Author: A.T.

More Fun With HYMC

But first . . .

THE TIDE IS TURNING

Gavin Newsom and Tim Miller (60 seconds).

WHY I VOTED FOR TRUMP

“Because I Was an Idiot” (60 seconds).

(To learn who “Donna” is, click here.  It’s blood-boiling.)

And now . . .

FUN WITH HYMC

HYMC jumped 50% yesterday to $24.50, up nearly 8-fold since suggested in June.  Rather than sell shares, I sold more calls, as described Sunday — this time for $14.50 each.  They give the buyer the right to buy my shares for $25 anytime until January 21, 2028.

The buyer is betting the stock may be above $39.50 by then, after which his having paid $14.50 for the right to buy it at $25 ($39.50 in total) won’t look so dumb.  Indeed, if the stock were $60 or $80 by then, it would look downright brilliant.

And I’m not sure the buyer won’t be right.  Which is why I’m keeping a good bit of my position without writing calls against it.

After all, look at it this way:

When AMC paid $27.9 million for 2.34 million shares at $10.70 each, it wasn’t doing it out of the kindness of its heart; it was taking a considerable risk in hope of considerable return.  (It also got warrants to buy an additional 2.34 million shares for an additional $27.9 million, which sweetened the deal.)

Now, nearly three years later, HYMC stock is more than double what AMC paid — and the warrants to buy more at $10.70 mean that, all told, AMC has pretty close to a quadruple.*

But wait!

When AMC took this gamble, perhaps hoping to make 10 or 15 times its money, gold was around $1,900 an ounce.  Today, it’s $4,400 . . .

. . . which is more than “more than double” $1,900 when you take into consideration the cost of mining each ounce.

If that cost is $900, then the net profit per ounce AMC might have been shooting for would have been $1,000 ($1,900 less $900).  Now, it would be $3,500 ($4,400 less $900) — three and a half times as much.

Plus, as noted Sunday, there’s the recently reported silver.

So — while none of this is really “analysis,” it’s just fun — if you figure AMC hoped to make $200 million on its $27.9 million gamble back when gold was $1,000 net of costs . . . might it now fairly hope for three and a half times that kind of profit? $700 million?  Even more?

For its $27.9 million investment to be worth $700 million, the 4.68 million HYMC shares it bought (and would own if it exercised all its warrants) would have to be $150 apiece — not yesterday’s $24.50.

I’m not for a moment suggesting or predicting that.  I know virtually nothing about mining gold, let alone where the prices of gold and silver will be a year or two from now.  Indeed, it’s just when I start to giddy about something that the top may be at hand.

But I like to think whoever bet $14.50 a share yesterday that HYMC will be meaningfully higher than $39.50 by 2028 will prove to have been spectacularly right.

BONUS: REMEMBER CIVILITY?

A former president and first lady.

 

*Sharp-eyed readers will note that AMC sold some of its holdings this month before much of the run-up.  To keep the math simple, I’ve ignored that.

 

Now We Know Who Stephen Miller Was In A Prior Life

I was hoping not to like Rachel Maddow’s new podcast, Burn Order, because who has the time, right?

Plus, we all know about the Japanese internment and that, in retrospect, it was a mistake.

Well, I have bad news: Burn Order is riveting.  And relevant.  

The good news is that it’s just six episodes that, at 1.3X speed, will go by very fast.

I can’t imagine any Republican senators will listen, let alone Stephen Miller or Tom Homan or Kristi Noem; but, boy, should they ever.  It’s their story.

While we’re on the subject, here is a piece on what it’s like to be detained by ICE, written by Trump’s former fixer.

It begins:

Four people died in ICE custody this week, proving the cruelty isn’t the arrest itself — it’s the neglect, indifference, and silence that follow once the doors lock.

I’ve been out of federal custody for a while now, but the memories don’t fade. They wake you up at night like a phantom pain from a limb you didn’t even know the government could amputate. Since my release from FCI Otisville, I’ve been very clear about what it means to be a human warehoused by the United States government. . . .

Don’t miss Burn Order.

As my mother used to say, “Let it be a lesson to us all.”

 

China, Coke, Gold … And The Winter Solstice

CHINA

From the Economist: 

China proved its strengths in 2025—and Donald Trump helped

The extraordinary thing is that Mr Trump has played into Mr Xi’s hands, both with his tariffs abroad and his wrecking-ball at home.

. . . [His] attack on science will impede American innovation.  Framed as an effort to eliminate inefficiency and woke ideology, his efforts have curbed financing for vital research. His hostility to foreign scientists, especially ethnic Chinese ones, [has also hurt].  China has already benefited.

COCAINE

I’m no fan.  I tried it a few times but was lucky — I didn’t love it.  It didn’t grab and ruin my life as it has so many.

That said, I think it should be legal.  (Shouldn’t Americans be free to drink or smoke, or even do coke, in their pursuit of happiness, if they want to?)  And that attempting to transport it from Venezuela to Trinidad for eventual export, presumably, to the U.S. should not be punishable by death-without-trial.

Legalizing coke is understandably controversial.

But the death-without-trial for Venezuelans part?  It blows my mind that House and Senate Republicans are fine with that (or pretend to be).

HYMC

A lot of our speculations crater (see, for fun, Google Puts and Soap Slivers from 20 years ago).

Others, like PRKR, ANIX, OPRT, CNF, UNIT, RNGE, VERU — even BOREF, I guess — “remain to be seen.”

But every once in a while we get lucky.  The latest example: HYMC, which reached $17.11 in after-hours trading Friday — up from $3.20 when suggested six months ago; $2.20 a couple of years before that.

By now, I’ve sold about half in my tax-sheltered accounts — though it’s certainly acting as though it wants to go higher, and very well may.  Not only is it “a potential gold mine” — literally — with the price of gold more than double what it was when we first started buying . . . it now seems also to be a potential silver mine, with the price of silver also going through the roof.

This recent HYMC write-up offers fair market valuations ranging from $4 to $40 a share, so what it’s currently worth seems to be anybody’s guess.

I haven’t sold any in my taxable accounts, but Friday I sold some “covered calls” against about a quarter of my position.  Specifically, calls that paid me $778* each and gave some nameless faceless buyer the right to “call away” from me 100 shares at 25 a share anytime between now and January 21, 2028.**

Let’s say you gambled $2,500 to buy 1,000 shares a couple of years ago.  It’s grown to $17,000.  Now, worried it might drop — but not eager to pay tax on the gain or miss out on possible further gains — you don’t sell.  Instead, you “write covered calls” on those 1,000 shares at $8.  You get $8,000, and here’s what could happen:

1.  HYMC goes to $60.  Whoever bought those calls from you at 8 is pretty happy.  He limited his risk to $8 a share, in case HYMC collapsed; and he had to pay you $8 for the right to buy your shares from you at the $25.  But that left him with a $27 long-term gain in a year or two on an investment of just $8.  But you’re not miserable, either.  Instead of selling your 1,000 shares today for $17,000 you got paid $25,000 for them — and got an $8,000 premium (taxed as a short-term gain) — all on a $2,500 bet (made with money you could truly afford to lose.

2. HYMC never gets much higher than $25 (so is unlikely to be called away), but limps across the finish line on January 21, 2028, at exactly $25.  He loses everything, but you — you lucky bastard — wound up with $33,000 (before tax, if in a taxable account) on a $2,500 investment.

3. HYMC has fallen to 9 by January 21, 2028.  You keep the $8,000 and either sell the stock, if you want to, or hold it and are not much worse off than you are today (though in a taxable account you’d owe tax on that $8,000) — and it still might go up to $25 or $60 or who knows.

The only way this can work out badly is for HYMC to crater.  Even then, you’d keep the $8,000 — not the worst result on a $2,500 bet.

*No tax is due on that $778 until the calls are exercised or expire, or I buy them back for less than I was paid. 

**Because these are long-term calls, they “suspend” the holding period of the underlying shares . . . but that’s not an issue for me, because I have already held them more than a year.  If you’re thinking of writing calls against shares in which you have a short-term profit, the IRS will “stop the clock” on those shares if the calls you write have a long expiration date or are “deep in the money.” Not the end of the world, but something to consider.

AND A HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE TO ALL

45 seconds!

 

Jimmy Kimmel – 3 Minutes

Like you, I had heard about “the plaques” but — perhaps unlike you — I had not actually seen them until I watched this portion of Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue (3 minutes).

He has turned the presidency into a joke.  A mockery.  An egomaniacal frenzy of corruption and self-adoration, untethered from reality and indifferent to human suffering.

(Among so much else — the closing of rural hospitals, the return of measles — hundreds of thousands of innocents have needlessly died.  Each one an actual human being.)

Not to mention his preference for dictators.

How can this be happening?  

Watch those 3 minutes and tell me he is not deranged.

TWO QUESTIONS FOR TRUMP SUPPORTERS

1. Why is Trump protecting Hunter Biden?!  They have the laptop — and every MAGA knows it contains wild bombshells that would have flipped the millions of votes by which Trump lost in 2o2o — so why has he not revealed them?  (If only to distract from the Epstein files.)

2. “If the 2020 elections involved widespread coordinated fraud and conspiracy, why hasn’t this administration arrested or indicted anyone?” — asked by Republican congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky.*

*By contrast, during the first Trump administration, a federal grand jury indicted 12 Russians for allegedly interfering in the election; and more than 1,000 former Republican and Democratic U.S. attorneys said Trump himself would have been indicted on multiple counts of obstruction had Justice Department policy not shielded a sitting president.  See Volume 2 of the Mueller report.  Volume 1 raised endless suspicious of collusion, though not enough to meet the strict legal definition — perhaps because investigators were obstructed from getting the full story.

LINCOLN SQUARE FACT-CHECKS THE SPEECH:

The Eight Big Lies from Wednesday Night

  • The “Warrior Dividend” Deception: Trump asserted that $1,776 checks “were on their way” to U.S. troops. The Fact: The President does not have the “power of the purse”—Congress does. Furthermore, while he offers a one-time $1,776 payment supposedly funded by tariffs, analysts estimate those same tariffs have already cost the average American household $1,700 this year alone.
  • The Prescription Price Policy: Trump claimed he has cut the cost of prescription drugs by 400%–500%. The Fact: This is mathematically impossible. A 100% price cut would mean the drugs are free ($0); anything beyond that would imply Americans are being paid to take their medicine! (ha! we wish!)
  • The Inflation Myth: He claimed he inherited the worst inflation in 48 years. The Fact: While inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, it had already fallen to approximately 2.4% by the time Trump took office in January 2025. Current data for late 2025 shows inflation at roughly 3.0%—an increase since he took office, which economists attribute partly to the tariffs implemented in April.
  • The Food Price Fib: Trump says food prices are ‘plummeting.’ The Fact: His own Agriculture Department released a report this week showing food prices are currently rising faster than inflation. In fact, food prices have never been higher.
  • The Manufacturing Mirage: He touted record factory growth. The Fact: The U.S. has seen seven consecutive months of manufacturing job losses.
  • The Foreign Investment Scam: Trump provided no evidence for his claim of securing $18 trillion in investment. Even the White House website reports only $9.6 billion in investment promises—a figure that includes investments initiated during the Biden administration.
  • Gaslighting on Gas Prices: Trump claimed the cost of gas is significantly lower. The Fact: While gasoline prices have seen some declines (averaging around $2.94 nationally), they are nowhere near the $2.00 national average Trump claimed.
  • A Wage Whopper: Trump stated that “for the first time in years, wages are rising much faster than inflation.” The Fact: Incorrect. Real wage growth has been positive since mid-2023. Recent 2025 data shows that while wages are still rising, the gap has actually narrowed as inflation ticked back up toward 3% this fall.

(Also from Lincoln Square: RFK Jr.’s Making Disease Great Again.)

A SEPARATE FACT-CHECK

Did Vice President J.D. Vance really say Trump could be “America’s Hitler”?

Yes.

In 2016, apparently, he did.

Too harsh, in my view — though, as discussed Wednesday, there are powerful parallels.

In case you can help fund the infrastructure that will help begin to put an end to this madness next November, click here!  I’ll see what you do and jump through the screen to say thanks.

 

Carl And I Agree

He writes, in response to yesterday‘s post:

Rob Reiner was the ultimate mensch for me too.

I agree Trump was 100% wrong to say what he did. If you remember I said he has flaws he is at times crude and talks before he thinks.  But I don’t remember Meathead calling Archie Hitler or fascist.  I don’t remember him saying Archie is “the single most unqualified human being to ever be a father” or in the case of Trump “assume the presidency of the United States.”

In 2017, Reiner told Variety at the Dubai International Film Festival that Trump was “mentally unfit” to serve as president. “Do we want fascism or do we want to continue the 248 years of self-rule?” he asked during the interview. “Do we want to continue democracy or do we want to slip into fascism?”

I replied:

We seem to agree not just that Rob Reiner was a mensch but also that fascism is a bad thing.

When I look up the characteristics of a fascist leader, Trump seems to check all the boxes:

  1. Authoritarian Rule — Centralized power under a single leader or party, rejecting democracy.
  2. Cult of Personality — Leader portrayed as infallible, heroic, or the embodiment of the nation.
  3. Ultranationalism — Extreme devotion to the nation or race, often tied to myths of national rebirth.
  4. Militarism — Glorification of war, violence, and military strength as tools of renewal.
  5. Suppression of Opposition — Forcible silencing of dissent, censorship, imprisonment, or elimination of rivals.
  6. Scapegoating & Demonization — Targeting minorities, immigrants, or political opponents as “enemies” of the nation.
  7. Rigid Social Hierarchy — Belief in natural inequality, with strict class, racial, or gender roles.
  8. Economic Control (Dirigisme) — State intervention in the economy to achieve self‑sufficiency (autarky).
  9. Mass Mobilization — Use of propaganda, rallies, and symbols to unify citizens under one ideology.
  10. Anti‑Liberalism & Anti‑Communism — Rejection of pluralism, socialism, and liberal democracy as “degenerate.”

How do YOU define fascism, and/or what do YOU see as the characteristics of a fascist leader?

I might have added that most of us are careful NOT to call Trump Hitler.  There’s a distinction between that and noting (for example) that he kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside or that there are stylistic parallels.

And I might have added that Rob wasn’t the only one to call Trump out as mentally unfit for the job.  His niece Mary, for example.  His ghost writer Tony Schwartz.  Senator Lindsey Graham, who called him “batshit crazy.”

See, also: The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.

If Carl responds, I’ll let you know.

BONUS

Peter Thiel and the Anti-Christ (90 seconds).

 

Trump V. Gore . . . And Homan

But first . . .

Sunday was so awful and sad.

Rob Reiner was the ultimate mensch.  “We grew up together.”  He was six weeks older.  We shared every episode of “All in the Family” — he from inside the TV, I from the couch — and I’ve watched “The Princess Bride” a dozen times.  As you doubtless know, it’s about love and justice — what’s better than that? — with two epic love stories: Buttercup and Wesley; grandpa and grandson.*

The Reiners’ murderer is mentally ill, as is the president who felt compelled to post — and then doubled down.

*The other nine Greatest Movies Ever Made, just so you know: Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon, Dr. Strangelove and Dr. Zhivago, The Ten Commandments and The Godfather/s, Moonstruck, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, The Bridge on the River Kwai and The Guns of Navarone, 2001 and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, It’s A Wonderful Life, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Network, Invictus, Philadelphia and — is that more than nine? — you may want to fill out the list with one or two of your own. 

TRUMP V. GORE

Jeffrey Toobin concludes his recent piece:

. . .  [I]t’s almost as if Donald Trump studied Al Gore’s behavior in 2000 and decided to do the opposite after he lost to Joe Biden in 2020. (And Trump did lose — by seven million votes in the popular vote and 303 to 232 in the Electoral College.)

Like Gore, Trump went to court in the aftermath of the election, but instead of eminences like David Boies and Laurence Tribe, who represented the vice president, Trump trotted out crackpots . . .

But the most important difference between Gore and Trump involves violence. At the infamous rally on the Ellipse on January 6, Giuliani called for “trial by combat,” and Trump told the throng, “We’re going to the Capitol. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Since then, more than 1,500 of Trump’s fighters have been arrested. Two weeks later, Joe Biden took office, but Trump (unlike Gore) failed to attend the victor’s inauguration and persisted in the lie that the election had been stolen from him.

Instead of the oblivion that Trump deserved, his belligerence won him continuing political relevance and, ultimately, the presidency once more.  On the first day of Trump’s return to the White House, there were pardons for those criminals who answered his summons to violence at the Capitol.

In all, the diverging fates of Gore and Trump offer grim lessons about the country they both sought to lead. Violence pays. Lying works. Grace is for suckers. “This is America,” Gore said in his concession speech. “Just as we fight hard when the stakes are high, we close ranks and come together when the contest is done.” No, alas; look who’s president now. THIS is America.

→ Maybe.  But the majority of us, who are appalled by his behavior, will take the first step in restoring civility, integrity, competence, and respect for the Constitution and the rule of law when we prevail next November.

NOW is the time to fund the infrastructure our 2026 candidates will rely on.  The second half of next year is the time to fund individual candidates’ lawn signs and door knocks, bus tours and billboards, social media campaigns (!!!), direct mail, radio and TV.

Please help if you can.

TOM HOMAN IS A SENSITIVE MAN

Jenn Budd: When the only lives of value are ICE lives

Border Czar Tom Homan says he “does not want to bury anyone else.” He also wants you to recognize that his ICE and CBP agents are risking their lives every single day to keep you safe. In exchange for that bravery, he is “begging the politicians, the governors, the mayors who constantly attack these men and women, please stop.”

To be clear, he is not begging this of republicans. It is apparently only the rhetoric and criticism coming from democrats that pierces ICE and CBP thin skin so deeply. So, let’s take a look at all the burials Homan has had to attend thanks to democrats.

The ICE Memorial page for fallen officers lists 77 names. Most interesting about this list is that it contains 48 deaths prior to ICE’s creation in 2003 with one dating back to 1915, a whopping 110 years ago. Only 29 deaths were ICE agents. Of those 29, the breakdown of causes is listed as:

> Covid – 15
> Cancer related to 9/11 [which occurred before ICE was formed] – 7
> Contracted a disease – 1
> Health of officer/accident – 3
> Shot while in Mexico City – 1
> Heat related – 1

It is not surprising that 15 ICE officers died from Covid. ICE and CBP ranks are bloated with right-wing conspiracy enthusiasts who did not believe in the dangers of Covid 19. Their opinion came from Trump calling the epidemic a hoax and that it was no worse than the flu. Most immigration officers refused to mask, going so far as to file a federal lawsuit against the Biden Administration for mandating they get vaccinated.

. . . Of all the ICE officer deaths listed, only one appears to be on-duty deaths in which the officer was targeted.  [And it was not in the U.S.]

Meanwhile, can someone please tell us what happened to the $50,000 bag of cash Homan was filmed accepting in an FBI sting?  In a normal world, he might be in very hot water.

 

Why Did You Lock Up His Wife?

ICE has apprehended some really bad people and we’re all the better off for that — especially when they’ve done it the American way (with due process) and not the dictator’s way (disappearing them).

That said, don’t miss this exchange between Seth Magaziner and Kristi Noem.

Magaziner: How many US military veterans have you deported?

Noem: Sir, we have not deported US citizens or military veterans.

Magaziner: We are joined on Zoom by a gentleman who is an Army combat veteran who was shot twice while serving our country in Panama in 1989. He is a combat vet, a Purple Heart recipient, he has sacrificed more for this country that most of us ever have. Can you please tell Mr. Park why you deported him to Korea, a country he hasn’t lived in since he was 7 years old?

Noem: Every law needs to be enforced.

Magaziner:  An individual in the back — his name is Troy Brown from Missouri. He is a Navy combat vet who served in the Gulf War. He’s married to a woman named Donna who came here from Ireland legally when she was 11. She’s lived here 48 years. Because of you, Donna has been in prison for the last 4 months. Why did you lock up his wife?

Noem: It is not my job to pick and choose which laws get enforced. People need to follow the law.

It went on (the landscaper here for 30 years with no criminal record) until the Congressman summed up . . .

Magaziner: You promised America that you would go after the worst of the worst. But these people are not the worst of the worst. A Purple Heart recipient, a military spouse, the father of three Marines. And it’s not just veterans and military families. You are locking up and deporting children with cancer, mothers with babies in the NICU. There are many problems with your leadership, but the biggest problem is this: you don’t seem to know how to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.

. . . and the Cabinet Secretary excused herself to go another (possibly imaginary) meeting.

Filming ICE is the most American thing you can do, argues Scott Hechinger, as he analyzes this photo:

THE AMERICAN RENAISSANCE CONFERENCE

“Antifa” — short for “anti-fascist” — is not an organized group.  It has no offices, leadership, or website and holds no conferences.  America has been almost unanimously “antifa” throughout its history.  Only now do some see anti-fascism as a threat.  Like these guys, gathered in Tennessee for a conference.

Which group better personifies American values?  The ones whose lives Noem wrecks (above) — or these guys?

 

The Statue Weeps

“Give me your tired, your poor . . . your huddled masses yearning to breathe free . . .”

Or, to update it . . . “You’re garbage — get the hell out of our harbor.”

This NPR story will get you in the mood:

Report finds ‘inhuman’ conditions at two Florida immigration facilities (4 minutes).

Disappeared to a Foreign Prison, by Sarah Stillman in The New Yorker, goes into more detail.

It begins:

One Saturday morning in early September, I got a WhatsApp video call from eleven strangers locked inside a secretive detention camp in a forest in Ghana. Their faces looked glazed with sweat and stricken with fear. In the background, I could hear birdsong and the drone of insects. An armed guard watched over the group as they huddled around a shared cellphone. “There are big snakes here, and scorpions!” a male voice with an American accent called out.

“My stomach is really hurting, and we have to beg for food,” another man said.

A third added, “We fear we’ll be tortured and killed.”

One of the men, a car salesman and a real-estate agent from Miami, whom I’ll call Jim, gave me a tour of the scene: an open-air military complex known as Bundase Training Camp, some forty miles from Accra. “I have five U.S.-citizen children, and they don’t know where their father is,” Jim said.

Just months earlier, one of these men had a job with UPS in Chicago. Another had lived in Houston, where he worked for his mother’s catering business, composed R. & B. music, and babysat his little brothers. Some had lived in the U.S. from an early age. Jim, a political refugee, had come to Miami from Liberia in the early nineties, when he was twenty-three, after his parents were murdered for their tribal and political affiliations during the country’s civil war. Others, including a twenty-one-year-old woman who had fled Togo fearing genital mutilation, had arrived in the U.S. recently, seeking asylum.

All of them had been taken from the United States against their will. . . .

More and more people are concluding this isn’t the country we want to be.

On so many levels.

(Hundreds Quarantined in South Carolina as Measles Spreads.)

(Desperate Farmers Say the System Is Broken.)

(Local food banks face new strains amid cuts to SNAP benefits.)

(Billionaires growing richer faster than ever . . . while 44% of humanity lives on less than $6.85 per day.)

As previously mentioned, a Democrat won the mayoralty Tuesday for the first time in 30 years — in a blow-out, 59.4% to 40.6%.

Here’s another flip — in a Georgia district that Trump won by 12 points.

The tide is turning.

ANIX

For those of us taking this flyer with money we can truly afford to lose:

Anixa Biosciences Announces Positive Phase 1 Data for Investigational Breast Cancer Vaccine; Primary Endpoints Were Met and Immune Response Observed in 74% of Participants

 

Trump Gets an A+++++

HEGSETH V. HEGSETH

From The Guardian: Hegseth said US military should refuse ‘unlawful’ Trump orders in unearthed 2016 interview

The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, stated repeatedly in 2016 on Fox News that US service members should refuse “unlawful” orders from a potential president Trump – exactly the position he called “despicable” when Democratic lawmakers said it last month.

But that was before the nation faced a threat from two men clinging to a capsized boat — that had been headed away from us — in the middle of the ocean.

Desperate times, desperate measures.

MEIDAS SUMMARIZES YESTERDAY’S POLITICO INTERVIEW

If you have 43 minutes, watch.

Otherwise, MeidasTouch reports:

Trump began the interview by insisting that the U.S. economy, an economy in which families are struggling with soaring costs, shrinking paychecks, and deep recession-level pain, is worthy of a grade of “A+++++.”

When the interviewer noted that holiday shoppers are feeling strained and are worried about having to choose between paying for their health insurance or holiday gifts, Trump dismissed the concern outright, telling the reporter, “Don’t be dramatic.” He insisted that people “don’t feel that,” a claim that would only make sense if one lived inside the gold-plated isolation of Mar-a-Lago, where the president routinely hosts Gatsby-themed galas while Americans try to figure out how to afford groceries.

Throughout the interview, Trump’s hostility grew. When asked about the devastating September 2 military operation, an attack already condemned by experts around the world as a likely war crime, Trump brushed aside concerns.

The foreign-policy portion of the interview revealed something even more dangerous: a commander in chief openly musing about ground invasions and attacking democratic allies. When pressed on whether he could rule out an American ground invasion of Venezuela or other nations including Mexico and Colombia, he replied, “I don’t want to rule in or out. I don’t talk about it.” He then launched into a tirade against Politico, bizarrely claiming the publication received “$8 million from Obama.” (A lie, of course).

Trump’s disdain for NATO was even more explicit. According to him, “NATO calls me daddy.” His administration’s newly released national-security strategy, an official government document, states plainly that his goal is to “end the perception and the reality of NATO as a permanent organization.” That is not reform. That is dismantling the most successful military alliance in modern history, a move that would leave Europe vulnerable and embolden Russia.

His rhetoric about Ukraine was worse. Trump repeatedly belittled President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling him “P.T. Barnum” and describing Ukraine as “losing.” He praised Russia’s position as “stronger,” ignoring the obvious: his own policies have tilted the scales in Moscow’s favor.

On economic policy, Trump made his most reckless admission yet: he will choose the next Federal Reserve chair based on a promise to immediately lower interest rates, regardless of economic conditions. This is the type of political interference economists warn can trigger severe downturns. At a time when most Americans already feel like they are living through a recession, Trump’s approach would all but guarantee even deeper instability.

His trade policies continue the same pattern of self-inflicted harm. After personally crippling U.S. farmers with a disastrous trade war that wiped out soybean exports to China, he is now claiming a “huge win” because China has agreed to buy a fraction of what it purchased under President Biden.

In exchange, Trump rewarded Beijing with something far more consequential: permission to buy Nvidia’s advanced H200 semiconductor chips, the same chips the Justice Department has treated as highly restricted national-security assets. On the very day the DOJ announced a major bust of smuggling operations involving those same chips, Trump told Xi Jinping he could have them legally. It is difficult to overstate how dangerous that concession is. These chips power the next generation of artificial intelligence capability. Handing them to a geopolitical rival in exchange for soybean purchases is a surrender, all in a panicked attempt to get China to try to undo the devastating effects of his own trade war.

Through all of this, the pattern is unmistakable. Trump rewards autocrats. He punishes allies. He lies about the economy. He tries to project strength while revealing profound weakness. And he attacks anyone, from reporters to NATO to members of Congress, who dares challenge him.

LEAVING MAGA

‘My MAGA started to crack’: How one Christian nationalist Mormon broke free of Trump

. . . [W]hen Trump ran for president in 2016, Gage embraced MAGA.

“I will never forget him on my big-screen TV, saying the words, ‘Make America Great Again,” Gage said.

“The first time I heard that, I literally started crying … and I pictured Norman Rockwell.”

What came to mind was the painter’s “Freedom from Want” — “The grandma putting the turkey on the table, the Thanksgiving dinner, the beautiful home and just that American traditional family and conservatism,” she said.

. . . But about two years ago, at 49, Gage had a reckoning, realizing she had been “literally a white supremacist from birth,” based on teachings from the Book of Mormon.

Gage said she came to see Mormonism as “the OG Christian nationalist church.”

So, she flipped her life upside down, leaving organized religion and the Republican party.

She now calls herself “a raging feminist,” hosts a podcast, “Life, Take Two,” and is a member of “Leaving MAGA,” a nonprofit online community for former Trump followers who found themselves lost in conspiracies, losing friends, even committing crimes in the president’s name.

WE’RE GONNA WIN

I know I said that in 2000, when Al Gore got more votes than George W. Bush . . . including in Florida* . . . but was denied the presidency.

And other times I’ve said it and been wrong.

But let’s not forget Obama and Biden — or Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.  Or the dozens of special elections in the past year where we’ve either won or wildly overperformed.

Yesterday’s result in Miami — where a Democrat won the mayoralty for the first time in 30 years, and by a margin of 59.4% to 40.6%! — is one more reason to believe normal Americans have grown uncomfortable with today’s Republican leadership . . . and that, yes: we’re gonna win.

Join the next “No Kings” protest!

Next year:

Sign up to be a poll worker (and inspire your kids and grandkids to do the same), plant lawn signs!  Write post cards!

This year:

Fund the Democratic infrastructure on which our 8.000+ candidates depend.

I can’t wait to see what you do to say thanks.

*By tens of thousands, if you count the overvotes that were thrown out because inexperienced voters punched “Gore” — but then, to be doubly sure, wrote in his name.  In most states, including Bush’s own Texas, those votes would have been counted.  In Florida that year, with the entire election (and thus the Supreme Court and so much else) hanging in the balance, W.’s brother Jeb’s team decided the overvotes had to be thrown out because when someone had arguably voted twice, how could you possibly discern their intent?  (Yes: this really happened.)  Not to mention what would have happened if Ralph Nader had told voters in swing states like Florida — where he got 97,488 votes — to vote for the man he considered the least bad alternative.  How entirely different the world today would have been.  Without those tens of thousands of overvotes, and with Nader encouraging progressives to vote for him, Gore “lost” by 537.