Lazy Sunday Tabs
- Via the BBC: Zelensky says ‘US silence’ over Russian attacks ‘encourages Putin’
- Via the BBC: Americans remember George Floyd on fifth anniversary of death.
- Via the Detroit News: U.S. Justice Department pardon lawyer pledges ‘hard look’ at plot to kidnap Michigan governor.
- Via USAT: With $37 million and a jet, Trump’s presidential library takes off, Eric Trump as pilot.
- Via TNR: Trump’s “Golden Dome” Won’t Work—but It’ll Make Elon Musk Richer.
- Via the AP: Belgian princess left in doubt about her Harvard future following Trump’s foreign student ban. Yikes! They didn’t mean those kinds of foreigners!
- Via NBC News: U.S. citizen with REAL ID handcuffed and held in immigration raid before being released. You’ll never guess what he looks like!
- Via the AP: The future of history: Trump could leave less documentation behind than any previous US president.
- Via Politico: Four major partners exit Paul, Weiss after Trump deal.
- Via Paul Waldman at Public Notice: Donald Trump and the power of the big (fake) number. Here is but one example.
Alas, the $2 trillion figure is essentially fictional. First, as the Washington Post noted, many of the deals the Trump administration has been claiming credit for from this trip were actually inked under the Biden administration, and some are absurdly exaggerated to boot. In one case, the administration claimed an agreement for Amazon to provide $1 billion worth of cloud services to the UAE was actually a $181 billion deal.
Musk using his insider position in a possibly illegal way seems pretty stupid in this case. If it’s like most RFP’s, this one will say, “We need someone to build, launch, and operate a network of 1,000 satellites. Prior experience a plus.”
It’s like why SpaceX is currently winning every bid for high-value NASA and national security payloads: no one else has a certified launch vehicle and can meet the schedule. Ars Technica reported this week on the Space Force taking the next step to pulling a bunch of ULA’s contracts because of the problems with their Vulcan rocket. ULA is up for sale; the main asset they have looking forward is their pile of Space Force contracts.
Re the guy looking to pardon Governor Whitmer’s kidnappers – I’ve mentioned I’m old. Why I’m so old I remember Republicans claiming to be the party of law and order.
@gVOR10:
The president who popularized that phrase was Richard Nixon. It has never meant anything more than “I’ll protect you from scary black and brown people.” Period, end of story. It is an intrinsically Orwellian slogan that has never had one whit to do with actually following the law; on the contrary, it has long been a favorite of the most corrupt pols out there. The only thing that distinguishes Trump from his predecessors is the degree of corruption.
@Kylopod: The only law they wanted to enforce was Wilhoit’s.
“With $37 million and a jet, Trump’s presidential library…”
A presidential library with a recently acquired and upgraded 747? Will this be one of those libraries that has a 10,000-foot runway? And forget the Reagan library comparison because that was a smaller aircraft that was disassembled, transported overland, and reassembled in its final location as a static display.
Also, it’s looking more likely that trump will insist on using the 747 that the U.S. just took off Qatar’s hands as an Air Force One. Not that it will be stripped down, inspected, and rebuilt to anything resembling the Air Force One requirements that Boeing is trying to achieve. He’ll probably waive some requirements and the DoD will add resources to mitigate risks; for example, they may activate more aircraft to protect Air Force One airspace, or preposition one of the current AF 747s near the destination, or shadow it with a current AF 747. Perhaps it will be used only for domestic flights–especially as a shuttle between Joint Base Andrews and Florida. Whatever they do with it, expect it to be very inefficient.
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