I think the truth is--he doesn't care. The whole scenario of his presidency is a fairy tale that he makes up minute-by-minute in his mind. And that, to him, is reality. The GOP doesn't panic because they have blind religious faith that he is invincible. Problem is, they are totally prepared to make the messiah fairy tale come to pass for him IN ANY WAY NECESSARY. Unfortunately, the rest of us are along for this ride, like it or not.
We have to remember that we have agency! We are not cement blocks. The GOP is getting its ass kicked all over the country. There are plenty more of us! This all ends when the majority of us decides we have had enough! I sure have! Keep talking, keep showing up.
Also, keep registering voters! Encourage everyone you know to show up and vote. But right NOW, encourage everyone to check their current registration to make sure the name and address are correct. And finally, make sure that you and your friends and family have the ID they need to vote!
I volunteer behind the scenes with Field Team 6 - their tagline is "Register Democrats. Save the World". (They are cool with moderate to progressive-leaning Independents too!). They currently have a big push to do in-person voter drives, but they also have postcard campaigns, text-banking and social media storms. Check out volunteer opportunities here: https://www.fieldteam6.org/all-volunteer-ops
I am also a volunteer letter-writer with VoteRiders, an organization which helps voters get the ID that they need to vote. Check out their volunteer opportunities here: https://voteriders.org/volunteer/
I believe the emphasis is to get registered Dems to the polls, especially if they haven’t voted. It’s ok to register voters, but there are a ton of registered Dems who did not vote. Let’s work on them.
⬆️"It’s ok to register voters, but there are a ton of registered Dems who did not vote. Let’s work on them."
How about doing both? It doesn't have to be either/or.
If you don't have a personal relationship with a low-propensity voter, there is a shelf-life for get-out-the-vote messages. They are less effective the more time there is between delivery of the message and the election. (If it is a friend or family member, you have multiple opportunities to engage with them, so starting early is great!).
I write a lot of postcards of all varieties as well as Vote Forward letters. Those can be written throughout the summer and stockpiled to be mailed closer to the election. There is lots of research about what constitutes the sweet spot for the mailing date.
Registering voters creates a life-time opportunity and can have a huge ripple effect as they can bring in more new voters. This is especially critical for newly eligible voters - in other words young people!
Research by the Civic Center (https://www.thecivicscenter.org/) shows that young people who are registered vote at similar rates as other age cohorts - the problem is that they are registered at much lower rates than older adults.
Civics education is practically non-existent these days, so the most effective way to increase participation is to **invite** people to register. And this can be a year-round activity! Also, many states permit voter pre-registration for teens as young as 16. Check out this hand map and click on your state:
Love Robert! I just checked earlier today, because I just updated my drivers license. I'm registered! Just have to figure out who to vote for down-ballot (I live in CA, so things are very twicky!)
I have made many friends through virtual postcard writing parties and one group has many Californians, so I know more about the CA races than you would expect from someone in NC.
I also know way more about NY races because of another NY-based group.
Remember, he's in it to win it ALL now. He continues to obsess on whether he'll be going to heaven. He knows his end is near so he's got nothing to lose at this point. He could give two chits about his "legacy". Meanwhile, we're stuck with his carnage and his cultists forever.
It's bizarre, isn't it. I believe he actually WANTS the US to fall apart when he's gone: "without me, they are nothing". He does NOT want to see a successful country move ahead without DJT at the helm. And INSANELY!, his followers buy this! Do you see why so many people fall for phone and internet scams every year?!?! And the rest of us feel like the only sane people accidentally locked up in an asylum!
I think it is part of his malignant narcissist personality along with his total lack of empathy or concern for anyone else.
And I am definitely creeped out by his single-minded focus on retribution. A friend of mine was murdered about a decade ago by her boyfriend after she broke up with him.
I am truly sorry to hear about your friend. I know exactly what people such as that are like--and it's scary as Hell. They are not above doing anything, anything. That is Trump.
I've commented this before to Jay: this whole "escapade" really really seems like an allegory!! The players, Trump, Hegseth, etc are CHARICATURES! Then there was "Good" and "Preti", the little kid in the Blue Bunny Hat. It's bizarrely allegorical. Stephen King!! get busy writing, boy!!!
Well, yeah, but I disagree about the "legacy" thing. If he doesn't care about that, why is he making all those changes in DC? (I'm sure WE all agree where he's going when he checks out!)
trump 2.0: All grift all of the time...check out the reporting on his 3700 trades in the market JUST for Q1, and the Judd Legum analysis of trump stock-touting before and during his purchases...manifestly criminal stock manipulation, but trump has no more fucks to give cos Scotus "immunity" gift.
If things head South this Summer or Fall, I can see a dramatically changed Congress in the New Year. There are rethugs who are not up this year who have to stand for reelection in 2028 who might have to vote with Dems to impeach and remove not just tRump , but maybe his entire regime. If that were to come to pass, I could see 6 MAGA justices looking for work.
Many fossil-fuel specialists are saying that global oil reserves have been drawn down at unsustainable rates to meliorate price rises, but this coming June could be the crunch point, and crude oil soars, creating the start of "demand destruction", i.e., a mad scramble to replace hydrocarbon in national economies.
trump's answer: Hey, no worries, we're the leaders in oil production, and we're dealin' today...come on down! What he doesn't say is that US crude will be sold at "market price", and even to American consumers...take note, MAGAts, that means YOU.
The other day TBP described how Trump is sabotaging the Republican party. Think about what his war is doing to all of his attempts to shut down renewable energies?
I don't know where you are, but I AM in the US, where he's killed development and implementation of what was to be built. He's even paying companies NOT to build offshore wind farms.
Here in Canada we have a renegade premier (equivalent to your governor) who is blocking and reversing green energy projects, creating special allowances to let coal mining take place in the Canadian Rockies, and trying to extort our federal government to build yet another pipeline to the west coast to transport oil to China. She's also enabling a petition to ask provincial residents if they want to be a separate country. She's doing her best to kowtow to Trump and his oily utopia dreams, encourage privatized health care and education, and working at dividing the province's and country's citizens. We don't want or need her type. I hope we succeed in driving her out of office.
Trump's third part to his solution is to make sure that the midterm elections don't happen so that he and his toadies won't be held responsible. We need to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to get Congress and state houses back to sanity. And then let the prosecutions begin.
I hope the Dems have a war chest so that they're prepared to fight fraud. Election fraud is not easy in a decentralized election arena like ours, but I am sure they'll try something in some key districts, and since we won't know where until they try it, the Dem establishment just needs to be ready to react.
I don't how on target the ThisWillHold claims about the Kamala election are, but it's awfully detailed and convincing, so I hope Dems are prepared for the moment. Of course, even if the TWH claims are viable, an overwhelming vote for Kamala would have negated fraud attempts, and the same should be true in the midterms.
So that's on us. I respect all the outreach you do for the GOTV process.
Looks like he may just be maximizing the grift for the rest of his lame duck term. He just asked the Injustice Department to write a check for $1.7B to him and his co-conspirators to get him to drop is huge suit against the IRS. They are even bigger pushovers than ABC.
they? you missed the part where the person who was 'damaged' sued himself, the head of the agency he was suing. and he generously agreed to settle the suit by giving him and his friends a couple of billions dollars. no pushovers here, since there was no need to push.
How about Trump's assessment of his closed door talks with Xi? Instead of his normal smiling, "It was perfect! We made more progress than anyone has ever made! ...", his face and statement was like a child who had been told to clean their plate before they could play video games. Xi clearly bent him over. I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall there.
The other thing that angers people is that this is an illegal war - we never had a conversation about pain for a non-nuclear Iran or the threat or a strategy. This is Netanyahu and Trumps cluster and we are really paying for their incompetence
Good read, Jay. The gas pump pic was priceless. However, cynical me, I'm not sure I believe the BLS 3.8 inflation number. Can we believe that the books weren't "cooked?" I'd like to think that DOGE didn't completely purge the government of competent statisticians, but I'm skeptical. Were I a betting woman, I'd put money on a nigher number.
It’s very difficult, I’ve read, to cook the BLS number without someone raising a stink. They can delay their release, but the numbers are the collective work of hundreds of experts.
The gas pump pic needs to be on bulletin boards. The Lincoln Project & others have been putting billboards designed to drive Donnie & Co. even crazier. Perhaps share this pic w/them? I’d contribute to getting this message on a billboard & would wager that a lot of other folks would, too. It would also be great if the pic went viral.
Can all of you imagine what this period of time would be like without the internet, independent journalists, and Jay Kuo? If all we had was the legacy media, we'd be screwed for sure...living through this with no sane community, no wise knowledge and guidance, NO SKEETS AND GIGGLES!!!!!! So. It could be worse.
Personally, I am considering my own economic pain of the moment to be a campaign contribution to the Democrats for November.
Thank you once again for your breakdown. There are some other things that pass through the straits of Hormuz that are going to inflict pain in the coming months.
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) & LPG: Supplies massive amounts of power and heating, predominantly to Asian and European markets.
Petrochemical Feedstocks: Naphtha, ethylene, and methanol serve as the fundamental building blocks for plastics, resins, coatings, and synthetic fibers.
Sulfur: Crucial for producing sulfuric acid, which is needed to refine battery metals (like cobalt, nickel, and copper) for electric vehicles. It is also used in a host of basic industrial processes.
Helium: Essential for manufacturing semiconductors, operating MRI machines, and running high-tech research equipment.
Aluminum: A major export for Gulf-based smelters supplying global manufacturing and aerospace industries
Okay, trump has an inflation problem and people are turning away from him but what about the election with all the gerrymandering. I think we have a problem. If the republicans win I’d scream fraud. Definitely not a free and fair election!
i live in the houston area -the highest I've paid so far: 4.09 for 87. Yesterday, the lowest pump price I saw was 3.99, but like the Colorado poster said, gas is going up (and sometimes down here) exponentially everyday and frequently multiple times per day - what a circus!
The rigorous analysis that TSQ readers are accustomed to. Yet, some chilling caveats. a] voters have shown repeatedly that in fact they do [ choose to] 'forget'. b] his approval is at 37% -- how is it even there? 7% would be more fathomable. c] once the ## appear somewhat sorted/settled, does the racism and misogyny kick back in?
It still amazes me that anyone was stupid enough to believe Trump could get gas below $2/gallon. I never imagined he’d be dumb enough to do what he did, but nothing surprises me from that ignorant, dangerous fool.
I think the truth is--he doesn't care. The whole scenario of his presidency is a fairy tale that he makes up minute-by-minute in his mind. And that, to him, is reality. The GOP doesn't panic because they have blind religious faith that he is invincible. Problem is, they are totally prepared to make the messiah fairy tale come to pass for him IN ANY WAY NECESSARY. Unfortunately, the rest of us are along for this ride, like it or not.
Much truth here, sadly
We have to remember that we have agency! We are not cement blocks. The GOP is getting its ass kicked all over the country. There are plenty more of us! This all ends when the majority of us decides we have had enough! I sure have! Keep talking, keep showing up.
Oh you are right. I love posts that fuel people's angry. All of us have to get angry enough to DO something about it!
⬆️"We have to remember that we have agency! We are not cement blocks."
... or potted plants as Robert Hubbell likes to say in his substack!
https://roberthubbell.substack.com/
⬆️"Keep talking, keep showing up."
Also, keep registering voters! Encourage everyone you know to show up and vote. But right NOW, encourage everyone to check their current registration to make sure the name and address are correct. And finally, make sure that you and your friends and family have the ID they need to vote!
I volunteer behind the scenes with Field Team 6 - their tagline is "Register Democrats. Save the World". (They are cool with moderate to progressive-leaning Independents too!). They currently have a big push to do in-person voter drives, but they also have postcard campaigns, text-banking and social media storms. Check out volunteer opportunities here: https://www.fieldteam6.org/all-volunteer-ops
I am also a volunteer letter-writer with VoteRiders, an organization which helps voters get the ID that they need to vote. Check out their volunteer opportunities here: https://voteriders.org/volunteer/
I believe the emphasis is to get registered Dems to the polls, especially if they haven’t voted. It’s ok to register voters, but there are a ton of registered Dems who did not vote. Let’s work on them.
⬆️"It’s ok to register voters, but there are a ton of registered Dems who did not vote. Let’s work on them."
How about doing both? It doesn't have to be either/or.
If you don't have a personal relationship with a low-propensity voter, there is a shelf-life for get-out-the-vote messages. They are less effective the more time there is between delivery of the message and the election. (If it is a friend or family member, you have multiple opportunities to engage with them, so starting early is great!).
I write a lot of postcards of all varieties as well as Vote Forward letters. Those can be written throughout the summer and stockpiled to be mailed closer to the election. There is lots of research about what constitutes the sweet spot for the mailing date.
Registering voters creates a life-time opportunity and can have a huge ripple effect as they can bring in more new voters. This is especially critical for newly eligible voters - in other words young people!
Research by the Civic Center (https://www.thecivicscenter.org/) shows that young people who are registered vote at similar rates as other age cohorts - the problem is that they are registered at much lower rates than older adults.
Civics education is practically non-existent these days, so the most effective way to increase participation is to **invite** people to register. And this can be a year-round activity! Also, many states permit voter pre-registration for teens as young as 16. Check out this hand map and click on your state:
https://www.thecivicscenter.org/prereg
Yes, do both! Especially younger voters! How many millions turn 18 between now and November? In the past 16 months?
In case this wasn't just a rhetorical question.
Check out thjis substack: https://thecivicscenter.substack.com/
Love Robert! I just checked earlier today, because I just updated my drivers license. I'm registered! Just have to figure out who to vote for down-ballot (I live in CA, so things are very twicky!)
Good luck!
I have made many friends through virtual postcard writing parties and one group has many Californians, so I know more about the CA races than you would expect from someone in NC.
I also know way more about NY races because of another NY-based group.
Remember, he's in it to win it ALL now. He continues to obsess on whether he'll be going to heaven. He knows his end is near so he's got nothing to lose at this point. He could give two chits about his "legacy". Meanwhile, we're stuck with his carnage and his cultists forever.
It's bizarre, isn't it. I believe he actually WANTS the US to fall apart when he's gone: "without me, they are nothing". He does NOT want to see a successful country move ahead without DJT at the helm. And INSANELY!, his followers buy this! Do you see why so many people fall for phone and internet scams every year?!?! And the rest of us feel like the only sane people accidentally locked up in an asylum!
I think it is part of his malignant narcissist personality along with his total lack of empathy or concern for anyone else.
And I am definitely creeped out by his single-minded focus on retribution. A friend of mine was murdered about a decade ago by her boyfriend after she broke up with him.
Oh, I am SO sorry! That's terrible. Sending hugs.
Thank you.
I am truly sorry to hear about your friend. I know exactly what people such as that are like--and it's scary as Hell. They are not above doing anything, anything. That is Trump.
Thank you.
All the other MegaMagats will divide up what's left. Worse person alive
I've commented this before to Jay: this whole "escapade" really really seems like an allegory!! The players, Trump, Hegseth, etc are CHARICATURES! Then there was "Good" and "Preti", the little kid in the Blue Bunny Hat. It's bizarrely allegorical. Stephen King!! get busy writing, boy!!!
Well, yeah, but I disagree about the "legacy" thing. If he doesn't care about that, why is he making all those changes in DC? (I'm sure WE all agree where he's going when he checks out!)
trump 2.0: All grift all of the time...check out the reporting on his 3700 trades in the market JUST for Q1, and the Judd Legum analysis of trump stock-touting before and during his purchases...manifestly criminal stock manipulation, but trump has no more fucks to give cos Scotus "immunity" gift.
https://popularinformation.substack.com/p/the-smoking-guns-in-trumps-new-financial?r=1pdf3&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
If things head South this Summer or Fall, I can see a dramatically changed Congress in the New Year. There are rethugs who are not up this year who have to stand for reelection in 2028 who might have to vote with Dems to impeach and remove not just tRump , but maybe his entire regime. If that were to come to pass, I could see 6 MAGA justices looking for work.
Agreed. He Does Not Care. Not about anyone, except himself; on a good day he probably cares about his family.
Many fossil-fuel specialists are saying that global oil reserves have been drawn down at unsustainable rates to meliorate price rises, but this coming June could be the crunch point, and crude oil soars, creating the start of "demand destruction", i.e., a mad scramble to replace hydrocarbon in national economies.
trump's answer: Hey, no worries, we're the leaders in oil production, and we're dealin' today...come on down! What he doesn't say is that US crude will be sold at "market price", and even to American consumers...take note, MAGAts, that means YOU.
The other day TBP described how Trump is sabotaging the Republican party. Think about what his war is doing to all of his attempts to shut down renewable energies?
But he's killed all of them for now.
Only in the US. China's economy is booming thanks to his wars on science, renewable energy, tech other than AI, etc.
I don't know where you are, but I AM in the US, where he's killed development and implementation of what was to be built. He's even paying companies NOT to build offshore wind farms.
Here in Canada we have a renegade premier (equivalent to your governor) who is blocking and reversing green energy projects, creating special allowances to let coal mining take place in the Canadian Rockies, and trying to extort our federal government to build yet another pipeline to the west coast to transport oil to China. She's also enabling a petition to ask provincial residents if they want to be a separate country. She's doing her best to kowtow to Trump and his oily utopia dreams, encourage privatized health care and education, and working at dividing the province's and country's citizens. We don't want or need her type. I hope we succeed in driving her out of office.
Is this in Alberta??
How’d you guess? 🇨🇦
Yes, the one and only Danielle Smith.
Trump's third part to his solution is to make sure that the midterm elections don't happen so that he and his toadies won't be held responsible. We need to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to get Congress and state houses back to sanity. And then let the prosecutions begin.
He will try to F with the midterms no doubt
I hope the Dems have a war chest so that they're prepared to fight fraud. Election fraud is not easy in a decentralized election arena like ours, but I am sure they'll try something in some key districts, and since we won't know where until they try it, the Dem establishment just needs to be ready to react.
I don't how on target the ThisWillHold claims about the Kamala election are, but it's awfully detailed and convincing, so I hope Dems are prepared for the moment. Of course, even if the TWH claims are viable, an overwhelming vote for Kamala would have negated fraud attempts, and the same should be true in the midterms.
So that's on us. I respect all the outreach you do for the GOTV process.
The only way out of this is to vote in numbers that can’t be manipulated.
Looks like he may just be maximizing the grift for the rest of his lame duck term. He just asked the Injustice Department to write a check for $1.7B to him and his co-conspirators to get him to drop is huge suit against the IRS. They are even bigger pushovers than ABC.
It's $1,776,000,000, referring to the 250th. Gee, I feel so patriotic! It's MY money they are giving away!
We need a tax strike, no matter who wins the midterms.
they? you missed the part where the person who was 'damaged' sued himself, the head of the agency he was suing. and he generously agreed to settle the suit by giving him and his friends a couple of billions dollars. no pushovers here, since there was no need to push.
How about Trump's assessment of his closed door talks with Xi? Instead of his normal smiling, "It was perfect! We made more progress than anyone has ever made! ...", his face and statement was like a child who had been told to clean their plate before they could play video games. Xi clearly bent him over. I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall there.
Chinese political cartoon, via JoJoFrom Jerz:
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!YTDA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb69b1f08-617a-4529-bd60-195d4fcda43f_510x680.jpeg
Kind of like that meeting with Putin during Trump 1.0?
Sort of, you know he bent over on both, but after the Putin meeting, he was still smiling and saying how wonderful it had been, iirc
The other thing that angers people is that this is an illegal war - we never had a conversation about pain for a non-nuclear Iran or the threat or a strategy. This is Netanyahu and Trumps cluster and we are really paying for their incompetence
To be truthful, the average American couldn't find Iran on a map, much less care if they have nuclear weapons.
A crook like Nixon, perhaps Trump will resort to wage-price controls like his fellow Republican president.
Good read, Jay. The gas pump pic was priceless. However, cynical me, I'm not sure I believe the BLS 3.8 inflation number. Can we believe that the books weren't "cooked?" I'd like to think that DOGE didn't completely purge the government of competent statisticians, but I'm skeptical. Were I a betting woman, I'd put money on a nigher number.
It’s very difficult, I’ve read, to cook the BLS number without someone raising a stink. They can delay their release, but the numbers are the collective work of hundreds of experts.
The gas pump pic needs to be on bulletin boards. The Lincoln Project & others have been putting billboards designed to drive Donnie & Co. even crazier. Perhaps share this pic w/them? I’d contribute to getting this message on a billboard & would wager that a lot of other folks would, too. It would also be great if the pic went viral.
Hey everyone, you know the assignment!
Excellent point, and reassuring.
Great to read this. Thank you for the reassurance.
Can all of you imagine what this period of time would be like without the internet, independent journalists, and Jay Kuo? If all we had was the legacy media, we'd be screwed for sure...living through this with no sane community, no wise knowledge and guidance, NO SKEETS AND GIGGLES!!!!!! So. It could be worse.
Personally, I am considering my own economic pain of the moment to be a campaign contribution to the Democrats for November.
Thank you once again for your breakdown. There are some other things that pass through the straits of Hormuz that are going to inflict pain in the coming months.
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) & LPG: Supplies massive amounts of power and heating, predominantly to Asian and European markets.
Petrochemical Feedstocks: Naphtha, ethylene, and methanol serve as the fundamental building blocks for plastics, resins, coatings, and synthetic fibers.
Sulfur: Crucial for producing sulfuric acid, which is needed to refine battery metals (like cobalt, nickel, and copper) for electric vehicles. It is also used in a host of basic industrial processes.
Helium: Essential for manufacturing semiconductors, operating MRI machines, and running high-tech research equipment.
Aluminum: A major export for Gulf-based smelters supplying global manufacturing and aerospace industries
Excellent point. We don't see this extensive list enough in the mainstream media.
Okay, trump has an inflation problem and people are turning away from him but what about the election with all the gerrymandering. I think we have a problem. If the republicans win I’d scream fraud. Definitely not a free and fair election!
$4.50 a gallon?!?
Ha! We wish for that.
Try $5.69 or higher.
Diesel?? $6.99 and up.
i live in the houston area -the highest I've paid so far: 4.09 for 87. Yesterday, the lowest pump price I saw was 3.99, but like the Colorado poster said, gas is going up (and sometimes down here) exponentially everyday and frequently multiple times per day - what a circus!
Yes, our gas is a lot higher than $4.50 gallon
The rigorous analysis that TSQ readers are accustomed to. Yet, some chilling caveats. a] voters have shown repeatedly that in fact they do [ choose to] 'forget'. b] his approval is at 37% -- how is it even there? 7% would be more fathomable. c] once the ## appear somewhat sorted/settled, does the racism and misogyny kick back in?
I’m hurting now, and it will get worse.
It still amazes me that anyone was stupid enough to believe Trump could get gas below $2/gallon. I never imagined he’d be dumb enough to do what he did, but nothing surprises me from that ignorant, dangerous fool.
Trump and his allies are corrupted. The work you do is special person. Thank you.