Trump Loves the Smell of Brutality in the Morning
“Chipocalypse Now"
As I was saying (in yesterday’s newsletter), the guy who promised to end “endless wars” is itching for a war of his own. And not just with Venezuela.
Let us pause for a moment to contemplate the bizarre fact that the President of the United States posted this on Saturday:
Are you not entertained? Are the libs not well and truly triggered? But let’s briefly break this down:
Trump’s post is an AI-generated image that refers to the movie “Apocalypse Now,” which Trump rebrands as “Chipocalypse Now,” complete with helicopters flying over a burning Chicago.
Trump depicts himself as the character played by Robert Duvall, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore, who expressed his fervent love for the War in Vietnam by proclaiming: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”
Irony is, of course, a foreign language to Trump. But it seems worth pointing out that “Apocalypse Now” was not a celebration of the awesomeness of war; nor was the use of napalm a moment of American Greatness.
We also shouldn’t gloss over another rather important distinction: Trump is not lusting for a war against foreign adversaries, but against Chicago, Illinois.
Do I need to point out that no American president has ever envisioned, threatened, or joked about using the military to attack an American city? Illinois Governor. J.B. Pritzker posted: “The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke. This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
It comes after a week in which Trump celebrated the extrajudicial killing of alleged drug smugglers, renamed the Department of Defense, the Department of WAR, and threatened to order the military to occupy more cities run by his political opponents. So he needs to be taken both literally and seriously.
It’s also worth pointing out that Trump never served a single day in military service, a point highlighted by Illinois Senator Tammy Duckworth.
Exit take: As Colby Hall writes, Trump excels at making extremism, authoritarianism and brutality “feel unserious.”
This is authoritarianism by way of irony. The more absurd the packaging — the memes, the cosplay, the AI warlord avatars — the easier it is to shrug. It’s only a joke, only a post, only Trump being Trump. And while his critics scream that democracy is under siege, he turns their outrage into proof that they lack a sense of humor, or worse, are unpatriotic by his very narrow and Archie Bunker style point of view.
But…
America may be governed by a sniggering 12-year-old man-child. But remember that juveniles with napalm and nukes… still have napalm and nukes.
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Happy Sunday.
I’m frequently asked: What can we do? How can we fight back? How can we get through this? How can we stay sane?
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Groveling. An Update.
“West Point alumni group cancels Tom Hanks award ceremony”- The Washington Post
The alumni association at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point has canceled an award ceremony for actor and veterans advocate Tom Hanks, citing a desire for the Army service academy to focus on preparing future officers for war after several political controversies involving the Trump administration shook the institution this year.
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“U.S. Open Orders Broadcasters to Censor Reactions to Trump” —Ben Rothenberg
An internal email sent by the U.S. Tennis Association leadership to U.S. Open broadcasters, obtained by Bounces, requested that broadcasters censor any possible protests or other reactions to President Donald Trump’s presence at Sunday’s U.S. Open men’s final between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz.
Here’s the key text from the USTA email obtained by Bounces:
“With respect to Broadcast Coverage, the President will be shown on the World Feed and the Ashe Court Feed during the opening anthem ceremony. We ask all broadcasters to refrain from showcasing any disruptions or reactions in response to the President’s attendance in any capacity, including ENG [Electronic News Gathering] coverage.”
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“Zuckerberg Caught in Revealing Hot Mic Moment During White House Dinner” — PCMag
It's not unusual for tech company CEOs to make the journey to Washington, DC, and announce billion-dollar investments to curry favor with politicians in power. Apple CEO Tim Cook was in the Oval Office last month, a piece of Apple-shaped glass and a 24-karat gold base in hand, to pledge another $100 billion in US investment over the next four years, for a total of $600 billion.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg perhaps had that number on his mind this week when he joined his fellow Silicon Valley heavy hitters at the White House for a dinner with President Trump. Zuckerberg was seated next to the president, who at one point leaned over and asked him, "How much are you spending, would you say, over the next few years?"
A flustered Zuckerberg responded, "Oh gosh, um, I mean, I think it's probably going to be something like, at least $600 billion through '28 in the US, yeah."
"That's a lot, that's a lot," Trump said.
It is indeed. Once the discussion concluded, Zuckerberg leaned over to Trump to privately admit the president had caught him off guard. "I'm sorry I wasn't ready...I wasn't sure what number you wanted to go with," Zuckerberg said in a revealing moment caught on a hot mic.
PBS Is Not Going Anywhere
On today’s “To the Contrary” Podcast, I sit down with Paula Kerger, the longest-serving president and CEO of PBS, to discuss the unprecedented defunding of public broadcasting. Kerger explains how the loss of federal support threatens hundreds of local stations, particularly in rural communities, and why this moment is a critical test for the future of public media. We also discuss the stakes for children’s programming, emergency alerts, and cultural projects as PBS seeks to survive on viewer and foundation support.
Subscribers can listen to the full ad-free version here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed.
Some highlights:
Kerger admits that she was surprised by the congressional vote to defund public broadcasting, and discusses how it happened.
Ken Burns’ series on the American Revolution is coming this Fall.
Sunday dog
Because he’s so huge, Eli can seem like a big scary dog. But the reality is that he’s a gentle soul who wants to cuddle.
“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.” - H.L. Mencken
We are the new radicals.
I saw Apocalypse Now it its first release. The scene the Trump admires was but one scene of many in a movie that was clearly anti war.
Trump was of course not a warrior. My wife’s father was a pilot who flew B 17s. He made it through and so did he’s crew. He was a family man who raised 2 daughters. He became a manager after the war. He was not like the bloodthirsty caricature that Trump imagines. Not was my uncle Joe who was in the Battle of the bulge. Nor were any of the men who I knew - as fathers of my schoolmates or friends.