The 47th President and the Post-Biden World

As the nation mourned the killing of VA ICU nurse Alex Pretti yesterday at the hands of federal officials in Minneapolis, President Donald J. Trump spent last night at the White House at a black-tie private screening of a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump. Amazon paid $40 million for the rights to the film just weeks after executive chair Jeff Bezos dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago following the former president’s reelection and is spending another $35 million to promote the film.

Then, this morning, Trump’s social media account posted a 450-word social media screed complaining about the lawsuit against his addition of a massive ballroom to the White House. Calling the National Trust for Historic Preservation a “Radical Left” organization, the account claimed that the addition “is being done with the design, consent, and approval of the highest levels of the United States Military and Secret Service. The mere bringing of this ridiculous lawsuit has already, unfortunately, exposed this heretofore Top Secret fact. Stoppage of construction, at this late date, when so much has already been ordered and done, would be devastating to the White House, our Country, and all concerned.”

This morning, administration officials doubled down on their insistence that the killing had been justified.

On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, U.S. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino claimed the true victims of yesterday’s shooting were federal agents. He confirmed that the agents who killed Pretti yesterday remain on the streets today, though they have been reassigned elsewhere. FBI director Kash Patel claimed on the Fox News Channel that the fact Pretti was carrying a weapon proved that he was planning trouble, although because he was part of a community-led first-responder network, carrying the weapon for which he had a permit made sense.

But Americans are not buying it. They are coalescing around the idea of the American people versus an out-of-control government. As conservative lawyer George Conway put it: “I just checked—it turns out that Art. II, Sec. 1 of the Constitution of the United States does *not* say ‘The executive Power shall be vested in a bunch of sociopaths who think they can do whatever the f*ck they want and make sh*t up as they go along.’”

Reports out of Minnesota say that in the face of the terror inflicted on it by federal agents, the people there are even more closely linked together in community solidarity. They are patrolling the streets, donating food, delivering groceries, helping with legal services, organizing to look out for each other in a demonstration of community solidarity so foreign to administration figures that Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday suggested that there was something nefarious about how well organized they are as they protect their neighbors.

In Minneapolis today, the Minnesota prison system took the extraordinary step of launching its own website to combat lies from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Its first major announcement suggested that Bovino had lied about the Border Patrol operation that was underway when agents killed Alex Pretti. The Minnesota Department of Corrections expressed its condolences to the family and loved ones of Alex Pretti and said that although Bovino claimed that the operation was targeting a man with a significant criminal history, that information was false.

In fact, the individual Bovino identified had never been in custody in Minnesota, and records showed only traffic-related offenses for him. Records did show, though, that he had been in federal immigration custody during Trump’s first administration and had been released.

Chief Brian O’Hara of the Minneapolis Police Department told Margaret Brennan of Face the Nation, “People have had enough. This is the third shooting now in less than three weeks. The Minneapolis Police Department went the entire year last year recovering about 900 guns from the street, arresting hundreds and hundreds of violent offenders, and we didn’t shoot anyone, and now this is the second American citizen that’s been killed, it’s the third shooting within three weeks…. This is not sustainable. This police department has only 600 police officers. We are stretched incredibly thin. This is taking an enormous toll, trying to manage all of this chaos on top of having to be the police department for a major city. It’s too much.”

The Minnesota National Guard made it clear which side they were on. Wearing neon vests to distinguish themselves from federal agents, they handed out doughnuts, coffee, and hot chocolate to anti-ICE protesters.

The National Basketball Players Association said it could no longer remain silent. “Now more than ever,” it said, “we must defend the right to freedom of speech and stand in solidarity with the people in Minnesota protesting and risking their lives to demand justice. The fraternity of NBA players, like the United States itself, is a community enriched by its global citizens, and we refuse to let the flames of division threaten the civil liberties that are meant to protect us all. The NBPA and its members extend our deepest condolences to the families of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, just as our thoughts remain focused on the safety and well-being of all members of our community.”

The newest killing has opened up a rift in Republican ranks. Administration officials not allied with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and her cronies are complaining to reporters, including Bill Melugin of the Fox News Channel, that they are frustrated with DHS officials’ statements that Pretti was intending a “massacre” of federal agents in the face of videos that disprove such absurd claims. They have told Melugin such comments are “catastrophic.” “[W]e are losing this war,” sources say, “we are losing the base and the narrative.”

Indeed, at the base level of politics, MAGA supporters who support gun ownership are appalled by statements like that of FBI director Kash Patel, who told the Fox News Channel’s Maria Bartiromo, “You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple. You don’t have the right to break the law and incite violence.” But Pretti had a license to carry a weapon, and he did not brandish it. President Rob Doar of the Minnesota Gun Owners Law Center noted that Pretti had the right to carry a gun in that situation and that it shouldn’t be necessary “to choose between exercising your First Amendment rights or your Second Amendment rights.” He expressed concern that “our government and agents of our government are not engaging in good faith with what we’re seeing with our own eyes.”

Lawyer John Mitnick, who served as deputy counsel of the Homeland Security Council from its inception during the George W. Bush administration and then served as general counsel of the United States Department of Homeland Security from 2018 to 2019, when he clashed with Stephen Miller, wrote on social media: “I helped to establish DHS in 2002 and 2003 and later had the homeland security portfolio as a White House Counsel and served as General Counsel of the Department. I am enraged and embarrassed by DHS’s lawlessness, fascism, and cruelty. Impeach and remove Trump—now.”

Aside from a few strong MAGA voices, elected Republicans appeared reluctant to defend the killing. Neither Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) nor House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) commented on it.

Vermont’s Republican governor Phil Scott did, though, leading the way for other Republicans in districts that are sliding away from MAGA. In a statement, he said: “Enough…It’s not acceptable for American citizens to be killed by federal agents for exercising their God-given and constitutional rights to protest their government. At best, these federal immigration operations are a complete failure of coordination of acceptable public safety and law enforcement practices, training, and leadership. At worst, it’s a deliberate federal intimidation and incitement of American citizens that’s resulting in the murder of Americans…. The president should pause these operations, de-escalate the situation, and reset the federal government’s focus on truly criminal illegal immigrants. In the absence of presidential action, Congress and the courts must step up to restore constitutionality.”

G. Elliot Morris of Strength in Numbers noted today that even the Republican-leaning Rasmussen polls have shown that 59% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, while only 39% approve. In Strength in Numbers today, he reported that “Trump’s 2024 coalition has come undone.” He explained that “[y]oung voters, non-white voters, and low-turnout voters who swung to Trump from 2020 to 2024 have swung back against him in force. In many cases, these groups are even more anti-Trump now than they were ahead of the 2020 election.”

Morris also noted that Trump’s approval rating is not underwater in ten of the states he won in 2024, as I wrote last night. It’s underwater in fifteen.

Today the editorial boards of both Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and his New York Post urged the administration to pause its ICE operations in Minneapolis after the killing of Alex Pretti. The Wall Street Journal’s famously right-wing editorial board warned that “[t]he Trump Administration spin on this simply isn’t believable.” It continued: “Ms. Noem and Mr. Miller aren’t credible spokesmen. Their social-media and cable-TV strategy is to own the libs, rather than to persuade Americans. This is backfiring against Republicans…. Mr. Miller’s mass deportation methods are turning immigration, an issue Mr. Trump owned in 2024, into a political liability for Republicans in 2026. Americans don’t want law enforcement shooting people in the street or arresting five-year-old boys.”

Tonight, the editorial board of the New York Post warned that Trump’s ICE actions in Minneapolis are “backfiring.” “Swing voters…see US citizens dying at federal agents’ hands, and recoil in horror.” It concluded: “Mr. President, the American people didn’t vote for these scenes and you can’t continue to order them to not believe their lying eyes.”

Trump’s social media account turned defensive tonight. After repeating Trump’s false claim that he had won election in a historic landslide (in reality, he won less than 50% of the vote), it blamed Democrats for the chaos ICE and CBP agents have caused in Democratic-led cities. It demanded that every Democratic mayor and governor cooperate with the administration to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Yesterday, after Alex Pretti’s death, the son of a man Pretti had cared for at the VA hospital published a video of Pretti speaking at his father’s deathbed. “Today we remember that freedom is not free,” Pretti said. “We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it, and even sacrifice for it. May we never forget and always remember our brothers and sisters who have served so that we may enjoy the gift of freedom. So in this moment, we remember and give thanks for their dedication and selfless service to our nation in the cause of our freedom. In this solemn hour, we [give] them our honor, and our gratitude.”

Asked if Pretti ever brandished his gun, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem said Saturday: “I don’t know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign. This is a violent riot when you have someone showing up with weapons and are using them to assault law enforcement officers.”

In 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse, a conservative 17-year-old from the Chicago suburbs, brought an AR-15 to a racial justice protest in Wisconsin, killing two people and injuring another. Liberals said he was looking for trouble, but Rittenhouse, arguing he had acted in self-defense, became a hero to many conservatives and was later acquitted of murder.

In another episode that year, Mark and Patricia McCloskey waved guns at Black Lives Matter protesters, albeit from their front yard. They were celebrated by gun rights backers and invited to speak at the Republican National Convention.

Liberals, including gun-control supporters, in contrast emphasize that Pretti’s legal possession of a weapon in no way reflects on his intentions at the protest, and certainly cannot justify his killing at the hands of federal agents.

The divide underlines how much American politics in the Trump era has departed from a debate over principles — to the extent that it was ever that — and has settled firmly into a battle of us-versus-them, where actions are lauded or vilified depending on who is behind them.

Yesterday President Donald J. Trump blamed Democratic officials for the killing of VA intensive care nurse Alex Pretti in Minnesota Saturday morning. Since then, administration officials and their supporters seem to be coalescing around the idea that the reason there have been violent clashes in Minneapolis is not the violence of federal agents there, but that city officials aren’t cooperating with federal officials.

As Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote notes, this language comes straight from the Insurrection Act, and indeed, MAGA leader and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that he thinks Trump should invoke that act. Bannon said Pretti “knew exactly what he was doing and he knew the consequences. The violent domestic terrorist mob in the streets of Minneapolis needs to stand down now.”

On right-wing social media, Bannon echoed the language of a dystopian vision of the world that claims immigrants are invading the United States and those protecting them in Minneapolis are dangerous. He told his supporters: “This is just not Minneapolis—this is an organized, well thought through effort to invade the country.” MAGA adherents are embracing the daft idea that the Minnesota people who have come together to protect their neighbors are an organized, paid insurgency.

But the tide seems to be running against them.

This morning, Trump’s social media account posted that the president is sending Tom Homan to Minnesota. Homan is a White House advisor under scrutiny for allegations that he accepted $50,000 in cash stuffed into a CAVA bag after promising to steer government contracts toward those offering him the money. According to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, Homan has been clashing with the extremist faction led by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, her advisor Corey Lewandowski, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller because he thinks their made-for-TV violence is doing long-term damage to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol.

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice commented: “If Tom ‘Cava Bag’ Homan is your emergency crisis comms guy, you’re f*cked.”

Trump’s account also posted his version of a phone call with Minnesota governor Tim Walz that would let Trump deescalate the situation there. Despite the fact that, as journalist Laura Bassett notes, the administration has been leading its followers to believe Walz is going to jail, Trump’s account posted:

“Governor Tim Walz called me with a request to work together with respect to Minnesota. It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength. I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession. The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future. He was happy that Tom Homan was going to Minnesota, and so am I! We have had such tremendous SUCCESS in Washington, D.C., Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana, and virtually every other place that we have ‘touched’ and, even in Minnesota, Crime is way down, but both Governor Walz and I want to make it better! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”

This morning, Republican Chris Madel withdrew from the Minnesota governor’s race, saying “I cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so…. Operation Metro Surge has expanded far beyond its stated focus on true public safety threats.”

“United States citizens, particularly those of color, live in fear. United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship. That’s wrong,” Madel said.

He added: “I am above all else a pragmatist. The reality is that the national Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota.”

Neil Mehta and Valerie Bauerlein of the Wall Street Journal noted that Preya Samsundar, a Republican strategy consultant, agrees, noting that her own mother, who immigrated legally, has begun to carry her passport with her.

Some Republicans are backing away from the administration over its tactics and violence in Minnesota. Former vice president Mike Pence today called images from there “deeply troubling” and called for a full investigation into Pretti’s killing. By Sunday, Republican senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina had all called for investigations.

Today those calls reached deeper into the party, with Republican senators John Curtis of Utah, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Todd Young of Indiana also calling for an investigation and “accountability.” This afternoon, Jordain Carney and Adam Wren of Politico reported that Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had called a hearing for February 12. He has asked Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commissioner Rodney Scott, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Joseph Edlow, and ICE acting director Todd Lyons to testify.

One House Republican told Meredith Lee Hill of Politico: “Many of us wonder if the administration has any clue as to how much this will hurt us legislatively and electorally this year.”

As Kate Riga of Talking Points Memo noted today, even MAGA firebrand Texas governor Greg Abbott said on a Dallas talk show that the White House needs to “recalibrate and maybe work from a different direction to ensure that they get back to get what they wanted to do to begin with—and that is to remove people from the country.”

And immigration officers themselves are speaking up. This afternoon, Nicholas Nehamas, Hamed Aleaziz, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, and Alexandra Berzon of the New York Times reported that immigration officers deployed to urban areas are angry at the aggressiveness the Trump administration is employing and at the administration’s sending them into dangerous situations. They say the arrest quotas, long hours, and public anger at them are taking a significant toll on morale. Most of those the journalists interviewed said they were unhappy that administration officials had jumped to blame Pretti for his own killing. One agent said he had “always given the benefit of the doubt to the government in these situations” but no longer believed “any of the statements they put out anymore.”

Throughout the day, there were signs that the administration was preparing to throw Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino under the bus. An unsigned editorial in The Free Press, an outlet closely aligned with the administration, lambasted Noem for pushing lies that the American people can see with their own eyes are untrue. “Perhaps Republican operatives consider the politics of division as a viable strategy for their party to survive the midterm elections,” the editorial said, but it noted that “the administration’s deportation tactics as well as the conduct of federal agents in Minneapolis are driving voters away from the president and his party.”

Then, this afternoon, CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez reported that Bovino and some of his agents are leaving Minneapolis and returning to the sectors from which they came. Before hitting the road, though, on Friday federal agents took into custody Juan Espinoza Martinez, whom a jury acquitted this week after the Department of Justice accused him of participating in a plot to hire someone to kill Bovino. While CBP appears to be leaving, the operation itself will continue.

Tonight Alvarez and her colleague Michael Williams reported that DHS had suspended Bovino’s access to his official social media accounts.

In response to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s suggestion in a letter on Saturday, shortly after Pretti’s killing, that Governor Tim Walz could “restore the rule of law” in Minnesota by handing over the state’s voter rolls, Walz said: “I think everybody understands what the last request was, totally unrelated to anything on the voter files. This is again…Donald Trump telling everybody that the election was rigged…. I would just give a pro tip to the attorney general. There’s two million documents in the Epstein files we’re still waiting on. Go ahead and work on those.”

This afternoon, Trump turned back to tariffs, saying he is increasing tariff rates on South Korean “Autos, Lumber, Pharma, and all other Reciprocal TARIFFS, from 15% to 25%.”

This evening, Trump’s social media account posted that he “just had a very good telephone conversation with Mayor Jacob Frey, of Minneapolis. Lots of progress is being made!”

Frey responded with a statement: “I spoke with President Trump this afternoon and appreciated the conversation. I expressed how much Minneapolis has benefited from our immigrant communities and was clear that my main ask is that Operation Metro Surge needs to end. The president agreed that the present situation cannot continue.

“Some federal agents will begin leaving the area tomorrow, and I will continue pushing for the rest involved in this operation to go.

“Minneapolis will continue to cooperate with state and federal law enforcement on real criminal investigations—but we will not participate in unconstitutional arrests of our neighbors or enforce federal immigration law. Violent criminals should be held accountable based on the crimes they commit, not based on where they are from.

“I will continue working with all levels of government to keep our communities safe, keep crime down, and put Minneapolis residents first.

“I plan to meet with Border Czar Tom Homan tomorrow to further discuss next steps.”

Yesterday President Donald J. Trump blamed Democratic officials for the killing of VA intensive care nurse Alex Pretti in Minnesota Saturday morning. Since then, administration officials and their supporters seem to be coalescing around the idea that the reason there have been violent clashes in Minneapolis is not the violence of federal agents there, but that city officials aren’t cooperating with federal officials.

As Allison Gill of Mueller, She Wrote notes, this language comes straight from the Insurrection Act, and indeed, MAGA leader and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon told the Wall Street Journal yesterday that he thinks Trump should invoke that act. Bannon said Pretti “knew exactly what he was doing and he knew the consequences. The violent domestic terrorist mob in the streets of Minneapolis needs to stand down now.”

On right-wing social media, Bannon echoed the language of a dystopian vision of the world that claims immigrants are invading the United States and those protecting them in Minneapolis are dangerous. He told his supporters: “This is just not Minneapolis—this is an organized, well thought through effort to invade the country.” MAGA adherents are embracing the daft idea that the Minnesota people who have come together to protect their neighbors are an organized, paid insurgency.

But the tide seems to be running against them.

This morning, Trump’s social media account posted that the president is sending Tom Homan to Minnesota. Homan is a White House advisor under scrutiny for allegations that he accepted $50,000 in cash stuffed into a CAVA bag after promising to steer government contracts toward those offering him the money. According to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, Homan has been clashing with the extremist faction led by Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, her advisor Corey Lewandowski, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller because he thinks their made-for-TV violence is doing long-term damage to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol.

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice commented: “if Tom ‘Cava Bag’ Homan is your emergency crisis comms guy, you’re f*cked.”

Trump’s account also posted his version of a phone call with Minnesota governor Tim Walz that would let Trump deescalate the situation there. Despite the fact that, as journalist Laura Bassett notes, the administration has been leading its followers to believe Walz is going to jail, Trump’s account posted:

“Governor Tim Walz called me with a request to work together with respect to Minnesota. It was a very good call, and we, actually, seemed to be on a similar wavelength. I told Governor Walz that I would have Tom Homan call him, and that what we are looking for are any and all Criminals that they have in their possession. The Governor, very respectfully, understood that, and I will be speaking to him in the near future. He was happy that Tom Homan was going to Minnesota, and so am I! We have had such tremendous SUCCESS in Washington, D.C., Memphis, Tennessee, and New Orleans, Louisiana, and virtually every other place that we have ‘touched’ and, even in Minnesota, Crime is way down, but both Governor Walz and I want to make it better! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”

This morning, Republican Chris Madel withdrew from the Minnesota governor’s race, saying “I cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so…. Operation Metro Surge has expanded far beyond its stated focus on true public safety threats.”

“United States citizens, particularly those of color, live in fear. United States citizens are carrying papers to prove their citizenship. That’s wrong,” Madel said.

He added: “I am above all else a pragmatist. The reality is that the national Republicans have made it nearly impossible for a Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota.”

Neil Mehta and Valerie Bauerlein of the Wall Street Journal noted that Preya Samsundar, a Republican strategy consultant, agrees, noting that her own mother, who immigrated legally, has begun to carry her passport with her.

Some Republicans are backing away from the administration over its tactics and violence in Minnesota. Former vice president Mike Pence today called images from there “deeply troubling” and called for a full investigation into Pretti’s killing. By Sunday, Republican senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina had all called for investigations.

Today those calls reached deeper into the party, with Republican senators John Curtis of Utah, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Todd Young of Indiana also calling for an investigation and “accountability.” This afternoon, Jordain Carney and Adam Wren of Politico reported that Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had called a hearing for February 12. He has asked Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commissioner Rodney Scott, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Joseph Edlow, and ICE acting director Todd Lyons to testify.

One House Republican told Meredith Lee Hill of Politico: “Many of us wonder if the administration has any clue as to how much this will hurt us legislatively and electorally this year.”

As Kate Riga of Talking Points Memo noted today, even MAGA firebrand Texas governor Greg Abbott said on a Dallas talk show that the White House needs to “recalibrate and maybe work from a different direction to ensure that they get back to get what they wanted to do to begin with—and that is to remove people from the country.”

And immigration officers themselves are speaking up. This afternoon, Nicholas Nehamas, Hamed Aleaziz, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, and Alexandra Berzon of the New York Times reported that immigration officers deployed to urban areas are angry at the aggressiveness the Trump administration is employing and at the administration’s sending them into dangerous situations. They say the arrest quotas, long hours, and public anger at them are taking a significant toll on morale. Most of those the journalists interviewed said they were unhappy that administration officials had jumped to blame Pretti for his own killing. One agent said he had “always given the benefit of the doubt to the government in these situations” but no longer believed “any of the statements they put out anymore.”

Throughout the day, there were signs that the administration was preparing to throw Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino under the bus. An unsigned editorial in The Free Press, an outlet closely aligned with the administration, lambasted Noem for pushing lies that the American people can see with their own eyes are untrue. “Perhaps Republican operatives consider the politics of division as a viable strategy for their party to survive the midterm elections,” the editorial said, but it noted that “the administration’s deportation tactics as well as the conduct of federal agents in Minneapolis are driving voters away from the president and his party.”

Then, this afternoon, CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez reported that Bovino and some of his agents are leaving Minneapolis and returning to the sectors from which they came. Before hitting the road, though, on Friday federal agents took into custody Juan Espinoza Martinez, whom a jury acquitted this week after the Department of Justice accused him of participating in a plot to hire someone to kill Bovino. While CBP appears to be leaving, the operation itself will continue.

Tonight Alvarez and her colleague Michael Williams reported that DHS had suspended Bovino’s access to his official social media accounts.

In response to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s suggestion in a letter on Saturday, shortly after Pretti’s killing, that Governor Tim Walz could “restore the rule of law” in Minnesota by handing over the state’s voter rolls, Walz said: “I think everybody understands what the last request was, totally unrelated to anything on the voter files. This is again…Donald Trump telling everybody that the election was rigged…. I would just give a pro tip to the attorney general. There’s two million documents in the Epstein files we’re still waiting on. Go ahead and work on those.”

This afternoon, Trump turned back to tariffs, saying he is increasing tariff rates on South Korean “Autos, Lumber, Pharma, and all other Reciprocal TARIFFS, from 15% to 25%.”

This evening, Trump’s social media account posted that he “just had a very good telephone conversation with Mayor Jacob Frey, of Minneapolis. Lots of progress is being made!”

Frey responded with a statement: “I spoke with President Trump this afternoon and appreciated the conversation. I expressed how much Minneapolis has benefited from our immigrant communities and was clear that my main ask is that Operation Metro Surge needs to end. The president agreed that the present situation cannot continue.

“Some federal agents will begin leaving the area tomorrow, and I will continue pushing for the rest involved in this operation to go.

“Minneapolis will continue to cooperate with state and federal law enforcement on real criminal investigations—but we will not participate in unconstitutional arrests of our neighbors or enforce federal immigration law. Violent criminals should be held accountable based on the crimes they commit, not based on where they are from.

“I will continue working with all levels of government to keep our communities safe, keep crime down, and put Minneapolis residents first.

“I plan to meet with Border Czar Tom Homan tomorrow to further discuss next steps.”

Let’s go through the tragicomedy of the last week or so in geopolitics to ask and answer a question. What happens when the world can’t trust America anymore?

Now, you might say, “It already can’t!” That’s true, perhaps, but not quite in the sense I mean. The hard stuff of trust. So far, the world is sort-of-dancing-at-the-edge of the abyss. It’s bewildered by what’s happened to America, and it’s unsure. Trust it, or not?

Hence, the last week. Here’s what happened. Trump, in a classic spiral of fascist-narcissist obsession, decided to erupt at Europe over Greenland. He threatened a whole new trade war, this time, with the explicit intent to seize a territory.

Europe was double crossed, because it’s spent the last year trying to please and placate Trump. Appease might be too strong a word, but Europe’s leaders, being unaccustomed to the kind of brutality and rage that permeates America these days, sort of nervously bit their fingernails, and hoped that Trump would calm down, if they played along, smiling, reducing tariffs on their end, not retaliating. But of course, Trump is Trump, and more to the point, authoritarians are authoritarians.

So after Trump—LOL—got? Stole? Demanded? A Nobel Peace Prize, and who the hell even knows what to call this ridiculous act, which was swiftly derided by the Nobel Committee itself, he proceeded to blow his top over Greenland in some bizarre combination of teenage temper tantrum by way of 21st century Hitler. But the really funny part is what happened next, in this sort of escalating geopolitical comedy hour. At Davos, Trump proceeded to double cross Europe again.

He declared that a “framework” for a “deal” had been arrived at, which was to include land and mineral rights, and therefore, since he’d won, he was “cancelling” the tariffs. The only problem was that no such deal had remotely been reached, or even discussed. Trump had met with the head of NATO, which isn’t a country, that can cede sovereignty, and politicians who actually led said countries were quick to point all this out.

Meanwhile, markets reacted as if what Trump had said was real. Because of course in the upside-down fantasy world we now live in, who the hell knows? And does anyone even care? Ah, but this is the part where we all should.

So. There’s Trump. Double-crossing America’s oldest friends and allies, not just once or twice, but just over and over again, like the mafia rolling into a bar, before they burn it down. Just lying through his teeth, so he doesn’t look like an idiot and an incompetent. Declaring “deals” have been done, when of course they haven’t.

And there’s the world asking: can we still trust America? Remember, it hasn’t quite arrived at an answer yet. It’s sort of stunned. It can’t quite comprehend this weird authoritarian fascist technofeudal expansionist explosion-implosion, which is like if all of history’s bleakest chapters decided to have diarrhea all at once (sorry, someone needed to say it.)

Now. Meanwhile, there’s Trump, just double-crossing and lying, and lying and double-crossing, over and over and over again. We should all understand given the pattern above what happens next. Trump double crosses everyone again, and the non-deal is angrily said to be not good enough, and bang, here comes another trade war, more expansionism, more insanity, more lunacy, more stupidity, as if we’re not all drowning in it already. But do enough of us understand that? What are a million double crosses even called?

This is Trump’s game. The abuser’s game. The inducement of the act of holding out hope. The “reprieve.” The double cross. The doubling down. This is the pattern. We can all see it by now. Aren’t we all—pardon my Vichy French—weary of it by now?

So what happens when the world finally cottons onto the fact that Trump is history’s high priest of bad faith? That none of this is ever going to work, the negotiations, the deals, the diplomacy, the nice-guy-smiles, the handshakes, all of it? And just concludes, in fact, that America can’t be trusted?

You might say, “of course the world can’t trust America now!,” but that’s not. quite the point. The point is that it wants to.Because of course it has a great deal invested in America. Capital, assets, people, time, energy, history, the list goes on. And so it’s in disbelief, precisely because disbelief is a thing that happens when we first want to believe. But at some point, and it’s coming soon, America will finally lose all credibility.

That means: nobody will bother even attempting to “deal” with Trump, because if all that’s going to happen is that you’ll be double-crossed, and lied to, then lied to, and double-crossed…then who’d bother? And that’s when the fireworks will really begin.

Right now, the world is still making a feeble attempt to deal with Trump in good faith. It’s playing out this sort of spectacle which we all know is a charade. OK, maybe if we just…maybe if we just…try to give this maniac a little bit of what he wants, he’ll go away. But it doesn’t work. It never has. You can’t appease a fascist, what is this, third grade?

But at some point, this fools’ dance will stop. Nobody will want to deal with an America that the world has rightly concluded can’t be trusted. Everybody’s tired of this goddamned game. It’s draining, playing out this three act play over and over again, every day, like we’re trapped in Kafka’s ******* high school notebook, or a 90s B-movie thriller: you threaten me, I placate you, then you double cross me and stab me in the back, hello, this is history’s dumbest and most cliched plot line, too, just ask Caesar. It’s all so tiring and so painful and so stupid the blood is pouring out of my toenails trying to find a new body to inhabit, or maybe just a less idiotic future.

We’re all too tired of it now. So what happens when the world’s like, thanks but no thanks, please, find someone else to star in this dimwits’ play? Then a lot of things happen, and none of them are good. The world just shakes its head and walks away when Trump announces he wants to “make a deal,” which is like the mafia asking if you want them to “invest” in your restaurant. The world walks away, from American business, assets, capital, investment, dollars. It’s not that it doesn’t want them, and whatnot, but…who knows what’s going to happen? If the idea is that you deal in good faith, but you’ll still get double crossed…and you know it…what does that make you?

This is a step beyond “uncertainty.” It’s a very different place. Uncertainty was one of the buzzwords of pundits of the last year. It was sort of accurate, in a tepid way. But this isn’t that anymore. This is certainty. Uncertainty is where the world’s been. Can we trust America? Should we? How much? Maybe 50%? That’s pretty good, right? Sort of mafia-investing-in-the-bar odds, actually, but I digress. Now we’re crossing the threshold into certainty. America can’t be trusted.

It can’t be trusted with money, with capital, with wealth. With ideas, with creativity, with time and energy. It can’t be trusted to be a goddamned responsible member of civilization, and maintain even what semblance of democracy it had, which wasn’t exactly a shining example, what with the endless wars and school shootings and so on, but at least it wasn’t a full on fascism orgasm (sorry number two.)

When the world decides that America can’t be trusted, then the consequences will be severe. The final loss of credibility is what we’re talking about now. What happens when something, someone, loses credibility? You don’t even listen to the threats anymore. You just walk away, and get on with your life. This way lies becoming a pariah state, and all that entails

Now. Would you want to hold stuff that didn’t have much credibility in the world’s eyes? Why would you? How much would it be worth? Credibility is everything, in the end.

Why don’t we invest as much as we probably should as a world in poor countries? It’s not just that they’re poor, it’s that they’re not credible. Their institutions are too weak for them to carry through on their promises, often, as noble as they may be. Their leaders are…a lot like Trump. They’re riven by malfeasance and corruption. And so that lack of credibility exacts a steep, steep price. In the end, it is what keeps so many poor countries poor.

Credibility is…everything. For a currency. For bonds, for stocks, for property. It’s everything for everything. Do you tend to do much business with those you know you can’t trust? Not just wonder if you can. Know you can’t. How about be friends with? Have relationships with?

Maybe you see my point. Let me now make it crystal clear.

We’re reaching a turning point now. Not just the place where the world wonders if it can trust America. But where it knows it can’t.

This will be the principle by which geopolitics will be ordered for probably the rest of our lives. If you doubt me, by the way, you’re probably American, so go ahead and ask a European or Canadian if they’ll trust America again just because it elects someone nicer. They’ll tell you: so what? Now the problem is that you just might do it all over again, at any point, and how do we know you won’t?

America now has a serious credibility problem on its hands. The consequences will be disastrous. For it. Geopolitically, this opens a great deal of room, for nations who wish to emerge now as leaders, like Canada, like Europe, who can serve as credible stewards of global institutions, order, and the future itself.

Big opportunity. They’re already seizing it. America blew it. This kind of credibility doesn’t come back, at least not in the rest of our lifetimes. The world really has changed dramatically now.

For a world, for a civilization, the question is always: who or what can, should, will we believe in? One answer is abstract, about ideals. Another is harder, about promises made and kept, investment, cooperation, prosperity, about who can be trusted to care even for what doesn’t belong to them. Credibility is power, in this way, my friends, the truest kind of all. The rest is just details.

And as America loses its credibility, so too goes everything it has built over decades and centuries.

Department of Homeland Security officers have fired shots during enforcement arrests or at people protesting their operations 16 times since July, and as in the recent shootings in Minneapolis, in each case the Trump administration has publicly declared their actions justified before waiting for investigations to be completed.

Most of the incidents involve officers firing at drivers during enforcement stops in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago where DHS has surged federal immigration officers. At least 10 people have been struck by bullets — including four U.S. citizens. Three people have been killed.

Board of Peace Set to Hand Trump Sweeping Powers Over Gaza

President Trump would have sweeping powers over the future governance of the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and the well-being of its people, under a plan drafted by the new international group he leads, laying out how it would operate.

The group, the Board of Peace, met for the first time in Davos, Switzerland, last week, as member states including Azerbaijan and Qatar, signed its founding charter, which calls for securing “enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.”
Much about the Board of Peace has so far been unclear, but a draft resolution, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, would allow the chairman, Mr. Trump, to nominate senior officials who will help administer Gaza, and assign responsibilities.

Those officials include a “high representative” for Gaza, tasked with overseeing a Palestinian body administering the enclave, and the commander of an international stabilization force, which is intended to help provide security. Mr. Trump would also have the power to approve resolutions and suspend them in urgent cases.

The resolution is dated Jan. 22 — last Thursday — and has not been signed by Mr. Trump, which would bring it into force, according to three officials who were briefed on the resolution and verified the authenticity of the obtained copy. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, adding that the resolution was currently under discussion.
It was not clear whether the draft was the final text of the resolution.
The document resembles a United Nations Security Council resolution, and appears to be an effort by the Board of Peace to formalize some of its plans for Gaza.

The notion of establishing a Board of Peace for Gaza was first set out in Mr. Trump’s 20-point plan, announced last September, for ending the 2-year war between Israel and Hamas that devastated the Palestinian enclave.
In November, the U.N. Security Council granted the Board of Peace a mandate as part of U.S.-led efforts to sustain the cease-fire in Gaza.
The assumption was that the board would focus solely on Gaza, but the Trump administration said this month that it would address conflicts elsewhere, although the scope of that remains unclear.

Though some countries have enthusiastically joined the new international organization after being invited by Mr. Trump, others, including close U.S. allies like France and Britain, have refused. Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said his country would not join because the board excluded the Palestinian Authority and because the body was “outside the framework of the United Nations.”