Posts by Bill Palmer

Donald Trump’s idiotic handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal – a story that wasn’t even getting headlines until Trump decided to put it into the headlines – isn’t just making Trump and his people look like they’re idiots who are hiding something ugly. It’s also having reverberations on the midterms already. “Speaker” of the House…

Donald Trump and the loyalists in his regime have spent the past week handling the Jeffrey Epstein scandal so stupidly that it’s revealed them to be inept idiots with something to hide. Even as large chunks of Trump’s base continue to turn against him over his regime’s claim that the Epstein files don’t exist, Trump…

There are a few basic rules for making a scandal go away. First, don’t do anything suspicious that makes it look like there’s more to come and you’re hiding it. Second, don’t handle things in such a clumsy way that more shoes continue to drop, keeping the story in the headlines. It appears Donald Trump…

By now we’ve all seen footage of Donald Trump dozing off during various meetings and events. Any time Trump isn’t putting his dementia on display by talking incoherently, he’s putting his dementia on display by promptly falling asleep. Now things have gotten even more absurd, with Trump falling asleep while on stage: . . This…

Now that Donald Trump’s Attorney General has declared that there is no Epstein client list, it hasn’t just put the spotlight back on evil deceased villain Jeffrey Epstein. It’s also put the spotlight back on his evil sidekick Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been quietly rotting in prison. Maxwell has been appealing her conviction for some…

It’s now been a full week since Donald Trump and his regime inexplicably decided to push the Jeffrey Epstein back into the spotlight in the most suspicious manner possible. It’s generated endless negative headlines for Trump and his top people, and it’s even turned a large chunk of Trump’s base angrily against him. Now Trump…

A week ago today, Donald Trump and his regime made one of the dumbest mistakes in the history of the United States presidency when they decided to dredge up the Jeffrey Epstein scandal in a manner that was both suspicious and wildly incompetent. As a result Trump got a week’s worth of very ugly headlines,…

By now you’re familiar with the series of very stupid decisions and unforced errors made by the Trump regime this week with its handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, so I won’t waste time recapping it. But it is worth trying to size up the sheer magnitude of the fallout – even as it continues…

When Donald Trump’s people pulled their Jeffrey Epstein stunt at the beginning of the week, they appeared to be trying to distract us all from something else. If that was the case, then it worked – but in the least successful way possible. Trump is now stuck with an Epstein scandal and coverup that’s so…

Whenever someone does something odd, we all have a tendency to try to figure out what their strategy is. No matter how strange or absurd or seemingly dumb the move might be, we all figure there has to be some kind of strategy or intent in there somewhere, right? But what we’re learning with this…

It’s still unclear why anyone in the Donald Trump regime thought it was a good idea to drag the Jeffrey Epstein scandal back to the surface. Even worse, the Trump regime has done it in a way that looks highly suspicious (there was no client list after they said they had the client list?), and…

The week began with the Trump DOJ announcing for no apparent reason that there was nothing suspicious about Jeffrey Epstein’s death and that there was no Epstein client list to be found. This has played out in multiple negative ways for the Trump regime. It’s turned numerous pro-Trump conspiracy theorists against the Trump regime. It’s…

Suffice it to say that we’re in hell for as long as Donald Trump is in power. But if it’s any consolation – and it should be – Trump is now increasingly in a hell of his own making. It’s not just that we get to watch him suffer. It’s that the worse things get…

After Donald Trump’s big ugly bill was passed into law last week, I wrote that we finally knew who was really running the presidency while a senile Trump twiddled his thumbs: Stephen Miller. The profoundly anti-poor, anti-immigrant legislation had Miller’s ideological fingerprints all over it. And it was Miller who was celebrating the most loudly…

Donald Trump has never once competently held a meeting with a world leader. We’ve seen him botch such meetings time and again when the cameras are rolling, and lord only knows how bad it gets behind closed doors. But as has been the general trend of late, Trump is getting worse at holding these meetings.…

Given how far gone Donald Trump is, it’s doubtful that he was even involved in the Trump regime’s decision to release a “nothing to see here” report this week about the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. But somebody in the Trump regime clearly thought it was a good idea, presumably as a distraction from something else we…

Trump Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth (you couldn’t come up with such a bizarre set of words if you were playing MadLibs) somehow survived the Signalgate scandal. That’s probably because Donald Trump is too far gone this time around to understand the need for scapegoating anyone. But now it appears Hegseth is being thrown under…

It’s still not clear why anyone in the Trump regime thought it was a good idea to take a Jeffrey Epstein scandal that no one was even talking about anymore, and announce for no particular reason that there was nothing suspicious about Epstein’s death and that there was no evidence of Epstein’s client list. But…

This morning I asked why the Trump regime had chosen yesterday to make such a big controversial announcement about there supposedly having been no further evidence in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and nothing suspicious about his death. What were they trying to distract us from? We still don’t know the answer to that. But we…

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (talk about putting the arsonist in charge of the fire station) announced yesterday that there was nothing suspicious about Jeffrey Epstein’s death whatsoever, and that there never was any client list to be found. In other words, it’s pretty much what we expected the Trump regime would announce. At this…

Over the past few weeks there has been a popular theory that Donald Trump’s more unhinged than usual behavior was an attempt on his part at distracting everyone from his unpopular budget bill while it was being passed. But according to that logic, now that Trump’s awful bill has become law, shouldn’t he be reining…

During the previous Donald Trump regime, none of his cabinet members were suitable – but at least they tended to only embarrass themselves one at a time. During this new Trump regime, his cabinet is so cartoonishly awful that it’s difficult to even keep track of all the awfulness. Most of the medical focus this…

Earlier this week I wrote that Donald Trump and his Republican Congress may have just passed the one and only piece of substantive partisan legislation that they’re going to get this term. I know that they still have a year and a half left. But even with full control, things have a way of running…

I spent the Fourth of July like many of you probably did: enjoying the festivities, going through the motions of patriotic joy, while wondering what it really means within the context of what’s happening to America right now. How do you manage to juggle the celebration of this nation’s founding ideals with the travesty of…

Remember back when the entire media pretended that President Biden had dementia because of one weak debate performance while he was sick? Imagine if the media had correctly identified Donald Trump as the candidate that actually had dementia. Since the media handed the 2024 election to Trump, his dementia has gotten worse. Far worse. This…

For the past few months, we’ve been staring at the same question: who’s really in charge? It’s certainly not a senile Donald Trump, who is so far gone that his foreign policy consists of “tariffs” and his domestic policy consists of “sharks.” Trump’s family doesn’t seem to be around anymore. JD Vance is a pushover.…

Earlier this week I pointed out that even as Republicans were trying to hurry up and ram the most corrupt legislation in history through the House and Senate, Donald Trump was busy announcing plans for a new prison surrounded by sharks. That’s right, Trump’s dementia riddled obsession with getting eaten by a shark has become…

Like a lot of dementia patients, Donald Trump is inexplicably obsessed with one of the few big-sounding words he can still remember: tariffs. And like a lot of dementia patients, he has no clue what the word he’s obsessed with even means. Now Trump has cut a new trade deal, and according to his own…

The Republican Party managed to ram a version of its evil budget bill through the Senate with zero votes to spare. Now we’ll see if the Republican House is willing to swallow it, or if the House is going to stand its ground and demand an even more evil version of the bill. If it…

Just six months ago, Elon Musk bought the presidency for convicted felon Donald Trump. Just one month ago, Trump was still letting Musk run the federal government into the ground. But things can take a sharp turn rather quickly in politics, particularly when you’re dealing with two mentally unstable people. Now Musk is out of…

Last week I shared with all of you that I’ve been dealing with anxiety attacks since election night, and that for a time it kept me from being able to write as much political commentary as I wanted to. I want to thank all of you who offered well wishes and support. Your supportive responses…

Once Elon Musk quit the Trump administration in a huff, it probably always spelled the end for his DOGE agency. For one thing, the agency never really seemed to exist, beyond Trump announcing that something called “DOGE” was now in charge of every federal agency that Trump and Congress were supposed to be overseeing. But…

I often try to highlight any good news or positive developments that occur during the darkest of political times – not out of any desire for optimism, but because we can often use good news to our advantage. I have to tell you though, this week has not been one for good political news. First…

As I write this I’m sitting on a somewhat turbulent cross country flight, but it’s on time and headed to the right destination. It could be worse. The last time I flew cross country, it turned into a 27 hour odyssey that somehow involved airports in all four quadrants of the United States. So yeah,…

There are a number of highly relevant things playing out in politics. We’re still dealing with the fallout from the Supreme Court’s ludicrous assertion that federal judges can’t issue federal injunctions. We’re still fighting against Trump’s “big beautiful bill” which is working its way through the Senate. But this morning I want to address the…

The United States Supreme Court has become such a detriment to the United States that the best one can hope for on any given week is that it’s not in session. Its rulings in this era have been occasionally good, mostly bad, sometimes catastrophic, often incoherent, and rarely constitutional. Now it’s happened again, in a…

Donald Trump, the biggest failure in history, continues to pick the wrong fights with the wrong people. He just bombed Iran and had it backfire on him, and now he’s reportedly considering bribing Iran. Even as he screws up his dealings on that side of the world, Trump is continuing to blow it closer to…