Trump Is Asking to Be Bailed Out Again
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A popular joke in the 1850s concerned a man who, upon being convicted for the murder of his parents, throws himself at the judge’s feet and begs for mercy on a poor orphan.
The tale came to mind recently as I read about a hearing challenging President Trump’s authority to build a new ballroom where the White House’s East Wing had stood until Trump abruptly demolished it last fall. The president had been insisting for some time that any work would not “interfere with the current building,” then razed it so quickly that no one had any time to intervene legally. In court this month, a Justice Department lawyer echoed the parricide orphan, pleading with a judge not to halt construction and arguing that it is necessary due to unspecified security concerns—even if he agreed with a suit brought by preservationists. “It does not benefit the public,” DOJ’s Yaakov Roth said, “to have this site dormant.”
Perhaps the administration should have considered this before it demolished the bustling building that used to be there. (U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon has not ruled but has said that he hopes to issue a decision by the end of this month.) The Trump team has discovered that acting fast can prevent anyone from stepping in to stop them—the “You can just do things” ethos. But the president still doesn’t understand why it might be unwise to do something, even if you can. His hasty actions keep producing crises that the administration then insists require everyone to accept further exercises of executive power.
Trump’s war—sorry, “operation”—in Iran is a perfect example. The president didn’t ask Congress to declare war, and he did not receive, or request, an authorization for use of military force. The administration briefed the “Gang of Eight” (the leaders of the House, Senate, and each body’s intelligence committees from both parties) just before the strikes but, according to The New York Times, misled them about the scope of the attack. Trump did not work to build support for war with Iran among the American people, and he did not attempt to assemble a coalition of allies other than Israel to take part.
Now that the operation has hit difficulty, though, Trump wants exactly the same people he ignored—Congress, the American people, and allies—to bail him out. The administration has asked for an astonishing $200 billion to fund a war that the president also sporadically claims is over, giving legislators an unappetizing choice between funding a quagmire or else walking away and leaving a mess behind. Administration officials have also called on citizens to make sacrifices to handle higher gas and energy prices in the service of a war they don’t support, whose aims the president can’t articulate. And Trump has alternatingly pleaded with and raged at allies who, having avoided a war they didn’t want—and having endured years of scorn from Trump—are now unwilling to put their own troops in danger to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
This logic of escalation has also appeared in domestic affairs. Having effected a hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center, Trump now finds himself insisting that the venue close for two years, reportedly in part because it has failed to book enough artists or sell enough tickets to remain open.
Or take Operation Metro Surge. In late 2025, Trump decided to send a contingent of immigration officers to Minnesota, ostensibly to respond to cases of benefit fraud among the state’s Somali population. The Justice Department was already prosecuting the matter, and it wasn’t clear what exactly Department of Homeland Security officers were going to do. Once they arrived and began patrolling neighborhoods, however, residents protested; the administration responded by expanding its deployment. Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act and dispatch active-duty soldiers, though he ultimately did not. By the time the administration pulled back, agents had arrested at least 3,000 people, but only 23 of them were Somali and none was connected to the fraud allegations, according to the Star Tribune. Meanwhile, two American citizens were shot and killed by federal agents.
The Minnesota operation was not only a tactical flop; it was a political blunder. The administration sacked Greg Bovino, the Customs and Border Protection official who had become the front man for aggressive enforcement. Most agents were yanked from Minnesota. Trump’s ratings on immigration, once his signature issue, turned hard against him.
This is ironic, because the original intention was a quick political win. Trump had hoped to spotlight the benefit fraud both to bolster his case for immigration enforcement and also because of his outspoken bigotry toward Somalis. He seems to have thought the same about the Iran operation, expecting as quick a win there as he (appears to have) notched in Venezuela. Instead, he has ended up worse off as a matter of his stated goals and political interests alike.
Following protocol might have deprived Trump of the splashiness of these sudden actions, or even prevented him from doing these things—but it might also have helped him avoid the missteps that are plaguing him. Trump doesn’t recognize that although rules can limit him, they also protect him. A lawyer for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is challenging the ballroom, made the same point more pithily during the hearing last week. Thaddeus Heuer noted that the administration could have consulted with relevant authorities before demolition but had declined.
“They have forgotten the proverbial first law of holes,” he said. “When you find yourself in one, stop digging.”
Related:
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- A landmark verdict against Meta and Google
- David Brooks: America needs a trimmer.
- The U.S. and Iran are fighting a massively asymmetrical war.
- The deep risk that Republican hawks overlooked
Today’s News
- A jury found Meta and YouTube negligent for designing addictive features that harmed a young user, ordering them to pay $3 million in damages. The ruling could pave the way for more lawsuits over social media’s impact on users’ mental health.
- The U.S. sent Iran a 15-point proposal to end the war, but Tehran rejected it and outlined its own conditions, including reparations and recognition of its sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz.
- Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats had sent Republicans a proposal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, including funding for TSA workers and proposed limits on ICE operations.
Evening Read
How AI Is Creeping Into The New York Times
By Vauhini Vara
On Sunday, a writer named Becky Tuch posted an excerpt on X from a months-old New York Times “Modern Love” column that had given her pause. “I don’t want to falsely accuse writers” of using AI, she wrote. “But this reads EXACTLY like AI slop.” The excerpt—from an essay by a mother who had lost custody of her son—described the son’s feelings, at one point, toward his mother: “Not hate. Not anger. Just the flat finality of a heart too tired to keep trying.”
Among the 100-plus replies to Tuch’s post was one by an AI researcher, Tuhin Chakrabarty. He’d run the snippet from “Modern Love” through an AI-detection tool from the start-up Pangram Labs, which flagged it as likely having been AI-generated.
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- David Frum: Trump owes Mueller.
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- The David Frum Show: The far-right algorithm: Anti-Churchill, anti-West
- When Claude met Claude
Culture Break
Explore. How America learned to love Barnes & Noble again, Henry Grabar writes.
Reflect. AI chatbots offer relationships that are low effort and completely personalized—and hollow, Julie Beck writes.
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Rafaela Jinich contributed to this newsletter.
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