Posts by Bill Palmer

For all of Donald Trump’s endless posturing, and for all of the media’s eternal insistence that Trump is a dangerously powerful strongman, the reality is that Trump has always been weak. More specifically, whenever he’s faced with superior power, he always caves. Always. And then he does some other stupid thing to distract everyone from…

Illegitimate President Donald Trump has illegally ordered the California National Guard and the U.S. Military to invade Los Angeles in order to crack down on protesters who are exercising their First Amendment rights. California Governor Gavin Newsom has pushed back against this, prompting Trump to (again illegally) call for Newsom’s arrest. Gavin Newsom isn’t having…

Donald Trump, the world’s most insecure wannabe dictator, is naturally holding a military parade in Washington DC. We all appreciate and support the military, but Trump is trying to use our military as pawns in his evil yet incompetent thirst for power. But it’s about to rain on Trump’s parade. When I say that, I…

I continue to believe that no matter how Donald Trump’s attempt at inciting violence in Los Angeles plays out, the end result is that it’ll make him weaker, not stronger. We’ll see. In the meantime, there are other political stories playing out that aren’t getting the attention they probably should. So let’s spend this morning…

Yesterday Donald Trump decided to send the United States military into Los Angeles, and then publicly advocated for the arrest of California Governor Gavin Newsom. Trump is playing a very, very dangerous game. There’s no way to predict with any certainty how this will play out. But I can tell you this: it’s not going…

Donald Trump spent yesterday trying to incite violence in Los Angeles, as part of his decade long strategy to use violence to make himself strong. Yesterday I wrote about the matter, along with the peaceful pro-immigrant protests in Los Angeles. But today I’m going to write about the thing that Trump is trying to distract…

There’s a reason the phrase “Everything Trump Touches Dies” is so omnipresent: Trump has never met a situation that he couldn’t make worse just by being a part of it. He’s made an absolute disaster of United States immigration policy, by sending his ICE gestapo to round up random immigrants for the crime of not…

Donald Trump’s poll numbers are now firmly in the gutter. If you want evidence of this, just take a look at the numbers. But if you want real proof, take a look at Donald Trump’s reaction. He’s going absolutely berserk right now about how his poll numbers are supposedly “rigged” against him. Trump has now…

If you’re looking for one thing that encapsulates the absurdity of our current situation more than anything else, it just might be the fact that the federal court system is largely still legitimate except for the Supreme Court itself. How is it possible that the head is corrupt while body is healthy? In any case,…

Yesterday the world’s wealthiest man appeared to publicly accuse the President of the United States of being a child rapist, and then the President of the United States retaliated by canceling the richest man in the world’s government contracts, and then the richest man in the world threatened to strand astronauts in outer space. It…

Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who were friends as recently as yesterday, have spent today publicly trying to destroy each other. And I’m not using the word “destroy” lightly. Musk accused Trump of suppressing the Jeffrey Epstein files because Trump was in them. Trump threatened to terminate Musk’s government contracts. Musk called for Trump to…

This morning I pointed out that Donald Trump had been missing from public view all week, and that something had to be going on. Was he ill and they didn’t want to admit it? Or did his dementia get so bad that they were trying to keep from letting anyone see? Either way, I predicted…

Earlier this week I wrote that we had scored a victory against the Trump regime. Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, had been handed the keys to the entire federal government. But we fought him at every turn, made his life miserable, and ultimately helped force him to quit in disgrace while whining on his…

Before we get to the topic of the day, I want to briefly say thank you for allowing me to take yesterday off. Also thank you to those who offered kind words and to those who donated to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research in my dad’s name. I promised I’d be back…

Just a quick note to say that my father, Bill Palmer Sr., has passed away peacefully while with family. I need to take today off for obvious reasons but I promise to be back to work tomorrow. In honor of my Dad, who died from a particularly aggressive form of Parkinson’s disease, please free to…

Ever since we lost the election in November, it’s felt like a series of ongoing losses. Our country has racked up losses. So has our democracy. So have the most vulnerable among us. It’s been demoralizing to say the least. But I’m here to tell you something. We just won one – and it’s a…

I like to use each of my morning columns to analyze whatever I feel is the most important, relevant, or overlooked political storyline of the moment. I’ve been writing this morning column each day for about ten years now. It’s always been about what’s happening with the political landscape. But today I’m going to open…

Whenever we talk about taking an ugly blow or getting a black eye in politics, it’s nearly always metaphorical. But leave it to this failing Donald Trump regime, and Elon Musk in particular, to somehow make these sayings apply literally – and in the stupidest way possible. Musk and Trump appeared together in the Oval…

Here’s the thing about Donald Trump and his regime. They’re not just extremist thugs and crass opportunists. They’re also morons – and I don’t say that lightly. Trump and his people are so desperate to carry out their deranged agenda, and yet so bad at trying to do so. It’s happened yet again, in a…

For as long as Donald Trump has been in the political arena, I’ve said that the way to defeat him was to mock him as loudly and relentlessly as possible for all the ways in which he’s weak and vulnerable. Such an approach served multiple purposes: demoralize his supporters, help expose him as an inept…

For the past decade we’ve been hearing about how Donald Trump has an “ironclad grip” keeping the Republican Party in “lockstep” with him. Those phrases have been used so often by the media and pundit class, it’s easy to just assume it’s true. And it often is true. But here’s the thing. House and Senate…

Donald Trump is always miserable, but he’s most miserable of all during holidays. Perhaps he sees everyone enjoying the holiday but him, because his sociopathic tendencies won’t allow such a thing. In any case, Trump had yet another deranged meltdown on Memorial Day, and it was arguably over the top even for him. I almost…

For all of the incoherent nonsense that comes out of his mouth and all the random rabbit holes that he goes down, the one consistent thing about Donald Trump is that he’s subservient to Vladimir Putin. We’ve all spent a decade trying to piece together how much of this may be due to money, blackmail,…

Earlier this week I warned everyone that while Donald Trump has long been mentally, psychologically, and cognitively incompetent, he’s been getting worse of late – and his collapse is accelerating. It’s almost as if Trump took my warning as a challenge. Trump was supposed to give the commencement speech at West Point, the President of the…

Each day Donald Trump manages to set the bar a little lower. And then the next day he manages to set it even lower. As if it were a dark experiment to see just how broken a person’s mind can be, Trump has reached a point where he… doesn’t know what two plus two is?…

Donald Trump is the most brazenly corrupt career criminal in American history, and yet morons voted him back into power anyway. This has given Trump a clear green light to ramp up his corruption, and he of course has jumped at the opportunity. Trump isn’t just openly accepting foreign bribes such as his free airplane…

We’ve spent a long time watching Donald Trump humiliate himself while attempting to interact with various world leaders. I say “attempting” because it’s pretty clear that Trump has no idea how social interactions are supposed to go, or how a person is supposed to act. It’s roughly like watching an alien – a deranged one…

We all know that Donald Trump has been publicly displaying symptoms of advanced dementia for a few years, and signs of malignant narcissistic sociopathy for his entire life. We should find his befuddled and disturbing behavior predictable by now, if obviously not acceptable. Since he’s retaken office, his behavior has gotten even worse. But of…

As some of you have pointed out, I haven’t yet written anything about President Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis. If I’m being honest, it’s because I was still trying to figure out what to say. There are so many angles involved, so many emotions, such heartbreak, and it only serves to somehow make what happened in…

The last time Donald Trump was in charge, he screwed up everything he touched. When COVID happened, his words and (non) actions made it worse. Whenever Kim Jong Un piped up, Trump responded to him and made it worse. It was the worst display of abject incompetence to ever occur on the world stage –…

Donald Trump is a notorious con artist and ripoff artist. He lies. He cheats. He doesn’t pay his bills. He’s a convicted felon because of how fraudulently he ran his business empire. But Trump is also something else: a sucker. Trump has always excelled at ripping off the little guy. But any time he does…

When Donald Trump began trying to find excuses for failing to follow Supreme Court rulings, I wrote that he was risking the possibility of retaliation. After all, the majority of this Supreme Court is made up of power hungry opportunists. Trump was begging to be put in his place, and I predicted that the Supreme…

When public figures – especially buffoonish ones – try their hand at running for high office, they usually find out rather quickly that governing is a lot of hard work and not very fun. And for all their insistence that politics needs outsiders with fresh ideas, they tend to find that they’re far worse at…

Dear Palmer Report readers, it’s been a tough year but the fight is more important than ever. For that reason I’ve launched the Palmer Report 2025 Operating Expenses Fund. If we can fully fund this, it’ll bridge the gap and ensure that Palmer Report can keep fighting now and into a crucial 2026. I’m asking you…

Donald Trump held a signing ceremony for an executive order this week and then wandered off without signing it, but I’m not here to talk about Trump’s worsening dementia today. I’m here to talk about something that’s in danger of getting overlooked amidst all the rest of the chaos: the staggeringly blatant corruption. Yesterday Trump…

I recently wrote that Donald Trump’s social media posts have begun committing the worst sin of all as far as he’s concerned: they’ve become boring. Trump (or whoever is ghostwriting for him) tries to hype something, but it either falls on deaf ears, or becomes an instant punchline, or unwittingly gives something away. It’s happened…

Donald Trump’s social media posts have always been horrifying, often incoherent, and usually illiterate. But now his social media presence has become something else entirely: boring. It’s not just that Trump never really did return to Twitter, and instead prefers to shout into the abyss on his own failed social network. It’s that PT Barnum’s…

Donald Trump has been on the national political stage for a decade, and throughout that entire time, his behavior has been so malignantly bizarre that there is still widespread debate about his motives and intentions. Is he strictly trying to plunder the country for his own personal gain? Is he trying to destroy America for…

When the Trump regime wrongly arrested a Wisconsin circuit court judge two weeks ago (yes, that was only two weeks ago), I wrote that it was an attempt at faking a power play. Trump was, as usual, picking on someone smaller than him. He wanted to make it look like he might be willing to…

Of all the aspects of the federal government that Donald Trump has weaponized for his own corrupt gain, the US Attorney’s Office for Washington DC might be the most flagrant. Trump quietly name Ed Martin as interim US Attorney, and Martin immediately proceeded to use the office to go after Trump’s political enemies. Now Ed…