Ramble On: Find / Replace

Morning thoughts on the State of the Union, the lack of urgency by Democratic leadership, and how replacing "Trump" with "the Kremlin" in headlines always makes sense

Good morning! Here is today’s ramble:

And here is the transcript, which has been edited for clarity:

Good morning. What a week this has been. Every week gets a little crazier, a little worse. Every day gets a little crazier, a little worse. But I guess we’re used to it now?

Obviously this State of the Union—which isn’t technically a State of the Union. One of the readers wrote in to tell me it’s actually called a Joint Address, which did not stop almost everyone from calling it a State of the Union, including people who are politicians and such, and it was trending on Twitter that way, et cetera, State of the Union. I did not watch. I did not listen. I feel like Trump at this point is like one of those radioactive pieces of charcoal from “Chernobyl,” the miniseries. I really have to limit my exposure or else I’m going to meet an early grave. He’s dangerous. It’s toxic. It’s toxic. And I have to pick my spots.

I want to try to listen to him as little as possible. Even the joking stuff—I know people would play a clip and then make a joke. I can’t even watch that. I don’t want to hear him. I can’t stand him. He’s just awful.

And yet people, even after that, people are still into him. It’s insane.

So here’s a story. I hope she doesn’t mind. My mother went to church on Ash Wednesday. My mother goes to church pretty much every day, but she went on Ash Wednesday, and was annoyed because that’s one of the days when all the—what she calls the “A &P Catholics,” which are the Ashes & Palm—come to Church to get their ash. So, you know, she couldn’t park where she wanted. She’s not where she usually sits. There’s two women behind her that she doesn’t know, has never seen before. And they’re just talking the whole time, you know, like they’re just watching TV or something in their living room. Even during the Mass, you know, they’re just talking about where they’re to go eat after. It’s kind of like, what’s the point? And one of them says, finally, “I can’t believe the Democrats didn’t even stand up and applaud him at all last night. That was just awful. They treated him so badly.” And I don’t know. This is one of the narratives that’s going around. There’s that one. There’s also this: “Trump is, just trying, he’s trying hard. He’s trying the things. He really does have the best intentions. He’s just trying, there’s a lot of red tape he’s got to get through.”

None of this is true. It’s all bullshit. People will find out eventually, but somebody like that, I don’t know how you argue with it. I had somebody on Facebook try to argue with me. I said, “Just wait six months. If you think I’m wrong, fine. If I’m wrong, I’ll never be more happy to be wrong.”

But I thought of an idea about how to couch this going forward with the Kremlin asset thing, right? Because I really do think that Trump and Musk are working against the United States. They’re working for their own purposes. They’re working for Putin’s purposes, and they do not care about the people in this country. In fact, they want us to be harmed. And that’s something I think it’s hard for people to wrap their minds around.

So maybe this will help. What I’ve done is, I have a list here. I just went to the Washington Post front page and I copy/pasted a bunch of headlines with the title and subtitle. I wrote it all down here. And I think if you insert the words, “the Kremlin,” instead of “Trump” or “Musk” or “the White House”—just say “the Kremlin” and ask yourself, “Is that something that Kremlin would do to hurt us,” then maybe it would make more sense. Okay. So here’s an example of what I mean:

The real headline is,

Inside the White House’s new media strategy to promote Trump as ‘KING’
The Trump administration has transformed its traditional press shop into a rapid-response influencer operation, and “they’re all offense, all the time.”

Now, promoting the president as a king is not something that democracies do. It’s not something we do in the United States. They don’t like kings here. George Washington despised kings. So let’s read it, substituting the word:

Inside the Kremlin’s new media strategy to promote Trump as king.

Makes more sense. That is something the Kremlin would do, because having a king would basically make the United States a dictatorship, which is more likely to align itself with Russia.

Moving on. Here’s the real headline:

Trump administration plans 15 percent cut to VA workforce
The department provides health care and other services for millions of veterans.

In what universe does that help people in this country? It doesn’t; it helps the Russians, it helps our enemies. So let’s change it.

The Kremlin plans 15 percent cut to VA workforce

Okay, that’s something that the Kremlin would do if they could. Moving on:

DOGE is driving Social Security cuts and will make mistakes, acting head says privately
The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner said members of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team are outsiders who are unfamiliar with the nuances of the agency’s programs.

You don’t say! Again, Social Security is the most popular benefit from the government that we have in this country. Nobody wants it cut. Nobody. Go ask anybody out there. Not a single person other than some cruel-ass idiot, Ayn Rand Republican like Paul Ryan would ever want to cut Social Security. So again:

The Kremlin is driving social security cuts and will make mistakes

Something the Kremlin would do.

Head of watchdog agency ends lawsuit to stop his firing by Trump

A watchdog agency is something that’s going to do checks and balances and represent guardrails. So again:

Head of watchdog agency ends lawsuit to stop his firing by the Kremlin

Makes more sense—that is something that the Kremlin would do.

Trump officials, aid groups can’t agree on timing to restart global aid
Global health groups accused the Trump administration of flouting a judge’s order to restart nearly $2 billion in payments for food, medicine and more.

Again, that does not help us. It doesn’t help us. Freezing that money does nothing for us. All it’s going to do is basically end these programs. Even if they kickstart in a couple of weeks, it’s not going to be enough.

So, you know, say it again:

The Kremlin, aid groups can’t agree on timing to restart global aid

There you go. It makes sense. Something that Kremlin would do.

White House mum on price relief measures as inflation stings Trump’s ratings

Okay:

The Kremlin mum on price relief measures

Yeah, they’re not gonna say it. They’re not gonna say what they’re doing because they ain’t doing shit, which is what the Kremlin would do because they want our economy to collapse—just as Trump and Musk want the economy to collapse.

Trump administration moves to let Idaho enforce strict abortion ban
The Justice Department dropped a Biden-era lawsuit that sought to require hospitals receiving government funds to offer abortions to women in medical emergencies.

Again, this is a law that allows a hospital to save a woman’s LIFE. They’re suing in order to do that. The State of Idaho wants to just let women die. Just let them die! And now Trump has gone in with that. So again:

The Kremlin moves to let Idaho enforce strict abortion ban

—something the Kremlin would do, because it’s just gonna kill more Americans. And if you kill female Americans who are pregnant, then there’d be fewer Americans, which is also what they want.

After explosive town halls, Republicans rethink how to reach voters
House Republicans are rethinking how best to reach constituents after a series of combative town halls where protesters vented about President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s policies.

Find/replace:

After explosive town halls, the Kremlin rethinks how to reach voters

So they don’t want to face the public. This is, again, what the Kremlin does. This is happens in Russia. You can’t just go to Putin’s house and tell him stuff. You can’t write anything bad about Putin or any of these people, or they’ll come get you. You’ll get window cancer, polonium in your tea, whatever. They’ll take your family away. They’re evil fuckers. That’s what they do.

And what’s happened now, I said it before and I say it again, is that Kremlin assets are now in charge of the federal government. They just are. And we can argue about like, “Well, he’s not really an asset.” We can argue about word choice or whatever. What Trump and Musk are doing is exactly what a Putin puppet would do in every case.

Now, if it was like John McCain who was the president, then we could say, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t believe that because it’s John McCain and he did all these things that were great and now he’s doing this, he probably has another reason.” But in Trump’s case, we have literally decades of evidence of him with Russians. Russian mob and now Russian government—one in the same in many ways. We have decades of evidence of this, a preponderance of evidence, we might even say. So when he comes in, and starts acting like a puppet of Putin—Well, yeah, what did we expect?

Hillary called him Putin’s puppet in 2016, and she wasn’t, like, trying to a dig at him. She said it because that’s what he is. And now we have the consequence of that. So we’re beyond the time where we have to realize what he is. We have to figure out what to do to stop it.

If Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Kislyak, the former ambassador—if they were in charge of the federal government right now, if they broke into the White House, into the West Wing, and Kislyak started taking a battle ax and put all our things through a wood chipper, and broke into our computer systems and started fucking stuff up…what would we do? Would we just sit back and be like, “Yeah, that’s cool.” If Lavrov gave a State of the Union address, would we just sit there? Hold up a sign maybe? No! We would take more drastic measures. And that’s what Trump and Musk are. They’re famous people, and we know them in a different context, but that’s what they are.

There’s no urgency from the Democrats. There’s no urgency. And there needs to be urgency. There just has to be. Otherwise, it’s toast. It’s not gonna work. The democracy will fall. I wrote in Rough Beast that if these guys have their way, they’re gonna make so many changes so fast that the United States would not be recognizable by the 4th of July, 2025.

Rough Beast: Slouching Towards Dictatorship

Four more months to the 4th of July, and we’re already way worse than what I thought we would be. So yeah, it’s not going to be recognizable unless the Democrats form a real opposition party, act like it, stop pretending that everything’s normal or will ever revert back to normal, or that there’s going to be a fair midterm election. This is not where all this is heading. This is slouching toward dictatorship, as I wrote in my book. And that’s where we’re at.

So I liked that some of the Democrats showed a little spine. I liked that they didn’t all sit there and do nothing. I mean, the signs were stupid, but at least they did something to protest. They got to do more. They got to do a lot more. You know, Schumer, Jeffries, the rest of the leadership: get your shit together. Get your shit together. Because if democracy dies, it dies on your watch.

Have a good weekend, everybody.

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LB and I will talk SOTU, the tariff bullshit, the shifting situation in Europe, and more.

—AND, on for our Five 8 members, we will have an Afterhours, where we will give notes on our North Country weekend:

See you tonight!

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