The Trump administration until it stops acting like it's at war (from The Wire): “Fact is, we went to war, and now there ain’t no going back. I mean, shit, it’s what war is, you know? Once you in it, you in it. If it’s a lie, then we fight on that lie. But we gotta fight.”

Now THIS is how you win by losing! Or at least it's in the right direction. Wish he listened to my advice about this over a month ago: michaelzigismund.substack.com/p/how-a-loss...

Here's my newest Zigismini, in which Trump has the good sense to withdraw from Syria... but he just can't quit Iran. (link in comments)

After over a year targeting Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, what's behind the Trump administration's recent kid gloves approach? In my latest, I argue it may have something to do with high prices these days. If I'm right, Trump should have never started the feud. (link in comments)

While we're on the topic of Orban, remember when Trump campaigned hard against Canada's Mark Carney, who ended up becoming Prime Minister? This week his party won special elections, handing them the majority they need to pass laws without opposition support.

A medical examiner ruled that immigration agents murdered a vetted refugee with visual impairment. I have some thoughts. (Link in comments)

If you had read my Zigismini last week, the fact that Trump is now feuding with the Pope would not be a surprise. (Though its precise manifestation should shock everyone, Christian or otherwise.) Subscribe (it's free!) for more prescient analysis :) michaelzigismund.substack.com/i/193537239/...

This is how Bruce Springsteen opened his concert in Los Angeles last night. 🔥🔥 Footage from @margaret_nagle on Threads.

My last name is Zigismund. Here are a digest of short thoughts called Zigisminis. …You understand. This inaugural Zigismini covers recent American immigration policy and the Iran war, as well as some things I’m reading and a jazz recommendation. Link in comments.

#Ukraine has been aiding Trump’s war effort. Europe has helped a little but has mostly remained neutral. And Russia has been helping #Iran. Trump’s response? Lift sanctions on Russia and threaten to abandon Ukraine to punish Europe. Every day is April Fools Day with this war.

If this were true, he'd just do it (and he should)

In my latest post, I list all the reported intel claims about the war. Not one supports the claims of this ever-escalating administration. (link in comments)

I'm not a lawyer does lack of evidence impede your case www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

The President, to be President, had to swear an oath to the Constitution. This is not just a violation of the Constitution. It is an *admission* to violating the Constitution.

When you're reading about the Watergate White House and realize you might as well be reading about today's White House. From All the President’s Men (2014 ed), p. 84.

If only there was a solution to the US demographic crisis... (image courtesy of ChatGPT)

If only Trump had the capacity to end the war on his own. I wrote about the benefits *to him* of doing so here: michaelzigismund.substack.com/p/how-a-loss...

The Most Transparent Administration in History!™️ keeps doing its thing BTW both Republican counterparts – Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, and Sen. Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee – agree on this

From Vietnam to Afghanistan, the American people learned years later that the US government lied to them about how well its wars were going. This is the first war in which the US government is actively deluding itself, and the American people can see it happening in real time.

Milton Mayer, in They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955), wishes the subjects of his Nazi study (his “friends”) felt collective shame. ...But he admits he feels no such shame as an American about American crimes.

What national debt? Margaret Thatcher: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

Here's my latest (much shorter!) piece. In which I compare Trump to Washington... if he does the right thing. Link in comments.

In light of the news that sanctions on economic activity are bad and unnecessary against an enemy even in wartime, what possible argument is there for maintaining economic sanctions on anyone ever?

-_-

My first Substack is live! A year ago, #MahmoudKhalil and #KilmarAbregoGarcia were arrested. 255 years before then was the #BostonMassacre. #JohnAdams's decision at the time teaches us that our liberties depend on defending the rights of the unpopular. Link in comments.

This is the dumbest timeline

I admit, I'm a NATO skeptic. Yet if I were president, I'd think my allies wouldn’t treat me with such disdain. After all, I would avoid insulting, tariffing, and threatening to conquer them. But maybe that’s why I’m not president.

The closer a promise from this administration comes to upholding the Constitution's protections, the faster it seems to expire

Our pro-death penalty administration may be pleased to hear the no-quarter crime is “especially forbidden” and “subject to the penalty of death” under US law.

TIL high #oil prices are good

More data for your America First scorecard: * Americans' finances wasted * Americans killed and injured * Iran now shipping more oil than it did before the war

NYT with the hot take: "The president sometimes exaggerates or is imprecise..."

Regime change was never even likely. “The report [was] completed about a week before the United States and Israel initiated the war on Feb. 28[.]” Casualty tracker for context.

Remarkable passages on how Germans slipped into accepting Nazi atrocities like boiled frogs – especially the highlighted section. From Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 (1955), chapter 13 (“But Then It Was Too Late”), pp. 168-71.

Why is the Trump administration so worried about its depleted munitions stockpile? Maybe because it keeps going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

Something to think about the next time he brays about the national deficit

For your America First scorecard Meanwhile Trump & Co. promise more casualties and refuse to rule out "boots on the ground"

"Successful" seems to be the best possible word for this best possible scenario

Among the mysteries future historians will have to piece together is how any of these people continued to show their faces in public

Awkward: <Charlie Kirk, in June of 2025, explaining why a massive US war against Iran, and an attempt to facilitate regime change, as pushed by people like Lindsey Graham and John Bolton, is "pathologically insane":> substack.com/@greenwald/n...

I was quoted in the New York Times yesterday. We're appealing. Link in comments. (Note that, although asylum details are typically private, we received permission to discuss them publicly.)

Probably nothing to see here from The Most Transparent Administration in History!™

The Most Transparent Administration in History!™ doing what it does best

“One year ago, our country was dead. We were absolutely dead. Our country was ready to fail. Totally fail. Now we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world.” – President Donald Trump, 12/17/2025

Compared to the globe’s stocks, America’s stocks are failing.

"We’re respected more now than we’ve ever been respected." - Trump, 1/11/2026

If this government is so against vaccines, how did it get its immunity to telling the truth? This case involves another Minnesota shooting. The agent fired “to defend his life” from a weapons assault that we now know never happened.

What's the problem? As the President said when people first complained about the economic costs of tariffs, just buy fewer pencils and dolls.

This is my close family. They just lost their home :( please donate and share! gofund.me/24ebbd544