The President, the Alien, and the End of Normal

While a drone struck the Arab world's only nuclear plant, your president posted an alien on a leash and went golfing

Good morning! Let’s begin where the president began his Sunday: Truth Social, apparently sometime between the back nine and brunch.

In the span of a few hours yesterday, Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself striding toward the camera in sunglasses, backed by bald eagles and burning American flags. He followed this with two Space Force fantasy images. In one, he sits at a command console while mushroom clouds bloom across a bank of screens labeled “TARGET DESTROYED”; in another, his finger rests on a large red button. He posted a map of the entire Middle East overlaid with the American flag, arrows converging on Iran from every direction. He posted “Bing Bing GONE”, an official White House graphic depicting Iranian boats being destroyed by laser fire, complete with his own sound effects, because the office of the presidency needed a catchphrase. He posted Obama, Biden, and Nancy Pelosi wading through sewage beneath the caption “Dumacrats Love Sewage.” He posted Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, depicted as a crime lord standing atop a mountain of garbage in a burning cityscape, captioned “Hakeem ‘Low IQ’ Jeffries in His District.” He posted a grotesquely caricatured Gavin Newsom rendered as a diseased-looking man on a California license plate. He posted a woman drowning in the Reflecting Pool, captioned “Coming Soon.” He reposted a “Jim Crow 2.0” electoral map approvingly. He endorsed a congressional candidate in Kentucky. He posted a photo with Xi Jinping, from a summit his own officials describe as a diplomatic defeat. And, between the mushroom clouds and the drowning women, he took a moment to wish the Rededicate 250 faith rally, the one he skipped in favor of golfing, a good time. Signed: “I’M BACK FROM CHINA!!!”

From the golf course or somewhere adjacent to it, he issued the following foreign policy statement to the nation of Iran, a country of 93 million people: “For Iran, the Clock is Ticking, and they better get moving, FAST, or there won’t be anything left of them. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!”

This is the man who sits at the top of America’s nuclear chain of command.

On April 30th, thirty-six physicians, including a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has spent a career working to prevent nuclear war, signed a letter calling for Trump’s immediate, lawful removal from office on medical grounds. The letter was read into the Congressional record. One of those physicians put it plainly: the same man who couldn’t stop himself from calling a female reporter “piggy” to her face, on Air Force One, in the middle of a workday, controls the nuclear codes. You don’t need a DSM to follow that logic. You just need yesterday’s Truth Social feed.

Meanwhile, in the world being governed by this feed:

The Financial Times is reporting that nearly 80 countries have now enacted emergency economic measures in response to the energy crisis driven by the Iran war. The IEA estimates that between March and June, global oil consumption is running roughly six million barrels a day above production, some analysts put the shortfall closer to nine million. JPMorgan warns that OECD inventories could approach what it delicately calls “operational stress levels” by early June. One economist at Aberdeen is now modeling a scenario where Brent crude reaches $180 a barrel, triggering recessions across Europe and Asia. “We are living on borrowed time,” he told the FT. The EU’s transport commissioner was less diplomatic: “If the Strait of Hormuz does not reopen in the coming weeks, a world recession could be on the table.”

Trump posted empty oil tankers sailing toward the Statue of Liberty, captioned triumphantly: “Empty Oil Tankers are SAILING to the US to LOAD UP on OIL!” National average gas price yesterday: $4.51 a gallon.

For a more intimate portrait of what “operational stress levels” actually looks like, the New York Times filed from Doha this weekend. Qatar, a country that built a gleaming civilization out of natural gas, whose sovereign wealth fund holds stakes in everything from Heathrow Airport to the Empire State Building, has had virtually no gas leave its shores for more than two months. Its industrial center at Ras Laffan, struck by Iranian missiles in March, has seen a 17% reduction in production capacity. Damage that will take years to repair, regardless of when the strait reopens. The IMF projects Qatar’s economy will shrink 8.6% this year. A choreographed fountain show at the Place Vendome mall in Lusail drew a single spectator on a recent Wednesday afternoon, slumped against a wall, eating a sandwich.

Qatar, you may recall, gifted Donald Trump a $400 million Boeing 747, a “palace in the sky,” in the now-immortal formulation of the American press. The jet is currently being painted red, white and blue. The Arabic exit signs have been removed; the oversize leather seats and faux library bookcases are staying, with presidential seals affixed to the walls. It is expected to be ready for the president’s use this summer. In exchange for the jet, Trump extended Qatar a unilateral NATO-like security guarantee, allowed a Qatari government-linked company to invest in a Trump golf and villa development, and parked Venezuelan oil revenue in a Qatari bank for reasons that have never been fully explained.

Qatar’s ports are paralyzed. Its gas flares have gone dark. One person is eating a sandwich next to a fountain. The plane is almost ready.

The polling landed Sunday morning with the particular thud of confirmation. Trump’s approval rating in the new Times/Siena poll is 37%, his lowest ever recorded, a drop of four points since January, and below the floor no president has breached for more than a few days in seventeen years. Only 28% of Americans approve of his handling of the cost of living. Only 31% approve of his handling of the war. Only 30% say attacking Iran was the right decision. Among voters under 30: 19% approval. Among Hispanic voters: 20%.

The Times’s Nate Cohn reaches for the George W. Bush comparison, and it fits: at the same stage of his second term, facing Iraq and high gas prices, Bush’s approval landed roughly where Trump’s is today. It then fell by less than a point a month for the rest of his presidency, eventually bottoming out in the twenties. That, Cohn notes, happens to be exactly the rate at which Trump has been losing support in recent months. Slow bleeds have a way of becoming fast ones.

Democrats currently lead the generic congressional ballot by eleven points. There are no examples in the polling era of a president’s party retaining the White House when his approval is under 40%.

Trump spent the day posting AI images of himself pushing a red button while targets were destroyed on screens behind him.

There is a story this week that is not about bombs or boats or polling floors, and it is in some ways the most clarifying story of all. The Guardian reports that the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, specifically the IRS data-sharing agreement with ICE, since ruled illegal by a federal judge but still casting a long shadow, has triggered a collapse in tax filings among undocumented immigrants. One tax adviser in Springfield, Virginia lost 75% of her clients this season. Another estimates 30-40% of his clients didn’t file. Her clients’ reasoning was not irrational: if the government has announced it will use your tax return to find and deport you, why would you file?

The fiscal mathematics are extraordinary. In 2022 alone, undocumented immigrants paid an estimated $96.7 billion in taxes, disproportionate contributors, as it happens, since they don’t qualify for most deductions or credits, meaning they often pay a higher effective rate than citizens. Yale’s Budget Lab now estimates the administration’s deterrence campaign will cost the federal government between $147 billion and $479 billion in lost revenue over the next decade. Simultaneously, up to 2.7 million children who are American citizens or lawful permanent residents may lose access to the child tax credit because their parents are undocumented.

The administration that ran on fiscal discipline and immigration enforcement has built a machine that destroys tax revenue to fund the enforcement that destroys the tax revenue. It is the Strait of Hormuz energy crisis in miniature: a presidency that is, across every domain, producing the precise opposite of its stated intentions.

Finally, and briefly, because it requires no elaboration: Yesterday afternoon, a drone struck the Barakah Nuclear Energy Plant in Abu Dhabi, the only nuclear power plant in the Arab world, and the first time it has been targeted since the war began. Two of three incoming drones were intercepted. The third hit an electrical generator outside the plant’s inner perimeter, sparking a fire and briefly knocking one reactor onto emergency diesel power. No injuries. No radiological release. All units now operating normally, the UAE’s nuclear regulator said.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi expressed “grave concern” and called for “maximum military restraint near any nuclear power plant.”

The ceasefire, technically, remains in effect.

The world is being asked to trust that all of this is under control.

Trump, for his part, posted an AI image of himself walking a shackled extraterrestrial through a military base, the alien in chains, Trump in a suit, both apparently headed somewhere with purpose, posted two Space Force fantasies featuring himself at a planetary command console, threatened to annihilate Iran in all-caps, and went golfing.

The codes travel with him.