A stiff drink from the Trump fire hose
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. When you think aloud for a living you’re lately getting a lot of wry comments like “It must be hard to come up with a topic with nothing going on." “It’s drinking from a fire hose," the journalist will reply. Meanwhile, normal people are asking: He doesn’t really think he’s a king, right? I’ve grown tired of saying, “Well, that was insane," and we’re barely a month in.
The most charitable gloss on the administration style—here we’re thinking of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s blithe announcement that he wants to cut defense spending 8% a year for the next five years—is that they’re simply riding high and have grown full of themselves, as opposed to clinically insane. The other day I remembered an old story about Muhammad Ali. The great boxer was flying to a championship bout, feeling on top of the world.
As the plane taxied down the runway, a dutiful stewardess kept coming by: “Sir, please fasten your seat belt." He smiled. “Superman don’t need no seat belt." She said, “Superman don’t need no airplane. Buckle up." And he did.
But that wouldn’t fully explain things. The president’s remarks on Ukraine this week were wild and destructive. He isn’t wrong to wish to end that conflict—war is brutality and waste.
Everyone knew that it would end on unsatisfying terms. But Ukraine didn’t start it, Russia did, in defiance of international law. The war isn’t Volodymyr Zelensky’s fault, he isn’t a dictator, he isn’t loathed by his people—all those things President Trump said were untrue.
And the vast majority of those listening to these charges know they are untrue. Asking “Why does Trump do this?" is a decade-long cliché, but really—why does he do this? Ukraine is a sovereign nation. Its
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