Trump's Day of Chaos

“Forget the myths the media's created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.” — George Conway

Clowns with flamethrowers are not actually funny.

The architects of Tuesday’s chaos and confusion really thought they knew what they were doing. They’ve been beavering away on this sort of thing in the bowels of the Heritage Foundation for years.

Some of them are smart-ish people who know something about how government works. But not quite enough. Think of it this way:

They are the guys who got B+s in high school biology — and are now trying to perform brain surgery. Bloody chaos ensues. And it sucks to be the patient who’s under the knife.

Happy Wednesday.

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Even the clowns were embarrassed

As Conway suggests, the media, bedazzled by the “shock and awe,” have fallen into the trap of thinking that the Trump White House is a citadel of ruthless efficiency, run by a quasi-technocratic shadow government.

But, alas, power is not a cure for idiocy and it is rarely salutary for the arrogant. And as we all saw on Tuesday, handing actual power to an army of swampy bureaucratic toe-lickers can lead to… bad things. The result was a clusterfuck that makes even clowns with flamethrowers blush.

And this.

The politics of all of this were… well, let’s just say that “suboptimal’ doesn’t quite do it justice.

Throughout the day, as the outrage spread, the Trump White House tried to deflect, obfuscate, and bluster. Republicans found themselves scrambling to assure voters that Trump did not really mean what he had said. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin posted on X that he had spoken to “senior officials” and confirmed that the “temporary pause” did not “impact individual assistance and will not disrupt disaster recovery efforts, school and childcare funding, health care for low income families, funding for our roads…”

But conservative budget guru Brian Riedl fired back: “Sorry, the blame here lies entirely with the White House for releasing a terribly-written memo that did not include most of they guardrails they are now rushing to add as part of their next-day damage control. Perhaps the White House should try to get it right the first time.”

Very much on brand, Trumpists tried to play the victim, blaming “malicious compliance” by the Deep State for shutting down Medicaid portals. Matt Yglesias wasn’t having it:

By the end of day, the Trump Administration was (temporarily) spared from the consequences of its FUBAR when a federal judge put a stop to the unconstitutional charade. (And Trump’s massive freeze is clearly illegal. Read this.¹ And this.)

A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from imposing a sweeping pause on trillions of dollars in federal spending, capping a frenetic day of disruption to government programs that fund schools, provide housing and ensure low-income Americans have access to healthcare.

The order prevented the new restrictions from taking effect until at least Feb. 3, buying time for a coalition of public-health advocates, nonprofits and businesses — represented by the left-leaning group Democracy Forward — to proceed with a case that may test Trump’s claims of expansive power over the nation’s fiscal trajectory.

The decision arrived amid a wave of chaos and confusion in Washington, where few appeared to understand the scope and intention of a White House memo that had directed agencies to “temporarily pause” the disbursement of key federal funds. Even before it could officially take effect at 5 p.m., thousands of government services — many dedicated primarily to Americans’ health, safety and well-being — appeared to be at risk of interruption or shutdown, at least temporarily.

**

How bad was it? Maybe, Punchbowl reports this morning, bad enough to shake Democrats from their somnolence. “During a Senate Democratic Caucus lunch on Tuesday, Schumer urged his colleagues to make the freeze ‘relatable’ to their constituents back home, a clear play for the messaging upper hand. Schumer also plans on doing several local TV interviews today.”

Baby steps. But steps, nonetheless.

**

Why is all this happening? What’s the MAGA agenda here? A friend emails:

-This affects grants to universities, community development block grants, worker training grants, church community outreach programs. education grants. Everything.

-It orders a three-month “pause” for “review”. Within three months, many millions of people across the country will be impacted. Hundreds of small community-based, faith-based and other organizations will be forced to close. Many many people will lose their jobs.

-It is also important to understand the goal of this action. It is clear in the choice to suspend US government grants across the country to review them, but not to pause any US government acquisition or procurement.

Big companies and beltway bandit contractors are free to continue getting taxpayer money, while big businessmen feed and flatter the president and influence his policies.

But charities! Community nonprofits! They are included in this OMB order in a list of evil things the government is trying to stop, along with “woke gender” and “DEI.” The order says that, as if nonprofits are some kind of political adversary.

- I have seen this before. This is what leaders do when they are trying to take down the democratic society that elected them so they don’t have to worry about losing a future election.

- why are these actions targeting nonprofits so important? They go first after community groups, because (as we Americans have always known) community civic organizations are the heart and soul of American democracy. They are where we come together as citizens to do things we agree amongst ourselves is important and petition our government to respond to our preferences. Whatever our preferences may be and whomever we vote for.

- this OMB order will harm families and communities across our country. It is also a five alarm fire for our grassroots American democracy.

**

Tom Nichols explains the madness within the madness.

The goal of all these orders is not to implement policy, but to generate outrage, report the spasms of liberal apoplexy to the MAGA faithful, and then, when necessary, go to court. And why not? The president now has a politically sympathetic Supreme Court majority that worked hard to keep him out of prison while he was a candidate, and has functionally immunized him against almost any challenge now that he’s back in office. Trump’s people know that they cannot actually shake the Constitution like an Etch A Sketch and make birthright citizenship disappear, but why not give it a shot, especially if a trolling executive order makes the base happy?

Inside the Monkey Works

Who’s actually piloting this ship? A new article in WIRED [paywall warning] details how Elon Musk’s lackeys have taken over the Office of Personnel Management, and the details are — depending on your mood— either hilarious or nauseating. Basically the story describes how the crucial department is now being run exclusively by Big Tech toadies, mostly from Elon Musk’s various companies. One of the employees who reports directly to the chief of staff is a “kid who just graduated high school and was recently a camp counsellor before interning at Neuralink.”

Exit take:

Jim Acosta’s goodbye to CNN

ICYMI:

I just wanted to end today’s show by thanking all of the wonderful people who work behind the scenes at this network.

You may have seen some reports about me and the show, and after giving all of this some careful consideration and weighing in alternative timeslots CNN offered me, I’ve decided to move on. I am grateful to CNN for the nearly 18 years I’ve spent here doing the news.

People often ask me if the highlight of my career at CNN was at the White House covering Donald Trump.

Actually, no. That moment came here when I covered former President Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba in 2016 and had the chance to question the dictator there, Raul Castro, about the island’s political prisoners.

As the son of a Cuban refugee, I took home this lesson: It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant.

I have always believed it’s the job of the press to hold power to account. I’ve always tried to do that here at CNN, and I plan on doing all of that in the future.

One final message. Don’t give in to the lies. Don’t give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth and to hope.

Even if you have to get out your phone, record that message. I will not give in to the lies. “I will not give in to the fear!”

Post it on your social media so people can hear from you, too.

I’ll have more to say about my plans in the coming days. But until then, I want to thank all of you for tuning in. It has been an honor to be welcomed into your home for all these years.

That’s the news. Reporting from Washington. I’m Jim Acosta.

Wednesday dogs

Auggie started out so tiny. But now he is King of all he surveys.

**

1. Via The Atlantic:

The Constitution gives Congress the so-called power of the purse—that is, the House and the Senate decide how much money the government spends and where it goes. Since 197https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/trump-executive-order-spending-congress/681484/4, a federal law known as the Impoundment Control Act has prohibited the executive branch from spending less than the amount of money that Congress appropriates for a given program or purpose. During Trump’s first term, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the administration had violated that law by holding up aid to Ukraine—a move that became central to Trump’s 2019 impeachment.