Trump's BFFs Are Abandoning Him
What's a wannabe authoritarian to do when even Marjorie Taylor Greene and Bibi Netanyahu are peeing in his sandbox?
We have a lot to cover today, including the Epstein Files, but I wanted to start with a follow-up to a story we covered a few weeks ago. Trump really, really wants a Nobel Peace Prize. He’s claimed that he’s stopped “six or seven wars” this year. Donald apparently views the Peace Prize like a punch card at his local coffee shop. If you stop ten wars, you get a free prize.
You’d be forgiven if the conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan or Egypt and Ethiopia weren’t on your radar. Yesterday, Israel launched airstrikes into Doha, the capital and central city of Qatar. Israel claims it was targeting senior Hamas leaders, but that reasoning hardly justifies the strike. Israel has immensely complex relations with the 22 countries that make up the Arab League, of which Qatar is a member.
Qatar is an important U.S. ally. The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) operates its most important base in the Middle East out of Qatar. Qatar is also an important mediator between the U.S. and groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, along with plenty of smaller organizations that might pop up on a list of wars Trump wants to take credit for ending. It’s ugly business, the idea that the United States is allied with a country that has cordial relations with all of these groups, but nobody said diplomacy had to be pretty.
If you’re confused as to why this is important, consider this scenario. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has an arrest warrant out for Vladimir Putin. 125 countries, including every major American ally, are obligated to carry out that warrant if Vlad sets foot on their soil. It’s why Putin and Trump couldn’t meet in Helsinki again.
Imagine if France or England sent forces to Anchorage, Alaska to crash the party and bring Putin to the Hague? Or better yet, what if they said, “Alaska is remote enough, let’s just bomb him,” and carried out an airstrike? Some of us might cheer the demise of Putin after all these years, but it would be really bad for America’s standing if we weren’t able to fulfill a promise of safe passage to a world leader, however heinous. Israel basically just did that to Qatar.
For his part, Trump denounced the strikes, which will undoubtedly hurt peace between Hamas and Israel. Trump has always been cozy with the Gulf States, paying them a visit back in May (the Gulf States also hosted his first international visit back in 2017, where he held his famous orb). The strikes on Qatar, an ally of the U.S., was a clear middle finger from Benjamin Netanyahu to Trump, undercutting any serious claim that the Fanta Fuhrer deserves some kind of reward for his peacekeeping skills.
Qatar was the same country that just gifted Trump a big fancy plane. Not so nice to be attacked after such an adorable bribe. I know I’ve never bombed anyone who gave me a Polly Pocket.
Trump has always struggled to balance his affection for the Gulf States, who share his dislike of democracy and funnel billions into his companies, with Israel, which has historically held fraught relationships with its neighbors. Trump made Netanyahu’s complicated relationship with Biden a key element of his 2024 campaign. Bibi isn’t necessarily slapping the U.S. in the face so much as he’s pulling down his trousers and slapping Donald with a different appendage.
Netanyahu needs both the continuation of his war with Hamas, and U.S. support to stay in power. By attacking Qatar, Netanyahu is trying to stomp out diplomacy, at the expense of American interests in the region. That might seem like a problem far removed from us in the States, but Bibi isn’t the only Trump ally currently gnawing on the hand that feeds.
The biggest story of the week is a crude drawing from 2003. The House Oversight Committee released a large swath of Epstein-related documents, including his famed “birthday book.” Trump’s contribution to his friend Jeffrey’s big day is about as pathetic as you’d expect.
Trump has, of course, denied the letter. He said he doesn’t doodle. He’s donated several doodles to charity events over the years, including around the time of Epstein’s birthday. He said that’s not his signature. Extensive analysis from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal suggest otherwise.
Trump, lying? Who could imagine!
I’ve hesitated to give the Epstein Files too much attention in this newsletter. It’s not because I don’t believe it’s important, but we’ve seen Trump slither away from seemingly every heinous act imaginable. It’s an open question as to how this will be any different.
But it is kind of different already. Like Netanyhau, Marjorie Taylor Greene is a politician who has needed Trump. It was only a few years ago that MTG was stripped of her committee assignments for racism, antisemitism (remember Jewish Space Lasers?), and inciting violence, among other things. Fast forward to 2025, MTG sits on the very important House Committees on Oversight and Homeland Security.
Who was responsible for MTG’s reversal of fortune? MTG has been one of the loudest elected proponents of the Big Lie since she took office. She was even one of six elected officials to ask Trump for a pardon after Jan 6. Obviously, Donald needed his Neanderthal avatar around to keep the more moderate Republicans in line.
Trump has called the Epstein story a “hoax” repeatedly, a favorite line of his. Fake News, fake story, fake everything. Ironic for the man with a fake tan, surrounded by cronies with Mar-a-Lago face, botoxed to such extremes that you wonder how they manage to chew their food.
MTG doesn’t think the Epstein saga is a hoax. Here she is, with plenty of Epstein victims, promising to fight on for them.
MTG is not alone in her fight. Other right-wing loudmouths, such as Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, have signed on to support the efforts she’s led, along with Thomas Massie, a Republican with a severe libertarian bent, who’s feuded with Trump on a number of issues. Unlike the other three, Trump hates Massie and is currently funding a primary effort to oust him from his safe seat in Kentucky. Massie has been attempting to force a House vote on the Epstein Files via a discharge petition. Currently, they’re two votes shy, but vacancies in the House could, in theory, deliver them the necessary numbers sooner rather than later.
Massie, Boebert, Greene, and Mace are hardly heavy power players in the House. The latter three are among the most vile elected transphobes. Mace might be the worst of the worst, as we covered last November. This hardly seems like enough firepower to take down a president.
And they probably won’t. As a scholar of Nixon-era political history, I’m hesitant to compare scandals to Watergate, because there’s almost certainly never going to be another Watergate. A political party is never going to willfully oust their own president. I’m not sure tapes of Trump with underage women would deliver the necessary 67 votes to successfully impeach him.
We don’t know if Trump will try to hang onto power after the 2028 election. History shows us that he’ll likely try. Odds are, his presidency will end on January 20, 2029, though you’d be forgiven for skepticism that he’ll actually leave the White House this time.
The redistricting fights that Trump wants to bring to Indiana and Kansas, among other states, after all the bullshit in Texas, are happening for one reason. Trump knows that Democrats stand a good chance of retaking the House, even with all of his gerrymandering. He can’t seem to stop the Epstein Files when his own party controls the House. Imagine what that’ll be like when Democrats control the gavels.
Trump saved the political careers of MTG and Boebert, the latter of whom is probably most noteworthy for vaping and jerking off her date during a performance of the Beetlejuice musical, which was on tour in Denver. I saw that same tour. It was very fun, even for those of us who didn’t bring a date so we could shuck their cob during musical numbers. I’ll admit, I was a little upset that I made it to intermission without even a courtesy reach-around.
What are they without Trump? We’re actually going to find that answer out, sooner rather than later. MTG is only 51, a baby by House standards. Boebert is 38, only a few years older than yours truly. Boebert became a grandmother at 36, only two years ago. At that rate, she could be a great-great-great-grandmother in office, and still be younger than Chuck Grassley. Traditional family values are hard at work.
I think it’s a bit of a misnomer to suggest that anyone will “inherit” MAGA when Trump finally loses his grip on the Republican Party. The reality is that the base will fracture. The anti-vaxxers don’t have a lot in common with the old Clinton Democrats who delivered Trump the Rust Belt in 2016 and 2024, or the evangelicals that treat the serial-philandering thrice-married adjudicated rapist like the messiah.
But MTG is shrewder than people realize. There is a chunk of Trump supporters, particularly the conspiracy theorists, who will need a new standard-bearer. Who better than the same woman who brought Jewish Space Lasers to the forefront of American politics?
For now, the important takeaway of the Epstein Files is that this is very much like Watergate in one key regard. Watergate was not an overnight scandal. It was a slow, steady, drip, drip, drip of information.
The Epstein Files don’t have to remove Trump from office to neuter him politically. All that needs to happen is for them to depress Republican turnout in the midterms. With inflation, war, and everything else going on, Trump has plenty of reasons to be worried already. No wonder he’s trying to redistrict every red state he can get his tiny little hands on.
Epstein is one area of a clear divide between Trump and large chunks of his MAGA base. Our final big story of today centers around another area. The 2024 Trump coalition leaned into conspiracy theories even more than his last two campaigns. Trump rewarded the anti-vaxxers who helped put him in office by entrusting the Department of Health and Human Services to the least qualified man possible: RFK Jr.
Vaccines have always been a peculiar element of Trump’s platform. We started this column talking about how Trump took credit for a bunch of wars that he either had nothing to do with, or weren’t wars at all. The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine, developed in record time, was one of the greatest achievements of his first term. Strange how he seems to want zero credit for that.
Even stranger is this reality. There are four medical doctors elected to the United States Senate. All are Republicans: John Barrasso, Bill Cassidy, Roger Marshall, and Rand Paul. All of them voted to confirm RFK Jr. Mitch McConnell was the lone Republican to come out of his turtle shell to oppose his nomination.
Of the four, Paul and Marshall openly align with RFK Jr. on many issues, including vaccines. Barrasso is a longtime member of GOP leadership, not generally known for bucking the party line. Cassidy was one of seven Republicans to vote to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial, but is up for re-election in 2026, facing stiff primary competition in Louisiana.
Cassidy was considered the likeliest Republican senator to oppose RFK Jr.'s nomination besides McConnell, a polio survivor. He chose cowardice. Cassidy and Barrasso both took RFK Jr. to task during a recent Senate hearing over Bobby’s purges at the CDC. Just yesterday, Cassidy urged his state’s Surgeon General not to follow Florida’s lead and provide covid vaccines to everyone who wants them.
Today is an unpleasant anniversary for many, especially me. On this date last year, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris had their first, and only, presidential debate. As is my custom, I covered the debate on my social media platforms, particularly Facebook. I tested positive for Covid for the first, and only, time right in the middle of the debate.
As many of you undoubtedly know, Covid isn’t fun. The vaccine ensured that I only suffered a mild case. RFK Jr. has made it much harder for people my age to get those vaccines. It’s disgusting.
Now, RFK Jr. is claiming a link between autism and women who take Tylenol during pregnancy. That is a load of bullshit, quite predictable for the same man who dumped a dead bear in the middle of Central Park when he realized he wouldn’t be able to eat it for dinner because of existing plans. Republicans claim to want more “oversight” over HHS, but this is a problem completely of their own making.
Republican senators can spar with RFK Jr. in front of the cameras. They can make him look like the moron that he is. It’s great TV, but that’s almost all it is. They don’t have the numbers to impeach him. Only Trump can fire him.
Will he? That’s the question I go back and forth on. Bobby is bad press for Donald, who typically shuns anyone who embarrasses him in the media. There are reasons he won’t. Donald is loath to jettison Bobby’s anti-vax following, the same way he was afraid to piss off the Nazis in Charlottesville. Ever the prestige chaser, Donald loves Bobby’s last name. He thinks it’s an honor to have a Kennedy in his cabinet.
But swing voters decide elections. Suburban Republicans did not abandon the party in droves people expected after the Dobbs decision overturned Roe. Maybe some of them were pissed off by the way Democratic-run school boards handled Covid lockdowns or treated trans children with dignity? Is that really worth bringing polio back?
I’ve been on a few dates with single parents over the past few weeks. The school horror stories are scarier than anything currently playing in theaters, way worse than The Conjuring. Like many women, I sometimes feel a subconscious urge to have a baby of my own. Any talk of crazy school parents quickly tosses cold water on that notion.
I was in elementary school when active shooter drills started to be a thing. Like the generations before me who had to do nuclear bomb drills, I pondered the effectiveness of hiding under a desk against such threats. Kids these days still have to hide under their desks, while also contending with the reality that measles and the mumps might be thriving in their classrooms.
Cassidy could cause problems for the White House by threatening to gunk up Senate procedures until RFK Jr. is sent back to his unvaccinated lair. He won’t, because he’s a coward. He knows better, but he is a weak, pathetic man.
Which is really the scariest part of all of this. Marjorie Taylor Greene is fighting on the right side of history right now, standing with the Epstein victims. MTG is a profoundly vile creature, but she’s doing something brave, something that hundreds of her House colleagues are too afraid to do. The woman who likely owes Trump more than any of her elected colleagues is standing up to him.
What does it say about this country that someone like MTG can push for justice while Bill Cassidy hides under his desk? We all know Trump looks like shit lately. He’s covered in bruises with horrible cankles. Maybe his health is a mess, or maybe he’s just depressed that so many of his allies have turned their backs on him. It must be pretty sad when polio and measles are your only friends.
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Thank you
Great read, thanks ❤️