“Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.” — Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Happy Thursday.
Rick Wilson sums up Trump's NATO Disaster thusly:
[Once] you strip away the defense-spending-target ranting, Greenland bluster, the Patriot licensing announcements, and the carefully usual tiresomely lawyered communiqué language. The leaders of the Western alliance have stopped treating Donald Trump like a problematic ally.
They’ve started treating him like the drunk Facebook uncle at Thanksgiving.
Trump’s arrival — angry, ranting, gaffe-tastic and trailing clouds of incoherence — generated a cottage-industry of blooper-reels. Via Tommy Christopher:
At a press op with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, Trump made up a new president of Ukraine (or was it just Freudian), mixing Zelenskyy up with Putin. He tried to make a recovery by pretending he meant to do that, but he was pointing right at Zelenskyy.
He also overthrew Japan and installed a theocratic government, and called President Obama’s Iran deal the “JCPOC” — sounds very DEI.
As Wilson writes, our former allies are no longer scared of him. Instead, he has become a punch line.
The man is 80 years old, and it is showing, publicly, on the world stage, in front of the leaders of thirty-one allied nations and every camera in Europe. He’s become a clownish figure of eye-rolling and quiet insult.
I think we should consider this progress.
**
But let’s dwell for a moment on his mode of departure. On Wednesday, Trump flew out of Turkey on the old Air Force One instead of his new billion-dollar Qatari-gifted plane, because it turns out that the wingéd bribe is a ginormously lame sitting duck.
The Metaphor Gods never sleep, do they?
Via MS NOW: “Officials say Trump switched out new Air Force One over security concerns”
President Donald Trump swapped out his new Qatari-gifted Air Force One for his flight from the NATO summit to the United Kingdom over concerns that the gifted aircraft lacks the secure communications systems and military defenses needed to safely manage a rapidly escalating conflict with Iran, according to two former national security officials familiar with the matter.
So, let’s review here….
The Qataris gave Trump the fanciest lagniappe of all — a jumbo bribe on wings that touched every one of Trump’s erogenous zones of avarice and excess. Trump’s new “Palace in the Sky” was accessorized and gold-gilted to Trump’s specifications, complete with faux-books and all the luxuries befitting a Middle Eastern potentate.1
But they left out all the stuff that you actually need on a real Air Force One.
Even as the taxpayers were shelling out hundreds of billions of dollars on the new jet critics noted that “the gifted plane lacks key military defenses of the original Air Force One, including the ability to refuel mid-air and missile-defense systems, according to a law enforcement official briefed on its capabilities.”
The Qatari Boeing VC-25B — originally manufactured as a passenger jet in 2012 — does not have some of the original Air Force One’s equipment, and some of the jet’s capabilities have not been fully tested, the sources added.
“This plane was built for aesthetics, not mission,” one former national security official said. “We know about its paint, its leather seats. But we don’t know its capabilities.”
Perhaps you are detecting a pattern here.
Exit take: It will not surprise you to learn that Trump is lying about the AF1 FUBAR.
BONUS: “Reflecting Pool being drained – again – as Trump administration tries once more to fix landmark”
Exit Platner
Facing allegations of rape, and abandoned by many of his most loyal supporters, Graham Platner dropped his senate bid last night. But his withdrawal did not win points for graciousness. Here is MS NOW host Cathrine Rampell:
Well, that was Graham Platner officially announcing that he is dropping off of the ballot for {Senate}, but taking zero responsibility for any of the scandals and more troubling things in his past that have destroyed that campaign, instead blaming, let’s see, corporate media, the political establishment, lots of hate for the political establishment, saying that we banded together, we did it the way we were told we were supposed to make change, and we won. And now they are not going to let us have it.
So, lots of finger pointing and blame and not taking any responsibility. Note that whoever he conceives of as the political establishment, you do have many of his once allies, including Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna, also calling for him to drop out….
He also said during that 10 minute video that all we were asking for was health care, was to end the genocide, to use our taxpayer dollars at home to uplift our communities instead of waging war overseas. We were asking for a fair system. We are asking for an end to the corruption.
So, lots of allegations that he was being taken out by nefarious forces that are forcing him to suspend his campaign, rather than the drip, drip, drip of scandal after scandal that has dogged his campaign and that have littered the last few months with red flags.
**
Maine’s Democrats announced they will now hold a convention to pick his replacement.
The convention would include roughly 600 people who would be selected by county-level Democratic committees, according to two people familiar with the specific plans and granted anonymity to share them. Every county committee would have to meet prior to the state nominating convention to elect 500 of those delegates, and the 100 current state committee members will also serve as delegates. State committee members voted to approve the plan Wednesday evening at the end of a lengthy emergency meeting.
**
“Collins’ allies think Platner's exit makes her reelection bid tougher.”
According to a person familiar with the campaign’s thinking, granted anonymity to discuss it, Collins’ team had long viewed Platner as a uniquely vulnerable opponent whose personal controversies could help offset one of the biggest challenges she faces in 2026: running as a blue-state Republican in the Trump era.
“She can certainly win, but they didn’t want to change candidates,” the person familiar with the campaign’s thinking said. “The stuff we already knew about Platner was going to propel Collins to overcome the Trump anchor. Now it’s going to be a Democrat with a cleaner record, presumably.”
And, speaking of sexual assault…
This is actually a pretty remarkable split screen.
While Democrats declare that a credible allegation for sexual assault is disqualifying, the GOP continues to shrug at the actual adjudication of sexual assault charges against Donald Trump.
ICYMI: “Judge Orders $5 Million Trump Judgment Be Released to E. Jean Carroll” - The New York Times
A federal judge on Wednesday ordered that the writer E. Jean Carroll should promptly receive a $5 million jury award, days after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by President Trump and despite his last-minute attempt to get the justices to reconsider.
In a two-page ruling, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of Manhattan federal court cited the Supreme Court’s June 29 order denying Mr. Trump’s request that the justices review the matter. That cleared the way for the funds, which Mr. Trump had deposited with the court, to be released to Ms. Carroll.
A Manhattan jury awarded the multimillion-dollar judgment to Ms. Carroll in May 2023 after finding him liable for sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. The jury also found that Mr. Trump defamed Ms. Carroll by calling her allegations against him “a Hoax and a lie” on social media. He has continued to deny assaulting Ms. Carroll.
Nota bene
Tom Nichols, in the Atlantic: “Iran, Not Trump, Is in Control of This War” (Gift link)
If Donald Trump ever had any control over the war he started with Iran, he’s lost it. The Iranians are now setting the terms of this conflict and are routinely humiliating the American president. The “cease-fire” Trump declared last month—a move probably meant to both soothe international markets and avert legislative action from the United States Congress—never really existed, because neither side ever ceased firing. The situation is now back to a kind of slow-motion punch-up: In the past few days, the Iranians struck three tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, the Americans attacked some 80 targets in Iran, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps now claims it hit some 85 U.S.-affiliated targets in Bahrain and Kuwait.
**
ICYMI: My podcast w/ General Mark Hertling: “Are We at Wat With Iran Again? (And Why the World Doesn’t Trust the US Anymore)
Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed
Thursday dogs
While my daughter and grandsons visit the U.S., our French dog, Zok, is relaxing in Bordeaux and showing off his new boots.
Back home, Eli is wearing the wrap that dries him off after a romp in the lake. (So is Auggie, seen here in the background.)
Flashback to May 2025, when the winged bribe was first announced:
Let’s not make this complicated.
Of course it’s a bribe.
Everyone knows it’s a bribe. The Qataris know it’s a bribe. Trump knows it’s a bribe. Even MAGA simps know it’s a bribe.
And you’re not crazy to think that it’s brazenly corrupt and illegal with hair on it. It’s exactly this sort of thing that the Founders had in mind when they wrote the Emoluments Clause.
The Qataris have been buying influence, access and clout for years, so they are veterans of payola. They could have given Trump piles of gold bars like the ones used to bribe Senator Bob Menendez; or envelopes of cash like Spiro Agnew pocketed. They could simply have purchased billions of dollars of $TRUMP meme coins. Or they could have given him secret accounts like the ones they used to finance Hamas and other terror groups.
What do you give to a president who already has enriched himself and his family by an average of $1 billion per month since taking office?
What could a guy — the most powerful man on the planet, who is planning 20 branded real estate projects around the globe — possibly want?
The “Palace in the Sky” comes with a twist designed to skirt the plain meaning of the law: It goes to the US Government to be used as Trump’s bespoke Air Force One, and then will be transferred to his presidential library in January 2029, where it will be available for Trump’s perpetual personal use.
This is all kosher, and not-at-all unconstitutional, says Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi — who until recently was paid $115,000 a month as a registered foreign lobbyist for the Qatari government.
Hello. You have reached Tim Coffey's "To the Contrary" autoresponder. You are receiving this message because the content in this morning's newsletter -- the president's blinged out, Qatari-gifted Air Force One not meeting security and performance specifications -- was easily foreseen the nanosecond Qatar gifted the plane to the president. As Mr. Coffey is a very senior engineer who understands requirements and the potential consequences of not meeting requirements, he is not the least bit surprised that fucking idiot Donald Trump does not understand requirements and the potential consequences of not meeting requirements. Nonetheless, Mr. Coffey appreciates a good laugh, and he also appreciates yet another opportunity to rub the idiocy of the president in the faces of credulous MAGA rubes. You will receive no further comment from Mr. Coffey today. Thank you, and have a nice day.
The way Platner exited comes as no surprise - once you arrive at the conclusion that he is unfit to be a Senator, it becomes pretty clear in one's mind that he will continue lying and blaming everyone but himself.
He's gone - that's what counts. Let's not focus on him one minute longer. The damage he has caused merits giving him no more thought. We have a "concerned" Collins to defeat!