In today’s “To the Contrary” Podcast, Justin Wolfers does not mince words. Come for the rage, stay for the economics lesson.
Trump’s Fed Chair nominee Kevin Warsh, Wolfers says, is “f*cking spineless” and an “utter disgrace” — and why that matters. We also discuss, the Trump family grift, the prediction markets, and the risks of private credit markets (which we all should know more about).
After we taped yesterday, Trump dropped the investigation into Jerome Powell, which clears the way for Warsh’s confirmation. But, as Wolfers notes this morning: “The President can meet [Senator Thom] Tillis’ threshold of promising not to jail *this* end-of-term Fed Chair, but he’s kept open the option of threatening to jail the next one.
The threats will continue unless the Senate refuses to confirm any nominee without clear legislation outlawing it. Congress has a role to play.
In today’s podcast, Wolfers also reminds us that the threat to jail the Fed Chair is the kind of thing that you see in tinpot dictatorships — not something that is done in any serious industrialized country.
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Some highlights of my conversation with Justin Wolfers
A moment of outrage…
Trump’s attempt to charge Fed Chair is the kind of thing you see in tin pot dictatorships.
Age of Grift: Barron Trump is worth $150 million. How did he get it?
ICYMI: Trump wants to permanently wipe the 2020 election from the books.
Nota Bene
Andrew Sullivan wonders: Have we reached the Trump Point At Last?
The Trump cult has survived so much. But this? I wonder. Those who joined MAGA for reasons other than celebrity worship have been publicly humiliated. Caldwell, Ahmari, Greene, Kelly, Carlson, Fuentes, Owens et al (in descending order of respectability) have all gotten off the train. Tucker even apologized this week! And yes, the internet and podcastland are not reality — but these people do represent a real swathe of real opinion. To realize Trump has preferred Miriam Adelson’s vision to theirs all along must burn.
That’s the first strike against MAGA: the decision to go to war at all.
The second strike is how Trump has actually conducted the war itself.
For even the most propagandistic pro-Trump outlets, it’s just unspinnable. Gerard Baker’s timeline captures the madness of it all:
Unconditional surrender. Regime change. Partnership with regime for tariffing the strait. Close the strait. Open the strait. No nukes. Some nukes. No missiles. Some missiles. Civilization wipeout. Ceasefire. War. Peace. And if all that fails, we’ll take the JCPOA.
This is the art of the deal? Please. Day-by-day contradictions, countless red lines crossed and crossed again, weird declarations of total victory, followed by even weirder threats to blow everything up again: at some point, even Goebbels would give up. Five deadlines have been set and five deadlines have passed without Iran capitulating. We are burning through munitions so fast — a staggering billion dollars a day — we’re now exposed globally. The memes are just brutal.
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ICYMI: I have some thoughts on the Podfellas and Hasan Piker… and this meme.
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Tom Nichols asks: Where Is Tulsi Gabbard? - The Atlantic (Gift link)
Firing Tulsi Gabbard would almost certainly be a net positive for U.S. national security. She is unqualified for the job in every way, including because she holds political views that should have been red flags for a position with access to sensitive intelligence. (This evaluation, of course, is always subject to the inevitable caveat that Trump, after he tosses one of his subordinates, may well find someone worse.)
But her invisibility during America’s biggest war in 20 years raises another question: Does the United States even need a director of national intelligence? Gabbard’s appointment was full of risk from the start because of her background, but her inconsequential impact on actual matters of policy might be one more reason to downsize the bloated national-security infrastructure put in place during the panic that gripped America after 9/11.
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Iran caused more extensive damage to U.S. military bases than publicly known — NBC
American military bases and other equipment in the Persian Gulf region suffered extensive damage from Iranian strikes that is far worse than publicly acknowledged and is expected to cost billions of dollars to repair, according to three U.S. officials, two congressional aides and another person familiar with the damage.
The Iranian regime swiftly retaliated after the Trump administration attacked on Feb. 28, hitting dozens of targets across U.S. military bases in seven Middle East countries. Those attacks struck warehouses, command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications infrastructure, runways, high-end radar systems and dozens of aircraft, according to the U.S. officials and an assessment by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
In the initial days of the war, an Iranian F-5 fighter jet bombed the U.S. base Camp Buehring in Kuwait, despite the base having air defenses, a rare breach that marked the first time an enemy fixed-wing aircraft has struck an American military base in years, according to two of the U.S. officials.
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Gabby Giffords writes Speaker Johnson on gun violence prevention after he declined call
Gabby Giffords, a former House Democrat from Arizona, tried to speak with Mike Johnson after a recent mass shooting in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, but he declined. Giffords, who survived her own shooting to become one of the country’s most prominent advocates for gun-violence prevention, reached out to the speaker this week after the horrifying incident, NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz reports.
“I want us to work together to ensure it never happens again. I mourn for your constituents, as I trust you do, and I know there are bipartisan reforms that can save lives,” Giffords wrote Johnson in a letter dated Wednesday. “I hoped to discuss this with you on the telephone and was disappointed when you declined my request.”
Saturday dogs
Auggie and Eli want you to know that they tried to warn us.
