Brooke Rollins

Tuesday

Ross Clark

Bessent’s private message reveals a Milei gamble

The first lesson for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is that digital photography has totally changed politics, as wiser practitioners have long since realized. You might have got away with reading private communications in public 30 years ago, but you can no longer do so. The second lesson is that if you build an administration on the promise that you will always serve the American interest, certain foreign policy decisions become difficult. Bessent has been caught reading a message on his phone from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins expressing her anger at the Trump administration’s deal to establish a $20 billion loan facility with Argentina, or "the Argentine" as Rollins prefers still to call it.

Bessent

Tuesday

Cockburn

Are you MAGA or in DRAG-A?

Trash talk Who gets to call themselves MAGA these days, anyway? Politico Playbook declared this weekend that “MAGA is whatever Trump decides it will be” – the administration’s go-to defense when the President does something the further-right side of his base doesn’t care for, such as dispatching military support to Ukraine, say, or running interference for the Ghost of Jeffrey Epstein. Heading into the midterms – and we’re past the halfway point of 2025, so we are heading into the midterms – Republican candidates up and down the country are already attempting to bill themselves as the most “MAGA” in the field, in hope of garnering a Trump endorsement that could see them win office.

nate morris maga drag-a

Friday

Pedro L. Gonzalez

Just how America First is the America First Policy Institute?

Two roads have diverged in the America First wood. On the one hand, the populist, grassroots, anti-establishment caravan; on the other, the establishment, grifter and, most importantly, official movement. The ironically named 'America First Policy Institute' and its dunces are leading the latter. Its newest ambassador, Daniel Di Martino, is illustrative of their type. Di Martino is a Venezuelan immigrant and activist in the United States on a student visa, telling Americans that they're racist for disagreeing with him about how to run their country. After then-president Donald Trump issued an immigration ban amid the pandemic last year, the Daily Caller hosted a debate on its implications between populist author Ryan Girdusky and Di Martino.

america first policy institute

Wednesday

Amber Duke

The Kushner conundrum

After a string of broken promises, policy disappointments and sinking poll numbers, the populist wing of the Republican party knows who is to blame. It’s the President’s son-in-law, the prince of the administration, Jared Kushner. ‘Trump has a Jared problem,’ is how one conservative activist who works with the White House on immigration puts it. ‘Jared is a total fuck-up. Everything he touches turns to lead.’ Others groan about ‘four more years of Jared’ should the President be re-elected in November. Various sources in, or connected to, the administration are stunned by the amount of power Kushner wields.

kushner