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10 hours ago
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Five Movies Worth a Repeat Watch
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Welcome back to The Daily's Sunday culture edition. Not all movies are meant to be watched twice. Some leave a glancing effect; others emanate so much intensity that the idea of sitting through them again feels unbearable. But then there are those films that draw you back in, even after you've seen it all before. So we asked The Atlantic's writers and editors: What's a movie you can watch over and over again? Raising Arizona (available to rent on Prime Video) I've probably seen Raising Arizona, the Coen brothers' 1987 classic with Holly Hunter and a 22-year-old Nicholas Cage, a half dozen times over the years. But I've watched the opening sequence many, many more times than that. It's a whole movie-within-the-movie, building up to the title shot with Cage's deadpan narration, rapid-cut scenes, and a jaunty musical bed that goes from whistling and humming to weird ululating. The screenwriting has some all-time great lines ('I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn't easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House,' says Cage, with wild hair, aviators, and a 12-gauge shotgun, preparing to stick up a convenience store). The other day, I made my 12-year-old watch it for the first time. When Cage says to his chatty prison bunkmate, incredulously, 'You ate sand?!' my son nearly fell on the floor. A true marker of timelessness. — Nick Miroff, staff writer *** White Christmas (streaming on Prime Video) It makes me miserable to contemplate how many people have never once seen the 1954 film White Christmas, let alone given it 10 to 20 percent of their attention while focusing on other activities, which is the ideal way to view it. Then again, the film's surprising obscurity is its hidden ace: From the moment you press 'Play' on White Christmas, no one who glances at the screen will be able to predict or even comprehend any aspect of the Technicolor encephalitic fever dream exploding before them unless they have previously seen White Christmas. In any given frame, a viewer might be confronted with a horde of people cavorting inside a giant purple void, waggling tambourines adorned with women's faces; the bombed-out smoldering remains of 1944 Europe; or the virtuoso dancer Vera-Ellen, in head-to-heel chartreuse, executing pirouettes at faster-than-heartbeat speeds (for no defined reason). Muted, it makes for terrific social lubricant at a party—there's something dazzling to remark upon nearly every second if conversation lags. Don't concern yourself with the plot; the film's writers did not. — Caity Weaver, staff writer *** The Lord of the Rings franchise (streaming on Max) I suppose my answer is less of a love letter to a movie than it is one to my family. My husband is the movie buff in our family—I'll rarely be caught rewatching movies. But his undying loyalty to the Lord of the Rings franchise means we've watched the trilogy together multiple times, more than once in an 11-plus-hour binge. (Yeah … it's the extended editions, every time.) The movies are a genuinely gorgeous feat of storytelling, bested only by the books; fantasy and action sequences aside, they spotlight friendship, loyalty, and the dueling motivations of pride, duty, and greed. And for our family, at least, they'll be a regular feature—I'm pretty sure it was implicit in our wedding vows that we'd indoctrinate our kids into the LOTR lore—which means that the films are about carving out time for one another as well. — Katherine J. Wu, staff writer *** All Your Faces (available to rent on Google Play and Apple TV) I've watched the French film All Your Faces three times in the past eight months. The movie isn't a documentary, but it's based on real restorative-justice programs in France that were introduced about a decade ago. Why did I repeatedly return to a film about an idiosyncratic feature of a foreign country's criminal-justice system? There's something about the encounter between victim and perpetrator, and the instability and unpredictability of these interactions, that surprised me each time I watched it. Equally intense was the tenderness between the instructors and the programs' participants, most evident between the characters played by Adèle Exarchopoulos and Élodie Bouchez. But it's Miou-Miou, playing an elderly victim of petty street crime, who delivers the most haunting line in the movie: 'I don't understand the violence.' A mantra for our time. — Isaac Stanley-Becker, staff writer *** Little Women (streaming on Hulu) Little Women first came to me as a comfort movie. Based on Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel, Greta Gerwig's 2019 film adaptation features not so much plot as simply vibes: a familiar tale of four sisters and their childhood friend, scenes of a snowy Christmas morning perfect for the holidays. But with each subsequent encounter during my lonely postgraduate months in a new city, I began to appreciate the little rebellions that make Gerwig's Little Women so special. The story is full of moments of seeing: Professor Bhaer turns around to watch Jo watching a play, Laurie gazes into the Marches' windows, and we, as viewers, feel seen by Jo's boyish brashness. But Gerwig also chooses to focus on Jo's many anxieties. Early in the film, Jo uncharacteristically dismisses her own writing ('Those are just stories,' she says. Just!); later, her monologue reveals a vulnerable desire for companionship (But I'm so lonely!). Gerwig honors the story's essence, but her version is not a granular retelling; rather, it serves as a homage to the art of writing itself—and women's mundane, humble stories, which Jo and Alcott are desperate to tell. — Yvonne Kim, associate editor Here are three Sunday reads from The Atlantic: The perilous spread of the wellness craze Bring back communal kid discipline. The conversations Trump's doctors should be having with him The Week Ahead Ballerina, an action movie in the John Wick franchise starring Ana de Armas as an assassin bent on avenging her father's death (in theaters Friday) Season 3 of Ginny & Georgia, a comedy-drama series about a single mom and two kids trying to settle down in a new town (premieres Thursday on Netflix) The Haves and the Have-Yachts, a book by the journalist Evan Osnos featuring dispatches on the ultrarich (out Tuesday) Essay Diddy's Defenders By Xochitl Gonzalez Diddy—whose legal name is Sean Combs—has pleaded not guilty to the charges he faces of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. Many Americans have taken to the comment sections to offer their full-throated belief in his innocence. Despite the video evidence of domestic violence, the photos of Combs's guns with serial numbers removed, and the multiple witnesses testifying that Combs threatened to kill them, this group insists that Diddy's biggest sin is nothing more than being a hypermasculine celebrity with 'libertine' sexual tastes. Read the full article. More in Culture What the show of the summer knows about intimacy Five books that will redirect your attention Unraveling the secrets of the Inca empire How a recession might tank American romance A film that captures a 'friend breakup' Catch Up on David Frum: The Trump presidency's world-historical heist Adam Serwer: The new Dark Age The coming Democratic civil war Photo Album Take a look at the beauty of the North. These photographs are by Olivier Morin, who captures remarkable images of the natural world, largely focusing on northern climates. Play our daily crossword. Explore all of our newsletters. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Atlantic
Five Movies Worth a Repeat Watch
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Welcome back to The Daily's Sunday culture edition. Not all movies are meant to be watched twice. Some leave a glancing effect; others emanate so much intensity that the idea of sitting through them again feels unbearable. But then there are those films that draw you back in, even after you've seen it all before. So we asked The Atlantic 's writers and editors: What's a movie you can watch over and over again? Raising Arizona (available to rent on Prime Video) I've probably seen Raising Arizona, the Coen brothers' 1987 classic with Holly Hunter and a 22-year-old Nicholas Cage, a half dozen times over the years. But I've watched the opening sequence many, many more times than that. It's a whole movie-within-the-movie, building up to the title shot with Cage's deadpan narration, rapid-cut scenes, and a jaunty musical bed that goes from whistling and humming to weird ululating. The screenwriting has some all-time great lines ('I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn't easy with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House,' says Cage, with wild hair, aviators, and a 12-gauge shotgun, preparing to stick up a convenience store). The other day, I made my 12-year-old watch it for the first time. When Cage says to his chatty prison bunkmate, incredulously, 'You ate sand?!' my son nearly fell on the floor. A true marker of timelessness. — Nick Miroff, staff writer White Christmas (streaming on Prime Video) It makes me miserable to contemplate how many people have never once seen the 1954 film White Christmas, let alone given it 10 to 20 percent of their attention while focusing on other activities, which is the ideal way to view it. Then again, the film's surprising obscurity is its hidden ace: From the moment you press 'Play' on White Christmas, no one who glances at the screen will be able to predict or even comprehend any aspect of the Technicolor encephalitic fever dream exploding before them unless they have previously seen White Christmas. In any given frame, a viewer might be confronted with a horde of people cavorting inside a giant purple void, waggling tambourines adorned with women's faces; the bombed-out smoldering remains of 1944 Europe; or the virtuoso dancer Vera-Ellen, in head-to-heel chartreuse, executing pirouettes at faster-than-heartbeat speeds (for no defined reason). Muted, it makes for terrific social lubricant at a party—there's something dazzling to remark upon nearly every second if conversation lags. Don't concern yourself with the plot; the film's writers did not. — Caity Weaver, staff writer The Lord of the Rings franchise (streaming on Max) I suppose my answer is less of a love letter to a movie than it is one to my family. My husband is the movie buff in our family—I'll rarely be caught rewatching movies. But his undying loyalty to the Lord of the Rings franchise means we've watched the trilogy together multiple times, more than once in an 11-plus-hour binge. (Yeah … it's the extended editions, every time.) The movies are a genuinely gorgeous feat of storytelling, bested only by the books; fantasy and action sequences aside, they spotlight friendship, loyalty, and the dueling motivations of pride, duty, and greed. And for our family, at least, they'll be a regular feature—I'm pretty sure it was implicit in our wedding vows that we'd indoctrinate our kids into the LOTR lore—which means that the films are about carving out time for one another as well. — Katherine J. Wu, staff writer All Your Faces (available to rent on Google Play and Apple TV) I've watched the French film All Your Faces three times in the past eight months. The movie isn't a documentary, but it's based on real restorative-justice programs in France that were introduced about a decade ago. Why did I repeatedly return to a film about an idiosyncratic feature of a foreign country's criminal-justice system? There's something about the encounter between victim and perpetrator, and the instability and unpredictability of these interactions, that surprised me each time I watched it. Equally intense was the tenderness between the instructors and the programs' participants, most evident between the characters played by Adèle Exarchopoulos and Élodie Bouchez. But it's Miou-Miou, playing an elderly victim of petty street crime, who delivers the most haunting line in the movie: 'I don't understand the violence.' A mantra for our time. — Isaac Stanley-Becker, staff writer Little Women (streaming on Hulu) Little Women first came to me as a comfort movie. Based on Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel, Greta Gerwig's 2019 film adaptation features not so much plot as simply vibes: a familiar tale of four sisters and their childhood friend, scenes of a snowy Christmas morning perfect for the holidays. But with each subsequent encounter during my lonely postgraduate months in a new city, I began to appreciate the little rebellions that make Gerwig's Little Women so special. The story is full of moments of seeing: Professor Bhaer turns around to watch Jo watching a play, Laurie gazes into the Marches' windows, and we, as viewers, feel seen by Jo's boyish brashness. But Gerwig also chooses to focus on Jo's many anxieties. Early in the film, Jo uncharacteristically dismisses her own writing ('Those are just stories,' she says. Just!); later, her monologue reveals a vulnerable desire for companionship (But I'm so lonely!). Gerwig honors the story's essence, but her version is not a granular retelling; rather, it serves as a homage to the art of writing itself—and women's mundane, humble stories, which Jo and Alcott are desperate to tell. The Week Ahead Ballerina, an action movie in the John Wick franchise starring Ana de Armas as an assassin bent on avenging her father's death (in theaters Friday) Season 3 of Ginny & Georgia, a comedy-drama series about a single mom and two kids trying to settle down in a new town (premieres Thursday on Netflix) The Haves and the Have-Yachts, a book by the journalist Evan Osnos featuring dispatches on the ultrarich (out Tuesday) Essay Diddy's Defenders Diddy—whose legal name is Sean Combs—has pleaded not guilty to the charges he faces of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. Many Americans have taken to the comment sections to offer their full-throated belief in his innocence. Despite the video evidence of domestic violence, the photos of Combs's guns with serial numbers removed, and the multiple witnesses testifying that Combs threatened to kill them, this group insists that Diddy's biggest sin is nothing more than being a hypermasculine celebrity with 'libertine' sexual tastes. More in Culture Catch Up on The Atlantic Photo Album Take a look at the beauty of the North. These photographs are by Olivier Morin, who captures remarkable images of the natural world, largely focusing on northern climates.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
The TACO Presidency
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. One way to trace the past nine years of Donald Trump is the journey from taco bowls to TACO bulls. (Hey, don't click away! This is going somewhere!) Back in May 2016, the then–GOP presidential candidate posted a picture of himself eating a Trump Tower Tex-Mex entree. 'I love Hispanics!' he wrote. Nearly everyone understood this as an awkward pander. Now, in May 2025, Wall Street is all over the 'TACO trade,' another instance of people realizing they shouldn't take the president at face value. 'TACO' is short for 'Trump always chickens out.' Markets have tended to go down when Trump announces new tariffs, but investors have recognized that a lot of this is bluffing, so they're buying the dip and then profiting off the inevitable rally. A reporter asked Trump about the expression on Wednesday, and he was furious. 'I chicken out? I've never heard that,' he said. 'Don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question. To me, that's the nastiest question.' The reaction demonstrates that the traders are right, because—to mix zoological metaphors—a hit dog will holler. The White House keeps talking tough about levying new tariffs on friends and geopolitical rivals alike, but Trump has frequently gone on to lower the measures or delay them for weeks or months. Foreign leaders had figured out that Trump was a pushover by May 2017, and a year later, I laid out in detail his pattern of nearly always folding. He's a desirable negotiating foil, despite his unpredictable nature, because he doesn't tend to know his material well, has a short attention span, and can be easily manipulated by flattery. The remarkable thing is that it's taken this long for Wall Street to catch on. Even though no president has been so purely a businessman as Trump, he and the markets have never really understood each other. That is partly because, as I wrote yesterday, Trump just isn't that good at business. Despite much glitzier ventures over the years, his most effective revenue sources have been rent collection at his legacy properties and rent-seeking as president. His approach to protectionism is premised on a basic misunderstanding of trade. Yet Wall Street has never seemed to have much better of a grasp on Trump than he has on them, despite having many years to crack the code. (This is worth recalling when market evangelists speak about the supposed omniscience of markets.) Financiers have tried to understand Trump in black-and-white terms, but the task requires the nuanced recognition, for example, that he can be deadly serious about tariffs in the abstract and also extremely prone to folding on specifics. Although they disdained him during his first term, many titans of industry sought accommodation with Trump during his 2024 campaign, hoping he'd be friendlier to their interests than Joe Biden had been. Once Trump's term began, though, they were taken aback to learn that he really did want tariffs, even though he'd been advocating for them since the 1980s, had levied some in his first term, and had put them at the center of his 2024 campaign. Trump's commitment to tariffs, however, didn't mean that he had carefully prepared for them or thought through their details. The administration has announced, suspended, reduced, or threatened new tariffs on China, Mexico, Canada, and the European Union. All of this volatility is ostensibly a product of ongoing negotiations, but in many cases, it's also a response to market turmoil or because of a lack of clarity about details. (This week, two federal courts also ruled that the president was overstepping his authority by implementing tariffs under emergency powers.) This is where the TACO trade comes in. Rather than panicking over every twist and turn, investors have begun to grasp the pattern. But every Wall Street arbitrage eventually loses its power once people get hip to it. In this case, the fact that Trump has learned about the TACO trade could be its downfall. The president may be fainthearted, but his track record shows that he can easily be dared into taking bad options by reporters just asking him about them. One can imagine a bleak scenario here: Trump feels shamed into following through on an economically harmful tariff; markets initially don't take him seriously, which removes any external pressure for him to reverse course. Once investors realize that he's for real this time, they panic, and the markets tank. If the president stops chickening out, both Wall Street and the American people won't be able to escape the consequences of his worst ideas. Related: Trump almost always folds. (From 2018) Trump will never rule out a bad option. Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: The Nobel Prize winner who thinks we have the universe all wrong In Trump immigration cases, it's one thing in public, another in court. The tech bros have ascended to movie-villain status. Today's News The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to temporarily pause a Biden-era program under which more than 500,000 immigrants had been granted temporary residency in America. At a press conference on the last day of Elon Musk's tenure as a special government employee, President Donald Trump said that Musk is 'really not leaving' the administration and will be 'back and forth' to the White House. Massive wildfires are burning in western and central Canada. Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate. Dispatches The Books Briefing: Alternatives to the medical or economic status quo offer hope—and danger, Boris Kachka writes. Explore all of our newsletters here. Evening Read How to Look at Paul Gauguin By Susan Tallman The life of Paul Gauguin is the stuff of legend. Or several legends. There's the Romantic visionary invoked by his friend August Strindberg—'a child taking his toys to pieces to make new ones, rejecting and defying and preferring a red sky to everybody else's blue one.' There's the voracious malcontent whom Edgar Degas pegged as a 'hungry wolf without a collar.' There's the accomplished swordsman and brawny genius hammed up by Anthony Quinn in Lust for Life, who takes a break from bickering with Vincent van Gogh to growl, 'I'm talking about women, man, women. I like 'em fat and vicious and not too smart.' And there's the 21st-century trope of the paint-smattered, colonizing Humbert Humbert, bedding 13-year-old girls and sowing syphilis throughout the South Seas. Read the full article. More From The Atlantic Is Trump falling out of love with Putin? Trump's attacks threaten much more than Harvard. A victory for separation of powers What is a 'reverse Nixon,' and can Trump pull it off? The artist who captured the contradictions of femininity Culture Break Take a look. These photos of the week show a Wienermobile race in Indianapolis, beehive therapy in Turkey, a rare tornado touchdown in Chile, and more. Watch (or not). Horror movies don't need to be highbrow, David Sims writes. The new film Bring Her Back (out now in theaters) aims for a deeper meaning, but comes to life in its goriest sequences instead. Play our daily crossword. *Lead image credit: Illustration by The Atlantic. Sources: Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty; Yuri Gripas / Abaca / Bloomberg / Getty; Stefani Reynolds / Bloomberg / Getty; Chip Somodevilla / Getty; Win McNamee / Getty Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
2 days ago
- Business
- Atlantic
The TACO Presidency
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. One way to trace the past nine years of Donald Trump is the journey from taco bowls to TACO bulls. (Hey, don't click away! This is going somewhere!) Back in May 2016, the then–GOP presidential candidate posted a picture of himself eating a Trump Tower Tex-Mex entree. 'I love Hispanics!' he wrote. Nearly everyone understood this as an awkward pander. Now, in May 2025, Wall Street is all over the ' TACO trade,' another instance of people realizing they shouldn't take the president at face value. 'TACO' is short for 'Trump always chickens out.' Markets have tended to go down when Trump announces new tariffs, but investors have recognized that a lot of this is bluffing, so they're buying the dip and then profiting off the inevitable rally. A reporter asked Trump about the expression on Wednesday, and he was furious. 'I chicken out? I've never heard that,' he said. 'Don't ever say what you said. That's a nasty question. To me, that's the nastiest question.' The reaction demonstrates that the traders are right, because—to mix zoological metaphors— a hit dog will holler. The White House keeps talking tough about levying new tariffs on friends and geopolitical rivals alike, but Trump has frequently gone on to lower the measures or delay them for weeks or months. Foreign leaders had figured out that Trump was a pushover by May 2017, and a year later, I laid out in detail his pattern of nearly always folding. He's a desirable negotiating foil, despite his unpredictable nature, because he doesn't tend to know his material well, has a short attention span, and can be easily manipulated by flattery. The remarkable thing is that it's taken this long for Wall Street to catch on. Even though no president has been so purely a businessman as Trump, he and the markets have never really understood each other. That is partly because, as I wrote yesterday, Trump just isn't that good at business. Despite much glitzier ventures over the years, his most effective revenue sources have been rent collection at his legacy properties and rent-seeking as president. His approach to protectionism is premised on a basic misunderstanding of trade. Yet Wall Street has never seemed to have much better of a grasp on Trump than he has on them, despite having many years to crack the code. (This is worth recalling when market evangelists speak about the supposed omniscience of markets.) Financiers have tried to understand Trump in black-and-white terms, but the task requires the nuanced recognition, for example, that he can be deadly serious about tariffs in the abstract and also extremely prone to folding on specifics. Although they disdained him during his first term, many titans of industry sought accommodation with Trump during his 2024 campaign, hoping he'd be friendlier to their interests than Joe Biden had been. Once Trump's term began, though, they were taken aback to learn that he really did want tariffs, even though he'd been advocating for them since the 1980s, had levied some in his first term, and had put them at the center of his 2024 campaign. Trump's commitment to tariffs, however, didn't mean that he had carefully prepared for them or thought through their details. The administration has announced, suspended, reduced, or threatened new tariffs on China, Mexico, Canada, and the European Union. All of this volatility is ostensibly a product of ongoing negotiations, but in many cases, it's also a response to market turmoil or because of a lack of clarity about details. (This week, two federal courts also ruled that the president was overstepping his authority by implementing tariffs under emergency powers.) This is where the TACO trade comes in. Rather than panicking over every twist and turn, investors have begun to grasp the pattern. But every Wall Street arbitrage eventually loses its power once people get hip to it. In this case, the fact that Trump has learned about the TACO trade could be its downfall. The president may be fainthearted, but his track record shows that he can easily be dared into taking bad options by reporters just asking him about them. One can imagine a bleak scenario here: Trump feels shamed into following through on an economically harmful tariff; markets initially don't take him seriously, which removes any external pressure for him to reverse course. Once investors realize that he's for real this time, they panic, and the markets tank. If the president stops chickening out, both Wall Street and the American people won't be able to escape the consequences of his worst ideas. Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Today's News The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to temporarily pause a Biden-era program under which more than 500,000 immigrants had been granted temporary residency in America. At a press conference on the last day of Elon Musk's tenure as a special government employee, President Donald Trump said that Musk is 'really not leaving' the administration and will be 'back and forth' to the White House. Massive wildfires are burning in western and central Canada. Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate. Dispatches Evening Read How to Look at Paul Gauguin By Susan Tallman The life of Paul Gauguin is the stuff of legend. Or several legends. There's the Romantic visionary invoked by his friend August Strindberg—'a child taking his toys to pieces to make new ones, rejecting and defying and preferring a red sky to everybody else's blue one.' There's the voracious malcontent whom Edgar Degas pegged as a 'hungry wolf without a collar.' There's the accomplished swordsman and brawny genius hammed up by Anthony Quinn in Lust for Life, who takes a break from bickering with Vincent van Gogh to growl, 'I'm talking about women, man, women. I like 'em fat and vicious and not too smart.' And there's the 21st-century trope of the paint-smattered, colonizing Humbert Humbert, bedding 13-year-old girls and sowing syphilis throughout the South Seas. More From The Atlantic Culture Break Take a look. These photos of the week show a Wienermobile race in Indianapolis, beehive therapy in Turkey, a rare tornado touchdown in Chile, and more. Watch (or not). Horror movies don't need to be highbrow, David Sims writes. The new film Bring Her Back (out now in theaters) aims for a deeper meaning, but comes to life in its goriest sequences instead. Play our daily crossword.
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3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump's Most Successful Business Venture
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Paul Walczak didn't have a plausible defense, but he did have a backup plan. As a Florida nursing-home executive, he'd defrauded taxpayers out of almost $11 million, using it to fund a lavish lifestyle. He pleaded guilty last fall, but applied for a pardon after Donald Trump retook office, claiming that he'd been prosecuted because of his mother Elizabeth Fago's support for Trump. Only after she attended a $1 million-per-person April fundraiser, which promised face time with the president, did Trump grant Walczak a full pardon. The press can't declare things 'bribes' without concrete proof, and it's not entirely clear how much of the money Fago donated herself, but even the staid New York Times resorted to snark in describing the case. 'A judge had justified the incarceration by declaring that there 'is not a get-out-of-jail-free card' for the rich. The pardon, however, indicated otherwise,' Kenneth Vogel wrote. A million bucks is, by the standards of this administration, pretty paltry. Trump has made many millions off being president. Earlier this week, my colleague David Frum took stock of the corruption of Trump's second term and concluded, 'Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency. Throw away the history books; discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past.' Yet even against this backdrop, the brazenness of the pardon's timing makes it stand out. Whether or not Trump was bought in this case, he's eager to create the impression that he is for sale. And for good reason: What's bad for the integrity of American rule of law has been very good for Trump's bottom line. After a career of high-profile mediocrity, punctuated by flamboyant failures, the selling of the presidency is the most successful business venture of his career. Business prowess is at the center of Trump's renown and political appeal, but the impression that he is a titan of industry is more a creation of The Art of the Deal and The Apprentice than his actual CV. By the time he ran for president for the first time, he'd largely given up on the real-estate development that made him famous, instead concentrating on licensing his name to products and buildings. That was mostly a concession to reality: At that point, Trump was struggling to find lenders because he'd stiffed so many banks. Trump's businesses declared bankruptcy six times, and although he has consistently defended these filings as savvy business moves, an even savvier business move is not needing to declare bankruptcy. Trump managed the impressive task of losing money as a casino owner. Although Atlantic City was in decline as a whole during Trump's time there, a Temple University legal scholar found that Trump underperformed competitors: 'His casinos were not the 'best' and not even average. They were the worst.' The president's lofty net worth was less a product of success than a product of coming into his father's fortune. In 2021, Forbes calculated that he would have made more money if he'd just put his inheritance in an S&P 500 index fund. (And the money that he did make might have been less if he hadn't been committing extensive fraud.) During Trump's first term, he began finding ways to profit from the presidency. He charged the Secret Service big bills to stay at his properties while protecting him (even though son Eric claimed that they stayed at a discount), and had officials like Vice President Mike Pence unnecessarily rack up charges there too. Moreover, the hotel he owned near the White House became an essential location for any officials looking to influence him. There was, it seemed, a benefit to being seen—and probably more importantly, to spending some dosh. Although this seemed like a clear violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause, attempts to enforce it were stymied in court. But in his second term, Trump has far surpassed these relatively petty hustles. The profits started rolling in even before he won reelection, as speculators poured cash into Trump Media and Technology Group—a business with wretched numbers but high upside for anyone wishing to influence the president. Since November, the flow has increased. 'Few if any legitimate investors entrusted their money to Trump's businesses when he was out of office,' Frum noted, but now Middle Eastern governments, Chinese crypto investors, and American corporations are all finding ways to get money into Trump-related businesses. The White House claims that because Trump's sons run these companies, no conflict of interest exists, but experts have noted that Trump hasn't really distanced himself meaningfully from his companies and he continues to profit from them. And nearly everyone involved is winning. Trump is making out like a bandit—perhaps very much like a bandit—and people such as Paul Walczak are getting their pardons. (Notably, Trump seems quick to pardon people charged with either fraud or corrupt use of government positions—both offenses of which he has been accused.) Unfortunately, the losers are the American people: anyone who might want the government to support rule of law, discourage corruption, and operate as something other than a concierge desk for those wealthy enough to buy in. When news emerged earlier this month of Trump's plans to accept a $400 million airplane from the Qatari government, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, a Republican, dismissed any concerns about emoluments. 'I think nobody believes that Donald Trump can be bought,' he said. 'I mean, what does Donald Trump need more money for?' This is either deeply cynical or painfully gullible. Trump's entire career has been consumed by his quest for more money—this is a man who once cashed a 13-cent prank check from a Spy magazine correspondent—even if he hasn't always been very good at it. Now that he's found a reliable way to keep the cash rolling in, he's not going to turn it down. Related: The Trump presidency's world-historical heist There's no such thing as a free plane. Here are three new stories from The Atlantic: The conversations Trump's doctors should be having with him The perilous spread of the wellness craze Bring back communal kid discipline. Today's News An appeals court temporarily paused a lower-court ruling that had blocked most of President Donald Trump's tariffs. The acting director of ICE gave Harvard University 30 days to challenge the Trump administration's ban revoking the college's ability to enroll international students. Elon Musk announced yesterday that he is leaving the Department of Government Efficiency after saying that he is shifting his focus from politics back to his companies. Dispatches Time-Travel Thursdays: Any recent college graduate will tell you that their head felt heaviest after the cap came off, Amogh Dimri writes. Explore all of our newsletters here. Evening Read How America Lost Control of the Seas By Arnav Rao 'He who commands the sea has command of everything,' the ancient Athenian general Themistocles said. By that standard, the United States has command of very little. America depends on ocean shipping. About 80 percent of its international trade by weight traverses the seas. The U.S. needs ships to deliver nearly 90 percent of its armed forces' supplies and equipment, including fuel, ammunition, and food … In the middle of the 20th century, the U.S. had a thriving, well-regulated ocean-shipping industry. Then the country turned its back on the system that made it all possible. Read the full article. More From The Atlantic Striking down Trump's tariffs isn't a judicial coup. A Swiss village destroyed by a landslide A way to understand Pope Leo XIV's mission of love Xochitl Gonzalez on Diddy's defenders Culture Break Read. These five books will redirect your attention and break the spell of malaise. Make a pledge. Moral courage can result in something beautiful. A lovely paradox of doing good in the world is that it does you good too, according to the happiness expert Arthur C. Brooks. Play our daily crossword. Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. 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