Thank you so much, Gabe, for a terrific newsletter. If you ever have to choose between a good newsletter published on time and an excellent one published a day or more later, by all means choose the latter.
One thing that a lot of folks may have missed is the massive damage that Trump has created between the United States and the International community. This damage, this destruction of trust, will take decades to rebuild - if it’s even possible for that to happen.
Thank you, Mr. Fleischer. The point here is that all the destruction or temporary interruption affects the middle and lower classes. The oligarch clsss just marches blithely on stuffing our tax dollars into their coffers.
One historical example missing from this analysis is that the Clinton administration was very effective in reducing government spending. They did it by having a very deliberative process that took Congress and the legislative/financial process into account. Clinton slashed almost 500,000 Federal employees without the same political backlash that Trump has encountered.
The big difference is that Clinton's effort, led by Al Gore, was focused on outcomes. Trump's is performative and focused on outrage.
One last thing. I have said having been in successful companies in corporate America and been a recruiter all trump and musk’s stuff was completely wrong if you wanted to make something more efficient
Gabe, you are 110% right. It is about process and I will add proper analysis. It is going to turn out the whole thing was about getting a data base
Seems the outsized* military budget, with its notorious $500 hammers and ludicrous toilet prices was the most effective way for DOGE to start eliminating swampy waste.
Part of the reason that the systems destroyed by DOGE had sand in the gears is that the built-in friction protected the privacy of American citizens. The loss is privacy is hard to quantify, but I believe it will be the hardest to restore, if it ever can be.
I like your reporting and I know you like to go in depth but I think more concise might be better. I don’t have time to go in depth on every subject. Just my 2 cents
This seems a bit rosy. So the erosion of norms, the lack of accountability, via any meaningful checks. The grift, graft, cruelty and open collusion don’t matter because it’s not codified by Congress so we can start over in 4 years? You make a lot of assumptions that the totalitarian, facism we are seeing will result in a new crew of folks to temper and reset the system. Elections will happen. Judges will hold the line—upholding the rule of law. Punishing perceived enemies, weaponizing the government in authoritarian ways etc. tariffs is a great example. The supremes finally weighed in and he just ignores them. I don’t how this doesn’t accelerate the fall of the empire, our monetary/global system and credibility in ways that will permanently erode American power and hegemony.
Good stuff. Glad to be aboard. As a statewide candidate running on a Show Me Results platform, I wish that getting better results from taxpayer dollars was more exciting…
Populists are slopulists. Planning is hard. Chaos is easy. Short cuts are sexy. Second law of thermodynamics. It’s why 5 year olds don’t make their beds. It’s just gonna get messed up again when I get back in, right? Why bother fixing for tomorrow what you can trash for today? One word- plastics. It’s no mystery why we find ourselves here. 85 years of anti-intellectualism in American married to 45 years of Reaganomics and Christofascist authoritarianism and 20 years of social media algorithms has produced Americans that hyper individualistic, lazy AND cruel. We now reap the wild wind of what we have sown.
The big thing lacking in Trump's presidency is good ole' fashioned leadership. A real leader speaks to the people, to Congress, to the news media, to everybody, and explains what he wants to do and WHY. Instead, Trump's style is more like slash-and-burn, bull-in-the-china-shop, slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am, damn the torpedoes. (I'd say ask forgiveness rather than permission, but he doesn't even ask for that.) As Gabe points out, his approach accomplishes only temporary results, at best.
Amazing what you find out when a journalist lays out what actually happened. Wow, it's complicated AND not as bad as it seemed. The center holds! Thanks so much for your work.
Process has been the necessary ingredient in government since Nixon and Watergate. Process actually does matter, a lot more than most people either would think or like to believe.
Thank you so much, Gabe, for a terrific newsletter. If you ever have to choose between a good newsletter published on time and an excellent one published a day or more later, by all means choose the latter.
One thing that a lot of folks may have missed is the massive damage that Trump has created between the United States and the International community. This damage, this destruction of trust, will take decades to rebuild - if it’s even possible for that to happen.
Thank you, Mr. Fleischer. The point here is that all the destruction or temporary interruption affects the middle and lower classes. The oligarch clsss just marches blithely on stuffing our tax dollars into their coffers.
Thanks for addressing this Gabe! Regular media covers when all these things are "announced" but rarely follows up on what actually happens afterwards.
One historical example missing from this analysis is that the Clinton administration was very effective in reducing government spending. They did it by having a very deliberative process that took Congress and the legislative/financial process into account. Clinton slashed almost 500,000 Federal employees without the same political backlash that Trump has encountered.
The big difference is that Clinton's effort, led by Al Gore, was focused on outcomes. Trump's is performative and focused on outrage.
One last thing. I have said having been in successful companies in corporate America and been a recruiter all trump and musk’s stuff was completely wrong if you wanted to make something more efficient
Gabe, you are 110% right. It is about process and I will add proper analysis. It is going to turn out the whole thing was about getting a data base
Worth the wait!
Seems the outsized* military budget, with its notorious $500 hammers and ludicrous toilet prices was the most effective way for DOGE to start eliminating swampy waste.
*relative to everywhere else on the planet
Part of the reason that the systems destroyed by DOGE had sand in the gears is that the built-in friction protected the privacy of American citizens. The loss is privacy is hard to quantify, but I believe it will be the hardest to restore, if it ever can be.
I like your reporting and I know you like to go in depth but I think more concise might be better. I don’t have time to go in depth on every subject. Just my 2 cents
This seems a bit rosy. So the erosion of norms, the lack of accountability, via any meaningful checks. The grift, graft, cruelty and open collusion don’t matter because it’s not codified by Congress so we can start over in 4 years? You make a lot of assumptions that the totalitarian, facism we are seeing will result in a new crew of folks to temper and reset the system. Elections will happen. Judges will hold the line—upholding the rule of law. Punishing perceived enemies, weaponizing the government in authoritarian ways etc. tariffs is a great example. The supremes finally weighed in and he just ignores them. I don’t how this doesn’t accelerate the fall of the empire, our monetary/global system and credibility in ways that will permanently erode American power and hegemony.
… to voters.
Good stuff. Glad to be aboard. As a statewide candidate running on a Show Me Results platform, I wish that getting better results from taxpayer dollars was more exciting…
Populists are slopulists. Planning is hard. Chaos is easy. Short cuts are sexy. Second law of thermodynamics. It’s why 5 year olds don’t make their beds. It’s just gonna get messed up again when I get back in, right? Why bother fixing for tomorrow what you can trash for today? One word- plastics. It’s no mystery why we find ourselves here. 85 years of anti-intellectualism in American married to 45 years of Reaganomics and Christofascist authoritarianism and 20 years of social media algorithms has produced Americans that hyper individualistic, lazy AND cruel. We now reap the wild wind of what we have sown.
The big thing lacking in Trump's presidency is good ole' fashioned leadership. A real leader speaks to the people, to Congress, to the news media, to everybody, and explains what he wants to do and WHY. Instead, Trump's style is more like slash-and-burn, bull-in-the-china-shop, slam-bam-thank-you-ma'am, damn the torpedoes. (I'd say ask forgiveness rather than permission, but he doesn't even ask for that.) As Gabe points out, his approach accomplishes only temporary results, at best.
Amazing what you find out when a journalist lays out what actually happened. Wow, it's complicated AND not as bad as it seemed. The center holds! Thanks so much for your work.
Process has been the necessary ingredient in government since Nixon and Watergate. Process actually does matter, a lot more than most people either would think or like to believe.