Who could have predicted there was a flaw in this brilliant business strategy

How dare you cast aspersions on 2001 Teen Choice Award nominee Kid Rock

This is 100% perjury. The idea that the Treasury Secretary doesn't know anything about one of the most important figures in crypto facilitating a giant bribe to Trump and then getting pardoned is laughable. He would literally be the only person in the finance world who didn't know about it.

"I knew he was a child rapist so I thought if I told him he might like to rape her that would help her get the job, I was doing her a favor you see" is perhaps not the iron-clad defense David Gelernter thinks it is. You'll also be shocked to learn Gelernter is a huge Trump fan

Having literally written the book on the National Prayer Breakfast -- borne of the idea that God cares more for the rich and powerful than everyone else -- I can say this is the rare instance where Trump's grotesqueness is deeply appropriate.

I wrote for the Washington Post for 10 years; here's my take on the homicide now in progress: paulwaldman.substack.com/p/jeff-bezos...

It really is a determined, systematic effort to take everything the government does that people might find helpful or worthwhile and destroy it

If you want to see what abject moral cowardice in the service of ambition looks like, here you go

All this Epstein stuff got me feelin insane over here

Conservatives keep saying “This resistance in Minneapolis isn’t real. It’s too ORGANIZED!” Yeah, it is - for a change. That’s what deep democratic participation looks like. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/the-rights...

For those on west coast making their first pot of coffee, I have a new piece, “Guns for me, not for thee,” out today in Public Notice in which I explain the new, post-Pretti “Rittenhouse Rules” applied selectively to conservatives and liberals: open.substack.com/pub/aaronrup...

Conservatives keep saying “This resistance in Minneapolis isn’t real. It’s too ORGANIZED!” Yeah, it is - for a change. That’s what deep democratic participation looks like. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/the-rights...

In addition to being one of history's most notorious pedophiles, Jeffrey Epstein was apparently also the world's worst speller, like comically bad. Beginning to think all these powerful men who called him a genius were actually out for something else in their relationship with him, what could it be

The arrests of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort are meant to send a message of intimidation and domination. But they thought they were sending the same message with the invasion of Minneapolis, and they got more than they bargained for. My latest at Public Notice: www.publicnotice.co/p/don-lemon-...

I was a White House ethics lawyer. I used to advise people not to even accept a free cup of coffee from someone who had interests before them. And staff followed those rules. I can’t even find the words to describe the scale of Trump’s corruption here.

"Criminality is so rampant inside CBP that it has seen one of its own agents or officers arrested every 24 to 36 hours since 2005... "Over the 20 years from 2005 to 2024 — the last year numbers are available — at least 4,913 CBP officers and Border Patrol agents have been arrested themselves"

PRIMARIES ARE GOOD They test the candidates and show who has skills and appeal. So what's to worry about in Michigan? Nothing. And note that only 1 anonymous person is quoted in this article expressing worry over the fact that they're having a spirited primary. www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

Trump is demanding that taxpayers pay him $10 billion, and guess who'll decide whether he gets it? He will! Even in the most corrupt presidency ever, this bit of self-dealing stands out. My latest at MSNOW: www.ms.now/opinion/trum...

My piece on our break with our closest neighbor and ally:

I have a riff in "The Infernal Triangle" about a Timseman writing around an obvious fact in so artful a way it's like he's mastered a journalistic version of quantum physics--all for the benefit of not telling the truth.

A Minneapolis friend of mine was telling me how the misogynistic and racist underpinning of this organization are wholly on display in every interaction. Quote: “Watching how many of these agents will talk back to/berate women, but be completely silent when faced by men, has been very telling.”

Everyone should understand what’s on display in Minneapolis: A bunch of insecure, frightened man-babies modeling the absolute worst version of masculinity, facing off against people displaying genuine courage. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/the-tiny-t...

Good day to remember that two dozen women went public with their stories of Donald Trump sexually assaulting them, at enormous personal cost. For every one who did that, there had to have been, what - dozens? hundreds? - who decided there was nothing to be gained by telling their own stories.

This can't be true, I was told many times that every American parent wants to have their local Republican congressman performing genital inspections in the middle school girls locker room before every gym class

And of course Scott Bessent will authorize a settlement for the full amount. "Corruption" is no longer sufficient to describe what Trump is doing. We need a new term for this level of ravenous self-dealing. news.bloombergtax.com/daily-tax-re...

Checked the theater nearest to me showing "Melania" and over 5 showings on its opening day tomorrow a total of 2 tickets have been sold

New Pew poll with 8,500 respondents shows Trump approval falling to 37%, with support slipping among Republicans www.pewresearch.org/politics/202...

"I want to protect the people that for the first time in their lives feel good about themselves, they feel like they've - that they're wealthy people." He is literally unable to imagine someone who is not rich having a fulfilling life.

Look at how hard they have to bend over backwards to avoid stating the obvious. COULD IT BE that Amazon was trying to curry favor with Trump, or did they sincerely think "Melania" will be a monster hit? Critics are wondering! Will the mystery of their motives ever be solved? Who knows!

This is sort of a throughline in cases of excessive force used by law enforcement. The civilian is supposed to perfectly adhere to some unwritten code of conduct; the armed professional supposedly trained for such situations is only human & must be given lattitude if they succumb to fear and rage.

I'm genuinely curious to find out how they managed to make a full-length documentary about Melania, who is literally the most boring public figure in the world. She has never accomplished anything, never had an interesting thought or idea - what could the movie actually be about?

When we learned last year that Bessent got in a shoving match with Elon Musk in the White House, I'm sure some people said "Huh, maybe he's an okay guy" but in actuality Bessent is a smug asshole, and he just happened to get in a fight with another smug asshole

From the Heritage Foundation's "news" organ, some profound insights on the minds of today's uppity broads www.dailysignal.com/2026/01/27/w...

"President Trump is a very strong leader, and I hope he will rise to this moment and unite the country." Such a courageous statement from Sam Altman to OpenAI employees. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/b...

The only remaining good thing about the Washington Post opinion section is the comments, which on every article is nothing but readers saying "What the frack is wrong with you people? You have destroyed this once-great newspaper, and I shall curse you with my last breath."

It's going to take DECADES to rebuild the federal government after what Trump and Musk and Vought and the rest of them did. www.science.org/content/arti...

Crackerjack Trump team continues to impress with its opsec www.politico.com/news/2026/01...

Marinating in their social media bubble, Republicans thought everyone agreed with them that immigration is inherently bad and must be addressed with violence. But that was never what most Americans believed. paulwaldman.substack.com/p/what-trump...

Not here to tell protesters what to do, but I think regularly blasting some Les Mis at protests would really rile Trump up, and I would find that amusing.

My god

Q for anyone who works at the VA: Has the VA secretary or leadership said anything internally addressing the fucking elephant in the room that one of their VA colleagues was just shot to death by a federal agent? Hearing from one source it's been a cone of silence in there, no comms to staff.

Yes. I had to learn in my years in newsrooms that “this is not new” was editor code for “I do not agree with this.” Pointing how many pieces they ran on whatever left punching theme was popular in that given era just annoyed them.

Cruz vs. Vance in a rizzless race to the bottom as they split the 10% normie Republican vote, allowing Kid Rock to secure the 2028 nomination.

One of the things that shows you how things are changing is that ordinary Democratic politicians (Pingree is pretty progressive but hardly a radical) are speaking in increasingly outraged terms. They know what's in the air.

Jeff Bezos, who is currently worth $250 billion, spent $500 million on a yacht. He could give the Post all the resources it needs until the end of time. If you're going to kill one of America's great newspapers, why not just sell it to someone who gives a crap?

One of the funny things about this is that if Trump hadn't done that stupid "51st state" stuff and imposed all those tariffs, right now Pierre Poilievre would be prime minister and Trump's biggest international hype man

In Hillbilly Elegy, Vance lectured Appalachians for being lazy bums. He lectured "childless cat ladies" he claimed were unhappy. Now he's lecturing every woman with a white collar job for living a meaningless life. Such a smug, condescending jackass. No wonder everyone hates him.

Somebody (maybe @charliejane.bsky.social and @annaleen.bsky.social?) pointed out that now when a movie wants to show a villain revealing their plan for world domination they have them doing it in a TED talk, and now I see it all the fricking time. Enough with the TED talk-as-exposition, I beg you.

Trump's economy is so "great" that Las Vegas is willing to take a 27% shave to lure Canadian tourists back to Sin City. Are we tired of winning yet?https://www.ctvnews.ca/calgary/article/we-miss-our-best-friends-las-vegas-hotels-accepting-canadian-dollar-at-par-to-spark-tourism/