Monsters run our government. We have to disempower and get rid of them ASAP. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/05/u... Gift link:

Excellent headline, excellent feaming for your lead story, @nytimes.com.👍🏻👏💯 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/05/u...

I’m a big Dan @osbornforne.bsky.social fan—the economic populist running for US Senate in my home state of Nebraska. And in his new all-policy campaign video, a fun surprise—union-mechanic Dan can do a fantastic midcentury mid-Atlantic elitist accent parodying his rich-heir GOP incumbent opponent!

Looking at the polls, finding it hard to restrain midterm hopes. In CNN’s new poll, Trump’s approval is down to 35%. Independents anti by 73% to 26%. Men now dislike him almost as much as women. A majority of white voters disapprove—even non-college-grads. And voters under 35—80% to 20% anti-Trump.

15 minutes in and he has said absolutely nothing he hasn’t said dozens of times.

Trump going off script tonight—“Like that beautiful big rocket launch of mine couple of hours ago, biggest ever, I’ve fired thousands of beautiful deadly little American rockets at Iran!”

An essay in the new Loneliness-themed issue of the great literary quarterly @prairie-schooner.bsky.social. About Edward Hopper and New York City and Nebraska and me. prairieschooner.unl.edu/excerpt/soli... prairieschooner.unl.edu/issue/spring...

Just since last fall: Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens. Rod Dreher, Megyn Kelly—and now right-wing media superstar Alex Jones abandons the dear leader, with a particularly frank, blunt RIP.

I asked Claude AI to explain the extreme Trump Administration support for Orban’s party vs the strong democratic opposition in Hungary, with Vance going even visiting in person. Then I asked about any real differences between U.S. & Russian policy. Interesting answer. Especially the last paragraph.

My friend last week the day he turned 100.

As I’ve said for years, he’s a mob boss. youtu.be/np_CXA6YAVI?...

The weekly papal rebuke of Vance continues.

Democrats: sure, vent against @Fetterman.senate.gov, and complain about the leadership if you want, but IMHO spending time hating on elected Democrats like @slotkin.senate.gov is squandering your energies.

Our group yesterday.

Very good @ezraklein.bsky.social piece on AI, including the bots’ annoying intrusive goody-goody assistant traits. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/29/o...

Good lede.

This headline makes me recall the Sunday morning in 1983 that I was the one Time magazine writer on duty in New York. I wrote the cover story about the Islamic Jihad suicide truck bomb at the barracks of 1800 U.S. Marines in Beirut, killing 241 of them.

Remarkable fact from @dkthomp.bsky.social: "Between December 2025 and March 2026, the AI lab Anthropic more than doubled its annual recurring revenue from $9 billion to more than $20 billion. According to several analysts, there is no record of any company growing this fast at this scale...ever. "

Tomorrow the weather all over the country will be sunny and pleasant. So come out and show America and the world you’re for freedom and fairness & against corruption, chaos and cruelty. It’s fun! I’ll be marching in Manhattan. www.nokings.org

My first job out of college was writing Gene Shalit's daily minute-and-a-half NBC Radio Network commentary. Great gig, amazing boss. He just had his 100th birthday, healthy and chipper and reading as voraciously as ever. Huzzah! From a book foreword I wrote in 2014, the passage celebrating him.

1st year of congestion pricing—drivers paying $9 fee to enter Manhattan below Central Park: • 11% fewer cars & trucks, traffic 5% faster • NJ tunnel traffic 51% & 25% faster • 9% fewer people injured in crashes • 17% fewer noise complaints • $548M revenue for subways-busses • 9% more subway riders

Deutsche Bank strategist Maximillian Uleer is today’s winner. He devised a TACO prediction metric: when Trump’s approval ratings drop & inflation expectations rise & stock prices fall + Treasury bill yields rise Trump chickens out and changes course.

In the brand new @Reuters.com Ipsos poll, approval of Trump plummeted to 36% and disapproval rose to 62%. Last week it was 40-58%. And his approval on the economy is down to 29%, much lower than Biden’s at his very lowest, when inflation had spiked to 9%. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

TACO: reasonable odds at this point that Iran will effectively win this war.

Definition of Catch-22.

Trump yesterday said the Strait of Hormuz will be open “very soon” and “jointly controlled.” By whom? “Maybe me? Maybe me. Me and the ayatollah. Whoever the ayatollah is.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/u...

TACO

Trump yesterday: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” Appalling. On the other hand, another of the many de facto permissions for the spontaneous day of global celebrations when his day finally comes.

Beautiful heartfelt answer on Iran from NY congressional Democrat @PatRyanUC —West Point, 2 Iraq combat tours, 2 Bronze Stars—on the draft dodger president and his minions calling war skeptics unpatriotic: “one of the most cynical, cowardly things” he’s seen in D.C. www.instagram.com/reel/DVvr0xP...

Remember Baghdad Bob? We’ve got an entire regime of them.

An exhibit in the covid gallery of The Museum of The 2020s

All part of the leader’s plan.

This early 2020s picture (at a Saudi-sponsored golf tournament at Trump’s New Jersey golf club) reminds me of this early 1930s picture of the Führer with his close friend and original Nazi paramilitary leader Ernst Rohm. Whom he had killed in the 1934 Night of the Long Knives.

Excellent cover, @economist.com.

Thanks, Clyde Haberman, for digging up and quoting me in this obituary. Don't remember writing it, or for that matter ever seeing a Chuck Norris movie, but the piece holds up okay, so that's good. time.com/archive/6701...

His hero Putin made veiled nuclear threats early in Russia’s non-victorious war on Ukraine, then got explicit after 7 months of failing to win.

"They will want to look into President Trump's eyes as they thank him, but they must not. They must not. They must not cast their gaze upon his glory, for they are not worthy. They should look to the dirt and the worms and count themselves blessed to be embraced by his watchful eye. ALL HAIL TRUMP!"

Good god.

Excellent lucid explanation by University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers exactly why and how the economic cost of Trump’s stupid unnecessary war to Americans will be many hundreds of billions of dollars.

After posing for decades as a brilliant global dealmaker and businessman, then confecting a delusional fantasy of getting the Nobel Peace Prize, this is what the ignorant elderly draft-dodging heir has wrought.

On @TheDailyShow.com last night, really brilliant 9-minute bit of Trump explaining his war. Starts about 10 minutes in. youtu.be/a2aYd-XHzsI?...

Remarkable chart. Takeaway: in northern Europe they work fewer hours and earn more money. Not to mention the universal health care and free higher education.

America First • Russia's oil revenues skyrocket and no longer sanctioned. • China gets its Iranian oil through the Strait of Hormuz fine. • In the U.S. so far it costs $10-$20 more to gas up a car, $30-$60 more to fill a pickup with diesel.

Sneak peak at Trump’s last scene. youtu.be/_PCCa4ecJds?...

Trump-appointed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, 11 tours as a special forces solider in the Middle East, Republican right-winger, supported Trump, believed he wouldn’t start needless wars.

Like a new ethnic group. Or extraterrestrials.

Last night: “i do believe I’ll be having the honor of taking Cuba. Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I can do anything I want with it.” 2005 callback: “I don’t even wait. When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” share.google/QOCIlgoiAwJE...

As pathetic as it gets. Our failing, humiliated, abandoned commander-in-chief last night took to his little web site to post three different MAGA media stories about a crowd in Miami cheering him—two months ago, at the college football championship game.

Very good super-cut from @Warnock.senate.gov of Trump and his flying monkeys the last few years on what a terrible idea starting a war with Iran would be, and promising he’d never do it. www.instagram.com/reel/DV1cu2I... @warnock.senate.gov

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius: “There will be no military participation.. We have a situation which we did not provoke.. This war started without any consultations.. What does Trump expect from a handful of European frigates in Strait of Hormuz that the mighty US Navy can't manage alone?"