Donald Trump Accidentally Tells the Truth

Plus: The toxic debate over rape

In another century and a political universe far, far away, Michael Kinsley once defined a political “gaffe” as a comment where “a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn't supposed to say.”

The whole concept of the “gaffe” has fallen into disuse; or, rather, it’s been bludgeoned by a political culture flooded with bluster, buncombe, bullshit, and a politician-in-chief whose rare statements of obvious truths are almost always accidental.

But, lo and behold, we had a Kinsley gaffe sighting Tuesday.

As inflation explodes and anxiety ripples through the economy, Trump was asked whether he was thinking about Americans’ financial situation in his dealings with Iran. Trump replied, “Not even a little bit.”

“The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran — they can’t have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”

That, notes Ron Fournier, is “a remarkable confession from a man who vowed in his election campaign to tame inflation and avoid foreign wars.” And so much for the “[Fill in the blank] is for they/them, President Trump is for you” populist messaging.

But let’s be clear here: What he said was obviously true. He really doesn’t think about anybody. He really doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the average American. If you’re not hanging out at Mar-a-Lago, you’re invisible.

We’ve known this for a very long time, but it’s become increasingly obvious as he indulges his obsessions with gilded ballrooms, reflecting pools, golden icons, and stuffing his own pockets with endless graft,

Tuesday he just said it out loud. For once, he told the truth. Obvious. Unvarnished.

“I don’t think about anybody.”

And that’s why it resonated: because most Americans had already figured that out. Check out the trend lines of Trump’s approval on what Axios is calling ‘Trump’s 5-alarm economy”: A new CNN poll found that 70% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy — a benchmark that never crossed 50% in his first term, even during the pandemic. Seventy-seven percent of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, say Trump’s policies have driven up the cost of living in their own community.”¹

Happy Wednesday.

A reminder (especially today) that I never promised you a safe space. Just straight, sober, sane, snarky commentary.

What China Thinks

As Trump and his planeloads of oligarchs and egos head off to a high-stakes summit, it’s worth noting how the Chinese regard American power in the Age of Trump. Via the NYT: “China Increasingly Views Trump’s America as an Empire in Decline.”

In January, a nationalistic Beijing think tank affiliated with Renmin University published a triumphant report about Mr. Trump’s first year back in office. The report argued that his tariffs, attacks on allies, anti-immigration policies and assaults on the American political establishment had inadvertently strengthened China while weakening the United States.

Its title: “Thank Trump.”

The report called Mr. Trump an “accelerator of American political decay,” with the United States sliding toward polarization, institutional dysfunction and even “Latin American-style instability.” His hostility toward China, the authors argued, was a “reverse booster” that unified the country and helped bring about its strategic self-reliance.

“At this turning point in history,” the authors wrote, “what we hear is the heavy and haunting toll of an empire’s evening bell.”

Exit take: I’m guessing this was not what the average Trump voter thought they were getting.

**

Trump Blinks (Again)

The Poison of Hyper-Tribalism

(WARNING: Graphic descriptions below. Also, a reminder that this is not a safe space.)

“It’s a simple proposition,” Nichols Kristof wrote the other day. “Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape.”

But, as we’re seeing, there is nothing simple about that proposition. To the contrary, we are in a media firestorm on the issue — and it could have serious ramifications for the midterms.

The report on Hamas rapes

A massive report details and documents the “‘systematic’ rape and sexual violence during Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel.”

Hamas militants and their allies raped, assaulted and sexually tortured their victims during and after the October 7, 2023 terror attack on southern Israel “to maximize pain and suffering,” a landmark new report has concluded.

Shared first with CNN, the report presents the most comprehensive body of evidence yet of sexual and gender-based violence against women, men and children, which it describes as “systematic, widespread, and integral to” the assault.

“The most important finding is the fact that the sexual violence on October 7 and against hostages in captivity has been a calculated strategy by Hamas,” lead author and human rights expert Cochav Elkayam-Levy told CNN.

The report by The Civil Commission | הנציבות האזרחית, includes a massive trove of evidence, including:

• Over 10,000 photographs and video segments

• More than 1,800 hours of visual material

• 430+ testimonies and interviews with survivors, witnesses, released hostages, experts, and family members

• Victims from 52 nationalities, in addition to Israeli victims.

The evidence obviously poses a grave moral and political challenge to Hamas rape-denialists like left-wing influencer Hasan Piker, who has defended Hamas and denied the sexual violence.

“There is no evidence” he claimed. “Mass rapes directed by Hamas did not happen,” Piker has declared. And even if the rapes occurred, Piker has made it clear that he doesn’t really care.

“It doesn’t matter if fucking rapes happened on Oct. 7,” Piker said on his show. “That doesn’t change the dynamic for me even this much. So that’s the other part of this problem that many people can’t contend with. Like, the Palestinian resistance is not perfect. They’re not, like, so good, they have magical bullets.”

And Piker mocked a social media account, StopAntisemitism, that posted about Hamas’s rapes of Israeli hostages, saying that the organization was having “rape fantasies” and “rape hallucinations” about Oct. 7.

Here’s Dana Bash on Piker’s positions:

As recently as last month, Piker doubled down on his defense of Hamas in an interview with Pod Host Jon Favreau. Asked whether he still thought Hamas was “a thousand times better than Israel,” Piker said: “I do mean it.”

As I’ve written before, this also poses a challenge to the commentators and politicians who have decided to embrace Piker this year.

But there’s more….

**

L’Affaire Kristof

The rape debate has become even more toxic with the publication of a lengthy, detailed, and controversial piece in The New York Times, by veteran columnist Nicholas Kristof: “The Silence That Meets the Rape of Palestinians, in which he accuses Israel itself of “systematic sexual violence” that is used “as part of an organized state policy.”

Palestinians have recounted to me a pattern of widespread Israeli sexual violence against men, women and even children — by soldiers, settlers, interrogators in the Shin Bet internal security agency and, above all, prison guards.

There is no evidence that Israeli leaders order rapes. But in recent years they have built a security apparatus where sexual violence has become, as a United Nations report put it last year, one of Israel’s “standard operating procedures” and “a major element in the ill treatment of Palestinians.” A report out last month, from the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based advocacy group often critical of Israel, concludes that Israel employs “systematic sexual violence” that is “widely practiced as part of an organized state policy.”

The blowback has been furious and sustained. Some of it appears justified. Critics have raised what appear to be credible objections to some details of Kristof’s piece. (His refence to the use of dogs is especially problematic.) See: “Nick Kristof’s ‘Dog Torture’ Claim About Israel Doesn’t Pass Muster.”

But it’s hard to escape the impression that much of the reaction seems driven by ideology and us v. them partisanship rather than a good-faith search for the truth.

A reminder is in order: It’s not impossible to regard Hamas as distinctly evil entity, while also regarding Benjamin Netanyahu’s response as monstrous. But that sort of balance is hard to find among the loudest and most strident activists on the right and left. This is the poison of hyper-tribalism.

The Banter’s Ben Cohen raises this warning: “When Israel’s Defenders Sound Like October 7 Deniers,” which he illustrates with this montage of anti-Kristof blowback:

Writes Cohen:

To many parts of the left, Hamas’s brutal assault on innocent kids at a music festival has been minimized or in many cases completely forgotten. Israel attacked Gaza for no reason and inflicted suffering on millions of Palestinians because Israel is an evil colonizing white supremacist state.

To me, this was a clear case of political tribalism gone mad.

The logic is uncompromising: if you are pro-Palestinian, you must condone everything Palestinians do and condemn everything Israelis do. There is no room for moral complexity. There is one grand narrative where your chosen heroes can do no wrong, while the enemy can do no right.

But this logic works in reverse too, as we are now seeing in the furious response to Nicholas Kristof’s latest piece in The New York Times about allegations of sexual violence against Palestinians in Israeli detention. Kristof is not a fringe anti-Israel activist or a tribalist propagandist. He is one of the most establishment liberal columnists in America, and his piece draws on testimony, human rights reporting, and a broader body of evidence that has been building for some time. The allegations are horrific: rape, sexual humiliation, threats of sexual assault, violence against prisoners’ genitals, and the use of sexual abuse as a tool of domination and degradation.

The response from many pro-Israel voices has been almost identical to the reaction we saw from parts of the left after October 7th. The story is fake. The witnesses are lying. It is blood-libel. The New York Times is corrupt and antisemitic.

My bottom-line: Follow the facts. Be skeptical. But do not let hyper-tribalism warp your basic sense of decency. The comment section today is WIDE OPEN:

Finally…

The most interesting political story of the day: “Democrats pick Nebraska Senate nominee who could drop out and back independent Dan Osborn.”

Cindy Burbank won the Democratic Senate primary in Nebraska, NBC News projects, potentially clearing the way for independent Dan Osborn to take on GOP Sen. Pete Ricketts head-to-head in the fall.

Burbank defeated pastor William Forbes for the Democratic nomination, while Ricketts easily won his Republican primary.

Democrats have not won a Senate race in Nebraska since 2006. But Osborn has been gearing up for a run against Ricketts after running a surprisingly competitive first campaign as an independent in 2024. A steamfitter and former union organizer, Osborn lost to GOP Sen. Deb Fischer by 7 points as President Donald Trump carried the state by 20 points.

Wednesday dogs

Eli on watch.

1. Via Axios this morning:

The big picture: The affordability crisis that fueled Trump’s return to power has become a five-alarm threat to his presidency — even as GDP growth, fueled largely by the AI boom, remains strong on paper.

1. Prices are surging: Inflation spiked to 3.8% in April as the Iran war pushed the national average price of gas above $4.50 a gallon….

2. Paychecks are shrinking: Tuesday’s inflation report showed that prices are outpacing wages for the first time in three years, erasing gains in real purchasing power….

3. Debt is mounting: Americans are increasingly leaning on credit cards and loans to absorb rising costs, with consumer borrowing posting its biggest monthly jump in March since late 2022….

4. Confidence is collapsing: Consumer sentiment has cratered to record lows as Americans grow pessimistic about the economy and their own financial futures….

5. Main Street is souring: The National Federation of Independent Business says optimism around future business conditions and expansion plans has fallen to its lowest level since before Trump’s reelection…