What did Donald Trump do today?

He warned that Senate Democrats would use "all sorts of tricks" against his nominees, like holding confirmation hearings.

Today, Trump posted on his private social media site that

"We just won a Historic Landslide and Mandate from the American People, but Senate Democrats are organizing to improperly stall and delay the confirmation process of many of our Great Nominees. They will try all sorts of tricks starting very soon. Republicans must not allow them to do that."

Trump once called his penchant for making things up and daring anybody to correct him "truthful hyperbole," but even by that standard, he did not win in a landslide. He received less than 50% of the popular vote, and beat Vice-President Kamala Harris by 1.5%.

The "trick" Trump apparently fears is that Senate Democrats will hold confirmation hearings on nominees who must be confirmed by the Senate. That is why he has demanded that his own party, which will control both houses of Congress in the coming year, shut down Congress entirely so that they can be appointed via a Constitutional provision known as a recess appointment. That would enable them to serve for the rest of the Congressional term without anyone asking questions about their fitness.

Even with a Republican majority in the Senate, Trump has good reason to be afraid of public hearings into many of his nominees. Many of them are billionaires, some have no apparent qualifications for the job Trump assigned to them, and some are struggling to receive even token support from within Trump's own party. For example, Trump's choice to lead the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, has done little to refute allegations—including those leveled by his own mother—that he is an untreated alcoholic with a history of sexual violence against women.

Trump may also be particularly worried about the embarrassment of seeing his choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., face questions from Americans' representatives in the Senate. Kennedy, who would be in charge of the United States' public health programs, is a conspiracy theorist whose only connection to dealing with disease outbreaks is helping to cause one. Kennedy threw his support to Trump late in the race after supporters started abandoning him after a series of increasingly bizarre or horrifying stories about committing sexual abuse, conducting a sexting-affair with a reporter covering him during the campaign, saying that COVID-19 was a bioweapon that deliberately spared Jews, contracting a parasite that literally ate part of his brain, and rehashing too many discredited "alternative" health theories to list.

Why does this matter?

• People who can't stand a few minutes' worth of scrutiny by the American public probably shouldn't be put in charge of the American government.

• No matter how much they believe otherwise, presidents are not kings, and they can't banish their opposition.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He lost yet another appeal of the civil judgment against him for what a judge found most people would call rape.

In 2023, a jury found that Trump had sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll and defamed her by accusing her of lying about it for personal gain, and awarded her $5 million. Trump then defamed her again by repeating the same allegations, and a second jury awarded her $83 million in damages.

Trump appealed that original verdict to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Among other things, he claimed that it was an error to allow testimony from two of the dozens of women who reported that he sexually assaulted or harassed them. Trump also claimed it was an error to allow jurors to hear the infamous Access Hollywood tape, on which Trump tells a TV host about his habit of grabbing women "by the pussy" whether they want it or not, because he knows his fame and money mean he'll be able to get away with it.

Today, the court dismissed all of Trump's arguments and upheld the verdict against him. The panel of judges found that there was no error, and that even if there had been, the effect on the jury's ability to reach a fair and accurate verdict would have been negligible.

Recently, Trump has tried to reframe the Carroll case by pointing to the fact that the jury found he didn't rape her (in a certain technical sense of the term used in New York law). Earlier this month, he pressured ABC News into a settlement for using the word "rape" to describe what he did to Carroll. 

The jury did find that he sexually assaulted Carroll, and the judge in the original case clearly stated that what the jury did find Trump had done would be considered "rape" in the way that most people typically use the term outside of a courtroom.

Through a statement issued by a spokesperson, Trump once again called the "Carroll Hoax" a "Witch Hunt" and complained that it was all a "Democrat-funded" "weaponization of our justice system."

He has made similar claims against all 88 criminal indictments against him (including the 34 felonies he was convicted of), his impeachment for trying to blackmail the government of Ukraine into a phony investigation of then-candidate Joe Biden, his impeachment for trying to overturn the results of the election that removed him from power in 2021, and most of the dozens of assault and harassment charges that women have levied against him.

Why does this matter?

• Donald Trump is the one responsible for Donald Trump's actions, not the media or the entire justice system or his political opponents or the women he assaults.

• The thing that ordinary people call rape is a vicious and disgusting act, whether or not that's the term defense lawyers would use for it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got very upset about having to do his job in the coming year.

Trump lashed out today at Congressional Republicans for passing a 2023 budget bill that raised the debt limit in such a way that it will expire in 2025. He posted this on his private social media site:

The extension of the Debt Ceiling by a previous Speaker of the House, a good man and a friend of mine, from this past September of the Biden Administration, to June of the Trump Administration, will go down as one of the dumbest political decisions made in years. There was no reason to do it - NOTHING WAS GAINED, and we got nothing for it - A major reason why that Speakership was lost. It was Biden’s problem, not ours. Now it becomes ours. I call it “1929” because the Democrats don’t care what our Country may be forced into. In fact, they would prefer “Depression” as long as it hurt the Republican Party. The Democrats must be forced to take a vote on this treacherous issue NOW, during the Biden Administration, and not in June. They should be blamed for this potential disaster, not the Republicans!

It's true that the debt ceiling has been used for brinksmanship in recent years, but only by Republican majorities in Congress against Democratic presidents: once in an attempt to force President Obama to sign a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and twice already during the Biden administration. As Trump himself has admitted, Democrats have treated it as sacrosanct. Here's how he described a meeting with Democratic leaders in 2019, shortly before the debt limit was suspended for the rest of his term:

I can’t imagine anybody ever even thinking of using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge. When I first came into office I asked about the debt ceiling, and I understand debt ceilings, and I certainly understand the highest rated credit in history, and the debt ceiling, and I said, I remember, to Sen. Schumer and to Nancy Pelosi, "Would anybody ever use that to negotiate with?" And they said "absolutely not, that’s a sacred element of our country." They can’t use the debt ceiling to negotiate.

It seems likely that the reason Trump is afraid that Democrats will ruin the credit of the United States—which would be absolutely catastrophic—is that it's what he would do himself. Here's what he said when it was President Obama facing that threat:

…and here's what he said just last year:

Why does this matter?

• Thinking that other people want to do the bad things that you want to do is called projection, and it's not a sign of good mental health.

• Being elected president means having to do the job of being president.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got confused about which kinds of immigrants he gives jobs to.

In recent days a nasty fight has broken out in the Trump camp over the question of H-1B visas, which are used to allow businesses to hire highly skilled foreign workers. They are common in the tech industry, and so Trump's "advisor" and patron Elon Musk has been fighting with Trump's more extreme-right nativist supporters like Laura Loomer over whether they should be restricted or expanded. Musk called Trump supporters who thought they were voting for restricted immigration "contemptible fools," while banning people who disagreed on Twitter, which he owns.

(Musk, who has since become a citizen, worked illegally in the United States—something he almost certainly has in common with Trump's third wife, Melania.)

Trump, who has been uncharacteristically deferential to Musk even as his staff seethes at the would-be "co-President," weighed in on his side today. Trump claimed that he, too, hired many H-1B employees. But that is not true. 

The Trump Organization does hire a great many foreign workers—even now, after Trump promised not to—but they are mostly if not entirely on H-2B visas, which is an important distinction. H-2B visas are for guest workers who do not possess rare technical skills, but who fill jobs where there are simply not enough American workers available.

Trump's businesses have used H-2B visas to fill jobs at his golf courses as bar staff or janitors, for extremely low wages. They are typically "advertised" for a day in a single newspaper, after which Trump's businesses claim there are no available American workers. (Sometimes, Trump has failed to offer any evidence that he tried to hire Americans at all.)

The advantage for Trump to using H-2B visas is that the workers hired have no choice other than to take whatever Trump's businesses give them, whatever that may be. It would be practically impossible for a guest worker to transfer the visa to another employer, or to sue for damages. That means a worker who protested mistreatment or wage theft or sexual harassment could simply be fired—and these are all chronic complaints at Trump businesses. Any guest worker who was fired would then be forced to leave the country at their own expense.

The only workers more easily exploited than H-2B are those with no legal work documentation at all. Trump, who campaigns as an immigration hardliner, has been repeatedly caught hiring such workers. His response has been to blame underlings (including his own children) while simultaneously claiming that everyone does it.

Why does this matter?

• Someone who campaigned on immigration reform should know something about immigration law.

• Business owners, like presidents, are responsible for what happens on their watch.

• "Everybody does it" is not a valid criminal defense.

• People who voted for Trump because of his campaign promises on immigration might have expected him to keep them.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He promised to use his "consummate dealmaking expertise" to give China something he's already decided to give them.

Earlier this year, Congress passed a bipartisan measure requiring Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, to divest itself from Chinese government ownership or be banned in the United States. President Biden signed it into law in April, and it is scheduled to go into effect in January.

The law was intended to prevent the Chinese government from compiling extremely invasive dossiers of Americans' online behaviors, as it does with its own citizens. Nevertheless, banning an entire platform (though none of the speech that might be expressed on that platform) raises legitimate First Amendment questions, and so Bytedance has asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

Trump was entirely in favor of such a law, which was a mainstream Republican gaol, although he never got around to doing anything about it—but when it actually happened, he instantly changed his position. Today, he filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court, asking them to suspend implementation of the law so that he could use his "consummate dealmaking expertise" to negotiate a different resolution.

There are two problems with this argument. First, laws passed by Congress and signed by the president don't cease to exist just because a different president wants things to work a different way.

The second is Trump's claim to "consummate dealmaking expertise." There are lots of ways to look at Trump's pre-presidential business career, although it's hard to escape the conclusion that he stole most of his wealth, either from his elderly father or taxpayers, and would have been richer if he'd simply collected interest on his inheritance rather than repeatedly drive his companies into bankruptcy. 

But the idea that he is a "dealmaker" was a public relations campaign advanced by a book, The Art of the Deal, that he didn't even write. The actual author, Tony Schwartz, has called the process of writing a book-length ad for Trump the businessman "putting lipstick on a pig" and noted that even the idea of promoting Trump as a business genius came from the publisher, not Trump himself.

Trump's brief does not make clear what "deal" he has in mind, which is a legitimate question, since his current stance is the same as that of the Chinese-controlled company he wants to "deal" with.

Why does this matter?

• A "consummate dealmaker" would probably not just give his opponent exactly what they want, although it's happened before.

• A "consummate dealmaker" probably wouldn't change their position at the drop of a hat to be the opposite of whatever his predecessor wanted, although it's happened before.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He named an ambassador to Panama, which normally wouldn't really be newsworthy.

Today, Trump announced he had picked Kevin Marino Cabrera to be the U.S. Ambassador to Panama. Cabrera is a county-level politician in Florida, and has no obvious credentials: he's never worked in diplomacy, he has no apparent cultural or family ties to Panama or Central America, and it's not even clear from what little public record there is of him that he speaks Spanish. Nevertheless, he wouldn't be the first ambassador made as a political appointment to a minor allied country with a thin résumé.

However, it's not clear how much longer Panama will be an allied country. Panama's government ignored the first few taunts, but now the president of Panama is responding directly, pointing out that Trump is simply lying when he claims that Chinese soldiers are controlling the canal. 

Hostile relations with Panama could affect American companies' ability to use the canal, however. One of the justifications for the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 was that its dictatorial "maximum leader" Manuel Noriega really was endangering trade through the canal. Precisely because there was evidence to support those charges, that invasion had virtually unanimous support from the international community, as well as a majority of Panamanian civilians.

An unprovoked attack on a stable, commercially accessible Canal Zone would instantly turn the canal into an impassable war zone and lead to massive international backlash against the United States—which is why Trump's threats are empty, whether he knows it or not.

Some of Trump's allies are claiming that his sudden fascination with buying or invading America's allies is a negotiating tactic—that he is pretending to be unstable or ignorant in order to force concessions. That would make more sense if there were anything Trump actually wanted from Panama in terms of the canal, but American ships are already sailing through as fast as they can—for now.

Why does this matter?

• Ambassadors implement their government's strategy for dealing with foreign countries, which is impossible if the head of that government doesn't have one.

• It's stupid to make threats that absolutely nobody thinks you can back up.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He offered Christmas blessings as only he does.

Today, Trump posted Christmas greetings on his private social media network. Following his usual practice, his "merry Christmas" message was a series of sarcastic attacks on his real and imagined enemies, mixed in with some of his recent obsessions like annexing Panama and Greenland.

These posts were the cap to a  a 34-post rant elaborating on these and other grievances that Trump spent Christmas morning on, at a time when many Christians attend church or open presents together.

Christmas, which celebrates the birth of Jesus, is one of the most important holidays on the Christian liturgical calendar. Trump nominally identifies as a Christian, and has tried to make money selling Trump-branded Bibles. But he virtually never attends church, which has led to some awkward confusion on his part about what exactly Christianity entails. 

However, he will have an opportunity to brush up at a prayer service he's hosting the day before his inauguration, and charging $100,000 or more for his supporters to attend, in what is being called a "pay-to-pray" event.

Why does this matter?

• Christians, including even some who voted for Trump, might not appreciate him making jokes about one of Christianity's holiest days.

• Jesus in particular had fairly strong feelings about mixing commerce and prayer.

• Christian or not, a president-elect should probably have something better to do on Christmas evening.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he'd push for more executions, which is not something he has a great track record with.

This week, President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates on federal death row. They will now serve life in prison rather than face execution. The move is the mirror image of what Trump did during his last few weeks in office, when he forced a sudden acceleration in the number of federal prisoners executed.

Today, clearly frustrated that Biden had deprived him of one of the few aspects of the presidency he had paid close attention to during his first term, Trump said he would force the Justice Department to pursue the death penalty more often. 

Even assuming federal prosecutors take such an instruction seriously, this will probably have no real effect on most cases. Most capital offenses—which is to say, most murders—are prosecuted at the state level. Seeking the death penalty for eligible federal crimes means enormously increasing the amount of DOJ resources for a given case, which in turn limits the government's ability to prosecute other equally serious crimes.

Trump has a history with the death penalty that predates his sudden interest in presiding over executions at the end of his first term. Most of it has taken the form of simply lashing out at people who have upset him by suggesting that he could have them put to death, as for example when he publicly fantasized about executing the whistleblowers who revealed the evidence that led to his first impeachment.

But In 1989, Trump—then known mostly as a celebrity socialite—used the furor over the rape of a woman in Central Park to call for the restoration of the death penalty. At the time, five men were being held for trial based on confessions coerced by police. Though convicted and sentenced to , they were later exonerated. Trump has steadfastly refused to acknowledge their innocence or apologize for calling for their deaths.

Trump's 1989 paid advertisement, which ran in several New York papers

Trump has argued that the death penalty should not be restricted solely to murder cases, and that it should be applied to drug prosecutions and rapes. (Trump himself is a convicted criminal who has been found civilly liable for rape and accused of it by several women, including his first wife.) While the constitutionality of capital sentences for other crimes is unclear, Trump is correct that by statute, it can be sought in a variety of crimes, including those dealing with espionage and child sex trafficking.

Why does this matter?

• Prosecutors are supposed to serve justice, not a president's need to look tough.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He shilled some Trump-branded guitars, and nothing else.

The only comment issued today by the Trump transition team, or Trump himself, came in the form of an advertisment Trump ran on his private Twitter knockoff for what appear to be cheap mass-produced guitars. 

That means that what Trump didn't talk about was the release of the House Ethics Committee's report on the investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), a vocal Trump diehard and, for a few days, Trump's nominee to be Attorney General.

The report (available here) summarized the bipartisan committee's findings that Gaetz

• paid tens of thousands of dollars to women in exchange for illegal drugs and sex
• used illegal drugs
• committed statutory rape by paying a minor to have sex with him
• obstructed the criminal investigation into these charges, as well as the committee's own investigation, by abusing his office
• accepted unlawful gifts from foreign lobbyists
• used his office to do favors for women he'd paid for sex

Trump has gone to great lengths to obscure how much vetting—if any—he's done of the people he plans to appoint to the highest positions in government. In fact, he's been deliberately avoiding scrutiny of his nominees by the FBI, and trying to get the incoming Republican Senate majority to let his choices skip confirmation proceedings altogether. But it does not seem possible that Trump was unaware of the committee's findings, which were known to Republicans on the committee and in Congressional leadership.

In other words, Trump's choice of Matt Gaetz as the nation's top law enforcement official was almost certainly made in full knowledge that Gaetz had almost certainly committed statutory rape, broken any number of other state and federal laws, lied to cover it up, and then used his government position to obstruct further investigation. 

Gaetz almost temporarily delayed the release of the report. He asked a court this morning to issue an emergency restraining order, but failed to file the motion properly and could not fix the error before the report was released. Again, Gaetz was Trump's nominee to head the Justice Department.

Why does this matter?

• If paying children for sex doesn't cross an ethical line in a Trump administration, nothing ever will.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He decided to do the first ever anti-drug campaign, as far as he knows.

Speaking at a conference today, Trump announced that he would launch an anti-drug campaign:

We're going to be doing something that's, uh, I think going to help a lot, we're going to do very big advertising campaigns, just like a campaign for, running for president. We'll spend a lot of money but it'll be a very small amount of money, relatively, we're going to advertise how bad drugs are for you. They ruin your look, they ruin your face, they ruin your skin, and ruin your teeth. If you want horrible teeth, take a lot of fentanyl. If you want to have skin that looks so terrible, take fentanyl. We're going to do, uh, we're going to show what these drugs are doing to you, nobody's done that before, and we're going to do it.

In reality, mass media anti-drug campaigns have been around so long that they're even older than Trump himself. For example, the film Reefer Madness, which shows teenagers under the influence of marijuana losing control of themselves and going on a crime spree that includes rape and murder, was released in 1936.

It's unlikely that Trump never heard about Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign, or the D.A.R.E. program that generations of schoolchildren sat through, or the ironic-iconic "This is your brain on drugs" ads from the 1980s, or McGruff the Crime Dog, or any of dozens of other forms of anti-drug messaging. What's not clear from today's remarks is whether he remembers them now.

Trump himself has some experience with illegal drug use. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician who did such a good job exaggerating Trump's health during his first term that Trump tried (and failed) to get him confirmed as Secretary of Veterans' Affairs, handed out controlled substances for the asking to White House staff without a prescription. Jackson also mishandled or could not account for Schedule II drugs—the most restricted drugs allowed to be prescribed—including fentanyl, according to a Defense Department investigation.

White House Medical Unit controlled substances tracking document, 2019.

The Navy eventually took the extraordinary step of demoting Jackson out of flag officer rank, although Jackson continued to falsely claim that he was still an admiral until the demotion was made public. 

Why does this matter?

• If Trump's memory failed, then even by his standards, that's a pretty big lapse.

• The reasons people get addicted to opioids generally don't have much to do with their feelings about having good skin.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made empty threats at yet another friendly country.

In recent weeks, Trump has made threats—apparently serious in his own mind, at least, to invade Mexico and annex Canada. To put it mildly, these threats have not been taken seriously by their targets. Today, for whatever reason, he threatened to seize the Panama Canal because it was charging American ships to pass through it—which is what all canals do.

The canal was originally administered by the United States. The Canal Zone, a ten-mile-wide strip of territory that cut the nation of Panama in half, was ceded back in 1979 as part of a treaty process. This was relatively uncontroversial at the time, bipartisan in terms of American politics, and was seen as benefiting both nations. Anger over the Panama Canal Treaty quickly faded to the fringes of American politics.

(Trump was accused of evading Panamanian taxes in 2019, but that complaint came from the business partners who say he ripped them off, not the government of Panama itself.)

Of course, there's nothing stopping Trump from invading a sovereign nation and seizing its canals, except what stops the United States from trying to conduct wars of aggression against any country's territory that might be useful to have: the strong likelihood that it would polarize the rest of the world against us, strengthen our actual enemies, and do far more economic damage than not invading.

Why does this matter?

• Making threats that nobody takes seriously only makes the country weaker.

• It's a problem that we can't tell why Trump is suddenly extremely agitated about an issue that hasn't been in the headlines since he was in his mid-30s.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He threatened to campaign against 78% of his own party's members in Congress.

Earlier this week, Trump belatedly joined his "advisor" Elon Musk's last-minute campaign against a routine continuing budget resolution. Musk appeared to simply be flexing his muscled as the self-appointed watchdog for "government efficiency." But Trump also added a demand that Democrats spare him the trouble of increasing the overall debt limit, which will be reached next summer, and will then need to be raised.

Faced with these ultimatums, House Republicans rewrote their own bill and tonight passed a slightly different version. It eliminates, among other things, funding for research into pediatric cancers—so Musk can claim, at least in theory, that he's had an effect, even if that effect comes at the expense of sick children. It also dropped reforms to so-called pharmacy benefit managers, enormous companies that Trump says drive up the cost of medications. Both of these provisions were revenue-neutral.

Musk will also personally benefit, possibly in the billions of dollars, from a provision in the original resolution that would have restricted his ability to offshore manufacturing jobs to China.

There's no reason to think that Trump really objects to these deletions. Officially, he was opposed to anything that he called a "win" for Democrats, whether it was funds to fight pediatric cancer, or limits on sneaky "junk fees" added by airlines or hotels, or economic sanctions against China. 

But the bill did not include Trump's demand to eliminate the debt ceiling so that he could spend whatever he wanted during his term.

Trump, again following Musk's lead, had threatened to support primary challengers to any Republican who voted for a continuing resolution without a debt ceiling increase. 170 Republicans, out of 219 total, did just that.

Why does this matter?

• It's almost unheard of for a President be handed a huge legislative loss by their own party before they even took office.

• It's bad if Congress takes a presidential "advisor" seriously but ignores threats from the president.

• The political aspects of the presidency are too important to be left to amateurs.

• Pediatric cancer research is more important than giving the richest person in the world a hobby.

• Conflicts of interest apply to private citizen billionaires, when private citizen billionaires are given de facto governmental authority.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He posted this to his boutique social media platform:

Of course, it's true that lots of different kinds of people might want the President of the United States to think they were his friend. Trump is notoriously susceptible to flattery.

Among those who have successfully flattered Trump and reaped the rewards are CEOs, world leaders, his own cabinet, junior staffers, people who want to be the nation's top intelligence official, foreign billionaires, his own physician who is supposed to be telling him hard truths about his health, and foreign governments looking to reap massive trade benefits. 

The unquestioned leader in this category is North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, who charmed Trump so thoroughly that within a few months Trump had gone from threatening nuclear war against North Korea to telling reporters about how he and Kim had "fallen in love." 

It's not clear what exactly had Trump so excited about his "friendships" this morning, but the previous night he'd had dinner with two billionaires who have made no secret of what they hope to gain from being Trump's "friend," Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.

Why does this matter?

• Past a certain point, a need for flattery is pathological.

• It shouldn't be this easy to manipulate a president.

• It shouldn't be this easy for people to know they've succeeded in manipulating a president.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He called for a shutdown of the government—or, at least, someone did.

Despite early attempts by Trump's staff to ward him off, mega-billionaire Elon Musk has consolidated his hold over the second Trump administration in recent weeks. Today, Musk put that power to use, tweeting more than 150 times calling for Congressional Republicans to defeat a routine continuing budget resolution that they themselves wrote. That bill would keep the government funded at normal levels through the holidays. He explicitly threatened Republicans that defying him put them at risk of losing their next primary elections.

Trump, meanwhile, had not commented publicly at all on the otherwise mundane budget bill that Musk thrust into the spotlight. That radio silence continued until 5:13 P.M. today, after the political die had been cast, when he belatedly joined Musk's call to defeat the resolution. 

Trump had been posting all day on a variety of subjects, making it unclear whether he knew what Musk was up to. Vice-president-elect J.D. Vance, who has been almost completely eclipsed by Musk in recent months, was also apparently out of the loop on Musk's campaign. Adding to the confusion, Trump appeared to attempt to blame President Biden for the shutdown Musk was saying Trump wanted. 

But the strongest evidence that Musk was acting without Trump's knowledge, and forcing Trump to conform after the fact, came in what Trump said when he caught up: a demand that Congress pass an increase to the debt ceiling so that he doesn't have to worry about it once his term starts. (The continuing resolution Musk is attacking would not exceed that limit.) But raising the debt ceiling is a totally different, and much bigger matter politically—and fighting the Biden administration and Senate Democrats on the smaller matter of the continuing resolution completely undermines any chance of a debt ceiling increase.

Musk is the richest person in the world and a de facto oligarch, who some staffers have accused of trying to "co-President" with Trump. Asked for comment, he shrugged off the consequences of suspending government services and laying off workers over the holidays. 

That much is in keeping with how Trump usually approaches shutdowns. In December 2018 and January 2019, Trump set the record for the longest government shutdown in American history during his first term, during which he became the first president ever to force American military servicemembers to work without pay, and he did the same to other federal employees. That particular shutdown was an unsuccessful attempt to force Democrats to fund his never-constructed border wall. 

Trump also shut down the government in 2017 in an attempt to bolster his weak approval ratings, believing that Americans would blame Democrats for his refusal to sign a budget bill when they controlled neither house of Congress. He also threatened to shut down the government in 2019 in an attempt to avoid being impeached over the Ukraine scandal.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if nobody really knows who holds the power in a presidential administration.

• Disruptions to government services are a big deal for most Americans even if the richest person on the planet isn't too bothered by them.

• The same thing is true of missing a paycheck, especially at the holidays.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got real electoral votes from people under criminal indictment for casting fake electoral votes.

Today was the day that state electors cast their votes for president. As expected, Trump won—but he did so with the votes of people under criminal indictment in at least three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada. Those people pretended to be legitimate electors in 2020 and submitted forged documents casting "votes" for Trump, in an attempt to cause legal confusion and to give Trump sympathizers in Congress an excuse to delay or deny certification of President Biden's victory.

In other words, it was part of the larger conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election and keep Trump in power by illegal means. Trump's personal attorneys and campaign officials were involved in coordinating the scheme. They were among those who were convicted of crimes as a result, not counting the fake electors in five states. 

Trump himself was indicted by a federal grand jury for his role in the conspiracy, although unlike many of his co-conspirators, he will escape punishment. While the case against him could still be revived after his term ends, he is widely expected to pardon himself—something he threatened to do even during his first term as evidence of his criminal actions mounted.

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if even ceremonial votes are cast by people who attacked Americans' right to free and fair elections.

• Criminal conspiracies to overturn elections are bad even if the perpetrators get away with it.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got played by foreign investors.

Trump held a press conference today with the billionaire investor Masayoshi Son, the CEO of the venture capital firm SoftBank. He claimed that Son's promise to invest $100 billion in the United States over the next four years was a vote of confidence in Trump himself. Trump thanked Son effusively, calling him "brilliant" and promising him that "you'll have my support… you'll have our country's support."

$100 billion dollars is a lot of money, but Son's promise is much less than it seems. Venture capitalist money in the technology sector would have to come to the United States anyway—but by appearing on stage with Trump and flattering him, Son gets political leverage with a president-elect who has already promised to allow companies that "invest" enough money to opt out of laws and regulations that small home-grown businesses still have to follow.

Trump has fallen for this kind of song and dance before. He spent years repeatedly claiming credit for a "$10 billion" investment by the Taiwanese company Foxconn in Wisconsin. State and local governments then had to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on what Trump called "the eighth wonder of the world," but ended up being mostly abandoned. In the end, it cost taxpayers more than half a million dollars per job created. 

It's not the first time Son has played this trick with Trump, either. In 2016, he promised $50 billion in investments. Referencing that pledge today, Trump claimed that it had been fulfilled "in every way, shape and form." It's actually not clear that tranche of investments created any net jobs in the United States. If it did, many of them have already vanished, like the ones related to WeWork, a corporate debacle so big that movies have already been made about it—and whose employees were collecting unemployment in record time. Some of its investments did better for SoftBank, like its stake in Uber and DoorDash, but "jobs" in the gig economy are famously bad deals for American workers. (During Trump's first term, the United States lost 2.7 million jobs all told.)

Masayoshi Son's willingness to appear on the stage with Trump also conceals the actual source of the money involved—sovereign wealth funds from countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and China. In effect, if SoftBank's promises come true in the sense of making lasting investments in meaningful new technologies, it will mean selling the biggest possible stake in the American technology sector to foreign governments.

Trump signaled his openness to this too, suggesting today that he had completely reversed his position on the Chinese company ByteDance retaining ownership of TikTok and the massive trove of personal information about American users it generates. He is meeting with that company's CEO, Shou Chew, this evening.

Why does this matter?

• It shouldn't be this easy to manipulate someone who wants to be President of the United States.

• Creating jobs means creating jobs, not taking credit for hypothetical future jobs.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the past day, which we know because Netanyahu himself told reporters about it today. According to Netanyahu, the two discussed efforts to secure the release of hostages taken during the October 7th attack. Netanyahu characterized the call as "very friendly, very warm and very important."

Not much else is known because so far, Trump's team has not even acknowledged that it happened.

Trump has done this before—making calls he either thinks are secret, or can't be bothered to inform the American public about, leaving foreign leaders like free to spin them however they like. This has most often been a problem with Vladimir Putin. 

It's also not known whether the actual United States government was informed. Trump has actively shut out the State Department on calls with enormous diplomatic implications during his transition, which he takes on unsecured phones. If not, that would mean that only Israel (and any foreign intelligence agencies that intercepted the call) would have a reliable record of the call.

Trump also has a habit of letting foreign leaders corner him without advisors, or even without his own translator. During his first term, he routinely shut out even his own hand-picked national security team to keep them from knowing what he was telling foreign leaders like Putin. This became a major point in his first impeachment, which hinged on a transcript of the call in which Trump tried to force Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to instigate a fake "investigation" of Joe Biden's son Hunter. Trump at first went to extraordinary lengths to hide that transcript, while lying about the actual substance of the call.

Why does this matter?

• The American people have a right to know what their president is doing, even if he doesn't feel like telling them.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made sure to be seen with Daniel Penny.

In May 2023, Daniel Penny killed Jordan Neely on a New York City subway train. Neely was a homeless man who had been behaving erratically and was ranting about being hungry. Penny, a former Marine, put Neely in a chokehold for over six minutes, holding it for long after Neely had gone limp and lost control of his bodily functions. The bystanders that Penny claimed Neely was threatening begged Penny to stop, saying "he's dying" and "you're gonna kill him now."

Earlier this week, Penny was acquitted of homicide in the killing. He was immediately invited to attend the Army-Navy football game with Trump, Elon Musk, and other administration officials like vice-president-elect JD Vance.

Trump had less luck with a Manhattan jury this year than Penny and was convicted this year of 34 felonies related to his scheme to defraud businesses and taxpayers, and to cover up his hush money payments to Stormy Daniels, the porn star he had an affair with. The Trump team put out several statements related to Penny's visit to Trump's luxury suite attacking Alvin Bragg, the New York district attorney who secured those convictions.

Penny's lawyer says he is apolitical and would have accepted an invitation from a Democratic politician, too. Prosecutors acknowledged that Penny may have meant well at first, but argued that the law does not permit the deliberate taking of a life after a reasonable person would know the threat had passed. But he has become a cause célèbre in far-right circles, where he has been hailed as a hero simply because he killed a Black man, regardless of the justification.

Trump's flirtation with those same groups, even before calling on them explicitly during the Jan. 6th uprising, makes his embrace of Penny unsurprising. But it also fits a long pattern of lying about crimes and who commits them, and demanding that Black people die as a result.

Why does this matter?

• It's hard to miss the symbolism of Donald Trump posing for pictures with someone who white nationalist gangs are calling a hero.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He floated the idea of letting his patron Elon Musk hide the number of crashes his "self-driving" cars get into.

Today, Trump's transition team previewed a plan to kill regulations that requires car makers to report accidents and deaths related to automated driving systems. The majority of crashes that must be disclosed under this rule are from Tesla vehicles: 40 out of 45 fatal crashes of so-called "self-driving" cars have involved Teslas. 

Source: NHTSA report on the Standing General Order on Crash Reporting

Tesla's CEO and principle owner Elon Musk has actively involved himself in the same transition team that leaked the plans. Musk's new role in government, in which he seems to be allowed to pick for himself what powers to exert, is apparently a concession for the massive financial and media help that he gave the Trump campaign.

Musk strongly opposes having to disclose Tesla's safety record to the public. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently opened up an investigation into 2.4 million of Tesla's so-called Full Self-Driving vehicles currently on the road. Tesla has been stonewalling the regulator by refusing to release data it is legally required to provide. Teslas have also been subject to multiple, overlapping recalls.

Self-driving cars may be an attainable goal in the near future, but experts have criticized Musk for releasing buggy and incomplete versions of it for use by the general public, while advertising it as a fully functional "autopilot," and then blaming drivers who trusted it to perform like one. 

The trial balloon of exempting Tesla from having to inform the public about the "self-driving" technology it already uses on public roads comes a few days after Trump promised to automatically fast-track exemptions from rules for any sufficiently large or wealthy companies.

Why does this matter?

• Mega-billionaires shouldn't be allowed to exempt themselves from laws they don't feel like following just because the president owes them.

• The American people have a right to know if cars on public roads are safe or not.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He walked back his central campaign promise.

Trump was named Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" today. Presidents of the United States almost always "win" this recognition in the year they are elected, although it's not meant as an honor, only a recognition of the influence that powerful politicians often have. (Others who have gotten the designation include Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Vladimir Putin, and Deng Xiaoping.) 

Trump, however, takes it seriously enough to jealously attack teenage girls when they win, and to lie about having opted out of consideration in at least one of the years he "lost." He even made fake Time covers featuring his picture to display at Mar-a-Lago when he was not famous enough to warrant it on his own merits.

Time conducts interviews as part of the process, and included a 2,300-word fact check to correct some of Trump's more obvious lies or confabulations on topics ranging from immigration to autism to transgender people to the economy. In particular, it caught Trump lying about inflation, saying it was three times higher than it actually is.

This is significant because Trump ran on a platform of reducing inflation, which spiked briefly as a result of COVID relief policies Trump himself signed. He falsely claimed on the campaign trail that the current rate (about 2.7%, very low by historical standards) was sky-high, and that he alone could fix it. 

But in the same interview, Trump decided to walk back those promises:

If the prices of groceries don't come down, will your presidency be a failure?

I don't think so. Look, they got them up. I'd like to bring them down. It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard.

Trump never actually explained how he would bring the "inflation" down from its already low level now. The only major economic policy he has announced is his plan to impose enormous 25% tariffs on the United States' three largest trading partners. This would absolutely drive prices up, since consumers pay those taxes. When asked earlier this week if he could guarantee that tariffs wouldn't cause this effect, Trump responded, "I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow." 

Why does this matter?

• It's bad if presidents don't even pretend to care about their campaign promises once they've been elected.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He celebrated the chance to appoint an FBI director he thinks will be personally loyal to him… again.

Shortly after taking office in 2017, Trump demanded that then-FBI Director James Comey swear personal loyalty to him. Comey refused, and Trump fired him shortly thereafter. 

The firing was particularly urgent for Trump, because the FBI was conducting the investigation into Russia's interference on Trump's behalf in the 2016 election. In fact, the firing was so suspicious that the acting FBI Director immediately opened an obstruction of justice investigation into Trump. As a result, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as a special counsel to investigate exactly how much influence Russia had over the election—and over Trump.

This was the sequence of events that led to Trump appointing Christopher Wray as the new FBI Director in 2017. Wray remained in office through the end of Trump's term, earning some respect for his willingness to defend the nation's law enforcement agencies from Trump's attacks.

After Trump left office, he was indicted in federal court for stealing classified documents and fomenting a coup. The FBI was involved in investigating both sets of crimes and, among other things, executed search warrants on Mar-a-Lago, where Trump had stashed those boxes of stolen government documents.

Trump was infuriated by Wray's "disloyalty" in refusing to obstruct those investigations, and promised to replace him if re-elected. Today, after Wray's announcement that he would resign rather than be fired, Trump was gleeful, saying that "today is a great day for America as it will end the Weaponization of what has become known as the United States Department of Injustice." 

Trump plans to replace Wray with another director he hopes will be personally loyal to him—and he may get it this time. Kash Patel is an election denier who has mimicked Trump's language about the supposed "deep state" conspiracy against him and—again parroting Trump—threatened to jail journalists.

Why does this matter?

• It is under no circumstances whatsoever appropriate for a president to demand a pledge of personal loyalty from the director of the FBI.

• Even now, nobody is above the law, but it's bad if Trump thinks he is and acts like it.

• Virtually all of the people Trump accuses of "weaponizing" politics against him are Republicans he appointed.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he'd cancel regulations for billionaires.

Trump has only occasionally posted to his private social media network in recent months, but today returned to something a bit more like his manic Twitter habits from the first term, with 25 posts by 10 p.m. One of them was apparently a policy statement:

Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!

There is no legal way for Trump to do this, but businesses that were trying to break the law or evade regulations would probably feel braver about doing that if they thought the executive branch wouldn't hold them accountable. 

Among the most obvious beneficiaries would be people like his patron, Elon Musk (whose picture was featured in several of Trump's posts today). Musk's business empire and personal wealth rely heavily on government contracts, but the horrifying safety record of Tesla and SpaceX, his scofflaw approach to the environmental damage his rocket company has caused, and a host of labor violations have brought the attention of regulators.

Musk rewarded Trump with an approving tweet, saying "this is awesome."

Why does this matter?

• Wealthy people and giant corporations should have to obey the law too.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he'd put his patron's lawyer in charge of civil rights enforcement.

Trump announced today that he was tapping Harmeet Dhillon to be the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. This position has responsibility for, among other things, making sure that Americans' right to vote is protected.

In her private practice, though, Dhillon has been involved in as many as 16 cases in which she sought to restrict Americans' ability to vote—and specifically to the benefit of her client, Donald Trump. Trump lost virtually all of his court challenges to the 2020 election. 

Dhillon is most notorious for having made a direct appeal through the media for the justices Trump appointed, and especially his most recent appointee, to show loyalty to him and find a way to rule in his favor. Claiming (falsely) that Pennsylvania election officials were not allowing Republican officials to witness the vote count, and that Philadelphia election workers were "filling in or 'fixing'" ballots to benefit Biden, she said:

We’re waiting for the United States Supreme Court, of which the president has nominated three justices, to step in and do something. And hopefully Amy Coney Barrett will come through and pick it up.

Dhillon also represented Elon Musk, the mega-billionaire patron who bankrolled Trump's campaign and is now, effectively, an oligarch within the Trump regime. When Musk took over Twitter, the site's usefulness to advertisers rapidly declined, thanks to the toxic climate he encouraged and technical issues that cropped up. When those brands reduced or stopped their ad buys, Musk hired Dhillon's firm to develop a legal theory saying, in effect, that other companies were not allowed to not buy ads on Twitter.

Why does this matter?

• Voters choose governments, not the other way around.

• Public servants should be chosen based on competence, not how loyal they are to the leader(s).

What did Donald Trump do today?

He said he would ignore the Constitution to deport American citizens.

In an interview with NBC's Meet The Press, Trump said this morning that he would "have no choice" but to deport children who were American citizens along with undocumented family members.

In reality, and under the actual laws of the United States, no President has the "choice" to expel American citizens from the country at all, under any circumstances.

Trump also said that he would use executive orders to change the definition of an American citizen to exclude those born in the United States to undocumented parents. 

Again, the Fourteenth Amendment defines who is a citizen, not Donald Trump, and neither a presidential memo nor even a law can change that. The first sentence of it reads "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

During his first term, Trump made a point of advertising cruelty to migrant children, separating them from their families during processing and keeping them in what amounted to open-air prisons. But he's not completely opposed to bending the rules on immigration: both his first and third wives violated immigration law before marrying him and obtaining citizenship that way—Ivana Trump by engaging in a sham marriage that let her enter the U.S., and Melania Trump by working illegally on a tourist visa. Melania Trump then sponsored her own elderly parents' citizenship application, which Trump rushed through in spite of condemning "chain migration" when other families do it. 

The four of Trump's five children born to those wives would still retain their citizenship under his proposed policy, since he was a citizen. But the late Ivana Trump and Melania Trump could have their citizenship revoked for illegally working in the United States—as could, among others, Trump's benefactor Elon Musk.

Why does this matter?

• The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, not what a president feels like it should be. 

• It's bad when the very rich and very powerful don't have to obey the law.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got confused about Syria again.

The Assad regime in Syria, which is allied with Russia, is rapidly losing ground to rebel forces and may soon collapse. Trump used the occasion to attack former President Barack Obama for not having intervened more strongly in the Syrian Civil War during his presidency—while simultaneously insisting that the United States should not intervene in any way.

He was apparently referring to Obama's decision not to get the U.S. military directly involved after Assad used chemical weapons on opposition forces in 2013. At the time, private citizen Trump demanded that Obama not take action, tweeting that the "VERY FOOLISH" Obama should under no circumstances intervene—which is the opposite of what he now says should have happened, but the same as his plan going forward.

If that sounds confusing, it's nothing new. The Syrian conflict is complicated, and the complexity often proved too much for Trump to keep straight during his first term. Among the notable events of that period:

• He launched an attack against a Syrian airbase that was so ineffective that it was out of commission for less than a day, rather than a more effective form attack that would have risked Russian lives.
• It later came out that the token effort to attack the pro-Putin Assad regime had literally been a bit of Mar-a-Lago dinner theater meant to impress visiting Chinese officials.
• He telegraphed his strategy for Syria, in an attempt to look tough on Russia, which gave Russia what they needed to be in a position to counter it.
• He "declared victory" in Syria as a result of a single airstrike on a munitions depot, which in no way changed anything about the status of the war.
• He forgot what side Russia was on in that conflict—which is to say, he forgot that the Putin regime was the enemy who wanted him to withdraw, which is what he did.
• He betrayed the allied Kurdish forces that had done the lion's share of fighting against ISIS in Syria, leaving them to be overrun by hostile Turkish troops over the objections of essentially his entire military staff
• James Mattis, his defense secretary, resigned over that betrayal of allies. Brett McGurk, the top official working on his administration's anti–ISIS efforts, also quit in protest.
• Overwhelming majorities in both parties passed a resolution condemning his abandonment of the Kurdish forces in Syria.

In practice, the United States not taking part in the post-Assad future in Syria means giving the Putin regime in Russia, to whom Trump personally owes many favors, the chance to dictate the future of the Middle East.

Why does this matter?

• At the very least, a president ought to be able to keep straight what side of a war he is on.

• Just letting hostile foreign powers do whatever they want isn't a great strategy.

• "The thing I wanted was right unless the person I don't like did it" is how a child thinks, not somebody responsible for the lives of American troops.