Roses, Wars, and Whoppers

From the Rose Garden “Club” to the $17 trillion fantasy economy, Trump rebrands the Pentagon, raids Hyundai, and forgets Putin’s name, while Zelensky reminds us what real grit looks like.

Good morning! Donald Trump held court in what’s left of the Rose Garden last night, a ceremony he dubbed the inaugural meeting of the “Rose Garden Club.” The roses, he reassured us, were untouched, “in full bloom and they will be in full bloom during certain seasons”, as if the country needed a botanical State of the Union. The grass, though, was apparently a national emergency: “Every time we’d have a press conference, women in particular were sinking deep into the mud.” So, at taxpayer expense, the turf was replaced with stone. Call it the Augusta National approach to governance: re-grass America and the rest will sort itself out.

The evening spun into something between a loyalty banquet and a stand-up routine nobody asked for. Trump lavished praise on Mike Johnson, the “great speaker of our time or any other time,” and reminisced about those long nights when he had to call “Jim” and a dozen other “hard-nos” at 4 a.m. to twist arms. The lucky guests tonight, however, were the chosen ones, the lawmakers who never made him pick up the phone. In Trump’s telling, this was their reward: a steak dinner under the fairy lights, serenaded by the sound of a safe Washington, where women are now “walking by themselves alone, and they feel totally safe.” He even insisted crime in D.C. had been reduced by 87%, “Really? Who are the 13%?”, suggesting the remaining criminals had either been vaporized or relocated to Portland.

And just to gild the lily, he added a folksy homily about turf management: “Grass has a life like we have a life. It expired about 40 years ago in these parks.” As if America’s greatest threat were not economic collapse or foreign war, but geriatric sod in Lafayette Square. The crowd was also treated to the soundtrack of an oncoming train, which Trump hailed as proof of his success: “The train is safe now. We don’t have to worry about it. Isn’t that a beautiful sound?” One imagines Kim Jong Un nodding in recognition at this level of propaganda-by-landscaping.

The speech lurched from one tall tale to the next. He bragged that his “great big beautiful bill” had abolished taxes on tips, overtime, and Social Security, thrown in car loan deductions for good measure, and, why not, basically solved the economy forever. He claimed to have stopped seven wars, one of which had allegedly raged for 37 years until he personally ended it in two hours. “Nobody’s done what we’ve done in seven months,” he boasted, before clarifying that even the “fake news” admitted his record was unparalleled. He waxed nostalgic about ordering a B-2 bombing run over Iran, with pilots “who look just like Tom Cruise,” and swore that “no other president had the courage to let us go.” He celebrated the imminent arrival of $17 trillion in investments, including AI factories that are apparently wiring themselves directly into the power grid like something out of The Matrix. To put that whopper in perspective, China’s entire GDP is roughly $18 trillion, but Trump would have us believe he conjured almost the same amount in loose change between Rose Garden banquets. And he recounted, with childlike glee, that his White House doctor once declared him “by far the healthiest” president compared to Bush and Obama, a line delivered as though it were the Nobel Prize of wellness. For good measure, he tossed in another flourish: “We were one heart attack from losing the House,” as if the nation’s fate had hung by the clogged artery of a Republican backbencher.

If the Rose Garden dinner was an ode to loyalty, his follow-up transcript from the White House presser was a reminder of fragility. Asked a clear question about Vladimir Putin, Trump looked blank until Melania leaned in like a caretaker prompting a patient: “They’re asking about Putin, Donald.” This is the president who insists he’s winning world wars with Tom Cruise lookalikes, yet can’t track a reporter’s question without help from his wife. Instead of an answer, he muttered, “What? About who? I didn’t hear,” before drifting into a tangent about “a lot of people” and “great conversations” that never seemed to exist. At one point, he even tried to pivot into his well-worn mantra, “We have the strongest military anywhere in the world”, as though sheer repetition could cover the lapse. The whole exchange felt less like a commander-in-chief briefing and more like a nursing-home check-in gone off script.

But the real kicker was Trump’s announcement that he’s rebranding the Pentagon. Forget the Department of Defense, too “woke.” He signed an executive order to bring back the old “Department of War.” “War means something. It means we’re not going to have any problems,” he explained, as if renaming the building were the geopolitical equivalent of sprinkling holy water on it. Billions will now be squandered on swapping seals, signs, and stationery across 700,000 facilities, a contractor’s dream disguised as a patriotic flex. The rollout was predictably botched: the Pentagon’s website redirected to war.gov, which promptly crashed, while the official X account sported a shiny new avatar over the old Defense banner, like a teenager failing to change their MySpace background. Even Truman’s ghost is spinning at this point. Allies abroad don’t know whether they’re negotiating with a defense partner or a country that just renamed itself belligerent on purpose.

And while Trump’s been busy fluffing the turf and rebranding the military, his immigration enforcers staged the largest workplace raid in Homeland Security history. Federal agents stormed Hyundai’s $12.6 billion Metaplant project in Georgia, hauling off 475 workers, most of them Korean nationals, from what was supposed to be the state’s biggest jobs engine. South Korea’s government is fuming, Democrats in Georgia are calling it terror tactics, and Hyundai and LG executives are scrambling to explain why their flagship venture just became a crime scene.

In the real world of actual war, Volodymyr Zelensky once again embarrassed Putin’s pretensions. Asked about the Kremlin’s latest invitation for him to come to Moscow, Zelensky smirked and replied, “He can come to Kyiv.” It was a line delivered with a laugh, but one that cuts deeper than any Rose Garden anecdote. Zelensky knows he can’t fly into the capital of “this terrorist” while missiles rain on Ukrainian cities, so he flips the invitation back with defiance. Compared to Trump’s imaginary seven wars ended in two hours, Zelensky’s quip feels like the real measure of grit.

And if you were wondering what ideological fertilizer nourishes Trump’s roses, look no further than the National Conservatism conference in D.C., a swamp masquerading as a think-tank. The guest list mixed white nationalist publishers, secretive men-only societies quoting Julius Evola, and Trump officials on the payroll. Harmeet Dhillon, now deputy attorney general, described the civil rights division as the president’s “shock troops.” Eric Schmitt delivered a blood-and-soil sermon about pioneers fighting “Indian warbands.” Kevin Roberts reassured alienated young men that their rage at immigrants and machines is righteous. Tulsi Gabbard showed up as director of national intelligence. The Venn diagram of Trump’s cabinet and the far right isn’t overlapping; it’s a perfect circle.

So there you have it: a week in the life of a president who believes grass has a soul, D.C. crime is at zero, and war is something you can rebrand like a chain of steakhouses. The roses may still be blooming, but American democracy is being trampled underfoot, stone by stone, seal by seal, lie by lie.

On a personal note, Marz and I are sneaking off today to spend time with the wee bairn, whose hands are already so large he looks destined to palm a basketball before he masters a sippy cup. If my posts seem a bit slower over the next day or two, it’s because I’m happily distracted by this tiny new giant. Thank you all again for the kind words and good wishes, they mean the world.