The Friday Brief: May 28, 2025

All Tacos Matter, Putin's Fool, and Much More

Inside:
Putin’s Fool: The Sucker In Chief.
The Godfather, But Dumber.
All Tacos Matter.
The Russia Nuke Leak.
Hegseth, Rabid Ferrets, and the NSA
Alpha Mike Foxtrot, Elon
RFK Jr is a Mass Murderer
Hurricane Season Starts Today
We’ll Never Know The Difference
What I’m Reading
Scenes From the Home Front

The Big Picture

Putin’s Fool: The Sucker-In-Chief

Yesterday, the Gray Lady delivered a steaming, caviar-scented platter of NYT Pitchbot realness with this headline: “Deal Maker or Duped? Trump’s Embrace of Putin Shows Few Results.”

The dek adds even more unintentional comedy: “The American president’s preference for praising and excusing the Russian leader has yielded no progress toward peace in Ukraine.”

Shocking, I know.

Who could have foreseen that a marginally-literate, deeply incurious, praise-addicted carnival barker whose personal ideology is a cocktail of ego, envy, and vaguely remembered Studio 54 orgies might not fare well against a chess-playing ex-KGB operative who’s murdered, bribed, and blackmailed his way to the top of the world’s most paranoid political system?

There’s an old intelligence acronym for how spies are recruited: MICE — Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego. Vladimir Putin must have spit vodka through his nose laughing when he saw that Donald Trump hit all four like it was a damn personality test.

Let’s rewind.

In 1987, Donald Trump visited Moscow as a guest of the Soviet government, scouting hotel sites while envisioning himself as the Slavic Sinatra of hospitality. He came back and placed full-page ads criticizing U.S. foreign policy. Subtle.

After the Soviet collapse, Trump desperately chased a Moscow hotel project like it was a coked-up porn star.