Not Necessarily Stoned, But Beautiful

Last night the Department of Justice subpoenaed reporters from the New York Times over a story the newspaper published on Wednesday. Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmitt reported that the Secret Service had security concerns about the new Air Force One Boeing 747-8 given to the U.S. by Qatar. So, when tensions escalated with Iran while Trump was in Türkiye for the NATO summit, they asked the president to use one of the other, older, Air Force One planes for his return journey.

Trump and White House officials pushed back strongly against the idea that the new plane had any security problems after pouring what appears to have been hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into renovating the plane. But, according to Adam Gramegna of Military . com, U.S. officials told CBS News that the speed with which the plane was rushed into service meant that it does not have the same protections as the older planes.

According to Devlin Barrett, Glenn Thrush, and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, the story that his prized plane was not as good as the older ones enraged Trump, and the White House called in FBI director Kash Patel to find the two anonymous sources who leaked it. Patel spent about 8 hours on Friday running an investigation from the White House, rather than FBI headquarters, before the reporters received the subpoenas.

David McCraw, senior vice president and deputy general counsel for the Times, said: “The appearance of Federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects. Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used. This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”

Today he turned his anger toward those questioning his mental acuity, particularly New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, who commented on MS NOW about his reference in Türkiye to the “Islamic State of Japan.” At 12:23 PM he lashed out at “Maggot Hagerman” and then, to refute her claims, wrote that he “just finished a perfect physical at Walter Reed, I do it every six months, and I requested another Cognitive Test, the only President to do so, three times, and I aced them all—Got every question right. Few people in Washington, D.C., could do so, including Maggot and her flunky associate, Jonathan Swan. I would be willing to bet they couldn’t get 50% of the questions right.”

The White House said Trump was referring to a physical he underwent in May.

There has been a spate of articles in the last week analyzing the perceived woes of the Democratic Party.

Lazy journalism. Clickbait. False equivalency. Republicans posing as neutral observers so they can sow discord.

One party in America is attempting to destroy democracy by undermining constitutional order. The other party is attempting to save democracy but has internal differences over the best path forward. Those two parties are not alike. One is an existential threat to democracy, the other is the only hope for saving it.

It takes effort, focus, and discipline to describe on a daily basis the existential threat posed by Trump and the GOP. It is exhausting to write about that threat without causing readers to tune out. But if journalists for major publications don’t want to put in the effort, they should find another profession.

There is only one political story that matters in America today, and it is not the internal growing pains of the party trying to save democracy.

Presumably afraid of investigations into his actions, President Donald J. Trump appears to have abandoned all pretense of governing for the good of the country and is focusing on rigging the 2026 election to keep Republicans in power.

This morning, as the National Association of Realtors reported that U.S. home prices have hit an all-time high, he announced that he will not sign the housing bill, which was designed to address the unaffordability of housing and which passed Congress with strong bipartisan majorities, “in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.”

As the Lincoln Project summed it up, the Republican Party’s message four months before the midterms appears to be, “You’re not getting affordable housing unless you give up your voting rights.”

His demand for the passage of a bill that most observers agree will suppress voting is only one of the ways that Trump is trying to rig the 2026 election.