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Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: When you're losing, scream at the refs. It doesn't work, but YOLO. [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-05-30

New York Times:

Trump Officials Intensify Attacks on Judges as Court Losses Mount White House reactions to unfavorable court rulings appeared designed to undermine confidence in the judiciary. Mr. Friedman said there was a political risk for Mr. Trump if he refused to abide by court rulings. Already, the administration has declined to carry out court orders seeking to return a deported man from El Salvador and turn around deportation flights. “Historically and certainly in the last century, presidents have not done well politically by defying the courts,” Mr. Friedman said. “People might support the president’s agenda, but they balk at presidents ignoring the courts.”

x “Trump is failing according to his own account. So where does this go? It just seems like a deeply contradictory position.” https://trib.al/rH2c7Hx — The New Republic (@newrepublic.com) 2025-05-30T02:03:23.580685Z

David Frum/The Atlantic:

The Trump Presidency’s World-Historical Heist He is taking self-enrichment to a scale never seen before in America. The record of Trump real-estate and business projects is one of almost unbroken failure; from 1991 to 2009, his companies filed for bankruptcy six times. Few if any legitimate investors entrusted their money to Trump’s businesses when he was out of office. But since his return to the White House, Trump has been inundated with cash from Middle Eastern governments. Obscure Chinese firms are suddenly buying millions of dollars’ worth of Trump meme coins. So are American companies hard-hit by the Trump tariffs and desperately seeking access and influence. After Trump invited major holders of his crypto funds to dinner, Wired quoted a crypto analyst about the coin’s value proposition: “Before, you were speculating on a TRUMP coin with no utility. Now you’re speculating on future access to Trump. That has to be worth a bit more money.” Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency. Throw away the history books; discard feeble comparisons to scandals of the past. There is no analogy with any previous action by any past president. The brazenness of the self-enrichment resembles nothing seen in any earlier White House. This is American corruption on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a postcolonial African dictatorship.

New York Times:

To Win Pardons, Trump Allies Echo His Claims of Political Prosecutions The president is increasingly using his clemency powers to undermine Justice Department cases against his supporters. When they pleaded guilty, the three men took responsibility for crimes. Brian Kelsey acknowledged his involvement in an illegal campaign cash scheme. Paul Walczak expressed “so much shame” for his tax fraud. Daniel Rodriguez wrote a letter to “apologize from the heart” to a police officer he assaulted with a stun gun. But when they or their allies pushed for pardons from President Trump, they argued that they — like him — had been unfairly targeted by prosecutors because of their politics. It is an argument that has resonated with Mr. Trump, who issued full and unconditional pardons to all three of the men, as well as hundreds of other supporters convicted of an array of crimes.

"Trump pardons crooks just like him. And for what kind of bribe?" would be a better headline.

x Fiona Hill: "The United States is on a path toward full-on state repression." — George Conway 👊🇺🇸🔥 (@gtconway.bsky.social) 2025-05-29T20:19:22.348Z

Wall Street Journal:

Elon Musk Tried to Block Sam Altman’s Big AI Deal in the Middle East Musk warned that Trump wouldn’t bless OpenAI data-center project unless his xAI company was added Musk had learned just before Trump’s mid-May tour of three Gulf countries that OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman was going to be on the trip and that a deal in the U.A.E. was in the works, and grew angry about it, according to White House officials. He then said he would also join the trip, and appeared alongside the president in Saudi Arabia. After Musk’s complaints, Trump and U.S. officials reviewed the deal terms and decided to move forward. The White House officials said Musk didn’t want a deal that seemed to benefit Altman. Aides discussed how to best calm Musk down, one of the officials said, because Trump and David Sacks, the president’s AI and crypto adviser, wanted to announce the deal before the end of the president’s trip to the Middle East. Musk didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Jonathan V Last/The Bulwark:

TACO has the potential to hurt Trump. (1) It’s simple. Trump Always Chickens Out. You can put that phrase anywhere, apply it to anything, and everyone knows what it means. (2) It’s meme-able. You have the slogan. You have the word mark. And you have an universally recognizable image. Hell, there’s even a pre-built emoji for it. 🌮 You can put this thing anywhere and it will be a symbol of the democracy movement. (3) It’s universal. You can apply it to any situation. Trump pulls back on tariffs? TACO. Trump gives in to Putin? TACO. Trump increases the national debt? TACO. (4) It’s organic. No Democratic strategist came up with TACO. It’s an observation that emerged from the finance world—from the very same bros who voted for Trump in the first place. You can feel the disdain of his own supporters dripping off of it. (5) It hits at something deep inside Trump. It’s about his soul. It’s about his weakness.

NOTUS:

The MAHA Report Cites Studies That Don’t Exist The Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” report misinterprets some studies and cites others that don’t exist, according to the listed authors. Epidemiologist Katherine Keyes is listed in the MAHA report as the first author of a study on anxiety in adolescents. When NOTUS reached out to her this week, she was surprised to hear of the citation. She does study mental health and substance use, she said. But she didn’t write the paper listed. “The paper cited is not a real paper that I or my colleagues were involved with,” Keyes told NOTUS via email. “We’ve certainly done research on this topic, but did not publish a paper in JAMA Pediatrics on this topic with that co-author group, or with that title.

Cliff Schecter on the fall of Marco Rubio:

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