Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Let me file that under fuck it.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Republicans in disarray!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / The Stuff of Mad Kings

The Stuff of Mad Kings

by | 78 Comments

This post is in: 

How did I miss this?

The orange menace is shooting himself in the foot.

(The New Republic)

He has now said it right out in the open—not once but twice. In two major interviews, President Donald Trump openly declared that he has the power to bring the wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the United States. And on both occasions, Trump said straight out that he is not doing so because administration lawyers have told him he doesn’t have to—or that he shouldn’t.

This has been widely seen as an admission that Trump is defying the Supreme Court, which has directed the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. Yes, it is that. But these two moments are also their own story. They offer a unique glimpse into the deep rot of bad faith infesting Trump and Stephen Miller’s broader project to expand the president’s removal powers into something extraordinarily vast and entirely unaccountable. They also show how Trump is inadvertently sabotaging his case against Abrego Garcia—and that broader project as well—with his bumbling incompetence.

[snip]

Trump has now admitted he can take this alternate path anytime he wants. So who is telling Trump not to? Who is directing that overall strategy? The more we learn along these lines, the more Trump’s whole case will collapse.

All this deals a blow to Trumpworld’s arguments in a deeper sense. Miller’s bigger argument is essentially that the president’s powers to remove people should be above challenge and unreviewable by definition. Miller appears to want Trump to have the power to declare undocumented immigrants to be terrorists and gang members by fiat; to have the power to absurdly decree them members of a hostile nation’s invading army, again by fiat; and then to have quasi-unlimited power to remove them, unconstrained by any court.

“The judicial process is for Americans,” Miller has said. “Immediate deportation is for illegal aliens.” He appears to want to dispense with due process for migrants entirely—the Constitution be damned.

Drunk with hubris and high on his sad little fascist fantasies, Miller believes he can bury Americans in propaganda about criminal migrants, seducing them into embracing unchecked presidential power as essential to securing public safety. But Trump’s blithe admission that he can follow the law on Abrego Garcia anytime he wants to—and is not doing so because someone, somewhere told him he doesn’t have to—reveals this as entirely unmoored from anything resembling public order and the rule of law. It’s lawless, arbitrary, and dictatorial—proudly so, in fact.

The more transparency we have gained into the rot of corruption and bad faith at the core of this whole saga, the worse it has come to look. Trump himself is exposing it all for what it truly is: the stuff of Mad Kings.

The arrogance is astonishing.  He truly believes he is untouchable.  Let’s hope he’s wrong.

Reader Interactions

78Comments

  2. 2.

    One of André Leon Talley's Fifty Pieces of Monogrammed Louis Vuitton Luggage

    Well, the Pope is infallible, so …

  3. 3.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: Has this been talked about on BJ?  I have been super busy and not keeping up on everything.

  4. 4.

    HopefullyNotcassandra

    Here is a similar one from political wire, politico and the NYT.

    President Trump announced that the U.S. will stop its intense bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen after almost two months, saying the rebels had told Washington they “don’t want to fight anymore,” Politico reports.

    Said Trump: “We will stop the bombings and they have capitulated.”

    However, earlier today the New York Times reports the Houthis said something quite different: “Our military capabilities are advancing with each aggression, and our operations will continue.”

  5. 5.

    Jeffro

    Interesting that “YOU’RE NOT THE BOSS OF ME!!!1!” – MAGA’s main operating principle – should come into conflict with the Constitution and the Supreme Court like that.  Who could have foreseen?

  9. 9.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    Stephen Miller, ‘Murka’s* Favorite Himmler, might not be in the bubble we’d like to think he is. Just look at events as they’re unfolding and see what the (non) responses (both politically and the general populace) are.  It’s entirely credible from their perspective that they’re untouchable.

    We’re far beyond a “constitutional crisis” into the territory of sheer authoritarian rule, and the sad fact is that very few Americans know or care.  Which leads right into a quote I use often:

    “The lesson of the Holocaust was not that the Nazis were uniquely evil. The lesson was that anyone can become a Nazi. You’re witnessing this with America right now.”

    *77 million voters

  10. 10.

    Baud

    Tulsi Gabbard Reused the Same Weak Password on Multiple Accounts for Years. Now the US director of national intelligence, Gabbard failed to follow basic cybersecurity practices on several of her personal accounts, leaked records reviewed by WIRED reveal.

    The password is “traitor.”

  14. 14.

    RaflW

    I don’t remember where I saw it on Bsky earlier today, but in some case wending its way through the courts an Admin lawyer was claiming ‘sovereign’ rights to do something that sure seems unconstitutional. It’s Nixon’s unitary executive theory run amok. Roberts and his ilk fanned that flame with their absurd decision last year, and, welp, here we are.

    I’m not optimistic that the Supremes will really manage to reel him in. Maybe collapsing public support might?

  15. 15.

    randy khan

    @Baud:

    The password is “traitor.”

    I would have guessed “Vladimir,” but six of one, a half dozen of the other.

  17. 17.

    HopefullyNotcassandra

    @laura: most kings are.  That is the inherent problem with inbred monarchies in my humble opinion.

  18. 18.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    “The judicial process is for Americans,” Miller has said. “Immediate deportation is for illegal aliens.” He appears to want to dispense with due process for migrants entirely—the Constitution be damned.

    This is nutso stuff. If the judicial process is “only for Americans” (I assume he means US citizens only), what about foreign tourists here on tourist visas? Legal permanent residents? Those here on work and student visas? I assume he would want our laws to apply to them. So should constitutional rights and legal protections. Only in dictatorships does that not apply

    Would Miller expect a foreign nation’s laws and legal rights to apply to Americans visiting/working there if they were accused of a crime?

  19. 19.

    New Deal democrat

    @WaterGirl: Don’t know generally, but yesterday I did point to this colloquy between Constitutional historian Jack Rakove and Greg Sargent

    Sargent:

    ‪Greg Sargent‬ ‪@gregsargent.bsky.social‬
    · 3d

    “Stephen Miller wants to create a vast, unreviewable WH rendition authority. His big story is that unchecked power is essential for public safety. But Trump’s admissions reveal that all this is really just lawless, arbitrary and dictatorial. The stuff of Mad Kings.”

     

    Rakove: “This is dead right–we do have a mad king problem, and notwithstanding the 25th Amendment and the Impeachment Clause, have abandoned any mechanism for dealing with it. The situation is so bizarrely anomalous for constitutional and republican government that the whole system is failing.”

    ‪

  20. 20.

    barbequebob

    Every time Mad King Trump has a brain fart, America has a new Top Priority.

    e.g. Make Alcatraz Great Again.

  21. 21.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    “The judicial process is for Americans,” Miller has said. “Immediate deportation is for illegal aliens.”

    So if an illegal murders someone you will let go free with  a deportation Miller?

    And considering Bekele been cozy with the drug gangs in the past, what makes you so sure  Miller that Bekele is really is punishing them, and not feeding you a line of BS?

  22. 22.

    Leto

    @Baud: ​
    “Goddammit, Tina; no I don’t want to download free games and music!” Gabbard would know that reference if she’d bother doing her fucking annual cybersecurity training, like she was required. Ofc that’s just for the little people and enlisted.

  24. 24.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): what about foreign tourists here on tourist visas? Legal permanent residents? Those here on work and student visas? I assume he would want our laws to apply to them.

    No, he doesn’t.  Remember those students on student and permanent-resident visas who were scooped-up and the Trumpists are trying to deport them without a hearing?  Yes there’s pushback, but their position is that these -persons- (under the Constitution) are not entitled to due process.

  25. 25.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):  Don’t bother getting to the arguments.  Call it out as the Unconstitutional and UnAmerican bullshit that it is.  Don’t grant them the courtesy of pretending the arguments are advanced in good faith.

  26. 26.

    kindness

    The current Reich does believe presidents have unchecked powers and they will continue to believe that until a Democrat is elected president.

  29. 29.

    Trollhattan

    So, US, Mexico and Canada, the 52nd and 51st states, are hosting World Cup next year. Is anybody showing up considering they might be rounded up by ICE or probably whoever is left at NOAA?

    Got a pitch from FIFA for venue-specific tickets for all matches to be held there. Those for the unspecified SF Bay Area venue cost $19,250, $16,050, $11,150, or $8,275 each, depending on specific package option. Ole!

  35. 35.

    Steve LaBonne

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Under this “principle” NOBODY is safe. They can grab any citizen off the street, send them to El Salvador, and claim they’re not actually a citizen. When there is no due process and you can’t even communicate with anyone, how would you prove that you actually are a citizen?

  39. 39.

    Jay

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    At some point in time, somebody is going to US that as a legal defense.

    “The Administration, the DOJ, the Courts have upheld that the Rule of Law does not apply to me, because I am not an American. So I can do anything I want, because no US Laws ban my actions or make them a crime.”

    These are not the brightest people.

  40. 40.

    WTFGhost

    This has been widely seen as an admission that Trump is defying the Supreme Court, which has directed the administration to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return. Yes, it is that. But these two moments are also their own story. They offer a unique glimpse into the deep rot of bad faith infesting Trump and Stephen Miller’s broader project to expand the president’s removal powers into something extraordinarily vast and entirely unaccountable.

    What makes this particular moment “unique?” Am I wrong? Is anyone here saying to themself, “self, this is unique in how Trump operates in bad faith!”

    Perhaps one could say they offer unique *evidence*. The two times Trump said he could bring the fellow back, that is unique evidence that he is operating in bad faith, and it might even be unique in how it has not only yanked the null hypothesis from your clutching fingers, it’s beaten up the null hypothesis, given it a swirly in a used toilet, curb-stomped the null hypothesis, chopped it into pieces with an axe ENTIRELY unlike the one Lizzie Borden used, insofar as the evidence is *real*, and is currently stomping up and down on the pieces, prior to burying them in a lead-lined coffin.

    But again, we all knew this, why is this evidence singular in nature?

    (What? I’m belligerently making a federal case out of this, because I’m one of those egghead pedants who frowns on improper use of “unique” and probably have a stick up my ass about “literally,” too? NO! I wouldn’t make a FEDERAL case out of anything, because the feds might shoot first and try to deport you afterward. No, no, never a federal case; a municipal, or state level case, and I live in a blue state, at worst!)

  42. 42.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    “The judicial process is for Americans,” Miller has said. “Immediate deportation is for illegal aliens.” He appears to want to dispense with due process for migrants entirely—the Constitution be damned.

    And the Bible, also too.

    One law shall be for the native-born and for the stranger who dwells among you.

    Exodus 12:49

    You are to have the same law for the foreigner and the native-born. I am the Lord your God.

    Leviticus 24:22

  44. 44.

    Bupalos

    @Gin & Tonic: The only thing more ridiculous that “I’m being censored because someone doesn’t like what I say” is “Hey, you’re being censored, because I suspect someone else who isn’t here… but I have some weird thing about… would object to what you say, I mean,  if he was here. Which is in effect, a thing you need to be careful about etc etc censorship!”

  45. 45.

    Geminid

    @HopefullyNotcassandra: There may actually be a deal regarding Houthi attacks on shipping, brokered by the Omanis. I guess we’ll find out more in the next few hours.

    The Houthis say they’re not done with Israel, though. They managed to land a missile right next to Ben Gurion International Airport on Sunday. Then the Israelis bombed Houthi-controlled Yemen the last two nights, wrecking Sanaa’s airport last night. So the Houthis have informed aviation authorities they will blockade Israel’s airports and warned:

       Support for Gaza continues, the response is coming, and Netanyahu must prepare his resignation.

    I’m not sure what that part about Netanyahu means. Maybe the Houthis intend to devastate Tel Aviv. But I wouldn’t be be surprised if they put out a screenshot of $100,000 Qatari check written out to Sara Netanyahu.

    The Houthis stopped their attacks at the beginning of February, when the Gaza ceasefire began. They only resumed them because Netanyahu blew up the ceasefire. The U.S. has been pounding the Houthis for 50 days, with jets from two aircraft carriers, missiles from half a dozen other warships, and Air Force fighters and B-2 bombers just to suppress Houthi attacks because Trump couldn’t make that ceasefire stick. This would be a huge waste even if there weren’t over 2000 more people killed in Gaza.

  46. 46.

    WTFGhost

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Well, plus, you can’t say you’re only deporting “illegal aliens” without due process, because you will pick up citizens. It will happen. There’s no scriptwriter making sure the episode ends happily. That means the courts get to review the script, and the casting, so to speak – they need to see the plans, and make sure everyone who is deported is one of the people who really is here unlawfully.

    What’s worse, right now, ICE is doing a nasty trick (or so I’ve heard, lots of people are saying, yadda yadda): they are cancelling visas, then saying a person is here unlawfully. If the judicial system is peopled by the sorts of people it should be peopled with, we should see a lot of judges perform a very good impression of an erupting volcano, because if the *executive* extralegally (if perhaps lawfully) causes the person’s presence to be illegal, the *executive* has no right to punish them for it.

    It’s like asking if you’re carrying, if you are, they cancel your permit, and arrest you for unlawful carry, even if you’re offering to surrender the gun to law enforcement right the eff now (“too late, now it’s evidence.“) It’s like entrapment, only, they may have a stronger name for this version.

  47. 47.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Bupalos: Your comment may have been true when you started it, but the very act of posting it made it moot.

  48. 48.

    Bupalos

    Yikes I just watched the 1st half of the Trump/Carney thing and I have a super bad feeling that Trump just dumped Carney’s popularity by 10% while getting money people back on his side. I hope that’s not what I just watched.

    Trump is way more flexible and agile than people want to accept.

    I won’t offend the board’s delicate Montisorri sentiments by using the word that’s starts with “I” and ends with “igent”

  49. 49.

    jonas

    @Baud: I’m sticking with my prediction that before the tariff wars bring our economy to its knees, this administration will be blown up by a catastrophic national security breach of some kind. It’s simply inconceivable that our most sensitive computer and intelligence networks have not already been completely compromised by these traitorous idiots.

  51. 51.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bupalos: ​Congratulations on completely and totally missing the point of my comment. In sports terms, you got a bagel.

  52. 52.

    Bupalos

    @Gin & Tonic: Just be careful. If Susan Sarandon was here she’d object to your use of the word “bagel.”

    What was the “point” of your comment?

  54. 54.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Bupalos: It was addressed to me.  I understood it and had a bit of a chuckle.  I would guess that was the point of the comment.

  55. 55.

    Jay

    @Bupalos:

    Fact check: Trump claimed the US doesn’t do ‘much business with Canada.’ Canada is the world’s top buyer of US exports
    Daniel Dale
    By Daniel Dale, CNN
    2 minute read
    Published 3:52 PM EDT, Tue May 6, 2025

    https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/politics/fact-check-trump-mark-carney-imports

    US Bilateral Trading Partners;

    #1 Canada
    #2 Mexico

    That’s $762.8 billion US dollars in trade that DJTdiot just kissed goodby to. 17.3% of your total economy, Canada alone.

  56. 56.

    WTFGhost

    @Bupalos: I’ve seen no reporting that would suggest this is true, but, I didn’t see the video.

    Trump is cunning, and completely unconstrained by the truth; he’s a showman, and knows how to feed the marks the correct lines – and the marks aren’t always who you think.

    I agree, that’s very effective, it apes the correct behavior so closely that, yes, you might think such a person is highly intelligent, rather than mediocre, at best, outside his field of showmanship. But I’m guessing you know my estimate of his intelligence. He doesn’t have truths; without truths, you can’t reason, you can just make hopeful wishes.

    Those things only tend to work out if you’re completely invulnerable to harm, but… but… damn, is Deadpool 3 a preview of the Trump administration?

    (I believe that was how Deadpool excused his outlandish lies  – “hopeful wishes”.)

  57. 57.

    Jay

    Trump Oval Office session with PM Carney a humiliation to America. Ego. Ignorance. Bluster. Rude. Stupid.

    PM Carney cerebral. Dignified. Firm. – Barry R McCaffrey

  60. 60.

    Bupalos

    @Jay: Trump-Carney Oval Office counter:

    Trump willfully lying, feigning friendship in an obviously feigned way while uttering barb after barb to see how Carney reacts. Carney continually making small motions with his finger to indicate that his profound disagreement will be buried under much more profound submissiveness. Carney is going to have Canada join Trump’s anti-China thing.

    The appropriate response to this meeting would be a predawn sneak attack on Wright-Patterson AFB.

  61. 61.

    Bupalos

    Carney just won an election because he was the most not-Trump candidate, then ran to Trump for a pat on the head and ex-post-facto endorsement… and promise not to be immediately annexed statement that there is no need to officially annex Canada at this time.

  62. 62.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bupalos: The point of the comment was to elicit precisely what it elicited: “a bit of a chuckle.” I was not aiming for “uproarious laughter” or “knee-slapping hilarity” – my aims are more subtle and limited.

  63. 63.

    The Thin Black Duke

    From the little I saw on YouTube, Trump sounded like an asshole, as usual. It was obvious Trump was in over his head. Carney showed remarkable restraint in not shouting out, “WTF, America?!? Why did you elect this fool?”

  64. 64.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Melancholy Jaques:

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    You two have got the right idea, of course. Their legal “theories” are just crazy though. Pure fascism

    @Chetan Murthy:

    No, he doesn’t. Remember those students on student and permanent-resident visas who were scooped-up and the Trumpists are trying to deport them without a hearing? Yes there’s pushback, but their position is that these -persons- (under the Constitution) are not entitled to due process.

    You’re right. When I said laws, I meant more in the “subject to the authority of the criminal justice system/law enforcement”. It’s safe to say he believes that, but doesn’t also believe legal rights should apply to them in his fucked up worldview

  65. 65.

    Jay

    @Bupalos:

    Carney’s popularity just went up 7% according to a CBC poll.

    Canadian’s don’t have the rotted MAGgot infested brains that the US has. 16 years of DJTdiot has rotted every US brain.

    Remember when DJTdiot started making mouth noises about Tariffs FFS/Fentanyl? We gave him the same deal we had negotiated with the Biden Administration in 2024, like it was a shiny new object and he ran away, clutching it to his chest like it was his “Precious”, (until of course, he got bored).

    There is a global trade alliance against China, it’s called the CPATPP,………. already exists,

    And the US is not part of it and it looks like it never will be.

  66. 66.

    WTFGhost

    I read to the end of the New Republic article, and the other thing I think they should have called out, is, the President is *ordered* to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. So, when he talks to “the lawyers,” and the lawyers say “we don’t want to do this,” he’s ordered to say, “yes, but I’m the President – I’m in charge, not you. I’ll follow the directive of the SCOTUS; and, I’ll have you all flogged for insubordination!” (In answer to the obvious question: I’m just not betting against the flogging threat, that’s all I’ll say.)

  67. 67.

    Jay

    @WTFGhost:

    C’mon, it’s the White Supremacy House. They will be lined up against a wall and have ketchup bottles thrown at them.

  68. 68.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Steve LaBonne:

    Under this “principle” NOBODY is safe. They can grab any citizen off the street, send them to El Salvador, and claim they’re not actually a citizen. When there is no due process and you can’t even communicate with anyone, how would you prove that you actually are a citizen?

    Exactly. There is no guarantee that they wouldn’t do this without due process. We’ve already seen examples where ICE has scooped US citizens off the street, trying to “deport” them. It was due process that saved them

  69. 69.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @WTFGhost:

    It’s like asking if you’re carrying, if you are, they cancel your permit, and arrest you for unlawful carry, even if you’re offering to surrender the gun to law enforcement right the eff now (“too late, now it’s evidence.“) It’s like entrapment, only, they may have a stronger name for this version.

    It is entrapment. That’s a great example

  77. 77.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Jay: this is a published headline? Link? Title of pub? Gosh I want to see it…

    it seems so much more apt that the idea that mr bluster won his dominance play in the Oval Office.

  78. 78.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Jay: if A=B, the B=A.
    thus, oh I wish, if a non American can do all those things, legally, then can someone who tries to do all those things, outside of the law, be declared un American, outside the protection of the law? And then can we bloody deport him?

    Just dreaming’

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