Posts published in “Johnson”

Breaking news late on Friday.

A federal appeals court panel by a 7-4 vote has ruled that many of Donald Trump’s tariffs were illegally imposed. The Supreme Court will almost certainly review the decision.

And Trump served notice he’s going to cancel nearly $5 billion in congressionally approved foreign aid funding. To say the least it is a legally questionable action.

Oh, a Trump cancelled Kamala Harris’ Secret Service protection because, well, I guess because he can.

And the White House fired a bunch of EPA staff Friday who had the temerity to sign a letter two months ago questioning the agency’s leadership.

Meanwhile, Happy Labor Day. The Chaos Presidency rolls into September.

In a piece I wrote for the Lewiston (Idaho) Tribune this week, I offered a sad despondent frightened pessimistic view of where we are with this administration.

Read on if you can take it.

With the exception of a similar comment Richard Nixon made after he was forced to resign the presidency – if the president does it, Nixon said, it’s not illegal – no American president, at least out loud and in public, has said anything approaching what Donald Trump said this week.

“I have the right to do anything I want to do,” Trump said. “I'm the president of the United States.”

What a totally remarkable, utterly frightening and profoundly unAmerican thing for the president of the United States to say.

Yet in another sense what Trump said is true because our now badly diminished 250-year-old system of checks and balances, designed from the beginning to constrain and even remove an imperial president, are failing by the hour.

As the historian Garrett Graff wrote recently:

“The president’s military occupation of the capital has escalated in recent days into something not seen since British troops marched the streets of colonial Boston – even though precisely nothing has happened to warrant it, the Pentagon has now armed the National Guard patrolling DC and armored vehicles, designed for the worst of combat, are patrolling the capital.”

But illegally using the military for police work, with I might add the enthusiastic support or several red state governors, actions that will almost certainly expand to other major cities, is hardly the least of our new king’s ongoing power grabs.

Check the boxes.

Consolidate control over the U.S. military.

Check.

Trump has now fired most of the top leadership at the Pentagon, always without explanation, and installed an eminently unqualified Fox News host as secretary of defense. The latest firing was of a respected three-star Air Force general – the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency – who contradicted Trump’s statements about “completely destroying” Iran’s nuclear weapons development program.

Attempt to destroy the historic independence of the Federal Reserve.

Check.

Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Fed board, vows to fight for her job after Trump “fired” her. Her job allegedly comes with Senate confirmation, a 14-year term and a mandate for independence from political pressure. Speculation holds that Trump will next target the regional Fed presidents. What could possibly go wrong?

Demand government ownership, which is to say Trump ownership, of big pieces of corporate America.

Check.

Intel’s CEO was attacked by Trump, then went to the White House and capitulated, agreeing to a 10% ownership stake in his company by the federal government. Trump demanded 15% of the sales of chip maker Nvidia and presto he seems to have gotten it. Maybe Micron is next, or Apple or Cracker Barrel. ¹

Harass critics of his policies, even ones that served in his previous administration.

Check.

John Bolton, the former Trump National Security Advisor’s home was raided, clearly at Trump’s instigation. Trump made threats to former confidante Chris Christie, and unsubstantiated charges against a U.S. senator and the attorney general of New York. All of it amplified by the Justice Department and the FBI.

Punish government whistleblowers.

Check.

More than 100 employees of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), worried that the administration has gutted the agency designed to help when natural disaster strikes, wrote an open letter to Congress voicing their concerns. Then more than 30 of those employees were suspended with no explanation, but after saying they hoped their warnings would “come in time to prevent not only another national catastrophe like Hurricane Katrina, but the effective dissolution of FEMA itself and the abandonment of the American people such an event would represent.”

Shake down major universities for alleged offenses that lack both good faith and the thinnest pretense of fact.

Check.

Harvard is fighting to maintain its research dollars under relentless pressure from Trump. Do you think the University of Idaho or Washington State or Brigham Young University are safe from such intimidation? If so, you’re smoking something – again.

Rig the midterms by demanding that Texas, Indiana and other red states redistrict congressional seats in order to gerrymander more Republicans into Congress.

Check.

Trump has reversed election security efforts taken during his first term and appointed a conspiracy theorist who has repeatedly misrepresented the 2020 election to be in charge of election “security” at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Trump also demanded that state officials turn over detailed voter information to him. “The hiring of an election conspiracy theorist with no election knowledge or expertise is the culmination of this reversal,” said David Becker who heads a non-profit working to improve public confidence in elections. “DHS now appears poised to become a primary amplifier of false election conspiracies pushed by our enemies.” For good measure, Trump attacks mail in voting.

Destroy the Centers for Disease Control by firing the top scientist.

Check.

Susan Monarez, a long-time government scientist, was sacked by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who really didn’t have the authority to do so, but never mind. Donald Trump decided he would personally neuter the CDC. In turn a group of senior leaders quit. Pray we don’t face another pandemic.

Blatant, massive, out in the open corruption that would make Nero blush.

Check.

Reporter David D. Kirkpatrick examined the public record and calculated, conservatively, that Trump has made $3.4 billion in real estate deals, licensing deals, crypto scams, a luxury Qatari jet and much more while president. “When it comes to using his public office to amass personal profits,” says Fred Wertheimer of Common Cause, “Trump is a unicorn – no one else even comes close.”

I have the right to do anything I want to do …

All of this, every bit of this and more, is beyond what we have ever seen in American democracy, which leads to the inescapable conclusion that we have stumbled our way across a line I never thought Americans would tolerate. To again quote historian Garrett Graff, the United States “has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism.”

If you are among the 40% or so of Americans – if you believe the polls – who support Donald Trump’s approach to the presidency my recounting of his actions likely brings a smile. You like the idea of a strongman president defying the law, tradition and any constraint on his actions.

As long as Trump is going after his enemies – and yours – it’s all good, right?

“I have the right to do anything I want to do,” the man says. “I'm the president of the United States.”

But think for a moment: where does it stop? Can it be stopped now?

Political scientist Norm Ornstein has been warning of this moment for some time. And Norm asked the obvious question this week: “Who will step up and restore any sense of checks and balances?”

Surely not a Republican Congress.

Don’t delude yourself that the Supreme Court will restore some sense of balance and constrain on a runaway president. A majority of the Court made him nearly entirely immune for his “official” actions and have repeatedly allowed him to do things that other presidents didn’t dream of trying.

Can we really count on a fair and free election next year or in 2028? A plot is afoot in plain sight to make sure Trumpism never loses.

And what does it mean for you, even my Trump supporting American friends who like the strongman idea, the guy who breaks instead of building?

Do you really want so much “power” in one man’s (tiny) hands? Is “democracy” by retribution really democracy?

And what if the script flips?

What if the next unconstrained, lawless president makes you or your business or your college or your city a target? Are your mortgage documents in order? How about that business loan 20 years ago? Ever late with your taxes? All they need is a pretense. Just make the charge and charge ahead. That’s where we are.

First they came for a Fed governor, or a senator I don’t particularly like but it didn’t affect me …

Don’t think it’s possible that you or someone you care about might be a target?

Don’t kid yourself.

Today is very different than any day before. And tomorrow will be worse.

There was once something called the “conservative foreign policy establishment” comprised of Republicans like Henry Kissinger, the one-time secretary of state and national security advisor to Richard Nixon, and George Schultz, Ronald Reagan’s top diplomat. James Baker, a Reagan confidante, was part of the GOP establishment and served as George H.W. Bush’s secretary of state.

John McCain, the Vietnam era POW and Arizona senator, certainly enjoyed foreign policy establishment standing, as did Indiana senator Richard Lugar, general and secretary of state Colin Powell and Bob Dole, the Kansas senator and presidential candidate.

None of these guys, and I could add many more names to the list, were perfect or even often right, but they were serious people. They worked to know the world and developed policies and approaches that were, if not perfect, at least informed and again - serious.

But the “the establishment” – people with expertise, real world experience, intellectual heft and historical perspective – no longer counts in the modern MAGA GOP.

Now only loyalty to the leader translates into status and influence.

Never has the lack of actual foreign policy capability by the current president and his sycophantic gang of turd polishers been more on display than when Russia’s international war criminal landed in Anchorage last week to be greeted by a smiling, clapping Donald Trump.

Trump, or someone around him, made the decision to debase American military personnel by having them literally get on hands and knees and roll out a red carpet for the Butcher of Kiev, Vladimir Putin. It was the sorriest spectacle since Trump met Putin in Helsinki in 2018 and sided with the Russian mob boss over the U.S. intelligence community.

Trump went to Alaska without preparation, without a reasonable objective and without honor in order to fawn like a fan boy over a former KGB agent. He ended this performative foreign policy charade by reversing himself on the need for a cease fire in Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.

Trump is back to giving away Ukrainian territory rather than confronting Putin’s desire to dominate, even eliminate Ukraine. Putin’s aim is clear: he intends to recreate the old Soviet empire and Ukraine is critical to his mission. Pretty much every serious person knows this with the exception of the president of the United States.

The sound you heard in the wake of this “summit” was John McCain rolling over in his grave.

Never has Trump, intellectually or practically, articulated what he sees as the stakes for a democratic Europe, an independent Ukraine or a retreating U.S. as he continues to fluffer and fuss over Putin, a man clearly intellectually and practically smarter than Trump.

Putin understands perfectly the president’s preoccupation, as with all narcissists, with fantasies about his success, power and brilliance. The Russians played the American president like Rostropovich once conducted the National Symphony.

For Trump, as Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic, “Zelensky and Ukraine are the problem, and the rest is just an ongoing tragedy that the Ukrainians can end by being ‘flexible’ and by putting their president in a room with the man conducting atrocities against them.”

A half dozen European leaders immediately rushed to Washington in the aftermath of the Alaska farce to help make sure Trump didn’t again assault Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. The Washington chapter of the summit of nothing ended with no path forward, but with the Russian’s rejecting Trump’s idea that the Putin and Zelensky get together and make a deal.

Through it all the president bloviated about his pursuit of peace while continuing to channel Kremlin talking points about the origin of Putin’s bloody war. Trump then had the gall to quote Putin on the dangers of mail in voting, as if Russia has had anything like a fair election since, what, 1917?

This is not a foreign policy; this is a deadly dangerous fantasy from a man historically ill equipped for the task at hand.

“As flaccid as a boned fish,” said that liberal squish George Will, “Donald Trump crumpled quicker than even Vladimir Putin probably anticipated. The former KGB agent currently indicted for war crimes felt no need to negotiate with the man-child.”

After World War II when (mostly) serious people governed in both political parties, Republicans who lived through the spectacle of Nazi domination of Europe, the Holocaust, the bloodiest war in human history and the dawn of the nuclear age systematically shed the head-in-the-sand isolationism that had defined the party after World War I. The Republican Party (mostly) embraced the notion of American leadership in the world.

In the post-war world the GOP “establishment,” built around real experience and serious grappling with the U.S. role in the world, eclipsed the then hard right wing of the party. The GOP turned to a legitimate war hero, Dwight Eisenhower, and largely banished the cranky kooks of the Birch Society, but the isolationist, conspiracy tinged hard right never completely went away. And now they dominate the party.

The foreign policy chops of the modern MAGA party, such as they are, reside with people like Putin and Nazi apologist Tucker Carlson, unhinged MAGA influencer Laura Loomer and Steve Wikcoff, Trump’s special envoy who came to the job without a lick of diplomatic experience.

As Foreign Policy magazine noted of the president’s “expert”, “Notoriously, Witkoff has been accused of not knowing the names of the Ukrainian provinces whose fate he is now working to decide.” ¹

Instead of a John McCain or a Bob Dole the Republican Senate features shrinking men like South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, who clearly wakes up every day determined to slobber over the president, and Idaho’s Jim Risch, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman in name only, who takes no position without calibrating how it will play in Trump world and regularly asks “how high” when this feckless administration says “jump.”

No words from these elites as Trump, aided by his secretary of state who once called Trump a “con man,” cleans out decades of expertise at the State Department, destroys foreign aid programs and bans many foreign students from studying at American universities. The old elites knew that our nation’s “soft power” – aiding the developing world and educating young people – was often as important as another aircraft carrier.

But with our current wholesale retreat from American leadership the new GOP establishment is working overtime to make Russia and China great again.

The old GOP elite was quick to invoke the Munich analogy, the fateful and repugnant decision by Britain and France in 1938 to attempt to appease Adolf Hitler’s designs on Czechoslovakia. That appeasement only emboldened Hitler and a year later all of Europe was at war.

The Munich analogy can be overdone, but in the present case it offers a crystal clear warning.

Trump will abandon Ukraine and side with the aggressor, and in the reverse of World War II it will rest with democratic Europe, the old world, to come to the aid of a new world debased and disgraced by Trumpism and its incompetent, cultish “elites.”

This column originally appeared on Marc' substack.

propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

All authoritarian regimes begin with propaganda. They must control the “truth” to control their people.

Richard J. Evans, the British historian, is in a small class of scholars who can legitimately be termed a “preeminent” authority of Nazi Germany. Evans’s trilogy is the fundamental story of the Nazi rise to power and then ultimate defeat. The three books are clearly among the indispensable works of modern history.

Evans, who has taught at Cambridge among other places, published a new book - Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich - in 2024.

To read the book against the backdrop of the steady (and quickening) rise of American authoritarianism is enough to make one shudder. The book details the low life incompetents, opportunists and basic evil doers who enabled Nazism to come to power in the 1930’s in Germany.

And at the risk of being accused of hyperbole or Trump Derangement Syndrome it’s impossible not to think of the cast around the current president of the United States as you read Evans’s book.

There is the incompetent Secretary of Defense, a dead ringer for the military lackeys Hitler surrounded himself with; the shouting, pompous press secretary, our own Minister of Propaganda; the Secretary of Homeland Security, a performative non-entity just venal enough to create our own concentration camps.

The Trump cabinet is a collection of the most unprepared, least serious people in any American administration, and the runner up - Warren Harding, maybe - isn’t even close. The Nazi hierarchy bears striking resemblance.

And like the German Reichstag following Hitler’s takeover, the American Congress has abdicated all of its Constitutional responsibility in order to appease the party leader. After 1942 the Reichstag simply quit meeting. They had ceded all power to the party leader, so why bother. Congress is still meeting, of course, but largely to carry out Trump’s directives without an ounce of independent judgment.

At the heart of Nazi German was, of course, the supreme leader, the Fuehrer, the man his deputy Rudolf Hess said was Germany, and Germany was Hitler. In the eyes of his many close disciples Hitler simply could do no wrong. They vied to stay in his good graces, often debasing themselves, their families and careers in the process. To a person they embraced Hitler’s viral anti-semitism, even when some clearly didn’t believe in it.

Most of these Nazis, as Evans documents, never recanted their slavish loyalty to Hitler and his cause. Most went to their deaths never admitting they had done anything wrong, and in many cases family members lived long lives never coming to grips with the totality of evil their relatives had unleashed.

Among the truest of the true believers was Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Hitler placed in charge of propaganda and culture. The section on Goebbels in Evans’s book is simply chilling, in no small part because Goebbels invented the “reality” that came to define Nazi Germany before and during World War II. ¹

Evans says:

Once his initial doubts had been quelled, Goebbels believed passionately in Hitler’s greatness and destiny. There can be little doubt either that he was sincere in his belief that the Jews were engaged in a global conspiracy to destroy Germany. That provided the justification for the cascade of lies that Goebbels unleashed in his propaganda, and for his unprecedentedly unscrupulous deployment of disinformation both before and after Hitler’s creation of the Third Reich. His propaganda tactics have been, and are being, widely imitated in the twenty-first century by populist politicians from Donald Trump to Viktor Orban [the Hungarian authoritarian] to discredit and ridicule their opponents and sweep aside opposition to their rule, though they are surely less ideologically fanatical in their motivation.

I find myself wondering about that final line: “less ideologically fanatical.” I’m not sure we can confidently say that Trump or Orban are not deeply committed ideologues.

Trump is, first and always, about the self-preservation of his power, position and money, but if the last six months tell us anything it is that we should never underestimate Trump’s ability to do, in the name of his own preservation and power, even more unimaginable, evil things.

He seems to be heading toward a pardon or commutation for a convicted sex trafficker in order to try and insulate himself from his own role in the Jeffrey Epstein affair.

He’s already pardoned everyone convicted in connection with the January 6 insurrection. He’s fired or intimidated government statisticians, prosecutors, the chair of the Federal Reserve, generals and admirals. He’s called for the prosecution of a former president and members of Congress who oppose him.

Can you really say he’s not capable of the next step … and the next?

More from Evans on Goebbels and the use of propaganda and disinformation:

By using derogatory nicknames for his critics, by denying the legitimacy of opposition to his cause, by cynically refusing to accept the truth when it turned out to be inconvenient, and by creating powerful but ultimately imaginary menaces to society that threaten to destroy unless countered by the power of a supposedly great leader, Goebbels set an example that was to be followed long after his death.

Beyond the unrelenting nature of the propaganda and cultishness of the Nazi regime, one feature stands out - the abject willingness of so many Germans to bow and scrape before the Fuehrer.

Hitler would frequently berate a subordinate, often for an extended period, only to see the subject of his temper and arrogance do anything possible to return to his favor. The underlings would flatter and cajole, make the grand gesture proving their loyalty, all the while ignoring the corruption, evil and incompetence all around them. They came to owe their very sense of self to the supreme leader.

Think Lindsey Graham. Or Marco Rubio.

Or it reminds me, frankly, of the comments Trump made this week directed at Republican Chuck Grassley. Trump teed off on Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, for not doing enough, in Trump’s view, to advance his judicial nominees. Grassley’s simpering response: “I was offended by what the president said, and I’m disappointed that it would result in personal insults,” Grassley said.

Nothing at all about being a member of a co-equal branch of government with specific duties under the Constitution. Grassley will, you can be sure, crawl back to the good graces.

Or there is the embarrassing spectacle of congressional Republicans seeking to rename the Kennedy Center Opera House for Melania Trump, or taking that idea even farther and renaming the entire place for Trump.

And, of course, Trump aims to build a grotesque “ballroom” addition to the White House, a monstrosity that the conservative pundit Charlie Sykes says is a mash up of late stage Ceau?escu [the Romanian dictator] meeting Liberace.

And Liberace had more taste. But it’s all about stroking the big man’s ego.

All of this eerily reminiscent of Hitler mandating the remaking of his hometown in Austria into a personal shrine, or empowering Nazi architect Albert Speer to remake entire German cities to conform with Hitler’s vision of the new Germany.

Idaho Republican Mike Simpson, once a serious supporter of the arts who has now become a Trump show pony, proposed the Opera House renaming. As NPR’s Elizabeth Blair noted, Simpson’s amendment to an appropriation bill likely violates the law. But that is just a technicality in Trump World.

BLAIR: Representative Simpson said that it would be an excellent way to recognize her appreciation for the arts. The first lady is an honorary chair of the Board of Trustees at the Kennedy Center, and that's a long tradition. Past first ladies have also served as honorary chair.

There's a point to be made about whether the opera house can legally be renamed. The guidelines that explain how the Kennedy Center spends federal dollars is very specific. Lots of dos and don'ts. It says, quote, "no additional memorials or plaques shall be designated or installed." This is why there isn't a theater named after the former board chair, David Rubenstein, who gave the Kennedy Center over a hundred million dollars.

Of course, reality is simply that Melania Trump is anything but a patron of the arts. But never mind. It’s the performative act of obsequiousness by Simpson (and so many others) that is the point. Simpson is a perfect example of how a once serious conservative became a true believer in the propaganda and nonsense that has enveloped his party.

Many such examples exist in Evans’s book.

The United States isn’t - at least yet - Germany in 1932, but all the signs are there if we care to see them: the vast propaganda machine that cranks out the daily dose of lies; the incompetent but completely loyal enablers; the attacks on education and free expression; the book banning; the remaking of the judiciary - and where that hasn’t yet fully taken place, the discrediting attacks on judges - ignoring judicial rulings; the performative celebration as undesirables - without due process - are cashiered into concentration camps; the destruction of science and research for purely ideological purposes; ceaseless attacks on political enemies and more and more. ³

Above all the lies. The petty propaganda. The first and essential act of every authoritarian.

It can happen here. It is happening here.

Read the Harris book. You’ll be stunned by the parallels between Germany in the 1930’s and Donald Trump’s America.

Read more of Marc Johnson's posts on Substack.

Perhaps it was inevitable.

“REPUBLICANS HAVE TRIED DOING THIS FOR 40 YEARS, AND FAILED….BUT NO MORE,” Donald Trump boasted of the GOP roasting Big Bird.

Now, they’ve finally done it after all these years, cut a billion dollars that effectively eliminates the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

I will mourn the destruction of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a profoundly wrongheaded and unnecessary attack on civility, decency and quality journalism, for the rest of my days. The reasons are personal, cultural and journalistic.

My start in broadcasting was behind the microphone of a college radio station in eastern South Dakota. I did the morning show, a little music, mostly news and sports and the weather of course. I believed even then that non-commercial radio could do the kinds of things that ratings dependent, used car dealer and marijuana dispensary supported AM or FM stations never could or would do.

I once broadcast a livestock show and a track meet. Not at the same time. As a college senior I covered the South Dakota legislature, providing daily interviews and news reports back to my home base, but also to stations all over the state who wouldn’t or couldn’t have their own “man in Pierre.”

The experience shaped my outlook on news and public service. And what is happening to public broadcasting makes me sad and damn mad.

“This is, in our view, the misuse of taxpayer dollars,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in justifying the elimination of federal funding for public broadcasting. “They’re not objective. They pretend to be so.”

Johnson likely never took a journalism course. What horse pucky from a sanctimonious little man of destruction.

I remember on the first day of one of my college courses the instructor, a former long-time reporter who knew of what he spoke, said rather bluntly: “Objectivity is impossible, but fairness is not.”

The ideologues on the far right aren’t into fairness. They’re all for free expression until they don’t like what you say, or what you report and then it’s labeled “woke” or “biased.”

That college station where I learned so much is likely to suffer crippling reductions in staff and programming. Or worse.

“I don’t think this is about bias in media,” Julie Overgaard, the executive director of South Dakota Public Broadcasting (SDPB) said after the House of Representatives affirmed the Senate’s slashing of funding for CPB. “I think this is about trying to shutter and change people’s access to information, to public safety, to education, to things that make a big, big difference.”

She’s spot on.

As the South Dakota Searchlight reported:

In addition to news coverage, [SDPB] provides live video and audio feeds of legislative and state government meetings, educational content, cultural programming, high school activities broadcasts, and emergency alerts across the state.

A great deal of that, maybe most of that, will now go away, voted out of existence not in the interest of service to constituents, but because congressional Republican have ceded their Constitutional authority over the federal budget to an arrogant and passionate group of far right ideologues intent on destroying America’s hard won global leadership in higher education and scientific research, and now independent, fair public broadcasting.

These ideologues also want to defund public schools and tell smart students from around the world to stay away from the nation’s best colleges and universities. It’s not the bias they want to kill; it’s the commitment to information in a discerning society.

Destroying public broadcasting saves small change, but it’s big for shuttering minds. And what’s not objective about “Antiques Roadshow,” or Ken Burns on the Civil War or the incredible science program, NOVA, or a spectacularly well reported NPR program like “Marketplace.”

Every western Republican save one, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, all representing vast areas of rural America, voted to kill or dramatically reduce public broadcasting funding.

South Dakota’s all GOP delegation knew what the cuts would mean for their constituents, and they did it anyway. Same with Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. ¹

“Collectively, the stations in the public media network give 99% of the U.S. population access to public broadcasting,” High Country News reported recently. “Nearly half of CPB grantees are rural, and together they employ close to 6,000 people.”

Cliff Bentz, the Republican congressman from most of Oregon (at least in terms of acres) has two stations in his sprawling district that will be hard pressed to stay on the air. One of the stations is on the Warm Springs Reservation in eastern Oregon.

Over the last week that station’s website has been full of information about a nearby wildfire, the largest burning in the country. Wildfire information, as Stephen Colbert might say, has a well-known liberal bias.

“From the Community Calendar to 6 local newscasts weekday mornings, from language lessons to local news, cultural, educational and informational programming – you can rely on KWSO to inform, educate and entertain,” the station says.

Well, probably not now after their congressman’s vote.

Other Republicans like Idaho’s Mike Simpson used the CPB vote to display the depth of their hypocrisy and the totality of the hold Trump has on people like Simpson. The eastern Idaho congressman is one of the top appropriators in the House, and up until last week he claimed to be a champion of public broadcasting and a defender of the constitutional role of Congress in making spending decisions.

In the department of rich irony, Simpson, in February was presented with the “Champion of Public Broadcasting Award” from the nation’s public TV stations. In presenting the award the group president said:

Congressman Simpson has been an unwavering supporter of the essential value of local public broadcasting stations and the important role stations like Idaho Public Television play in communities throughout the nation, especially in serving rural communities. He has always been an effective champion of public broadcasting, and we are proud to have earned his enduring support.

We are extremely grateful for Congressman Simpson’s ongoing, strong commitment to ensuring all Americans have access to the essential local services provided by public television stations, from emergency alerts and warnings, to high-quality, educational resources and local programming and events that foster community connections. We are honored to present Congressman Mike Simpson with the 2025 Champion of Public Broadcasting Award he so richly deserves.

Enduring, ongoing, strong. Yeh, Right.

Simpson voted to kill Big Bird – twice. And, of course, he originally voted for the money he has now decided to eliminate. ²

Republicans who have killed the funding for public broadcast claim they need to get the federal budget under control, and they’re right – they do. Spending public dollars, however, is about establishing priorities.

Here’s one priority from the recent Republican legislation that took an axe to rural hospitals and food assistance – an enormous tax break for Silicon Valley investors who got rich on technology start up companies.

The “qualified small business stock exclusion,” has been around for a while, but the GOP Congress just made the tax break much fatter for founders and investors who cash out stock and skip out on paying taxes. Much fatter to the tune of $17 billion over ten years.

The CPB budget, in contrast, amounts to one one-hundredth of a percent (0.01%) of the federal budget. It really is about priorities.

Perhaps even worse than a decision to kill CPB after nearly 60 years is the admission for a number of Republicans that they didn’t really know what they were cutting in Donald Trump’s recession bill.

“Please give us specific information about where the cuts will come,” said Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, who, of course, voted to let the White House do what it wanted. “Let’s not make a habit of this. Let's not consider this a precedent.”

Good luck with that.

Congress is dealing, after all, with a guy with the budget acumen of a genius who bankrupt a casino and a director of the Office of Management and Budget – the real president, it seems – who is hell bent on destroying pretty much everything, now including Sesame Street.

I can’t leave this without another reflection on the bias accusation, a charge thrown at me many a time when a viewer just didn’t like a guest, a show, a subject or felt their own, often blinkered point of view got short shrift.

It’s less a reflection on my humble career than on the broader public broadcasting mindset that in my years of hosting public affairs programs – I did thousands of interviews – I had a mandate to interview interesting and significant people of every political persuasion. Smaller market commercial TV has rarely, if ever, done the same on that scale or depth.

So I did 30 minutes with William F. Buckley, one of the most fascinating guests ever. And I should note Buckley’s TV show was carried for years on PBS.

I interviewed a guy named Reed Irvine, the founder of Accuracy in Media, a group that regularly bashed almost every news organization in the country.

I interviewed many conservative corporate and business leaders, including William Agee, who drove the company once known as Morrison-Knudsen off a cliff after being brought in to save it, and John Fery, a nice guy who built Boise Cascade into a wood products giant and was just a bit to the right of Herbert Hoover.

I covered the Idaho legislature for many years, anchoring a daily show from the statehouse that overwhelmingly featured – no big surprise in Idaho – Republican legislators, even some who voted (for a year) to end state support for public television. I’m still proud that a very conservative guy with a mind as big as his wallet stepped in to underwrite our broadcast.

Here’s something that gets lost in the purely partisan strum und drang of Republican justifications of killing things like public broadcasting: it’s not just about closing some rural NPR stations or starving out of business a PBS station in rural America.

This is part and parcel of an ultra-conservative effort to destroy sources of vital, independent and fair journalism - all across the media landscape.

There are many, many proof points for the fact that authoritarianism has come to the United States in the shape of the current administration and it’s bootlickers in Congress, but killing off independent sources of news, information and entertainment is about as fascist adjacent as it comes.

As important as public broadcasting is to me and to millions of Americans, killing CPB is just one step of many … and they will continue.

As Paul Farhi wrote yesterday in The Atlantic:

Ever since he launched his presidential campaign in 2015, Trump has fulminated against “the fake news.” But only in his second term has Trump gone beyond such rhetoric to wage a multifront war on media freedom with all of the tools at his disposal: executive actions, lawsuits, a loyal regulatory bureaucracy, a compliant Republican majority in Congress and a sympathetic Supreme Court. Each of his actions has been extraordinary in its own right; collectively, they represent a slow-motion demolition of the Fourth Estate.

The principal question isn’t just whether anyone can stop Trump, but whether anyone in power really wants to.

Make no mistake this is all about shuttering and changing people’s access to information, to public safety, to education.

It’s what authoritarians do.

Donald Trump is claiming his victory. His One Big Beautiful Bill passed, reshaping the country in ways he doesn’t understand but we will – soon.

The legislation, passed entirely with Republican votes, is the largest wealth transfer from poor to wealthy Americans in the history. It shreds the social safety net that millions of fellow Americans depend upon for health care and food security. Donald Trump promised over and over that he would not touch Medicaid. His bill touches Medicaid with a flaming sledgehammer.

Yet, victory lap notwithstanding, this really wasn’t Trump’s legislation. He is infamously hands off on details, particularly details like complicated tax policy. No, this legislation is really the handiwork of the senior senator from Idaho, Mike Crapo, the chairman of the Finance Committee, the committee overseeing your taxes, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and tariff policy.

A serious argument can be made that no previous federal legislator from Idaho has ever had such a big thumb on the scale of American domestic policy. The legislation will be Crapo’s legacy after 30 years in Congress, and you sense he knows it.

Crapo stood at Trump’s elbow for the bill signing at the White House looking frankly a bit uncomfortable, perhaps starting to wonder what he’ll say when rural hospitals, already financially stressed, start to close.

One recent analysis found nearly 800 rural hospitals in the United States “at risk of closure due to financial problems, with about 40% of those hospitals at immediate risk of closure.” Nine of those hospitals are in Idaho.

Another analysis based on the financial position of individual hospitals shows three Idaho hospitals – American Falls, Jerome and Burley – as most likely to go under. The reason, of course, is that rural hospitals rely overwhelmingly on Medicaid dollars Crapo slashed in his bill.

During the run up to Trump’s signing ceremony Crapo said virtually nothing about cuts to Medicaid (or food assistance) other than to claim the legislation will root out “waste, fraud and abuse.” How much waste, fraud and abuse do you suspect exists at the community-owned Power County Hospital in American Falls, Idaho?

Mike Crapo surely knows that voters in Power County voted to tax themselves in 2017 to make improvements to their hospital. One suspects they didn’t do so because they believed the place was rotten with fraud.

Crapo’s main argument for his bill is that it makes permanent tax cuts enacted the same year Power County voters approved $15 million in property taxes to improve their hospital. Like other Republicans who voted for the legislation, Crapo has argued that the tax cuts will stimulate the economy without adding to the ballooning federal deficit. No serious economist agrees with this assessment.

As a reader pointed out recently: if permanent tax cuts don’t add to the deficit why did Crapo vote to raise the debt ceiling by $5 trillion? It’s impossible to escape the fact that Crapo spent years gaslighting constituents regarding concerns about deficit spending.

Tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans do indeed add to the deficit.

And not just income tax rates, but pages of special interest tax benefits that Crapo inserted or allowed to be insert in his legislation.

As Politico reported:

There’s a new supersized deduction for business meals – though only for employees at certain Alaskan fishing boats and processing plants, with the measure stipulating the facilities must be ‘located in the United States north of 50 degrees north latitude’ though not in a ‘metropolitan statistical area.’

That was the Lisa Murkowski buy off.

There’s more:

A $17 billion expansion of a provision that helps venture capitalists make fortunes tax-free.

An Oklahoma senator got a sweet deal for the oil and gas industry.

Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana championed a $2 billion giveaway for the rum industry. “We have the highest per capita intake of alcohol in the nation,” Cassidy said. I guess you could call that taking care of the folks back home.

There is an expansion of a “little-known break that Silicon Valley investors have used to nix tax bills on tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars in earnings from Internet startups.”

And $26 billion for a new tax credits for gifts to groups that provide scholarships for private school students.

A cool $1 billion, tax exempt, for “spaceports,” which the legislation says are “any facility located at or in close proximity to a launch site or reentry site.”

Oregon’s Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on Crapo’s committee, said in a social media post that this tax break was “Trump’s [or Crapo’s] wedding gift to [Jeff] Bezos and birthday gift to [Elon] Musk … tucked in the new budget bill.”

While cutting Medicaid by $1 trillion over ten years, Crapo’s bill found billions for a 150 percent increase in homeland security spending and billions more for a border wall even as the Trump Administration boasts it has closed the border. Wall bucks, cuts for wellness.

So, what to make of Crapo’s legacy bill? He’s a smart guy, a Harvard trained lawyer. Surely he knows what his bill will do. Surely he know how wildly unpopular it is.

Surely he has an answer for former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers who says the legislation is a victory for “human brutality.”

Surely Crapo knows, as the National Catholic Reporter put it in an editorial: “This bill is the signature of a democracy in decay. A government that no longer reflects the will or welfare of its people. A political system where a party can seize the presidency with less than half of the popular vote and still impose an agenda that serves only the wealthiest.”

What a legacy.

A final thought on the senator from Idaho.

Your memory may go back far enough to remember the release of the Access Hollywood tape very late in the 2016 presidential campaign. The tape featured Donald Trump boasting about his sexual conquests and his admitted abuse of women. Trump said, among other things, as “a star” he could get away grabbing women by, well, you know.

For many at the time, including Senator Crapo, the tape seemed likely to end Trump’s campaign and Crapo publicly called on Trump to do just that.

Here’s Crapo’s full statement from October 2016:

I have reached a decision that I can no longer endorse Donald Trump. This is not a decision that I have reached lightly, but his pattern of behavior has left me no choice. His repeated actions and comments toward women have been disrespectful, profane and demeaning. I have spent more than two decades working on domestic violence prevention. Trump’s most recent excuse of ‘locker room talk’ is completely unacceptable and is inconsistent with protecting women from abusive, disparaging treatment.

Make no mistake - we [need] conservative leadership in the White House. I urge Donald Trump to step aside and allow the Republican party to put forward a conservative candidate like Mike Pence who can defeat Hillary Clinton.

Crapo is far from alone, of course, in completely flipping on that strong statement, as he did three weeks after he issued it.

Politico noted at the time:

For Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the third time’s the charm for his presidential endorsement.

He backed Donald Trump once he became the presumptive Republican nominee in May. But Crapo then revoked his endorsement earlier this month, citing Trump’s offensive comments — caught on tape — boasting of sexually assaulting women.

You might say Crapo was for Trump then against Trump and then for him again. He made his peace, apparently. These days Crapo has nothing but praise.

Crapo was correct in 2016 when he said he had been working to address domestic violence against women, but not so much since. His focus seems to have changed to preventing transgender women from participating in sports.

Perhaps this is just in keeping with the arc of the moral universe of MAGA. What once was considered “disrespectful, profane and demeaning” is now abject Republican acceptance of a president with 34 felony convictions related to paying hush money to a porn star.

Still, you have to wonder: how does a Mike Crapo square this circle?

Are billionaire tax cuts and ending health care for millions of Americans, including his own constituents, worth the unblinking embrace of the politics of Trumpism?

Is continuing a 30 year career in Congress worth debasing yourself by embracing an authoritarian who clearly relishes dominating weak men like Mike Crapo?

The answer is certainly - sure. It is clearly worth it to these folks.

I understand the power and the prospect of another re-election - Crapo is 74 - and the bloated, fawning congressional staff and all that, but in the quiet of his own heart you have to wonder if Mike Crapo knows what an awful bargain he has made and what a lie he is living.

Surely he knows.

From the Substack of Marc Johnson.

Given the state of our politics some days - most days - it’s difficult to figure out where to start.

So, I’ll begin with the famous question posed by lawyer Jospeh Welch to Wisconsin’s demagogic Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954 during the hearings that helped bring about McCarthy’s downfall: “Have you no decency, sir?”

Since Monday I have been going back and forth on whether to write something about Mike Lee, the senior senator from Utah, a Temple going Mormon Republican who seems to think his main job as a United States senator is to post rafts of batshit crazy stuff on Elon Musk’s social media platform.

[In fairness to Lee he also is the chief Senate proponent of selling off public land in the American West, an idea as stupid and ill-considered as the senator’s social media profile.]

I hesitated to write about Mike Lee’s gutter garbage because it was so obviously gutter garbage that I (naively) thought Lee might try to make it right if people just gave him a few hours … or days.

Silly me. So, here’s one more recounting of this sordid, awful moment in our Trump Era, an era of blatant, uncompromising lying and character-free crap spreading that pretends to be politics in a democracy.

If you haven’t discovered it earlier Lee’s recent behavior should confirm that much of social media is a stewing cesspool of toxic human-generated waste largely because of guys like Mike Lee.

Joe Perticone at The Bulwark conducted a deep dive into Senator Lee’s social media habits. It ain’t pretty.

The Bulwark conducted a review of Mike Lee’s Twitter feed, @BasedMikeLee, over the past month. During that time period (30 days), the senator posted nearly 1,400 times, or about 46 posts a day. Of those posts, about half (697) were original tweets. The rest where retweets of other accounts or his own posts. The posts came mostly during normal business hours. But not exclusively. Of the nearly 700 posts Lee authored on Twitter, 47 of them came between the hours of 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. eastern daylight time. ¹

Perticone concludes, and its hard not to agree, that Lee needs an intervention - fast. Another appropriate step would be to show him an exit to his political career.

It was heartening - briefly, at least - to see Lee’s colleague from Minnesota, Tina Smith, confront him over his disgustingly shameful mocking of the state legislator in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, who was assassinated last weekend.

“I wanted him to know how much pain that caused me and the other people in my state, and I think around the country, who think that this was a brutal attack,” Smith told reporters. “I don’t know whether Senator Lee thought fully through what it was — you have to ask him — but I needed him to hear from me directly what impact I think his cruel statement had on me, his colleague.”

I’ll assume you’ve read about Lee’s comments and Smith’s response to them, but you may not have read about the strong Republican pushback against Mike Lee’s lunacy.

You haven’t read about pushback because it hasn’t happened.

As far as I can tell only one Senate Republican, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, said much of anything about Mike Lee’s disgraceful social media quips. “Seems insensitive, to say the least, inappropriate, for sure” and “not even true,” Cramer said.

And not even true.

Lee took the slimiest of his social media posts down, but did nothing more because being a shitposting conservative now means never having to say you’re sorry or wrong - about anything.

The Deseret News, the Salt Lake City newspaper owned by the LDS Church, editorialized about the senior senator from Utah, quaintly suggesting he might do something to make all this nonsense a little less nonsensical.

The tweets were unacceptable for anyone, let alone from a member of the Senate. It revealed a lack of compassion for both victims and their loved ones and cast a poor light on Utah, the state Sen. Lee represents. Removing the tweets was a start. An apology and recognition of the mistake should follow.

Lee didn’t just cast a poor light on Utah, but the human race. ²

So, instead of party pushback on the troll from Utah you might have seen the troll who is president of the United States trash talking the governor of Minnesota. Tim Walz broke the news to the world that his friend, the former speaker of the Minnesota House, and her husband had been killed in their own home apparently by a crazed, anti-abortion Trump supporter.

The president attacked Walz.

Well, of course, he did.

Leave it to Jon Stewart to pick through this pile of crap.

On his Monday show Stewart called Lee “the avatar for the insanity of this moment.”

After excoriating Lee for his callous, depraved treatment of victims of assassination, Stewart recounted a meeting he had with Lee back when Stewart was trying to get Congress to act on assistance for first responders injured in the terror attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

As the Salt Lake Tribune reported:

Stewart said he and a group of first responders met with Lee, who responded to one police officer recounting how he survived being in one of the towers when they collapsed. “Sen. Lee smiled and said, ‘I bet you’ve got a lot of stories,’” Stewart recalled.

“We met a lot of people in Washington,” Stewart said. “That was the only meeting where we all walked out and looked at each other and went, ‘What the f--- is wrong with that guy?’”

What, indeed.

And what is wrong with 600,000 people who follow his social media nonsense or the 571,974 Utah voters who supported him in his last re-election or the millions of Americans willing to shrug off such a repulsive lack of character? ³

At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

Answer: No. But we certainly have a lot of stories, don’t we?

This column first appeared on the Marc C. Johnson Substack.

Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution - the emoluments clause:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

What the CIA World Factbook says about Qatar, the country reportedly ready to gift President Donald Trump a $400 million luxuriously tricked out Boeing 747:

absolute monarchy

That’s pithy.

Those pesky Founding Fathers did not leave much wiggle room in the Constitution for bribes. The emoluments clause is just about as clear as it gets.

any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

Any kind whatever …

When a person - even the president, or especially the president - can so obviously violate the law and the plain language of the Constitution it can only mean one thing: the United States has ceased to be a nation of laws, indeed ceased to be a functioning republic.

Full stop.

The brain splitting corruption involved in Donald Trump saying he will accept the gift (or maybe grift) of a fancy aircraft that (reportedly) will then be handed over to his eventual presidential library is so far out the Overton window of political normalcy to be, well, wildly unprecedented doesn’t really cover it. ¹

“It’s not a gift to me, it’s a gift to the Department of Defense,” Trump said, telling a reporter they should be “embarrassed” for asking what his response is to people who view the jet as a personal gift to him.

Right.

Just consider the chain of corruption that leads to that kind of comment:

Trump started complaining in his first term about what he considered the sorry state of Air Force One, and has regularly thrown verbal spit balls at Boeing for being years behind in producing two new presidential aircraft.

Trump inspects the plane

“The motorcade of U.S. President Donald Trump is parked next to a 12-year old Qatari-owned Boeing 747-8 that Trump was touring in West Palm Beach, Florida, February 15, 2025.”

Qatar invests in Kushner private equity firm

“Wealth funds in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have invested hundreds of millions of dollars with Jared Kushner’s [Trump’s son-in-law] private equity firm, according to people with knowledge of the transactions, joining Saudi Arabia in backing the venture launched by former President Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law as he left the White House.” ³

Trump announces first foreign trip of second term to Middle East

“President Donald Trump will travel to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates next month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Tuesday. ?

Trump family business cuts Qatar deals

“The Trump family company struck a deal Wednesday to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar in a sign it has no plans to hold back from foreign dealmaking during a second Trump administration, despite the danger of a president shaping U.S. public policy for personal financial gain.?

ABC breaks story of Qatar airplane gift

“In what may be the most valuable gift ever extended to the United States from a foreign government, the Trump administration is preparing to accept a super luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet from the royal family of Qatar -- a gift that is to be available for use by President Donald Trump as the new Air Force One until shortly before he leaves office, at which time ownership of the plane will be transferred to the Trump presidential library foundation, sources familiar with the proposed arrangement told ABC News.” ?

"They're giving us a gift," Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday, adding that he would be "a stupid person" if he did not accept it. ?

I probably should add that Qatar, whose government is an absolute monarchy, has apparently been funding the Hamas terrorist organization for years, news that prompted a scathing report last year from former Israeli and US intelligence professionals.

The Times of Israel said the funding from Qatar directly led to the gruesome October 7 terror attack in Israel.

A confidential report by a team of veteran US and Israeli intelligence professionals working on behalf of lawyers for the families of October 7 victims contends that Qatar should not be allowed to continue to serve as a key mediator in the Gaza conflict, notably in negotiations for the release of hostages.

Compiled on the basis of research in English, Arabic, and French in the Middle East, Europe and the US, as well as public sourcing, the report concludes that Qatar is a fundamentally disingenuous actor, falsely presenting itself as an honest broker, moderating influence in the region, and “friend of the West.”

Oh, another wrinkle. The attorney general of the United States, Pam Bondi, before she assumed the job of Justice Department facilitator for White House and general government corruption, was - wait, wait - a $115,000 a month lobbyist for … Qatar.

If this were an episode of Veep we’d demand that the writer’s room work harder.

Sources told ABC that Bondi and Trump’s top White House lawyer, David Warrington, have already smoothed the legal details [on the 747 gift]. They concluded that the gift is “legally permissible” because it is being handed to the United States Air Force and will then be transferred to Trump’s presidential library foundation. They also determined it does not constitute a bribe because the gift does not hinge on an official act.

Right.

Hard not to imagine what the absolute monarchy is getting out of this “legally permissible” very public and transparent deal. Let your imagination run wild. ?

So, back in the almost Before Times Donald Trump did a deal with the federal government to lease a hotel in Washington, DC. You might remember.

The hotel, where Trump ended up as both the lessee and the person supervising the lease, became a magnet for foreign visitors and MAGA political types who stayed in the tacky suites, drank in the tacky bar and ate in the tacky restaurant. By one account foreign guests at the Trump hotel alone spent $3.7 million there, the functional equivalent of putting cash in the pocket of the American president.

The DC hotel should have been a much bigger story, in part, as NBC reported in 2021, because the federal agency that should have been raising red flags instead struck it’s colors.

The House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure's report, obtained exclusively by NBC News, found that the General Services Administration did not track foreign government payments to the hotel or identify the origins of more than $75 million in loans made by Trump and his family to shore up its troubled finances.

Right.

A government agency under control of the president didn’t track.

That Trump skated on the DC hotel deal, and skated on his attempt to shakedown the Ukrainian president for dirt on Joe Biden and skated again when then-Vice President Mike Pence went miles out of his way to stay at a Trump property in Ireland in 2019 and skated again on his massive crypto grifts is why we’re now talking about a Qatar airplane being gifted to Donald Trump.

Corruption reminds me of the wild blackberries that grow everywhere here on the Oregon coast. Unless you root them out and kill them off they comes back bigger and nastier year after year.

If this airplane deal goes through - and given the parties in play that seems more likely than not - the next mountain of corruption from this administration will be worse, much worse.

There is a fix for this level of putrid wrongdoing, but the fact that presidential corruption on this vast scale is not worth even a thought bubble among congressional Republicans is all the proof we need that the United States is no longer a functioning republic.

Those impressive oaths of office promising to uphold the Constitution. Piffle. No longer operative these days. The absolute monarchy has come to America.

Dr. Franklin was right. If we could keep it, he said, the republic that is. And it doesn’t appear we have.

 

I’m writing about Idaho - again.

I’ve long had a love-hate relationship with the state where I spent 40 years, and like some old (mostly) pleasant memory tinged with regret I just can’t shake the place - the mountains, the rivers, the old and good friends. Mostly the memories.

Idaho has also become for me a petrie dish through which to observe the growth of a kind of political bacteria that exposes just how far off the rails an already very conservative state has gone in the Time of Trump.

So, here goes.

An enduring feature of the Trump Era, in addition to the illegal executive orders, the senseless gutting of national health and science research, the chaotic and feckless approach to national security and the wildly corrupt behavior of the president, is the consistent and cringeworthy groveling by Republican elected officials seeking the favor of our would-be king.

Incredible news for Idaho’s farmers and ranchers! This trade agreement with the U.K. will open exciting new opportunities for Idaho agriculture. Thank you President Donald J. Trump for your leadership!

You come to expect that level of obsequious fawning from a Cabinet secretary or Fox News or Russian television host, but that quote came on May 8 from the two-term governor of Idaho, Brad Little.

Little, as in there is nothing too belittling for him to do in order to kiss up to Donald Trump, once had a discerning and practical political mind. That mind has now been infested, RFK, Jr.-style, with Trumpian brain worms.

Earlier this week Little posted a short video of himself standing in front of the White House with “Made in Idaho” products spread on a White House driveway. He was positively giddy.

I just dropped off some of our Great Idaho commodities at the White House to thank President @realDonaldTrump for his incredible trade deal with the UK!

I am excited to announce Idaho is headed to the UK this fall to build off @POTUS’ great work and promote Idaho agriculture!

As a general rule governors should refrain – we should all refrain – from excessive exclamation point usage, but four !!!! in two short messages !

Wow! Good thing no tariffs were imposed on (!) points.

Did the governor of Idaho really fly all the way across the country to make a 24 second Facebook video simply to curry favor with his king? You betcha he did.

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He’s apparently running for re-election next year and needs the “total and complete” blessing of the American Sun King to ward off a challenge from the even farther right. ¹

These cuddle up, ego stroking, fulsome praise and fawn over messages have, of course, only an audience of one. Trump was in Qatar at the time Little was preening in front of the White House this week, arranging, no doubt, the details of his wildly !!! unconstitutional luxury Boeing 747 gift (or grift) from the absolute monarch of that terrorist supporting Middle East country.

But the governor knows a Facebook post lasts forever and surely the White House Office of Sycophantic Governors Who Support the Great Man is keeping track of such things. If so, it was a good week for the shrinking governor from Idaho.

But here’s the thing: this great UK – US trade deal is a sham when it comes to Idaho and most other states. The announcement of the “deal” was a press release mascaraing as trade policy.

Since UK prime minister Sir Kier Starmer needed a “deal” as badly as the president both men hyped the agreement for all it was worth, which isn’t much since the specifics for agriculture producers were, well, mostly non-existent.

As the BBC reported:

The US has agreed to reduce import taxes on a set number of British cars and allow some steel and aluminum into the country tariff-free, as part of a new agreement between the US and UK.

Great news for the Idaho market for Bentleys and Jaguars and the state’s vast import market for metals. But, you may ask, what about those Idaho agricultural products that are now going to flow so freely toward the Brits? ²

There does appear to be some potential upside for the U.S. beef exports to the U.K. – the governor is a rancher – but the fine print details are rather foggy, as in we have a concept of an agreement and nothing more.

The American Farm Bureau Federation called it an "important first step", while noting “more work is needed.”

“This is a good deal for American farmers ... but it is at the end of the day a fairly narrowly-focused framework,” said Lewis Lukens, former acting US Ambassador to the UK and deputy chief of mission to the US embassy in London during part of Trump's first term.

“It gives Trump a political victory with not too much really to show behind it.”

As Reuter’s reported: “Both sides have agreed to new reciprocal market access on beef, with UK farmers given a first-ever tariff-free quota for 13,000 metric tons.”

In other words: U.K. beef coming to the U.S.

But there is more “incredible news for Idaho farmers.”

“There will be no weakening of UK food standards on imports, despite repeated entreaties by the U.S. side.

“Crucially there will be no weakening of UK food standards on U.S. beef imports, which was an election manifesto pledge for the Labour government. That means U.S. beef bred with growth hormones still won't be allowed in.

“U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said the deal would ‘exponentially increase’ U.S. beef exports to Britain. But much depends on whether American beef could compete with the British beef on price and find favor with British consumers.

“Currently 100% of the fresh beef sold by Britain's two biggest supermarket chains Tesco and Sainsbury’s is British and Irish.”

A concept of a deal with a thousand loose ends. That is what the governor is touting with all those exclamation points.

But the fact-based world is just a concept for Republican governors whose political future depends on the art of the kiss up. The reality, as the Washington Post noted, is the UK’s trade future, given the chaos and unpredictability of the Trump Era, is with Europe, not with Idaho.

“Starmer is trying to placate Trump even as the British prime minister seeks a new post-Brexit relationship with Europe,” the Post reported, “which is a far more important farm market than the United States. Britain and the E.U. are expected to announce their trade deal as soon as next week.

“Starmer will host E.U. leaders in London on May 19 in what is being dubbed a major Brexit ‘reset’ summit, where leaders are expected to discuss ways to further trade and cooperation between the U.K. and the trading bloc.”

The governor might want to reconsider his trade mission to the UK this fall and book a ticket – maybe take some Idaho spuds or peas and lentils along – and head for Brussels, or Ottawa.

One follower of Brad Little on Facebook posted the only possibly appropriate comment to his servile Trumpian fabulism about trade and so much more.

“Weird,” she said.