Good morning! Lewis Goodall of The News Agents told LBC listeners this week that America has entered “the Louis XIV period of Donald Trump,” with a blond Bourbon king presiding over a White House that increasingly looks “like a Best Western gone wrong.”
I’m personally grateful that a British broadcaster can get away with saying that on the radio, and Wednesday’s schedule backed him up.
Trump spent the evening in San Antonio promising every adult citizen a $5,000 “Trump dividend” if his party holds Congress, while drivers came off a record September at the pump. Pete Hegseth flew out to the USS Abraham Lincoln, read the crew a Presidential Unit Citation, congratulated them on “a mission accomplished,” and dropped to the deck for two push-ups. Over in Athens, Marco Rubio praised the U.S. ambassador to Greece as “a strong ambassador.” The same day, the Wall Street Journal published texts showing her pressing a donor to wire $100,000 to her American Express account.
Today the Lincoln docks at North Island after more than ten months away, carrying the people who actually paid the human price of the war.
In the course of a single day, the Iran war managed to be both finished and existential.
Aboard Air Force One on the way to Texas, Trump told reporters it was “a war that’s been won.” Iran’s military, he said, “is now wiped out,” and the whole thing would “be over very quickly.” That night in San Antonio he called Iran “a failed nation” with “a little spunk left,” promised “we’ll be out of there soon,” and predicted oil would “come down like a rock.” Iran, he assured the crowd, “will never have a nuclear weapon.”
Then he defended the war by asking the crowd to picture an Iranian missile slamming into San Diego or Los Angeles.
“They’d use it,” he said.
The enemy is finished, and it is also one launch away from the 405.
Trump’s own timeline contradicts the first half. At the outset, he said the war would last a matter of weeks. In September he conceded that oil prices wouldn’t fall until after the midterms. The “wiped out” military kept fighting through the summer: U.S. forces struck Iran ten nights running in July and launched fresh strikes on Sept. 1.
The public intelligence record contradicts the second half. U.S. intelligence has long assessed that Iran halted its organized nuclear-weapons program in 2003, and the 2025 threat assessment said Tehran was still not building a bomb. “Never,” meanwhile, rests on nuclear material nobody can fully account for. Iran held roughly 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent. U.S. intelligence believes much of it was buried, not destroyed, at Isfahan, and no one has verified where the rest is.
Even if Tehran somehow produced a bomb tomorrow, it still lacks a missile capable of delivering one anywhere near California. Iran’s longest-range operational missiles reach roughly 2,000 kilometers. San Diego is more than 12,000 kilometers away.
Which version of the war Americans are being sold seems to depend on how many days remain until Nov. 3.
The centerpiece of the San Antonio pitch was cash. If Republicans hold the House and Senate, Trump said, every adult citizen gets $5,000, a “Trump dividend” that has to be spent in the USA.
We have been through the arithmetic before. Tariff revenue doesn’t come close to covering it. The $21 trillion in investment he invokes is largely pledges, and considerably larger than the total on his own White House website. His previous $2,000 tariff dividend never arrived.
What’s worth noticing is the fine print. Trump has said he doesn’t want the $5,000 distributed while Republican control of Congress is at risk. First comes the election. Then, if voters return his party to power, comes the check.
The smaller checks are already moving: $500 Obamacare refunds and $90 Medicare payments, both of which Trump again presented as money his administration had rescued from Democrats rather than programs financed through the government Americans already pay for.
Meanwhile, the affordability problem those checks are supposed to answer remains stubbornly real. Gas spent September at record levels for the month, mortgage rates remain above 7 percent, and Trump nevertheless told the crowd Americans are paying less for oil than they did under Biden.
They aren’t.
At $4.41 a gallon, that $90 Medicare check buys about 20 gallons.
Trump took a detour in San Antonio to settle a score with Rep. Henry Cuellar, the South Texas Democrat he pardoned last year, along with Cuellar’s wife, on federal bribery charges. Trump said he did it for Cuellar’s daughters, who wrote him letters, and he stressed that he “made no deal.” He just expected one. Maybe Cuellar wouldn’t run again, Trump mused, or would run as a Republican. Instead, Cuellar stayed a Democrat. Trump called him disloyal and ungrateful, a “low life” who “should be serving a long term prison sentence with his wife,” and urged voters to elect his opponent as “payback.” The episode proves, Trump said, that “loyalty does matter.”
So the pardon came with a receipt.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, Don Jr.’s former fiancée and now ambassador to Greece, turns up in the same marketplace from the other direction. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that in the months before her confirmation, she pressed Kentucky donor Eric Deters for money while promising access to the administration. Deters had dangled up to $1 million for results. She forwarded him the note she sent incoming IRS commissioner Billy Long, invoking her closeness to Don Jr. Six days before her confirmation hearing, she sent Deters wiring instructions for $100,000 to her American Express account, promising it “won’t show up anywhere.” He declined, saying it would cost him his marriage. She repeatedly warned him to stop putting payments in writing.
Guilfoyle’s lawyer disputes the messages’ authenticity but offered no specifics. Deters is an imperfect witness: Kentucky suspended his law license twice, and an insurer has accused him of extortion, which he denies. The Journal says it reviewed hundreds of messages, emails, and letters. Billy Long is now ambassador to Iceland.
Trump handed out a pardon and expected loyalty back. Guilfoyle allegedly offered access and expected cash. Neither seller got paid. Same transaction, opposite ends of the counter.
Trump told the Coliseum crowd that the “fake news” is demoralizing Republicans with “rigged polls,” that his real numbers are “phenomenal,” and that he’d beat any Democrat by 25 or 30 points. He proved it with a CNN chart showing 98% approval among MAGA Republicans, which is a little like citing your mother’s opinion of your cooking.
Outside the arena, the provinces are restless. New York Times/Siena polling released Oct. 3 found Talarico ahead 51 to 45 in Texas, Mary Peltola leading 50 to 43 in Alaska, and Sherrod Brown ahead of Jon Husted 49 to 46 in Ohio. Kansas hasn’t elected a Democratic senator since 1932, yet a newer YouGov poll has Adam Hamilton ahead 48 to 45, and the race has moved into toss-up territory. A Reuters/Ipsos poll puts Trump’s approval at 32%, the lowest of his political career.
Lewis Goodall predicts the 2028 Republican primary will run like an episode of The Apprentice, with Trump handing his would-be heirs tasks and toying with them. After November, he may also be handing them the bill.
Among the night’s accomplishments, Trump announced that he’s getting rid of artificial intelligence. He’s not regulating it; he’s renaming it. “Artificial” sounds fake, he explained, so it’s now “super intelligence.” This isn’t a rally riff. He signed an executive order directing federal agencies to use the new term. Same technology, same legal definition, two new letters. Gavin Newsom answered with an order keeping “artificial intelligence” in California.
Geoffrey Hinton, the Nobel laureate often called the godfather of AI, had a suggestion when asked about it in Erie, Pennsylvania. “Super intelligence” is a technical term meaning smarter than people, he noted. You can’t just declare it. But if the president is on a roll, he might define pi as three and spare schoolchildren a lot of trouble.
As the Lincoln ties up this afternoon after a record stretch at sea, it’s worth remembering what Pete Hegseth told its crew the day before: that the press coverage of their deployment was “the exact opposite” of the truth. Two weeks earlier, his own acting Navy secretary had told Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand there were eight suicide attempts across the strike group. Hegseth delivered his rebuttal on the same carrier where, in 2003, the banner read “Mission Accomplished.”
Asked in Erie what the most important thing people can do about AI is right now, Hinton, a Canadian who moments later confessed he isn’t supposed to meddle in American politics, didn’t hesitate.
“Vote in the midterms.”
Trump’s comment about how Iran might take out Los Angeles or San Diego wasn’t just intended to illustrate the importance of nuclear deterrence. It was also meant to remind Californians that he could, if the mood struck him, choose not to protect us in the event of a foreign attack. His audience in Nebraska got the “joke”and they reacted with cheers and laughter.
This was yet another irritating example of Trump’s use of dog whistles to taunt his enemies and egg on his followers. The comment was followed, as usual, with gaslighting from Trump’s White House stooges and “lefties can’t take a joke” comments on right-wing media.
I feel like I’m in a dysfunctional relationship with a narcissist. Which I suppose I am.