And there’s a song already.

And in case any of you missed it, here is the NY Times analysis of the Minnesota shooting that uncledad linked to in comments yesterday. It’s very helpful.

I wonder if Kristi Gnome and Trump were even aware that this video was all over cable news and social media already when they released their statements about what happened. The Gnome’s description of what happened bore no resemblance whatsoever to the video, and millions of people likely had already seen the video. And of course Trump’s claim that an ICE agent had been “run over” was downright hallucinatory.

Yesterday seemed like an inflection point to me, but we’ll see.

Trump chose yesterday to ask  Congress to add another half trillion dollars to the defense budget, to bring it to $1.5 trillion.

The president provided few details in his post on Truth Social, other than to say the money would pay for his “Dream Military.” Trump did suggest that tariff revenues could cover the increase, but even if he managed to circumvent Congress’ constitutionally mandated power over spending, existing tariff collections would still be several hundred billion short of what the president plans to ask for.

While finding half-a-trillion dollars in new spending would prove difficult, Trump and some congressional Republicans appeared confident they could do so. The budget reached $1 trillion this year thanks to $150 billion in new money Congress voted to pour into Pentagon coffers via a reconciliation bill, although much of that will be spread out over the next five years on various long-term projects.

This is just ridiculous. But it ties into Paul Krugman’s column today, titled The Looting of U.S. Foreign Policy.  He starts out talking about Trump’s oil grabbing plans in Venezuela, which seem mostly about enriching Trump and his clique, and then writes this:

I use the word “clique” advisedly. That’s the term used by the political scientists Stacie E. Goddard and Abraham Newman in a recent paper titled “Further Back to the Future: Neo-Royalism, the Trump Administration, and the Emerging International System.”

Goddard and Newman have received well-deserved attention for their analysis, which states that Americans should stop believing that U.S. foreign policy serves U.S. national interests. Instead, they argue, we must recognize that in many ways we’ve been transported back to the 16^th century – a time before nation-states existed, when international affairs were a game played by dynasties serving their interests.

Thus, the Italian Wars of the 16^th century weren’t a fight between France and Spain, they were a contest for dominance between the House of Valois and the Habsburgs. Similarly, Goddard and Newman argue that Trumpist foreign policy has nothing to do with, well, making America great again, and everything to do with raising the wealth and status of the Trump family and its hangers-on — what they call our ruling clique.

As Goddard and Newman point out, U.S. foreign policy over the past year makes no sense if interpreted through the lens of national interest. How can it serve U.S. interests to insult and demean Canada, which has been an utterly reliable ally? Why would a U.S. president talk about seizing Greenland, which belongs to another ally, Denmark, and is a place where America already has a military base and can do whatever it considers necessary to protect our national security?

But the Trump clique doesn’t care whether nations have been staunch allies of the United States. They want subservient clients paying tribute, not to America, but to them personally. And that’s something democracies like Canada and Denmark won’t do.

Of course. Now that Krugman points it out, it seems to obvious. Krugman goes on to say that this is why Trump has no interest in restoring democratic government to Venezuela. A corrupt autocracy can be bullied into paying protection money to him. A democracy won’t do that.

According to a December report in The National Interest (an ironic name given Trump’s policies) moving a carrier group to the Caribbean cost around $600 million. In addition, the ongoing operational costs are $6.5 million per day, which have been accumulating since late October/early November. Add in the cost of munitions expended during the Maduro abduction, and the whole adventure has surely cost more than a billion dollars. Moreover, the meter keeps ticking: since Chavistas are still in power, Trump has to keep forces nearby in order to intimidate them to honor agreements. But Trump doesn’t care: The military expenses are the little people’s problem.

The bottom line is that to understand what Trump is doing around the world you must disabuse yourself of the notion that any of it is about serving America. It’s all about glorifying himself and enriching his clique.

He’s not just looting Venezuela. He’s looting American taxpayers and using taxpayer-funded resources like the U.S. military to carry out looting to benefit himself and his cronies. The military expenses are the little people’s problem.

Likewise, ICE is obviously not about making America safer. It’s about making America intimidated. We’ll be more compliant if we’re all afraid.

And I see that Trump’s talk about taking over Greenland is being taken very seriously now.

Yesterday Trump floated the idea of canceling the midterms and then said he wouldn’t do it. Of course not. If he can stir up enough violence and unrest in the U.S. maybe he can use that as an excuse. Constitutionally he has no authority to cancel elections, nor does Congress. Elections are run by the states. But if he could set up a scenario in which some red states did cancel elections he might go to court and say the election results are invalid because some states didn’t participate. I think we need to get ahead of this. But I’m not sure how.