* The bill that passed in March funding the government runs out at the end of this month. Heads up.
* “This country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE.”–President Trump.
* A Trump executive order aims to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War, its previous name until changed in 1947. Sen. Rick Scott is co-sponsoring companion legislation in the Senate. The rationale for the change? “It just sounded better,” explained the president who wants to project military toughness. Secretary of (for now) Defense Pete Hegseth was more specific—and disquieting. “We haven’t won a war since” (the name change). “We’re going to go on offense, not just defense.” How reassuring.
* “I love the smell of deportation in the morning.”–The president’s Trumpian comments that accompanied an AI “Chipocalypse Now” posting on his Truth Social platform.
* What a coincidence: National Guard occupiers have been sent to, among others places, Washington, Los Angeles, Oakland, Chicago and New York. They all have Democratic mayors who are black.
* “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do.”–Donald Trump. BTW, only four U.S. presidents have won it: Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama.
* A president who truly cared about crime would not have pardoned the Jan. 6 rioters. Moreover, dozens of the Justice Department lawyers who prosecuted them have been fired.
* “A crown jewel of this administration.”–A reference to U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. by Trump suck-up consigliere Stephen Miller.
* “We’re still a long way off.” That was Sec. of State Marco Rubio’s take on the Ukraine-Russia war, the one that Trump would end on “day one.” Surely, Rubio, a former presidential candidate, knows he now works for a man he once accurately labeled a “con man.” Surely. But it’s the price to be paid for career ascent and Faustian prestige.
* “I have the right to do anything I want to do—I’m the president of the United States.”–Donald Trump. Had any predecessor said that, it would have been a stop-the-presses moment. For Trump, just another day at the orifice.
* Trump’s predictable take on the Epstein files: “They’re trying to get people to talk about something that’s totally irrelevant to the success that we’ve had as a nation since I’ve been president.”
* Imagine a president who’s an anti-science germaphobe?