Nation Shrugs as Godzilla Eats Washington
Donald Trump's sequel return is already an epic monster movie, and the country seems to think the capital's trampling is a net plus
From the New York Times this morning:
ABC News agreed to pay $15 million… Mr. Trump contended that the network’s star anchor, George Stephanopoulos, had defamed him by saying on his weekly television program that a federal jury had found Mr. Trump liable for rape when in fact it had found him liable for sexual abuse… Mr. Stephanopoulos’s statement was technically inaccurate, but… Mr. Trump would also have had a difficult time proving reputational injury… the $15 million payment looks less like settlement than submission.
Jameel Jaffer, Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute, must not be able to hear himself. “Yes, ABC repeatedly and inaccurately described Trump as a rapist, but he can’t show damage because he’s been called Hitler ten trillion times already. Corporate news must be allowed to defame.” He went on to complain that CBS was settling the 60 Minutes episode in which the network aired two versions of an interview with Kamala Harris, a whitewash job that made every veteran journalist cringe. But it’s an “unimpressive suit with essentially no chance of succeeding,” says Jaffer. I know what it is to stand up for odious speech, but this week has seen one intellectual after another seem proud of obnoxious things.
On NBC, former U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) official Michael Schiffer wailed that the beheading of his former organization would cause national security to “erode.” His quote came as USAID’s budget has been cracked open and Americans are leafing, transfixed, through its colossal library of crazy-ass contracts. From $39 million for “Gender Equality in Water, Power, and Transportation” to “Recognizing the Third Gender in Bangladesh” to “Ukrainian Resilience Through Fashion” to a “TransFormation Salon” to a pre-Taliban plan to help “Afghan Women Enter the Financial Sector,” it’s a bottomless pit of “I don’t want to pay for that.”
A trip through USASpending.gov led me to an “art therapy” contract whose deliverables include things that look like (but can’t be, of course) suggestive pics of queer teenagers:
If we close the door on such work, the former USAID official Schiffer said, “America’s Enemies Will Rejoice.” Joe Scarborough called USAID “the ultimate soft power.” Look, I like a good trans mani-pedi third-floor Mumbai walkup as much as the next person, but I’m not sure it’s a national security line item:
MSNBC was one of many outlets to describe USAID as a “humanitarian” organization today — the Morning Joe graphic is a frowning waif-child — even though the world knows it to be a transparent CIA proxy used as cover for intel shenanigans. How can they think this is the smart play?
Trump has been in office two weeks and changes are coming so fast, even I’m freaked out. He’s Godzilla, stomping on everything: news networks, billions in federal grants, USAID, DEI, Mexico and Canada and China, South Africa, immigrants, maybe the Department of Education, and many other things. His daily “No more of this shit!” signing sessions have become destination television:
Courts will be busy for years weighing which of his acts are legal, with virtually all under challenge. In the interim, carnage continues, with opposition in total message paralysis. Whether it’s planned or just Trump’s luck is unclear, but harrumphing bureaucrats are now daily rushing to defend the indefensible, from Jaffer’s slanderous networks to Schiffer’s waste and budget scammery. Monday scenes of legislators like Ilhan Omar and Jamie Raskin chaining themselves to the Matterhorn of suck that is USAID were just the beginning of what looks like a rash of optics suicides. We’ve never seen anything like it:
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