Our Petty, Hollow, Squalid Ogre in Chief

Though I tend to think it’s usually a waste of space to devote a column to President Trump’s personality — what more is there to say about the character of this petty, hollow, squalid, overstuffed man? — sometimes the point bears stressing: We are led by the most loathsome human being ever to occupy the White House.

Markets will not be moved, or brigades redeployed, or history shifted, because Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner were found stabbed to death on Sunday in their home in Los Angeles, allegedly at the hands of their troubled son Nick.

But this is an appalling human tragedy and a terrible national loss. Reiner’s movies, including “Stand by Me,” “The Princess Bride” and “When Harry Met Sally…,” are landmarks in the inner lives of millions of people; I can still quote by heart dialogue and song lyrics from his 1984 classic, “This Is Spinal Tap.” Until last week, he and Michele remained creative forces as well as one of Hollywood’s great real-life love stories. Their liberal politics, though mostly not my own, were honorable and sincere.

To which our ogre in chief had this to say on social media:

“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”

I quote Trump’s post in full not only because it must be read to be believed, but also because it captures the combination of preposterous grandiosity, obsessive self-regard and gratuitous spite that “deranged” the Reiners and so many other Americans trying to hold on to a sense of national decency. Good people and good nations do not stomp on the grief of others. Politics is meant to end at the graveside. That’s not just some social nicety. It’s a foundational taboo that any civilized society must enforce to prevent transient personal differences from becoming generational blood feuds.

That is where history will record that the deepest damage by the Trump presidency was done. There is, as Adam Smith said, “a great deal of ruin in a nation,” by which he meant that there are things in almost any country that are going badly wrong but can still be mended. Foolishly imposed tariffs can be repealed. Hastily cut funding can be restored. Ill-thought-out national security strategies can be rewritten. Shaken trust can be rebuilt between Washington and our allies.

But the damage that cuts deepest is never financial, legal or institutional. As one of Smith’s greatest contemporaries, Edmund Burke, knew, it lies in something softer and less tangible but also more important: manners. “Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us,” Burke wrote. It is, he warned, through manners that laws are either made or unmade, upheld or corrupted.

Right now, in every grotesque social media post; in every cabinet meeting devoted, North Korea-like, to adulating him; in every executive-order-signing ceremony intended to make him appear like a Chinese emperor; in every fawning reference to all the peace he’s supposedly brought the world; in every Neronic enlargement of the White House’s East Wing; in every classless dig at his predecessor; in every shady deal his family is striking to enrich itself; in every White House gathering of tech billionaires paying him court (in the literal senses of both “pay” and “court”); in every visiting foreign leader who learns to abase himself to avoid some capricious tariff or other punishment — in all this and more, our standards as a nation are being debased, our manners barbarized.

Read the rest here.

London Police Must Disclose Ties to Freemasonry

Metropolitan police officers must tell their bosses if they are Freemasons, the force has announced, amid fears membership could be linked to corruption.

Britain’s largest force said anyone who was part or had been a member of a “hierarchical organisation that require members to support and protect each other” must declare it.

The body representing Freemasons condemned the rule and said it would consider legal action.

The issue of Freemasons in the Met has been long-running, but previous commissioners have either thought tougher rules were not justified or not worth the pain.

The current commissioner, Mark Rowley, was moved to act as part of his drive to show the public the force can be trusted.

The Guardian also understands, however, that a recent case of alleged wrongdoing in the force contains allegations that acts under investigation may be linked to Freemasonry.

The Met has held intelligence for years of potential corruption linked to personal relationships formed through membership of the Freemasons, but nothing has been proved.

Read the rest here.

NY Times: US Military Superiority is Declining Dangerously

President Xi Jinping of China has ordered his armed forces to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027. Though the United States maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity on how it would respond to an invasion, Republican and Democratic presidents alike have said that America would defend the island nation. The Pentagon has produced a classified, multiyear assessment that shows how such a conflict would play out: the Overmatch brief.

The report is a comprehensive review of U.S. military power prepared by the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment and delivered most recently to top White House officials in the last year. It catalogs China’s ability to destroy American fighter planes, large ships and satellites, and identifies the U.S. military’s supply chain choke points. Its details have not been previously reported.

The picture it paints is consistent and disturbing. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, said last November that in the Pentagon’s war games against China, “we lose every time.” When a senior Biden national security official received the Overmatch brief in 2021, he turned pale as he realized that “every trick we had up our sleeve, the Chinese had redundancy after redundancy,” according to one official who was present.

The assessment shows something more worrying than the potential outcome of a war over Taiwan. It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically advanced ones. And it traces a decades-long decline in America’s ability to win a long war with a major power.

War games can be wrong; analysts sometimes overstate adversaries’ abilities. Yet this larger point should not be ignored. Nearly four decades after victory in the Cold War, the U.S. military is ill prepared for today’s global threats and revolutionary technologies.

Read the rest here.

You know you are in trouble when even the NY Times is sounding the alarm over national defense.

Britain's Defense Buildup: Lots of talk but not so much money

LONDON — Keir Starmer tore up the script this year to pledge a massive British defense spending hike. So why is the country's military still preparing to make cuts?

Just ahead of his crucial first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump in February, the U.K. prime minister announced his government would spend 2.5 percent of GDP on defense by 2027 — and hit 3 percent in the next parliament.

In June he went further — joining NATO allies in promising a move to 3.5 percent by 2035. Britain’s bold direction of travel was warmly welcomed by NATO members, including the U.S., which has sent a clear message under Trump that Europe must become more self-sufficient on security.

Yet inside Whitehall, anxiety is rising about how the U.K. will match lofty rhetoric with reality — and military chiefs are already locked in a fight with the all-powerful Treasury to get cash in the here and now.

The recent government-wide budget delivered by Chancellor Rachel Reeves contained nothing new for national security, while the Ministry of Defence is currently locked in a fraught battle with the Treasury over a landmark investment plan.

One U.K. defense official, not authorized to speak publicly, said: “Our position is becoming untenable. You can’t talk about leadership in Europe when we haven’t put our budget up at all.”

Read the res here.

How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration

In the weeks after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was elected president, advisers delivered a warning: His approach to immigration could prove disastrous.

Mr. Biden had pledged to treat unauthorized immigrants more humanely than President Donald J. Trump, who generated widespread backlash by separating migrant children from their parents.

But Mr. Biden was now president-elect, and his positions threatened to drastically increase border crossings, experts advising his transition team warned in a Zoom briefing in the final weeks of 2020, according to people with direct knowledge of that briefing. That jump, they said, could provoke a political crisis.

“Chaos” was the word the advisers had used in a memo during the campaign.

They offered a range of options to avert that crisis, by better deterring migrants. Mr. Biden seemed to grasp the risk. But he and his top aides failed to act on those recommendations.

The warnings came true, and then some. After Mr. Biden became president, migrant encounters at the southern border quickly doubled, then kept rising. New arrivals overwhelmed border stations, then border towns, and eventually major cities like New York and Denver.

Anger over illegal migration helped return Mr. Trump to the presidency, and he has enacted even more aggressive policies than those Mr. Biden first campaigned against. Mr. Trump has drawn outrage from Democrats by sending masked agents to target immigrants, often aided by National Guard soldiers.

But a New York Times examination of Mr. Biden’s record found that he and his closest advisers repeatedly rebuffed recommendations that could have addressed the border crisis faster, and eased what became a potent issue for Mr. Trump as he sought to return to the White House and justify the aggressive tactics roiling American cities today.

Former Biden administration officials told The Times that Mr. Biden and his circle of close confidants — including Ron Klain, who was chief of staff during the president’s first two years, Mike Donilon, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Anita Dunn — made two crucial errors.

First, they underestimated the scale of migration that was coming. Second, they failed to appreciate the political reaction to that migration — believing that stronger enforcement would alienate Latino and progressive voters, and also that a border surge would not be an important issue to most voters. Those calculations would later prove to be mistaken, with many voters, including Latinos, citing immigration as a reason for supporting Mr. Trump in 2024.

Read the rest here.

Vigil for St. Nicholas, December 5th, 2025

In the News

Hegseth boat strike fallout, war crime allegations: What to know 

Pete Hegseth ‘pushed top Navy admiral who questioned boat strikes to resign’

Trump pardons former top entertainment executive who was charged by his own Justice Department

Trump pardons Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar

Trump 'garbage' rhetoric about Somalis draws cheers from administration, silence from Republicans and alarm from critics

Poll: Trump's own voters begin blaming him for affordability crisis

Trump's current poll numbers

New York Times sues over Pentagon press access rules

Oklahoma university instructor on leave after failing Bible-based essay on gender

America’s Magical Thinking About Ukraine

Putin authorised 2018 Novichok poisoning of ex-Russian spy Skripal, UK inquiry says

U.S. Institute of Peace renamed for Trump

Von der Leyen pushes ahead with reparations loan for Ukraine as Belgium maintains its opposition

Analysis Kicking the Corpse: Netanyahu's Pardon Request Caps the Slow Death of Law in Israel

Crisis looms in Israel over ultra-Orthodox conscription bill

CDC Panel Meets to Vote On Hepatitis B Vaccine Amid Anti-Vax Push

The Tennessee Special Election

Today's special election to fill a recently vacated congressional seat in Tennessee has been getting a lot of attention. Normally it would be a non-story given that the district is as Republican as San Francisco is Democratic. President Trump carried it by 22 points. But polls have been showing a shockingly close race. This has gotten Democrats excited and Republicans nervous. All of which said, I doubt the Democrats will pull it off. The polls still show the Republican candidate with a modest lead and those same polls have a history of undercounting conservative voters. There's a lot of debate about the hows and whys of that, but it remains true nonetheless. The latest poll showed around 5% of voters as undecided. In that district they almost always break Republican. And there was a margin of error of ~4%. Democrats are hoping that will break their way, but again, history does not suggest that is too likely. Add to that, the Democratic candidate is not a centrist. She is way to the left by Tennessee political standards and has in the past staked out all kinds of really lefty positions like supporting trans/alphabet people etc., pro-abortion, pro-wealth redistribution and so on. That may play well on the left coast and in New York City, but in Tennessee... I'm not seeing it.

In both parties there is a certain class of professional operators who live and breath politics. When they are eating lunch, they are scanning their phone for the latest stories that could impact broad public opinion. They go to bed at night reciting poll numbers and when they dream it's about which districts will need how much money for the coming off year elections. These people are watching this race not to see who wins, but to see how close it is. The serious people in both parties know that flipping the seat is highly improbable. But what has Democrats giddy and Republicans sweating is how close will it be. If the GOP holds the seat, but the margin is single digits, you are going to see alarm among Republicans and elation among Democrats. It will signal a major threat to swing district Republicans and that money will have to be spent defending at least some districts that would normally be considered safe seats. It would likely add to the steady flow of Republican congress people who have announced their plans not to seek re-election. The party leadership would also have to contend with members feeling more free to criticize the administration. Make no mistake, Donald Trump is on the ballot in this election and the forthcoming off year elections. 

The above aside, what if lightning strikes and the Democrats actually manage to flip the seat? In political terms that would be the equivalent of a tactical nuclear weapon going off in the middle of MAGA country. A district Trump won 13 months ago by 22% in a functionally one party state going Democratic, by even a paper thin margin, might well portend a 2026 election wipe out rivaling those of 1974 and 1994. Democrats will be popping champaign corks from Seattle to South Carolina. For Republicans it would be Katie bar the door. 

The Ex-President Whom Trump Plans to Pardon Flooded America With Cocaine

He once boasted that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.” He accepted a $1 million bribe from El Chapo to allow cocaine shipments to pass through Honduras. A man was killed in prison to protect him.

At the federal trial of Juan Orlando Hernández in New York, testimony and evidence showed how the former president maintained Honduras as a bastion of the global drug trade. He orchestrated a vast trafficking conspiracy that prosecutors said raked in millions for cartels while keeping Honduras one of Central America’s poorest, most violent and most corrupt countries.

Last year, Mr. Hernández was convicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges and sentenced to 45 years in prison. It was one of the most sweeping drug-trafficking cases to come before a U.S. court since the trial of the Panamanian strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega three decades before.

But on Friday, President Trump announced that he would pardon Mr. Hernandez, 57, who he said was a victim of political persecution, though Mr. Trump offered no evidence to support that claim. It would be a head-spinning resolution to a case that for prosecutors was a pinnacle, striking at the heart of a narcostate.

Read the rest here.

Report: Trump to recognize Russian military conquests in Ukraine

The United States is poised to recognise Russia’s control over Crimea and other occupied Ukrainian territories to secure a deal to end the war.

The Telegraph understands that Donald Trump has sent his peace envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to make the direct offer to Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

The plan to recognise territory, which breaks US diplomatic convention, is likely to go ahead despite concerns among Ukraine’s European allies.

One well-placed source said: “It’s increasingly clear the Americans don’t care about the European position. They say the Europeans can do whatever they want.”

Russia’s president on Thursday said Washington’s legal recognition of Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as Russian territory would be one of the key issues in negotiations over the US president’s peace plan.

Read the rest here.

Happy Thanksgiving

Wishing all a blessed feast. Given the events of September; Thanksgiving and Christmas this year are likely to rather subdued in my family. But we are not ignoring the holidays entirely. 

UK: Mass migration is only part of the problem.

The other part of the problem is all the skilled workers and the well off who are leaving.

62 Years Later: Oswald did it.

Trump's Peace Plan for Ukraine in One Word

Surrender.

Orthodox Church Pews Are Overflowing With Converts

And the New York Times is not happy.

Quote of the day...

"Things happen." 

-US President Donald Trump responding to questions regarding his dinner guest's ordering the torture, murder and dismemberment of a journalist. 

Polish rail line blown up in suspected sabotage

WARSAW, Nov 17 (Reuters) - An explosion that damaged a Polish railway track on a route to Ukraine was an "unprecedented act of sabotage", Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Monday as he vowed to catch those responsible for an incident he said could have ended in tragedy.

The blast on the Warsaw-Lublin line that connects the capital to the Ukrainian border followed a wave of arson, sabotage and cyberattacks in Poland and other European countries since the start of the war in Ukraine.

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Warsaw has in the past held Russia responsible, saying Poland has become one of Moscow's biggest targets due to its role as a hub for aid to Kyiv. Russia has repeatedly denied being responsible for acts of sabotage.

"The blowing up of the railway track on the Warsaw-Lublin route is an unprecedented act of sabotage aimed at the security of the Polish state and its citizens," Tusk wrote on X.

"An investigation is underway. Just like in previous cases of this kind, we will catch the perpetrators, regardless of who their backers are."

Read the rest here.

Trump pardons Jan. 6 defendant for a second time over gun conviction

President Donald Trump on Friday pardoned Dan Wilson, a former Jan. 6 defendant, for a second time on gun charges not related to his conduct during the 2021 riot at the Capitol.

Wilson pleaded guilty in May 2024 to three crimes including a charge of impeding or injuring an officer in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, and two gun charges in Kentucky from 2023, when his home was searched as part of the Jan. 6 investigation.

A White House official confirmed the new pardon to NBC News, saying that Trump decided to do so because Wilson’s gun charges stemmed from the Jan. 6 investigation.

Read the rest here.

Also... Was Trump using an autopen for signing pardons?

Trump blinks on Epstein as GOP rebels

President Donald Trump is coming to grips with his impending loss on the Jeffrey Epstein files and a rare moment of tenuous control over the House GOP.

In a late Sunday Truth Social post, Trump said House Republicans should vote to release DOJ records on the late convicted sex offender “because we have nothing to hide.”

“I DON’T CARE!” he said. “All I do care about is that Republicans get BACK ON POINT.”

Trump’s reversal after a monthslong pressure campaign came as dozens of Republicans — perhaps as many as 100 — were already poised to break with him in a vote Tuesday. Even close allies of GOP leadership were weighing whether to defect from the president.

Read the rest here.