No Kings 3

I confess that we did not attend any of the No Kings 3 protests last weekend, but we were greatly encouraged to see the massive turnout in so many cities across this country, and even around the world. The world is going to party like we've never seen before (to borrow a phrase) when this orange maggot finally bites the dust. As one sign said, "Blood Clot, Do Your Thing!"

Dan Rather had a few things to say about the No Kings protests.

Millions Say No To “King” Trump

And his long list of democracy-destroying transgressions

Dan Rather and Team Steady

March 30, 2026

Saturday saw many Americans — 8 million strong — gathering to protest what they believe is a would-be king and to acknowledge a shared animosity toward what Donald Trump is doing to America.

Why is the “No Kings” movement growing? Because the instances of illegality and autocratic rule by the Trump regime are expanding exponentially. The president’s White House delegates and other Republicans labeled the movement as “hate America” rallies. Whether you agree with those in the movement or not, the contrary is true.

Those who marched Saturday love this country deeply and are angry, even mortified, at what we’ve lost.

The peaceful protests were motivated by what the participants describe as unbridled frustration with the dangerous and draconian policies of Donald Trump. But their feelings are tempered by what the protesters see as an enormous community of like-minded Americans who have simply had enough.

On the heels of so many Americans exercising their First Amendment rights, it is a good time to remember that this is not just about the price of gasoline or unaccountable immigration police.

What follows is a brief compilation and reminder of what is motivating the widespread movement: the havoc wrought as democratic institutions and norms are destroyed by the president and his enablers in the Republican Party.

An Unwanted, Poorly Planned, and Increasingly Unpopular War

As the Iran war heads into its fifth week, the Pentagon is providing only scant information about what the American military is doing. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s reaction to reporting he doesn’t like is to cancel all press conferences.

But reporters are managing to report. The Washington Post writes that the Pentagon is preparing for weeks of U.S. combat operations on the ground in Iran. More than 50,000 American troops are now in the Middle East. Iran has an army of more than half a million soldiers.

Axios is reporting that congressional Republicans are considering cuts to health care to pay for the war, which costs more than a billion dollars a day. That move coupled with surging gasoline prices — the national average is almost $4 a gallon — doesn’t help to endear beleaguered Republicans to their constituents.

Turning His Back on Those Who Elected Him

The president and his administration don’t seem to grasp the mounting anger and alarm among millions of American voters, many of whom delivered Trump back to the White House. For this erroneously labeled “populist,” policy after policy has hurt rather than helped the middle class, while enriching the growing billionaire class.

Trump’s big summer spending bill cut taxes for those billionaires while raising taxes for a good portion of everyday Americans. It added trillions to the deficit and ballooned the national debt.

Those billionaire tax cuts were supposed to be offset by money collected by Trump’s sweeping tariffs. However, the tariffs were never going to be enough to balance the projected $4.7 trillion increase to the deficit over 10 years. And the Supreme Court determined the tariffs were illegal. Trump is now refusing to refund the $175 billion collected by the Treasury Department.

Trump allowed the enhanced Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) subsidies to expire at the end of 2025, causing premiums to skyrocket and pushing more than 2 million people off of the health insurance rolls, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

When Trump was running for office, he promised to deport dangerous immigrants, “the worst of the worst,” and many Americans supported that policy promise. But that is not what is happening.

Masked federal agents killed two Americans and have snatched hundreds of thousands of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, off the street and from their homes, without due process. According to the federal government’s own statistics, only about 25% of detainees have criminal convictions, yet many have been shipped to inhumane detention centers in the U.S. and notorious prisons in foreign countries. Trump’s ICE agents have separated thousands of infants and children from their parents.

Ending Protections Americans Expect

The unabashed pro-corporation president has eviscerated decades-old environmental protections, rolling back climate change regulations, weakening clear air and drinking water standards, and expanding oil and natural gas drilling.

As measles outbreaks continue to rise around the country, he has allowed his secretary of health and human services to dismantle long-standing, science-backed vaccine policies. This includes reducing the number of recommended shots for infants and children from 17 to 11.

The U.S., once considered the leader in biomedical research, has been sidelined. Billions of dollars in funding for research for everything from childhood cancer to dementia to HIV was slashed.

Trump has eliminated or weakened investigative offices throughout the federal government, which has allowed the president and members of his government to act with impunity. Not even the fox is guarding the henhouse.

Within the first week of his second term, Trump removed 17 inspectors general from federal agencies, leaving many vacancies and filling others with sycophants. He also purged the investigative offices at the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Self-Aggrandizement and Personal Enrichment

Trump treats the presidency like a vanity project. He is putting his name and/or face on everything from Soviet-esque banners draping government buildings in Washington to gold coins and newly minted bills. This change breaks a 165-year tradition of only the treasury secretary’s and U.S. treasurer’s signatures on paper currency.

Without congressional approval he added his name to the Kennedy Center and U.S. Institute of Peace. He is building a monstrosity of a ballroom, which he has said he will name after himself, tearing down part of the White House to make room for it.

He has brazenly enriched himself and his family with his crypto-currency schemes, including private dinners at the White House for the biggest investors. Many of those investors are reportedly foreign nationals looking to curry regulatory and financial favor.

He accepted a $400-million jet from the Qatari government as the Trump Organization entered into a deal to build a luxury resort in Qatar. He started what he has dubbed an alternative to the United Nations, called the Board of Peace. He populated it with leaders from countries with some of the world’s worst human rights records, all while charging them $1 billion each to join. No one knows exactly where that money has gone.

He is abusing his pardon power left and right. Numerous media outlets have reported a pay-to-play scheme in which people looking for pardons “donate” to Trump. He has pardoned some of the worst criminals. These include the former president of Honduras, who was convicted of conspiracy to import cocaine into the U.S. and having ties with powerful Mexican drug cartels. This on top of pardoning every January 6 rioter charged or convicted.

Last Monday, just before markets opened, Trump posted on social media that peace talks with Iran were going well. It turns out those talks were a fabrication. According to the Financial Times, 6,000 oil-trading contracts, worth more than $500 million, changed hands just before that post, making a number of unknown investors a lot of money.

Because he has defanged the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigative arm, we will likely never know who made those trades and if they were tipped off ahead of time.

Beating Up The Constitution

The Trump administration has waged a holistic assault on the Constitution. The First Amendment — freedom of speech, press, religion, and assembly — has been routinely trampled. The Fourth, which protects from unreasonable search and seizure, and the Fifth, which guarantees due process and the equal protections of the 14th, are being disregarded.

The emoluments clause, which bars government officials from accepting payments and gifts from foreign governments, is clearly unenforced. Trump completely ignores the separation of powers provisions, which are supposed to limit what the executive branch can do. He has expanded his role, encroaching on Congress, funding things he wants and killing funding for things he doesn’t.

Before Trump took office even a single example from this list could have (and has) toppled a president. It strikes many people as astounding that, after all this, he still occupies the White House. Since beginning his second term, his approval ratings have gone in one direction: down. And he is finally getting a little pushback from some members of his party, though clearly not enough to stop his worst whims and inclinations.

This is no doubt an incomplete list. But it is plenty long enough to get millions of Americans to spend their Saturday letting what they see as a thin-skinned, wannabe king know just how reviled he is.

Please consider supporting my team’s efforts to protect our democracy through the power of independent journalism by becoming a paid subscriber. It’s one of the best deals on Substack. I thank you for your support!

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April Fool

Any American voter who voted for Trump and still defends him is just an idiot. It's that simple. Maybe some of them are in some way benefitting financially under Trump, and so their future is tied to his, so they still want him to "succeed" so that they can continue to profit. I suppose that is possible, for a very few. If you're already a criminal, or a religious charlatan, you might be able to cozy up to Trump and get a place at the trough. Other than that, you're an idiot.

As for Iran, Trump and his gang of idiots have fucked it up every which way they can, while scamming, grifting, and committing multiple war crimes. "War crimes are for pussies!" I can hear Pete Hegseth saying in his usual derisive tone. Indecisive leadership, contradicting what you said yesterday with more bullshit today. Just floundering around like a fish out of water. It's embarrassing. U.S. credibility is totally shot, thanks to this criminal cretin. I just hope we can recoup the monies that Trump and his amoral family have stolen from we the people.

The Psychology of Military Incompetence

How the Iran War was lost

PAUL KRUGMAN MAR 31

So the world’s greatest military power went to war against a fourth rate nation whose military budget would be rounding error in our defense spending. And it appears that we lost. 

Hi, Paul Krugman with a late night, well, evening update, which I don’t usually do, but I wanted to get this in before who knows what happens in the news tomorrow. 

It’s Tuesday. It’s the day that the stock market rallied enormously, that the futures price of oil dropped precipitously, all on the happy news that the United States, at least based on Trump’s Truth Social, appears to be surrendering. Trump put up a Truth Social post saying that, you know, we don’t need to open the Strait of Hormuz. If the Europeans think they need it, they should go ahead and do it. And it’s up to them. And this is pretty amazing. 

Of course, the idea that it only matters to the Europeans, that it doesn’t matter to us, is all wrong. And that will be a subject of a Substack post shortly. But it is pretty much a confession. Although it’s framed as we won, now let somebody else do the cleanup, the reality is it’s effectively a confession that, well, we lost. We can’t do this.

How the hell did we manage to do this? I mean, the objective reality is that this was never going to be... Maybe it wasn’t even going to be doable. There were reasons why we didn’t go to war with Iran, particularly why we didn’t go to war in a way that basically became an existential threat for the regime so that they have no compunction about creating lots of damage because the alternative result is annihilation for them personally. But everybody who thought about it even for a couple of minutes, anyone who knew anything, particularly anyone who’d been paying attention to four years of war in Ukraine … we know something about what modern war looks like and about the inability of countries that have conventional superior forces to avoid major damage from drones and missiles. So this was completely, unbelievably stupid. 

How did we get there? Well, there was a very good article by Tobin Harshaw in Bloomberg, and mostly I’m just riffing off what he wrote, but I think that it deserves wider circulation. He resurrected a book I had forgotten about, a 1976 book by Norman Dixon called The Psychology of Military Incompetence. It was very British oriented, but the lessons apply; Dixon looked at the great military disasters of British history. 

You might think there were many reasons why really bad decisions were made, but he actually said there was a kind of consistent pattern. That what happened was that you had military leaders, or people making military decisions, who for the most part shared two things. First, they believed, they had this atavistic, anachronistic belief that warfare is all about muscles and not about minds. which hasn’t been true for a very long time. And second, he argued that they are just generally anti-intellectual, anti-education. 

So in some sense, it’s all about muscles and don’t give me all of these smarty-pants intellectuals who are telling me about why I’m doing it wrong. It’s an uncannily accurate portrait of Pete Hegseth, down to even seemingly minor details. Muscular Christianity is among the defining symptoms of the bad British military leaders that Dixon analyzed. So this is what happened.

This is not about specific bad judgments. It’s not, in a way, about the specifics of the case. It is that we were led into war by people who exemplified in the classic way how really bad military decisions are made. And it all comes down to believing in brute force and toughness and muscles — muscles in the age of drone warfare! — and hate intellectuals, hate learning. 

What really gets me is that in a war where the deciding factor is having some intellectual understanding of what you’re doing, that a theocratic regime in Iran, which basically wants to bring back the Middle Ages, mostly got it right.

And the world’s leading haven of scientific thought, or we were at least until the current administration, got it completely wrong. It’s humiliating. It’s awful. And, you know, we will all be paying the price for this incredible defeat for probably for the rest of our lives. 

Allen Clifton

I keep going back to Allen Clifton's well in Austin, Texas. There is something so simple and plain-spoken about Texans, especially when they agree with me politically and socially.

I get so sick and tired of seeing polls saying that Americans have soured on Donald Trump’s handling of the economy and, in particular, that his tariffs have led to higher prices.

Let me say this with as much professionalism as I can possibly present right now: F*ck off and no shit.

Oh, I’m sorry — you folks who voted for him are “disappointed” that nearly everything we all told you would happen is happening?

You know, like how he had no real economic plan to lower prices, how his tariffs would lead to higher prices and that American consumers would pay them, and how his immigration propaganda wasn’t “just about the criminals,” but that he was largely going to target any immigrant he felt he could expel from this country — even those showing up to hearings, as they were required to, regarding their immigration status.

Every time this orange shit stain gets elected, then reality inevitably proves what an incompetent pile of garbage we all told everyone who voted for him he was, polls come out with people saying they’re “disappointed” that he’s exactly what we all told anyone foolish enough to vote for him he was.

Trump’s biggest claim to fame during his first administration was taking credit for the economy Obama left him. Now, inheriting a strong — but more fragile — economic environment and no longer surrounded by any competent adults, it took him less than a year to turn it into a huge mess, heading straight for a recession at the current rate of decline.

Which is exactly what we told everyone who voted for him he would do.

Why anyone ever believed that a guy who’s mostly known as a businessman for constant failures, multiple bankruptcies, and being a complete slimeball when it came to paying people who did work for him was ever somehow a “genius” regarding complicated economic issues is something future generations will spend countless hours studying.

Hell, he even has us involved in the war with Iran that he spent more than ten years promising he would never start — while claiming his opponents, including his predecessor, would.

And yet after all that bullshit, he’s the one who actually attacked the Iranian government.

If you voted for Trump and regret it, that’s fine. I’ll never deny anyone a second chance.

That said, what I won’t do is act like we should accept the fact that those folks ignored everything we said and act as if all of this is some sort of complete surprise.

That’s like claiming you were shocked by a surprise party we all told you the time and location of.

If you are someone who chose to be willfully ignorant by not listening to others — or even paying any attention to facts you didn’t like — then you need to own up to that.

I can always forgive someone who’s realized a mistake. What I will not do, however, is allow someone to regret something but act as if they never saw it coming.

Because at the root of why we’re dealing with this orange dickhead a second time is the fact that people make these mistakes, regret them, are never forced to reconcile with what went wrong in the first place (they ignored people, facts, and truths they didn’t like), so they just keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

I don’t need someone to tell me that I was right, but I do need them to realize why they were so damn wrong.

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It's you.

This post is from a musician friend of mine who has been pretty vocal in the past against Trump. I won't name him now. Maybe later.

What seems to stick in the craw of MAGA folks the most, and the parting shot that former friends and acquaintances leave me on their way out the door is, "What really pisses me off is that you act like you're better than me!"

He made fun of a handicapped person by mocking their disability on live TV, and you laughed.

You heard his own voice stating that he feels entitled to sexually assault a woman, and bragging about his position as owner of a beauty pageant allowing him to look at female children naked, and you said boys will be boys.

He's made an entire political career of attacking and discrediting the free press, and because you are blissfully unaware that that is the cornerstone of any free society and the reason why you enjoy the lifestyle that you do, you thought it was a gotcha moment for your side, and raised your fist in the air and cheered him on.

He has been accused of rape and sexual assault by nearly 30 women, and his connection to the most notorious child sex trafficker in history is undeniable, but you don't believe any of his accusers, and you choose to think it's fake news.

He's bankrupted numerous businesses, and personally filed bankruptcy six times, and has a string of failed businesses and stiffed contractors throughout his public life, but you think he's a great businessman and is going to fix what's wrong with our economy.

He expanded a law enforcement agency and overwrote their mission statement, supporting masked militia in the streets murdering Americans, and you say it's worth it to feel safe.

He incited a mob of traitors to overturn a free and fair election because he didn't like it, and you agreed with him and you make excuses for that treason, and everyone who committed it.

He has gotten us into an unnecessary war and has absolutely no strategy to win it or to get out of it, and American service men and women are coming home in boxes again after being promised no new wars, and you say it's okay and it's about time somebody did it.

It's not an act. I'm not acting. You fucking suck as a person and your parents failed you. It's not me, it's you. Stay mad.

No link.

Giant POS

It's been a long time sinee I checked in with The Rude Pundit. So many good writers and satirists out there, and Trump provides them with endless material and targets.

It Should Be a Bigger Story That the President of the United States Is a Giant Piece of Shit

By The Rude Pundit

3/22/26

President Donald Trump, a rapist who increasingly looks like a particularly pustulent hemorrhoid, loves to say that he won the 2024 election in a "landslide." He says it a lot. No, wait, that undersells it. He says it all the fucking time, like every time it bubbles up in the moldy pudding where his brain once was. On March 16, at a luncheon for the Kennedy Center board, Trump said, "We won in a landslide." On March 17, while meeting with Ireland's Taoiseach Micheal Martin in the enshittified fake gold Oval Office, Trump said that he's "a popular President of the United States that won in a landslide that won all seven swing states that got record numbers of votes." On March 20, while presenting the Commander-in-Chief's Trophy to the US Naval Academy for being good at football, he pondered, like a Temu Arthur Miller character, "When a man can get elected in a landslide, winning every -- think of it, seven swing states, win them all..." Honestly, Trump says it on an almost daily basis, like he says many things. 

This kind of constant repetition is the con man's ploy: if you keep saying it, if you have other people saying it (and Trump's cabinet members and advisors and media lackeys do it all the time), then it will seem like the truth, even if it's a lie, especially if no one challenges that lie. We've reached that point with the landslide assertion. Trump did not, in actual fact, win in a landslide. Far from it. No one bothers pushing back against it anymore because, well, fuck, what about the lies about the Iran war or trans people or voting or the 2020 election or...you get it. It's also an idiotic lie because he won, but that's not enough. It's gotta be the biggest win or the biggest crowd or the biggest tax cut. 

Like other lies in the manic tsunami of lies that he's constantly crashing over the American public, it's one that should be questioned every time he brings it up: "Why do you keep saying you won in a 'landslide' when, in fact, you narrowly defeated Vice President Harris?" Not that he'd answer it. Because, see, the lies are all he has, and that's part of makes him a giant piece of shit.

And, frankly, that should be a bigger story, indeed, perhaps, the only story: We are living in a time period where the president of the United States is a giant piece of shit, and that has an effect on everything around us. If the president can get away with being a piece of shit, if no one calls him on it, if the media acts like being a giant piece of shit is normal, then, well, fuck it. Let's all be pieces of shit, too. 

This weekend, when former FBI Director and Special Counsel Robert Mueller died, over at Truth Toilet, Trump diarrheaed, "Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!" Sure, you can say, as many of the pieces of shit around Trump have said, that Mueller treated Trump "badly," and thus we should have "empathy" for Trump. It shouldn't surprise us that Trump couldn't shut the fuck up and gloated over Mueller's corpse, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't anger us. Frankly, Trump should be thanking Mueller for every goddamn day of freedom that he has because of how Mueller wrote his report on Trump colluding with Russia in 2016 and because of how Mueller kept quiet publicly when then-Attorney General Bill Barr completely dicked Mueller over by mischaracterizing its findings and keeping it secret. 

Today, Sunday, Trump posted on the Texas Senate race, where he has refused to endorse a Republican, thus helping to force a prolonged primary battle between two fucking awful human beings, John Cornyn and Ken Paxton. Really, it's like choosing herpes or chlamydia. The herpes isn't ever really going away, and you can cure the chlamydia, but it's way worse for you.

Trump said (and I'm gonna quote in full because I don't fuckin' want to link to his garbage site), "The Democrat running in Texas, James Talarico, turns out to be a FRAUD! It showed after the Election when he beat Low IQ Candidate Jasmine Crockett (No relation to Davy Crockett!). He’s got six Genders, insults to Jesus, only vegan food, was wearing a mask in 2023 and 2024, and is a weak, ineffective guy who we 'allowed' to win prior to releasing the avalanche of information we had on him because, as bad as Crockett was as a Candidate, this guy is worse! I believe that any human being running against him, sick, incompetent, close to death or, even a child, would win. He may be the Worst Candidate I have ever seen, other than, of course, Gavin Newscum who admitted that he suffers from mental incapacity, is unable to read a speech, and is dumb but, in saying 'the dumb comment,' referred to his audience, and therefore became, in the eyes of African Americans, A TOTAL RACIST — which is probably true! Gavin admits that he’s a Low IQ individual, which typically is not good for winning the Presidency. His interview may have been the worst ever given by a 'professional' politician. I believe, it takes him OUT OF THE RACE. Kamala is back!"

There is so much shittiness in there that it's like wading through the pig field at a factory farm. Putting aside the effort to emasculate Talarico using barely coded language to queer him up (and, for the record, he's not a vegan, not that there's anything wrong with that, but you can guarantee that it's all you'll hear about for weeks), as well as the gratuitously racist and sexist slams against Jasmine Crockett, look at this idea that Trump "allowed" Talarico to win. He's implying that the GOP manipulated the release of information on Talarico because they thought Crockett would be harder to beat. The fucking ego of that shit belies the fact that poll after poll shows Talarico winning against either Republican STD. 

But the peak of being a piece of shit is Trump's ongoing degradation of California Governor Gavin Newsom for speaking openly about his struggles with dyslexia. For Trump, this is "mental incapacity," openly insulting millions of people who are dealing with it. It's repulsive for anyone to be saying that shit, but this is the goddamned president of the United States. His dismissal of a learning disability that can be dealt with opens the door for others to attack dyslexics. And the repetition of "Low IQ" as an insult kind of shows the insulter is a fucking dumbass who can't come up with a new negative comment.

As Trump layers lies upon bullshit like a fraud parfait, the corporate media is missing out on how this is degrading the entire country. We can't become numb and bored with his abject shittiness. That's what lets him get away with every fucking crime. Every single piece on him should open with "President Donald Trump, a rapist" and then it should be about how he's a giant piece of shit who can't be trusted on anything. And how having a president like this is gutting this country.

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