has a soft spot for foreign strongmen like Putin and China's Xi Jinping, and has abandoned the long-standing U.S. policy of fostering democracy abroad, Kagan noted. Read more: Trump threatens Russia with tariffs and boosts U.S. weapons for Ukraine The problem, Schake said, is that those principles 'impede Trump's ability to get things done around the world, and he doesn't seem to realize it. 'The international order we built after World War II made American power stronger and more effective,' she said. 'Trump and his administration seem bent on presiding over the destruction of that international order.' Moreover, Kagan argued, Trump's frenetic imposition of punitive tariffs on other countries comes with serious costs. 'Tariffs are a form of economic warfare,' he said. 'Trump is creating enemies for the United States all over the world. ... I don't think you can have a successful foreign policy if everyone in the world mistrusts you.' Not surprisingly, Trump and his aides don't agree. 'It cannot be overstated how successful the first six months of this administration have been,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. 'With President Trump as commander in chief, the world is a much safer place.' That claim will take years to test. Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter. Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond, in your inbox twice per week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Chicago Tribune
18 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Robert A. Pape: To prevent nuclear war in the Middle East, America needs to change its nuclear doctrine
The world is moving closer to the brink of nuclear war in alarming ways that are more dangerous and harder to anticipate than during the Cold War. The famous 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was a harrowing near miss, but today's nuclear dangers are more complex. This is due to a variety of factors, particularly coming together in the Middle East: increasing tensions across the region, growing risks of nuclear proliferation, and now perils of surprise military attack during crises involving states with nuclear weapons or on the cusp of nuclear weapons. Israel's recent 12-day war against Iran is a harbinger of potentially growing nuclear dangers to come. For the first time in history, two nuclear armed states — Israel and the United States — bombed a state, Iran, with a major nuclear program that many believe is on the threshold of acquiring all the physical and technical capacities necessary to produce nuclear weapons within a matter of months. For sure, the 12-day war involved a series of attacks and counterattacks that were terrifying to live through, and there was great relief when they came to an end. However, the future is even more concerning. First, Israeli and American bombing did not obliterate Iran's nuclear program, as President Donald Trump astonishingly declared before he received bomb damage assessments. As is now widely agreed among U.S. defense intelligence, Israeli intelligence and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan did not eliminate Iran's stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. Although uncertainly remains about Iran's next steps, there is little doubt that Iran could attempt to produce a 'crude' bomb in a matter of months. And it is important to understand, a 'crude' bomb means a Hiroshima-style weapon that could lead to the deaths of 80,000 people from the immediate effects of the blast. Second, future information about Iran's nuclear program is fraught with high degrees of uncertainty. From the beginning, Iran has allowed IAEA inspectors to have tremendous access to monitor its nuclear enrichment program. True, these inspections have fluctuated over time and have never been as fully comprehensive as many would have liked. However, for decades, the quarterly IAEA reports have been crucial for high confidence assessments about the scale of Iran's enrichment program and whether vast amounts of enriched uranium have not been siphoned off to develop nuclear weapons. Now, Iran has reportedly banned IAEA inspectors from its nuclear facilities, and the fear and suspicion about a surprise nuclear breakout will grow over time. Third, and most important, the 12-day war shows that the fear of surprise attack is now fully justified. It is important to recall that the war started June 13 with a stunning, Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack by Israel on Iran's nuclear sites. Israel's bolt-from-the-blue strike occurred without warning and while Iranian negotiators were preparing to meet with their American counterparts just days later. Given these events, Israel, the United States and Iran now face the specter of one of the most terrifying scenarios for nuclear war: the 'reciprocal fear of surprise attack.' That's a situation in which both sides of a potential conflict fear being attacked first, leading them to consider — and possibly launch — a preemptive strike to avoid being caught off guard. The most worrisome aspect is that striking first in these circumstances has an element of rationality. If one side thinks the other is preparing for a surprise attack, then attacking first, even if it carries risks, may be the best way to reduce one's own losses. Of course, nuclear war is so horrible that the reciprocal fear of surprise attack may never lead to an actual outbreak of war. If so, then the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons would not be a problem in the first place. Alas, we need to take this danger seriously. What can be done? Although there are no perfect solutions to the reciprocal fear of surprise attack, there is one step that would significantly matter: For the United States, Iran and Israel to declare that they would never be the first to use nuclear weapons in a crisis involving Iran. The general idea of 'no first use' pledges, as they are called, arose during the Cold War, but the United States has never been willing to make such a promise. At the time, this was thought of in the context of the U.S., Europe and Soviet contest in which America needed the implicit threat of the first use of nuclear weapons to offset the Soviet conventional military threat to U.S. nonnuclear European allies. The Middle East is clearly different. America's main ally, Israel, is a powerful nuclear weapons state and so does not rely on U.S. nuclear weapons to deter attacks on its homeland. For the United States, Israel and Iran to agree a limited no-first-use policy would not end the tensions over Iran's nuclear program. However, it would energize negotiations and avoid some of the worst ways that a nuclear war could inadvertently occur. The Nobel Laureate Assembly to Prevent Nuclear War taking place at the University of Chicago recently was a perfect place to begin a national conversation about the value of adapting U.S. nuclear doctrine to today's realities in the Middle East. If this assembly of the most brilliant minds on the planet could recommend this historic step in which the U.S., Iran and Israel each pledge they would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in the dispute involving Iran's nuclear program, this would be a meaningful step toward preventing nuclear war in one of the most dangerous regions in the world.
Los Angeles Times
18 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
After six months under Trump, California and L.A. are battlegrounds. Who benefits?
Six months into President Trump's second term, his predilection for picking on California has never been on fuller display, turning the state broadly and Los Angeles specifically into key battlegrounds for his right-wing agenda. There are chaotic immigration raids occurring across the state and military troops on L.A. streets. The administration has sued the state or city over sanctuary policies, transgender athletes and the price of eggs. The state has sued the administration more than 30 times, including over funding cuts, voting restrictions and the undoing of birthright citizenship. Federal officials are investigating L.A. County's gun permitting policies, and have sought to overturn a host of education, health and environmental regulations. They have talked not only of enforcing federal laws for the benefit of California residents, but of showing up in full force — soldiers and all — to wrench control from the state's elected leaders. 'We are not going away,' Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a news conference in Los Angeles last month. 'We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country, and what they have tried to insert into this city.' The antagonism toward California is not entirely surprising, having been a feature of Trump's first term and his recent presidential campaign. And yet, the breadth and pace of the administration's attacks, aided by a Republican-controlled Congress and a U.S. Supreme Court convinced of executive power, have stunned many — pleasing some and infuriating others. 'Trump's been able to go much further, much faster than anyone would have calculated, with the assistance of the Supreme Court,' said Bob Shrum, director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future. 'In a second Trump term, he's clearly either feeling or acting more emboldened and testing the limits of his power, and Republicans in Congress certainly aren't doing anything to try to rein that in,' said California Sen. Alex Padilla, who was forced to the ground and handcuffed by federal agents after confronting Noem at her news conference. 'It's enraging. It's offensive.' 'What is clear after six months is we now have some measure of checks and balances in California, a counterweight to one-party supermajority control at the state level,' said Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin). 'From securing the border to reversing the ban on gas cars to protecting girls' sports, balance and common sense are returning to our state.' Rob Stutzman, a longtime GOP strategist in California who is no fan of Trump, said the president's motivations for targeting California are obvious, as it 'is the contrast that he basically has built MAGA on.' Visuals of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rounding up immigrants in liberal California are red meat to the MAGA base, Stutzman said. 'What they've been able to do in California is basically create the live TV show that they want.' But Trump is hardly the only politician who benefits from his administration being on a war footing with the nation's most populous blue state, Stutzman said. There is a 'symbiotic relationship that Democrats in California have with Trump,' he said, and leaders such as Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also benefit politically when they're seen as standing up to the president. 'If not for Trump's assault on California, was Gavin Newsom in South Carolina?' Stutzman asked, of what many viewed as an early presidential campaign stop earlier this month. 'Would Karen Bass otherwise have been given a lifeline after her disastrous performance with the fires?' Bass, in a statement to The Times, defended her record, saying both homelessness and homicides are down and fire recovery is moving quickly. She said the Trump administration was helpful with early fire response, but 'now they've assaulted our city' with immigration raids — which is why L.A. has joined in litigation to stop them, as her 'number one job is to protect Angelenos.' Bob Salladay, a senior advisor to Newsom, dismissed the idea that battling Trump is in any way good for California or welcomed by its leaders. 'That's not why we're fighting him,' he said. 'We're fighting him because what he's doing is immoral and illegal.' Salladay agreed, however, that the last six months have produced a stunning showdown over American values that few predicted — even with the conservative Project 2025 playbook laying out much of it in advance. 'We knew it would be bad. We didn't know it would be this bad,' Salladay said. 'We didn't know it would be the president of the United States sending U.S. troops into an American city and taking away resources from the National Guard for public theater.' When protests over early immigration raids erupted in scattered pockets of L.A. and downtown, Trump dramatized them as a grave threat to citywide safety, in part to justify bringing in the military. Local officials say masked and militarized agents swarming Latino and other immigrant neighborhoods and racially profiling targets for detention have undermined safety far more than the protests ever did. Trump has since pulled back about half the troops, but thousands remain. A federal judge recently ordered federal agents to stop using racial profiling to carry out indiscriminate arrests, but raids continue. The Trump administration, meanwhile, is demanding California counties provide lists of noncitizens in their jails. Beyond L.A., officials and industry leaders say immigration raids have badly spooked workers in farming, construction, street vending and other service sectors, with some leaving the job for fear of being detained. Meanwhile, Trump's tariff war with trading partners has made it more difficult for some farmers to purchase equipment and chemical supplies. The Justice Department is suing the state for allowing transgender girls to compete in girls' sports, alleging such policies violate federal civil rights law. It is suing the state over an animal welfare law protecting hens from being kept in small cages, blaming the policy for driving up the cost of eggs in violation of federal farming regulations. It is investigating L.A. County's gun permitting process, suggesting excessive fees and wait times are violating people's gun rights. Trump signed legislation to undo California's aggressive limits on auto emissions and a landmark rule that would ban new gas-only car sales in the state by 2035. His administration just rescinded billions of dollars for a long-planned high-speed rail line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, calling it a 'boondoggle.' The legal antagonism has cut in the opposite direction, as well, with California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta's office having sued the Trump administration more than 30 times in the last six months over a range of issues. Bonta has sued over billions of dollars in cuts to education funding and billions of dollars in cuts to medical research and development. He has sued over Trump executive orders declaring that California must radically restrict voting access, over Trump's unilateral tariff scheme and over clawbacks of funding and approvals for wind energy and electric vehicle charging stations. Bonta called the Trump administration's targeting of the state 'a lot of show' — and 'disrespectful, inappropriate and unlawful.' He noted a lot of wins in court for the state, but also acknowledged the administration has scored victories, too, particularly at the Supreme Court, which has temporarily cleared the way for mass layoffs of federal employees, the dismantling of the Department of Education and the undoing of birthright citizenship. But those rulings are 'just procedural' for now as litigation continues, Bonta stressed, and the fight continues. 'We are absolutely unapologetic, resolute, committed to meeting the Trump administration in court and beating them back each time they violate the law,' Bonta said. After six months of entrenched political infighting between the U.S. and its largest state, who benefits? Trump, officials in his administration and some state Republicans are adamant that it is good, hardworking, law-abiding people of California, who they allege have long suffered under liberal state policies that reward criminals and unauthorized immigrants. 'What would Los Angeles look like without illegal aliens?' Stephen Miller, one of Trump's top policy advisors, recently asked on Fox News — before suggesting, without proof, that it would have better healthcare and schooling for U.S. children and 'no drug deaths' on the streets. Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement to The Times that 'Gavin Newscum' — Trump's favorite insult — is 'destroying' the state, and that Trump 'has had to step in and save Californians from Gavin's incompetence.' 'First, when Newscum was chronically unprepared to address the January wildfires, and more recently when he refused to stop violent, left-wing rioters from attacking federal law enforcement,' Jackson said. 'This doesn't even account for Newscum's radical, left-wing policies, which the Administration is working to protect Californians — and all Americans — from, like letting men destroy women's sports, or turning a blind eye to child labor exploitation.' Trump, she said, 'will continue to stand up for Californians like a real leader, while Newsom sips wine in Napa.' Some Republicans in the state strongly agree, including Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, who is running for governor. With Trump in office, Bianco said, 'there's finally someone working and looking out for Californians' best interests.' He said Trump called in troops only because of the 'embarrassing' failure of L.A. officials to maintain order. He said the only reason ICE is going after unauthorized immigrants in the streets — with some bystanders admittedly caught in the fray — is that California sanctuary laws prevent agents from just picking them up in jails. 'This is an absolute failure of a Democrat-led agenda and Democrat policy that is forcing the federal government to go into our neighborhoods looking for these criminals,' Bianco said. 'Californians are being punished for it because of failed California leadership, not because of the federal government.' Newsom, Bass and other liberal officials, of course, have framed Trump's actions in the state in very different terms. In a recent filing in the federal case challenging the constitutionality of ICE's immigration tactics in L.A., California and 17 other liberal-led states argued those tactics had left citizens and noncitizens afraid to go outside, turned 'once bustling neighborhoods into ghost towns' and devastated local businesses. State and local officials have said they are fighting the administration so aggressively because Trump's policies threaten billions in federal funding for the state in education, healthcare, transportation and other sectors. California Sen. Adam Schiff, a staunch adversary of Trump, said he has had particularly troubling conversations with farmers up and down the state, who are feeling the pain from Trump's immigration polices and tariffs acutely. 'Their workers are increasingly not showing up. Their raw materials are increasingly more expensive because of the tariffs. Their markets are shrinking because of the recoil by other countries from this kind of indiscriminate turf war,' Schiff said. 'Farmers are really in the epicenter of this.' So, too, Schiff said, are the millions of Californians who could be affected by the administration's decision to cut environmental funding and curtail disaster preparation and relief in the state, including by hampering water management and flood mitigation work and 'slow-walking' wildfire relief in L.A. 'Donald Trump is the first U.S. president who doesn't believe that it's his job to represent the whole country — only the states that voted for him,' Schiff said. 'The president seems to have a particular, personal vendetta against California, which is obviously [a] deep disservice to the millions of residents in our state, no matter whom they voted for.' During her Los Angeles news conference, Noem said that federal officials in L.A. were 'putting together a model and a blueprint' that could be replicated elsewhere — an apparent warning against other blue cities and states bucking the administration. California officials saw it exactly that way. Bass has accused the administration of 'treating Los Angeles as a test case for how far it can go in driving its political agenda forward while pushing the Constitution aside.' What happens next, several political observers said, depends on whether the antagonism continues to work politically, and whether the administration starts acting on its threats to crack down even more. When Bass showed up in person to object to heavily armed immigration agents storming through MacArthur Park recently, U.S. Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino allegedly told her that she and other L.A. officials and residents 'better get used to' agents being in the city, who 'will go anywhere, anytime we want in Los Angeles.' Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, when asked if Bass would be arrested, said they were 'keeping everything on the table.' Trump has suggested Newsom should be arrested, too, saying, 'I'd do it.' Padilla was taken forcefully to the ground and handcuffed at a Noem press event. Trump has accused Schiff of criminal fraud for claiming primary residency in mortgage paperwork for a home in his district and one near his work in Washington, D.C., which Schiff called a baseless political attack. Padilla said it's all to be expected from a Republican administration that hates and fears everything that his state stands for, but that Democrats aren't backing down and will continue to 'organize, organize, organize' to defend Californians and win back power in the midterms. 'We're not the fourth largest economy in the world despite our diversity and immigrant population, but because of it,' Padilla said. 'Diversity and migrants doing well and making our country stronger is Donald Trump's worst nightmare — and that has made California his No. 1 target.' Schiff said the administration's actions in California in the last six months are indeed producing 'the TV show that Trump wanted to show his MAGA base,' but 'it's a TV show that is not going over well with the American people.' Trump's approval numbers on immigration are down, Schiff said, because Americans don't want to live in a country where landscapers, car wash employees and farmworkers with zero criminal convictions are terrorized by masked agents in the streets and U.S. citizen children are ripped from their parents. 'The more Trump tries to inflict harm and pain on California, and the more he disrupts life in California cities and communities, the more he makes the Republican brand absolutely toxic,' Schiff said, 'and the more harm that he does to Republican elected leaders up and down the state.'
