After a morning meeting, I sat down to my computer around 11:30 a.m. ET and read two reader emails picked more or less at random out of my inbox. The first was from an American expat. The gist of his email was that American liberals — Blue America, for lack of a better descriptor — are totally unprepared for what’s coming down the pike toward them. The second was from a federal government employee reviewing the executive orders relevant to the federal workforce and explaining to me in so many words, ‘yeah, good luck with that.’ The expat’s email was generally more pessimistic and totalizing than I’m inclined to be. You may differ and you may be right; who knows? But in general the two emails together captured the moment as well or better than any report, essay or interview I might have read — a mix of actions and red flags almost unimaginable by any normal standard (though in virtually every case unsurprising) mixed with an underbrush of the sheer size, inertia and difficulty of whatever changes Trump is trying to make. They’re both true. Both true at once.
I was at the gym this afternoon when I saw out of the corner of my eye Elon Musk giving an exuberant speech at one of the Trump inauguration’s events. I was listening to something else on my AirPods. Then, only a few moments later, in a moment of exuberant disinhibition he gave what was unmistakably a sieg heil! salute. Then he did it again. He actually appeared to do it three separate times. I took out my AirPods and tried to see if there was going to be any comment on CNN on what we’d just seen. I wondered whether this might somehow have been a weird angle or something. I commented on BlueSky asking, rhetorically, if we’d all just seen what we just saw. It wasn’t a weird angle.
This is one of those cases where it’s helpful to have been to this rodeo one time before.
Gen. Mark A. Milley responds to Biden pardon: “My family and I are deeply grateful for the President’s action today. After forty-three years of faithful service in uniform to our Nation, protecting and defending the Constitution, I do not wish to spend whatever remaining time the Lord grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights.”
I’m not one to tell people how they should react to or experience things. But for me I’m taking all of this in with a serene impassivity. They won. They’re entitled to their day. The Trump people have been signaling for days that they’re going to hit the ground running with what they describe as an executive “shock and awe.” I don’t see any reason to be shocked or awed. I don’t say this in any grand metaphysical sense. I mean that I’ve seen headstrong winners of close elections high on their own supply before. As I wrote a couple weeks ago, all of this is meant to hit you with so much sensory stimulus that you become overwhelmed. But the images you see wrapped around you in an iMax theater aren’t real. It’s still a movie.
Note this “for the ages” picture, above, of Jeff Bezos with the CEOs of Meta, Google and Apple from left to right, at an inaugural service feting Donald Trump this morning at St. John’s church across the street from the White House. You may not have a billion dollars but your dignity is all yours. No one can take it from you. Compared to some you can already be ahead of the game.
One step at a time. They’re not as big as they look.
Fascinating news this afternoon that CBS and its parent company Paramount are considering settling a lawsuit Trump filed against them late last year alleging “election interference” and demanding $10 billion in damages. We know there’s been a lot of this of late. ABC settled an incredibly weak case Trump brought over George Stephanopoulos’ correct use of the word “rape” to describe what a jury in New York concluded Trump had done to E. Jean Carroll. But there’s weak and there’s weak. The suit against CBS isn’t weak. It’s absurd. There’s no tort of editing. But Paramount is considering settling and generally going full Oprah cash & prizes for Donald Trump. This WSJ article, which broke the news, tells us what the issue is: CBS has a merger it’s trying to get approved. And the Trump team, including incoming FCC chair Brendan Carr (who has promised to abuse his power starting on day one), have made it clear that companies have to give Trump cash and prizes if they don’t want trouble.
Amid a flurry of executive actions meant to demoralize his opponents and flex his supposed “mandate” from a historically narrow election win, Donald Trump has begun the real work of neutering the government and punishing his enemies.
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