* Another day at the Orifice: Trump recently welcomed, so to speak, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to the White House. Awkward small talk soon devolved into Trumpian bloviation when a Japanese journalist asked the president why he hadn’t notified allies ahead of the war with Iran. “Because,” said Trump, “we wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK?” No, you can’t make this up.
BTW, Japan, which imports more than 90% of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz, could certainly have used a head’s up. Japan is also the largest foreign investor in the United States. Japanese investors hold more than $1 trillion in Treasuries.
* Crusading Secretary of Offense Pete Hegseth is playing the holy card of Christian moral underpinning in the Iran war. “The providence of our Almighty God is there protecting those (recently deployed) troops…and we’re committed to this mission.”
* “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead.” Trump’s version of RIP.
* Benumbing numbers: The Congressional Budget Office projects a budget deficit of $1.9 trillion this year. U.S. debt is now at a record $39 trillion. Imagine the numbers if we didn’t have a “businessman” in charge.
* “When oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.” –Donald Trump. The U.S. is now the largest crude producer in the world.
* Vanity Flair: At the National Portrait Gallery, the text under Trump’s portrait has been changed to eliminate any mention of his two first-term impeachments. The text under Bill Clinton’s portrait, however, still states that he was impeached for “lying under oath about a sexual relationship he had with a White House intern.”
* “Your excellency”: That’s how North Korea’s Kim Jong Un references Trump. But it might also apply to Lindsey Graham.
* “Trump has enshrined personal impulse as a governing principle of his presidency.”—WaPo associate editor and author Bob Woodward.
* According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, the president’s tariffs cost the average household $1,000 last year.
* “The strategy here is to show the Cubans and the world that the only lifeline that Cuba has left is the United States.”—Ricardo Herrero, executive director of the Cuba Study Group, a nonpartisan policy and advocacy group in Washington. In other words, the U.S. can use oil as leverage to extract concessions from a Cuban regime that is in economic free fall.